Sometimes, Advertising is simply more fun.  It will not only sell more cars or your products, but could be a great SEO or a viral Internet Marketing tool.  And Super Sunday this year was the best as far as Ads are concerned.  One of my favorites was is the Hyundai Ad.  I have been a huge fan of Hundai and their Ads of late.  Check this one out, LOVE IT.  It makes the SEO and Internet Marketing book top lists for it’s effectiveness, creativity and shaming it’s competitors.  If I was in the market for a car, I would seriously go test drive it, even though I am Volvo person:

Find more videos like this on AdGabber

Yahoo just made a bold move to add video and image ads in their search advertising results.  I think it’s a brilliant and bold move for them to stay fresh.  I also believe that Carol Bartz, the new CEO of Yahoo, is an interesting and confident woman who is wonderful choice for Yahoo.  Here is the link to article from NY Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/technology/companies/19yahoo.html?_r=2&ref=technology

As we all know that for marketing to effective, marketers have to stand out.  And video and image ads are a wonderful way for the big national advertisers to do so.  You can learn this and other smart and free Internet marketing advice in our marketing book.  We not only cover how you should be blogging on a free blogs platform, but do smart SEM and internet marketing including Social Networking and social media marketing.  Enjoy!

We write a lot here about SEO, Search, and Social marketing.  And, this is all in the field of Internet marketing, and our marketing book always focuses from a perspective of blogs and how they help businesses promote themselves on line.  We all know that if you can get your self ranked high via SEO, that is the best thing you can do, but if not you have to advertise.  And if you can figure out a positive ROAS return on ad spend, you should do more of it.  So if you selling a product and make $10 net profit on each product, there is nothing wrong with you spending $0-$5 in my mind or in my marketing book to increase your sales, in fact, I don’t talk as much about internet Advertising in my marketing book as I should, but Advertising is essentially how most companies market their products.  My focus is Blogs and social marketing for internet marketing. 

There are many different forms of advertising and Search Marketing or buying keywords is the best by most people’s standards.  I also write in my marketing book that MSN  Ad Center is a great way to have lower cost for clicks, so all SEM experts usually utilize that avenue, obviously Google as a ton more traffic.  But don’t forget about AdCenter.  SEO, and blogs are free and can be great, but in Internet Marketing Content Ads or Contextual Ads are a great way to market your products and have lower cost of clicks.  Most people (newbies) don’t understand what they are.  So here is a quick overview and why they can be better than Search Keyword advertising.

Content Ads or Contextual Advertising is advertising on non-search result pages.  It is using keywords to target advertisement on everything but search results; such as blogs, emagazines, news articles, basically anything that is a content page.  And, almost always they are matched contextually by keywords.  So you can advertise on 200,000 sites in the Google ad sense network or on all MSN pages or Yahoo pages via the content ads feature of their SEM ad buying tools. 

Content Ads or Contextual ads are usually not as good for conversion, and therefore usually have lower CPC (cost per click), this is not always the case but usually.  And, this is because most advertisers who advertise on Search engines tend to not advertise on Content Ads part of those SEM tools.  So less the competition the lower your bids and more your ads can have a high ROAS (Return On Ad Spend).  Search engines also know this, and the impression volume is usually much higher, so if you are trying to build and use your brand name, this is a great way to build a brand too. 

It’s a much cheaper way to build a brand and get some conversions so in my humble opinon, Content Ads if done right are a better tool for your internet marketing.  Don’t be afraid to buy our marketing book on Amazon if you like what I am writing.  I am also giving away the marketing book for free so you will do that.  But, I do work as a consultant full time at one of the top Internet companies in the world.  Yes, you can guess it if you read my blogs enough or know where we live.  Best of all, this article was incepted with the smart content from a panel at SES from SEOMoz.  Enjoy here is the link to the great article on Content Ads;  http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-traffic-from-contextual-ads-ses-san-jose

For those of you wonderting why we don’t blog as much as before.  We are simply too busy with our full time jobs and raising our family.  Thanks and best wishes!

This guy at the Search Engine Land, was just quoted in a Media Post article and spoke on  Friday at the Search Insider summit.  Danny is a really smart guy, and the article reads, “Google Likely to stay on top in Search”… My comment to that is DUH..A Big DUH… you are such a Genius Danny..

I am fired up the stupid and yet thoughtfully percieved as intelligent comment by Danny boy.  Danny says that BM leaving Microsoft means that Microsoft is leaving the focus on Display.  Where did that come from?  BM is a very smart man, and MS has a huge Display business and will continue to as it has MSN and more syndicated partnerships and owns many super high traffic sites.  But, that is none of Danny the search guys comments.  BM has made a ton of money, and deserve to take some time off.  There is new blood needed at MS and Search is something that is clearly a focus, but never at the expense of Display.  BM has placed his top tier managers as leaders within MS to take that to the next level.  But, what would Danny boy know about this, he only knows search. 

