This article is about Google Product extensions which are putting an end to the 70-character ad text which is incredibly restricting, the ‘one landing page per keyword’ rule and the fact that image ads are not available on the search network.

Amazing! Unfortunately, this product is only available in the U.S. for the time being but I am sure Google will roll it out world wide once all the bugs have been dealt with.

So, what exactly are Google Extensions? Simple! Instead of simply one ad being displayed for a company/product, the ad appears with a + sign inside of a box underneath it which can be expanded and displays a list of other products featured by this same company. Brilliant!

Where does this extra information come from? The company needs to enter information into Google’s Merchant Center and the information is pulled from there. If a customer then clicks on one of the products listed in the expanded product extension, they are taken to the appropriate page (specified in the Google Merchant Center).

The article goes into great detail about the strategies, costs involved, tracking and whether there will be an impact on SEO (since once all of the extensions are expanded, the first organic listing falls well below the fold) but for sake of simplicity, I have just covered the basics.

Check out the full article here (with a subscription), on Google or contact us at Anduro for more information on this. Remember though, this is only available in the U.S. for the time being.

In the past, I’ve taken lots of picture on vacations using 35mm and digital formats but I haven’t ever use video. The tremendous growth in the use of video over the last few years, especially on YouTube prompted me to give video a try. I have always felt that video production was difficult, time consuming and expensive but it appears that the opposite is true. In a recent post by Gideon Shalwick of Brick Marketing: Video Tips to Use he debunks each of these myths.

So, for this vacation I thought I would try and create a video record of the cruise. Below I have uploaded a few videos to YouTube and added a link to the video from this blog. Enjoy.

By the way, before the cruise I purchased a Mino HD video camera from Flip Video for about $250 at Best Buy.  I looked at a similar recorder from Sony but the Flip Video was so simple to use that I couldn’t resist. The quality of the videos is lacking but that isn’t the fault of the camera – it is the human taking the shot (one of my sons or me). Sorry about that – this was our first time shooting video.

The first shot is of the cruise ship, The Liberty of the Seas, at dock in Miami while we were traveling to port via taxi.

The second shot is disembarking at Labadee, Haiti. Labadee is basically are resort owned by Royal Caribbean – very touristy – but the food was great.

The next video is taken by my son as he rides down the Dragon’s Flight zip line. Tons of fun and not as scary as it looks. Loved it. Great view.

Another shot by my son. This time of the swimming pools on the 11th deck of the Liberty of the Seas. Weather was great for the first half of the trip and then it deteriorated.

In Jamaica we went to Bob Marley’s grave at the town of 9 Mile. We had a great bus ride singing Bob Marley tunes for an hour there and an hour back. Wonderful. This is a shot of our tour guide, Crazy.

The next shot is of the Atlantis Submarine surfacing in Cozumel Mexico. We boarded it and went down to 120 feet below the surface. Very scenic. Lots of fish and sea creatures.

At about 50 feet we saw a stingray.

The final shot is in Carlos n Charlie’s Cafe beach side in the pouring rain. But we had fun anyway.

Overall the trip was fantastic.

Regarding the topic of using video in a blog, I learned quite a bit. Shooting video so that you get good quality footage is harder than it looks . Using Movie Maker is a little tricky. Uploading the videos to YouTube is easy once you figure out that not all formats are uploadable. Linking the videos to a blog page is easy. But all of these steps are time consuming.

Footnote, a day later:
After I uploaded all the videos, I realized that the audio was faster than the video portion in each file. As a result, anyone talking sounded like a chipmunk – not kewl. I tried and tried with Movie Maker but I was unsuccessful in fixing the audio. The raw files were fine but when I uploaded to Movie Maker the chipmunks came back. So I spent a few hours trying to find another video editing program that was free and usable. I tried a bunch and finally settled on a free trial of Corel VideoStudio Pro X3. It took a while to learn how to use the program (maybe another post) but eventually I was able to edit the videos (again) and post them on YouTube.

