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Internet Marketing

Infographics, or Information graphics, are a visual representation of complex data or knowledge that is presented in an easy to understand graphic. While infographics have been around for a long time, Internet marketers have turned to using infographics as a link building tactic. As you can see from the Google Trends graph, infographics started to really pick up at the beginning of 2010. So the start of 2010 has been the year of the infographic linkbait. Producing an attention grabbing and timel...

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Brent Nau 7/27/2010 4:01:00 PM Comments(0)

Internet Marketing: A Road Map of the Basics

Internet Marketing: A Road Map of the Basics Survival of the fittest To this day, internet is the fastest changing industry which adapts many changes throughout every month, even on a daily basis! With the Google algorithms always increasing in complexity, it becomes harder to be able to generate organic results for any given website. If you just now want to start with internet marketing campaigns for your business, you must start with a very well defined niche which is in de...

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Andres Molina 7/27/2010 8:47:00 AM Comments(0)

Yahoo / MSN Search Alliance Update

Yahoo and MSN have moved one step closer to completing their search alliance. Yahoo announced that they are now performing limited tests with the Bing search algorithm and ad serving platform. Yahoo has stated that they are using the Bing search algorithm and paid search listings for up to 25% of Yahoo search traffic in the United States. This test should last through July and into August. Yahoo expects that the full integration of the Bing search algorithm and paid search listings should happen...

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Brent Nau 7/21/2010 8:54:00 AM Comments(0)

Internet Marketing: Investing Wisely in your Business

If you have a website, you need traffic. Unfortunately many people know this and also come to realize their lack of knowledge on how “Internet traffic” really works. There are lots of “opportunities” out there offering you thousands of “targeted visitors” to your website for just a few bucks, or a directory promoting your website on Google on your behalf. If you do not advertise your business, your incoming flow of customers will be low. Nowadays simple wo...

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Andres Molina 5/20/2010 12:53:00 PM Comments(1)

Tips on Choosing a Good Domain Name

Choosing a domain name is probably the most important step in getting your business online. When choosing a domain name for your business there are several factors to consider before you make that final purchase. .COM – The .com domain extension is probably the most recognized and trusted domain extension. Now if you are a non-profit or healthcare organization you may want to consider the .org domain extension. And whatever you do stay away from the .info. The .info domain extension has be...

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Brent Nau 1/22/2010 12:58:00 PM Comments(0)

Internet Marketing: Looking Back In 2009

2009 was a pretty big year for internet marketing. There was a lot of activity in the industry, whether it was that latest real-time search results implementation or the new search engine Bing launching. When asked "What are some of the key events that happened online in 2009 from an Internet Marketing standpoint?" the SMT Internet marketing responded with: Microsoft Launches Bing One of the top search engine providers launches a new search engine. Yea, I would consider that a pretty big deal. B...

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Jonathan Crowe, Dennis Dornon, Jon Negrini 12/30/2009 3:19:00 PM Comments(0)

Can your marketing survive on PPC alone?

There has been a lot of debate on whether a business can survive and thrive using pay per click PPC marketing alone. While PPC marketing can be very effective, using it without an organic search plan can be costly. There are several reasons PPC marketing needs to be coupled with organic search strategies. 1 Your Google Adwords bids can cost you more if your campaigns and landing pages are improperly optimized. Google states " Include specific keywords that directly relate to the specific theme o...

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Kenneth Moody 12/22/2009 10:42:00 AM Comments(0)

4 Online Marketing Techniques Your Business Should Be Using

Here is a list of 4 online marketing techniques your business should be using. 1 Search Engine Optimization SEO By implementing an SEO strategy, you are optimizing your website to be found under certain keywords in the search engines. Users typing in these keywords are typically looking for information regarding their keyword; hence, targeted audience. If your site is setup properly, then you should be seeing conversions. 2 Social Media People love interacting! Social Media does something really...

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Jonathan Crowe 12/18/2009 4:18:00 PM Comments(0)

Why Online Marketing Should Be In Your 2010 Marketing Budget

If it’s not too late, I wanted to go over your 2010 marketing budget. No, I physically can’t look over it, but what I can do is list off reasons why you should invest in an online marketing strategy. It’s a tough advertising world out there with all of the advertising options you have especially when they ALL say they deliver a good ROI . I’m not here to pick on the other guys today, I’m just here to tell you what online marketing can do for your business. The Numbe...

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Jonathan Crowe 12/10/2009 4:42:00 PM Comments(0)

How To Create An iPhone Favicon For Your Website

Favicons are very important for branding your website and your services. As you might already know, the favicon.ico shows up in several places. The greater exposure to of your brand, the better effect it will have on your visitors. Does your site have an iPhone favicon? If not, don’t worry. I’ll tell you exactly how to get one. But first, let’s look at what I mean. Load up your website in your iPhone or iPod Touch. Once it has been completely loaded, click on the ‘+’...

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Jonathan Crowe 12/3/2009 4:19:00 PM Comments(0)

Tips To Prepare Your eCommerce Site Tis' Holiday Season

It’s coming. The wonderful time of year when houses and stores are being decorated with lights and trees, the time when the weather is cold enough to drink hot chocolate, and the time when you start hearing Christmas music while you shop. The 2009 Holiday Season is right around the corner and you need to make sure your eCommerce site is prepared for it! Do not fret. This blog post focuses on some basic tips to make sure your eCommerce site is prepared this holiday season. Add some holiday ...

