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Consistent Business Branding for Internet Marketing

Thursday, August 12th, 2010 by TurkReno

Branding for Internet MarketingNo matter what form of business you are branding online, it is important that your online presence is represented with a consistent brand and marketing message that clearly describes your business. To determine your “Online Brand” you must first evaluate your Niche Market. It is important to have a marketing statement that reaches multiple groups of people but also do not forget to target a smaller focused group called a Niche Market. Reaching millions of people may not mean that your sales will increase. Targeting a Niche Market, an audience that is truly interested in your services, may increase your conversion dramatically. You must always think of your audience and place yourself in their shoes. First, think about the overall design of your website. Is your website professional or suitable enough for the clients that will be interested in your services? Is the message clear in your content about your products and services? There is a lot of hard work that goes into Branding your business online; however once you evaluate every factor and thoroughly research your market, you can then begin to truly reach your audience.

First, start by defining your business in as few sentences as possible. If you are creating profiles on the top social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, you want to have a consistent description of your business on each site. Evaluate what categories or industries you most likely fall under. This is the beginning of developing your personal online brand. Develop a list of 10 descriptive keywords that you can consistently use to describe your business and that match up with your websites content. You have to think of yourself as a client who is searching for your service information online. If you were the customer what keywords would you type in a search engine to find your products and services? If you offer more than one service it is important to develop a list of keywords relevant to each service.

This may seem simple however it takes a lot of planning and developing to determine what keywords are most beneficial to use. You have to consider what keywords your competitors are using, what the monthly search rate is for your keywords (Are the words to broad? Do you have a chance to rank well for these words?), if you keywords not searched often enough, and so on. It is important to find the appropriate keywords most suitable for your business that you have a chance of ranking high for and optimizing those words throughout you’re online marketing campaign.

Thorough descriptions, professional web design, relevant content, optimized keywords and content, targeted niche audience, these are all important factors to evaluate for your online brand and must always remain consistent across the board. If you are in the beginning of developing your Business Website then TurkReno can help you focus on Website Development, Website Design, and Online Marketing, such as Search Engine Optimization or Pay-Per-Click Management. Choosing one business to help develop all three categories will be best for your online branding to stay consistent. Luckily, there are companies, such as TurkReno, that focus in great depth on Online Branding and can truly bring success to your website through online marketing.

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Posted in Discussion, Marketing, SEO, SMO | No Comments »

Nintendo DSi XL Review – An XL Step Forward

Sunday, April 4th, 2010 by TurkReno

By Izmeiah Brown

Going into this iteration of the DSi family was exciting for me. You see if my closet is any indication I LOVE my DS. I bought the original DS “Phat” back when it debuted on Nov 21, 2004 and as the system aged I have been constantly buying the “upgrades” to the family. So far I have owned 1 DS, 3 DS Lite, 1 DSi and now a DS XL. The Lite, and the DSi were a marked upgrade over the original. They featured sexy designs, and sleek polish over the bulky gray original. However the reduction in weight and smallness of the system meant one thing to me: Hand cramps.

Nintendo DSi XL

I have over 100 DS games, and playing them for any amount of time on a DS Light or a DSi caused pain throughout most of my thumb region. This was pretty much my only complaint about the system. Enter the DS XL, this big boned beautiful sister  alternative to the popular DSi has become my liberator. Gone is the pain and cramping associated with my DS playtime. The DS XL for all its enormity is by far and away the best example of engineering put  out by Nintendo in a long while.

The screens are absolutely gorgeous. I had read on many boards over the last few weeks that there would be “distortions” caused from the bigger screens, but this is largely not true. The screens still operate at the same dimensions as their smaller counterpart. The screens are perfect for those that need glasses, or perhaps those that like to show off their gaming to family and friends. There does in fact seem to be a wider view angle when compared to the previous DSi and this is somewhat a nice thing. I can count many times when people have put their ear to mine to hear the ocean watch what I am playing. The fact that they can now sit comfortably beside me is a godsend.

Nintendo DSi XLNow for the bad.  I have downloaded games through the Nintendo WFC yet, even with a linked account to Club Nintendo, I am not able to download those purchases. So basically Nintendo dropped the ball yet again on their wireless end. I hope these issues are fixed by the time we see the 3DS, or the successor to the Wii. I mean this is kind of a big deal. This means that somewhere someone at some Gamestop in Alabama gets all my hand-me-down games. Unacceptable, Nintendo.

Also while I am talking about the 3DS why on Earth did Nintendo announce that this week I wonder? It almost seems certain that it would detract from XL sales, however it also seems just as likely that if they had waited a week it would have upset 3DS sales too. A thorny situation, thorny indeed.  Whatever the reason it is I still stand behind my purchase on this system. Despite what others have been saying online I say that this system DOES in fact feel like an upgrade to an already great system. I just hope that in four months there isn’t a NDS Super XL: Now with cup holder edition.

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Posted in Discussion, Gaming, Marketing | No Comments »

Review: How to Measure Return on Investment in Social Media

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 by TurkReno

One of the absolute best SEO/SMO articles we’ve read in a very long time:

http://www.briansolis.com/2010/02/roi-how-to-measure-return-on-investment-in-social-media/

Consider how much you are aware of your presence online once you see the graphs.  We were amazed at the figures, but not shockingly surprised. We tweeted about this very topic last week in an online discussion and are proud to share it with you here. Great job Brian Solis on a very powerful and well needed article!

