The Vizion Search Engine Optimization Blog
- 2009Sep25Creating a Usable PPC AdWords Geographic Report
When running AdWords reports one of the challenges when looking over geographic performance is that you are limited to only reports on a daily unit of time. I will show you how you can use Excel to group the daily data into a report you can really use to help optimize the geographical areas you are targeting.
- 2009Sep18Search Engine Optimization Tip 29: 404 Errors
This is search engine optimization tip number twenty nine in our continuing series of search engine optimization tips. All of our search engine optimization tips are meant to be specific, they should not take too much time to implement, and are meant to be directly to the point. In fact, this search engine optimization tip is pretty simple: check your 404 error pages on your website.- 2009Sep17Mobilizing Your Facebook Marketing Army
Facebook: 250 million active users, 150 million of them new in the last year and eight million of these users become fans of Pages every day. There’s the data, and you probably didn’t need me to tell you that Facebook is the social media “place to be”. This new pop culture craze gives you a chance to keep tabs on your friends and family, and with a little creativity you can use the Facebook platform to build an army of Facebooker’s to market and promote your products.
You’re not going to get very far by posting to your personal profile every half hour with your latest product or promotion without eventually annoying your friends. This is why the utilization of the Pages feature a great way to promote your brand and products because your fans are just that, fans of what you have to say. They are going out of their way to join your Page to stay attune to what you have to say as well as let their friends know of their interest in your company.
- 2009Sep17Got Content? A Quick Way to Generate Content, Trust and Traffic All At Once!
We’ve all been there, racking our brains trying to find another way to build site pages and create exposure for a brand through content generation. All products have their own page, each location has an individual page, you present news and press releases, you blog, and so on and so on. You have finally hit a wall where you feel that anything else you add to the site will simply be un-convertible junk in written form. Well, think again.
One of the easiest forms of mass content generation is simply not often thought of, education. A great way to add multiple pages to your site is to add a glossary of commonly used industry and site-wide terms to an easily accessible site section. What better way to show potential customers that you care to help them understand your offerings than to provide a breadth of term definitions for their own knowledge? Gaining this trust with a potential client is what helps you convert at a higher rate as a confused site visitor is likely to soon leave your site, [...]
- 2009Sep16Everyone wants to use WordPress as a CMS (Content Management System)
More and more websites are using WordPress as a platform to build their entire site — and not just their blog. In our experience, WordPress can be a powerful ally in your online presence. It’s abilities reach far beyond Blogging and Websites themselves. You can use it to build full-scale Web Applications, Social Media Networks, and even Online Stores. With WordPress, and many great plugins like Pods, you are no longer subject to the restraints of built-in functionality. Did we mention it takes us less time to develop on this platform than many of the leading CMS platforms?
WordPress has many great features besides being extremely user-friendly. Here are some of our favorite features that come in handy:
Full standards compliance
Blog Posts and Comments
Pages
Custom Theming / Plugins to extend WordPress
RSS feeds
Spam protection
User management
Easy installation and upgrades
Built-in [...]- 2009Aug13Google Caffeine: A Comprehensive Analysis
Google has released a new version of Google which is being called Google Caffeine. Google officially calls this a “next-generation architecture for Google’s web search”. It’s being widely reported that this new version is faster than the older version. For most of us, though, we will not notice an increase in speed.Because most website owners would be interested, I have compiled a comprehensive list of what appears to have changed in the new Google Caffeine and have made a list. Since Google Caffeine is still rather new, this list is certainly subject to change as we go, so I will do my best to keep it updated as appropriate.
The new Google Caffeine’s search results URLs are different. Therefore, third party software analytics may be effected. For example, the search results pages now use # in the URL.
Some people are reporting that Google Caffeine seems to improve Wikipedia results. Personally, I think it depends on the actual search query.
Some .gov websites got lower rankings for core keywords. A search for “Barack Obama” shows a drastic change: I’m currently not seeing Whitehouse.gov in the top 10 search results on Google [...]- 2009Jun30How to Use WordPress as a CMS Content Management System
Scott Kingsley Clark recently spoke at the WordPress WordCamp Dallas 2009.
- 2009Jun26Can Twitter Search Rival Google Search? Even for Michael Jackson?
Yesterday, June 25, 2009, when the news broke that Michael Jackson had died, many people went online and went over to Twitter. We searched. And we searched for news about Michael Jackson. Soon, we began to see everyone talking about Michael Jackson’s untimely death on Twitter. But we also continue to see people gaming the Twitter search engine.
Mark Jackson (no, he’s not related to Michael Jackson) was recently interviewed about Twitter search.
- 2009Jun18WordPress Plugin Developer Scott Kingsley Clark to Speak at WordCamp Dallas 2009
Attendees to learn how to use WordPress as a Content Management System
Dallas, Texas — WordPress Plugin developer Scott Kingsley Clark of Vizion Interactive (www.VizionInteractive.com) will present “WordPress as a CMS: How to Unleash the Dragon” at the WordCamp Dallas 2009 conference to be held on Saturday, June 27 and Sunday, June 28, 2009 at the University of Texas at Dallas in Richardson, Texas.
Mr. Clark has been a strong proponent of utilizing WordPress as a content management system for many years. Along with his beliefs, Mr. Clark has been an active contributor in the WordPress community, providing many free, useful and helpful plug-ins for others who are using WordPress.
“Our company is honored to have Scott Kingsley Clark speaking at WordCamp. Scott will have the opportunity to provide his insight and experiences of using WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS) on a daily basis and share some of the Plugins that he has developed,” said Vizion Interactive President/CEO Mark Jackson.
This two-day event is designed for those with a passion for WordPress — users, designers, developers and anyone else who is interested in learning the latest about this ever growing [...]
- 2009Jun16New Strides in Local Search Marketing!
It was an early Christmas gift from Google for all of us local search marketing geeks out there. Thanks to folks at Google Local Business Center, local businesses now have the opportunity to dig deeper into the performance of their Google local listings via a listing performance dashboard.
While this may not be new to those who were able to first explore this offering beginning June 2nd, I just received access to it and I am extremely happy with it. I think that the information made available is insightful, actionable and paints a great picture for how your local listings are performing. Let’s also not forget that ultimately it is much easier than digging through Google Analytics for minimal local listing performance data.
To start off, the dashboard provides the same top-level data of impressions vs. clicks. To some, this may be seen as the most critical data to assess. This is the first indicator that your local business listing is not captivating or that you are marketing to the wrong audience. However, seeing this in the past as effective due to a high click-to-impression/action ratio may have been misleading for those who title [...]
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