Im0z

Keyword Research for Mobile Marketing

2010-02-22T07:06:00.001-08:00

We haven't spent much time talking about mobile marketing on this blog. This is not because we haven't been researching and experimenting in mobile marketing. We have actually built several mobile websites for clients and have experimented with things such as text message marketing and mobile lead generation. However, mobile marketing data has lagged behind desktop search marketing data quite a lot, and so we have been focused more heavily on that.

Nevertheless, research for mobile marketing grew significantly in 2009. Studies done by large companies like Jumptags and AT & T are beginning to reveal trends for mobile markets. And we bet you didn't know that Google even has a keyword research tool for mobile phones that is similar to its public AdWords keyword tool.

*Keyword Research for Mobile
So, we'd like to start out with a sort of Mobile Marketing 101 post. Expect more posts on this
subject this year.

*Step 1: Mobile Keyword Research
Is there a keyword research and selection tool specific to mobile search terms? The answer is yes. It is located inside Google's AdWords cpanel, but it is not that easy to find. The way we found it is by following these steps:

1. Inside AdWords, create a new paused ad campaign
2. Create a paused ad group underneath that. Set the ad group and campaign to run only on mobile devices, and only on the search network (not the Content network)
3. Click the "Add Keywords" button
4. When the keyword input box displays, click the "keyword selection tool" link.
5. Now, when you get to the next screen, you'll notice that the keyword selection tool looks different than the normal public version of the AdWords tool.
6. Underneath the keyword tool, there will be a link that says "advanced options". Click that link
7. This will reveal another set of search filtering options. One of those options will be a checkbox that says something like, "Search Mobile Keywords". Click it.
8. Enter your search term in the box. You can also just enter a URL in the input field to the right of the keyword box, or you can enter both.
9. Click search

There you have it. The search terms that it spits out will represent mobile search volume. You can verify that this is true by going to the standard public AdWords keyword selection tool and comparing the search volume for the same term. You will notice a difference in the numbers.

If your firm is interested in starting a mobile marketing campaign, mobile advertiing, or mobile website development, feel free to contact us at 908.787.3475 . You can also set an appointment with an SEO specialist on staff by visiting http://gnosisarts.genbook.com , or by email at info@gnosisarts.com .

7 Tips for Making the Most of Twitter

2010-02-16T06:30:00.001-08:00

There are a number of good uses for Twitter. Twitter works well with traditional blogging platforms to give you increased readership for your blog. Twitter can be effective in generating buzz for a product or service. Journalists have been using Twitter to enhance their news reporting ability. Others use Twitter as a customer service tool.

But no matter how you personally utilize the popular microblogging site, there are some tips that will help you get the most out of the service. Here are 7 tips to good Twitter netiquette.

1. Focus on Quality, not Quantity.
My colleague, Sara Paxton of Evans Media Group, is a Twitter maven. She stresses "forgetting about the number of followers," and instead focusing on the type of followers. We've seen Twitter accounts go bad by employing the many "get lots of Twitter followers fast" schemes tha have sprung up.

2. Engagement Level Is More Important than Follower Count.
Having a ton of followers is great, but if none of them cares enough about what you're tweeting to comment or conversate, then it's pretty much pointless. As we wrote in a previous blog post, you must have engagement to have client relations, marketing potential, or sales.

3. Publish Quality Content
As with almost all things marketing, content is king. If you just publish sales spam or garbage content, you won't get much engagement on Twitter. Quality content means content that is desirable to your followers.

4. Don't Spam DMs
Direct messages are a nice feature of Twitter. But be careful not to overdo them. Many Twitterers use the DM feature to send unsolicited emails full of spam. This is a surefire way to lose followers and harm your reputation.

5. Be Careful With the Number of Apps You Give Account Access to
The number of Twitter apps out on the market now is staggering. Many of these apps require you to give them access to your Twitter status feed. This is so they can send tweets to your feed without your permission. Other apps use this access to auto-follow other users. Be wary of this, as too many apps having access can quickly corrupt your Twitter feed or even cause your account to be suspended.

6. Use the List Feature to Produce A More Useful Twitter Experience
With Twitter, you can create lists wich include certan Twitter users. However, you can also use lists to segment and categorize Tweets. For example, on one of our client Twitter feeds, we have created various lists of useful information for the client's followers, including local weather updates, frequently asked questions, customer comments, and the like. This adds value to our Twitter account which increases our following.

7. Foster Two-Way Conversation.
A lot of people use Twitter only to peddle their message. They don't really care to get to know their followers or what they're followers are interested in - or to comment on their followers' tweets. In our experience this is bad form, and quickly leads to a stagnating Twitter feed with little or no engagement. A better practice, we've found, is to simply engage in normal conversation as opposed to bombardng people with your message.

If you follow these guidelines, your Twitter experience will be better for both yourself and your followers. You'll start to build trust and a good reputation. Your Tweets will be retweeted more often, and you'll find that, whatever your objective for using Twitter, you will be better able to fulfill those objectives.

What Notability Is Not

2010-01-24T13:03:00.001-08:00

In consulting with clients on their Wikipedia articles, sometimes the concept of notability gets muddied. Wikipedia guidelines clearly state that a subject must be notable by Wikipedia standards in order to qualify for a stand-alone article. But what exactly constitutes notability? Rather than discuss what notability is, in this post I will try to define what notability is NOT.

*Notability Is Not Commendability
Many people have done things that are very commendable. You may have donated $1 million to AIDS research, done 1000 hours of community srvice or received the Employee of the Month Award at your job. These are all commendable, but the are not criteria for notability in the Wikipedia sense.

*Notability Does Not Mean Accomplished
An oral surgeon may have performed 100 successful root canal operations. While this may make her acccomplished, it does not necessarily make her notable. Notability has a historic and more broad reaching element to it.

*Notability Is Not Inherited
Your Great Uncle may have won a Pulitzer Prize. But his notable achievement is not passed on to you. Your notability cannot be inherited from his simply by virtue of birth or blood relatedness.

*Notability Does Not Mean Noteworthy
You may be a professor who has been cited in an article by a peer in an academic journal. But your research is not the main subject of the journal entry. You are noteworthy, but not neccesarily notable in the Wikipedia sense.

*Notability Is Not Infamy
Your boss may have robbed the company for hundreds of thousands of dollars. She may even have gone to trial and been put in prison for her crime. But if no major news publication covered the story, she is not for all that notable.

*Notability Does Not Equate to Uniqueness
Uniqueness can sometimes support a subject's notability, but they are not the same thing. You may be a lawyer who writes poetry. As far as lawyers go, you may be considered unique. But that doesn't mean you are notable. You may be the only person in your firm who does what you do, but if no one has written about it, you are not notable.