ROI: How to Measure Return on Investment in Social Media


What follows is the entire version of my recent post on Mashable, “The Maturation of Social Media ROI“

Over the years, Social Media experts attempted to redefine ROI for a new era of influence. While some introduced alternative philosophies for measuring the nuances tied to social media, others wondered aloud whether ROI simply wasn’t necessary as the tools and methodologies for analyzing yields didn’t yet exist. And furthermore, by focusing on justification and metrics, we were distracted from the primary objective of building relationships and cultivating dialogue.

The debate over ROI inspired certain brands to cannonball into popular social networks to join the proverbial conversation without a plan or strategic objectives defined. At the same time, the lack of ROI standards and established authorities unnerved many executives, preventing any form of experimentation until their questions and concerns were addressed.

But that was then and this is now.

In 2010, we enter into a new era of social media marketing, one based on information, rationalization, and resolve.

Business leaders simply need clarity in a time of abundant options and scarcity of experience and answers. As many of us can attest, we report to executives who have no desire to measure intangible credos rooted in transparency and authenticity. In the end, they simply want to calculate the return on investment and associate Social Media programs with real world business performance metrics.

Over the years, we explored ideas, driven by a passionate desire to find new meaning and vindication in uncharted domains. These discussions and the innovation they sparked, redefined the framework for traditional metrics, creating hybrids that would and will prove critical to modernizing business practices, improving products and services, and effectively competing for the future.

ROI: The Return on Ignorance

Where the “I” in ROI represents return on investment, marketers have also explored ancillary elements to address the socialization of media, marketing, and the resulting dynamics of engagement.

Adaptations included:

Return on engagement – the duration of time spent either in conversation or interacting with social objects, and in turn, what transpired that’s worthy of measurement.

Return on participation – the metric tied to measuring and valuing the time spent participating in social media through conversations or the creation of, social objects.

Return on involvement – similar to participation, marketers explored touchpoints for documenting states of interaction and tying metrics and potential return of each.

Return on attention – In the attention economy, we assess the means to seize attention, hold it and as such measure the responses activities that we engender.

Return on trust – A variant on measuring customer loyalty and the likelihood for referrals, a trust barometer establishes the state of trust earned in social media engagement and the prospect of generating advocacy and how it impacts future business.

But as we learn through experience, our views and techniques mature into more sophisticated strategies as we progress through the Ten Stages of Social Media Evolution.

For many businesses, the case for new metrics cannot arise until we have an intrinsic understanding of how social media engagement affects us at every level. To be quite honest, it is not as simple as counting an increase of subscribers, followers, fans, conversation volume, reach, and traffic. While the size of the corporate social graph is a reflection of our participation behavior, it is not symbolic of brand stature, resonance, loyalty, advocacy, nor is it an indicator for business performance.

ROI: Return on Investment

Sometimes we simply need ROI to signify a meaningful return on investment.

In 2010, Social Media endeavors are still funded as pilot programs to steer the brand towards perceived relevance in the hopes that they demonstrate momentum and as such, rewards materialize. Budgets are for the most part, borrowed from other divisions to fund the teams and programs lead by the internal champions who effectively make the case for experimentation. Where that money goes and from where it’s borrowed varies by department and by company usually tied to where champions reside internally today.

In many cases however, new programs are introduced without an integrated strategy. Money is allocated from existing programs, and if we’re going to take it away from something, we should therefore determine whether or not we’re justified in doing so.

According to a 2009 study performed by Mzinga and Babson Executive Education, 84 percent of professionals representing a variety of industries reported that they do not measure ROI.


Source: eMarketer

In 2010, executives are demanding scrutiny, evaluation, and interpretation. Even though new media is transforming organizations from the inside out, what is constant nevertheless, is the need to apply performance indicators to our work.

The Business of Social Media

The CFO, CEO, and CMO of any organization would be remiss if they did not account for spending and resource allocation, regardless of the allure and seduction of social media.

MarketingProfs recently published a study performed by Bazaarvoice and the CMO Club that revealed the true expectation of chief marketing officers. Bottom line, they want measurable results from social media.

Elusiveness continues to prevail however. The study found that the exact impact of social media tactics evade the grasp of CMOs.

- 53% are unsure about their return on Twitter

-50% are unable to assess the value of LinkedIn or industry blogs

More specifically however, roughly 15% believe there is no ROI associated with Twitter and just over 10% cannot glean ROI from LinkedIn or Facebook.

I believe this is the direct result of not tying activity to an end game, the ability to know what it is we want to measure before we engage. Doing so, allows us to define a strategy and a tactical plan to support activity that helps us reach our goals and objectives.

We first answer,

What is it we want to change, improve, accomplish, incite, etc.?

Doing so will allow us to establish goals and objectives that specifically tie activity to:

- Sales

- Registrations

- Referrals

- Links (the currency of the social web)

- Votes

- Reduction in costs and processes

- Decrease in customer issues

- Lead generation

- Conversion

- Reduced sale cycles

- Inbound activity

Customer Insight

Among the responses received from CMOs, customer ratings and reviews rose to the top of marketing activities that deliver tangible ROI insight. In 2009, 80% of respondents reported that customer stories and product suggestions shape products and services. As a result, brands earn the trust and loyalty of their customers for listening and responding – as long as they are made aware of their role and rewarded for it.

In 2010, CMOs will review opportunities for user-generated content sources to involve customers and advocates with many reporting…

- a 400% increase in use of Twitter comments to inform decisions about products and services

- a 59% increase in the use of customer ratings and reviews

- a 24% increase in use of social media for pre-sales Q&A

The Socialization of Monetization

Social media metrics will increasingly tie to revenue in 2010. To what extent seems to vary according to CMOs.

