the internet ideas blog

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Shopping Habits Revealed



This morning I was greeted with an email from the Google Alert I set up from the Realtime application (see previous post). Apparently my name was now associated with a new website, Shopalize. I was curious since I don't have an ecommerce site myself and I haven't given any product reviews recently so I clicked the link.

Shopalize is a (new?) website that tracks my twitter feed for anything I've posted related to shopping. Under my feed: an article I retweeted about a flower shop that was penalized for buying links, a testimonial for verizon wireless, and a quote about buying good luggage.

How are they deciding which posts are related to my actual views about products? As you can tell from posts chosen from my tweet stream, only one was a true shopping recommendation, the other two had nothing to do with my preferences.

On the other side, this could be a very useful tool for further promotion of products & services. Companies that regularly post featured items, daily deals etc. could potentially find extra attention via Shopalize. Although searching for my twitter clients who do post deals resulted in a quaint "our service is broken" message with advice to "check back in a few days."

At any rate, this could be something to watch for in the future if Shopalize really gets off the ground. By the way, Shopalize has an alexa ranking of 204,359 so it's definitely popular.

Friday, August 27, 2010

Off the top - 3 ways to use Google/Realtime


Okay so yesterday Google announced it's "experimental" version of Google Realtime and I got to play around with it a bit. Off the top of my head here are 3 ways to use it for your business:
  1. Reputation management. Put in your name or your companies name and make sure you're not getting any bad press. If you see something negative at least you are aware of it should someone mention it to you and you may want to put out some good press to counter-act. Hopefully everything is rosey for you (it was for me)

  2. Industry info: If you work with several client social media campaigns (as I do) you'll be able to search for industry info that you can use as tweets or articles that are available for reprint on your client sites. Just a couple of suggestions.

    You can also set up alerts so you are getting the info in your email as it happens (or once a day or once a week) so you're always on top.

  3. Just as you can manage info for clients - you can use this to keep up with your own industry news. Especially important for internet based occupations, our industry changes with the blink of an eye!
Okay so there it is - short and sweet. If you haven't tried it already, here's the link: Google Realtime

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Are you passionate?


Today on HLN I saw a poll about how many people were doing their dream job. Surprisingly many people were not doing what they considered to be their dream job. Personally I think that the poll results, which indicated which dream job people would most like to have, were a bit unrealistic. Not everyone is cut out to be an actor (29%), President of the US (13%), a rock star (13%) . . . But I have met people that I think are truly passionate about what they do. And it shows in their level of success.

The same holds true of websites. Websites that are developed and maintained by or with the person who is most passionate about the website topics are, oddly, the highest ranking on the search engines and are successful. Why is that?

It could be that the natural descriptions by the business owner who loves what they do generates the right key phrases to capture the correct searchers. It could be that the level of passion causes the business owner to constantly stay on top of what they are advertising on their websites and therefore make changes to the site on a regular basis causing the search engines to revisit the site regularly.

It could also be that passionate people are able to draw a following because others can sense that level of passion in them generating more links to the website which, in turn, increases page rank.

Whatever the reason may be, it's a sure thing that if you really love what you are doing, your website will show it and the people who visit your website will know it.

If you want to learn more about the basics of search engine optimization, sign up for my webinar here: Search Engine Basics

Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Socialnomics


Came across this one on YouTube this morning . . . pretty cool and accurate! If you aren't in on social media better jump quick!


See my newest article about Social media & search engine optimization - click here.

Monday, August 02, 2010

What's in a (Key) Phrase?


Everyone knows that being on top for a keyword is big! But the likelihood of getting top rankings for just one single word is slim. People just don't search for online 1 word, usually it's a word with a qualifier like, "diamond ring." Some people qualify further, "gold diamond ring." And others are just really sure about what they want, "white gold 1ct diamond ring."

Now you might think that "diamond ring" would be a great term for top placement - and that's true. But what you might not know is that phrases of between 3 to 5 words are the best for optimal placement and conversions.

Ad Network Chitika sampled over 41 million impressions of search traffic over 6 days and found that 26% of search traffic came from 3-word phrases (ie "gold diamond ring") while phrases with only 2 words (ie "diamond ring") accounted for only 19% of the traffic. Only 14% of searchers used one word to do a search.

What does this mean to you? Well if a searcher is refining what they want to see by using 4 or 5 words, they are more interested in buying what you have to offer. They are really focused in on specifics. These are your most qualified leads and are most likely to convert into sales.

So when you go to optimize your website, look at the phrases people use to find you - not just one term.
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