Google Ad Planner, a free media measurement tool

For all you media planners out there, you'll get a kick out of this free tool; Google Ad Planner. It can help you narrow down what websites your audience is more likely to visit and therefore, help you make better informed advertising decisions. The whole idea is to help us discover relevant sites for your products and services.
With this great free tool you can:
- Find websites relevant to your audience, create lists and store them in a media plan
- Define audiences interests and demographics
- View the number of unique visitors, page views, and other data for millions of websites from over 40 countries
- Generate aggregated website statistics for your media plan

When google announced this tool it was only available by invitation only but now is available to anyone with a Google account.

Viral Marketing - Basics -

Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily. 

Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages. The basic form of viral marketing is not infinitely sustainable.

The elements of viral marketing strategy are: 

Gives away products or services

Provides for effortless transfer to others

Scales easily from small to very large

Exploits common motivations and behaviors

Utilizes existing communication networks

Takes advantage of others' resources

Source: Wikipedia - wilsonweb.com

Sprint's Now Widget

Many people talk about building a widget and utilizing it as link bait. Well I think this could be the busiest widget EVER BUILT. Sprint's Now Widget has built something showing everything from the national debt to how many people are stuck in an elevator to sticky notes being produced. A MUST SEE!!!!

Enhanced Podcast

A big thank you to Kearney Adams from the Home Remedies Digest . He created an 'enhanced podcast' version of our Ten Golden Rules of Internet Marketing Podcast Episode 31

An enhanced podcast lets you skip to each section and add different images in each section.

This was created using Apple's Garage Band, we're going to investigate how to do this for PC. Here is a link to how to a video tutorial for creating enhanced podcasts on Garage Band.

Google Releases SEO Starter Guide

Yesterday on the Google Webmaster Central blog, they released an pretty interesting guide to help webmasters understand the best practices for SEO to apply to their website. It covers topics such as how one should construct their page titles, meta tags, URL structure and site navigation best practices. For a 22 page .pdf, it's worth taking a look at, and Google plans to update with new suggestions because as we all know with Google... changes happen all the time.

Of course, there are more elements to getting your website at the top of the search engines that also should be considered, such as social media, PPC and much more.

Dyve Deep into the Web

DeepDyve, formerly Infovell has released a beta version of their deep Web search tool designed to dig below the surface of the Internet, reaching resources not indexed in Google and the other major search engines. With over 500 million pages indexed to date, DeepDyve is targeting in-depth, professional content that resides deep within the Web.

By using a search algorithm that matches patterns and symbols, DeepDyve returns complex data that is not likely to be found in traditional keyword searches. The goal is to filter out opinion sites and irrelevant content for researchers looking for highly relevant, non-opinionated information on complex topics.

Although this search tool can be used for free upon registration, a more complete version is available for $45 per month. While the major players in search offer free access without registration, we will see just how much people are interested in reaching these deeply buried web pages.

Obama is the first global leader of the digital age?

Change has come to the federal government, and Barack Obama hasn't even been inaugurated as the nation's 44th president. Change.gov — was launched within 24 hours of Obama's presidential election victory over John McCain.

The interactive Web site of Obama's transition team is the first sign that the candidate who revolutionized American politics with his heavy use of cutting-edge communications technology and social networking tools is preparing to transform the way the U.S. president interacts with the citizenry.

"Obama is going to be the first global leader of the digital age," said Phil Noble, founder of PoliticsOnline.com, an Internet information and consulting company. "We are in totally uncharted territory."

At the turn of the 20th century, William McKinley became the first mass-media president during the newspaper barons' golden age. Three decades later, Franklin D. Roosevelt's "fireside chats" ushered in the era of intimate radio communication. John F. Kennedy's performances in televised news conferences brought Camelot to the masses. Obama's presidency, experts say, will reflect a leap in communications technology that will allow the commander-in-chief to speak directly and unfiltered to the American people. It could also allow the American people to interact in unprecedented ways with the nation's chief executive and the federal bureaucracy.

Source: Chron 

Ten Golden Rules CEO Jay Berkowitz featured in Solutions Stars Video Series

Our CEO Jay Berkowitz joined an All Star cast of internet marketers in the Network Solutions video series. See such industry icons as: Tony Hsieh CEO of Billion dollar web company Zappos.com, Guy Kawasaki Author and Founder of Alltop.com, Tim Ferriss Author of the 4 Hour Work Week (I want one!), Rohit Bhargava author of Personality Not Included and Chris Baggot CEO of Compendium Software.