- 80% predict upwards of 5%

- 15% optimistically hope for 5-10%

In 2009, those companies that aligned social media investments with revenue estimate:

- 5% or less revenue tied to social in 2009 foresee an increase of an additional 5% in 2010

- 6-10% of revenue stemming from social is expected to increase more than 10%

- Those with greater revenues resulting from social engagement expect an escalation of revenue derived from social at 20%

Companies such as Dell are not only tracking the impact of Social Media on revenue, but expanding lessons learned across the entire organization. According to Dell’s Lionel Menchaca:

Our @DellOutlet is now close to 1.5 million followers on Twitter, and back in June we indicated that @DellOutlet earned $3 million in revenue from Twitter. Today it’s not just Dell Outlet having success connecting with customers on Twitter. In total, Dell’s global reach on Twitter has resulted in more than $6.5 million in revenue. In fact our Brazilian and Canadian accounts are growing rapidly too – and it was Canadian tweeters who asked to make sure Dell Canada came online to Twitter. Dell Canada responded because the team heard our customers. In less than a year, @DellnoBrasil has already generated nearly $800,000 in product revenues. Similarly, @DellHomeSalesCA has surpassed $150,000 and is increasing at notable pace.

The Forecast for Metrics in 2010

Earlier we mentioned generic forms of Social Media metrics. The survey revealed that indeed, many CMOs, 89%, tracked the impact of social media by traffic, pageviews, and the size of their social graph or communities. However, 2010 is the year that social media graduates from experimentation to strategic implementation with direct ties to specific measurable performance indicators.

In 2010, CMOs will seek to establish a connection between social media and P&L business goals. The study documents the adoption of three metrics:

- 333% surge in tracking revenue

- 174% escalation in monitoring conversion

- 150% increase in measuring average order value

A Call To Action

Among the most effective forms of any marketing initiative is the integration of a call to action. It is how I define influence as it gives us the ability to inspire activity and measure it – as designed. As stated earlier, revenue is only one form of metrics we can introduce, but defining the “R” in ROI is where we need to focus as it relates to our business goals and performance indicators specifically. Even though much of social media is free, we do know the cost of engagement as it relates to employees, time, equipment, and opportunity cost (what they’re not focusing on or accomplishing while engaging in social media). Tying those costs to the results will reveal a formula for assessing the “I” as investment.

When we truly grasp the ability to define action and measure it, we can expand the impact of new media beyond the P&L. We can adapt business processes, inspire ingenuity, and more effectively compete for the future.

Connect with Brian Solis: Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Google Buzz, Facebook
—
Pre-order the next book, Engage!

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Posted in Discussion, Reviews, SEO, SMO | No Comments »

The PlayStation Recap; Final Fantasy XIII Launches in the US

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 by TurkReno

Really, the biggest news of tonight is the launch of Final Fantasy XIII in the United States. It’s launched in the EST, but we’re still waiting on our copy in the CST.  Very excited to say the least.  In our own due diligence, we wanted to share with you at least an update of the PSN.  The ONLY thing we’ve seen from Sony for why the systems and PlayStation Network would not work is below.  We can’t but help to think it was a media stunt to gain more Twitter followers at this point:

The PlayStation Recap

Posted by Chris Morell // Senior Specialist, Social Media

MAG Logo

Courtesy of Jeremy Dunham

UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves banner

Courtesy of Arne Meyer

  • UNCHARTED 2 Title Update 1.06 and Multiplayer Updates – We released an update to the multiplayer modes of UNCHARTED 2 earlier this week. The Title Update and live updates we pushed performed some additional balancing to player hitboxes, some weapons and one Booster that we felt was warranted after Title Update 1.05 was released. As part of these updates, we also pushed some geometry updates to prevent intentional glitching.
  • “Unleashed: The Art of Naughty Dog” art show opens this weekend – Twenty Naughty Dog (and UNCHARTED 2) artists are doing a group show of their art work at the Gnomon Gallery in Hollywood, California. The opening reception for the show is on the evening of Saturday, March 6, and will run for at least a month.

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Posted in Discussion, Gaming, Off-Topic, SEO, SMO | No Comments »

The Inconvenient Truth About HubSpot’s Website Grader

Thursday, January 7th, 2010 by TurkReno

I’ve come across a few blogs reviewing the use of Website Grader from Hubspot and they all have mixed reviews. Over the course of 2009 until now, I have to say that we have found the results to be inconsistent at best.  We’ve ensured that our site is not only W3C Valid, but also have passed the initial 508 Compliance tests from Cynthia Says for our home page, Checked with DomainTools on our SEO score (We score 100% on all metrics there), have listed ourselves in the paid Yahoo! Directory and are listed in the DMOZ.

Not only that, we’ve turned on GZIP Compression in Apache using mod_gzip and mod_deflate, tuned Apache, PHP and MySQL, enabled all other sorts of goodies for security and speed, turned on all types of Caching, checked our headers and then did the entire process all over again when we migrated servers.  We just can’t seem to get past the 95-98.6% range on Website Grader.  The one good thing of all of this is that our Alexa ranking is improving dramatically and we’re still #1 in our area for what we do.

HubSpot has said many times over that they are not selling SEO “snake oil”…but if you sign up for their 7 day free trial, you’ll find a hefty $9000.00 price-point PER YEAR with a $500.00 setup fee if you want to continue.  Surely they know who they want to market to with that kind of investment for one company.  With a “free SEO tool”, pushing someone to eventually spend this much money is a bit absurd to find out information that you could have Googled or found with another “free SEO tool”.

Hubspot says this about their product:

HubSpot’s software helps you take advantage of the changing nature of how people research and shop for products – bringing together a suite of Internet marketing tools for the small or medium sized business, including tools for search engine optimization, business blogging, website content publishing, lead tracking and intelligence, marketing analytics, and competitor analysis. HubSpot is web-based, does not require any IT staff, and is designed to be used by a marketing person, not a techie.