*Notability Is Not Citability
Your work or achievement may have been cited in other publications. But this in itself does not establish notability. The quality and type of the publication is key. If, however, your work is cited by the majority of authorities in your field, then you might be notable as a result.

Lead Generation: Evaluating Online Lead Generation Sources

2010-01-19T06:15:00.001-08:00

At Gnosis Arts, our Internet Marketing methodology is experiment and data driven. Everything we do is evaluated in the light of certain metrics and experimntation. Two overarching metrics we focus on are: Cost Per Lead (CPL) and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). As a result, we always want to know how effective a lead generation source is in delivering quality leads. We are always doing cost-benefit analysis of various online lead generation sources. In our analyss, we utilize four main metrics to evaluate the worth of a lead generation source. I'd like to share those with you in the hopes that it will help you thinl more clearly about your bottom line with respect to Internet marketing.

*Evaluating Lead Generation Sources: Four Metrics
The four metrics we use to perform cost-benefit analysis on lead generation sources are

1. Labor
2. Quality
3. Predictability
4. Cost

*Operationalizing These Metrics
For these metrics to posess any meaning, we must first define what we mean by each of these terms.

1. Labor Required
This is the amount of man hours required to generate a lead from the source in question. Some lead sources may require significantly more time and work to produce a lead than others.

2. Quality
The quality of a lead is the probability that the lead will turn into a prospect (not necessarily a sale). Sometimes a lead source produces a relatively high number of leads, but none of the leads become actual sales prospects. On the other hand, some lead sources may deliver a low volume of leads but a larger percentage of prospects.

3. Predictability
Predictability refers to how consistently a lead source delivers leads. Some lead sources may produce a high quality lead, but there is no discernible pattern or timeframe for when the lead source will produce a lead. You may have to work at it one day during one month, but two weeks during another month.

4. Cost
Cost is pretty straightforward. It is the amount of money you must put into a lead source to produce a lead. An example of this is Google Adwords. Some lead sources are relatively cheap, but may deliver lower quality leads, and vice versa. Other lead sources are free, and still others it may be difficult to measure cost at all.

Armed with these metrics, we are in a good position to evaluate our lead generation sources as well as our lead generation efforts. Here are a few examples to how you how to apply these metrics to specific lead sources.

In light of the following, the ideal lead source would be one that

*Requires little or no labor
*Delivers leads that more often convert to prospects than not
*Delivers leads in a consistent, predictable time frame
*Costs little or no money to produce a lead

* Examples

1. Craigslist
Craigslist features individuals and small businesses which need services we offer. It may take 1-2 hrs of labor to generate a lead. It may take us 5-7 days to generate a lead from Craigslist. 1 out of every 6 leads becomes a prospect. The cost is free.

Grade = B+/A-

2. Google Adwords
-Labor: Negligible, once ads are set up and tweaked
-Quality: Very High
-Predictability: very predictable.
-Cost: relatively expensive

Grade = B+

3. Elance
-Labor: extremely time intensive
-Quality: high
-Predictability: poor
-Cost: expensive

Grade = C-

4. Google Local
-Labor: Low to moderate
-Quality: High
-Predictability: depending upon the product or service offered, impressions and clicks are extremely regular
-Cost: free

Grade = B

5. Voicebroadcasting
-Labor: Low to moderate
-Quality: fair
-Predictability: Low
-Cost: Expensive

Grade = C-

6. Yahoo Search Marketing
-Labor: Negligible, onces ads are set up
-Quality: poor
-Predictability: poor
-Cost: moderate to high

Grade = D

7. LinkedIn
-Labor: low to moderate
-Quality: very high
-Predictability: ?
-Cost: little or nothing

Grade = B-

8. Twitter
-Labor: moderate
-Quality: poor to fair
-Predictability: poor
-Cost: free

Grade = C

C. Our free press release site
-Labor: negligible
-Quality: poor to fair
-Predictability: Extremely predictable
-Cost: free

Grade = B-

Keep in mind that a lead generation source may perform differently based on your unique products or services. You will want to evaluate a lead source based on yourown conditions. Also keep in mind that some lead sources' performance depends quite a bit on your individual approach use of the source. This is especially true of social media sites like Twitter or Facebook.

Also remember that, no matter how good a lead generation source is, if you don't have a product or service on the receiving end of the lead, one that delivers value to people, you won't generate any sales regardless. A lead source can only lead the horse to water, so to speak; your website has to encourage him to drink. Without good Conversion Rate Optimization, the value of any lead generation source is diminished.

Conversion Tracking: Google Analytics

2010-01-13T07:02:00.001-08:00

If you have an e-commerce website where you are advertising or selling a product or service, then it is important to be able to accurately track conversions. This is especially true if you are running Google Adwords PPC ads for the product. In order to calculate the Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) you need to know whether your ads are generating leads, prospects and sales.

However, conversion tracking - as it is called - in Google Analytics isn't always a straightforward process. The process can be even more challenging if you have a website with a lot of dynamically generated content. Tracking events, goals and conversions for these sites can be difficult because often the webpages produce multiple content or pages without the benefit of a unique URL attached to those pages. As a result, in its default mode, Google Analytics will not know that this dynamically generated content was viewed by a visitor.

So, I published this blog post to help you understand some basics of conversion tracking.

*Definitions
But first, a few definitions.

What is a conversion? Well, a conversion can be defined as any observable event or activity that a visitor to your site can take. Perhaps the easiest conversion to understand is when a visitor purchases something on your website. Other types of conversions include

*Completing a Contact form
*Calling a phone number
*Downloading a document

There are others, but these are perhaps the most common. In short, a conversion is any activity a visitor takes, while on your website, that brings her a step closer to making a purchase.

*Attributing Conversions to PPC Ads
For obvious reasons, you may wish to know whether a PPC ad helped to produce a particular conversion event. For instance, if a person purchases a product from your website, it is helpful to know whether the person came to your site from a PPC ad. This way, you have some measure to go by when calculating how effective the ad was; it helps you know whether the ad is "doing its job" so to speak.

Of course, you can use the old "ask them how they got to your product page" approach, but you may find that this is not effective. Often times visitors don't remember how exactly they reached your website. Or, sometimes they will just give you a general answer like "I found your site on Google", which really won't help you much. Therefore, it is good to know how to track visitors using Google Analytics, especially when they make a purchase.

*Tracking Ad Conversions
There are ways to track virtually any web activity, but for our purposes we will stick to tracking purchases.

How do you tell whether an ad generated a purchase? Another way to put it: How do you know if a purchaser originally came to your site from an ad?

