Archive for google
9 Firefox Plugins for an Online Marketer
Firefox is Hot
Firefox is a very useful tool for anyone who does online marketing. You can do alot of things within the browser, as well as get alot of information using these plugins. Some of the things I use Firefox Addons for:
- Post directly to Twitter from twitterfox
- Write blog posts
- Do Competitive research (learn how many pages a site has, how many visitors a website has, and more)
The List of Essential Firefox Plugins:
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17 Useful Wordpress SEO and other plugins
- All in One SEO Pack - This is an absolutely vital plugin for every blog that you have. This allows you to change your Title, description and keyword metatags on each blog post to make them unique, as well as to make a default home page title and description. I credit this plugin with about 30% of the credit for my rankings on some of my keywords.
- AutoMeta - This tag kind of conflicts with the All-in-one SEO packplugin, as it automatically creates the titles and descriptions. I still have to see how this works with All-in-One SEO pack
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Facebook (Stupidly) Takes the Heat from Moveon, while Yahoo and Ebay laugh to the bank!
So we all know about the Facebook Debacle with Beacon - and the horrible mistakes stupid 24 year olds make (We really do love you Mark Zuckerburg) it’s just that young kids shouldn’t be running $15 billion dollar businesses.
Moveon.org and the EFF have been decrying the privacy issues. As I’ve stated in a previous post, I think that behavioral targeting is inevitable and coming soon. In fact, I wasn’t happy that Mike Morgan from Tacoda was being apologetic about it.
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Should an Ecommerce Website Have a Blog?
(Disclaimer: I am extremely biased towards blogs. I have already come to the conclusion that blogs are always beneficial. Consider yourself warned!)
Here are the issues:
- What are the pro’s and con’s of having a blog on your ecommerce site (The Theory)
- What are the other experts in the field saying about having blogs on your ecommerce site
- What are the big guys doing?
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What are the Pro’s and Con’s of having a Blog on your Ecommerce site?
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Is the LA Times Getting Closer to “Getting It”?
This is a follow up to my first post on the LA Times’s efforts to go “Web 2.0″, after meeting with Eric Ulken at a blogger’s event.
First off, a little disclaimer… My site is ugly, doesn’t convert, and definitely is not “cool”. So I really should have no right to criticize other companies’ efforts to “get it”. Especially since the LA Time site isn’t to badly designed. It has a pretty minimalist design, and very easy to find links.
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The Importance of Local Optimization for Small Businesses
I’m currently doing some consulting work for some clients - as well as for my day job… creating and implementing a plan of action for local search. I’m realizing how much I’ve underutilized it. In the next couple of days I will be creating a guide outlining the steps you need to take to market your business locally.
In the meantime, here is an important resource from Frank Fuchs, a “Yahoo” who seems to have no qualms about stating his impressions of the company publicly. He lists all of the Local Places to submit your business to.
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Att: Paulie Sabol - A Social Media Experiment…
So I’ve been inducted to the cause of Broadcasting Ben Mack’s Interview with Paulie Sabol (There will be a link to the interview here in a couple of hours) tonight. This is a continuation of my blog post about social media marketing - and getting someone’s attention by blogging about them.
Our goal here is to have Paulie Sabol’s Google Alerts get hit with a bunch of links about this interview. So why am I manipulating the use of your precious time just to do an “ego thing” of pinging someone’s google alerts? Doesn’t this devalue the value of my blog posts, and thus opinions - kind of the John Chow is bad for blogging theory (using the status of my blog to get “personal gain”)?
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Response to WebProNews Rich Ord Column “Pay Per Click Party Over?”
Rich Ord (CEO of Ientry) recently posted an article in WebProNews Titled “Pay Per Click Party Over?”
Rich puts in 5 reasons that PPC will be losing effectiveness, and getting less useful.
Like banner ads, they are becoming too ubiquitous (- adsense on every page etc), declining relevance, rising costs, increasing options for marketers online, and bad press about the trustworthiness of the ads.
I disagree with him on many of the points. Although the party may be over for small business, it definitely isn’t close to over for the search engines or the advertisers.
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MySpace Marketing Still Work? Getting a “Guru’s” Attention…
1) Does MySpace Marketing Still work?
About six month ago, I went to my first - and currently only, “Internet Marketing” seminar. I met this amazing twelfth grade high school kid that was making a hell of a lot more than I was using just myspace marketing.
However, he mentioned that he was starting to research other topics, as he felt that the myspace legality issues were precarious. If they start prohibiting certain messaging etc, it would negatively affect the ability to do (affiliate) marketing on myspace. (Obviously, bands aren’t going to have a problem promoting themselves).
