Looking for some SEO Software. What about the Extras?

So, there are a few extras that I'd really like to have in an SEO package. This is a short list. As I poke into the software more, I'll probably have some other ideas about other things that would be really nice to have.

• Online training - Free and included.
  
• Web Site Performance Analysis - Help to speed up your site
  
• Link validation tool- Check for broken links

Watch for a few more posts on this subject over the next few days. Ultimately, I'm going to select some SEO software and kick its tires. Hopefully I get it right, and find a good way to legitimately improve my page rankings.

Have you used SEO Software? Please post a comment to this blog to tell me what you chose, why, and how it has worked out.

Looking for some SEO Software. What should SEO Software do?

I'm a Marketing Strategy Consultant. I "get" the importance of SEO. But, I'm not an SEO expert, and as you can probably tell from my website, I'm not a technical expert. So, I've been looking for a Search Engine Optimization tool that will help me to "SEO" my own site. This is a "learning experience" for me.

The purpose of Search Engine Optimization is to improve your organic search ranking. That means when someone searches for phrases that are important to your company, that your site comes up on the first page right near the top. That's the goal, but of course it can be very hard to do depending on your industry, your size, and your competition.

What does Search Engine Optimization software do? Here are some things it should do. Wait a minute ... maybe it should do these things. It is important that you manage the use of the SEO software carefully so that you don't end up in trouble with the Search companies (more about that in another post or two):

• Search engine submission - helps you to submit your website to the search engines. This should hit all of the major search engines, as well as multiple "little ones". It also should allow you to do this manually and / or scheduled.
• Search engine optimization (SEO) - Provide practical advice and tips on how to improve your pages to increase their ranking advice for multiple search engines. Optimization advice touches upon factors such as general page properties, head and body areas and off-the-page parameters.
• Pinpoints possible and existing search engine visibility problems
• Give a complete breakdown of problems by the area of page
• Recommend changes to be made so that your site is found by prospective users
• Density Analysis Report - this search engine optimization report gives a breakdown on the density of phrases used on your page. This report helps you to see what keywords and phrases your page is actually optimized for and whether your optimization efforts influence your on-page parameters.
• Web ranking - Organic keyword rank reporting which tells you how you are ranking for each of your organic search terms. Reports should also show trends.
• Link popularity check - allows you to independently measure the number of incoming links to your website.
• Meta Tag generator and editor - creates or modifies keywords, descriptions, and titles for your web pages.
• Page Creator - Creates a "Doorway Page" or "Landing Page" automatically with the keywords you choose. You should be able to edit and customize this page subsequently. (Hmmm ... be careful with this one. A doorway page is clearly Black Hat. The page that is created should be a Landing Page that will be useful to a human.)
  
• Google Friendly API - Support for the Google API
• Keyword Library and Builder - a keyword research tool that will generate a list of suggestion keywords based on the keywords you provide or that it gleans from your site, in order to create or modify a keyword library database and use them for your web sites. You can target important keywords and phrases generated by Keyword Builder to use them to optimize your meta tags.
• Keyword Competitive analysis - Research each keyword's competition thoroughly.
• Page editor - Automatically tune your web pages for top-ranking in the major search engines
• Competitor Analysis - ability to see how your competitors rank and also what they are doing to rank where they are ranking.
• Maintain reciprocal links
• Generate new links from search engines
• Send "Personalized" link invitation messages
• Track and verify your link partners
• Create link pages automatically and promote them
• Site saturation monitoring - this number represents how many pages of your website are indexed by the search engine. (You can find this easily by querying on Google with the phrase "site:www.yoursite.com query".)
• Live product support
• Multiple URL capability - the ability to do run analysis on multiple URLs.
• Reports - capability to check & track your web site position on all major search engines, based on your list of keywords.
• Custom Reports - the ability to customize the reports with things like your logo, company name, and details.
• Send reports by email.
• Export stuff to Excel.
• Engine data renewal - Most of these SEO tools need you to renew your "license" with them each year.

Watch for a few more posts on this subject over the next few days. Ultimately, I'm going to select some SEO software and kick its tires. Will I get banned by the search engines ... I hope not :^).

Have you used SEO Software? Please post a comment to this blog to tell me what you chose, why, and how it has worked out.

Market GoGo's Blog is ranking well!

I was happily surprised to find out tonight that this little blog is ranking in the top 6.85 % of blogs, according to Technorati. The Market GoGo blog has a Technorati rank of 4,793,965. That doesn't sound great, but apparently it means that this blog is in the top 6.85% of blogs tracked by Technorati. SUPER.

This little tid-bit came to me courtesy of HubSpot's Grader

Charlie Booker's Ten Biggest C***s in Advertising

Have you ever heard of Charlie Brooker? He's an English comedian who is (at the least) profane. In any event, I was searching Google the other day for Marketing Trends (as part of researching my 2009 trends) and came across some of his satirical "commentary".

The following two videos really needs to come with this disclaimer:
"The following videos contain mature subject matter". Interesting however, as they weren't tagged that way on YouTube.

Brooker's: 10 Biggest Cocks in Advertising


10 biggest Cocks and she cocks in advertising

Did you know that March 14th is "Pi Day"

Think about it ...