Though it sounds simple, tracking this accurately isn't always simple. The path a visitor takes from initial entry to your website, to making a purchase, is rarely a straight one. A visitor may click an ad, hit the landing page, surf around for a while to gather additional information, and the reenter the purchase process. Or, a visitor may leave your site altogether, and revisit the next day to make the purchase.

These common web surfing scenarios make things hard on Google Analytics. In its default settings, Analytics can't accurately track conversions in these scenarios. So, you have to activate certain additional features within Analytics to really see what's going on.

*One Method
A lot could be said about this subject - far more than can be covered in a single blog post. But here is the basic outline.

The first step is to tag all the URLs of your ads. Google has a URL builder to assist you with this. Basically what manual tagging does is to create a unique URL for each ad's landing page. Though the landing pages will still be on your website, the original URLs are rewritten, so to speak, to be unique and exclusive for each ad.

Manual tagging also signals Analytics to count the visit source as a PPC ad, as opposed to an organic, referral or direct visit.

Once you have tagged each ad, the next step is to set up your conversion funnel. A funnel has an endpoint and a begnning point. The endpoint is the purchase confirmation page. This is the page the visitor is directed to after making a successful purchase.

It is essential to have a confirmation page to accurately set up the conversion funnel.

The beginning point of the funnel will be, as you might have guessed, the tagged (or rewritten) URL. You can create a separate funnel for each ad and tagged URL.

*What Manual Tagging Accomplishes
Now, when a visitor clicks an ad with a tagged or rewritten URL, Google Analytics will count that visitor as coming from an ad. If the visitor makes a purchase, the he will wind up at the designated confirmation page. As we specified in advance that this confirmation page is the endpoint of the conversion route, or funnel, Analytics will count that purchase as a conversion attributed to the ad. Analytics gives you a nice neat little report that clearly shows you how many purchases (conversions) each ad produced in a given time frame.

There are many more advanced tracking features you can apply. For example, you can assign a dollar value to each conversion destination. In his way, Analytics will add up how much revenue the ads generate to make ROI easier to calculate Nevertheless, this is the basic procedure for accurately tracking conversions.

Best regards,

Eric Bryant, Director
Gnosis Arts
22 Ray Court
Bedminster NJ 07921
908.787.3475
www.gnosisarts.com

A Lot of Followers But Little Engagement, or Fewer Followers But Greater Engagement?

2010-01-08T16:21:00.001-08:00

Which do you prefer: Having a ton of social media followers, but little or no engagement, or fewer, active followers with higher engagement levels?

I think that the latter is preferable if you want to improve sales or marketing efforts. If you prefer sheer numbers, then you probably reason that, if I have a large enough follower base, the engagement will follow.

But I'm not so sure this is the case. On Twitter, for example, we manage client business accounts that get more engagement and poduce more sales with 500 followers than accounts that have thousands of followers.

In online marketing, quantity is rarely, if ever, a substitute for quality. We've seen PPC campaigns generate close to a million impressions but deliver not a single conversion.

*Is Quality Content Really That Important?
Well, pretty much. But we need to clarify what is meant by "quality" content. Having a philosophy background, I tend (erroneously) to think of "Quality" in the "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" way. That is, quality is some objective, ideal or Platonic Form existing "out there" somewhere, which everyone is just waiting to behold.

But we're not deaing with Philosophy, we're dealing with Marketing. In marketing, it appears that "quality" simply means: what your followers want. You have to give them the content THEY want, not the content you THINK they want.

Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook can make great tools for client relations. But we must remember that you have to have engagement in order to have client relations. You have to have engagement in order to have sales. You have to have engagement in order to have customer service or reputation management or relationship marketing.

Twtsynd - Twitter Syndication Network

2010-01-04T07:11:00.001-08:00

I love it when my team creates something new and exciting.

We just launched our newest project - Twtsynd. Twtsynd is a euonym for Twitter Syndication, and it is an a Web API that enables you to publish your tweets to other Twitter accounts. What we've done is create a network of Twitter users, in short, a syndication network. Just as news or television networks have syndicates that publish the network's messages, Twtsynd publishes member messages on all accounts within the network.

Twtsynd is our newest project, and we are quite proud of the response so far. Currently, Twtsynd's audience reaches over 24,000 Twitter users - and the service on barely two weeks old! The service has grown so fast already that we've had to close it to members only, while still in BETA.

*Benefits of Being A Twtsynd Member
Twtsynd enables you to publish your tweets on other member status feeds. As a result, it enables Members to reach a larger audience than what each could reach on his own. And because you are reaching a broader audience, you have a greater chance of gaining more interested, quality Twitter followers by using the service. There is almost no limit to the number of Twitter users you can reach with Twtsynd, as there is no limit to the size of the Network.

Currently, Twtsynd is an Invitation-Only, Member-Only site. So, if you would like to join our syndication network, please feel free to send a request to

http://gnosisarts.com/home/Special:Contact

Best regards,

Eric Bryant, Director
Gnosis Arts
22 Ray Court
Bedminster NJ 07921
908.787.3475
www.gnosisarts.com

It's not the traffic you get, it's the traffic you convert

2010-01-01T14:12:00.000-08:00

We've been in the business for a while now and we specialize in Internet marketing.

What we have found w/rt traffic is this: It's not the amount of traffic you get, it's the amount of traffic you convert.

Let me explain.

1 million hits X zero sales still = $0 in revenue, sales and profit.

Unless your business is a non e-commerce product or service - that is, you're not really selling anything - the amount of traffic is irrelevant. What is important is the quality, targeted-ness, and sales potential of the traffic you're getting.

There are many traffic generation schemes that will deliver tons of traffic. But it won't be good traffic and won't deliver any sales. In fact, some of these traffic generation schemes can actually hurt your search engine rankings because they are considered spammy, or link farms, or some other such offensive type of site to search engines. (Google is particularly hard on spammy sites - see Matt Cutts' blog - Matt is the Director of Spam Prevention at Google and if you've never heard of him or know what his department does, you're not a real online marketer)

We have built sites that get only drops of traffic, but which generate enough sales revenue to justify the site's existence.

By the same token, we have seen sites of businesses that get ridiculous amounts of traffic, but which go out of business!

I keep harping on this point b/c understanding it makes the difference between sound Internet marketing and fluff:

It's not the traffic you get, it's the traffic you convert. Period.

Just as in personal finance, it's not the amount of income you make, but the amount you keep that is important - the same is true for Web traffic. Sheer volume of traffic is meaningless as a statistic in itself; what is more important are factors like

* Number of Pageviews per visit
* Bounce Rate
* Avg. Time on Site
* Conversion Rate

The Two All-Important Metrics

Now, we have basically reduced the value of traffic, and by extension, a website, down to 2 all-important metrics. These metrics are

* CPA
* ROAS

CPA stands for Cost Per Acquistion (sometimes referred to as Cost Per Lead, but this is not technically the same thing). This is just what it sounds like. It's the amount of money or labor you have to spend to "acquire" one (1) sale from your website. Related to CPA is CPC - Cost Per Conversion. This is the amount of dollars or labor you must spend to generate one (1) website conversion on your website.

