Thrasher Marketing, based at 502 Court Street in Utica, manages Web marketing, email marketing and other high tech/computer needs for medium and large businesses throughout the USA and the world. Rob is also co-owner of Zrinity, a nationally recognized email delivery system provider with Fortune 1000 customers all over the world and newly released 315 Stuff, a search engine and website launcher specifically for the 315 area code.

Rob and his partners currently seek equity partners for some of their high tech projects. You can read more about these ventures that seek qualified partners at FundOurProject.com.

Visit Thrasher Marketing & Search Secrets, Visit Zrinity, Visit 315 Stuff

My only caveat would be to get a good marketing strategy in place first, including a good digital strategy to ensure your efforts are on-course and that you are spending your time and money in the right area. A little help here will pay great dividends. And getting a little bit of training will let you hit the ground running and save you making wasteful mistakes.

http://www.system0.net/2008/04/21/joel-comm-says-sorry-for-stealing-your-money/#comment-2841 

It's a pretty serious indictment on Joel Comm.

If you feel you've been deceived or defrauded in any way by Joel Comm, you should contact the FBI's internet crime division:

http://www.ic3.gov/complaint/default.aspx 

In the meantime, read all of Joel Comm's marketing tactics very carefully BEFORE you spend one dime with him.

Chris Lake from E-Consultancy suggested that this slowdown was not merely down to the economic slow-down but also to a matured UK search market. The report stated:
"Although there is significant room for further growth in spending, the sector is now becoming more established and, as such, cannot keep on such a steep curve indefinitely," whilst going on to say
"While there remains strong growth in the market, the upward trajectory of search has begun to flatten as the industry has become more mature, as has happened in the United States".

According to the report the majority of the spend was earmarked for paid search (approximately £2.4 Billion or 88%), with organic search engine optimisation accounting for around a mere £330 million (circa 12%). It should however be noted that year on year SEO spend is expected to increase by 32% this year. That is hardly suprising in my opinion given the saturation of many of the paid search verticals, where cost per click can make entry to the market prohibitive to a certain extent. Whilst there are certain verticals within the organic framework that are certainly as saturated I personally feel there is significantly more growth within the sector, particularly given the greater integration of blended search within the search engine results themselves.

I myself am currently the SEO Manager for Mediavest (the UK's leading independent media agency), something I thoroughly enjoy. This forum merely allows us to merely talk about my thoughts relating to Search, where its going and how I feel about it, with no holes (well maybe a few) barred. Search is something I am passionate about, and blogging something I thoroughly enjoy, especially following serious blogging time at both E-Gain New Media, Connectpoint/Pavilion/Amaze and my regular pieces over at E-Consultancy.

I have invited a couple of colleagues and industry friends to get involved and will introduce as they come on board.

In the meantime... Enjoy

Although this might work in the short term in the long term it will spell disaster every time. Some of the things that people do is cloaking where In terms of search engine marketing, Bid Management this is the act of getting a search engine to record content for a URL that is different than what a searcher will ultimately see. It can be done in many technical ways.

Several search engines have explicit rules against unapproved cloaking. Those violating these guidelines might find their pages penalized or banned from a search engine's index. Remember that the path to the Dark Side is one of Doom. Darth Sidious is a prime example of that.

Best Internet Marketing Solutions Without Overspending

The Internet has made this world an open enterprise. It has become important for companies to further expand their market and their consumer targets. Engaging to Internet Marketing maybe a risk for people who wish to be involved with this type of business.

Ensure that most of your target consumers will surely acquire your product. Consider the best products which will definitely capture their interests and needs. This means that you need to identify specifically who these people are, their location and financial level in the society. Have a marketing knowledge and skill to achieve your goal in the field of Internet marketing.

Another great Internet marketing solution is through websites. This is a good promotion strategy to employ since you can display all the necessary information for your target consumers. The website should capture their interest and be complete since every transaction, from inquiry to payments may take place. All correspondence that will be done online must be well-facilitated by the features of your website.

How To Start A Blog That Makes Money

A blog is one of the cheapest ways in the world to generate income. Search MarketingThere are even ways out there to start a blog for free. For those of you that are new to internet marketing, a blog is short for weblog.

In the beginning, blogs were meant to be online journals. People posted their thoughts and experiences. As time evolved, blogs became a great way to make money with the internet.