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Beware!!! Biased Companies “Research” Supports Product - Part 2 - Pay-Per-Call?? The Click Fraud Solution???
I was going to do a post on Yahoo’ s smartads press releases, as well as the Atlas’s Research that conveniently came up right beforehand. Hmm… both services not in as much in the SEM field as much as in the…. you got it - banner and rich media advertising… Hmmm correlation?
(Unfortunately, that idea seems to have fallen flat. The sad part is, that although the concept was a good one - someone in PR at Yahoo just doesn’t know how to promote it. It will remain a little gold mine for the marketer that cares.)
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Real Good Keyword Research Tools…
I’m frustrated - and I need your suggestion. I am doing keyword research on a huge industry for a site that we are putting up shortly. I’m a systematic person. When I was working for one of the best affiliate marketers creating keyword lists, I would systematically create an excel sheet that contained all of the variations of that keyword that people would search.
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PPC Powerpoint Presentation
About three months ago, when I was still working for my old company, I created a powerpoint presentation on Pay Per Click for the CEO and Chairman of the board, as well as the partners.
I was frustrated because I felt that there was no communication of the search marketing team’s goals to the company, as they didn’t understand the factors of PPC. Therefore, I created a powerpoint presentation about the basics. Click on the image to see the presentation on authorstream.
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Beware!!! Biased Companies “Research” Supports Product…Part 1 - Click Fraud
In recent times, I’ve noticed two major companies that have put out press releases about “itches” (things that bother advertisers), just to get focus on their products… I don’t have any issues with them doing that - I think it’s a brilliant marketing plan.
1) Find an “itch” - an issue, challenge or market opening
2) Create a solution (under wraps)
3) Scratch the itch (blow the issue, challenge or market opening up as much as possible- but appear unbiase, because you don’t yet have a solution)
4) Rake in the money - become the “authority” on the “issue, challenge or market opening”
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More about Yahoo…
I saw an interesting article at knowledge at wharton which confirmed some of my beliefs about Yahoo -and their current perception in the eyes of “tech geeks”, Wall Street and the public. One of their main arguments was that Yahoo has to ignore Wall Street and their opinions.
Couldn’t agree more 
However, I think that it is just the opposite. I think that Yahoo has to create a PR campaign about their innovations. They had personalized pages before Google - yet Google’s personal home page was trumpeted alot more. More so, they don’t even pay for the publicity.
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The Newbie secret… A coaching program from Codrut Torcanu
So I signed up for the Newbie secret Platinum… Why?
Well, first why not?
Here are the reasons why not. I don’t generally buy ebooks anymore. I used to buy thousands. I still stay on the lists of people pushing ebooks, and I look at the sales letters sometimes - but I don’t buy too much. Frankly, I have a high BS detector, and most of the information in the ebooks I pretty much know myself. I’m simply looking for a step - by - system to implement all of the random scattered knowledge that I know works. Plus, many of the times, the authors use a nice “bait-n-switch” on you in salesletters.
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The Lessons From the Yahoo vs. Google Rivalry…
One thing that strikes me so weird is Wall Street’s attitude towards Yahoo. It almost feels like most Yahoo investors that aren’t enamored of it are because “Google is cool” - be like Google. As a savvy person - and one that is savvy in online marketing - I laugh at that.
But this is not something to laugh at. The market’s perception of Yahoo is what will drive it’s future, as the unknowing owners / stockholders will demand from Yahoo to emulate and beat Google at Google’s game. Sad… really.
But hey, I don’t have Yahoo stock - or Google, so I’ll just stay carefree.
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CEO’s Who Don’t Understand Search Rant…
Wow… today was a crazy day. I am the “online marketing specialist”. Typically, I get orders of stuff to do, and I just do them. I don’t get into meetings with the CEO and make decisions. Hey, I’m happy that way, it frees me from responsibility.
Well, today I got invited into a meeting, where our department got chewed. Now, it wasn’t really our department. It was my boss- the VP of marketing, that the CEO was frustrated with.
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The undug gold mine of SEM…MSN???
Tonight’s post is kinda short, as I watched Live Free Die Hard and I came home at like 10:15.
Anyways, I’ve found a fascinating thing. I work mostly with paid search, and dabble in SEO, blogging etc. The most underutilized search marketing tool is MSN! (Can’t give you specifics but…) Our cost per conversion from MSN is about 1/3 to 1/5 of the cost of Google or Yahoo. (Yahoo is about 3/4 of the cost of Google - surprisingly).
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Los Angeles Internet Marketing •