The idea is that if you get enough conversions, you will eventually get an acquisition and then you can more or less exactly calculate how much it costs to get that acquisition. For our purposes we are defining an "acquisition" as a sale or purchase, either online or offline, but one that is directly attributable to your website. So, if someone visits your site, then calls you, and then you place an order over the phone, that conversion and acquisition should really be attributed to your website.

When an acquisition is not defined as a sale or purchase, the metric is sometimes referred to as Cost Per Lead (CPL).

A website conversion is any measurable event - generated from your website - that leads to a potential sale: e.g.., completing a contact form; calling a phone number only shown on your website; downloading a document; subscrining to news updates; subscribing to a blog; referring a friend; sending a link to a friend; completing a survey or questionnaire; uploading a profile; requesting something in the mail; requesting a fax; sending a fax; clicking a certain video, image or button; commenting on a blog post; and (obviously) purchasing something off your site. The list is almost endless.

ROAS stands for Return on Ad Spend. This is the net gain, in dollars, of your revenue generated from the leads minus what you spent in ad dollars to generate the revenue.

If you look at all your internet marketing efforts as just so many different forms of "advertising", then if you keep the ROAS and CPA metrics in mind - you will go a long way towards establishing a successful online business. This will be true, regardless of whether your site is receiving 100 or 100,000 visitors.

I would much rather have a site that gets 100 visitors, but converts 2 or 3 or 5 % of those visits to sales than have a site that gets 1,000 visitors but converts only .001% to sales. That's a no-brainer.

When our firm consults with small business owners, we always try to drill this into them. We help them locate the best marketing channel online for each of their service or product offerings. By "best" is meant: that channel which doesn't necessarily deliver the largest volume of traffic, but the highest ratio of conversions and/or acquisitions. THAT is quality traffic.

And what we've found is that no one online marketing channel accomplishes this for every type of business. For example, our multimedia firm offers music lessons, professional writing services, basic web development, Public Relations and SEO services. We generate virtually 100% of our business online and we've been in business for 3 years now and have shown a profit each year.

For our business, no one marketing channel works for each of our diverse services. For our music business, local niche directories convert the best. But for our writing services, Google Adwords converts the best. For our SEO services, we use a combination of social media and a press release site that we've built to generate leads. These convert well. For our PR services, old-fashioned word-of-mouth seems to work the best.

And we get good results. Our site has increased in PageRank over the three years of existence at least 1 PagerRank point per year. We now have a PR 4, which is actually pretty difficult to get nowadays. A PR 4 today is like a PR 5.5 a couple of years ago, as Google as tightened up it's PageRank metric. We still don't get a significant amount more traffic this year than we did in year one, but our sales and revenue still increase each year. It has been a slight increase, but an increase nonetheless. Enough so that we've gone from a one-man shop to a 4 staff business.

Setting Each to Its Proper Task

2009-12-30T07:02:00.001-08:00

I've spent some time on this blog talking about the online "marketing mix." We've explored understanding it, and finding the right marketing channel for achieving a certain objective. This post is an addendum to that. In this post we will discuss Twitter as a Client Relations tool and blogs as a branding and trust-building tool.

*Twitter, Client Relations & Customer Service
I want to first talk about Twitter's value in customer service. While Twitter can be used in a few different ways - we've discussed some of these in other posts - Twitter really helps in enhancing customer service and client relations. The real-time nature of Twitter makes it easy to respond to customer questions, complaints and concerns.

Twitter's informal forum seems to encourage people to tweet things they wouldn't feel as comfortable with saying in an email or over the phone. The very human, down-to-earth quality of the site makes people sort of loosen up. In our experence, the mediation of the "status feed" encourages clients and customers to just start casual conversation with vendors. As a result, Twitter gives vendors a unique opportunity to really focus on relational marketing.

Don't neglect or underestimate the marketing and sales value of this.

*Blogs Build Value, Show Expertise & Engender Trust
With the advent of Twitter, some Internet marketers are saying that the traditional blog format will become obsolete or will soon vanish. We completely disagree with this. We are finding that blogs and Twitter (i.e., microblogs) serve very different purposes, and that the traditional blog forum is yet an indispensable part of the online marketing mix.

Blogs are still great for building value in a product, service or brand. For example, in a blog post you can extol the virtues of a product in detail and evoke fascination in a way that you just can't with a microblog site like Twitter. Also, I would wager that at least 40% of all Tweets link to a blog post expounding upon the Tweet in greater detail In this way, blogs and Twitter work very well together and create a kind of synergy with each other.

Blogs are also excellent media for showing readers your unique expertise. A new spin on a common problem; offering insight or information on a subject few others offer; demonstrating that you know what you're talking about; these are the province of blogs. You can't really do that with a microblog.

Finally, blogs can build trust in a way that microblogs cannot. For example, we will often send a blog post to a potential client or sales prospect as part of our sales and marketing strategy. As the prospect is thinking about whether or not to hire us, they can mull over a blog post that dives into detail on some subject od interest to them. This increases trust a little bit because we're not only showing our expertise but we're also giving them free knowledge and free consultation of sorts. This helps sow the seeds for closing the sale in the future.

Eric Bryant, Director
Gnosis Arts
22 Ray Court
Bedminster NJ 07921
908.787.3475
www.gnosisarts.com

Update on Our Twitter Syndication Network Service

2009-12-27T18:20:00.000-08:00

The BETA launch of our new Twitter syndication service is now well underway. To update our readers, our service now gives you the opportunity to join our Twitter Syndication Network. We are striving to build a network of Twitter accounts, with diverse audiences, much in the same way television, news and radio stations build networks. As a Member, you enjoy the benefits of getting their message out to all the followers within the Network. This will increase your online exposure as the Network grows.

Why Syndicate Tweets?
A news network consists of many syndicates. These syndicates broadcast or publish the network's messages on their individual channels. By combining the strengths of multiple broadcast channels, a network can reach a much larger audience than any single news publication or broadcast alone. In the same way, we have constructed a sort of Twitter Syndicate network. Members who utilize the service can syndicate their tweets throughout the entire network of Twitter member "channels", or accounts.

Using Our Twitter Syndication Service
To use our service, just visit http://s.gnosisarts.com/twtsynd. When you enter your tweet in the form, your tweet will be syndicated on the Twitter status timelines of each of the Member sites. Currently, the total follower count of all our Twitter Syndication Network Members is over 12,000. We have plans in 2010 to begin offering a subscription to the Network, with revenue-sharing.