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Jonathan Crowe 11/18/2009 5:34:00 PM Comments(1)

Google Webmaster Tools Keyword Significance

Google has now started showing what it believes are the most significant for you website. Here's what Google believes are the most important keywords for SMTUSA.com In a Webmaster Central Help Page updated 11/12/09 Google explains: "The Keywords page lists the most significant keywords Google found when crawling your site. The significance of each keyword reflects how often it's found on your site's pages. Click each keyword to see a sampling of pages on which it appears." Google goes on to reco...

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Dennis Dornon 11/12/2009 9:54:00 AM Comments(1)

Effective Call To Actions Help Increase Conversions

There are so many different aspects and fundamental elements that need to be in place for a website to be prosperous. With so many different, yet important elements that make up a successful website, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about Call To Actions CTA . While an intriguing design, a lot of relevant and up-to-date content, visibility, a user friendly layout, and accessibility are all very important, I wanted to share the magnitude of creative and captivating call to actions. Call to ac...

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Jonathan Crowe 11/3/2009 4:21:00 PM Comments(1)

Google Analytics Conversion Tracking Facelift

Today as I was setting up a Google Analytics profile, I noticed that there was a small, but neat little update to their conversion tracking. Typically you can setup your goals as specific URL's being visited. For example, if setup yourdomain.com/thank-you.html as your goal tracking URL and a visitor lands on that page, Google Analytics will count that was 1 goal or otherwise known as conversion . But today, I saw that Google is giving users two 2 more options for their goal tracking. The first o...

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Jonathan Crowe 10/22/2009 4:14:00 PM Comments(0)

Testing Google Wave

Google is at it again , adding yet another new product this year called Google Wave . Google Wave is a web-based application promising to bring together e-mail, chat, wiki and social networking in a clean and organized platform. The system works in real-time, and features some potentially useful collaborative tools including live translator extensions and virtual conference calling. With that said, what does it Google Wave really do? While Wave is not completely released yet, a few of us at SMT ...

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Jon Negrini 10/8/2009 4:12:00 PM Comments(0)

Keywords Meta Tag Doesn't Matter To Google

The Google Webmaster Tool blog announced officially Monday that Google doesn't use the keywords meta tag in their ranking algorithm. But what really caught my attention was a little episode on Matt Cutts' blog, where he reiterated the Google doesn't use the keywords meta tag as a ranking factor and Graywolf actually called him out on in the comments. In case you missed it, it goes like this: graywolf September 21, 2009 at 12:42 pm "so what about this about meta descrptions http://bit.ly/TW8cC yo...

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Jonathan Crowe 9/23/2009 8:40:00 PM Comments(0)

What ICANN's New gTLDs Mean for Search Engine Rankings

For the past several months there has been a lot of talk and speculation as to whether or not ICANN will be opening up their gTLD-global top-level domain extension -registration in late 2010. ICANN stands for 'Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' and is essentially the Internet's governing body, focusing specifically on domain registration. If ICANN's new gTLD program launches as planned, in late 2010 corporations, interest groups, cities and anyone else who has the financial mea...

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Jon Negrini 8/24/2009 10:21:00 AM Comments(0)

Google adds Options to its search results

Google has once again refined its search results. Google has made tremendous strides when it comes to localizing search results. In an attempt to compete with real time search results provided by companies like Twitter they have introduced "show options". Show options which is located just below the search box and above the listing results allows users to refine the search results by various means, but my favorite refinement would have to be the refine your search query by timeline where you can...

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Ken Moody 5/18/2009 10:45:00 AM Comments(0)

Display Google Base Products in Google Adwords

Google introduced a new feature for Google Adwords advertisers this past week. The new feature allows advertisers to integrate their existing Google Base products into their current Adwords campaigns. By integrating your Google Base products into your Adwords account you will be able to gain additional exposure for your product listings. Once integrated you will see a expandable "Show products from COMPANY NAME" link right under the Adwords ad. Clicking this link displays three products with pro...

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Brent Nau 5/5/2009 8:36:00 AM Comments(2)

Google Penalty – How to Properly Request Reconsideration

Today Google released a video from two leaders of the Google Search Quality Web Spam Group, Racheal Searles and Brian White, giving their recommendations for creating a good reconsideration request . Their Tips Include: Admit any mistakes you’ve made and let Google know what you have done to fix them. They want you to realize there is actual people who read the re-inclusion request. If you don’t know what your site did to get the penalty the suggest going back and rereading the Googl...

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Dennis Dornon 4/24/2009 2:23:00 PM Comments(1)

SearchStatus Toolbar – Five Reasons It Rocks My SEO World

I recently had to undergo a fresh install computer had a lot of unnecessary data of Windows on my super machine that I like to call the beast! Don’t worry; she made it out without a scratch. Anyways, when I was finishing up adding the last of my Firefox plugins and add-ons, I relived the excitement of the SearchStatus add-on. This puppy is amazing and I have five reasons why you should have it: Can somebody say rank toolbar? This toolbar not only shows the standard PageRank and Alexa ranki...