• March the 14th is the 3rd month and 14th day (3.14)
• Pi is that mythical number associated with circles 3.14159265 ... (typically referred to simply as 3.14).

March 14th also just happens to be Einstein's birthday (coincidence ... I think not!).
Apparently the big celebration is officially at 1:59 in the afternoon. Shouldn't it be 1:59 in the morning on March 14th? That might be better, then the party could start on the 13th!

Why is this interesting to the average web marketer? Well - take a look at Google's heat meter on the hot-ness of queries for "Pi Facts". It's on fire!
(That's as of about 1opm mountain time on March 12th, 2009. There are still 2 days to go.)

And, that's not the only "pi" term that is burning up the Google rankings:

• "Pi Facts" are currently#7
• "Pi Jokes" are #13
• "Pi Digits" are #15
  
• "Pi Poems" are #16
• "History of Pi" is #19
• ... and so on!

Google "Pi Facts", and the rest of those terms. You'll find that virtually no one is bidding on those terms. I'd buy them up over the next 2 days if I sold:

• PCs
• Pies
• Educational Supplies (like those giant wooden compasses they used when I was in Grade 6 ... do they still use those?)
  
• Party Supplies
• ... I'm sure there are more great ideas!

Sticking with the concept, I wonder what other "trivial" days there are out there that would be a fun opportunity to win with relevant and cheap search engine marketing?

(Here's a link in case you want more information about Pi Day.)

What should TV do to save itself?

The PVR will kill TV advertising, so how can TV save itself?

I have a few ideas. If I were making a TV ad for the "PVR generation", I'd:

• Sight hooks - Perhaps an ad solely for PVR people shot in slow-mo, but with signs held by the actors, an introduction pop-out saying "PVR tuned ad from ". In my mind's eye I keep thinking of those kids books where you flip the corner of the page and create a movie. You could do the same thing for a PVR ad, by showing ten frames, each held for 3 seconds. Watched at regular speed it would look odd. Watched at PVR fast-forward, it would suddenly come to life.
  
• Silent ads - Why waste the sound. Plus, a silent ad will attract the attention of a viewer who is watching the ad in real time. With the appropriate pop-outs during that ad, there will be a touch of appealing humor. To that end, you could have sound that is totally out of synch with the pictures. There would be a double joke here. The script could be along the lines of "Thanks for listening to this ad. Since you are actually paying attention and listening to us -- unlike the people fast forwarding through this ad with their PVR -- we thought we'd give you a bit extra ..." The copy would offer "more" of something. Perhaps a tip on life, or an incentive to buy (e.g. "tell your sales person you heard this ad to get an extra 10% off".
  
• In-show Ticker overlay or Corner Pop-outs - People aren't going to speed through the show. If your ad shows up at the top or bottom during the show, then you can be sure people will see it. If you had a text ad scrolling by like a ticker randomly during the show, and featuring a company's URL I bet people would be more likely than ever to hit their computer and have a look at your ad.
• Brand Centric - The brand name should be displayed throughout the ad, and should be featured large. Even filling a full 1/4 of the screen the whole time. Maybe another 1/4 of the screen should have bullet-point copy about the purpose and benefits of the product.

Reuters reports that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer may shift to online-only

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer may become the first large newspaper publisher to dump the newsprint and become e-only. Reuters reports that the newspaper's print edition may be shutting down.

Hey - Winnipeg Free Press and Ottawa Citizen ... are you paying attention?

YouTube's Super Bowl Results

Who won the game? WHO CARES! Who took top honors with the best ad. That's what matters.

YouTube's Super Bowl ad ranking contest is over, and the winner is ...

DORITOS. It is hard not to watch this ad without both cringing and laughing. Then, you have to watch it again. This ad was created out of a contest, and the winner walked away with $1,00,000,000,000,000. Wait a minute, that was a few too many zeroes. It was just a million. Doritos clearly got their money's worth and then some out of this contest.

• The ad has been viewed more than 2,000,000 times on YouTube alone (not including all the other duplicate posts and responses to it, which would have generated many million more impressions)
  
• Their contest micro-site was one of the most popular on the internet according to Alexa.com
• Their ad improved their brand impression according to Comscore.
  

Just in case you didn't see the ad yet ... here it is:

4Q Survey - I'm seeing results

I have the 4Q user survey up and running on the Market GoGo website. I blogged about this a few days back, and I am very enthusiastic about what iPerceptions is doing to help websites improve their customer satisfaction. Plus, giving away the opportunity to try a customer satisfaction survey is a great way for them to whet the appetite of their prospective customers and ultimately generate more business.

A screen print of one of my 4Q results tabs is shown to the right here.

So far my results are pretty good. I can already learn a lot about why people are visiting my site. I can see that satisfaction is low at 40%, but that everyone was able to complete what they were looking to do. Apparently what people are doing on my site is research!

WAIT A MINUTE. When I look at some of the details, I see that only one person has completed the survey so far.