While this may be true, it only gives a very topographical look – more correctly as one blog put it as a “website check engine light”.  Now, what really, honestly, confuses me is when searching Google for Website Grader, I managed to pull up a site that not only has a poor design, but it scores higher than we do on Website Grader.  Check this out.  How does a site with that many errors get listed as 99.3?  CertGuard.com has a 99.5 and about the same number of errors.  So, why is it when we take all of these measures to CORRECT the things that HubSpot are listed as wrong that we are scored lower in light of the two sites that have multiple Website Grader errors and score higher?  This seems backwards.  Why put your trust in a company that asks for this much money and does not accurately depict a website?

On another note, you can order effective and worthy SEO services from TurkReno Incorporated at our online store for much less than HubSpot is asking for.

Comments are welcome.

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Posted in Discussion, Rant, SEO | 3 Comments »

Google DOES NOT CARE about META Keywords

Friday, October 2nd, 2009 by TurkReno
I was recently e-mailed by one of my clients regarding an SEO company that is basically trying to sell them snake-oil and defraud them of their money. I hate companies like this because they prey on people who have good intentions but may not keep up with everything that comes from Google HQ or from SEOMoz. Yes, the title of this is in fact “Google DOES NOT CARE about META Keywords” because they don’t and haven’t for quite some time (years to be exact). What is important is your META Title and META Description. Other search engines do care about the META Keywords and it was best said to do them anyways for “META Insurance”. But, again, not an important factor at all to Google.

Below is what Matt Cutts of Google (SEO MASTER) had to say on the Google Official Webmaster Blog:

Recently we received some questions about how Google uses (or more accurately, doesn’t use) the “keywords” meta tag in ranking web search results. Suppose you have two website owners, Alice and Bob. Alice runs a company called AliceCo and Bob runs BobCo. One day while looking at Bob’s site, Alice notices that Bob has copied some of the words that she uses in her “keywords” meta tag. Even more interesting, Bob has added the words “AliceCo” to his “keywords” meta tag. Should Alice be concerned?

At least for Google’s web search results currently (September 2009), the answer is no. Google doesn’t use the “keywords” meta tag in our web search ranking. This video explains more, or see the questions below.

Watch the Video on YouTube.

Q: Does Google ever use the “keywords” meta tag in its web search ranking?
A: In a word, no. Google does sell a Google Search Appliance, and that product has the ability to match meta tags, which could include the keywords meta tag. But that’s an enterprise search appliance that is completely separate from our main web search. Our web search (the well-known search at Google.com that hundreds of millions of people use each day) disregards keyword metatags completely. They simply don’t have any effect in our search ranking at present.

Q: Why doesn’t Google use the keywords meta tag?
A: About a decade ago, search engines judged pages only on the content of web pages, not any so-called “off-page” factors such as the links pointing to a web page. In those days, keyword meta tags quickly became an area where someone could stuff often-irrelevant keywords without typical visitors ever seeing those keywords. Because the keywords meta tag was so often abused, many years ago Google began disregarding the keywords meta tag.

Q: Does this mean that Google ignores all meta tags?
A: No, Google does support several other meta tags. This meta tags page documents more info on several meta tags that we do use. For example, we do sometimes use the “description” meta tag as the text for our search results snippets, as this screenshot shows:

Even though we sometimes use the description meta tag for the snippets we show, we still don’t use the description meta tag in our ranking.

Q: Does this mean that Google will always ignore the keywords meta tag?
A: It’s possible that Google could use this information in the future, but it’s unlikely. Google has ignored the keywords meta tag for years and currently we see no need to change that policy.

Posted by Matt Cutts, Search Quality Team

And that’s the official P’s and Q’s ladies and gentlemen. Do not let some snake-oil salesman sell you “keyword optimization” because it is FRAUDULENT! If you did, now would be a good time to go to your bank and file a fraud affidavit. But, again, this is just Google. No one, not even us, can guarantee you on the 1st page or top 10 of Google. Are they secretly hacking into the Google servers without someone noticing and changing the search algorithm themselves? HIGHLY UNLIKELY, so therefore it would be impossible for any sort of guarantee. And, Google generates results based on your IP Location, like we’re listed in Mobile, Alabama. You drive to Nashville, TN and you’re going to get different results because they’re trying to provide you relevancy based on location. Things that are generally popular, validated to W3C standards, and optimized correctly the other tags will rank higher than other sites and that’s a fact. If doing this puts you at #1 for Google, then that’s an added bonus.

I will say that Search Engine Optimization on the META description and META title level with content analysis is a good thing, but $125 per “keyword”? Robbery and a scam. Have us take a look at your site and we’ll give you the what’s-what and who’s-who on SEO without trying to milk every dollar out of you. We’ve done this for several years now and know what techniques work and which don’t. Matt Cutts at Google saying this only helps to rectify our point.

Contact us today and get REAL SEO, not some snake-oil scheme/scam.

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Posted in Discussion, Methods, SEO | No Comments »

Important notice: GeoCities is closing.

Friday, July 10th, 2009 by TurkReno

From Yahoo News –

Dear Yahoo! GeoCities customer,

We’re writing to let you know that Yahoo! GeoCities, our free web site building service and community, is closing on October 26, 2009.

On October 26, 2009, your GeoCities site will no longer appear on the Web, and you will no longer be able to access your GeoCities account and files.

What You Need to Do
If you’d like to move your web site, or save the images and other files you’ve posted online, you need to act now by choosing one of the following options:
€¢ Download your files to your own computer.
With your pages and images saved offline, you can re-create your site with any hosting provider.