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Jonathan Crowe 4/14/2009 1:11:00 PM Comments(1)

Three reasons why Long Tail Keyword searches are so important?

Long tail keyword searches are the secret to tremendous website traffic. Why are they so important and how do they work? Here are three reasons why long tail keyword searches are so important. After studying the traffic to a popular website whose domain name is the same as its primary keyword, we found that during a thirty day period the website received 500k visitors. But only 12k of them where for the primary keyword. The other 488k visitors found the site using long tail keyword searches, key...

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Kenneth Moody 1/29/2009 9:41:00 AM Comments(2)

Five Great Google Adwords Tips for Saving Money on Adwords

Here are five Adwords tips to help you get more bang for your buck with Google Adwords. Put your phone number in the Google ad, because some people are likely to call instead of clicking through. If you are on a small budget, have your ads scheduled to start running later in the day to give some time for some advertisers to blow through their daily budget. Geo target your ads to prevent paying for clicks outside your servicing ability. Make sure to use negative keywords when setting up your keyw...

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Ken 12/31/2008 7:21:00 PM Comments(1)

Top Ten Reputation Management Tips

When it comes to your image, or the image of your brand, reputation management is a word you need to know. The internet is a very powerful and quick force and a negative comment on a blog, Twitter, or forum can literally spread across the internet in minutes and can result in a loss of business and profit. That’s where reputation management comes in. Monitoring what is said about you on the internet and responding when appropriate can reduce the spread of negative comments, but the real da...

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Ken 12/31/2008 7:02:00 PM Comments(0)

Amazon.com Had “Best Ever” Holiday Season

Powerhouse Online Retailer, Amazon.com said that this holiday season was their, “best ever”. One of the busiest online days to shop is December 15th, and Amazon customers ordered 6.3 million items that day. Which is a significant increase compared to last years 5.4 million on their peak day. Unfortunately, Amazon has not released any dollar figures and wouldn’t say whether the average value of orders had changed. Many people are debating if the sole purpose of this increase...

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Jonathan Crowe 12/31/2008 4:28:00 PM Comments(0)

Google Leading Mobile Web

Surprirsed? Yeah, me neither. According to Nielsen Mobile , surprisingly sarcasm Google is the leading force in mobile search in the US. With iPhones, Google Androids, Blackberry Storms, and other internet capable phones, the mobile web is on the fast track for either booming success or failure due to overload. Source: Nielsen Mobile What I mean by failure to overload is this… We all know that mobile browsing is going to be huge! But when it does, will the mobile web have the capabil...

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Jonathan Crowe 12/31/2008 4:11:00 PM Comments(0)

Google Continues to Grow in November

Just a few minutes ago ComScore released their November Search Engine Ranking Report and Google continues to grow in the search market with both Yahoo! and MSN losing ground. Overall Americans searched 3% less in November when compared to October. November 2008 vs. October 2008 Total U.S. - Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore qSearch 2.0 Core Search Entity Oct-08 Nov-08 Point Change Nov-08 vs. Oct-08 Total Core Search 100 100 N/A Google 63.1 63.5 0.4 Yahoo! 20.5 20.4 -0.1 MSN/Live 8....

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Dennis Dornon 12/19/2008 10:57:00 PM Comments(0)

Hackers Can Steal Your PageRank

Recently John Mueller, a Webmaster Trends Analyst for Google, reported on his personal blog that hackers have been stealing PageRank from websites. He writes: In this particular case, a "massive amount" of sites were hacked and likely redirected through suomi.co.in. The Hackers were able to 301 redirect pages for search engine spiders only so the webmaster and site visitors never saw a change on the site. By redirecting the Spiders this way the Google believed the site had moved and began ...

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Dennis Dornon 12/9/2008 5:44:00 PM Comments(0)

Online Spending Up 846 Million on Cyber Monday

Not all is bad in the retail world especially if your primary business is online. comScore’s latest survey results show Cyber Monday, the online equivalent to Black Friday, up 15% over last year making it the second busiest online shopping day on record. The weekend between Thanksgiving day and Cyber Monday Nov. 29 - 30th was up 19% over 2007. Holiday Season to Date Millions $ 2007 2008 Percent Change Nov. 1 - Dec. 1 $12,217 12,025 -2% Pre-Thanksgivi...

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Dennis Dornon 12/3/2008 3:18:00 PM Comments(0)

Google Releases Guidelines for Bloggers

Earlier this week Google released a new set of Blogging Best Practices in their Creating a Google-friendly site section of Webmaster help. The document starts out with Google reiterating their pro-blog feelings: If you have a website but don’t have a blog, consider creating one: A blog is a great way to connect with people who share your interests, or to publicize your site or product. Blogs are easy to create and update, and rich, useful, and original blog content will encourage reade...

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Dennis Dornon 12/1/2008 3:36:00 AM Comments(0)

Christmas Time Revenue

Now that you have filled your belly with turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and every kind of pie your grandma can whip up, it’s time to focus on this Christmas seasons potential revenue. What I am about to share with you isn’t a million dollar idea, but will help you or your business earn those extra Christmas dollars. The Christmas season is a great opportunity to market your product or service and put a little Christmas season twist on it! There are “Doorbuster Deals&...

