Client Update: Sun Capital Appoints Jim Beutel as Senior Vice President

We join our client, Sun Capital Group, Inc. in welcoming Jim Beutel to their ranks.

Jim Beutel brings more than three decades of sales and marketing experience to SCG, serving in a variety of leadership capacities for both privately held and public commercial and healthcare companies.

Welcome to the group, Jim. We know you'll be a great asset!

SEO and HTML Character Entities

Make sure your information is processed correctly in searches, marketing emails, blogs and the product listings in shopping sites by validating your HTML, especially the special, non-standard, or foreign characters. There are many special HTML entities, including quotation marks, apostrophe, ampersand, numerical marks such as less-than and greater-than, currency symbols, foreign alphabets and accent marks, copyright and trademark symbols, superscripts and fractions. Search engines may differ in the way they handle HTML entities in search processes and may have trouble displaying or converting search information with special or newer html characters.

This is important in regards to the metadata in your HTML meta tags. The use of numeric character code in the Meta tags is recommended to avoid potential problems. Use HTML entity codes since programs may not recognize all the character entity values which are part of the html standard nor the ALT+NUM method of displaying ASCII characters. Do not expect special characters which you paste directly into HTML documents to display or be searched correctly either.

For example, the apostrophe may not display or be recognized by programs correctly, so the actual code for it should be placed in your Meta tags. And if you are using accent marks or foreign language letters, the same action is recommended.

Some HTML Entities with Entity Codes:

Using Twitter to Promote Your Website

If you are actively involved with the internet, you most likely have heard of Twitter. Twitter is a cross between blogging, instant message away messages and social networking. The idea of Twitter is that you update when you choose, writing about what’s on your mind but with a 140 character limit. You can link to your Twitter page on your own website, add Twitter friends to your list and read their entries, otherwise known as “Tweets.” Twitter is a great tool for networking, online communication and collaboration.

So how is Twitter useful for a company promoting their website?

• Promote special events or offers
• Promote an interesting article or new feature on the website
• Provide insight on a current event
• Build relationships with prospective clients
• Build a conversation

You can pretty much Twitter anywhere you are, through cell phone text, instant message, Facebook and many other 3^rd party clients and applications.

Many Twitter users are individuals but there are also many well known sites that use Twitter to promote news or features on their websites such as CNN, ESPN and MacRumors. Using Twitter is just another way to make your presence on the web known.

Respected Internet Marketing Expert Jay Berkowitz to Present at Webmaster World’s Pubcon 2007

Respected Internet marketing expert, Jay Berkowitz will be speaking at PubCon in Las Vegas next week. He will be presenting along with other business and marketing speakers including Craig Newmark from Craig's List, Matt Cutts of Google and Guy Kawasaki from Garage Technology Ventures.

Jay is known for being the creator of the Ten Golden Rules of Internet Marketing podcast which has just posted the 14th episode. For more information on the TGR podcast visit here.

Is It Time to Fire All the Smokers?

Bryan Person's blog post on the Monster Blog already has 151 comments.

I agree with Bryan, smoking is a nasty habit and I am SO thankful I never got started.

My biggest beef with smoking is smokers who throw lit butts out of their car. Sparks flying a night is a driving hazard and if a smoker wants to harm their own health, that is their choice, but please don't harm the environment!

How about a $5,000 fine for littering cigarettes first offense, $10,000 for second offense and a jail term for third offense. Revenue from the fines could go towards cleaning the street and highways.

How Does Google Create Snippets for Search Engine Results?

Matt Cutts, a software engineer with Google, gives a great explanation on how Google creates the snippets found on search engine results. Here's an example of a snippet for Starbucks:

As you can see the snippet consists of several important parts:

• Title - this information is gathered directly from the site's title tag.
• Description - Google can pull this information from the meta description, text on the page or even your DMOZ directory description.
• URL - the URL that the snippet goes to.
• Site Links - for a select group of sites, usually highly branded sites, Google will offer additional links below the main site URL. These links take you to specific areas of site. And unfortunately, it's all algorithmic so site owners have no input in what links Google points to.