The link pointed to an article called “Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists” by Derek Powazek. In a nutshell it is tirade against Search Engine Optimization and companies offering SEO which includes our company, Anduro Marketing. I couldn’t resist reading the post and responding.

First Derek gives a quick history of the search engine industry:

“First came the web, and it was a mess.” “Then came the search engines. First primitive indexes of dumb keywords, then Google…” “The ascendancy of Google has meant that, if your goal is to get the most eyeballs possible (as any ad-supported media business’ goal is), then prominent placement in the search engine results became a top priority.”

Not a bad history actually. He should post that to Twitter. But then Derek loads up the page with name calling and loaded language to emphasize his point. His labels for Search Engine Optimizers include: “goat sacrificers”, “snake oil salesmen” and “a new breed of con man”. He then makes 3 points and elaborates on each.

1. The good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work.
2. SEO is poisoning the web.
3. The One True Way.

Actually, Derek is right on each point but beyond the basic point Derek seems tarnished, tainted and terribly mislead or misinformed.

1. SEO is Obvious.
In many ways Derek is correct – much of SEO is obvious. Picking keywords, adding them to web pages and getting any type of link back to the website is free and relatively easy. But so is cooking a burger or changing oil in a car. I can do both but I don’t except occasionally. Why? Lots of reasons. I don’t have time. I’m too lazy. And the chef at BrokenCity does a much better job. Besides, I don’t have buns, burgers, condiments, fries and a stove at the office. Why should I cook a burger at lunch time when I can pay someone to do it and talk with customers, colleagues and friends instead? Sheesh.

So what are customers buying when they hire a firm to optimize their website? Where is the value in hiring a company like ours to optimize their website and boost the home page on search engines? The answer is simple. Our customers don’t want to spend time doing tasks that would take them a month of Sundays. We can do SEO faster, better and often cheaper. We have the tools, processes, and know-how to get the job done quickly and effectively.

One of the basic principles of running a successful business is to do what you do well and focus on that. People buy value. If you focus on providing value then customers will buy. But if you spend all your time learning and doing things you don’t have the aptitude, training and skills for then you won’t be able to provide quality products on time at a reasonable price. Trying to do everything sounds like failure to me.

Let me give you an example. Let’s take Dell – a large company with a large budget for brochures and online ads. One would assume that their website would automatically work well with the search engines. Not so. A couple years ago we got an email from a business manager for the business unit focusing on small and medium business. He thought there was untapped opportunities for Dell to rank well on search engines. His rationale was that paid ads on Google cost money and high listings on the organic side of Google are free. Good point. We “messed around” with the URLs, source code, anchor text, internal links, external links and strange things started to happened. Pages on the Dell site start ranking at the top of the SERPs. Dell.com is still in top spot for “business laptops”, beating out 25 million other pages. It’s in 3rd spot, out performing 109 million other pages, for “servers”. The end result – our contact at Dell got promoted. Nice.

But what about small companies? What value do they get from SEO? About 5 years ago Wayne Thomas came to us. He runs a small company called CleanSuite Software Inc. His company produces software for dry cleaning businesses. He wanted to have more visitors come to his website. He had some ideas of how to do that but wasn’t confident and simply didn’t have enough hours in the week to optimize his site and pursue inbound links. We talked. He hired us to help him out and he is a very happy customer. CleanSuite is a small company that is building its reputation and success on our talents. If you go to Google.com and search for “dry cleaning software” his site is listed in 2nd spot beating out 1.3 million other pages. He was in first spot until recently. Wayne, give us a call.

In summary, yes, SEO is obvious to some people but not everyone. For companies that want to reduce their marketing risks, an SEO firm is a good bet.

