Believe it or not, you may be a SuperTron – a technology enthusiast considered part of the early adopters phenomenon.   

In his book "Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why It Matters", author Bill Tancer emphasizes the critical role that SuperTrons play. Specifically, the author analyzes the new generation of consumerism in a way no other has before, showing how we use the Internet, and how those trends provide a wealth of market research nearly as vast as the Internet itself in attracting and using SuperTrons as a defined segment to market to. 

Why does this all matter? 

The insight into the new media habits of an early adopter consumer will be valuable for media companies, tech firms and cable and satellite operations that want to reach this segment but also tap mainstream as well.   

An excellent example of a web site that resonates with early adopters is the recent launch of “Nat Geo” music service. National Geographic tapped the behavior that drives SuperTrons to ‘get the word out’ thereby pushing their web site to the mainstream.

Resources

Early Adopters - Defined

National Geographic Music Site

Buy Bill Tancer's Book

You probably know that building links into your site is one of the most important things you can do in your efforts to improve your site's ranking.

A lot of people struggle with this process, especially at the beginning. Many questions also arise as to where the link should be placed on the site you are trying to get linked from, along with what kind of sites should you get links from, and what those links should look like.  Linking is no longer a passing fancy, it is a strategy that is relevant and necessary. Consder the following link building strategies:

Social Media: By submitting your site and content to social media aggregators such as Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon and other niche social news sharing and bookmarking sites, you introduce their audience to your site and build high authority links to your organization.

Advertising: Text Links which are sold or purchased with the intention of advertising a relevant site or service to the audience of the site which is serving the link ads. These links are valued and treated as authority inbound links by the major search engines.

Editorial: Editorial links are links which are earned via relationships with journalists, bloggers or site publishers. By informing writers about your site and services, you persuade them to write about you.

Directory: Web directories classify sites into organized subjects and listings while also sending search traffic to those sites. Directories are a way to increase search rankings and site traffic.

Blogger Reviews: Similar to editorial links, blogger reviews are when you pay bloggers to take the time and write an honest review about your product, business or site - and link to you. Not only will your link be seen by search engines, but also by the readers and subscribers of these high level bloggers.

Privately Solicited Links: Contact site owners and negotiate private linking deals with your business goals in mind.

Blog Comment Participation: By intelligently adding to blog comment conversations, you build your online reputation along with inbound links to your site.

Resources:

• 101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Web Site by Andy Hagans and Aaron Wall
• Link Building - Web Site Resource

Best,

Denice MacDonald

Flash and AJAX are two technologies that enhance the user experience on a web site and are supported by almost every browser and operating system.  Only pitfall -- this technology is not SEO-friendly.

However, in early July, Adobe Systems Incorporated announced the company is teaming up with search industry leaders to dramatically improve search results of dynamic Web content and rich Internet applications (RIAs). Adobe is providing optimized Adobe® Flash® Player technology to Google and Yahoo! to enhance search engine indexing of the Flash file format (SWF) and uncover information that is currently undiscoverable by search engines.

This will provide more relevant automatic search rankings of the millions of RIAs and other dynamic content that run in Adobe Flash Player. Moving forward, RIA developers and rich Web content producers won’t need to amend existing and future content to make it searchable — they can now be confident it can be found by users around the globe.

BUT, a few technical bloggers out there say that the technology is not quite there yet:

Flash's New SEO is Over-Hyped by IckyDime

Flash indexing and SEO; Remember testing? by "Dion"

This blogger definitely has some sound solutions for Flash and SEO challenges: 

4 SEO Solutions for Flash by Benj Arriola

Best,

Denice MacDonald

Does your Web site deserve to succeed? According to Sarah at OneUpWeb, it doesn't if you're not constantly testing to make sure that it is easy to navigate, delivers the right kinds of information and snags conversions (be they subscriptions, lead generations or actual sales).

Hours of SEO work and carefully researched pay-per-click campaigns are practically worthless if the landing page doesn't convert users -- or they get lost in the process somewhere else on the Web site. Sarah suggests testing factors like your site's checkout process (if there is one), conversion click paths, as well as multiple image and text layouts to KNOW which features are working -- not just assume. She also offers a strategy for determining which site factors are most important for you to test, from products, to presentation to channel factors. 

In summary:

Test your site post launch to insure the user is getting to where they need to go (click paths, conversion etc. – including checkout if e-commerce enabled) 

Supplement highly interactive ads with contextual ads (measure both)

Two Word Searches: Nearly 32% of all searchers around the globe use two-word search queries, according to research from Amsterdam-based OneStat

Search engine ‘boxes’ can have both word search and ‘suggested’ search for optimum user interaction to sites 

Read Full Article Here

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Need help - try out these guys:

Charlie Sweet, Web Technology Manager at Aloha Inc. (specialty: full service)

Eric Herzberg, Owner, Linkage Internet Consulting (specialty: pay-per-click)

Denice MacDonald, President, MacDonald Consulting (specialty: link building and search engine marketing)

We've been sitting on the sidelines watching with wonder the latest Yahoo - Microsoft - Google triangle of events.  Finally, an outcome worth commentary. I agree with Venture capitalist Fred Wilson that Yahoo did the right thing by choosing Google over Microsoft as a partner. 

Wilson contends, "Yahoo! finally woke up and did what they should have done years ago, cede search monetization to Google who simply does it better and will always do this era of search better than anyone else. Now Yahoo! will do what it needs to do. Clean house, get lean, and get out of businesses it shouldn't be in. Focus on what it's good at. And start making money and growing again. They may need new leadership to do that. But selling this asset to Microsoft just because they had the wrong leadership and probably still have the wrong leadership is a mistake."