Matt Cutts offers a more detailed explanation of Google Snippets on his YouTube Video:



If you're interested in getting more education on Google, visit their YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/Google.

Happy Cyber Monday!

Today is Cyber Monday, the start of the Ecommerce Shopping Season, much like Black Friday. Cyber Monday was coined by Shop.org a couple years ago. The origin of the day was that shoppers being unable to find what they were looking for in stores went online on Monday after Thanksgiving and made their purchases online. Recent studies over the last couple years, show that the biggest online shopping days of the year are now sometime between December 5th and the 12th.

Whatever the biggest day of the year online shopping wise is, there are hundreds of deals out there today on the web, with most sites offering at the minimum Free Shipping. For a list of participating online stores, check out Cybermonday.com. And Happy Shopping!

If you live in a Big Blue House Don't Throw Stones?

IBM has launched a new tv commercial making light of avatars and fake money.

The commercial resolves to a web address www.ibm.com/do and uses the theme line Stop Talking Start Doing.

I went to the site and clicked on the video link and the site is still looking for a video format 15 minutes later...















After I returned to the site I clicked on some of the videos and a podcast. The content was boring and basic, case studies on big expensive imlpementations that IBM has done under the theme of innovation.

Anshe Chung has made over $1 million dollars US in Second Life, maybe Big Blue shouldn't be throwing virtual stones at virtual worlds?

What do you think?

Ten Golden Rules of Internet Marketing Video

We just found a short edit of our CEO Jay Berkowitz making a keynote presentation at the International CRM conference in Miami. It is about 7 minutes long and gives a nice short summary of the presentation.



And other content from the conference CRMC CALA 2007 is available here

Why Businesses Should Have a Presence on Facebook

Facebook has gone a long way from being just a MySpace clone. It has actually become something way better. Facebook is a social network that connects friends, family and coworkers together through their profiles. Most recently, Facebook has opened its doors to businesses to have a presence on Facebook as well, enabling Facebook members to discover new organizations and businesses and interact with them as well.

With a Facebook page, businesses can provide general information on their business as well as display videos, photos and any other applications that are relevant. A Facebook member can become a “fan” of the business profile, post comments and interact with others by discussions right on the profile. Applications such as syndicating a business blog can bring awareness to members who didn’t know a blog existed for their business.

A concern a business may have when it comes to having a Facebook profile is how they can even get noticed. Since Facebook members are linked together, each member can see what they’re doing through a News Feed. A News Feed is a unique feed that announces when a member has done something, such as join a Facebook group, update their profile, or comment on another profile. If a Facebook member becomes a fan of Coca Cola, all their friends will know through the News Feed and may want to be fans of Coca Cola too.

Besides having a Facebook page, they also offer Social Ads, which target a specific audience on Facebook. These ads are made to be influential, since if one member finds it interesting, a friend of theirs may be interested in it as well.

So if you haven’t considered Facebook as a way to get more exposure to your business or organization, you should definitely join today.

International Brand Marketing and the 2008 Olympics in Beijing

The 2008 Olympics will be played in Beijing at a time when international focus on China has shifted from their politics to their economy and culture. It will be interesting to see how China uses the Olympics to join our global community. How will the games affect China’s censorship and control of the media and the Internet? Will the Chinese government be more willing to tolerate different ideas and public opinions being introduced to and used by their people? Will they become more open in their government actions? How will they handle unfavorable publicity? Obviously, China sees this as a chance worth taking. Let’s see if it risks changing the way it communicates with the rest of the world.