There are now thousands of people that earn a full-time living from blogging. Who knows, you might be one of them someday!

Showing the newest content on the homepage of a blog is one of the reasons blogs work so well. Users can easily find the newest information on the site, it will always be found on the homepage. In this way, blogs are very much like news sites. Readers don't have to search for the newest information, and this makes most blogs more user friendly than traditional sites.

Building traffic to a blog is also significantly easier than building traffic to traditional websites. You can easily configure a blog to let the search engines know each time you add new material.

Blog search engines show the newest content that has been added to the internet, so each time you post something new on your blog you will be bringing instant visitors to it. Search Engine MarketingBlogging has also become quite social; you can bring many visitors to your site simply by being friendly with other bloggers.

Press release, Dettagli e .pdf

Altri dettagli su Marketing Charts

Their most recent blog post gave some general ideas on how to improve an ads quality index.

From the Yahoo Search Marketing blog:

"Improve your ad quality by grouping related keywords
If you group your keywords the right way (by themes, such as product or service type, or special offers) and achieve high quality, you could receive a better rank in search results and/or a lower bid."

These tips along with many others come from Yahoo's Smart Start Guide.

The Smart Start Guide according to Yahoo, "is a guidebook geared especially toward the beginning search marketer, but it also offers tips for the more advanced Yahoo! Search Marketing advertiser."

The Yahoo Smart Start Guide chapters include:

• Getting to know your Yahoo account
• Building a foundation with strong keywords
• Organizing ad groups for success
• Writing effective Yahoo ads
• Making sure your Yahoo ads are high quality
• Matching keywords to your customers’ searches
• Determining effective bids
• Targeting your Yahoo ads geographically
• Advertising on content sites other than Yahoo.com
• Tracking your Yahoo results

The Yahoo Search Marketing blog then provides a link to download a pdf version of the Smart Start Guide.

Unfortunately numerous attempts to download the Smart Start Guide to Yahoo's pay per click advertising system, I ended up with an unreadable pdf document.

I don't know why the pdf failed, but I don't think the download error occurred on my end.

Hopefully the Yahoo Search Marketing blog team will receive news of this blog post ping and fix their Smart Start Guide pdf download.

Otherwise, I will have to keep searching for answers to my Yahoo pay per click advertising questions elsewhere.

Update: Jeff the Yahoo Search Marketing blog editor contacted me and suggested I use Adobe Acrobat to open their Smart Start Guide which I did - successfully.

Apparently, my Apple Reader has some compatibility issues with viewing that particular Yahoo pdf.

Thanks Jeff...

Currently Google analyzes that the content of the pages you look at to display ads that are related to the content of the page.  Once Google had the tracking power of Google Toolbar and now the Chrome browser, Google has the ability to track viewing and purchasing history for individual web users instead of individual web pages.  It is very similar to the power Amazon has to match you with products that people with similar purchase histories prefer, except during your entire web experience.  While it proves somewhat convenient to have products displayed to me on a shopping marketplace, I don't want to have this targeted bombardment of advertisements in the same way every time I use the internet. 

I expect Google will release a statement saying that they will not use the technology for this purpose like several of their projects before, but this is just one more time when we are putting something of incredible strength and power into Google's hands without any accountability for privacy.

A ten represents a perfect score out of ten on the Thrasher Marketing Score of high tech authors. Click here to learn which was the Top SEO Book. Don't waste your money on the books that did not make this list!

An interesting article came out on Marketing Vox last week with regard to how India is just not using Search and lagging behind the rest of the world.

According to a study conducted by comScore, India represents just 2 percent of the world's Internet searches and Google sites represent 81 percent of the Search marketing space in India. No surprise there!

I have been struggling to get good results in terms of sales from PPC Search in India, but then I work in a market where, in India especially, my company's products are usually purchased offline through intermediaries. I expected a below average performance from PPC Search in India when compared to other countries in Asia, even before we started the programme. The CTRs are very high, but the conversions are low.

There is without doubt a search online, buy offline mentality in India, and I imagine it will continue to be like this until the appropriate infrastructure is in place and consumer trust in the security of online purchases, especially products of high value, grows.

There is just over 5 percent Internet penetration in India at present, but this is growing. It will be interesting to see if Search rises over time as access to the Internet grows. With the government clamping down on Internet cafes though, I imagine the growth of Search will be slower than people imagine.