Free Twitter Ads | Advertise, Publicize, Syndicate Your Tweets

2009-12-19T18:52:00.000-08:00

Gnosis Arts now offers free Twitter advertising for your business. We've always wanted a sort of Twitter syndication service, so we decided to build our own.

When you utilize our free service, your tweet will be automatically published throughout our Twitter feeds.Our Twitter feeds have over 6,000 followers. Your tweet is published within a few seconds.

Just visit http://gnosisarts.com/home/freetwitterads.html to use the service.

2009-12-07T06:08:00.000-08:00

We have a couple of new services to help give you more visibility for your business online.

First, don't forget to check out our latest eBook, "Cracking the MerchantCircle SEO Code." This new eBook shows you step by step how to optimize a MerchantCircle business website to get hundreds of visitors and page 1 search engine rankings. The eBook is available for download at http://s.gnosisartscom/seonj

Next, we've just launched a new SEO product called the Synergy SEO Schema (SM). With this new SEO methodology, we're able to put content - your content - on page 1 in the majore search engines. You can find out more at http://seo-synergy.site11.com

And our free press release site is an affordable, yet effective, way of promoting your business. You can include two anchor text hyperlinks in your release, and you can submit two free press releases per month. You can create SEO optimized press releases that ca rank highly in the search engines. We also have a Google News Syndication service as well, for a low monthly subscription fee.

Sent from my T-Mobile Dash

Eric Bryant, Director
Gnosis Arts
22 Ray Court
Bedminster, NJ 07921
908.787.3475
www.gnosisarts.com

Social Media Delivers Poor ROI (Strikethrough) (cont'd)

2009-11-20T15:22:00.001-08:00

Yesterday's blog post was about whether social media can deliver a good ROI to your business. Though I had hastily claimed in the past that social media ROI was poor, today I am officially rescinding that statement. Today, I saw the power of social media in action and unleashed.

We launched social media promotions for a client website. A day prior to actuallt advertising the product, we used Twitter to generate buzz about the product. We did it as a sort of countdown. If you download our toolbar, you'll be the first to hear about the promo. If you become a fan on Facebook, you'll be next. And if you're a Twitter follower, you'll be third.

As I described yesterday, this strategy produced significant buzz and interest. I didn't know it would, but it did. It tilled the marketing soil for today's sales seed, if you will.

Today's results indicate very strongly that this worked well. Make a long story short, we generated 5 sales within a few hours of the toolbar update and social media promotional updates. There is little doubt in my mind that social media accomplished this because the product promo hadn't even gone out to our email subscriber list at the time the sales were reported.

This result, to me, is nothing short of spectacular. It proved to me that I was wrong in my initial assertion. I saw the proof with my own eyes.

Nevertheless, I do think that there are other factors that come into play to make social media promotion a success. I still think, for example, that the popularity of the brand is key; the less well known or sought after a brand is, the less effective a social media marketing campaign will be.

I also think that you have to do a social media promo in a certain way. I think a good deal of groundwork has to first be laid cultivating a following on Twitter and Facebook and nurturing those relationships. If your Twitter or Facebook feeds are just full of "sales spam" and you've spent little or no time in truly engaging and connecting with followers, on a non-business level, then the marketing value of social media is diminished.

It's amazing to me, people's need for sincere relationship and useful information - even online. If your business' social media profiles don't establish these two characteristics FIRST, then I don't think these sites will be effective marketing channels.

Sent from my T-Mobile Dash

Eric Bryant, Director
Gnosis Arts
22 Ray Court
Bedminster, NJ 07921
908.787.3475
www.gnosisarts.com

Social Media Has Poor ROI (Strikethrough)

2009-11-20T05:54:00.001-08:00

In a previous blog post I made the audacious claim that social media sites like Twitter and Facebook have poor ROI. Then, in a following post, I argued that we should reconceptualize "ROI" for social media, perhaps renaming the acronym "Return on Information" or "Return on Influence." Clearly, our SEO team has been struggling in a back and forth way to understand relative strengths and weaknesses of social media with respect to business success.

Now, I am back over the fence. Recent happenings on one of our client Twitter feeds we manage has caused me to recant on my earlier claim that social media delivers poor ROI.

Yesterday, several things came together for me in a weird sort of serendipity. My client is about to publish a new holiday product, and I started a conversation about the product on his Twitter feed. Immediately I got several responses from enthusiastic, interested followers. "Sounds awesome!", "How can I get in on that!", and "You're on a roll today!" were just a few of the responses.

So, in an almost Taoist go-with-the-flow sort of way, carried away by the energy of the moment, I put together an online marketing promotion. It was quick, spur of the moment, not planned or thought out. I told our followers that if they download the client's toolbar, they would be the first to know about the special - via their desktop. (The toolbar has a Java API that enables me to send a desktop alert.)

"The next group to receive the news will be our Facebook fans," I continued "So, if you miss the toolbar update, you might wanna go ahead and start following us on Facebook because this will be the next round of updates."

The third group to be updated would be our Twitter followers, I explained. "After that, it'll be open to the general public and it's anybody's game."

All this promoting (marketing?) will happen before I publish the package on the main website. And before I send the deal out to our email subscriber list.

Incredibly, the "buzz" of this not-planned out, spur of the moment, "promotion" was astonishing. Engagement and response levels went through the ceiling; Twitterers were coming out of the woodworks to follow my client, to get in on the action. There was a dense air of expectancy that caused me to pause, seriously, to think about what had just happened.

And all this occurred in the timespan of 10 minutes, at the most!

*The Import
My PR Manager, Susan Marie, is a raving Twitter fan. She believes that Twitter will become the next big search engine and will revolutionize news production. She has been researching everything Twitter and is composing a position paper on the subject, the first draft of which I have reviewed. Her thesis is that Twitter mastery will be the next big thing in SEO best practices. I, on the other hand, am not yet sold on this.

But yesterday's exchange has caused me to step back from previous positions I've held. It is obvious that there is tremendous power in what we did through Twitter yesterday. In a span of minutes we generated "buzz", garnered a bunch of new followers, got several more folks to install our toolbar, got others to fan us on facebook ...

I mean, there IS a return on investment here; it is undeniable. Precisely quantifying that ROI may be impossible, but you can "feel" that it is there and that it is good, in a marketing sense. Intuitively, one can sense that a step forward for marketing and customer relations management took place.

And perhaps we've finally figured out how to "put it all together" with social media? I'm not sure, but I think we're getting closer. At any rate, I think now I am compelled to rescind my former comments on the poor ROI of social media!