2. SEO is poisoning the web.

Derek’s complaint is that Google’s search algorithm is based primary on building links back to a site. Then he goes on a rant about “SEO cockroaches” and “SEO bastards” doing all kinds of devious techniques to get links which have temporary value. He is right. If you use black hat tactics and try to trick Google you will get caught and the website will likely be tossed out. But who uses black hat techniques? Any SEO who has been in business for more than 3 years and can prove results never tries to trick Google. What we use are best practices.

1. Picking keyword phrases that will drive qualified visitors to a site – people looking for what companies are offering.
2. Optimizing a web page by adding the keywords in the right spots so that the search engine crawlers can find the phrase. This isn’t secret or hard but it has to be done correctly.
3. Building a web of reputable industry related links back to the site. Not really hard but time consuming so we can’t waste time going after useless links. No one is going to pay us for work that doesn’t produce results.

Derek, what’s wrong with using best practices?

3. The One True Way – Good Products and Good Content.

Derek’s point that many writers create “dumbed down content” is valid. It is sooooo true. I see tons of crappy content on the Internet every day. But I read fast and I can spot dumb content very quickly. Here’s the rub. I doubt that I’m the only one with a critical eye. The folks at Google aren’t stupid either. They know what good content looks like.

Thanks Derek for a stimulating article and your point of view. Ultimately, you and I can agree on something. Create good products. Create good content to let people know about it. Repeat.

Speakers included:

• Social Media Victories – Real Businesses, Real Campaigns, Real Results by Patrick Schwerdtfeger, Tactical Execution
• Cause Marketing by Shauna Causey, Comcast
• The Power Triumvirate of 2010: The Convergence of Social-Mobile-Local by Gillian Muessig, SEOMoz
• Investor Relations 2.0 – Using Social Media to Reach Investors and Support Your Stock by Doug Lacombe, communicatto
• Fatal Mistakes that may Destroy your Internet Marketing Campaign by Dennton Fahl, BlackSun
• Taking Facebook Connect to the Next Level – Social Context by Ryan Merket, Facebook Consultant
• XRay Vision – Using SEO-Browser.com to Diagnose Problems with Your Website, Jeff Nelson, Anduro Marketing
• Conversation Marketing by Ian Lurie, Portent Interactive
• A Picture Is Worth 10,000 Words by Alli Marshall, Strix Insights
• Alternate Reality Games by Kevin Franco, Francomedia
• The Power of Web Video for Businesses by Tish Bell & Stacy James Fry, BizBOXTV
• Social Media & Gaming: The Untapped Market by Evan Fishkin, Portent Interactive

We are all looking forward to next year’s conference.

Here is a link for more details: Internet Marketing Conference – Calgary 2010.

Great line-up of speakers. So far 60 people have registered. Ends on St Patrick’s Day – March 17th.

Topics include Social Media, Gaming, Videos, SEO, Pay-Per-Click and Industry related news.

Anduro is offering a discount. Call our office and we will give you the promo code.

1. The importance of the tail varies tremendously
2. People search differently for different types of services/products.
3. The importance of the tail does not depend on the size of the search spend.
4. The tail is most important for SKU-based commodity retailers.
5. The tail is critically important for some advertisers.

I love the way Damon James in our company summarized the article. His conclusion is, “For bigger websites (lots of pages) and companies with lots of discretionary funds, the long-tail is a good thing. For smaller websites (limited real estate) and companies with limited dollars, (unless they want to do it themselves), not so much.”

One of our strategies is to use SEO techniques to go after keywords that are in the middle of the tail and pay-per-click campaigns to catch keywords on the long tail.

The bottom line is that most companies have to look at the value of keywords in the long tail and determine the value. More often than not setting up a pay-per-click campaign is the best way to go.

This is an excellent question because even though social media is “free”, the time needed for a successful social media campaign is the real hurdle. So where do you start?

It is really just about time management! There are different approaches to this obviously, one being just hiring someone to do it. Fair enough! But if you don’t have that kind of budget, there are a few things you can do to get it under control.