Visibility through Search


Building Web Presence


Rising Above the Noise


Strategy Drives Outreach


See the entire series at Solutions Stars Videos.

Internet Monitoring Methodology Predicts US Election Winner...

On our Ten Golden Rules of Internet Marketing Podcast distributed on August 5, 2007 we used a set of Internet Monitoring tools to correctly predict the winners of the party primaries. These tools included: SEO Quake, Twitter Followers, MySpace Friends, Search Engine Optimization and popularity on blogs through Technorati.

On October 28th we used the same tools to predict Barack Obama the winner of the 2008 US Presidential Election, listen to the podcast on our website or iTunes :)

Netbooks or Notebooks?

A netbook is a small to medium sized, light-weight, low-cost, energy-efficient laptop, generally optimized for internet based services such as web browsing and e-mailing.

The form factor of a netbook is smaller than that of a notebook and they are very light in weight (usually 2 to 3 pounds). Common features include a small screen (usually around 7-inches to 10-inches diagonal), wireless connectivity, but no optical disc drive, and a smaller sized keyboard (usually 80 percent to 95 percent of normal size). There is also a trend of using solid-state drives instead of traditional hard disk drives. Netbooks typically include a pre-installed operating system, either a custom version of a GNU/Linux or Windows XP Home Edition.

The idea of a netbook is not new in 1997 HP introduced the OmniBook, now in 2008 HP is back with the Mini-Note, ASUS and ACER are others manufacturers which are fighting for this under $500 market-share. These low cost machines are good for students and people on the go that just need check emails, surf the net and edit quick documents.

I found a good video on YouTube promoting the new ASUS, enjoy:

Source: Wikipedia

Learn Internet Marketing Through Video

If you’re wondering how search engine optimization works and everything that goes with it you may want to explore IMBroadcast.com. Everyone learns differently, whether it be through reading text, illustration, audio and video. IMBroadcast is a site where you can upload videos about SEO, link building and other internet marketing strategies that other internet marketers are kind enough to share. The site is in its beginning stages so it can only grow from where it is now. I think this site is a great way to separate videos on a specific topic and that topic only, since it allows someone that wants to learn internet marketing all explore all of the aspects that come with it. I think that video tutorials give a better understanding than information written on a blog or resource website because not only can you hear a voice but you can also visualize making it easier to understand.

Here's a video from the IMBroadcast site about Optimizing for Google.

Are You Voting For The Right Person?

Still unsure of who to vote for? These two tools may help you decide.

Glassbooth.org has created a great tool to help you see if your beliefs are those of the candidate you are voting for. After rating issues that are important to you, it will generate a short quiz for you to take. The results show you which candidate you are more aligned with and it gives you explanations to the politicians stands.

Anther helpful tool has been created by The Political Compass. This is a little more demanding of time, but still worth looking at and seeing with who you align thoughts with.

Both of these will 100% make you think about your vote on November 4th. No matter who you vote for, just make sure you vote!

Economic Climate Strikes Online Retailers

Due to increased consumer pessimism toward the economy in the wake of the recent economic meltdown, online retailers are beginning to feel the effects with a steady decline in visits. Overall traffic to retail sites has shown decline for the past eight weeks in a row with no signs of change.

The biggest hit came to online music retailers, dropping 21 percent in traffic this week. The second biggest decline in traffic was in computer retail sites, followed by ticketing sites and toys. This foreshadows a dismal holiday season for all retailers, both online and offline. Offline sales declines can be predicted based on this online traffic decrease because online research strongly influences offline purchases.

Google Web History

When you create a Google Account, you're given the option to enable Web History. You know that great website you saw online and now can't find? With Web History, you can:

• View and manage your web activity.
  With Web History, you can view and search across the full text of the pages you've visited, including Google searches, web pages, images, videos and news stories.
• Get the search results most relevant to you.
  Web History helps deliver more personalized search results based on the things you've searched for on Google and the sites you've visited.
• Follow interesting trends in your web activity.
  Which sites do you visit frequently? How many searches did you do between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.?
  

