Yo Gabba Gabba

I just realized my last post was in June, yikes! So here's a post with a website that's deserving of my 3+ readers attention Yo Gabba Gabba. It's got some of the best video, flash, music, content and animation that rivals the likes of Pee Wee's Playhouse and Sesame Street. So whether your a kid or an adult, you will digg YO Gabba Gabba and to me that's what marketing is all about. Check out this video from the Yo Gabba Gabba featuring musical guests MGMT. And remember, if you like this blog please subscribe or leave a comment, thanks.

Miracle Fortress

Miracle Fortress. I was going to try and write something prolific here but I'm so wound up doing endless SEO, copy writing, web design, link building, client consultations and PPC that I feel I've lost a bit of my mid 20's bliss and creativity (yes, I need to start having more fun). So in keeping with the theme of my last post and trying to get back a bit of my mojo I've posted this video by Miracle Fortress. I hope you enjoy this video as much as I did and be sure to take good care of yourself out there, visit your friends and family and be of good cheer this holiday season, Happy Holidays! Miracle Fortress.

Internet Marketing Wake Up Call - The Strange Attractor

I haven't posted here in awhile as it's been super busy in 2009 but I had to write about a recent epiphany I had. I recently connected with Pete Barnett of the blog The Strange Attractor and as I was reading through the blog I had a sort of prolific Internet marketing wake up call.

This blog has absolutely no advertising on it what-so-ever. Combine that with amazing design works in print, photography, film, video and more, The Strange Attractor affected me in a very unexpected way.

The non-existant advertising, banner ads and Google Adsense combined with the selfless dedication to art and the promotion of artists from around the world (which is very apparent) I actually felt kind of wierd reading through the blog at first and I didn't know why.

I finally put two and two together and started to re-think what the hell I was doing as an Internet marketer. There is so much crap on the Internet today and admittedly I have not done my best in the design department. We as Internet marketers tend to focus on things like SEO, SEM and blogging for links that we are missing the true purpose of what we are doing, to provide great and well designed content.

It's great to make your clients money and do good work, but for the love of god let's all try and make the web a better place like Pete Barnett and all the talented contributors over at The Strange Attractor , Cheers!

Yellow Pages Local Online Video Advertising

Has your business suffered from the current economic downturn? A lot of local businesses have experienced a slowdown in the past year or two and it doesn't look like things will get any better anytime soon. The big question is: What am I going to do to about it? The answer: Local Internet Marketing. Local Internet marketing is a powerful advertising tool that most small business owners are not capitalizing on. A lot of local businesses I talk with think that having a website and being listed (buried) in the Yellow Pages phone book is enough in today's competitive landscape and are missing out on the huge ROI and business potential of local online marketing. One of the fastest growing segments of Local Search is Local Online Video Advertising. Here is a very interesting article on the growth of Yellow Pages Video Advertising that deserves some attention. Yellow Pages have sold over 20,000 video advertisements in 2008 so far. If you have any questions about search engine optimization and local marketing you can contact me at kszprychel@yahoo.com for a free consultation.


Borrell and Associates released a new report today about the future on Print Yellow Pages titled, “Say Goodbye to Yellow Pages.” with some interesting predictions regarding where revenue will migrate. According to the report, they estimates that the yellow pages industry will loose almost 40% of their annual revenue over the course of the next 5 years. Guess where the that revenue will go? Hint - Local Online Video ;-)

In addition, the report predicts that much of this revenue loss as well as market share will migrate to search engine marketing and local online video advertising. Of the 2, Borrell reports that local online video shows the most promise, with predictions that it will grow from a $1.4 Billion dollar category in 2008 to more than $7.6 Billion dollars in 2013, an increase of more than 500%.

Read The Rest Of This Local Online Video article from www.reelseo.com

Here is an actual video advertisement created by Smartpages found on the video distribution site Revver. If you're interested in making your own videos and getting it distributed on sites like Revver contact kszprychel@yahoo.com for a free consultation.

Assholes Inc. - Reputation Management Services

Assholes Inc – Reputation Management Services

We’ll F@%k Up The Competition

Looking for new ways to rise above the pack? Here at Assholes Inc we say; “If you can’t beat’em – destroy’em!”

You’ve heard of reputation management services, but do you know about our anti-reputation management programs? We’re the company that keeps the rep managers in business. If you’ve got a competitor (or even a friend, spouse…we don’t care) that needs to be bitch slapped far and wide on the web, then you’ve come to the right spot.

Here’s just some of the nightmare your target will face;

• Lost revenues
• Destroyed marketing campaigns
• PR staff breakdown
• Search engine sadness
• Mental instability for executives
• Hair loss (from pulling it out)
• Increased rep management costs
• Email overflow and madness
• Internal stress and strife

Great SEO Company, Dirt Cheap Rates and Lightning Fast Responses, Check It Out.

