Exclusive Concepts Blog » Down Memory Lane

Juicy Links: June 25 – June 29

admin — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 11:39:16 +0000

Hot off the presses: valuable marketing tips, insights into link building, the evolution of social media, and, of course, the scoop on the iPhone. Check out this week’s Juicy Links round-up.

Marketing

How to not discourage innovation

If you can measure everything, are you really measuring anything?

High speed access notwithstanding, maybe we shouldn’t be so fancy with our Websites

As online ad viewers become more sophisticated, it’s time to create an experience

Search and RSS

V(ideo)SO: Plan, Produce, Promote, Prove

Linking

9 tips for link building

Content as link bait

Social Media

Rapid growth of Facebook out-cools MySpace

Shareable apps being tested on Facebook to rave reviews

This would only come from the UK: Facebook / MySpace divide along socio-economic class

Yahoo!

Yahoo! leads the pack for top Web properties

Yahoo’s many strengths

Google

Internet restrictions = trade barriers, according to Google

Apple

David Pogue’s iPhone review (The New York Times)—don’t miss the video

Pogue’s FAQs

To sum up, here’s what the iPhone doesn’t have

So, perhaps what you need are some accessories….

Verizon finger-wags on some features

A primer on Wi-Fi vs. EDGE networks (i.e., why is AT&T so slow?)

Around the Web

BBC’s 15 Web Principles

More Conversions! A new website optimization service.

Exclusive Concepts Blog Team — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 02:13:21 +0000

Why More Conversions!?

If you’re like most website owners, you want to drive traffic to your site. You’ve invested in building an attractive site and may even have tried traffic-generating tactics like pay-per-click (PPC) online advertising and search engine optimization (SEO).

Yet, increasing traffic without ensuring your website is optimized to convert that traffic into sales leads is inefficient, unproductive – and possibly a waste of money.

An increase of just 1% in your website’s conversion rate can improve your bottom-line results by 50% or more. That’s why Excusive Concepts has developed More Conversions!

If you want to maintain your existing site design, get more value from SEO investments, add content management capabilities, and improve your bottom line, the Exclusive Concepts More Conversions! Service is the answer.

What’s included in More Conversions!?
• A Website conversion analysis and improvement plan

• A site re-design that incorporates the conversion enhancements while retaining your existing site’s look and feel

• Integration of a state-of-the-art content management system that allows non-technical users to easily add and modify content to the website

• A streamlined schedule that provides the newly optimized site in about 60 days

• Optional search engine optimization and search advertising services

If you’re ready to take your business to the next level, call Exclusive Concepts at 781-810-9107 or send an email

Juicy Links: June 22, 2007

admin — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 12:40:32 +0000

What happened this week in the Internet marketing world and around the Web? Check out our Juicy Links round-up.

Marketing

Direct Marketing Association catches on to online

Improving the end searcher experience

Media brands and distribution: “Our selling proposition is we’re selling the audience that comes to the Wall Street Journal… It’s the high income decision makers.”

Study: email marketing campaigns need better landing pages

Your brand as an experience

Search and RSS

Boosting PR results with SEO, SEM & RSS through press releases

20 SEO “don’ts??

Okay, so they changed the algorithm. Keep the faith.

Linking

7 principles of the Web

Social Media

“Are your interactions delivering enough value to your users???

Social networks goes offline

Social Media: All voices count.

Web 2.0: user generated online campaigns

10 ways to promote with social media

Yahoo!

Yahoo! to take on MySpace?

Apple

iPhone guided tour — riveting

Summary of notable features from the tour

Not even shipped yet, and already tied for first place

Yet IT departments are scrambling

iTunes passes Amazon as top music retailer

Juicy Links of the Week: June 15, 2007

Herb — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 12:22:41 +0000

What happened this week in the Internet marketing world and around the Web? Check out our Juicy Links round-up.

Marketing

“…every single traditional media will lose revenue to online advertising.”

Search marketing just got a lot harder

Unprecedented views into customer behavior with instant replay analytics

10 factors to test your landing pages

Search and RSS

Permission Marketing’s Seth Godin at SES Canada

Social Media

Facebook: it’s about fitting in not causing waves

Google

eBay, Google, PayPal and Checkout: Can’t we all just get along?

But eBay pulling ads generated a “collective sigh of relief”

Day without Google right out of Seinfeld

10 tips on using Google Analytics

New Analytics features

YouTube and the election: the real problem is “b.s.”

Google and Intel go green

Apple

No cell service provider loyalty when it comes to iPhone

Microsoft

Microsoft fights Google’s complaints about Vista

Amazon

Amazon going strong, topping Google in valuation

…but not even Harry Potter is contributing to profits

Blogs

How to become a Super Blog

Blogging as a marketing tool

Around the Web

Now find out for sure: Is your boss crazy?

Google requires high quality landing pages and websites

admin — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 06:38:53 +0000

Did you know that Google has landing page and site quality “guidelines”? More importantly did you know that this affects the price you pay to advertise on Google?

In fact, Google is very open that Adwords customers are expected to meet quality guidelines. How well you meet them affects your “Quality Score.” As Google states:

“The AdWords system uses your Quality Score to define several important factors for your keywords when you first create your ads. These factors define how much you’ll pay for clicks…”

What are some of the quality guidelines?
• Link to the page on your site that provides the most useful and accurate information about the product or service in your ad.
• Ensure that your landing page is relevant to your keywords and your ad text.
• Try to provide information without requiring users to register. Or, provide a preview of what users will get by registering.
• In general, build pages that provide substantial and useful information to the end-user. If your ad does link to a page consisting of mostly ads or general search results (such as a directory or catalog page), provide additional information beyond what the user may have seen in your ad or on the page prior to clicking on your ad
• You should have unique content (should not be similar or nearly identical in appearance to another site). For more information, see our affiliate guidelines.