Your web history is stored on Google servers, which means that you can view and manage it from any computer.

PR: wait... I: wait... L: wait... LD: wait... I: wait... wait... C: wait... SD: wait...

The importance of website content?

Hello everyone, I am new at Ten Golden Rules! - and I will be blogging about my favorite subject; internet marketing. This week while I was driving I kept thinking why google and other search engines emphasize on content? We all know that search engines "reward" websites if there is a constant flow of new content on a site, but why? What is the reason behind this? If we take a look at any news website, look at their page rank, in most cases is always a high number.
In a snapshot, all internet marketers know the importance of content - titles including keywords, meta descriptions and meta keywords (although meta keywords are not that important now), body copy, etc. - okay, we know all these basics but the reason why search engines "reward" websites for content is because at the end of the day everything comes down to business, right? - and search engines need to make money. If they do not have all of us creating content on the web where will they place advertisement? They need us to give them content to be profitable and keep their business growing.
Another example I always think about is why google (you'll be hearing a lot of "google" from me) gives away so many free tools, because they are nice? And how can we learn from this idea and incorporate it on our own website? In addition, I will also be covering the list of free google tools in my next couple posts - so come back because there is always one cool tool you might not know...

Blogger Outreach 101

Blogger outreach can be a useful way to build links for a website, especially if you have a physical product to offer.

Many product review blogs will post an entire entry about your product (including a link) if you send them a free sample. Even blogs which normally do not offer product reviews may consider reviewing your product if it is highly relevant to their normal content.

However, one must be familiar with the blog and the blogger before reaching out or requesting a product review. Take into consideration the blogger's age, sex and interests before contacting them. Scroll through the blog's last few posts and read the About and Contact pages thoroughly. If the blogger specifically says they do not want to be contacted for PR or Marketing purposes or that they do not give product reviews, respect their wishes.

Google Helps You Find Out Where You Can Vote

This is my first election voting in Florida and after not receiving my voters registration card, I ended up calling the Supervisor of Elections and was happy to hear that I was in the system and registered to vote. The person I spoke with even told me my voting location.

Google Maps launched a US Voter Info site to help people who are not sure where their voting location is based on where they live. The site was developed in order to increase voter participation and helped by many state and local election officials, the League of Women Voters, Pew Charitable Trusts and the Voting Information Project.

I checked if the voting location the person had told me on the phone was indeed correct and it was, offering me directions, information to Vote by Mail and on Election Day.

So if you’re registered to vote, find out exactly where you have to go and how to get there.

Web Surfing Stimulates Your Brain

A recent University of California at Los Angeles study shows the effects of web surfing on brain activity. In an attempt to refute claims that Internet leads to shorter attention spans and makes people dumber, researchers tested twenty-four volunteers between the ages of 55 and 76 with MRI scans while the participants were given various Web searching tasks and book reading tasks.

The participants were broken into two groups - experienced Web surfers and those with no Web searching experience.

While both groups showed similar levels of brain activity during the book reading tasks, the experienced web surfers showed a significant amount more brain activity while performing Internet searches, much more than while reading a book.

What this means…Internet surfing doesn’t make people stupid. Rather, it triggers brain centers that control decision making and complex reasoning, which can actually help older people fight senility.

Tmobile launched first Android Phone The G1

The T-Mobile G1 with Google is the first commercially available phone to run on the 'Android' operating system, which empowers developers with tools to create and offer consumers applications that add value to their lives. This is one of many initiatives T-Mobile is working on to lead the industry in bringing real innovation to wireless customers.

The G1 starts out looking like a somewhat chunky (4.6" x 2.1" x .62") PDA-phone, topped by a big 320x480 touch screen. The touch screen is wonderfully quick and responsive. Below the screen are five buttons and a small, slightly slippery track ball. Slide the screen to the right and turn the device 90 degrees, though, and it reveals a full QWERTY keyboard of slightly rubbery, nicely separated keys. There's a miniUSB charging port on the bottom, and a MicroSD memory card slips into a difficult-to-open slot to the right of the keyboard. (The phone comes with a 1GB card.) On the back, there's a 3-megapixel still camera.The G1 works on T-Mobile's 3G network, on foreign 3G networks, and on GSM EDGE networks all over the world, including in the US.