Now about Google leading in Search and will continue to lead.  Well, it doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.  But, MS doesn’t care about making Live search user friendly?  Are you kidding Danny boy, how about Powerset and tons of resources MS is putting in to search.  MS never gives up, did you not learn that from the browser wars, email, and games.  Which part of Microsoft perservance did you not understand as a super powerful success factor.  Maybe you are just a kid Danny boy?  Danny Sullivan, you are certainly wrong about Microsoft, maybe you should live in Seattle like I do.  They are ferociously competive, super smart, and did you forget they have a ton of money.  They are also not firing 20,000 contractors to get their stock price up, like Google.

Danny you are a smart guy to bring search engine land to the fore front, and you maybe smart about a lot of stuff.  But you are wrong about Microsoft.  They are doing so well in so many tech areas, and with all of the investments and focus on online services, they will continue to dominate in Display and give Google a run for it’s money in Search.   Take that for the record!

I just watched this video from CNBC’s Advertising segment, can’t believe the anchor women knew about SEO.  That is a very smart Advertising women, maybe she read my marketing book?  Enjoy the Video, world is not falling apart, I think things will only get better from here!

Click Here to Watch Advertising Video, This one is for Advertising as a whole, they don’t let you embed it kind of silly!

Another Video on Internet Advertising, not just Advertising! 

While it may seem that all of the world is coming to an end with current economic crisis, Internet Advertising is still a hot trend.  Why?  Because in Internet Advertising, especially in search advertising, but even in display advertising, the key is that advertisers can measure the performance unlike any other. And by in large Internet advertising allows the advertiser to lead directly to sale, not just build brand.  Some smart advertisers do you TV and other media to drive traffic to their website, but they are usually more a brand building play rather then a pure sales play.  Why is the keyword above “Advertising” linking to Advertising.Microsoft.com ?  I am doing an experiement to see if I these links will help that site rank higher from #12 to #9 or higher for the keyword “Advertising“. 

Here is an article from our Marketing book and from this past summer, enjoy:

The Online Ad Market size - SEO market size too?

The Online Ad Story in a Picture - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

The article above from the New York times discusses the trends and facts of the Online Advertising numbers, Why? The talks of Yahoo and MSN is not just important to SEO Services people, but to all advertising and marketing people. Here is a quote from the article, we are covering this as the SEO landscape will dramatically change if Microsoft and Yahoo combine.

“Of course Google is booming and the traditional portals are struggling. But the numbers are stark: Last year, Google’s advertising revenue of $6 billion was roughly the same as that of Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft combined.

Google’s growth is slowing, but it continues to be a juggernaut. EMarketer estimates that ad revenue at Google will increase by 32 percent this year. That makes it the only one of these four companies that will grow faster than the ad market as a whole, which is estimated to expand by 23 percent this year. (To be sure, the uncertain economy makes any predictions especially suspect this year, but the relative trends appear stable.)

So as we try to second-guess the mating games of the big Internet companies, this graph raises the question: Does combining two past-their-prime giants that are both losing market share really solve any problems?”

The reason we are covering the recent news about the Microsoft and Yahoo is that this combination could greatly impact your SEO, SEM, and Marketing strategies. The combined search advertising and organic results, if that is what the solution will be, will be difficult for most small marketing people to ignore. Large marketing departments and advertisers do advertise on Microsoft and Yahoo, not just Google. They could quite possibly be the driving force behind another big option, not just being too dependant on Google. So our hypothesis is that a bigger advertising network other than Google is needed, and we support Microsoft as we are from Seattle.

As always we are just trying to provide you simple information for marketing your blogs and web sites. And, mixing in some shameful self promotion of us and our SEO services clients and marketing products of our strategic partners. Reminder, that is why I like blogging so much, and we created this free blogs site MyTypes.com. We found SEO advice all over the place, but we wanted to provide people a blogging tool, that would them actually SEO their blogs and websites. That is also why we finished our Marketing book, about the power of blogs for SEO and search marketing.

So we are going to plug in our web design St. Louis client, ArtWorksDesign.com, and we are also launching a sister blog at MyTypes.com/WebDesign where we will talk about the web design techniques especially as far as they relate to SEO. Last year we launched, GreenIsBetter.org for the energy saving infrared heaters, and air purifiers by Steril Air purifier. We think the web design blog will essentially lead to a portal or blogs or forums of sorts for SEO savvy web design topics. We have incorporated our end to end SEO and blogging techniques in our marketing book, so this should just be a continuation of those topics, only with more focus on web design.