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Jonathan Crowe 12/1/2008 3:28:00 AM Comments(0)

Search Engine Usage Statistics

COMscore, a leading internet research firm, released their October 2008 Search Engine usage statistics a few days ago and Google still retains a sizeable lead on all other Search Engines combined. Google led the U.S. in search with 63.1 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo 20.5% , MSN 8.5% , Ask 4.2% , and AOL 3.7% . Of the 12.6 Billion searches by U.S. residents in October Google provided results for 8 billion of those an increase of 7 percent from September of 2008. Yahoo a...

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Dennis Dornon 11/30/2008 4:49:00 PM Comments(0)

Google Trends for Websites.

Google just recently added Google Trends for websites which is a great research tool for analyzing authority type websites. I say authority type websites because websites with lower search volumes usually return this message “Your website sampledomainname.com does not have data to display”. The Google trends for websites tool gives an insight to what regions the visitors are coming from, what sites visitors also visited and what search terms the visitors also searched for. The inform...

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Ken 11/6/2008 1:59:00 PM Comments(0)

Even in a Tough Economy E-commerce Continues to Grow

Market research group comScore released their third quarter retail e-commerce report today which shows as the economy struggles Internet Retailers continue to grow albeit at a slower rate. Their research shows U.S. consumers spent 30 billion online in the third quarter, excluding travel, a 6% increase over the same period last year. However, the growth rate was slower when compared to the previous two quarters of this year with the growth rate in the first quarter up 12% over 2007 and the seco...

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Dennis Dornon 11/1/2008 3:01:00 AM Comments(0)

How do I increase traffic & sales on my website?

I hear this question “How do I increase traffic & sales on my website?” all the time, and the funny thing is most of the time its from clients who’s sales have doubled and even tripled over the past year. The answer to this question is simple but applying the principles is not quite as simple because it usually requires some work. To increase traffic & sales on websites, I like to use what I call the “CLUB” method which is: C = Content Content needs to b...

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Ken 10/31/2008 1:00:00 PM Comments(1)

4% of Websites Meet Web Standards

Matt Cutts stated a very interesting comment on twitter a couple of weeks ago and it goes something like this: “Only 4% of web pages comply w/standards: http://bit.ly/2BJMnZ . That’s why Google can’t return only those pages; too few of them. “ You can view that quote here . I have been thinking about that lately and wanted to put my thoughts in a blog post. My first thought is, it’s quite pathetic to only have 4%, excuse me, 4.13% of the web complying with web...

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Jonathan Crowe 10/31/2008 2:10:00 AM Comments(0)

How To Launch A New Site

Shhh… Do you hear that? Yeah, me neither. If you want to avoid launch failure and the crickets, follow these easy steps to create a buzz about your newly launched site. 1 Check, Check, and Check Again I can’t tell you how many internet users shy away from websites because of failed image loads, broken links, and/or internet browsers displaying the content wrong. It is so important to do a thorough check of your site to assure the functionality and display check in multiple browser...

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Jonathan Crowe 10/28/2008 2:09:00 AM Comments(0)

When Great Google Rankings Hurt Your Business

Never would we have ever thought that great Google rankings could hurt your business, but its true. So many businesses are focused on Google rankings that the most important thing is usually over looked. Conversions, whether your conversion is a sale or just supplying important information about your company, that should be the focus of your Internet marketing. So how do great rankings hurt your business? Its when you rank great for irrelevant terms, terms with little or no search demand, or ter...

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Ken 10/23/2008 1:11:00 PM Comments(0)

Webmasters don’t punish your users

Recently I have visited numerous websites and more often than not its as if the websites are punishing their users. Webmasters need to start asking themselves “What is the purpose of my website?” Usually the purpose of a website is to inform, entertain, provide a service or product to the user. So why do so many websites punish their users with poor navigation, pop-ups, no clear call to action, cumbersome checkout processes, and is it really necessary to fill user’s email inbox...

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Ken 10/10/2008 1:43:00 PM Comments(0)

Think SEO Before a Website Redesign

We always hear the question “We are thinking about redesigning our website. When should we think about search engine optimization?”. The simple answer is at the beginning. When considering redesigning you website, ensure that you consult with a search engine optimization company at the beginning, not at the end. Here are some examples of issues that can arise when your web developer is not well versed in search engine optimization: Removing a page from the site that was driving tra...

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Brent 10/3/2008 4:10:00 PM Comments(0)

Google is 10 and We get the Gifts

Currently Google is the largest search engine in world and one of the most visited sites on the Internet, its stock is currently trading at $400.52 Sept 30th 2008 and it’s name has become synonymous for a web search Google it but it hasn't always been that way. In celebration of its 10th anniversary Google opened up its archives to the world. I'm not sure if this is something they plan on keeping up or if it's something their going to take down after the celebration. So take a look at th...

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Dennis Dornon 10/1/2008 12:42:00 AM Comments(0)

Effectively Using Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools is a free service from Google that provides webmasters with tools and data about their site. I want to touch on some of the benefits of authenticating your site through this service. The first step is to have a Google account set it up here . Diagnostic Tools The Diagnostic Tools section provides information on any crawling issues that Google may be having with your website. This section will provide a list of problematic URLs with a short description of the problem. Y...