To quickly download your published files, visit your GeoCities web site, right-click on each page, and choose Save Page As… from the menu that appears. Choose a location on your computer to save your files, then click OK or Save. Learn more about downloading your files.

Don’t Wait
Please be aware that after October 26, your GeoCities files will be deleted from our servers, and will not be recoverable. If you’d like to save your files, you must download them now or move to Yahoo! Web Hosting. If you need assistance, please visit the help center.

We want to thank you for being a GeoCities customer, and hope you continue to enjoy our other Yahoo! services.

Best regards,

Yahoo

So.  We offer hosting.  We may not have been around as long as a dinosaur like GeoCities (God knows I had a few accounts there), but we can take care of you if this is what it comes down to.  Contact us today at http://www.turkreno.com and find out what we can do for you!

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Posted in Discussion, Hosting Review | 2 Comments »

W3 Validation – Does it make a difference to be a perfectionist?

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 by TurkReno

Well, it’s interesting to put all of my training to work. Yet despite all of the certifications and education that I have, it is interesting to contradict my scholarly standings with yet another blog post.  At this point, I want to discuss validator.w3.org.  Even though I have known about this handy feature for a while now, it should at least be questioned.  Does it make a difference?  In a few cases, I have found questions like this one below throughout the Internet:

I just wanted to present this question to all you SEO savvy people out there. I have recently been building websites with W3 compliant code as an added SEO feature. Do you think that it helps with SEO and if so, do you know if there are any statistics out there on the web that show how much it helps?

A lot of people answer no change at all… Some report high change.  I personally think that it is case specific.  Even with a site that may have several errors (+50), it is important to properly grasp the situation by giving a proper analysis.  If the site has never been launched before, yes – it is extremely important.  If it is a site that you have maintained with dynamic content and it has been done before, it may or may not make a difference.

There are some errors that matter more than others that can hinder your SEO for XHTML:

  • Incorrectly defining your entire page by forgetting to declare your DOCTYPE
  • No Alt tag on <img> tags
  • Forgetting to close your tags the right way or within the correct tag
  • Forgetting to put a <p> before text in a <div> tag

There are plenty more things.  I did a lot of what I described above when validating pages last night…even though the blog here is not yet validated.  Do I think that it makes a difference?  Not really.  Because if this was a magic bullet, then my pages would be where I want them to be at this very moment.  But of course, I would tell my competition that ;-)

Have thoughts?  Please leave a comment!

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Posted in Discussion, Marketing, SEO | 3 Comments »

How To Become A Web Expert Without Spending A Dime

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 by TurkReno

I recently read this online and really felt like it spoke to me directly.  I know that parts of it are a bit catchy, but it serves a very good purpose and point.  Read it, comment, all kudos go to the original author though.

Imagine you’re a master at making money online, that you’re passionate, and excited during almost every hour you spend working. Visualize people coming to YOU for answers to their most important Web-related questions. Envision emails and phone calls flooding in every day with eager, prospective customers. Read on to learn the secret to achieving all of this.

If I could show you how to become a Web design, development or marketing expert without spending a dime, would you want to learn?

Imagine you’re a master at making money online, that you’re passionate, and excited during almost every hour you spend working. Visualize people coming to YOU for answers to their most important Web-related questions. Envision emails and phone calls flooding in every day with eager, prospective customers. Read on to learn the secret to achieving all of this.

First, discernment and discretion are vital. There are many programs online, many e-books, many self-proclaimed Web gurus and so much information today that it’s overwhelming and could send you to the poor-house faster than the speed of digital communication.

Where should I go to learn Web marketing? How should I spend my time? Who should teach me? What websites offer the best information? How do I make money using the Internet? What are the most important things I should learn? Should I learn Java or PHP? What are the fundamentals? How do I write effective copy online? How long will it take me before I can start my own business? The answer to all these questions can is . . .

Before I explain, let me tell you a brief story of my inchoate professional life. I barely knew what a computer while in college. It was only after living on both coasts playing live music did I conclude that a career in computers may make me a few more dollars than a career in music. It was then I decided I wanted to become a Web expert.

I had first considered attending a high-priced computer school that a programmer friend had recommended. But I had no money, and the school required all its students to attend full-time. I needed to eat and provide a roof over my head, and for that I needed to work full-time, so this expensive computer school was out of the question for me.

Although my options were limited, but I diligently looked in the Want Ads till I found a job that I could possibly do that was related to computers. The job title was “Internet Exploration Specialist”. I know that sounds slightly strange, but if you had met my chair-throwing, screaming and eccentric boss-to-be, it would make a little more sense.

I got the job and outlasted the most optimistic office pool prediction for how long I would remain working for the perpetually livid CEO. Looking back, it was probably one the best things I could have ever done (minus the maniacal boss, that is). I learned how to surf the Web. I became an expert Internet peruser, a digital explorer, a website connoisseur, and a professional information superhighway surveyor.

At around the same time I learned one of the secrets to becoming an expert at something. You have to put the time in. People who remain working in careers that they hate don’t put in the extra time to develop a career in something they love. Pure and simple. So while I had down time at work, I read books and found websites that taught me how to do things Web-related tasks. More importantly, I spent time after work and on the weekends reading, practicing and developing my Web skills.

Back when I began developing my Web career, the Internet wasn’t as big as it is today. There weren’t as many options for learning Web-related skills. Since I had no money, I simply searched for free online tutorials, primers and how-to’s. They became my staple for learning. Since I had seriously developed my Web surfing skills, I inevitably found many highly educational websites. And there weren’t as many scams back then either, there weren’t as many “gurus”. Web marketing or e-marketing hadn’t even become terms yet, so I had a lot of success getting reliable information.