As we started to sell SEO services a few years ago, we knew that we had to work with third party web design firms. The owners of the website simply did not have the capabilities to make the small changes needed to SEO the site. These minor changes have to do with proper Meta Tags, content and footer links. The majority of the web design companies now days know the basics of SEO, but SEO Services provide a lot of off-site services such as content and link popularity assets. This is why most companies large and small need to use an SEO services firm. Usually off-site SEO work will yield better results faster, once the basics are done. But, that is coming from Internet Marketing experts at MyTypes.com, we did write a marketing book on blogs, SEO, search and Social. But how well do we rank, you ask? We are only ranked top 10 in Google and other search engines for very competitive keywords, such as “Create a blog“, “Blogging”, “Free Blog“, “Wordpress SEO“, and we are usually ranked #6-#13 for “SEO“.

In the past we talked a lot about Google and it’s great keyword suggestion tool.  As some of you know that Microsoft Advertising, as it’s called has been quietly building it’s best of breed SEM tools.  The MSN Live Keyword Addin tool as it is called, is quiet amazing.  Especially if you are professional SEM manager and use Excel in your normal office tool set.

MSN Keyword tool - Click here to download

What do Massage Therapists and Lawyers have in common? Oh shucks, I forgot that the SEO consultants can trade for their SEO services too.   They are all local professionals, who can benefit by bartering their services to grow their businesses. Yes they can, sorry for stealing the line from Presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s campaign, where the line is YES WE CAN! Not only do you get barter clients, you will grow your cash sales too, but you have to read the end of the blogs post for that.

Getting back to the focus of this blog, tips for professionals such as local Massage therapists and local Lawyers to trade for their services via a bartering system such as ITEX’s Barter site. If you are a massage therapist or a local lawyer you may be wondering how does this trade or bartering thing work? Simple, we will get in to the details in a second, but you don’t have to be a massage therapist or a local Lawyer to grow your sales via Bartering. We have local professionals such as marketing consultants, real estate agents, restaurants, auto detailers, car repair, dentists, and many other professionals and barter items that people can trade.

Here is an example of how massage therapists can benefit from our Bartering System, they already trade with their local friend massage therapists friends. But, instead of getting only massage in return, why not take a trip with our ITEX barter dollars? Or provide a massage or two a week, at full price mind you, and earn 200 ITEX dollars a week x 4weeks for $800/month x 12 = $9,600.00. Than you can take a trip for example a trip I hope to take to Mexico for 4 people full flight and hotel for 6 nights, all for a cost of $5,300. All these $ signs referenced above is for the ITEX Barter dollars. No this is not funny money, we do manage over $300m worth of transactions every year. We are a professional barter system, and there are over 24,000 small businesses that utilize our bartering network. In fact we are the largest barter network in the US, with over 90 franchise offices, where a local bartering broker helps you trade your products or services. Ok, I will stop selling now, let’s gets back to why I am blogging about massage therapists:-), who doesn’t love a massage!

So about the Local lawyers and how they can trade to not only get barter dollars but actual cash paying clients. This example was told to me a bartering guru at ITEX Alan, who use to own a bakery and he use to barter all the time for his goods, not just services. So here is the Lawyers scenario: Say Mr. Lawyers is an attorney who is not fully booked his 2,200 hours annually. And, he is going through a slow time of the year or the month, but he has to keep paying his secretary and legal assistant a full time salary, rent, insurance, all fixed costs. So if he could increase his billable hours by say just 10% that would get to his pocket book.

Mr. Lawyers comes in the office one day to check in, and his secretary Judy has every thing handled and says no appointments today, but here is this for client x, and client y, but they are all taken care of. Why don’t you go play some golf or go visit your friends and family? As he decides to put on his jacket, Judy gets a call from their local ITEX bartering broker, one of the local businesses needs an attorney to review a contract on immediately. Their original lawyer is too busy, so Judy agrees to setup the meeting for after lunch that day, and she tells Mr. Lawyers to come in at 2pm for a meeting with the local Bartering business, who happens to be a massage therapist. She is being evicted by her landlord and has to review the real estate contract. She is stressed out and needs some legal help. Mr. Lawyers meets with her, reviews the contract, earns $900 barter dollars via ITEX.