I’m especially excited about how the Olympics will affect the Chinese market and industries. What opportunities will Chinese companies take advantage of, and how will they team up with foreign brands that are eager to enter their market? Budweiser beat out the German brewers at the 2006 FIFA World Cup to make the American brand known to loyal beer-drinking Chinese football fans. I’ll definitely be watching athletes compete at the Olympics, but I’ll also be keeping a score-card on which companies breakaway from the pack to score big points with Chinese consumers.

What strategies and media will be best in engaging Chinese consumers? What cultural preferences will the foreign brands play to? With reports showing Chinese Internet users currently at 162 million, how will foreign brands use the Internet, podcasts, and MP3s to reach them?

There are definitely games being set up for the 2008 Olympics, but not all of them will be played in the sports arena. Keep an eye on those big-game players and all the international teams!

Mac vs PC Ads Now Online

Apple continues to get creative with their Mac vs PC Ads, this time moving the ads to the web. It is a great use of ad space and I for one, look forward to seeing other creative for the campaign. Thanks to MacRumors for putting the ad on Youtube. The campaign has been spotted on some tech oriented sites such as PCMag and Engadget

Are You Ready for Cyber Monday?

Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving weekend, is considered to be one of the highest online shopping days of the year. Just like it's brick and mortar high shopping day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday brings in the big money, and e-retailers are gearing up to take advantage of the post-turkey, shopping frenzy. If you haven't already made plans to take advantage of this internet marketing opportunity, there are a few last minute things you can still do to get the consumer's attention:

• PPC Advertising - The beauty of PPC is that you can turn it on in an instant and turn it off just as quickly. Sit down with your staff, create a Cyber Monday promotion and then run PPC ads on Monday in Google, Yahoo and MSN.
• Midnight Emailing - Put together a quick one page HTML newsletter, announcing your Cyber Monday sales and email it the night before at midnight. That way your sales promotion is sitting in their in-box Monday morning when they get into work.
• Google Product Search - either update or create a product feed and submit it to Google on Friday/Saturday. It only takes 24 hour to get your product feed in Google Product Search. Because of Google Universal Search when people are shopping for your products online, you could potentially outshine other websites in the natural results.

Don't stop there. If you have a little more time and money to devote to Cyber Monday, put out a few online press releases related to the season to get attention to your website. Offer a promotion where some of profits from your sale are donated to the charity of your choice.

If you don't have time to take advantage Cyber Monday, don't fret. With the holidays right around the corner, the next several Mondays will be high shopping days, and e-retailers can use some of these techniques to draw attention to their holiday promotions.

Retail Success in Second Life

Recently Ten Golden Rules had an opportunity to assist with creating a Second Life costume store for Annie's Costumes.The new store opened on October 2nd and over the course of the month ran a 3.7% conversion.

LeftBank Studios developed the Second Life store in-world and assisted with its promotion. Lynuor Richelieu, in-world graphic artist and designer, notes that, "The key to a successful retailing brand in Second Life is much the same as in the real-world: having a good product and being able to generate traffic to the product."

For new businesses looking to jump into the virtual world of Second Life, it's important to understand what Second Lifers are looking for and connect yourself with in-world developers and marketers that have the social network to get the word about your product out there.

So do your market research...don't just jump into Second Life expecting for instant success. Just like a website...you can't just build a Second Life store and they will come. It's a lot of careful planning and hard work.

Congratulations to Ivan Berkowitz - Big Heart Winner!

Ivan Berkowitz, father of Ten Golden Rules founder Jay Berkowitz was selected for the Heart & Stroke Foundation's prestigious "Big Heart Award" following over 35 years of involvement and support of heart related charities! Congratulations from the team at Ten Golden Rules.

You Can't Compete With "Click Here"

Did you ever see a website with a link that reads, “Click here?” We’ve all seen this around the web, and most don’t realize that this phrase puts their website at a disadvantage. Since search engines place a lot of weight on links, it is important to be as descriptive as possible when you’re linking to other pages or want to link your site pages together.

