Mediaboss Marketing

It’s 2012, and SEO has never been more difficult.

Convincing business owners to utilize us is an uphill battle.

SEO is not easy. Even the brightest and most talented of Internet marketing managers don’t have the capacity to devote to the effort. It takes dedication, persistence, patience, scientific inquiry and a heart of stone. Oh, and let’s not forget – TIME. However, if done correctly, SEO can reap huge benefits for online conversions. We know this, but we have to communicate this to business owners and marketing managers in a more effective way. Perhaps we begin with communicating the SEO landscape more efficiently.

But, what do business owners really need? In the past this was an easy question: links. How can I build links? This, however, is no longer the case. SEO strategies need to evolve in a serious way, and that’s what the majority of us are doing. These companies need SEO consultation, tactical implementation, content production and an overall strategy that will wrap this all together. Every company or organization that owns a web property that is or is one of its basis for making money, should be interested in investing time and money into search engine optimization and the consulting that may, or may not, be needed to accompany those initiatives. Period.

Let’s look at the funnel below:

I’d be willing to bet that every business owner would look at this graphic and quickly identify that it their funnel gets squeezed pretty tight around “Keyword Rankings”.

Business owner: “I need better rankings.”

It’s a simple answer. Develop and implement an SEO strategy. (I said it was simple, not easy.)

A modern day SEO consultant might approach that task like this: Optimize your domain. Optimize your pages. Optimize the architecture of your domain, and make sure it can be properly crawled and indexed by search engines. Create off-page signals that communicate an optimized, relevant message. Create a social network that’s connected and actively engaged with your domain and brand. Finally, make sure each aspect of your strategy works in conjunction with the other moving parts, thus creating an environment of interaction surrounding your domain and your brand on the Internet while creating the proper signals to search engines that will increase your keyword rankings and overall traffic.

Rinse and repeat. Right? Well, not exactly.

You’ll have to keep up as Google updates their algorithm around 500 times per year, optimizing your pages and domain ever-so-slightly in order to avoid dying the slow, painful death of traffic decrease as a result of a minor loss of 2-3 positions on page one that comes from not staying on top of your SEO game (or a massive stab in the traffic jugular in a few cases, *ahem*…Panda).

As SEO experts, we know how difficult it is to achieve and maintain top tier rankings nowadays. This must be communicated to our audience. There is no longer a silver bullet or magic formula.

For many, this is the end of the store when it comes to what they’d expect from hiring us.  In order to earn and keep the business of enterprise level clientele in the SEO space, we must step up our game. The tactics and strategies mentioned above focus on both domain and page micro-level issues (eg: building links, optimizing anchor text, fulfilling on-site content needs, and more). It’s 2012, and there is a whole other world of SEO offerings that we can bring to the table. I’m talking about macro-level offerings SEO consultation fulfills that are often overlooked, undervalued and in some cases, even ignored.

This is the macro-minded marketing and digital promotion expertise of the majority of professionals in the SEO field possess, understand, value and can offer to our clients. Bottom line: We know what a good, effective and profit-driving website looks like, inside and out.

Consider some of these macro-level questions that business owners desperately need help with:

Sure I need SEO, but where do I begin? What do I look for? How do I do keyword research on a mass scale? Where do I start when looking at my domain? What pages are most important to focus on for SEO? What’s most impactful? Can I aggregate Analytics data to put a weight on my pages? What am I already ranking for? How do I analyze rankings, are there tools for that? How do I create goals within my analytics for SEO performance? How do I report performance and time spent on SEO activities to my boss? Should I use a subdomain for development on a new segment of my company? What are my alternatives? My conversions are happening on a different domain – my users are redirected once they click the “buy” button. Is this acceptable? How do I fix it if it’s not? I have great rankings and awesome traffic for a couple of big terms – but they don’t convert, why is that and what should I do?

We SEO pros chomp at the bit for questions like these. We hear them, answer them and see results driven from them on a daily basis. There’s more to us than attempting to get backlinks built to a site, now let’s make that known. This is an evolving industry, and it’s evolving fast. We need to communicate that it’s alright for Internet marketing managers to ask for help with SEO. In fact, it’s expected.

Unless a company feels comfortable tacking their entire SEO operation by themselves or with the internal team they have developed at their organization, it’s expected that they’d hire on the help of an SEO agency or consulting company.

A final quiz for our world of Internet marketing managers:

Can you develop and implement a continuous SEO strategy around your domain, concerning both on and off page signals that are consistent and optimized with one another?

Do you feel comfortable answering all of the questions above and any related questions having to do with the macro-level nature of communicating your progress, success and standing in your competitive SEO space? Do you have the time to consistently track, analyze and deduct sound strategies from competitive and on-site data such as analytics, rankings increases/decreases, and other SEO driven tool sets?

If they can answer no to any of these questions, then they’re in the market for SEO consultation. We need to re-evaluate the perception of the SEO consultant and communicate the reality of our situation. SEO is not what it used to be. It’s a holistic effort, in every capacity. We’re quickly becoming digital brand advocators. We know SEO, we know the Internet, and we know how to make money from websites. Period.

Plus, we’re nerds – and who doesn’t love a nerd?