But, wait Mr. Lawyers just got a barter client, he did not get a cash client did he? No he did not, but do you think that the local massage therapist only deals with Barter for her business? Chances are not, so she will probably take her Cash business to Mr. lawyers. But, better yet, she is now connected with Mr. Lawyers and as she is a massage therapists, she obviously touches 3-7 people a day. Do you think they talk during massages? Yes, and Do you think she is going to tell people about how Mr. Lawyers is such an awesome attorney? She will actually refer cash business to Mr. Lawyers, as most people use cash not Barter. You can imagine the SEO consultant, the restaurant, the car repair shop, all benefiting by getting new customers, as the bartering businesses will promote their cash business.

Does Bartering makes sense for all businesses? Maybe not for people who are not doing well, and cant’ trade excess inventory, and are loosing money. But for successful products people, who want to sell their products at full price, want more clients, and for people who want to get more awareness Instantly by joining a local business community. Our local bartering brokers make the difference, they will help you with every thing and take care of all of the paperwork. Remember our blogging platform is partially owned by the fine folks at ITEX barter system.

As always we want to thank our supporters at cross jewelry and designer jewelry by Loverelic.com. We also started to sell our Infrared heaters, which are better than edenpure heaters at GreenIsBetter.org. We are building an online marketplace focused on services marketplace and b2b marketplace to help small businesses buy and sell products online, and especially to promote their businesses.

Writing about SEO tips and small business marketing can be very challenging, especially as we don’t want to be your run of the mill SEO blogs site, we actually want to give you smart Internet marketing 2.0 advice. But lately we have almost run out of things to say, well almost, as people who know me like to say that I love to talk. That is why blogging is such a great outlet for me people like me, but we have to have smart advice or no one is going to read our Small Business blogs. Thank God, we have readers and they see value in our SEO blogs, or I would be a lonely man. Getting to the point SEO ver SEM is always a great debate, and I wrote a couple of weeks ago about research done on the subject. Here are the highlights: SEO get’s 6 times the clicks or traffic, but a lower conversion rate of around 3.16 percent, and SEM or Pay Per click ads on Google get about 3.5 percent click through rates. So for short term and immediate sale, I often recommend that your Internet Marketing 2.0 strategy include SEM not just SEO for better results quickly, and I always recommend Google Adwords, as they are the biggest.

Pay Per Click will also help you identify the best keywords to SEO for, because of ad impressions volume shows demand, and actual click through’s show you match of keyword demand and it’s impact for your product. Adwords success has come due to great utilization by smart small businesses people because of it’s easy to use platform, but the best part is the ability for businesses to research which keywords people are searching for and target their products to those customers. This particular part of SEO and SEM has brought an incredible level of market research to the hands of small businesses world wide, that to me is the true success of Google. I always said, that Microsoft made it’s thousands of small businesses called VAR (Value Added Resellers) tons of money, and that is why they succeeded. I think Google is doing the same for SEO and SEM, it’s because of the Adwords ability to provide this market data that makes small business marketing successful in todays marketplace.

We have been running some large pay per click ads for our Bartering client for the keywords related to Small Businesses, Classifieds, Market place, and many more online marketing related keywords. We know that if we don’t stay on top of them, they get very expensive, so we are working on other small business marketing strategies such as SEO.   But really, it’s important from our real life example that we use Pay Per click data to make sure we SEO for the proper words to attract small businesses. The biggest problem we face is that these campaigns are very expensive, so we have be very intelligent in trying different keywords. Hence we came up with words such as Classifieds for marketplace and classified ads versus classifieds, because these slight variations deliver quite a bit of specific traffic.

Just to promote one my small business blogs, here is what i wrote their about Australia travel:

Aussie.. Aussie… Aussie… Oay.. Oay… Oay…

It’s summer time in Australia, the Australian Open is on in Melbourne, and it’s a great winter get away for North Americans. The people of this large island nation are one of my favorite, they are so well traveled, beautiful, and fun loving, I love everything about them. In fact, my favorite event ever in life was the Sydney 2000 Olympics. The people of Australia showed their true colors and the beauty of the land and sea shows off in it’s green and blue excitements, only to not be forgotten by the big Orange rock Uluru, also called Ayers rock. So a trip to Australia cannot be called complete, without a visit to this amazingly hot and barron Norther central territory. As you will see from a a series of blog articles we will high light the top attractions brought to you by the folks at vacation rental software and online booking software RentExpert.com.

First stop to any vacation hot spot, should start with the official tourism website, and in this case it’s called Australia.com, how original and top of the .Com are the Aussie’s. Go Aussies Go!