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Brent 9/30/2008 6:05:00 PM Comments(0)

Why and How To Add Breadcrumbs To Your Wordpress Blog

As a long-time internet user, I have seen breadcrumbs really take off around the internet and recently with many of the major Wordpress websites using them. You may be asking, “Why should I use them on my blog?” Well, breadcrumbs are excellent for improving user navigation and helping the search engines establish your website's structure, otherwise known as SEO purposes. Unfortunately, Wordpress hasn't inherited the use of breadcrumbs, which is a grave disappointment in my opinion. H...

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Jonathan Crowe 9/29/2008 8:08:00 PM Comments(0)

Blog Orlando - My First Conference

Upon hearing news of attending Blog Orlando 3 , I wasn't sure what to expect. Having worked behind the scenes in an online world, I wasn't sure what kind of environment to expect, people who were new age, older generation, people who were like me, or people who wouldn't get me. Being the chicken I am I asked my girlfriend who is not a web person by any stretch to join me so I wasn't alone in the experience. We arrived to an empty street close to Rollins college the site of the conference , hop...

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Dennis Dornon 9/29/2008 12:08:00 AM Comments(0)

Top Five Wordpress Plugins

Wordpress has become the best blogging software and will continue to reign as the best. With the popularity of Wordpress, I am surprised to find the unpopularity of certain plugins being used. If you manage a Wordpress blog, I would strongly consider my list of the top five plugins to use: Wordpress Database Backup - An excellent automated or manual backup solution for your Wordpress database. A classic. Akismet - Can someone say SPAM? Yes, we all hate it and Akismet is the best Spam protect...

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Jonathan Crowe 9/26/2008 12:55:00 AM Comments(1)

Microsoft's Vista armor starting to fade

HP recently ran an article which hinted that it was developing a software package that had the ability to bypass a portion of the Windows Vista Security. HP might not be the first, but should be noted as a major player in the game. How does this affect your experience? First it shows that it is possible to circumvent the all powerful security features Microsoft is so proud of. If hackers have not already found a way, HP’s tremendous resources will surely be reverse engineered and used for ...

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Chris 9/23/2008 8:21:00 PM Comments(0)

Pimp’n out Your Twitter Profile

If you have not taken notice on the explosion of Twitter , you may not have realized that this micro-blogging platform has increased their traffic by 400+% with over 2 million unique users a month stats gathered from Compete.com, actual numbers maybe greater . Hop aboard this train, but before you do make sure your Twitter page matches your company’s look and feel. Here are some tips on doing this: - Use a real person’s image, people want to connect with a face not a logo - In Se...

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Brent 8/11/2008 4:32:00 PM Comments(0)

Reputation Management - Protect Your Company Online

It's time to consider online reputation management into your monthly marketing budget. If you have never thought about reputation management for your business according to Wikipedia it's "the process of tracking an entity’s actions and other entities’ opinions about those actions; reporting on those actions and opinions; and reacting to that report". With more and more user generated content online your company's reputation is under constant threat of attack be it from bloggers, re...

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Dennis Dornon 7/30/2008 12:07:00 PM Comments(0)

Creative One Way Linking Strategy

The other day I saw a creative one way link exchange request. The request asked if the website owner would add a link to a requested website, and in exchange the requester would add a link to the owner’s website from two of theirs. What made this interesting was the fact that the link they wanted added to the website owner’s site wasn’t one of the two sites they would link back from. Therefore, the owner would get two links for one which seems like a good deal , yet the request...

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Ken 7/14/2008 7:28:00 PM Comments(0)

Yahoo Flagging Harmful Websites in Search Results

With Yahoo’s recent search index this past week, we are noticing that Yahoo has followed in the steps of Google by marking harmful websites within their natural search results. We noticed when searching on the term “surge protection” that a warning message is produced “1 potential harmful website is marked on this page”. The flagged listing has a warning stating “Warning: Unsolicited Emails”. So it looks like Yahoo is taking it one step further then Goog...

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Brent 6/2/2008 12:28:00 PM Comments(0)

Internet Marketing Specialist Job Opportunities Avaliable

As our client base continues to grow, our need for experienced Internet Marketing Specialists does too. Our Internet Marketing Department is looking for two qualified candiates to join our team. Find out the details for these positions by visiting http://www.smtusa.com/jobs/ . Here we GROW Again! Sales & Marketing Technologies is located just North of Orlando, Florida in Altamonte Springs. Tags: internet marketing , internet marketing specialist , seo , ppc , seo job , internet marketing jo...

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Brent 5/23/2008 3:01:00 PM Comments(0)

Following your Passion, Why I joined the SMT Team

I have been marketing for years and while most people do not realize that they are always marketing something whether they like it or not, I do realize it. And over the last five years I have been refining my marketing skills towards the internet. Just recently I joined the SMT team for selfish reasons. Reasons being, I am consumed by the internet, search engine optimization, and internet marketing in general, and since I would rather spend my entire day engulfed by my passion, I might as well g...

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Ken 4/23/2008 2:06:00 PM Comments(0)

New Addition To The Internet Marketing Team

It has been quite a while since we have posted on the blog, but we have been extremely busy in the Internet Marketing department. We have been growing our department and are still looking for qualified Internet Marketers to join our team. Through our recent acquisition of EZ SEO Solutions , Ken Moody has joined our Internet Marketing team at Sales & Marketing Technologies. Ken has over 5 years of experience in SEO, Web Development, and PPC Management. Ken also served in the Air Force fulfillin...

