International Presentation on Strategic Internet Marketing

Jay Berkowitz, a leader in strategic Internet marketing will be presenting on ways to apply the Internet in your International marketing campaign in Costa Rica at the Four Season Hotel on February 12.

Some Topics will include:

• Internet promotion techniques that will help generate more website traffic

• How to improve your website so it shows up in Google searches

• How to generate positive return-on-investment with online advertising

If you are interested in learning more or to register please visit the registration page.

Internet Marketing Experts Speak Prior to Affiliate Summit West 2008

A team of Internet marketing experts, including jay Berkowitz will be speaking at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas the day before Affiliate Summit West, 2008. The event will feature the best ideas for marketing on the Internet and include author James Martell and CEO of Lifescript.com Ron Caporale. For more information on the best internet marketing strategies or to learn more about the conference or for your TGR discount please visit the Ten Golden Rules website.

Rank Your Favorite Super Bowl Commercials

The Super bowl commercials are always entertaining and people are even talking about them weeks after the big game. This year, the cost for a Super Bowl commercial is up again to $2.7 million for a 30 second spot to reach an expected record breaking number of over 94 million viewers as the New England Patriots are seeking an undefeated season.

Adblitz has created a YouTube channel where people will be able to view the Super Bowl commercials and vote on their favorites. They are asking people to visit the site after the game and vote. This is going to be a great way for fans to watch these funny and entertaining videos again and again.

Are You Ranked #6 in Google?

For about the last month or so, there has been talk amongst the SEO community of a supposed Position 6 penalty. Sites that were previously ranking #1 or #2 were now ranking #6 for key terms. Most of the sites were well established doing good white hat seo, but for some seemingly unknown reason, the sites were appearing at #6. Many thought it was too much of a coincidence that so many good sites were at Position 6, and up until today, there was no confirmation, on the Position 6 penalty. Matt Cutts has been able to confirm the Position 6 penalty and that the penalty has been reversed. Rankings should return back to proper position shortly.

Matt also points out that if you feel you were your site might have a penalty (perhaps from past behavior) and you think the site is clean presently, you can do a reconsideration request on the webmaster console to request a reconsideration.

A Very Wise Google Tip of the Day

I subscribe to the Google Tip of the Day blog and most days they feature something really amazing that Google is doing – stuff I've never heard about and am always surprised by. So, today's tip was surprising only in its simplicity and wisdom. The tip for today reads:



Essentially, Google is recommending a "long tail" search phrase. In the past, I've criticized Google for not including simple search tips on their homepage. These days, knowing how to properly use a search engine is not something people are taught, nor is it something you're born knowing how to do. So, I'm pleased to see Google take this approach – even if only on their "Tip of the Day" blog.

Now if they would just put a link on their homepage to "Basic Search Tips" . . .

Interesting Video - Future of Mobile Technology from the World Economic Forum

At the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland a panel called 'The Future of Mobile Technology' features: Eric Schmidt CEO of Google, Sir Howard Stringer CEO of Sony, Wang Jianzhou CEO of China Mobile, , Shin-Bae Kim from Korea's largest mobile operator ad agency and record company, Kevin J. Martin Chairman of US Federal Communications Commission and Jeff Zucker CEO of NBC.



Eric Schmidt’s comments about Google’s plans for mobile advertising and we learn China Mobile China's largest mobile phone company is adding 16 million users per month!

See our video about the Ten Golden Rules Internet Marketing Bootcamp prior to Affiliate Summit 2008

Here is a YouTube video featuring our CEO Jay Berkowitz, he's excited about our upcoming Ten Golden Rules Internet Marketing Bootcamp, Sponsored by: the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Division for Educational Outreach. The educational event is scheduled for February 23, 2008 at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas, the day before Affiliate Summit West 2008.



Saturday, January 23, 2008 - Rio Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas preceding Affiliate Summit West 2008

A Team of Internet Marketing Gurus including Jay Berkowitz and Margie Schneider from Ten Golden Rules.com, Ron Caporale CEO of Lifescript.com and James Martell author of The Affiliate Marketer's Handbook will teach the critical strategies and tactics for successful internet marketing including:

• How to improve your website so it shows up in Google searches
• How to generate positive return-on-investment with online advertising
• What online business models are working, and not working today
• How to build ongoing relationships with the customers who visit a website
• How to capitalize on the Ten Leading Trends in online marketing today
• How to plan media and develop creative and landing pages that sell
• Pay-Per-Click campaign development and advanced optimization strategies
• Web Optimized PR – turn your press releases into website traffic generators
• MySpace, Wikipedia, Twitter, Second Life - How Web 2.0 impacts business

For a special $50 discount for friends of Ten Golden Rules, please click here to register for the Ten Golden Rules Internet Marketing Bootcamp.