If you actually go into Google and search "click here," you will be competing with sites like Adobe, Apple, Yahoo and billions of other pages on the web. Since these sites are heavily ranked because they’re branded, the competition is very high and you’re less likely to be in the top 10 in Google. Although ‘click here’ indicates some sort of action for the reader, describing your link text will not only give your reader a better understanding the page they’re about to click on, the search engines will understand too. Keeping this in mind, make sure you describe your links with keywords of the page your bringing traffic to.

Rather than linking a page like this:
Click here for Women’s size 6 Nike sneakers.

You put the exact keyword phrase a user would be looking for:
Find Women’s Size 6 Nike Sneakers.

You can even go further and link a specific type of Nike sneaker:
Buy Women’s Size 6 Nike Running Sneakers.

The moral of the story is: the more descriptive your link is, the better chance you’ll show up in the search engines.

Press Release distibution

Now that you have written your press release that is optimized for those key phrases it’s time to decide where and how you want your release to be sent out to the public. There are several wire services offering great SEO capabilities and could confuse you. I wanted to share the services that we use, and have great success with.

These services distribute your news to the search engines including Google News, Yahoo News, and MSN along with several others. Also, you want your release going to the editors at all the news outlets hoping that they will print or air your story showcasing you in the best light.

Here is a list of my top 10 distribution services that we continually use. Some of these services offer free distribution and also help with your link building efforts.

Business Wire – One of the leaders in commercial distribution for privately held and publically traded companies. Different pricing structure and different distribution options allows you to target specific media by location and trades.

PR Newswire – Another leader in commercial distribution, pricing higher than other distribution services.

PRWeb – Great for distribution at lowest rates, could be compared to commercial distributors and offers some of the same great features for SEO. Doesn’t have full editing department.

Marketwire – Becoming a top contender for distribution services. Could get pricey for several add on features.

PR.com – Not just a site to distribute your news releases, pr.com allows you to promote all things business such as, products, services, and job postings.

PR Leap – Starting at just $10, you can have your release posted to the search engines and rss feeds along with Digg, Delicious, and Technorati.

i-Newswire – For $25 per release, you are able to increase your web traffic and increase your link popularity.

24-7pressrelease.com – Affordability is great for small to mid size company’s trying to reach journalists and improve visibility on search engines.

PRZoom – Prices range from $99 - $399 and is distributed to major search engines and has an RSS feed.

ClickPress – All submissions are free and remain searchable in the archives indefinitely. Part of pressventures, they offer several free tools and media services.

More Changes to Adsense Network

A couple days ago Blogoscoped reported that there were changes being made with Google Adsense ads over the next several days. Previously, the entire ad (including whitespace around the ad) was clickable. With the change being made only the title and the display url are clickable. This will obviously limit the amount of revenue that Google generates (but probably only minimally considering last quarter Google did over 4 billion in revenue), but more importantly this should potentially limit the revenue generated by publishers who have adsense ads on their site, as it should severely cut down on invalid click. Google hopes this, and the changes it made last week to placement targeting should make it more profitable for advertisers to run on the adsense network.

Live Blogging from the Ten Golden Rules of Internet Marketing Bootcamp

In conjunction with the American Marketing Association South Florida branch, Ten Golden Rules is conducting an Internet Marketing Bootcamp in Fort Lauderdale.

I've just finished giving my presentation on Pay Per Click Marketing: Winning Creative and Conversion Strategies. The audience was very receptive and asked great questions afterwards. I'm looking forward to hearing about their experiences using the tips I talked about.

Kathryn gave a presentation on how to succeed in organic search earlier today, and she did a great job dissecting what is an extraordinarily complicated subject.

Right now, Jay is presenting about Web 2.0 - focusing on sites like MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn and others. He's going to show some of the work we've done in Second Life for our client, Annie's Costumes. He also recorded a question and answer session over lunch - for our podcast - and is recording his current presentation on Web 2.0, too.