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Brent 4/18/2008 12:28:00 PM Comments(0)

Postlets - Real Estate Marketing Tool

Came across a nice free tool for real estate agents called Postlets . The tool allows users to post properties to several main stream classified networks such as backpage, Google Base, Kijiji, Oodle and more. The site steps you through the process of creating your listing. This is a great tool to propogate your listings across some fo the bigger free classified networks. This application also works for selling cars, but on a more limited distribution. ...

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Brent 1/29/2008 9:55:00 PM Comments(0)

Digg = Traffic

Below is a chart taken directy from Google Analytics showing a spike in traffic. This spike occured from one comment the first comment on a related article that made the first page of Digg.com . If you come across an article on Digg that is related to your site, you may want to seriously consider adding a relevant comment that includes your url. You can often comment on both the Digg site and the page of the actual article. ...

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James 1/29/2008 8:25:00 PM Comments(0)

Can Google Get Any Fresher?

I just posted a blog entry on one of my client’s sites and within 40 minutes the blog entry shows up second for the key term the blog entry was discussing. Is Google just that fresh or was I lucky enough to have the Google Bot visit the site right when I published the blog? Any how here is a screenshot of the listing. ...

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Brent 1/8/2008 3:33:00 PM Comments(0)

High Bounce Rates Mean Its Time To Revise Your Website Content

Definition: Web Page Bounce Rate The % of single page visits to your site where the visitor left your site from the same page that the entered. During the past year Google Analytics made this more prominent in it's reporting data and I am glad they did. A bounce rate gives you a good starting point into how your users experience your site. I use the bounce rate to evaluate web page changes, user experience and overall satisfaction and I know that if I can reduce a websites bounce rate I can...

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Brent 12/19/2007 7:47:00 PM Comments(1)

Matt Cutts IS Google

From PubCon’s “Meet the Google Engineers”…Matt Cutts was swarmed immediately when the doors opened for the “Meet the Google Engineers” gathering out in Vegas. As Matt entered the hall it started out as just a crowd of about six people, but as the night went on Matt Cutts stayed in the same place while more and more webmasters gathered to hear his Google Wisdom. Matt was “trapped” right next to the bar all night and as I approached the bar for my be...

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Brent 12/14/2007 1:26:00 PM Comments(0)

Google Toolbar 5 Tracks 404 Error Pages

I just downloaded the Google Toolbar 5 beta and just happened to read the Google Toolbar Privacy Notice. There is a quick statement in thier stating: “In Toolbar 5, if you navigate to a URL that does not exist, the Toolbar may send the URL to Google so we can help you find the URL you were looking for.” This is interesting. I wonder if they will use that data to clean up the index faster for pages coming up with 404s? Here is a screenshot of their “Opps! This Link Appears B...

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Brent 12/13/2007 3:52:00 PM Comments(0)

Duplicate Content Issue? Couple of Tips to Solve Your Problem

One of the hot topics at PubCon last week was the issue of duplicate content. One may say “What’s the big deal? I can get more of my pages indexed in Google.”. Well, it is a big deal and it could be affecting your rankings. When Google comes by your site and starts to index it, it does not necessarily index every single page during that particular visit especially if you have 10,000+ pages . But when the search engine bot or spider arrives, it starts to go through each page a...

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Brent 12/12/2007 10:04:00 PM Comments(0)

Pubcon 2007 Take Aways - Buying Links, Video, Buzz

I finally found a few minutes to blog after returning from Pubcon to an over flowing inbox, voice messages, and rescheduled meetings. It was a great time, as always, with lots of knowledgeable speakers. Here are 3 points that seemed to be stressed by multiple speakers and attendees alike: 1 Buying links is not a good long term strategy. Google and the other major search engines according to Matt Cutts are cracking down on sites who buy and/or sell links. Will buying 1 link get you black listed...

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James 12/12/2007 9:49:00 PM Comments(0)

HubPages & Other Industry Pages, Leading to More Sales?

What follows is a crazy, but true tale of a little HubPage that never gave up. Nearly four months ago I created a HubPages account for a client. The page was succinct and targeted one of their main keywords. As the months go by, some other optimizations are performed. Four months later present day , I'm looking at the main site's progression up the search engines and who do I run into - well good ole HubPages, all sweaty and out-of-breath. This particular client has a niche, geographically-t...

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Brent 12/6/2007 3:12:00 PM Comments(0)

Using Social Networks for Links

Just got out of a very good session at Pubcon here in Las Vegas about leveraging social networking websites to generate incoming links to your site. In fact, Rand Fishkin , CEO of SEOMoz listed about 60 websites that can be used for content submissions, profile building, and general marketing purposes. Unfortunately he has asked we do not publish the full list…..so here is a partial Flickr DeviantArt Care2 Hugg . Sphinn Mixx To find out how to implement social networking into...

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James 12/4/2007 8:47:00 PM Comments(0)

WebmasterWorld’s Pubcon 2007 in Vegas

Well, we’re off to Pubcon in Las Vegas again. This year should be full of useful information and SEO tidbits especially with keynotes such as Matt Cutts from Google and Craig Nemark from Craigslist . This has always been a great conference for the nuts and bolts of internet marketing. We’ll keep you posted! ...