Google CEO Eric Schmidt couldn't be happier.  In a press statement he indicated: "This commercial agreement provides Yahoo with the opportunity to deliver more relevant ads to users and provide advertisers and publishers with better advertising technology to help them succeed in their own businesses. This agreement will preserve the competitive and dynamic online advertising space."

It will be interesting to see if Yahoo can redefine themselves in short order and do what they have to do to keep everyone happy - but partnering with Google will lessen the burden.  It will be interesting to watch and we certainly will learn a lot.  That's the best part about being the small guy on the sidelines.

Bob Pearson, of Dell, recently presented insight into Dell's learning relative to the web - and in my opinion, they are spot-on with their findings. I've taken the liberty of condensing the learning below.

What Dell's Learned so far?

1. The online world is undergoing the most significant transformation so far. 
2. The # of conversations is exploding. 
3. Customers want to speak with us in their first language. 
4. New countries are formed every day that are not being treated with the full respect that their nation's population deserves. 
5. Watch out for content pushers. 
6. You new home page is really cool .... but do you know where it is? Today's home page is a Google search Results page.  The Traffic that matters is not about you!
7. If you build it they will not necessarily come!
8. Less than 1% of a personal time online will be spent online purchasing.

What has Dell's Key Learnings & Action been with all of this?

1. The most important thing you can do is help customers w/ their technology problems.
2. Blogging is global ... blogging is multi-lingual ... blogging is by community of passion ... blogging is not "one blog". 
3. Would you rather do a focuses group with 10 people or listen to 100,00 people debate ideas for a few months and ask them questions throughout the process? 
4. Customers are partners and partners join together to make a difference. 
5. Communities are more powerful than individuals, Communities want to help each other improve.
6. The online experience at work should be similar to the online experience at home. 
7. Join your customer's communities and become part of the solution.
8. You can be easy to see, and should be easy to converse to.
9. If you are dealing with an issue be truthful, transparent and diligent in updating your customers.
10. Your customers are people not lines of business.  One customer or Employee --> Many communities.
11. Measurement requires thinking outside the box.  Don't try to fit old thinking to the new environment.

 Citation Link: Search Marketing Gurus

By 2012, more than 145 million people—67% of the US Internet population—will be reading blogs at least once a month.

That is up from a readership of 94 million in 2007, or 50% of Internet users. Click graphic for full article.

Caveat > The Ethics of Blogging: 

As we know, blogs are great for search engine optimization - but that should not be the only reason for creating a blog.  A blog is a reflection of your brand and your contribution to customers and other stakeholders.  A 'blog plan' should be formulated to insure that the content that is conveyed is relevant and proper for the end user. 

A plan would include educating management and training employees on creating and posting blogs so that emphase is placed on the organizations' attributes in product, marketing, PR, customer service, research, legal or HR. Likewise, blogs are a great recruiting tool as potential hires have an opportunity to look inside your organization and see the culture first hand.

Bottomline, your go-to-market strategy for blogging should be as well thought out as any significant communication initiative you may have for your organization - or it will diminish your brand and send customers packing.

Search Options for the B2B Space 

Most search marketers focus on Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. But B2B search marketers also have a growing number of vertical search options. Clicks and leads from these vertical search sites may not yield the same traffic as general search engines, but the percentage of qualified traffic and conversions can increase dramatically with leads from these specialized and vertical business-oriented engines. Here's a roundup of the most important search sites and resources B2B search marketers should be targeting.

Click here.

Let's face it, successful SEO is hard. 

Reason simply, SEO is not a want, it is a necessity.  According to Jill Whalen, CEO and founder of High Rankings, "...a sick web site leaves money on the table".

Without proper web page optimization, an organization is losing out on search engine visibility and possible customer conversion.  One of the first diagnostic tests in your SEO checklist is to see how Google views your home page (or any page of your site) by taking a look at how it looks in Google's "text cache." Additional warning signs (symptoms) include:

• Missing page content
• Missing navigational links
• List of unlinked words
• Keyword stuffed paragraphs that aren't normally visible

Although a good exercise, it is only the first step in elevating an organization's web page rankings.  For more information and Search Engine Guidelines visit:

• http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/
• http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/index.html
• http://search.msn.com/docs/siteowner.aspx

Lastly, stay connected on latest SEO trends, reviews and content sharing at:

• http://www.SEOMoz.org

Continue marketing mix on all fronts. 

The ZenithOptimedia report says that in 2008 television's share of ad expenditure will fall 0.3 percentage points to 32.4% in North America, and 0.5 percentage points to 30.4% in Western Europe. In the rest of the world, however, television tends to attract a much higher share of ad expenditure. The Olympics in Beijing are expected to give an extra boost to television in 2008, particularly in China and its neighbors.  

The forecasts for internet advertising have been revised upwards. The report now forecasts 29.9%% growth this year (up from 28.6% three months ago) and 85% growth between 2006 and 2009 (up from 82%). Online video and local search are the new, fast-growing segments, but display, classified and the rest of search are still growing rapidly as well. Internet advertising is expected to account for 9.5% of all expenditure in 2009, fractionally up from the 9.4% forecast three months ago.  

Newspapers are suffering the most from the depredations of the internet, which is better at delivering timely news and is an efficient substitute for newspaper classifieds. The study expects newspapers' share of world ad expenditure to fall from 29.0% in 2006 to 26.2% in 2009. By contrast, outdoor is in rude health, and is forecast to increase its market share from 5.6% to 5.9% over the same period.  

My slant: Nothing has changed dramatically to assume that you need to do spending in one main category – rather, it is important to continue the marketing mix on all fronts.  What is changing though (and I’ll send info on this the first part of the year) is the change in metrics from demographics to a blend of user targeted behavior (as a result of the current social networking boom).