Today it’s different. This is both good news and bad news. I’ll start with the bad news.

You can’t throw a rock into the Internet ocean now and NOT hit a get-rich-quick plan, a Web marketing curriculum, or an e-marketing “expert”. You’ve got StomperNet, Portal Feeder, Pipeline Profits, The Rich Jerk, Strategic Profits and Traffic Secrets to name only a few. There’s too much to choose from and they all come for a steep price. Now many of these programs may teach you a lot, but it will cost you. I’m here to say that you don’t need to spend any money. You’re reading this for free, aren’t you?

But here’s the good news.

Because of the way Google ranks websites now, because the very nature of the Internet as man’s most prolific and complete resource on everything, and because of human nature being curious and information-driven, the Web has massive amounts of extremely useful, high-quality, free information. People are falling all over each other trying to produce and publish high-quality Web content all at no cost to you.

Again, Google is one reason. One main way Google ranks a website is by how many authoritative sites link to that website. The best way to get new links pointing to your site is by creating useful content that can be accessed by anyone. If the content is fresh, original and high-quality, people will link to it.

And here’s more good news. Of all the subjects there are in the world, and therefore all of the subjects discussed online, the Web is the most popular.

Of course this has to be true. Think about it. Who’s doing all the posting? Webmasters. And what do webmasters know best? The Web. So you’re going to find a huge amount of tutorials, primers, articles, forum posts, blogs and websites that offer tons of useful information on how to become good at all kinds of Web-related things, and all at no charge.

Here are a few tips for effectively searching online.

  • Open up two or three browser windows at a time. One should have Google, the next Yahoo or MSN Search and the third should be your working browser. Use all three browsers when searching by toggling to each of them. Toggling is achieved by pressing ALT+TAB. By using different search engines, you’ll get a wide range of different results.
  • Use quotes around your phrases to find exact phrases. This will give you results that have the words in your phrase only in that order.
  • Use long tail search phrases when using a search engine. Long tail means many words. The more specific your search phrase is, the more relevant results you’ll get. For example, searching in Google for “free tutorials for beginner web marketers and expert career advice” instead of “web marketing tutorials” will yield more relevant results for you.
  • Use the minus sign to weed out superfluous results. For example, if you’re looking for event tickets and you type in “Boston tickets”, you’ll end up with lots of airline related results. Instead use “Boston event tickets” “airline flights”.
  • Get creative in contructing your search phrases. Combine multiple concepts.
  • Don’t just use search engines. Join forums like WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint, SitePoint, HighRankings and SEOChat, visit blogs, and read how-to’s and tutorials found in article directories. Regularly visit authority webmaster sites like DevGuru, Developer.com, TheNetGazette.net, HTMLprimer.com and WebKnowHow.net.
  • Go to and participate in Web 2.0 sites such as PlugIM, FreeIQ, Digg, Technorati, Simpy, Del.iciou.us, MarkTD, BibSonomy and Squidoo.
  • Become good friends with your Favorites or Bookmarks feature in your browser. Set it up so you develop a well-organized, useful list of websites, Internet destinations and Web pages and posts that you can constantly refer back to.Becoming an expert Web marketer or Web programmer can be done by putting aside time every day to learn your craft and by becoming good at finding the right information online that doesn’t cost anything. The more you search for useful information, the better you’ll become at it, and it will soon take you less and less time to find what you want.Therefore, the answer to all the questions above is: you’ll need patience, discipline, time management skills, and Internet searching skills. The searching skills come to you by simply practicing, by putting the time in online. Everything you need to know to become a Web expert without spending a dime is literally a few clicks away online and most of it is free. Get to work.

    • Copyright: Copyright © 2007-2008 Jason OConnor

    Jason OConnor is President of Oak Web Works – The
    synthesis of Web design, technology     and marketing

    Jason is an expert at Web design and programming, e-strategy, and
    e-marketing

    http://www.oakwebworks.com

    mailto: joconnor888 @ hotmail.com
    –
    Drop us a line! Web Site Design, Web Development, Web Hosting, Web Everything from TurkReno Inc. in Daphne, Alabama.

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    Posted in Design, Discussion, Off-Topic, SEO, Self-Advertising | 2 Comments »

    Professional SEO Consultant Services, TurkReno, Daphne, Alabama

    Sunday, October 5th, 2008 by TurkReno

    Search engine optimization (SEO) has changed a LOT over the past 10 years, so much so that for some types of websites it’s practically impossible to gain enough organic search engine traffic (through SEO means) to warrant spending significant money on organic SEO services (low ROI).

    Before contacting TurkReno for a free SEO quote for our Professional SEO Consultant Services please read through the following site descriptions to determine if your business web site is likely to benefit from our long term professional SEO services.

    Is the Professional SEO Consultant Services Plan for you?

    1. I own a new domain or an old domain with hardly any backlinks (very low PR) and want fast Google rankings.

    Any ethical SEO consultant will tell you since 2005 it takes far longer to gain rankings in Google with a new domain than it did in 2004: see the Google Sandbox Effect for details.

    If you expect fast results for a new domain NO organic search engine optimization service can help you: you could sink tens of thousands of dollars into an extensive links campaign, but Google’s algorithm changed in late 2004 made it impossible to rank highly for competitive SERPs fast: fast being a few months from going live.

    Because of the Google Sandbox effect it takes over 9 months for a new domain to rank well for competitive SERPs in Google. This doesn’t mean a new site can’t gain any SERPs/traffic at all, but it’s hard to gain reasonable traffic SERPs in those early months and so paying for professional SEO services at this point might not be a good use of your marketing funds.