YouTube Improves Mobile Phone Capabilities

This week, YouTube announced their new and improved mobile phone capabilities. Being an iPhone owner, this is nothing new, but now other phones can enjoy being able to view YouTube videos on their mobile phones. YouTube also has added more videos that can be viewed on the mobile platform, and video uploading viewable instantly on m.youtube.com and YouTube.com. You can also view your account, which includes your own uploaded videos, and favorite channels and videos. Users can also comment, rate, and share directly from the mobile website as well. So basically, you can pretty much access YouTube from anywhere, as long as you have an internet plan on your cell phone.

Most mobile phones that support streaming video can view YouTube videos by going to m.youtube.com. There is also a downloadable beta version of their mobile application that is only supported by a limited amount of phones, but you can still access the mobile site through the mobile URL. I think it’s awesome that YouTube is improving mobile capabilities, and it’s only a matter of time that other video sharing sites get on the mobile bandwagon too.

You can check out the video of how the mobile platform looks, as well as the downloadable platform below:

Place Your Votes for the Best SEM Blog Posts

That's right folks, SEM gurus have chosen their favorite search engine marketing blog posts for 2008, and now are opening voting to the public at SEMMYS.org. The 1st Annual SEMMYS is an awards event honoring some of the best articles and blog posts from the search marketing industry. Started by Matt McGee, he tracked over 200+ blogs in the search engine marketing industry and chose with a group of judges their picks in the following categories:

• SEO
• PPC
• Small Business
• Local Search
• Google
• Blogs & Blogging
• Link Building
• Social Media
• Analytics
• Search Tech
• Rants
• LOL Funny!
• Online Marketing/General
• Reputation Management
• Viral Marketing

Now sadly, Matt and his friends overlooked the Ten Golden Rules blog this year; however, I wouldn't hold it against them. After all, this is their first year. Even Matt admits the limitations:

I’m well aware of the limitations in this first edition of the SEMMYS. The nominees represent a wide variety of web sites and blogs, but there’s no way for one person to read everything written about search engine marketing. I tend to gravitate toward “how to” articles, so the great writers and blogs who produce more news-oriented content and/or thought pieces are likely underrepresented. Imperfect or not, I think it’s important to honor great content.

So drop by the SEMMYS, vote for your favorite SEM blog posts and if you have ideas on how to improve the SEMMYS, offer Matt a few suggestions.

Note: Voting ends January 30, 2008 so make sure you don't too long to vote!

Directv Tivo Scheduling on the Go

Just last week, I mentioned how Google Maps and the iPhone are making my life easier, well now Directv is stepping up as well.

Quietly over the weekend, Directv released a beta version of their new DVR Scheduler for computers and select mobile phones or any phone with internet access. The Scheduler is simple enough, lets say you are not at your home and you forget to Tivo your favorite show,all you need to do is just login to your directv.com account and you can schedule your DVR to record your show. And if you are stuck in traffic or have no access to your laptop, DVR Scheduler allows you to login to Directv's mobile site and schedule a program to record from your mobile phone. The mobile site looks almost custom fitted for my iPhone screen and the interface could not be easier or faster especially with the touch screen.

Directv also sends you a confirmation email to let you know your show will be recorded. I do not know of any other cable providers currently offering this or a similar service, if anyone does, please feel free to leave the information in the comments section. Slingbox is certainly an option. But you have to buy a slingbox, Directv Scheduler is part of your existing Directv service. But currently Slingbox is not compatible with my iPhone.

How Social Bookmarking Can Be Useful

As an avid user of the internet, I never realized how useful social bookmarking was until I was looking for Photoshop Tutorials one day. I was looking for a website with a collection of Photoshop tutorials on Google and decided to use Del.icio.us to bookmark them.

Because social bookmarking is based on the idea that anything you bookmark, others can see, so you can see who else bookmarked the same website you did, along with their bookmarks.

With Del.icio.us, you can also view the most popular bookmarks for a particular keyword to find other related websites that are bookmarked. If enough users bookmark your website, it may be featured on the homepage, or above all of the results for a particular keyword, which is a great way to bring traffic to your website.

Digg is another useful website because there is always something interesting to read on this site. Since the stories on Digg are ordered by the amount of users who “dig” these stories, there is always something new to read when you go to their homepage. Using Digg is a great way to bring traffic to a website if the content is interesting enough.

With that being said, it is always good to have a social bookmarking adding tool on your website. Using a plug in such as AddThis and ShareThis, you can easily implement a bookmarking adding tool onto your website. This will make those who use these social bookmarking sites easier to add your website to their own social bookmarking lists.

