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Archive for October 2008

Search Ads Come To YouTube

by on Oct 13, 2008 (0) Comments

Quiz: What’s the No. 2 search site?

Answer: If you guessed “Yahoo,” you’re wrong. Internet users now conduct more searches on YouTube (2.5 billion in August) than they do on Yahoo (2.4 billion), according to comScore’s expanded search query report.

So it is not surprising that YouTube’s parent, Google, is thinking of turning those searches into dollars. The company has begun testing video ads that are targeted to specific YouTube searches. The system works a lot like the hugely profitable AdWords system for search ads on Google. Type “Tina Fey” into YouTube’s search box and, along with the search results, you may find a somewhat relevant ad for the movie “W” as well as a significantly less relevant ad for the University of Phoenix. (This is a test, after all.) The “W” ad links to a trailer on YouTube for the Oliver Stone movie and the University of Phoenix ad links to that school’s YouTube channel.

“We are constantly testing a wide range of options to find the right advertising format, for the right content, for the right video experience on YouTube — whether you’re watching short videos or long videos, uploading videos, or even searching for videos on our site,” said Aaron Zamost, a YouTube spokesman. “We do not believe there is one advertising solution for YouTube, but lots of valuable ways for advertisers to engage with our audience.”

SEO Tips for Developing Authority Websites

by on Oct 12, 2008 (0) Comments

There are some things that really work in tandem withSEO there are other components that just scratch the surface when it comes to overall effectiveness.

We know that timing and layers all play their role, but knowing when to do something and how are the true qualifications of developing results that transcend just being a part that ultimately serve the whole. Building and leveraging website authority is on of such things which is why we encourage you to follow the links to these posts from the past for further elaboration on the topic.

Intro to Sitecore

by on Oct 10, 2008 (2) Comments

Unlike many content management systems which maintain content in a haphazard manner, Sitecore maintains data in a structured content tree.

Data is represented as items. These items of different types are combined in a tree structure such that an item can have a parent and child items.

Templates are like Object Oriented Classes. A template contains fields that contain the actual content for an item. An item is an instance of a template just as an Object is an instance of a class. A template can have a “Master” which is used to create an item of a template. A master plays the same role as an Object Oriented Constructor. Masters can be configured to specify default values for fields and can specify sub-items that should be created when an item is first created. Templates can be based on other templates and inherit their fields, much like Object Oriented inheritance.

The SEO Impact Of Google’s New Speech Recognition In Videos

by on Oct 09, 2008 (0) Comments

Google has rolled out Google Audio Indexing for video just in time for the final stretch of the U.S. presidential election. Using speech recognition technology, Google has indexed all the words spoken within YouTube political channel videos. This allows users to find videos that contain their search term and navigate directly to the part of the video where the term was used. Videos can also be filtered by candidate- Obama or McCain.

Personalize Your Link Building

by on Oct 07, 2008 (0) Comments

The ethnographic method is an approach of studying a person or group of people by participating in the culture of interest while still remaining a bit of an outsider. At its core is the focus on cultural relativism, which is seeing something through the eyes of the involved. Thus, to get to know someone or a group of people, you have to lose your own set of beliefs and views and start from scratch as you seek out the functional reasons why things happen.

This method is critical for successfully connecting to people, especially online when you have no physical cues to tell you about a person. In essence, you have to lose your own identity at first, in order to get a better idea of how to best connect to someone new. When you approach a potential link partner, you know very little about that person except for a few clues picked up in the analysis of the site that he or she controls. Your best bet is to pick up that information as quickly as possible, because you have a very limited amount of time to make or break that connection.
Personas makes use of the ethnographic method in SEO and are intensely valuable. This process helps you learn about your audience and mindset, and the resulting personas can help you to compare the output of your efforts to the target market in question. It’s commonplace to use personas in areas like usability and social media, but they also can be a tremendous help when written specifically for link development. An audience IS an audience, after all.

Writing personas

Ask.com Taps Semantics for Smarter Search

by on Oct 06, 2008 (0) Comments

Ask.com rolled out a new version of itself Monday. The revamped search engine includes a new user interface with three new technologies — DADs (Direct Answers from Databases), DAFS (Direct Answers From Search) and AnswerFarm — that offer users the ability to search the Web using commonly spoken language.

The enhancements to Ask.com will help the site retain existing users and attract new, said Caroline Dangson, an IDC analyst.

Natural Language Search

Ask.com’s new technologies differ from those used by competitors such as Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) and MSN Search because they enable Web surfers to type real questions, instead of a series of keywords, said Erik Collier, vice president of product management at Ask.com.

Challenges and Opportunity in Local Advertising

by on Oct 06, 2008 (0) Comments

More national advertisers are using online local advertising to generate leads and drive offline sales. The strategies for successful local online advertising are not the same as general online or search advertising and measuring results can be challenging. That’s why so many national advertisers, agencies and online advertising resellers are reaching out to partners to help them create and optimize their local online advertising strategy.

In conjunction with Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence, Marchex recently conducted a study of national advertisers across the United States who sell products and/or services through local outlets, dealers, franchises or branded stores to gain an understanding of their local online advertising strategies and tactics, challenges and best practices, as well as how they are measuring their results and return on investment (ROI).

It wasn’t all that surprising that the majority of these national advertisers – 73%, in fact – were doing digital or online marketing and nearly half of the respondents indicated they were doing some form of local online targeting. But despite the growing demand for local online marketing, geo-targeting by those surveyed rarely dipped below the state level and 45% indicated they did not use different messaging or tactics for different geographic or local markets. What’s more, the data also shows that while more than 50% of marketers are trying a number of different local sources including search engines, directories, local search engines, newspapers and vertical Web sites, managing the campaigns and generating volume are challenges.