The Vizion Search Engine Optimization Blog
- 2007Dec2Search Engine Marketing Conferences
Mark discusses the reasons why you shouldn’t miss an opportunity to attend a search engine marketing conference.
I am flattered to have people ask me to speak at conferences. This week (as I write this, it’s “this week”), I will be speaking at Pubcon in Las Vegas. At the same time, Search Engine Strategies will be taking place in Chicago. You might ask “is there really that much information out there for this Industry”? I am saying, emphatically, “yes”.
Attending one of these conferences will leave you with a wealth of knowledge. Regular attendance keeps you up-to-speed on all of the many changes that happen, each year, in our incredibly dynamic Industry.
Some people have asked me “which conference should I attend”? That’s a loaded question. If I could have found a way to be at both Search Engine Strategies and Pubcon, I would have done it in a heartbeat. They are both fantastic conferences, full of terrific speakers and they offer a wealth of great networking opportunities.
Due to the fact that my Search Engine Watch column is devoted to organic search engine optimization, I will try to point each of you to some sessions that you may want to consider at [...]- 2007Oct23Receiving Our First Cool Analog Spam
Most everyone is used to getting junk mail and a metric ton of email spam, but today at the Vizion offices we received our first unsolicited physical letter airmailed all the way from India. Addressed to “The Chairman, Vizion Interactive, Inc.” from our new friend Kishan Jalan in Jharkhand.
He was kind enough to send us a couple of flyers to hang in the high traffic areas of the office relating to the “true & best education” relating to saving women and “innocents” from wrong education.
We’re not quite clear on what the “wrong education” is and what the “right education” is – the english portions of our new poster are choppy at best, but in theory it seems like a good cause. Whitney Houston told us a while back that the “children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way” who are we at Vizion to disagree?Until next time – “Only Satyug” to save the children and innocents,
- 2007Oct18Branding Versus SEO
As promised, this is a continuation of the post entitled, “Branding Experts Clash with SEO.” I introduced the problem in that post, and I’d like to provide an example of Branding versus SEO in the real world.
Let’s take a look at Helio. For those of you not familiar with the brand, Helio is an MVNO, or in plain English, they are a company who markets really cool cell phones to teenagers and young 20s, and their service plans piggy back on the Sprint mobile network. It’s actually a very difficult industry to succeed in, when you consider that a majority of their fees go to Sprint for service. They charge enough over the standard Sprint fee to make a profit, but they have to compete with every other cell phone company on the market, including Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T.
They accomplish this goal by providing phones with extra features and cool designs and some marketing genius. In every Helio Ocean radio commercial I’ve heard, they always say, “Don’t call it a cell phone, call it an Ocean!” Even in traditional marketing circles, they realize that they have to mention the term cell phone, even [...]
- 2007Oct16Branding Experts Clash with SEO
One of the most common issues we face with clients is the mental disconnect between branding and best practices for on-page optimization. Your branding expert will typically come from a traditional marketing background, where branding for print, radio, and television was standard. In those marketing mediums, audiences everywhere are exposed to the terms and phrases you create to express your brand. With enough repetition, the public becomes comfortable with newly branded terms and taglines. Some of these creative new terms are even adopted in common language. That’s when a company really concretes itself within a culture and takes a place of accepted prominence.
Marketing online is a completely different beast. The internet is not like television. Everyone is not exposed to the exact same commercial advertisements. Each person is visiting a variety of websites according to their own choosing, preference, and ability to search.
If you or someone within your marketing division has yet to accept this truth, let’s waste no more time. YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO MARKET YOURSELF FOR SEARCH in order to compete with other companies online. Unless your visitor knows exactly where to go to find what they want, they will use a search engine to find the best [...]
- 2007Sep17Cover Most Search Marketing News with Two RSS Feeds
If SEM is your profession, you’ll likely have 30-50 SEO blogs in your feed reader. But if you’re looking for a search marketing professional or attempting to do some of the work on your own, you can cover most of what’s new with two RSS feeds.