How Google and the IPhone Will Change the World

The iPhone released a new update to their software. One of the biggest additions was the Where am I button. Using Cell phone tower triangulation and your cell phone, Google estimates your location and then pinpoints it on tje map. The half a dozen times I checked my location, it was correct to within a block or two and I was in a suburban area. Google Maps then sets that as your location and you can get directions from that location to anywhere you need to go. This comes in especially handy, as in my case I was on my way to a friends house and I was trying to find a liquor store near by to bring a bottle of wine to the house warming. With the locator button I found a liquor store just a block off the road I was on.

Google Maps then had a link to information on the liquor store including the phone number. One click on the phone number and the number was dialing. This feature is available on all Google Maps applications, at www.google.com/gmm The tool is especially handy on the Iphone because of the seemlessness of the application and the touch screen on the Iphone. It is only a short time before GPS becomes standard on all cell phones, but in the meantime this is a great tool.

Online Reputation Management....

Jay gave us an interesting homework assignment this week. He suggested for our next blog post that we take a look at the posts we did last year, and choose one that we felt was worth a revisit.

As I was scanning my old posts, I stopped on one I posted back in June of 2007. In this post, I talked about the concept that your online friends ARE your reputation. My post pointed out that your online persona is as much about the people you align yourself with (your friends list) as any other criteria.

For 2008, there is a lot of mainstream buzz about your online brand/reputation and the building, nurturing and protection of it. There is no end of discussion on this point – and it is polarizing in a lot of ways. There are many who believe the more friends you have, the better. And there are those who feel their online brand should be rigorously protected. And there is even a movement to allow for "Data Portability", which would allow you to easily port your entire profile from one social media site to another.

There are some great questions on this topic, too. For instance, would you want your prospective employer to see your friend's comments from your MySpace page? Is your LinkedIn profile good enough to act as your resume? If you have a Facebook page, should it reflect your professional or your personal tastes and interests? Should your personal blog be fair game for your boss to read?

I expect to see the business of building, nurturing and protecting your online brand – both for individuals and companies – to become a major focus for the right companies this year. The web-savvy among us will do it for ourselves. But, this is a key opportunity for companies to offer a service to provide "online reputation management" for those who can't.

Google.org Announces 5 Global Initiatives

When the public thinks of Google, they think of a global search giant that's dominating the search marketplace. However, there are more faces to this complex organization, and Google.org handles their philanthropic initiatives. This week, Google.org announced 5 global initiatives to address the challenges of our age: climate change, poverty and emerging disease.

Develop Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal - is working to develop electricity from renewable energy sources that are cheaper than electricity produced from coal.

RechargeIT - aims to reduce CO2 emissions, cut oil use and stabilize the electrical grid by accelerating the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid technology.

Predict and Prevent - will use information and technology to empower communities to predict and prevent emerging environmental threats before they become local, regional, or global crises.

Inform and Empower to Improve Public Services - will work with partners to address areas where essential public services, such as education, health, and water and sanitation services, are failing in developing countries.

Fuel the Growth of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises - plans to increase the flow of risk capital to small and medium-sized businesses, bringing economic growth to developing nations.

I applaud Google's public interests, making philanthropy part of their company's vision. And more businesses should put some of their profits into making the world around them a better place.

Paying For The Internet Per Minute

Time Warner Cable has announced plans to bill customers for the amount of usage on the internet versus a standard monthly rate. The first test city, Beaumont, Texas, is said to help reduce the congestion on its network for those who are considered light users. This could cause several issues with consumers and watch groups. Other companies such as Verizon and AT&T will be also watching to see how this impacts financially.

Will Google Captcha themeselves out of buiness?

Several times over the past two days I have received a 'captcha' when I did a Google search. A captcha is a security measure that websites use to discourage fraudulent activities such as spam and automated queries.

I have already seen this tool about 10 times and I am starting to think I should switch search engines. If Google uses the captcha for very long look for their stock price to fall, fast as traffic drops to the site.

Doritos lets us pick the Super Bowl Band!

Doritos has been running a cool promotion called 'Crash the Super Bowl'. Choose from three remaining finalists: cool pop sounds of Landon Austin from Dallas, Texas; the folksy Kina Grannis and Indian-Rap artist Nilva.

Vote for your fav here:

Is Search Engine Optimization an Art or Science?

Panah Mosaferirad posted a thought provoking question on LinkedIn Answers: Search Engine Optimization: Art or Science? Mosaferirad went on to insist that it's more of a science:

"Many consultants claim that search engine optimization (SEO) is more of an art than science. I tend to strongly disagree as while you may need to have some creativity to come up with innovative SEO tactics, it hardly makes search engine optimization an art."

