Ads Next™ Local Internet Advertising, Annapolis, Maryland, Internet Advertising Solutions, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design and Integration, Social Media Marketing

By MG Siegler

Today, at its Search Event in Mountain View, Google Fellow Amit Singhal (who recently participated in our Realtime Crunchup) took the stage to announce a big new feature for the search giant: Realtime.

“It’s Google’s relevance technology meeting the realtime web,” is how Singhal described it.

As we’ve learned over the past several months with Twitter Search, relevancy is perhaps the key to making realtime search a pillar of the web. Google seems to believe it has cracked the code for this, and has been internally testing it for a while now. But starting today it’s going live for everyone.

Singhal showed off the new feature by doing a query for “Obama.” The results page shows results coming in in realtime. And yes, it works with Twitter. For example, Google’s Matt Cutts tweeted something from the audience, and in popped in the results immediately. This is the first time any search engine has integrated realtime results into a standard page, Google says. Obviously, this is huge. Read More

While doing my weekly search engine marketing readings I came across these best practices for ranking number one in the search engines by randfish from SEOmoz.

Ads Next’s unique solution practices these techniques to provide our clients with the greatest results and top organic rankings.

Best Practices for Ranking # 1

Curiously, though perhaps not entirely surprisingly to experienced SEOs, the truth is that on-page optimization doesn’t necessarily rank first in the quest for top rankings. In fact, a list that walks through the process of actually getting that first position would look something more like:

1. Accessibility – content engines can’t see or access cannot even be indexed; thus crawl-ability is foremost on this list.
2. Content – you need to have compelling, high quality material that not only attracts interest, but compels visitors to share the information. Virality of content is possibly the most important/valuable factor in the ranking equation because it will produce the highest link conversion rate (the ratio of those who visit to those who link after viewing).
3. Basic On-Page Elements – getting the keyword targeting right in the most important elements (titles, URLs, internal links) provides a big boost in the potential ability of a page to perform well.
4. User Experience – the usability, user interface and overall experience provided by a website strongly influences the links and citations it earns as well as the conversion rate and browse rate of the traffic that visits.
5. Marketing - I like to say that “great content is no substitute for great marketing.” A terrific marketing machine or powerful campaign has the power to attract far more links than content may “deserve,” and though this might seem unfair, it’s a principle on which all of capitalism has functioned for the last few hundred years. Spreading the word is often just as important (or more so) than being right, being honest or being valuable (just look at the political spectrum).
6. Advanced/Thorough On-Page Optimization – applying all of the above with careful attention to detail certainly isn’t useless, but it is, for better or worse, at the bottom of this list for a reason; in our experience, it doesn’t add as much value as the other techniques described.

In the second part of 2009 Google will be launching a new product called Google Wave. One of Google Wave’s developers Lars Rasmussen describes the new product as, “what email would look like if it were invented today.” Google Wave is a real – time communication platform that combines email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management.

Software Engineering Manager, Lars Rasmussen comments: “Here’s how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.”

To Learn more about the Google Wave view the video below.

People are turning to the search engines more and more to search for “local” service providers, ranging from cosmetic dentists to cosmetic skin care, electricians to home remodelers.

Most of us deal with companies and businesses within a few miles of where we live, especially with the current state of the economy. It’s cheaper to shop local.

Just building a website is not enough anymore to succeed online. It is now crucial for any business hoping to expand their reach to have a high Internet presence that is aimed at targeting their local customers.

Effective Local Online Advertising  involves a professionally built website, a Local Search Engine Marketing Campaign, and someone that can manage both of these efforts. Below is an interesting article on internet Ad Spending from SMBs by Melinda Gipson from Burrell Associates. 

“In the last three years, Internet spending by SMBs has nearly tripled from 4 percent of sales to 11 percent. So says the latest Borrell Associates report “Main Street Goes Interactive.” But, while the collective heft of such businesses, numbering more than 14.6 million in the U.S., has tantalized numerous locally-targeted Internet marketing services who are deluging them with offers, Borrell warns, “the SMBs in any market are less like a two-ton gorilla and more like 1,000 four-pound monkeys – difficult to chase down and impossible to corral.”

The good news: such offers have this market’s attention. The bad news, they’re much less receptive to buying banner advertising (now 54 percent of their Internet spend, but declining in share), and more amenable to search engine advertising, online directory listings and streaming video. Rather than spend more on what publishers might define as advertising, they’re upping their budgets on site design, search engine optimization and customer databases.
By the numbers, in 2008 SMBs:

•    Were responsible for $6.9 billion in locally-generated, locally targeted Internet advertising – more than half the U.S. total;
•    Smaller merchants spent less than $300/ea on Web site support, but this expenditure will triple again in just a few years, Borrell predicts.

“SMBs are collectively poised to plow billions of dollars into their own Web sites,” but they appear to be extremely results oriented and have grown leery of Internet products that are “oversold and under-perform.”