Does that mean you won’t have a lot of reading to do? Hardly. These two are excellent resources because they are so comprehensive.
SearchEngineLand – This website was started by Danny Sullivan, the biggest name in search engine optimization worldwide. Though the site is not very old, it has covered nearly every topic possible on a daily basis. A word of caution, keeping up with Search Engine Land is like drinking from a fire hydrant. So many topics are covered on a daily basis that they issue daily recaps to summarize everything covered that day.
One of the benefits of subscribing to Search Engine Land is that they’ve split up their RSS feeds so that you can decide what topics you want covered.
Sphinn – Sphinn is the social media/news site for search marketing professionals (or at least the bloggers). Subscribe to this site and [...]- 2007Jul12Vizion News: Volume 1
Letter from the President:
I truly love my job. Not only do I have the privilege of working with some fun and dedicated people, we’re getting results for our clients and our clients are happy. There’s nothing like the experience of building a strong partnerships!We’re fortunate that our clients give us the opportunity to earn more of their business (we provide website design/development, email marketing, Interactive PR and other various Interactive marketing solutions, aside from search engine optimization/marketing).
We’ve taken this early part of summer to re-design our website. The original site was functional to start with, but the new look and feel really communicate our vision more accurately. Feel free to check out the new look and features at www.vizioninteractive.com when you’re writing me back.
As you’ll see to the left, we’re doing some pretty remarkable things for our search engine optimization clients:Palm Harbor Homes — From January — May of this year, we’ve driven almost $11,000,000 worth of traffic to their site, through organic search engine optimization efforts, compared with the same time period one year ago. We based the valuation on if they had bought this traffic [...]
- 2007Jul9SEO Forums and Magazines
There are several web sites that are very useful to read on a regular basis if you are looking to keep up with the latest tips, tricks, and search engine optimization techniques. In fact, the search engine optimization industry changes so often that we recommend that you peruse these sites on a regular basis.
Search Engine Optimization Forums
WebmasterWorld – Great forums where many SEO’s will bounce ideas back and forth.
SEO Chat Forums – Popular forum that covers a lot of topics related to search engine optimization.
DigitalPoint – One of the more active forums.
SitePoint – Focuses more on web development and coding issues. Has a large marketplace and other resources.
Search Engine Forums – One of the original search engine marketing forums.
High Rankings Forum – SEO forum for anyone looking to learn more about search marketing. For beginner SEOs through advanced.
Search Engine Watch Forums – Discussions about all topics related to search engines.
iHelpYou Forums – Focuses on SEO best practices.
Cre8aSite Forum – The Cre8asite Forum covers expert advice on search engine optimization, usability, web design, quality assurance testing and more.WebProWorld Forums – [...]
- 2007Jul9SEO Tools and Directories
SEO Toolkit
Good overview of what to do to have a search engine friendly website design and achieve higher rankings via search engine optimization.
DMOZ Directory
A “must have” directory listing, which is easier said than done. Free directory listing, but operated by editors who also work for free.- 2007Jul9Knowledge Base
Pandia
Pandia has all you need to know about search engines, Internet searching and search engine marketing.
Search-This
Search This was created to provide information on: search engine optimization (SEO) along with website design, development, website promotion and internet marketing strategies. Our hope is to provide you with enough knowledge, strategies, tips and advice that will allow you to successfully build, optimize and promote your web site.- 2007Jul9SEO News
ClickZ
Great website for news and information on all aspects of Interactive marketing.
Search Engine Watch
Danny Sullivan’s project which provides the latest news and information regarding search engine optimization, search engine marketing, analytics and anything else that you may need to know if you want to succeed with your search engine marketing programs. Be sure to sign up for the newsletter!
E-Marketing News
Great insight from Mike Grehan and Christine Churchill, including interviews with Industry insiders.
Search Engine Guide
News and information on search engine optimization, search engine marketing and offers a search engine marketing newsletter.
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