Originally posted here:
SEO Consulting for 2012

12-02-2012 01:01 IPAD 2 DASH CAMERA TEST VIDEO HOW TO MAKE MONEY WITH YOUR CAMERA BY BCNEWSVIDEO COQUITLAM BRITISH COLUMBIA CANADA

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IPAD 2 DASH CAMERA TEST VIDEO HOW TO MAKE MONEY WITH YOUR C - Video

12-02-2012 15:14 We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us. We Are Anonymous. ****************************************************************** Anonymous (used as a mass noun) is an Internet meme that originated in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan, representing the concept of many online and offline community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic, digitized global brain. It is also generally considered to be a blanket term for members of certain Internet subcultures, a way to refer to the actions of people in an environment where their actual identities are not known. In its early form, the concept has been adopted by a decentralized online community acting anonymously in a coordinated manner, usually toward a loosely self-agreed goal, and primarily focused on entertainment. Beginning with 2008, the Anonymous collective has become increasingly associated with collaborative, international hacktivism, undertaking protests and other actions, often in retaliation against anti-digital piracy campaigns by motion picture and recording industry trade associations. Actions credited to "Anonymous" are undertaken by unidentified individuals who apply the Anonymous label to themselves as attribution. Although not necessarily tied to a single online entity, many websites are strongly associated with Anonymous. This includes notable imageboards such as 4chan, their associated wikis, Encyclopædia Dramatica, and a number of forums. After a series of controversial, widely ...

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Anonymous: Freedom - Video

A new electronic system could save the once-threatened method of paying by cheque, its developers have said.

Paper cheques fell out of favour with banks as they were costly to process and need to be stored afterwards, yet they remained popular with customers, particularly the elderly.

Now a team of academics has developed a system which has the benefits of easy, electronic money transfer while preserving the physical attributes of something that is handed to the payee.

The team from Newcastle (Frankfurt: 725198 - news) , York and Northumbria Universities developed the system after speaking to a group of 80-year-olds from Tyneside.

Their research is to be presented today at the Computer Supported Co-operative Work conference in Seattle, in the US.

The new cheques look identical to traditional ones, save for the grey background on each one which is actually billions of tiny dots laid out in a specific pattern.

The account holder writes out the cheque as normal, but uses a digital pen which ‘reads’ the cheque as it is written. Once completed, they tick a box - the only difference to a normal cheque - and the information is transmitted directly to the payee’s bank account.

Dr John Vines, of Newcastle University, said: “Sending a cheque in a Christmas or birthday card is something many people do - not just the older generation.

“It’s easy and safe but it’s also personal.

“The beauty of this system is that it is a safe and cheap electronic transaction for the banks but it’s a physical paper-based transaction for the customer.”

Project lead Professor Andrew Monk, a psychologist at the University of York, said the 80-year-olds canvassed clearly understood cheque payments.

“Many of us still use cheques and in some cases the only alternative is to hand over cash which often isn’t ideal,” he said.

“For the banks, it’s not only the time and cost of processing cheques but, at present, where you store them after they have been processed.

“But for the bank’s customers - and particularly the older generation - cheques are seen as a vital part of their financial independence.

“They provide a permanent record which means they can easily keep track of what’s being spent.

“The people who worked with us also valued the experience of handing over a signed cheque to a named individual rather than the anonymity of online transactions.

“The beauty of our design is that you not only have something physical to hand over to the recipient, you also have a cheque book stub as a record.”

According to Newcastle University, cheque use has been falling in the UK since 1990. While the number of cheques being written each day is still high - around 3.5 million a day - this is down from 11 million in 1990.

A study by Age UK last year called The Way We Pay revealed 73% of people over 65 in the UK still frequently use cheques.

Michelle Mitchell, Charity Director-General of Age UK, said: “We’re delighted these researchers asked older people what they need and want in this critical part of daily life, paying bills and making payments.

“Hopefully banks will now see the potential and invest in this kind of innovative design which preserves what many people find invaluable about cheques but also makes the most of modern technology.”

Dr Vines added: “The larger lesson from this story is that we all need to listen carefully to what 80 and 90 year olds have to say to us.

“They grew up in a time when financial practices were quite different to the ones we are used to now but their values are pertinent to all of us.”

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Digital pen to save paper cheques

How much will you pay for design? The $79.95 Mophie Juice Pack Powerstation gives you less battery life than competing products, but it's a lot prettier. Whether that's worth it is up to you.

The Juice Pack Powerstation is an attractive little soft-touch rectangle at 2.3 by 4.1 by .5 inches (HWD) and 4.3 ounces. Like most Mophie products, it's very elgantly designed, with a silver band around the edge that echoes the iPhone 4/4S case. There are full-sized and MicroUSB ports on the top, and a single button on the side that lights up a line of four green LEDs to show the battery's stored charge.

The Powerstation doesn't come with a power adapter; you're supposed to charge it by plugging it into a PC or using an existing USB power adapter you have lying around. Unlike the Tylt Energi ($39.99, 3.5 stars) and Zagg Zaggsparq 2.0 ($99, 3 stars), the Powerstation doesn't function as a travel adapter to charge your gadgets from an AC jack, either. That seems a chintzy omission for an $80 product. It took about four hours to charge, shorter than the same-capacity Energizer XP4001 ($49.95).

With its 4000mAh battery, the Powerstation helped a Droid RAZR ($199, 4.5 stars) get 5 hours, 13 minutes more of solid LTE streaming, and let an iPad 1 (4.5 stars) watch video for 4 hours, 16 minutes more than before. That's less performance than we saw from the 4000mAh Energizer XP4001 ($49.95, 3.5 stars) and from the 5000mAh, $79.99 Editor's Choice Sanyo eneloop Mobile Booster (4 stars).

But it could still be enough. Four hours of added juice is probably enough to make it to where you're going, whether that's through a cross-country flight or past a long day on the road. We think the Energizer and Sanyo batteries are better value for the money here, but if the Powerstation's elegant design appeals to you, that would make it worth the coin.

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Mophie Juice Pack Powerstation