I think what is certain however is that PPC Search in India has a place in a company's marketing mix - not necessarily solely to produce a sale, but as a branding and awareness mechanism. All we need now is to be able to tie a click on a Search ad online to a purchase through an intermediary offline in order to see the true value of the PPC Search activity - this is the marketer's holy grail, and I don't think we will ever get there!

News sources in Asturias report that journalist Ed Knight spent several days in Asturias this week compiling material for the video and guide. Both will be distributed to around 310,000 Daily Telegraph readers at the end of September.

According to El Comercio Digital, details of the promotional exercise were revealed by General Director for Tourism Elisa Llaneza, at a press conference last week. Llaneza is quoted as saying:
"Asturias is a perfect destination for British people, now that we are less than 2 hours away by plane."

Asturias has been less than 2 hours away from London by plane for more than 2 years, but I guess better late than never to point that out.

According to the same article, Llaneza also used the conference to highlight recent efforts by the Principality of Asturias to promote itself to European audiences, including a campaign run in the UK over recent months called "Smile You Are in Asturias".

One can only hope that the tourism department pay some serious attention to their online efforts before the video and guide are published. If Asturias has indeed been targeting UK audiences over recent months, they have made no visible attempt to replicate these efforts on the Internet.

It is now widely acknowledged that offline advertising and marketing activities have a significant impact on user behaviour online, and that an integrated approach to media activity is essential for any organisation wanting to make the most of their marketing spend.

Role of Search in UK travel market

Let´s imagine that a Daily Telegraph reader watches the promotional video on Asturias, reads the guide, and they like what they see. What is the first thing they are likely to do if they are interested in finding out more about Asturias? The chances are they will do the same as 20 million people in the UK and type "Asturias" into a search engine.

According to research published by comScore and Google, 20 million people in the UK used search engines to find travel information in the first quarter of 2007. The same research revealed that on average, customers make 12 travel related searches and visit 22 websites before making their travel purchase.

One would therefore assume that a tourism organisation hoping to attract more visitors from the UK would pay considerable attention to their online presence. Not in this case, apparently.

So far, so mediocre

If you type "Asturias" into Google.co.uk, an assortment of websites about Asturias appear in the natural search results. These include a Wikipedia entry, a number of ´homemade´ webpages, and the website of the Government of the Principality of Asturias. The official Asturias tourism website, InfoAsturias, appears below all of these.

The top sponsored link on Google.co.uk for Asturias belongs to SpainInfo, the official Spanish govenrnment tourist information website. Unfortunately it doesn´t deep link to a page about Asturias, they leave it up to the consumer to find their own way there. InfoAsturias does not appear in the sponsored links, meaning that no-one is paying for the official website to appear at the top of Google.

No hablamos Inglés

So far so mediocre, until you actually get to the English version of InfoAsturias. Half of the homepage is not translated into English. Six out of seven homepage links under "Suggestions" are broken, or lead to a page in Spanish.

All the information in the Events Calendar is in Spanish, as are most of the accommodation listings. The accommodation booking engine itself is about as intuitive as a dog with no nose.

The Travelling To section has lots of information about the airport, but nothing about which airlines fly there. There is no mention of ferry connections to ports further along the coast, a major omission given the number of people who could be looking for a greener way to travel.

Throughout the supposedly English website there are pages and pages of Spanish. One can only hope that Ed Knight speaks good Spanish, or else didn´t have to rely on this website to organise his trip!

Missed opportunities and efficiencies

Seriously though, the Principality of Asturias is throwing money away by spending on offline promotions and campaigns, but not investing in online. Not just their own marketing funds, but the money of businesses in Asturias lose when UK tourists decide to go elsewhere.

According to research undertaken by brands including Yahoo! and Orange published by in a report entitled The Hitwise UK Media Impact Report; "Integrated online and offline campaigns yield the biggest results in brand awareness and website visits......Campaigns that are not integrated from a media standpoint can lead to missed opportunities and inefficiencies." And that report was published nearly 2 years ago, in September 2006.

Spain may be behind the UK when it comes to Internet marketing and advertising, but that is no excuse if you are spending public money on campaigns designed to target audiences in the UK. It is even less excusable when you consider that online marketing - done properly - can be more measurable, targeted and cost effective than offline. The point is not that online is better than offline or vice versa, but that the whole mix is greater than the sum of its parts.