The G1 also has Wi-Fi, though you can't use it for phone calls. We got 600-700 kbps on a speed test Web site using T-Mobile's 3G connection, which is a decent speed. You won't be able to use the G1 as a 3G modem for your PC, T-Mobile execs said at the G1's launch.

Some features of the G1 are:

480 x 320 resolution HVGA display

3G connectivity

GPS support

3.1 megapixel camera

Max. 8GB memory

5 hours talktime

130 hours standby time

I found this video on YouTube, enjoy

Social Media Overload : Tips on Being Successful with Social Media

Many of us, me included has dealt with information overload at some point, and because the internet is limitless, the creation of social media sites are always popping up. I’m sure a lot of the social media fanatics out there try out every social media site that comes up, but at some point there is always a feeling of being overwhelmed. If we spent all day on social networking sites, we’d never get anything done.

Here are a few tips to avoid social media overload.

1. Pick social media sites that you find that benefit you. Are you trying to keep in touch with friends who live all over the world? Then you’ll probably enjoy Facebook or MySpace. Like to express what’s on your mind? Maybe you’ll enjoy Twitter. Do you like to read about the latest news on the Internet? Then you may like Digg.

2. It’s ok to try but not ‘buy.’ You may enjoy Plurk, Pownce or Brightkite, but is it interfering with your life? If you don’t want to feel out of the loop then don’t give yourself more than 5 minutes on each site.

3. Think about why you joined these social networks in the first place? Did you sign up because you want to be the first to know? Or is it useful to your everyday life? Not everyone is the same and it’s ok if you don’t have a Facebook account if you know that you won’t use it. Those who are looking for you will eventually find you.

Cheapest Gas Prices

If you’re looking for cheap gas, as I’m sure most of us are, you need to check out at Yahoo!’s new tool. When you type in “gas prices” and your zip code you’ll be shown a map with prices in the area. I’ve used this now several times and the prices have been exactly what’s been posted. The other search engines only list local gas stations without showing you prices.

Importance of HTML Title-tag:

The title tag is very important in terms of search engine visibility because it servers multiple functions:

• Title-tag is considered primary text, meaning that all the search engines index this text an use it to determine relevancy.
• Title-tag is the first text shown in individual lstings on search results pages.
• Title-tag is the text shown in Bookmarks and Favorites.

All the search engines consider title-tag text when calculating relevancy. A good Title for your website should contain 10 words or 60 characters. Your website Title also should contain your most important keyword phrases and accurately reflect the content of your Web pages and finally have to be unique for each page.

PR: wait... I: wait... L: wait... LD: wait... I: wait... wait... C: wait... SD: wait...

Online Advertising Holding Strong through Meltdown

In this tough economic time, safe investment options are scarce. Dwindling revenues across the board are resulting in a decrease in spending for most businesses. Online ad sales, however, continue to look promising, showing double-digit growth for the first half of the year, compared to the first half of 2007. The first half of 2008, according to data from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, shows a 15.2% online ad growth rate. The growth includes spending on search, display (banners), rich media, and email advertising.

It is actually possible that online advertising can benefit from the current economic uncertainty. Marketers are forced to tighten up and focus their efforts on a medium that is both measurable and effective so they know that their ad spending is creating real revenue. Since online advertising provides both measurability and effectiveness, many advertisers are likely to pull the brakes on traditional marketing strategies and spend more on internet marketing.

This is not to say that online advertising and ecommerce are completely safe from economic downfall, as no business really is. The industry is, however, showing much more promise than most industries.

How to OWN a SERP

Recently a client asked me why we are recommending they create a blog, a Wikipedia page, a Google Knol, and a YouTube channel with videos. They couldn't understand what one had to do with the other. We often refer to the combination of these tactics as Reputation Management. And while we find it essential to control as much of the search engine results page (SERP) for a client for messaging reasons, we also like the fact that it just plain allows an opportunity to own as much of the real estate on a SERP as possible.

But since most search engines only allow up to 2 links from a single domain, you must create optimized presence in a variety of domains in order to do that. With strategic website choices (like those I mentioned above) and appropriate tagging and optimization, a client can achieve many slots in a SERP, even for competitive phrases. If done well, a client can potentially own all 10 first page results.

Woz: Ipod will die?

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (Woz) warns that the iPod's days are numbered in an interview with UK newspaper, the Telegraph.