Top take away from today for me? Sometimes the best ideas come from those who you are trying to teach something to. A great day for me. Wish you could have been there. :)

Submitting Content to Article Syndication Sites

Article syndication is a great link building method that you can use to drive traffic as well as get free permanent links from other sites. Someone that reads your article from another site and finds it interesting will most likely visit your site along with a potential conversion. Submitting your article to these article syndication sites also allow websites looking for content to be able to post these articles on their sites, which in turn give you traffic as well.

There are some things to keep in mind before submitting your articles to these sites. You should always read their guidelines very carefully. The best article submission sites have very thorough guidelines, which usually mean that they are serious about the content that they put up on their site. The content in your article should also be of quality and originality. With guidelines in mind before submitting your article, you should also make sure that anyone who decides to place your article on their site keeps everything in tact, such as your links and content. There is no use in submitting your article to a site that doesn’t protect other publishers from altering your content. Another thing to keep in mind is how much traffic goes to the site. Using SEO Quake, which is a plugin for Firefox and Internet Explorer, you can view Google Pagerank, Alexa Rank, age of the website, and how many pages are indexed in Google and Yahoo. These indicators give a good indication of the site’s popularity. Also, check if there are any costs related to submitting content. Most article syndication websites allow you to submit your articles for free.

Article syndication sites that have all of the above attributes are EzineArticles, Article City, Article Dashboard, Article Biz and Easy Articles.

Problems with GUS (Google Universal Search)

It's been pointed out that there still a few kinks with GUS (Google Universal Search). When doing a simple search for chewing gum, which is a term that children may search for, here are the images that appear. One is a commercial featuring a naked woman in a chewing gum commercial. For parents, Danny Sullivan points out ways to ensure your computer doesn't allow this to pop up.

Google Updates Site Targeting

On the Inside Adwords blog last night, the Crew announced two changes to site targeting on the Content Network. The first is the ability to not only choose which websites you would like to target but now the ability to target subsections of sites, such as the sports section of a news site. You can also target specific ad units on a particular webpage.

The second option, is one that many marketers have been asking for since the Content Network was launched, the ability to bid on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis. With this change to the Content Network, advertisers will be able to use the network for their conversion-oriented metrics, not purely for what many considered branding purposes with the older cost-per-impression (CPM) bidding.

Are you a Web Oldtimer? Top Ten List!

I've been working in "web" since 1994. Amazingly enough that makes me an "old timer". Yes, I remember when Yahoo! and Amazon started - and when AltaVista was the most awesome search engine (soon to be squashed by the "infant" Google). CompuServe and Prodigy were the original AOL. We had chat, but it sure didn't work like AIM and even email was different (PINE anyone?).

So I've devised my own top ten list of how to know you're a web "old timer".

You Might be a Web "Old Timer" if...

10. You haven't switched to "tabbed browsing".

9. You got a really high score on "Elf Bowling".

8. Hearing the hamster dance song makes you nostalgic, but mildly nauseated.

7. You can reference your memory, instead of the "Wayback Machine".

6. You DID actually use and like Netscape at some point in the 90s.

5. You remember thinking, "What does selling books online have to do with the Amazon?"

4. You couldn't afford to buy more than one domain name - even though the really good ones WERE available.

3. You used PINE for email, ICQ for chat or bulletin boards for user generated content.

2. You still use the browser back button instead of "back navigation" on the webpage.

1. And the #1 way to know you're a Web "Old Timer" is you wonder why everyone keeps calling it "Web 2.0", when you remember quite clearly that the whole point of the Internet (from day one) was to enable user generated content and sharing/exchanging information.

I hope this post made the "Old Timers" like me smile. Everyone else, feel free to leave your comments or ask questions. I've got YEARS of information to talk about. :)

Pitching the right editors and bloggers

In public relations it’s all about relationship building and knowing which editors and bloggers to pitch your ideas to. Many editors will not take emails and phone calls from individuals due to the fact they are not paying attention to the stories they are writing.