Let´s just hope the tourism department has something up its sleeve and we will see improvements before the Daily Telegraph promotion hits the racks. With less than a month to go they may be cutting it fine, but I´ll reserve my judgement until then.

I use to the run the website and do online marketing for a Homeland Security magazine. Through an article, I became aware of a program run by the United States Food and Drug Administration to help farmers determine if their farms were targets for terrorism. The program is based upon a military practice called CARVER that is used to identify and prioritize targets.

After doing some quick online research, I came upon the Joint Special Operations Targeting and Mission Planning Procedure from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I began to modify the strategy that the Special Forces uses into a method that marketers can use to make better decisions around whom they should target and the best means to reach those targets.

Through some pretty in-depth research, I haven’t found anyone else who’s doing this, so, it’s the birth of CARVER Marketing.

Here are the basic foundational elements of CARVER Marketing as it applies to the identification and prioritization of marketing targets and digital marketing tactics:

• Criticality
• Accessibility
• Recuperability (also Return-on-Investment)
• Vulnerability
• Effect
• Recognizability

I used CARVER Marketing to help the client I mentioned earlier rank their personas and provided the back-up data that was socialized throughout the organization to get everyone on the same page. So while personas are often used as a conflict resolution device, CARVER Marketing can provide additional support to keep programs moving along.

CARVER Marketing can remove some of the guesswork and “gut instinct” that litters a lot of marketing which is causing longer timelines and costing more money. Start from an educated position then “fire and adjust”.

I have written a white paper on applying CARVER Marketing to digital marketing tactics. I use this method to help figure out budgeting for marketing campaigns. If you would like a copy, send me a note. CARVER Marketing for Personas is coming along, you should see it in a few weeks.

(BTW: if you're wondering why I've added some of the keyword tags to this post, you'll see why in the upcoming posts...)

Get Ready For Some Veritas From An Insomniatic Internet Marketer

Ever since someone coined the phrase Web 2.0 it seems that people have been speculating and predicting what Web 3.0 will involve.  I guess I am no different except that my speculations are closer to mainly limited to how it will affect search engines.  It is very probably that Web 3.0 will include a surge in modular applications and a new dimension of social/open source media, but the largest development will be the release of semantic-style search to the mass market.

Currently, most search engine technology is based off simple word matching.  For instance, if your search for 'pink auto'  in most standard search engines you will pull results for the term 'pink auto' and maybe even 'hot pink automobiles', but it is not likely that you will get results for a 'magenta suv' or a 'flamingo-colored Cadillac"....(suddenly tired...to be continued)

The Stompernet Live 6 event in Atlanta was amazing. I am so inspired. I am filled with the juice of action - I am willing and able to do what it takes to fly, and I want you all to fly with me. Because on the internet that is how it works - we help one another and it in turn helps ourself. It's all about the CyberCommunity.

Just to keep you in the loop, here's a chat transcript between myself and my coworker today...she wanted to know what I learned and how she can apply some of the stuff too.
Session Start (zhenyanhr:Alana 3722): Wed Aug 27 13:25:16 2008
[13:25] Alana 3722: when do you have time to talk story about your trip
[13:25] zhenyanhr: sigh...
[13:25] zhenyanhr: I wish sooner but I have to get several things off my desk...probably won't be until next week
[13:25] zhenyanhr: but I do want to tell you about the twitter thing
[13:26] zhenyanhr: and the root idea here
[13:26] zhenyanhr: is that you need to develop your personality and your brand
[13:26] zhenyanhr: even when you are working for someone else
[13:26] zhenyanhr: so get concise about your passions in life
[13:26] zhenyanhr: and start to develop yourself online as an expert in that field
[13:26] zhenyanhr: keep the blogging thing up as I said
[13:27] zhenyanhr: and you can link twitter to your blog and have it update both places at once
[13:27] zhenyanhr: and you can also update twitter from your phone
[13:27] zhenyanhr: there is A LOT of info
[13:27] zhenyanhr: so I'll give you a little at atime
[13:27] zhenyanhr: so you don't get overwhelmed
[13:27] Alana 3722: =)
[13:27] zhenyanhr: did you link up twitter to your phone yet?
[13:27] Alana 3722: i didnt
[13:27] zhenyanhr: as you can see I am a spout of info ready to go off at any moment
[13:27] zhenyanhr: do that
[13:27] zhenyanhr: i have reasons for telling you these things you know!
[13:28] Alana 3722: does it charge as a text?
[13:28] Alana 3722: i know, im excited to hear about it
[13:28] Alana 3722: ill set it up
[14:03] zhenyanhr: yep you do get charged normal text rates - do you have a plan?
[14:03] zhenyanhr: I get 250 txts a month for $5.00
[14:03] zhenyanhr: that's old so you can prob get an even better deal now
[14:03] zhenyanhr: worth it
[14:03] zhenyanhr: don't worry though we aren't going to utilize it until we need to