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James 12/3/2007 9:09:00 PM Comments(0)

Google’s Did You Mean

I am sure you have seen it or possible even use it daily as a spell checker . If you search Google and spell your word s incorrectly, Google will ask you “Did you mean…?” with a suggestion link to alternative search results. Sounds like a great idea and usually it works very well. However, let’s take a case where your brand name is close to an actual word. If my company name was “fintastic fins” and a potential customer heard about me and searched on Google, t...

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James 11/30/2007 5:14:00 PM Comments(0)

Increase Web Site Traffic by Eliminating These 5 Web Site Mistakes

Web designers, programmers, IT specialist and business marketing departments are all involved in the development of wonderful web sites. However, few of these professionals care how you rank in the search engines and whether your site produces leads or sales. If you want to Increase Web Site Traffic you need to see if your site makes any of these web site mistakes and then take action to correct them. 1. Flash Home Page / Web Site Nothing stops a search engine spider than no readable cont...

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Brent 11/28/2007 2:26:00 PM Comments(0)

Learn What Small Web Site Changes Are Adding Up to 50% Sales Increase

It's was 10:43 pm last night when I logged in to check the daily ecommerce sales. The results Up 20% for the day and for the month up a whopping 50%, "Yes" I said. This would seem routine if I worked or owned the company, but I don’t. I am their Internet Marketing Manager and live hours away from their business and I was ecstatic. All the little changes and adjustments we have been working on all year are now paying off and the are swampped with huge sales increases. In a way, I feel t...

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Brent 11/15/2007 8:33:00 PM Comments(0)

Business Benefits of Blogging

Often times, to a business, a blog may have an undeserving negative connotation. By now, most of us are aware that it is no longer exclusively for teens Tommy and Tina to hobnob about their weekend events. Blogging has become a powerful internet and business tool, when used properly. Maybe a blog on your site still makes you a little squeamish. Do you prefer a newsletter, events page, industry articles section, or a press release section? Well, in all honesty, a blog can act as all of these. W...

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Brent 10/31/2007 9:27:00 PM Comments(1)

Template CMS Based Websites

There are many companies out there offering very attractive hosting and website solutions. They promise to give you 99% uptime and tools to build your own website in minutes for a low monthly fee. Many of these services are focused on certain niches such as golf courses, churches, hotels, etc. These are great solutions for businesses who just want an online presence and a url to put on their business cards. However, these template type systems generally have some huge seo drawbacks for those loo...

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James 10/26/2007 11:58:00 AM Comments(0)

Mergers, Acquisitions and Web Sites

Recently we have seen several of our clients purchase additional businesses or be purchased by another company. My first question to my clients is "What is going to happen to the web site?" This is often followed by a "Huh?" and a statement like "We buying a business and not a web site." and that is where I reply you are buying both. In many cases people know how to value a business but not how to value a web site or even understand how a successful web site plays into the success of a busines...

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Brent 9/12/2007 8:14:00 PM Comments(0)

Corporate Transparency - Web 2.0

Blogging has become an important part of the online experience. There is no better way to get the very latest information on almost any subject or company. But what makes a company blog worthwhile? The answer: improved corporate image and building customer loyalty. A corporate blog should be written by multiple high level officers within the company. It should be written to include the personality of the writer. Blogs that are manicured by the corporate PR team often come across as nothing more ...

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James 7/31/2007 3:12:00 PM Comments(0)

How Google Sees Your Site

Google, like many search engines, sees a website just like a browser would. To view the code that is getting indexed by Google, simply visit your webpage, right click and select ‘view source’. This will pull up a notepad filled with the page html code. If you are not familiar with html, there is another way to see what a search engine bot sees. Just follow these steps: 1 type in a word that you know your site ranks for in Google. The most obvious search is simply your company name. ...

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James 7/30/2007 1:31:00 PM Comments(0)

Accessibility for Search Engines

We find that most new clients that have had their site built by another company fail to have their page’s code optimized correctly. The most common issue that we come across is having internal JavaScript code on the page. You may be wondering why this would be an issue. When search engine spiders crawl your site, the spider will go through all of the page code to understand what the page content is about. Typically spiders will index up to 110K of data before abandoning the page. So if t...

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Brent 7/30/2007 1:27:00 PM Comments(0)

The Importance of a Good Hosting Company During Website Launch

When your ready to launch a new site, it is easy to forget the little things, like search engine rankings. Enamored by the glitz of a fresh looking website and new images, often redirects are overlooked and the old site just forgotten. But Google will not forget so easily, unless properly told. The old site worked hard to migrate up the rankings, slipping past competitors and nestling on the first page. Often the old site’s content was so amazing that outsiders would even link to it. If ...

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Brent 7/11/2007 7:19:00 PM Comments(0)

New SMT Website Launched

Sales and Marketing Technologies has launched a new website with a “2.0″ look and feel. The new design was created for easy navigation, up-to-date information, and of course for search engine marketing. Although redesigning a website is often necessary to keep up with the changing trends online, it can also have some negative effects on search engine rankings, if not done properly. It is important to remember to 301 permanent redirect all old pages to the corresponding new pages. T...