The report is chock-full of insights on what kinds of SMBs are spending more online than their peers, by category of business (hint: general merchandise stores, auto marketing and Real Estate Services together account for 70 percent of all local online ad spending.) Pure-plays like Yahoo and Google control almost half of all local interactive ad spending by SMBs, irrespective of their size. Newspaper-owned interactive units follow in rank with a 28 percent share. In 2004, newspapers’ share was 50 percent and portals hovered around 20 percent, so these marketers’ roles are nearly reversed, even as the competition for attention heats up.

As Borrell puts it, “All in all, our interactive Main Street may look quiet, but when it comes to local interactive ad spending, it’s where the action is.”

Here is an interview with Google’s Matt Cutts and his take on search engine rankings in 2009.  He makes some interesting points on what to expect from Google in 2009 and how you should be marketing your website.  Your main focus should not be on rankings. 

Cutts isn’t saying that rankings are dead however it’s not as important as it used to be.  He states that smart SEOs aren’t only looking at rankings but also conversions and metrics.  Its great to be ranking high on important keyword phrases that relate to your business but if those phrases aren’t generating sales or revenue then it isn’t helping your business very much.

Matt Cutts stresses “The challenge is not to pay so much attention to ranking, pay attention to traffic, pay attention to conversions and keep building good content and don’t worry about can I show people that I rank number one for my trophy phrases.”

He also gives some insight on Universal Search in 2009.

“Universal is really useful and I think it will continue to expand and what that means in 2009 you can’t just think of yourself as an SEO,” said Cutts.

“SEOs are starting to embrace the fact that they are marketers. It’s a broader spectrum. You have to think about how you build buzz, how do you get loyal customers, how do you optimize your ROI. All those different things and that can include how do I make good videos, do I have a book, things like that.”

Cutts says that people will continue to pay attention to video and images in 2009 but noted a down side. “Of course anywhere there is money there will be spam.” Google has been focusing on its different properties to manage the spam issue.

We agree, that is why Ads Next™ offers a 360°web promotion, tracking and results driven marketing solution.

Our goal is to promote your website across the web and generate as much traffic and leads as possible based on your budget.  We will balance our website traffic strategy between paid traffic (Pay-Per-Click), and organic traffic (Search Engine Optimization).  We then use our lead tools to track and convert these traffic increases into more qualified leads.  We prove results with our web-based Reporting Dashboard 2.0.  This new version combines all of our traffic and lead tracking metrics into one place with easy to read graphical charts.

The following article was posted on the Nasdaq website.  I found it very interesting.  It gives insight on the Interactive Ad industry and the challenges all types of advertising is facing due to the current state of the economy.  Although internet ads are in a better position because you are able to track performance.

“The internet advertising industry has managed to buck the slumping economy with this week’s announcement that revenues climbed to $6 billion in the third quarter of 2008.

The $5.9 billion in revenues represent an 11 percent gain over the third quarter of 2007, although the current figures are only two percent higher than they were in the second quarter of this year.

“Interactive advertising continues to be the most measurable and cost-effective way to reach consumers, and we see more and more marketers seeking to harness its power,” said Interactive Advertising Bureau President Randall Rothenburg. Still, Rothenburg also acknowledged that growth in advertising revenues had “stabilized” due to the current economic climate.

Total online advertising revenues have nearly tripled since 2000 and exponentially since such tracking began in 1996, when online advertising revenue for the entire year was reported as $267million.

David Silverman of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP also cited the economy as an ongoing challenge for any type of advertising, but suggested that internet ads are “better poised to withstand the storm” because of its “ability to combine performance-based advertising along with broad-based branding.”"

After developing a website for your business it is important for users to be able to find your website on the internet.  What is the point of having a website if no one can find it?  So how do you get found on the internet?  The best way to get a consistent amount of visitors to your website is through Search Engine Optimization (SEO). 

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it “ranks,” the more searchers will visit that site. – Wikipedia

Optimizing your website will allow users to find you, help you stand out from your online competition and guarantee that you will get web traffic.  Increasing traffic to a website means more potential customers and more potential sales for your business. 

Matt Cutts from Google shares 5 SEO tips to help sites rank higher in the search engines.

1. Spotlight your search term on the page. If you want to be found for your keyword, make sure that term is on the page you want to rank. The term should be at the top as well as peppered throughout your copy.
2. Fill in your “tags.” The two most important tags are Title and Description b/c that’s what is displayed on the search results.
3. Get other sites to “link” back to you. This is one of the most important of the 100 factors Google considers when ranking sites
4. Create a blog and post often. This can help you get links. 
5.  Register for free tools. Cutts recommends using the tools at google.com/webmaster, as well as creating a text-based sitemap www.xml-sitemaps.com, and adding your business to Google’s Local Business center (google.com/local/add)