Once you have the strategy in place – I need to pause here for a moment and just stress the importance of the strategy step – you need to decide how to move forward. Are you going to be the one in charge, Tweeting, YouTubing and Facebooking your way to business success??

OK, so once you have that figured out and have decided that it is in fact you that will be in charge of all of this, take a deep breath and put together a plan and FOLLOW it! Here are a few little tips that I use:

1. Dedicate one hour every day to social media. Whether you spend that time updating your blog, tweeting, or brainstorming a new video for YouTube is up to you. But don’t let anything distract or interrupt you unless it is an emergency. Sit down and do it.

2. Part of the strategy step would involve figuring out your message. Of course you don’t want to just blast your community of followers or friends with spammy, pitchy sales stuff so come up with some clever ideas to give out information that is interesting and useful to the ‘user’. You would be amazed how many people will stop following you on Twitter if you just blast sales pitches out there. It is bad form!

3. If you have some down time, use this time for social media. Come up with ideas etc so that on days when you are REALLY busy, you can just grab an idea, post it up and be on your way!

4. Use the tools available online – TweetDeck, HootSuite – the list is endless of great helpful tools.

Those are a few of my suggestions. I found a great blog post with some of the same ideas and some new ideas. Have a read here! It’s a pretty helpful post!

-Stefanie-

In online marketing the key is to gently coax website visitors through an evolution into website participants.  Whether we are talking about Pay Per Click platforms or ecommerce sites, visitors need to be participating – clicking – in order to increase the conversion rate and, hence, the ROI.  As evidenced by the 2 million Google Search results, this process is not a hard science with tried and tested methods – it is an art.  There are a lot of web users who are more than happy to simply be visitors – just hoping to pass GO and collect their proverbial $200.  After reviewing a few of the Google Search results and thinking of my own online experiences I have identified two key concepts that website owners should keep in mind when trying to entice visitors to take that first step toward earning the highly esteemed blue Participant ribbon.

• The need to participate:
  • In today’s fast paced world, people do not take the time to do things they do not need or want to do.   The end goal of the conversion must be valuable and secure for the visitor as well as for the website owner.  Nurture the desire to participate by clearly communicating the value of the conversion to the website visitor.  Encourage return business by adding an additional thank you page after the conversion step is completed.
• The ability to participate:
  • Expand on the concept of the Big Orange Button (BOB).  Keep the visitor on task by ensuring that the information, design and feel of the website are consistent from the landing page through to the actual conversion step.  Limit distractions, make the next step(s) obvious and encourage and enable the visitor to act quickly.

It is well recognized that higher conversion rates can translate into higher ROI and a few well executed website adjustments can help to increase conversion rates.  So, welcome to all visitors.  Now, ready… set…participate!!

- Jenn -

Guest post done by Jenn. It just so happens that Anduro Marketing offers what we call an “Increasing Conversions Session”. To find out more, contact us.

He has done some research and has come to the conclusion the Tweeting less and posting a fewer number of  links actually gets you better results in Twitter.

Read his first blog post here and the follow up one here. The follow up blog post talks about which times of day and which days of the week are most effective. Really interesting blog post!

-Stefanie-

They titled it “Is This Stamp-Worthy?”. Seth Godin did a blog post about the evolution to email marketing campaigns from mail outs. When companies still used physical mail-outs more readily than they do now, the marketing team would have to think twice about who they are going to send the mail to since it cost them per piece of mail. Now that email is essentially “free”, it is much easier to hit send.

His example was that he received an offer to buy diapers online from Drugstore.com. He explains, “I’ve never purchased diapers online, since my diaper purchases predate online diaper shopping and my hope is that I won’t be buying Depends for another fifty years or so!.”

This is now a completely irrelevant product for him but because email doesn’t really cost a company anything, he got the mail out anyways. Now he has become an un-subscribed customer!

So next time you think about sending out a big email blast, think about whether you would pay for the stamp that would have to go on the mail out!