    Many online business owners expect unrealistic results with new domains, even with perfectly search engine optimized content and a great links campaign it’s going to take at least a year before you’ll see a return on your SEO investment (this is not the case for sites with aged links, see later).

    Based on the previous 3 years experience (2005-2008) only a small percentage of SEO clients are prepared to wait this time while paying for professional SEO services: Average SEO client with a new domain will come on board and within a few months of poor search engine results become frustrated, consider the SEO service a failure and drop our SEO consultant.

    This isn’t good for us or the client, it wastes the clients and ours time/money (we only make money from long term clients, not short term). For this reason it’s rare for SEO Gold to take on clients with new domains: understandably a year is too long to wait for most business owners when they have to pay SEO fees.

    As a potential SEO client of ours with a new domain if you can’t wait a year for good search engine results we are not for you: please don’t think you can find another quality SEO service that can rank new domains fast, it’s not possible (we’ve tried on over 200 domains) and any SEO firm that tells you otherwise is at worst unethical or at best poorly educated in current search engine optimization techniques and trends!

    If your site falls within the description above please continue to read our Free SEO Blog and spend six months optimizing your content and gaining new links (aim for a PageRank of at least 4 for your home page). If you need help at that point come back to us for a free SEO quote.

    2. I have a domain PR4+ with aged backlinks (a year plus old backlinks), but only have a small number of pages on the site and have NO plans to add new content.

    Good news is you are in a much better position than if you were starting with a new domain. Google relies heavily on backlinks, in particular aged backlinks: the age of links is so important which is why it’s impossible to rank fast for competitive SERPs in Google with a new domain (no aged backlinks).

    If you have a domain with aged backlinks your business site has far more potential for Google search engine rankings than a website with no/few aged links.

    However, with only a small number of content pages you aren’t giving the search engines anything to work with. This means all your organic search engine traffic has to come in through a small number of pages and this means your going to need high traffic SERPs (which are always hard/competitive).

    Although it is possible to gain competitive SERPs long term, there’s no guarantee your site will be in the top 5 for this type of SERP in a reasonable time frame. Although top 10 SERPs will generate traffic, top 5 is where the real traffic is. There can be millions of competing pages for a single competitive search phrase, only 10 of them are going to be listed top 10 and there’s no guarantee even when doing everything right that your page will be one of them. Basically a small number of pages SEO strategies are high risk.

    To give an extreme hypothetical example of why many small sites are not SEO friendly: lets say you own a mortgage website consisting of 5 pages with only two (one being the home page) targeting actual mortgage SERPs (other 3 pages are contact/privacy type pages).

    Together we could do everything right SEO copywriting/backlinks wise and get your site to the top 10 for SOME mortgage SERPs, but with only two content pages to work with there’s only so much we can do.

    The top traffic mortgage SERPs are these:

    mortgage calculator
    mortgage rates
    mortgage rates predictions
    mortgage payment calculator
    reverse mortgage
    (lots of calculator SERPs)

    This is a particularly difficult niche (most financial niches are competitive) and to do well it’s going to take highly optimized content and a lot of backlinks using mortgage phrases as the anchor text.

    Depending on the starting point of the site will determine how much optimization and text links are needed and unless you already have a lot of decent PR backlinks already (that have aged) our basic 50 text links supplied with the SEO service isn’t going to be nearly enough (more text links will be needed and this can be costly).

    Let’s assume to make a good return on your SEO investment a site like this is going to need to be top 10 for a half a dozen of the top traffic SERPs (so most of the mortgage SERPs list above).

    This is where it gets almost impossible for a small site, (it’s difficult for a large site) there’s only so many phrases one page can target before the SEO copywriting is watered down so much the page doesn’t do particularly well for any of the targeted mortgage SERPs.

    In a perfect SEO world you would target one phrase per page with the hard SERP being targeted on the home page. From an SEO copywriting perspective it’s not hard to optimize for one phrase, but to optimize for even half a dozen phrases on one page is almost impossible without impacting a pages main SERP (there should always be one main phrase).

    In our hypothetical mortgage site example (just two pages to work with) we clearly need a mortgage calculator page for maximum search engine traffic, but what if the clients site lacks this type of content, to tackle a SERP ethically the targeted phrases should be found within the content: if we are optimizing for mortgage calculator SERPs there should be a mortgage calculator on the site or some information about them.

    But our hypothetical site lacks a mortgage calculator and doesn’t keep track of mortgage rates since the client doesn’t plan to add new content, so there’s nothing to use to gain most of these SERPs, or at least not ethically and within Google’s webmaster guidelines: never a good idea to use blackhat techniques.

    What this means is we are limited in what SERPs we can aim for, we’d be left with SERPs like Mortgage, Home Mortgage, Mortgage Company etc… which are good SERPs, but they are hard and even if you owned one of the major banking sites your not guaranteed a top 10 for SERPs this hard!

    As it happens for the mortgage calculator SERP there’s only one major bank in the top 20 (RBC Royal Bank).

    With a site like this (very small) it either does really well (usually because it’s really old and a has a LOT of old backlinks) or terrible and for this reason we avoid working with web site owners who have small sites with no plans to expand. We only work with sites that we are reasonably confident we’ll help gain more organic search engine traffic for.

    As you can imagine a business owner like the hypothetical one above is very frustrating and unrewarding for our SEO consultants to work with and since our SEO services are in high demand we never take on clients like this.

    A Little Free SEO Advice

    If you have a aged site with little content on it you could increase your traffic many times over just by adding new content to cover more relevant SERPs.

    If your site falls within the site description above please read our Free SEO Tutorial and if you ever reconsider your position on the size of your site feel free to contact us for a free SEO quote.

    What Sort of Website is Ideal for SEO Services?