In fact, I'm going to go check my social media profiles for this client right now :)

Sent from my T-Mobile Dash

Eric Bryant, Director
Gnosis Arts
22 Ray Court
Bedminster, NJ 07921
908.787.3475
www.gnosisarts.com

Which Generates More PPC Conversions: AdWords or Yahoo?

2009-11-16T10:57:00.001-08:00

A very good article outlining some experimentation the author did on comparing Google AdWords to Yahoo Search Marketing ads. Google wins on this one.

clipped from www.searchengineguide.com

Clearly then, Google AdWords is a better choice if you are interested in clicks, impressions, and conversions. If you want the lower cost per click for the same position, it would seem that Yahoo is the better choice (though conversions are lower).

Qualities to Look for in a Great SEO

2009-11-16T06:02:00.001-08:00

Lately I've been thinking about what makes superior search engine optimizer. I ski myself, "If I needed to hire an SEO for our firm, what qualities or characteristics would I look for?" Here is my list of personality traits or skills that I would look for.

* Good Problem Solver
A good SEO knows how to correctly formulate a problem and figure out creative ways to solve it.

* Systematic Thinker
A good SEO knows how to approach Internet marketing systematically. S/he can see all the relevant elements of a plan and see what the relative importance of those elements are in the global strategy.

* An Analytic Thinker
I find philosophy students make good SEOs because they have good analytic skills. They know how to take a system apart and break it down to its basic constituents. They can then look at each of these elements and test them systematically.

* An Excellent Researcher
A good SEO has superior research ability. S/he knows how to locate key research and, more importantly, to interpret that research to achieve results. In short, what separates good SEOs from great SEOs is their ability to find information others can't find.

There are other more concrete skill sets that a good SEO will possess, but these, I think, are the most important. The others can be taught, but the four mentioned above are hard to teach. They represent more a way of thinking and problem solving rather than a tangible skill like knowledge of HTML or how to build ads in a PPC campaign.

If I were interviewing for an SEO specialist position, I would much rather have someone strong in the four aforementioned qualities and a little weaker in the more concrete qualities, than the other way round.

Sent from my T-Mobile Dash

Eric Bryant, Director
Gnosis Arts
22 Ray Court
Bedminster, NJ 07921
908.787.3475
www.gnosisarts.com

SEO Strategies - A New SEO System

2009-11-10T14:04:00.000-08:00

We've devised a new SEO strategy. And it works.

Our SEO study has revealed that it is possible to obtain page 1 placement, on any major or minor search engine, for virtually any term. To do so, however, requires ingenuity and innovative SEO strategies that go beyond the on-page SEO potential of any one website.

S3℠ is all about the concept of synergy. We have taken this concept of synergy and simply applied it to the science of Search Engine Optimization. By utilizing the collective strength of several well-chosen sites, we are able to achieve astonishing SEO results for our clients - results which could scarcely be achieved through more conventional on-page SEO methods of manipulating a master site.

More to come on this...

The Importance of the AdWords Quality Score

2009-11-10T09:59:00.001-08:00

Google AdWords has a metric called Quality Score (QS for short). It is sort of like the PageRank metric. It is a numeric value from one to 10 that represents how relevant an ad's landing page is to the ad content.

Understanding how QS affects your ad performance is important to running a winning PPC ad campaign. We recently did some testing and confirmed the general rule: the lower your landing page QS, the less frequently your ads show for your selected keywords.

In addition, a low QS typically means you will have to pay more per click. But our research also found that a QS below 4 means, not only will your ads display less frequently overall, but they will display less frequently in high-click positions as well.

While it is not always easy to directly improve a page's QS, we have noticed that a site consisting of multiple pages on the theme of your ads generally produced a higher individual QS for any single page.

###

Sent from my T-Mobile Dash

Eric Bryant, Director
Gnosis Arts
22 Ray Court
Bedminster, NJ 07921
908.787.3475
www.gnosisarts.com

What is advanced SEO, and who is expert in it?

2009-11-02T16:13:00.000-08:00

An essential question: What does advanced search engine optimization (SEO) consist of, and who has the expertise to achieve it?

I think that a new SEO method is necessary, which we at Gnosis Arts are working on, one that takes into account algorithmic changes and adapts SEO strategy accordingly.

To begin with, SEO is art and science: A broad range of strategies and techniques; not easily pinned down, but often derivative of the intuition of experience and analysis.

The true SEO expert knows that page rankings and positions alone are not enough.

An expert understands execution and the knowledge that if not properly done, things such as IP delivery and page rank sculpting can go very far afield from one's business goals.

There are things to keep in mind such as SERPS: Webopedia clarifies perfectly:

Short for search engine results page, the Web page that a search enginereturns with the results of its search. The major search engines typically display three kinds of listings on their SERPs. Listings that have been indexed by the search engine’s spider, listings that have been indexed into the searchengine’s directory by a human, and listings that are paid to be listed by the search engine.
Also see How Web Search Engines Work in the Did You Know . . . ? section of Webopedia.

The target audience must be persuaded to click on the link, and the graphics of the site must accommodate the SEO. Tag words and meta-tags must not be too cluttered; the exact information of the seeker must be clear.

(Developing a web friendly site is important, and will be covered next month. )

SEO Optimize Website , one of the gems of Search Engine techniques and social marketing internet analysis, whom I treat as a sort of holy grail, have this marvelous post which I show below. Oddly, one of the reasons I absolutely love their posting is that they make reference to so many of the tested methods which Eric Bryant, Director, Gnosis Arts Multimedia , and I, were intuitively using already!

Here is a synopsis from their lengthy post :

Web Design/Development

Landing page optimization for organic search results
ROI oriented usability testing (Split A/B Testing etc.)
Streamlining information architecture towards a predefined sales funnel
Enforcing security considerations to prevent crackers from compromising your system and hijacking your site’s authority
Implementing dynamic scalability for large sites by self replicating processes
Siloing content on important keyword optimized pages (instead of PageRank sculpting)

Web Analytics

Identifying the target audience by age, income, education, computer skills, region and understanding it
Conversion attribution to find out how many stages were involved in making a person finally appear on site or buy
Twitter analytics to follow your true fans and connectors who spread the word and realistic Twitter traffic numbers
Monitoring long tail keyword combinations and frequency for early acknowledgment of trends
Time based and historic keyword research to identify potentials for recurring traffic spikes

Content Creation

Creating videos, ebooks, infographics and other rich media for SEO purposes
Semantic SEO trying to understand user intent and serving the appropriate content
Business blogging beyond solely SEO copywriting keyword rich content for search engines
Writing of “magnetic Web content“, with “killer headlines” and irresistible hooks
Defining an SEO code of ethics for your company and anticipating upcoming industry standards
Allowing and managing and user generated conent with crowdsourcing, tagging/folksonomy
Predictive SEO in order to be the first to offer supplies for demands that don’t exist yet