One horror story that I found was on Longtail.com where Chris Anderson, editor of Wired Magazine, posted the email addresses of people who are blacklisted from pitching him EVER AGAIN! It’s a great debate between the lazy approach to PR, which is spaming every writer you can find, and sending the right pitches to the right editors. This could be the difference between having your story picked up and never speaking to a reporter again.

I leave you with this; do your due diligence, research the right editor, read several stories he or she has written in the past. There are several ways of doing this like Google News, Lexus Nexis, etc…. Journalists are so busy with thousands of pitches, you want to make sure you don’t waste their time, and definitely don't get blacklisted from ever speaking to them again.

My Ten Golden Rules for Blog Promotion

Anyone can blog, but in order to be successful and become a credible part of the blogosphere, you really have to stand out among the pack. Here are some ways that I get traffic to my blog, WorkinOnMyFitness.com, as well as types of blog posts and other tactics that have brought success to my blog.

1. Passion posts – These are posts that I try to incorporate in my everyday life about fitness and eating healthy. An example would be an interesting way to exercise to make it less boring and more fun.
2. Innovative idea posts – One of my blog posts was about a Bento Box being a way to portion control your meals, which later was linked onto AOL’s fitness site, ThatsFit.com. This resulted in a lot of traffic coming to my site that day. Now, every time someone is interested in the topic ‘portion control’ on that site, they will find the page that features my post.
3. Weekly roundup posts – Every week, which is usually Friday for me, I compile a list of blogs that interest me. Linking to other sites this way makes the reader more compelled to actually read your site because it was of interest to someone else.
4. Forums – Another way to get traffic to your blog is by going to popular forums that are related to the subject you blog about. In my case, forums related to fitness and health, I would include a link to my site in my signature or profile in that forum. As I post on forums, there is a chance that people will notice the link in my signature and go to my site.
5. Directory Listings – Directories are another way to get traffic to your site, since they are categorized in different subjects and even subcategories to become even more specific. This makes it easy for readers to find sites that are of interest to them.
6. Blog Linking – I link to blogs on my site that I enjoy reading and other bloggers link to my site if they enjoy reading my site. This is the simplest way for readers to find my blog by finding it on their favorite blog.
7. “Google Food” – Google loves content, especially relevant content that is updated frequently. Since my blog is updated often, this helps it to be able to be found in Google and other search engines through different keyword combinations.
8. Research posts – These posts are usually about a topic I want to focus on. For example, the nutritional value of a vegetable. I would have to do research to generate a post about it, and make it my own.
9. Interaction posts – These posts ask your readers to voice their opinions on a topic, such as ‘What fitness magazines do you read?’ or a poll on ‘How long do you exercise? – 30 minutes? 1 hour? 2+ hours?’
10. News posts – These posts are about what’s happening that’s making news headlines – example: The recent ban on iPods used during marathons sponsored by USA Track & Field.

Search Engine Updates on Google and Yahoo

The SEM community has been in quite a buzz lately over some search engine updates on Google and Yahoo.

During the month of October, Google made several updates to their Google PageRank that had SEM experts speculating whether or not Google was penalizing blogging networks or just sites that sell text links. Loren Baker from Search Engine Journal was able to confirm with Matt Cutts that the recent search engine update was related to paid linking and advertisement links which influence Google PageRank.

On Halloween, Yahoo announced a search engine update on their blog. They're rolling out some changes to their crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms. While no date was set for when these changes would be complete, it's sure to create more buzz within the SEO community.

For the old timers, major updates right before the holiday season shouldn't be a surprise. Traditionally, Google and other search engines have "dropped bombs" in Q4. In 2006, Google changed how they scored landing pages, sending PPC managers into a panic. The year before that, Google did an update to their Google AdRank algorithm that created an SEM buzz.

My advice to business owners is to stay on top of the trends, and weather the storm because Q4 isn't just the holiday season, it's search engine hurricane time.