    Now that we’ve scared off most of our potential SEO business clients we finally come to what the perfect SEO client looks like.

    You have a aged domain with a lot of content, preferably sales based content (like product pages) with unique content on most pages.

    This is the perfect site for us to work with because there’s the potential from the aged backlinks and there’s plenty of content for the search engines to work with, we can go for thousands of long tail SERPs.

    With content optimization and steady link building a site like this can see significant organic traffic growth. How much/fast depends a lot on the site/niche and how old and how many aged backlinks the site has. We’ve seen ~1,000 page ecommerce sites with a PR4 home page go from under 500 visitors a day to over 4,000 visitors a day within a few months of working with us mostly due to simple code changes and better SEO copywriting: we taught the owners how to write for search engines and visitors and their websites cleaned up on long tail SERPs.

    If you have a under performing site like this or plan to create one we’d love to work with you to gain maximum organic search engine traffic. Working with business owners with large websites is very rewarding for us.

    What is the Professional SEO Consultant Services Plan

    For a fixed monthly fee you retain the long term services of an experienced SEO consultant. Your consultant will guide you through the mine field of SEO myths and misinformation you’ll find online today and be available to answer any questions about your web sites search engine optimization needs by email.

    There are no limits (within reason) to the number of SEO questions you can ask your SEO expert about your web site.

    From simple yes or no questions to fully detail multiple page responses (most emails answered within 48hrs) your SEO consultant will be there to help guide your webmaster through the optimization process of your website over time.

    No need to wade through hundreds of websites that are trying to sell worthless search engine submission software (complete waste of time) or how to generate obsolete meta tags (most not important to Google any more) and don’t forget the countless hours spent reading contradictory information on the SEO forums some of which can harm your site!

    We tend to have an informal/friendly relationship with our clients and can either deal with the client direct or their webmaster (usually the best option).

    Your SEO consultant will look through your website and provide lists of items to improve, you arrange to have these items changed on your timescale and over time your entire website can be search engine optimized.

    The best way to use our service is to designate one person to work with us through email. Ideally this person will understand your websites code (so they have no problem optimizing your code) and have access to its content (so they can rewrite some of it).

    Through one to one email we can teach a member of your staff how to optimize your websites code, how to write for search engines (SEO copywriting skills) without damaging your visitor experience and how to gain new backlinks.

    If you follow all the advice the end result will be a fully search engine optimized website and the ability to gain organic backlinks.

    We also supply 50 text links as part of the service for as long as you use our Professional SEO Consultant Services. We try to match these to your content, but it’s more about adding some new links to get you started (will be some PR4+ links) than adding 50 themed text links.

    If your HTML skills aren’t very good your SEO consultant will try to guide you through the HTML changes to be made to your sites code.

    We’ll try to give code snippets, detailed explanations to help get the work done and if you lack the skills required to modify your site we can do it for you at a relatively low fee: we charge SEO clients on this plan just $85 per hour for code work.

    If you are looking to learn about SEO, this is a perfect opportunity to do so whilst putting your website on the search engines map.

    Our SEO consultants are here to explain why a change is necessary and what its SEO benefits are, why you shouldn’t be using blackhat search engine optimization techniques that can land you with the Google death penalty!

    You’ll note how much information we’ve supplied on this page and our free SEO Tutorial pages, if you need a detailed explanation of something you don’t understand we’ll supply one.

    Our SEO Consultants – Who Will You Be Working With

    Our expert consultants are native English speakers and have many years of experience building and running websites including ecommerce sites, between us we own well over 300 websites totaling millions of pages (indexed in Google etc.).

    Our main SEO consultants’ websites for example receives over 20,000 search engine visitors a day (August 2008).

    For example, panda.com.sa that’s owned by one of our clients, has 10s of thousands of pages indexed in Google and as of August 2008 receives over 10,000s visitors a day (these are real visitors a day, NOT HITS).

    This means not only do our expert SEO consultants understand the latest SEO techniques, they use them to rank their own websites in Google, so if something stops working they will ‘feel’ it in their organic traffic (none of us pay for traffic) and will have to learn what went wrong and how to get a site ranked today.

    We also appreciate the intricacies of running a successful online business website (we’ve all ran ecommerce sites at one time). Our main SEO consultant for example ran a successful online store (~1,500 products) that received up to 8,000 unique visitors a day in the very competitive lingerie niche.

    It’s not about a few good SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), but masses of highly targeted search engine traffic (the SEO long tail) that converts to sales without ruining your visitors experience (you want repeat customers after all).

    Payment Details

    Pay by credit or debit card (online), cashier’s check, or PayPal.

    Since we need to view your web site prior to agreeing to an SEO consultation, detailed payment advice will be supplied with your no obligation SEO quote.

    Our starter fee for the SEO Consultant Retainer Plan is $400 a month with no setup fees and no minimum contract: you should budget for at least 6 months and ideally 12 months.

    For an extra monthly fee we can also supply text links at low cost if you’re having problems gaining them yourself.

    Free SEO Quote for Professional SEO Services

    To obtain your free SEO quote contact us at sales@turkreno.com detailing as much about your website and your needs as possible. Please be as descriptive as possible, more information you supply easier it is for us to understand your website/business etc… and research your niche.

    We are very busy and existing SEO and Web Design clients always come first.
    Please allow at least 5 working days for a response.

    Note: if you only supply a link to your website and no other information we will not supply a free SEO quote. A business serious about its search engine optimization needs will supply a lot of information at this early stage to help us help them: we sometimes supply free SEO tips along with the quote.

    Taylor S. Ripley, Owner – TurkReno Inc.

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    Posted in Discussion, Google, Methods, SEO | 2 Comments »

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