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James 5/29/2007 4:21:00 PM Comments(0)

Server Set up Error Can Be Costly Mistake

Even the big boys make little mistakes that can prove to be costly. So what is the cost of a simple server set up issue for Yahoo? It could be thousands of dollars a day and the longer it goes on the more money MSN, Google and others can earn off this error. If you simply type in Overture.com, you land at MSN's and Google's search results page because the server is not pointing to www.Overture.com which is working fine. The first listing in MSN is a paid listing for Searchmarketing.Yahoo.com...

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Brent 5/11/2007 6:45:00 PM Comments(0)

Tracking Google Base Listings

The Official Google Base Blog offered up a tip recently on how to track your Google Base listings in Google Analytics by creating a special landing page to identify that traffic as unique. While this would work, it’s not exactly a elegant solution and quite frankly outdated. Google Analytics enables you to append tracking variables to URLs that you can place as links on various inbound traffic sources, including Google Base, that will feed in data about where specifically the traffic came ...

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Terry 5/10/2007 1:38:00 PM Comments(0)

What Can Small Business Owners Do?

So, you own a small business and you don’t have any technical expertise. You are one of the least internet savvy people in your company. You hire a geek to make sure the computers all work and maybe an internet marketing company self promotion; to help your company site show up for some relevant searches. Well then, you’ve done your job…right? Sure, if you are happy with “just getting by”. Here is what every small business owner could and should be doing to take adv...

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James 3/21/2007 9:31:00 PM Comments(0)

Which Local Event Web Site Is Better? Eventful or Upcoming

Local event web sites are gaining in popularity. There are several sites out there that are trying to capitalize on serving local markets by allowing users to search for and share local event information. Two companies that are at the fore front of this are Upcoming.org and Eventful.com . Basically the two sites allow the user to promote a local event for a particular city or metro area free of charge. Both are simple to use and provide an easy way to search for local community events. The big...

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Brent 3/2/2007 7:58:00 PM Comments(0)

Online Marketing Before or After Web Site Development?

A prospective client called in yesterday and said we just finished our web site and now we are looking for a marketing firm to drive in new business via search engine traffic and media buys. After asking for the domain name, I took a long pause and a deep breath... and said "You have a beautiful web site that showcases your product as a high end prestige brand but it is not built for online marketing success." "What do you mean?" I noted that it appeared that while the site had all the spit ...

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Brent 2/14/2007 7:38:00 PM Comments(0)

9 Years of Internet Marketing and Everything Continues to Change

When I started Search Engine Marketing in 1998, there were 10 to 20 key players, instant search engine updates, Google was in beta, GoTo a new pay per click search engine had penny bids, banner ads were overpriced and black hat techniques of hidden text and tag manipulation were all the rage. Today there are 3 main players in the search engine world, content is king and offsite factors are a greater influence in your online success. Web site promotion has grown from achieving high rankings in ...

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Brent 1/22/2007 3:39:00 PM Comments(0)

The Pros and Cons of Google Analytics

Google Analytics has been on the website traffic statistics scene for just a little over a year now and looks to be in no danger of fading into obscurity. For many website owners and professional online marketing firms it has become the de facto standard for helping to manage online marketing campaigns. Much of this is due to the depth of data and the ability to cross reference categories of information and really drill down to specifics on the who, what and when of your site’s visitors. W...

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Terry 1/20/2007 9:11:00 PM Comments(0)

A Simple Guide to Sitemaps. Or Is That Site Maps?

Most people are familiar with the term "site map", but how does it differ from "sitemap? Besides the obvious spelling, these two terms have different meanings. A site map is a collection of plain text links to all of the pages on your website. A sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site in addition to providing metadata about each of those URLs. Site Map Site maps are standard on most websites and are most commonly linked to in the footer section of the site. By providing a site map,...

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Brent 1/19/2007 5:31:00 PM Comments(0)

Ranking for Long String Keywords

When conversations begin about converting website visitors to sales, it will generally come up that “we need to rank for this term”. While “this term” may be very high demand, it may not be the converter you hope or think it is. Here is a brief summary of an internet users experience when buying. Research. This is, in most cases, where users start. If I wanted a new air filter for my house, I may search for home air filters . Take note of the top 5 listings air-purifier...

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James 1/18/2007 10:56:00 PM Comments(0)

Google Supplemental Results

You may have heard about the Google “Sandbox” while surfing the web for internet marketing, seo, sem, or other related terms. Although this is a heavily debated topic I will throw my understanding into the ring. Google doesn’t trust new sites. This means they don’t want to show sites in their search engine results at least not for high demand terms that: 1 Just registered their domains….brand new sites 2 Have had no links from other sites pointed to them The...

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James 1/11/2007 10:47:00 PM Comments(0)

Yahoo Reveals New Search Marketing Blog

Yahoo officially launched their new Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog . Looks to be a customer facing blog that is going to allow a two-way interaction on Yahoo digital products. There is also a blogroll for their other Yahoo company blogs. Tags: yahoo , ysm , yahoo search marketing blog , search engine marketing , seo , sem , smart marketing blog , smt...

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Brent 10/26/2006 9:30:00 AM Comments(0)