Link Acquisition

On topic widget bait for long term recurring results (not just link bait)
Creating both funny and engaging quizzes. Example: SEO expert quiz
Preparing and implementing contests to actively empower audiences as brand evangelists
Establishing reputable awards or annual best of collections. Examples: Web 2.0 awards, Semmys
“Pulling a Calacanis” that is stirring controversy to gain attention and make adversaries and supporters to link to you

Social Media Outreach

Proactive online reputation building, instead of just reactive firemen like management
Social CRM for all relevant groups (beyond “customers”). Example: Influencers
Creating and spreading viral memes through various media independently of your own presence there
Creating communities both inside and outside your own websites. Example: Dell Idea storm
Disseminating social media press releases and cultivating blogger relations

Expanding into New Markets

Embracing Twitter plus other Microblogging for business purposes
International multilingual SEO on one site or creating parallel sites
Geo-location based local SEO and IP delivery for international businesses
Mobile search optimization with appropriate CSS formats for different use cases
Introducing “real life” SEO with links you can scan with your mobile (See SEO Optimize at: http://www.seoptimise.com/blog/2009/06/30-advanced-seo-tactics-techniques-and-resources-55-links.html)

Semantic Web: The Future of SEO

2009-10-30T17:09:00.001-07:00

This week I participated in a very fruitful forum discussion on the Semantic Web. It helped me better conceptualize what it is; and, more importantly, how it can be applied to the subset of Internet marketing I specialize in - SEO. That discussion leads me to believe that the Semantic Web technology is really the future of SEO.

*What Is the Semantic Web?
This is a broad question, and you get different answers depending upon whom you ask. But I want to try to define it in terms of SEO.

Basically, the purpose of SW technology is to help search engines understand the meaning of web content better. That's really it in a nutshell.

For example, in previous HTML iterations, we used to use the tag to stand for "bold." told web browsers: "Display this text darker and thicker than the rest." It is, in essence, a representational tag; it doesn't tell the browser anything qualitative or evaluative about the text; it merely tells how to display it.

Then, the W3C came out with the tag. Though it may not be obvious, the tag is a sort of beginning of the reach toward a more semantic markup. It tells the browser "This text has a strong emphasis" but it does not tell the browser how exactly to render - or represent - the text. It gives data about the text, that it should be emphasized in some way.

Next, it became more proper to do away with these sorts of "old-school" tags. Though most of us still use them to give display directives to browsers, correct W3C markup is to use the or <div> elements, in conjuction with inline or external <style> directives, to display text features. So now we use code like



To tell the browser how to render something. More meaning is given here than in the . This new markup says, "Whatever is within this span, it is more important than whatever is outside the span." See how the markup is providing more and more info about the info?

*More and More Meaning
The point of all this is that Web markup language has been evolving towards providing more data about data, as opposed to simply ... Well ...conveying or displaying data. This "data about data" we call metadata. In other words, more and more coding language is being used to give information about the natural language it is manipulating.

If you can understand this basic idea, namely, that markup language is moving increasingly toward talking "about" language instead of merely representing language, then you're already on your way to grasping the import of the Semantic Web.

*So, What Is the Semantic Web, Again? And Why Is It Important to the Future of SEO?

Now, since 2005, roughly, there have been a family of markup languages that have been developed. And they have been developed for precisely this reason: to provide more "data about the data". Why do we need more metadata? Well, we (humans) don't need it so much. But machines (e.g., browsers, software, search engines, servers, etc) well, they do need it.

Let me give you an example of why.

Google the phrase "fried chicken in kentucky." What you get is several results for "Kentucky Fried Chicken." In fact, this will be the first search result. Now, there's nothing wrong with this, if in fact your intention was to find a nearby KFC. But what if your intention was to find how how people in kentucky like to fry chicken?

See, a search engine (i.e., a machine) has a hard time knowing what you mean. This is because there is no real machine language (e.g., HTML) that can explain this to the machine, until recently.

That's what the new family of markup languages aims to do: give enough data about data (i.e., your search term) to "understand" the true meaning of your search.

*Semantics and SEO
How does this all play into SEO? Well, one goal of SEOs is to achieve higher rankings for certain search terms, right? In order to do this, an SEO uses techniques to feed the search engines exactly the data about a website he wants them to know. He also attaches the relative importance of that data as well. In other words, the SEO tries to give the SEs added meaning, i.e., semantics.

As such, an SEO is very much concerned with "data about data", i.e., metadata. He manipulates meta keywords, meta descriptions, link relationships, alt img src, and <h> tags - and a whole host of other web markup data - in order to achieve these results.

In short, an SEOs success hinges upon being able to make sure that search engines read all of his website's content and understand it in the way he wants them to.

Well, this is all semantics, when you think about it.

The Semantic Web SEO would basically do all this, but to an ever-increasing degree. He would extract all representational coding from the old days and separate that out to a CSS file, for instance, and then recode the tags in a more Semantic way (e.g., using in place of ).

As he's doing this, he begins to see that virtually all tags are Semantic in spirit. He will start thinking about how each of them may be re-represented, recoded, to provide more data about the data.

And then he will make a discovery: that languages already exist to assist with this. Perhaps the most pertinent for SEO is one called Resource Description Framework A (RDFa). He will begin to learn of the SEO potential of RDFa. He may also start making broader use of Microformats - which are, in a sense, RDF prototypes. In short, he will begin to see that there really is no limit to what he can "communicate" to a search engine about his website content. The SEOs who master this the best will likely achieve higher rankings and greater visibility than the ones who don't.

...and THAT is the future of SEO, baby!

*Gnosis Arts: On the Cutting Edge
Just so you know, our team is already hard at work on learning these new semantic markup languages. We are doing our research and experimentation as this blog post is published. We always strive to stay at the very top of our game, not satisfied that any SEO agency should know more than we.

If your firm would like to talk to us about how we can enhance your website's visibility, rankings and traffic, contact us at

http://gnosisarts.genbook.com

Or by phone at 908.458.9122

Getting Your Tracking Right

2009-10-26T16:05:00.001-07:00

I recently posed a question in a forum asking what was the most important or useful SEO tip you've received. Of course, I got a lot of feedback - everything from do thorough keyword research to secure strong links. But the answer I thought was best was from an SEO who said, "Get your tracking right. " He glibly added that this was an area where "most SEOs were useless."

That's a pretty strong statement. But there is a hint of truth in it. Website tracking is both simple and complex. Simple in that it involves common sense. Complex in that it is not always easy to figure out how best to apply that common sense to real analytics situations.