My favorite place to visit in Australia will have to be the Sydney Opera house, and Sydney harbor bridge and the beaches of this incredible city. I can’t imagine taking a visit in Australia without renting a beach vacation home, and it must be done through our Vacation rental software and online booking system, right? Hopefully by the time, I plan a trip there, we will have many vacation rentals properties listed. Not to worry, we will list many VRBO type websites, yes that stands for Vacation Rental By Owners, just like For Sale By Owner for FSBO, a term familiar by vacation rentals by Owners. Sorry real estate agents your time has come and gone, the Internet is making vacation rentals better, and our vacation rental software and online booking software will provide more features than you ever did, and no commission to worry about:-).

Now besides Sydney, the #2 vacation spot in Australia has to the Great Barrier Reef, **Click on the picture to visit the Parks website: in Queensland. Did you know that it’s the only living thing visible from space? Did you also know that the barrier reef is made up of living and dangerous sea algae, but don’t worry it’s safe and it’s visited by many hundreds of thousands and millions of people every year.

So what is the #3 most visited vacation spot in Australia, is it Melbourne or is it the Great big rock Uluru. I don’t know, I think the travel channel had a special naming the top 10 places to visit in Australia. Where would you go? Since Australia is about The Outback, and we all want to see a Kangaroo, I think the great rock of Uluru makes the list. So does Melbourne for me, and I bet it’s easier to rental vacation homes in Melbourne and surrounding beaches? No doubt we will be promoting our vacation spots via our blogs at VacationBlogspot.com and of course our vacation rental software and online booking system will power this and thousands of others VRBO destinations.

Posted by Admin in Vacation-rentals, Vacation Homes Rentals

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This post maybe all you need to know about marketing, well maybe not, but it is a great primer. Most people don’t know the basics of marketing, we not only provide you that, but here we go further. We might give you better than a marketing MBA. Because we cover the most ignored principal of marketing, the 5th P. Having made millions with my marketing skills and entrepreneurship, I have not only been a student of marketing, but an enthusiast.

All of these the major topics of modern day will be covered in the book. Are you feeling the theme of the new book yet “Secrets to eSuccess: blogs, social, and search marketing”?

A few of my friends/advisers have Stanford MBA’s, and a conservative one with a Harvard MBA.  They all agree that SEO and search marketing are a must for any business in todays market.  As you already know, we cover a lot of these topics in our blogs, but something was missing, a holistic Marketing approach. So we decided to take a step back and provide the basics.

If some of you were lucky, smart or blessed enough to study marketing in college you certainly know about the 4 P’s of marketing. I have been talking about these 4 p’s for 7 years now. The 5th P, I will tell you in a second, and you will agree it is the most important. Marketing is not just about public relations or advertising, as most people assume. It’s a complex world of strategic positioning, product strategy, product development, product management, and public relations and advertising. Advertising, public relations and sales are really one of the lagging parts, though very important. The most important lessons of marketing was from Anthony Robbins, yes Tony, the great motivational speaker. He talked about the VALS research from Stanford, and profiling different types of people, but most marketing people don’t emphasize the 5th P principles.

The 5th P does not stand for “Process” as an MBA in Marketing from the U. of Washington in Seattle told me.  I can’t believe that is what they taught there at U. of W. U Dub is a great school, but folks, process is just a process. So here are the 4 P’s and the 5th will be discussed in detail below:

1. Product; if you don’t have a product, you don’t have anything. A product can also be a service so for sake of simplicity we will bundle them.

2. Price; if you can’t make money selling your product, should you sell it? Or go back to the drawing table, Well you know the answer right?

3. Place; needs more clarification, it’s where you will sell the product, retail, online, jewelry parties, it’s the sales channel.

4. Promotion; this is the world of public relations, advertising, and call to action sales materials, search marketing etc. etc. For those of you who study marketing you may already know that eMarketing tools is the fastest growing segment of technology. This is from a recent Gartner report, of July 2007 on marketing automation.

Without, any further a due, the drum rolls rolling, the hearts beating, yes the claps, and church bells ringing.  Tadaha..It’s People, People, People, how can the marketing geniuses of the MBA’s forget to teach about “People, the 5th P”. Is process more important than people, no silly.  So what do yo need to know about People and marketing?

Forget about demographics, focus more on psycho-graphics, and get the data to back up your strategy. It’s the art of understanding not only who your customers are. The 5th P of marketing is all about people, you need to know everything about your customers, their profile is just a start. You need to know their likes, dislikes, passions, dreams and aspirations. Where are they going today? How much money are they spending on products that you sell, how much will they spend on them tomorrow?  VALS research covers types, that I can’t really forget. There will be more on this topic tomorrow, so we will call the series, “Secrets to eMarketing, Part 1-6″, we will start with Part 1. tomorrow.