Search Engine Optimization is an art and a science. I don't think one is mutually exclusive to the other. SEO is an art because parts of it requires an understanding of copywriting and marketing know-how, both of which tend to lean on the side of creativity/art. SEO is a science because it deals with complex search engine algorithms, coding techniques, etc. I believe that SEOs that do their job well balance both sides of the coin.

For example, I can plug in my keywords in a page, but if I have no creativity, the words might looked forced and won't appeal to the visitor. Could the page rank well? Possibly if the right factors are in place, but without the art, it's not going to appeal to the user and therefore whatever ranking you achieved is useless.

But what do you think. Is search engine optimization an art or science? Post your comments below or join the discussion on Linked In.

CEO, Jay Berkowitz to Speak on Internet Promotion Techniques

Jay Berkowitz will be speaking on January 24-25 at Nova Southeastern University for the U.S. Commercial Service of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The event is in conjunction with Nova Southeastern University and will cover topics such as Internet promotion techniques and importance of enhanced search engine placements. For more information people should visit the Florida Exporter website.

FEATURED SPEAKERS INCLUDE:
Jay Berkowitz, CEO, www.TenGoldenRules.com
Anastia Holdren, Recognized Google AdWords Leader
Brenda Ronson, Microsoft
Susan Anthony, Office of Intellectual Property, US Patent and Trademark Office
Shari Thurow, Top-selling Author “Search Engine Visibility”
Marilyn Aldir, US Latinamerican Sales Terra
Adria Chang, FedEx

5 Important Things to Have On Your Blog

Anyone can set up a blog, but there are many things that people aren’t aware of doing before they even launch their blog. Here are 5 important things you should have on your blog before you should even launch it to the public.

1. Measuring Your Traffic – It is best to have an idea of how many visitors go to your blog daily, and from there you can see how well your blog is doing. Adding Google Analytics and another site tracker helps so you can compare the two results you are getting from both places. A site tracker that I would recommend is SiteMeter.com.

2. RSS Feed – RSS means Real or Really Simple Syndication, and having an RSS feed on your blog allows your readers to become aware of your posts as it is made public using a Feed aggregator such as Google Reader. Most blog platforms automatically have an RSS built in, but in order to keep track of how many subscribers you have, you can use FeedBurner.com.

3. Blog Comment Moderation – A big problem in having a blog is comment spam. Although it is tough to not get any comment spam on a blog, there are ways to lessen it. One way is to have CAPTCHA, which is where you have to enter letters and numbers from the image shown. Another way is to moderate comments before they become live on the site.

4. An About Page – It is very important to have a page on your blog about yourself, or the company that is running the blog. That way, your readers will have a better idea of who is writing the content.

5. Updated Content – A blog that has updated content is the most important thing to have, and a best way to keep at putting out new blog posts is to have a schedule of what days you should post. If you wonder how you can keep the content coming, having a list of topics on hand is also helpful. If you enjoy what you are blogging about, finding ideas to write about is easy.

Get Mobile Answers on the Go

Mobile services are definitely appearing more and more these days. Most recently, two mobile services came out and will definitely be useful. Ask.com just came out with Voice Activated directions. You access their mobile platform from your cell phone, and you will see a link for Voice Entry. Click on the link to speak the address and you will be asked to speak the start city and address followed by the end city and address. From there, you will get a text message of the directions to get to your destination. Mobile directions are not new, but being able to say where you want to go saves time in typing it all out on a cell phone.

For those who like text messaging, a fairly new search engine, ChaCha came out with textChaCha, which is a service that gives you answers to your questions. If you’re on the go and looking for the nearest Starbucks, all you need to do is ask them via text # 242242. You can even ask questions such as what the weather is like, trivia questions and even scores from a sports game. An actual person will then send you an answer. In order to use the service, you must sign up for a free account and link your mobile number to your account. The service is currently free, although text message charges may apply from your cell phone.

Now you don’t have to go to a gas station for directions or call 411 for answers. :)

Google Image Labeler

Google, in an attempt to get better search results for the countless images on the web recently launched a new website/game, Google Image Labeler. The idea is simple, you and another visitor are shown an image and you type in what you would be good labels for the image. You then get points for every matched answer with your partner. You get more points for the more descriptive the label is. Each round last 2 minutes so its a nice break if you are looking for a new way to kill a couple minutes of time.

I have played about a dozen times or so, with some success. Below is a screen shot of the two images we tried to label.



Google hopes enough people have an interest in helping them improve the relevance of image search for users.

How many of these labels actually get used, or if only matched answers is used, is still unknown, but this should help at least get some of the millions (billions maybe?) of images on the internet some kind of label and get more images showing up in Google Image Search Results.