• 300,000+ business have a presence on facebook
• Participants in online communities usually spend more $ online.
• 70% of companies plan to increase investment in social media by an average of 40% in 2010.
• Social media = Low Cost Marketing + Getting Traction
• Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI

What do you think about social media?  Share your story and if you need more information on how social media can help your business grow please call us at 1(866) 388-2697, or click here to contact us.

You can start by checking these sites:

• facebook
• twitter
• youtube
• tumblr
• myspace

Thanks
Destiny

Having a Blog inside your website and blogging often, will help you with your online positioning.

How is this possible?

• If your Blog is inside your website (in the same domain and structure of your site), every time you create a blog entry, a new page is created for the site (a new potential indexed page by google).
• On the other hand if you keep your website updated google will come back more often to you for new information.
• Let say now that you also assigned tags to that blog entry, now every one of the old tags you assigned (which was a page by itself) is going to be updated and also all the new tags you created for this specific blog entry will be created as another new page.

So as you can see, a simple blog entry could make your website grow exponentially and keep your pages updated, both things google and the other search engines love.

Blog every day if you can!!! and remember to asign tags... Also remember, an external blog (not inside your domain) will only generate inbound links from the outside (which is fine and you also need) but those keywords, tags, copy, etc will not be taken as content inside your site.

Lets get Blogging...

Here's a good example of Google maps helping you on your internet marketing campaign. If you search for SEO Sarasota (Search engine optimization Sarasota) which is one of the services we provide in one of the areas we provide it locally you'll find us on the map at the very beginning of the first page of Google.

You can make your business come up locally on the first page of google or bing very easily using maps.

Many people don't know that you can actually add your business into google's map or bing's map systems. This is a very easy, FREE way to put your business on the first page of google if someone is searching LOCALLY. Adding your business into GOOGLE's MAP or BING'S MAP can help your company's website come up on the first page with selected keywords when people is searching in your area or using the city or state that you are located in the search string.


How to create a Google Map entry for your business?
You just need a GOOGLE ACCOUNT... If you have a gmail or use any of the google or youtube services you already have one.
Login with your google account or create one here (https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount)
After login go to Google maps (http://maps.google.com/) and click on the Put your business on Google Maps or go directly here (http://www.google.com/local/add/)
Follow all the steps in google's map entry creation.
Remember to use KEYWORD ORIENTED descriptions, names and information. This will help your google map entry come up with those keywords in the search. Also remember you need to be RELEVANT, you need to have those keywords also on your website, blog entries and other profiles you might have.
At the end of the process google will ask you to verify your business, you can do it thru a postcard to your address (takes time) or the easy way, by phone (We recommend this one).


How to create a Bing Map entry for your business?
The process is the same, but you have to create a live.com msn.com or hotmail.com account (click here to create one: https://signup.live.com/)
Then login to it and go to this address to put your business into the BING MAP (https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx)
Follow the steps, using KEYWORD ORIENTED content.
And verify your business thru their process (they only have the postcard option here).

On the other hand if you have a new website, embedding a google map inside your website will help you bring Google to your website faster for indexing. But remember, your website has to be search engine friendly, you should have a blog, use tags, and have a nice organized keyword oriented copy inside your site. Without that you will not be RELEVANT for google or bing and the MAPS could just not come up on the search.

For more information about SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) tips, click here.
For more information on Search Engine Friendly affordable Joomla Websites, click here.

Here's a great video showing how Social media is changing everything and why you should be doing it. Incredible numbers that show how marketing changed in the past years and why it is so important to be part of this change.

del.icio.us is a web-based bookmarking site. Delicious users save their bookmarks on the website so they can access them from any browser. A website that has many bookmarking it is generally popular and will get more traffic. You can use del.icio.us bookmarks to help improve your SEO campaign. The public social component of del.icio.us makes it a great tool to make your website stand out form your competition. 

Here's a video explaining how to use del.icio.us and why is it SOCIAL:

 

You can also use Social Bookmarking as a great online collaboration toll. Since your bookmarks are public delicous allow you to easily share important or useful links with coworkers, customers and partners. 

If not done properly you could be missing out on very valuable keywords. If you do not take your time you could put keywords on pages that don't belong or target keyword in your pay per click campaign that do nothing but produce clicks and burn through your marketing and advertising budget. When conducting keyword research there are some things you should be looking out for.