You heard me! Start writing on your blog every day. I don't care what you write about. Write about how you love the blue sky. Write about the shoes you want to buy. Write about your headache, or if you actually have an article, post that. It doesn't matter. Just keep your blog alive.

And sign up for a Twitter.com account and hook it up to your cell phone. And look for "skysurfergirl" and follow me and I will follwo you, OK? That's a blog class lesson. Just do it!

2. Search Engine Marketing Inc (TM Score: 9)
3. Ultimate Guide to Search Engine Optimization (TM Score: 7)
4. Landing Page Optimization (TM Score: 7)
5. Search Engine Optimization: Your visual blueprint... (TM Score: 7)

Visit the New Millennium Minds Top 5 SEO Books With Hyperlinks

Search Marketing Info: SEO Calendar, SEO Books, SEO Tutorials, SEO Speakers

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Don't just go randomly and get a million pages if which 90% are not relevant to your actual desired Web pages that match your criterion. Find what you want. Don't make Google guess what you want, because even though Google is very good at guessing, there's no reason to not use search tactics that are very easy to use and will save you hundreds or thousands of hours of search time.

Read the Search Engine Secrets Article

Una serie di FAQ prova a dare tutte le risposte necessarie.

Inoltre il post punta l'attenzione sul fatto che proprio nel momento in cui i SEO sembravano riusciti a sensibilizzare clienti, grafici e sviluppatori sull'utilizzo attento di Adobe Flash (un tempo Macromedia), la notizia del tavolo di lavoro tra Adobe, Google e Yahoo per migliorare l'indicizzazione dei file SWF rischia di generare soprattutto confusione e false speranze: indicizzato non significa posizionato!

La notizia ha avuto troppo ottimistico risalto, come se si trattasse della novità dell'anno, ma chi lavora sul campo sa bene che i problemi sono tutt'altro che risolti...

Here are the changes:

• Quality Score will now be more accurate because it will be calculated at the time of each search query
• Keywords will no longer be marked 'inactive for search'
• 'First page bid' will replace 'minimum bid' in your account

The first point on the list is huge.  Instead of using a broad Quality Score to determine the placement of your ads, Google will be calculating the Quality Score on the fly based on a number of factors.  These factors include Keywords and Geographical Location.  In my opinion, it's about time Google implemented an automatic Geo-Targeting method for ads, and it's finally here.  How nice would it be to never have to worry about paying for clicks that get sent to a "country-specific redirect".  There have been controls to specify what countries your ad gets placed in for years, but nevertheless it still happens.

The second change involves keywords no longer being labeled 'Inactive for Search'.  This won't necessarily be a huge boon to search marketers, but it does increase the overall pool of terms & keywords that can be targeted, even if they are extremely longtail.  More keywords equals more clicks and revenue for affiliate marketers.

Possibly the biggest change is the new 'First Page Bid' listing.  It has long been a guessing game to figure out the sweet spot between paying too much for clicks, and having your ads show up on the 2nd, 3rd or 4th page of results.  Some might say that this will cause an upward trend in keyword bid prices, because inexperienced marketers will now know how much they need to bid to get on the first page.  I don't see this being a long term issue, because they will either run out of money or decide it's not worth it to bid with the big boys because they can't get the traffic to back out for them.

My feeling is, the more transparency that Google has, the better.  It's no fun trying to guess what you need to do to be successful as a search marketer.  The more information we have about how the system works, the better that we will be able to use it and optimize our campaigns to be as profitable as possible.  It doesn't matter how complicated the system is, the cream will rise to the top.  If you are a full time affiliate marketer, you should take these changes and run with them to gain a lead on the competition as quickly as possible.

If you want to read the changes for yourself, checkout the official post on the AdWords Blog.