Until recently, these guidelines were aimed at the Adwords advertisers, but now they are applying them to sites that host Google ads (Adsense).

That’s good news for Google Adsense advertisers. If you need help developing or improving landing pages or websites to perform better give us a call at 781-810-9107

Juicy Links of the Week: June 8, 2007

Herb — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 15:13:57 +0000

What happened this week in the Internet marketing world and around the Web? Check out our Juicy Links round-up.

Marketing

Improve your conversion rate with these tips from BusinessWeek

Great copy for Web 2.0

Ten tips to increase conversion rates

Future of Online Advertising: conference in New York

Shifting Internet metrics spell new ways to quantify results

Search and RSS

Knows just enough to be dangerous: the PPC marketing beginner

Justifying your job with ROI: search marketers’ job performance rating

Social Media

Mobile networking with Sprite

Yahoo!

Yahoo! partners with print media online

To search, or not to search?

Google

The Google Doodle: learn about the artist and see the slide show

Apple

3 million is the magic number for the iPhone

How big will it be?

“Apple is preparing for one of the most pivotal summers in its history.??

The kinder, gentler Steve Jobs

Microsoft

The love / hate relationship between Jobs and Gates

Gates finally gets his degree

Amazon

Netflix to join Amazon?

Juicy Links of the Week: June 1, 2007

Herb — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 10:54:07 +0000

What happened this week in the Internet marketing world and around the Web? Check out our Juicy Links round-up.

Marketing

Buy whenever they want, wherever they want

Lack of standards complicates email delivery to mobiles

They caught one! Finally a spammer is brought to justice

CyberNet rejoices

Emetrics Summit

Keynote gives four tricks of the trade

Info on Web analytics

Analysis of analytics industry

Search and RSS

The next wave: semantic search

Manage your search professionally

Social Media

How is Facebook the new Apple?

Harnessing the power of user-generated content

Yahoo!

Some new tools from Yahoo!

Google

Privacy issues plague Google’s Street View

$1 per Internet user? Nice!

Strange bedfellows: Apple and YouTube

Apple

Looks like we can all get along! Jobs / Gates interview

Apple iPhone details from Jobs

Microsoft

Just what we’ve been waiting for: coffee table monitor

Not all links are equal

Herb — Tue, 29 May 2007 08:17:59 +0000

Search engines view links to your site as “votes” and and give much weight to these inbound links when they determine your sites position in the rankings.

It goes without saying that not all links are created equal. Back in the day, you could get away with trading reciprocal links like crazy to secure top spots in Google, MSN and Yahoo.

Today, that’s no longer the case. Search engines can detect these reciprocal link building schemes and have devalued them. Reciprocal links aren’t necessarily bad but they aren’t good enough.

You know from your own experience that websites that are linked to from other high quality, authoritative sites are likely to be more meaningful and valuable. Search engines are looking for the same thing.

Successful link building is based on inbound links from quality websites that are popular, authoritative, and relevant to your site Other issues like link anchor text, surrounding copy, acquisition rate, number on a page, and semantic relationship all have impact.

Link building has evolved into an art form. It can neither be too contrived or abstract. If you are interested in improving your sites search ranking then consider a quality link building service. Contact Exclusive Concepts at 781-810-9107 and we’ll explain how we can help.

Juicy Links of the Week: May 25, 2007

Herb — Fri, 25 May 2007 10:03:22 +0000

What happened this week in the Internet marketing world and around the Web? Check out our Juicy Links round-up.

Marketing

The marketing jackpot—the sweet spot we seldom find

We’ve adapted: spam being brought under control by users

The stats, broken down

Going easy on the duplicate content, and why

Playing tag as a marketing tool

Consumer behavior: Is it only price?

Search and RSS

Test your SEO strategy for globalization

B2B buyers and search: What are they looking for?

Social Media

10 ways to use social media to promote your business

Facebook is “getting in MySpace’s face??

Some analysis of the news from Read/WriteWeb

Thoughts from ClickZ

Facebook IPO soon?

MySpace to help authorities with offenders

Marketers aren’t quite getting social media

Microsoft

Maybe they don’t love Yahoo! after all

Microsoft in the agency business

Google

Google banned ads list—they really are trying to do no evil

Yahoo!

How the new Facebook strategy might crush Yahoo!

Blogs

US DoD blocks soldiers’ blogging. The soldiers’ response

YouTube’s going to fight it

Outlook 2007 Won’t Display Your Newsletter!

admin — Mon, 21 May 2007 10:41:32 +0000

For reasons known only to Microsoft (actually they have an explanation but it’s weak) they have decided to substitute the Word 2007 HTML “engine?? for the Internet Explorer HTML version that they previously used.

The technical impact? As Microsoft states on the page explaining this change:

“Word 2007 supports a subset of the standard HTML 4.01 specification and of the Internet Explorer 6.0 HTML specification. Word 2007 also supports a subset of the standard Cascading Stylesheet Specification, Level 1. Word 2007 uses HTML elements that support a subset of the Word 2007 cascading style sheets properties.??

The business impact: Emails that you have been sending out will not display properly. Exactly what does that mean? You can see a sample from our own newsletter.

The first image is the way the newsletter would appear in the previous version of Outlook.

The second image shows the way it looks in Outlook 2007.

This final image is a new design we’ve just implemented. This newsletter will display properly in Outlook 2007 and improves on the overall look.

What can you do? You have to modify your newsletter templates so they will display properly in Outlook 2007. We’ve been getting many requests to do that by our clients. If you have a need contact 781-810-9107