"Out of the box" only 20% of people were being asked to complete the survey. I don't have a tonne of traffic to MarketGoGo.com (although my traffic is higher than similar sites - according to Google Analytics). So, I've just turned up the crank on asking more people if they want to participate in the survey. Now 90% of visitors to the site should be asked to complete the questionnaire. Maybe for my next post I will have some additional details to share about the survey.

The data I'm collecting from Google Analytics and the 4Q survey will eventually lead me to re-vamp the MarketGoGo.com site.

What are you doing to improve your visitor's satisfaction, the way your site works, and ultimately your business?

For some thoughts on this, please don't hesitate to email Market GoGo.

Doritos Super Bowl Ad Improves Brand Most; GoDaddy’s Does Damage

The results are in for the Super Bowl Ads. Comscore reports that:

• One-quarter of respondents in comScore’s pre-Super Bowl survey indicated that watching the ads is their favorite part of the day’s festivities.
• Ads which people would most like to see again were Bud / Bud Light, Doritos, Coca Cola, Pepsi, and GoDaddy.com.
• Ads which most improved their brand image were for Doritos, Bud / Bud Light, and Denny's.
• Results indicated that GoDaddy.com's ad may have hurt its brand image. However, it also had the third highest ad recall.
  

Have a look at the full story and charts over at Marketing Charts.

Everything on table as Winnipeg Free Press looks to cut costs

CBC reports (online) that the Winnipeg Free Press is working hard to cut costs. The poor old newspaper industry sure is in rough shape:

• Many of them are leveraged out the wazoo as they were bought with enormous debt (suddenly Conrad Black looks like he might have been smarter to get locked up in jail, then saddled with a newspaper empire)
• People are going online to get timely news that doesn't get your fingers dirty and smelly, and not picking up an outdated paper
• Advertising revenue is plumetting as advertisers chop budgets and look for better ways to get their messages out.

As one comment on the CBC site says:

"This is classic Darwin, the Media version.
Years ago, television killed radio and radio adapted.
Recently, digital cameras killed print film and Kodak adapted (barely).
Today, the Internet is killing print media, and print media had better adapt."

The times they are a changing

With apologies in advance for to Bob Dylan for today's blog title.


I checked the Google top searches today, and what do you know ... People are searching for the correct time. Presumably this is a spike due to the time change last night and not just a wild and crazy new thing to search for.

Here's what the Hot Trends looked like at 11:30 on Sunday. Or is it 12:30? :^)

Anyhow ... Here's Bob:

Low cost or cheap?

In my post earlier today I talked about buying a new (used) cell phone.

A few weeks back I brought my old Palm IIIe back to life. My Palm IIIe was my second Palm product (my first was the original Palm Pilot). Both Palm PDAs were fantastic. They were durable (I can't tell you how many times I dropped them), and were great on batteries. The mono-chrome screen was okay and easy to read.

I found my trusty Palm IIIe in the bottom of a box a couple of months ago and hit the power button. Dead. I threw in a pair of new batteries. LIFE.

A bit of searching around led me to the Chapura PocketMirror, and in no time I had Calendar and Address Book synchronization with Outlook.

I should also note that the cell phone I'm using is a hand-me-down from my wife. It is a first generation Motorola 2G phone, that is in baby blue and missing the antenna. Still, the reception is fine and the battery lasts forever. Also, it will probably haunt me and last longer than anything else I buy. I won't be shocked if I am back using it again by this fall.

In any event, the phone I bought on eBay that I'm waiting for (hopefully it arrives tomorrow), is a Palm Treo 650. It of course has the old faithful Palm PDA applications, and also the phone. It also has a camera and video camera. So, I can also pull my Flip video camera out of my pocket and leave that at home too.

It will be sad to re-retire my Palm IIIe. But it will be nice to only have to schlep around one device again.

So - am I low cost or cheap? I'd like to think that reviving an old cell phone and PDA, and then upgrading by buying a used device on eBay makes reflects my low-cost business strategy.

Well done UPS

I bought a new ("previously enjoyed") cell phone on eBay this week. I'm really looking forward to receiving it. The phone is being shipped by UPS, and I received an email from UPS yesterday telling me that my phone is on the way. I clicked through on the tracking link from the UPS email, and found a great deal of detail about the shipment.

I'm not sure what to do with all the detail, but I find it fascinating that UPS provides this.

What a great use of the web.

Can you think of ways that your company can do something similar to "wow" your customers by publishing information on the web?

The PVR will kill TV Advertising ...

... which will kill TV.

So, someone better figure out a way to make money on TV soon.

A few weeks back I blogged that the PVR won't kill TV ads. I had just bought a PVR and had only just started recording shows. Now I know more about using my PVR, and am watching TV faster and watching far fewer ads.

I was wrong, the PVR will kill TV Advertising. When advertising revenues dry up then TV networks will go bankrupt, and the only broadcast source will be the internet.

Ottawa Citizen removing more newspaper boxes

CBC.ca reports that the Ottawa Citizen is removing all of their newspaper boxes. Are they doing this because people really don't like to buy newspapers from a box anymore ... or because people really don't like to buy newspapers anymore?

One of the comments to the story is:

Why go to the trouble to remove the boxes? Because they're probably worth more as scrap metal to the publisher, than as the revenue generating devices they were originally designed to be.