What Niche do you want to be In? You will have to find out what type of group you want to be visible to and get inside their shoes in order to figure out what types of keywords will fit best on your website. Really find out and isolate what type of products you are servicing and find all the niche keywords and phrases that revolve around that niche. Don't always worry about targeting all the high volume keywords because they receive the most traffic. Long tail keyword phrases often times convert the best when it comes to SEO and PPC. The long tail phrases are usually conducted by web users who know exactly what they are looking for.

Budget: Budget meaning how much of a marketing budget do you have to go after competitive keywords? If you are a one person company starting out you will need to bring some heavy ammo to go after the same keywords that your competition that might have been around for 5-10 years and is established is going after. It is important to not only target the very competitive keywords but also the keywords that have medium amounts of traffic and also low. You have to remember that SEO is long term and you won't be visible over night, but SEO could bring better results and it creates an asset over your website (because it could keep building up without having to spend money per every click)

Competition: Take a long hard look at your competition to see what it is that they are targeting. It is always important to take a look at what your competitors are targeting for keywords on their website when you starting conducting your keyword research. You know what they say; the best offense is a good defense. It is always important to know what types of keywords your competition is going after so you can gauge just how much of an effort you will need to put out there in order get into the same area.

Here at Destiny Technologies we include KEYWORD RESEARCH in all our SEO packages, Contact us if you have any questions about this.

 

Original Blog Post: addme.com

Microsoft, home of the Zune, has just announced that they're going to launch Bing, a rebranding and reformatting of their search engine (they actually call it : Decision Engine). So far, they've earmarked $100 million just for the marketing.

Bing, of course, stands for But It's Not Google. The problem, as far as I can tell, is that it is trying to be the next Google. And the challenge for Microsoft is that there already is a next Google. It's called Google.

Google is not seen as broken by many people, and a hundred million dollars trying to persuade us that it is, is money poorly spent. In times of change, the rule is this:

Don't try to be the 'next'. Instead, try to be the other, the changer, the new.

If Microsoft adds a few features and they prove popular, how long precisely will it take Google to mirror or even leapfrog those features?

With $100 million, you could build (or even buy) something remarkable. Something that spread online without benefit of a lot of yelling and shouting. Something that changes the game in a fundamental way. The internet works best when you build a network, not when you buy a brand. In fact, I can't think of one successful online brand that was built with cash.

Comment: We predict Bing will take some market share so we need to be prepared for that and we are working on it. Bing is a new search engine and your OLD SEO campaign may not work for it. Our engineers are constantly evolving and working with new technologies and Bing is one of them now. If you need SEO that works today and will work tomorrow, contact us!
If you really want to know what the NEXT GOOGLE is ready this Blog entry about WAVE, the new product coming from Google.

Original Blog entry: sethgodin

Google has launched a new keyword tool called Sktool (Search-based Keyword Tool).

Google’s new Search Based Keyword Tool (SKTOOL) allows search marketers to generate keyword ideas based on the content of their Web site and back-end data.  The tool maps similar queries to each other and also maps back to the keywords you’re currently bidding on in your AdWords account.

The tool has a number of applications.  The main application is to expand your keyword list in an organized and thematic way.  However, many of the keywords suggested by the tool should not be bid on by search advertisers; in fact, an advertiser would waste a lot of money if all the suggested keywords were added to a program.  The tool should be used to consider suggestions and pick ones that are relevant to your site.

 

The tool also shows the amount of competition on a given keyword, a suggested bid for that keyword, the average monthly searches for that keyword and the best page of your Web site to land that searcher.

This tool will actually help us in creating a better, more relevant, keyword list for your SEO campaign. We will be able to find the keywords that people are searching for a specific market and apply it to your search engine optimization and social media optimization.
Even thought this tool is in its BETA phase, we think it has a lot of potential.

link: Sktool - Search-based Keyword Tool    

 

Here you have a couple of good videos about search privacy. They talk about how privacy works in the google search and on the other hand what to expect when searching which can help us in a way to understand how we need to do a search engine optimization campaign (SEO). On the other hand it has cool features that not everybody knows about the google account and how to manage some advance features of the google search engine. Enjoy.