Doing proper tracking isn't always what it seems. For instance, today I had to figure out how to determine the number of reservations we receive from a third-party website. Should be pretty simple, right? The only problem is: I cannot install tracking scripts on the third-party site, and the reservations booked through the site aren't populated in our in-house reservation database. Not to mention, the third -party site is in large part generated dynamically, thus compounding the problem.

After thinking long and hard on this, it came down to a rather simple, commonsense, solution: Call the Director of Operations and get a report of the number of reservations generated from the site in question!

This is the simplest, quickest and most effective way of tracking that particular variable. And it had nothing to do with scripts and goals and funnels and advanced segments.

In other cases the simplest way to track web activity is to create duplicate routes to a conversion goal. Of course, you have to be careful with this option so as to avoid any duplicate content issues that may arise, but this ca be mitigated with proper meta tagging.

At other times it is most effective to create a rewritten URL to track visitor activity. At other times it may be best to manually tag the landing page URL. Still other times it may be easiest to create a contact form with special notes in it. Then again, another situation may call for customizing a script to track an artificial pageview. There are any number of tracking situations and possibilities.

But the overarching question to ask in web tracking is: 1. What exactly do I need to track? And 2. What is the simplest, most direct way to track it?

Bing, Twitter & SEO

2009-10-22T13:55:00.000-07:00

Well, today Bing has launched it's Bing Twitter search engine. It is supposed to be the closest thing to real-time search the search world has seen. Of course, it raises all sorts of questions in my mind as an SEO. Like: How will this development alter SEo strategy; how the search algos determine which Tweets to index; etc. Our staff today has been peeking at Bing Twitter (I think it should be called Twitter BING!!) to try to see if we can decipher a pattern to it. So far, can't figure it out. More to come on this latest of developments.

Goals. Funnels, Conversions,URL Tagging, Customizing Ga.Js Scripts...

2009-10-16T17:07:00.001-07:00

C'mon, Now!

Let's simplify all this s**t, for cryin' out loud!

While Google Analytics offers some powerful
tools for advanced, in-depth tracking, these tools can be daunting to figure out how to configure, to say the least. Configuring the Analytics javascript, let's face it, it ain't the easiest thing for the average Jane. And setting up goals, tracking conversions and manually tagging URLs aren't the most straightforward of tasks, either. Add to that tracking AJAX events, recording dynamic pageviews, and other higher level analytics, and you can easily see why none but the stout of heart cash in the chips.

As a result of this, I want to offer a simplified approach to accurately tracking your website visitor activity. This approach won't necessarily be sufficient in all circumstances, but it works and we've employed it successfully in at least 75% of cases.

This could be a really, really long post, as I could go into case studies and give far more detail than you care for. So, I'll try to keep in short(ish) and simple.

*The Analytics Axiom
The Tao of tracking a conversion process, or a funnel route, or a goal - whatever you want to call it - rests upon this one All-Important Principle:

>> Set things up so that the end page you want to use as the conversion "goal" can ONLY be reached by ONE AND ONLY ONE route.

That's it; That's the rule. If you master that one principle, you will be able to bypass much of that other crap I mentioned in the first few sentences of this blog post - and you will have reliable numbers for the majority of the cases in which you need to perform advanced tracking and measurement

An Important Distinction Between Conversions and Funnels

2009-10-16T14:24:00.001-07:00

This may be why your getting contradictory data when viewing the Conversions report v. the Funnel Visualization report.

clipped from www.google.com

The goal conversions on the goal conversions report shows all visitors that have hit the conversion page of a goal regardless of their entrance path.

The funnel visualization page's goal conversion number shows all visitors that have successfully passed through all required steps in the goal funnel before hitting the goal conversion page. If you have selected the Step Required checkbox on the goal settings page then a visitor is required to visit this first step's URI before they will be counted towards a goal conversion on the funnel viz page. See this Help Center article for more info about the Required Step check box: https://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=72714&hl=en_US .

Some SEO adages to bear well in mind

2009-10-11T11:58:00.000-07:00

Chelsea Rollins of Ambrias Company has joined forces with Susan Kovalinsky and Eric Bryant (Director, Gnosis Arts Multimedia Communications) to ensure that small businesses go "hot" across the net. Working within the framework of some essentials are part of the dedicated and ongoing platform for success that this team is committed to.

To begin with, it is essential to understand that search engine optimization is an ongoing process; along the way one learns to hone in on the essential successful elements of SEO and can then tinker and "tweak" the process as it unfolds.

Certainly good press releases are the bedrock of SEO, along with carefully placed articles with proper tagging and key words within. (Wikipedia is one such, but can be problematic unless the "less is more" adage is adhered to!) Of course social bookmarking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Technocrati, Current, Digg, Newsvine, are a help; so, too, are things like OpEd pieces, expert blogging and website creation.

The internet is a complex give and take network of connections within connections, patterns within patterns, and I have found again and again that my pieces have ranked #1 on Google Engine search because I have intuitively "ridden" the waves of certain key ideas which then "piggyback" onto others, creating a sort of "fanning" effect. Together with Eric Bryant, I was able to turn a simple press release promoting a little-known British quantum theorist at a Manhattan event - through use of key words, proper images and text, and certain well placed promotional ideas - into a success which drew over 300 members of the New York press and public to the Roosevelt Hotel. Events management from the hotel told me that they were totally awed, stunned actually, that this occurred on a Monday night in August, at 6 p.m., which they informed me was about the most inopportune time they could have imagined. I was told by one PR expert that the feat we had pulled off was "tantamount to raising the dead"! So I would venture to say I am growing quite confident as to my methodical approach to SEO!

Additionally, I have found that "lucky accidents" regarding prestigious online media picking up certain of my press releases were in the end not so much chance, but a reward for the steadfast attention to correct timing and positioning, with precision of key phrases, which I had allowed to be my lodestar and guide. A blending of art and science would certainly seem to be the key to the process of SEO and Internet marketing.

Results are not always immediate, and can take weeks and months before they "take". Being a student of SEO involves some patience, and a keen eye for patterns. I might restate in closing that intuitive grasp of patterns is a talent, a true tool of the inward eye and mind, and is perhaps the distinguishing mark of the SEO "expert".

A couple of ideas for good measure: 1. Web analytics will not tell you much unless you have a clear idea of exactly your target goals and tasks. A good, clear plan is indispensable.

2. URLs and links must be SEO "charged"; conducive to the interconnection of the internet traffic patterns.

In the end, it is a flowing process of staying informed, keen watchfulness, diligence, and the will to succeed which forms the underpinning of successful SEO.

An excellent article to pore over is this one: http://www.seoptimise.com/blog/2009/06/30-advanced-seo-tactics-techniques-and-resources-55-links.html