Lisa Nova - Twitter Whore

Good day! I'm happy to say I just landed a pretty sweet consulting gig for a local Chicago tax attorney providing Pay Per Click consulting, website design and SEO consulting services. A funny thing happened as I was preparing for the new client doing some keyword research and such when I ran across the lovely and uber smart Lisa Nova. Lisa Nova 's sense of irony, social media mastery and wit make her a new favorite of mine. You should definitely check out Lisa's website and her videos on Youtube are a must. Warning, Lisa Novas videos can be a little "unusual" but are hilarious when viewed in the context of social commentary and the ridiculous things we do online. Who says social marketing can't be fun.

I'll be writing a detailed article titled, Vlogs: The Evolution of Relationship Marketing, in the next couple weeks so be sure to bookmark this site, leave a comment and check back soon!

Lisa Nova - Twitter Whore Part 2, enjoy.

Reputation Management Tools

Whether you're a large corporation like Comcast or an independent freelancer like me it's important to manage your online reputation and you're going to need a reputation management tool to do that. Let's say for example, you have a client that's unhappy with your products or services and they've started a blog about you or posted a complaint on ripoffreport.com. This could have a tremendous effect on your bottom line and you want to address these issues before you lose business. For that matter, even if you were a local Chicago Website Company that didn't care about your clients or your employees you could still use this as a cheap reputation management tool.

But let's assume you're a reputable company and you care about your customers. Not to worry, the Google Alerts API is the perfect tool for reputation management and best of all it's free. Here's a quick breakdown on what these great online reputation management tools do.

Google Alerts currently offers 6 variations of alerts: News, Web, Blogs, Video, Comprehensive, and Groups. The API monitors Google for the keyword/s and phrases you specify and alerts you when any of your phrases are indexed so you can go the site and see what's happening, pretty simple. A negative would be you can only monitor Google and not any other search engines, but that's not so bad for the price tag.

Even though there are some limitations, Google Alerts is a great way to make sure your customers are happy and with a little practice and some tweaking, you've got yourself one heck of a online reputation management tool.

How To Increase Conversions With Persuasive Copy Architecture

I was searching the web today looking for a used copy of Dreamweaver CS3 and I ran across a bunch of Craigslist ads selling burned copies for $30. To good to be true, right? I decided to look up "Dreamweaver scams" and soon discovered this great example of persuasive copy architecture and adsense placement that should probably get an award. You have to read it to believe it.

About halfway down the page of this article they reproduced an email from a viewer that supposedly got scammed 27 times . This is where the sponsored ads blend in with the article almost seamlessly causing the reader to click the ad naturally. If you're looking to increase conversions on your site you should see this great example of persuasive copy architecture.

Here's That OEM Hotscams Article

Update: After I posted this article they have changed the entire look of this page and it no longer reflects the gray hat greatness it once was.

Contextual Ads and Design Code Exploits

A few days ago I stumbled upon this website that had some pretty creative code going on. It's a sort of exploit that's designed to improve your overall sponsored ads and affiliate networks CTR. I'm not going to get into the technical aspects of the code in this article but here's how it works.

One quick note before you get started. You should read this whole article so you are prepared to see this great piece of coding in action (it's over in 1.5 seconds). The difference you will see when the page loads will be minor, but could improve your sponsored ads CTR by 20% or more which is a significant improvement. Multiply that times 100 URLs and you've got some serious cash flowing.

Ok here it is. Watch the upper middle of the page when it loads. You will see that the page displays a list of musical instruments with photos, product descriptions and pricing. The product section hangs for about a second or so and instantly shifts the section down the page and replaces it with a big Google sponsored ad. Admittedly, I was in a hurry and eager to click but that shift was timed so perfectly. Great piece of design coding. By the way, I checked out other pages of kijiji and they do the same thing.

Update: They changed the page that I had a linked to. Just look up any kijiji page and you'll see it. I'll post another "discreet" link later.

SEO Design Coding

Poetic Prophet - SEO Rapper. I saw this video back in January and recently stumbled upon it again. It reminded me of how great this video really is. I enjoy the Poetic Prophet's music and he drops some killer beats but there's more to the Poetic Prophet than the music.

Lyrics:

Your site design is the first thing people see
it should be reflective of you and the industry
easy to look at with a nice navigation
when you can't find what you want it causes frustration
a clear Call to action to increase the temptation
use appealing graphics they create motivation
if you have animation
use with moderation
cause search engines can't index the information
display the logos of all your associations
highlight your contact info that's an obligation
create a clean design you can use some decoration
but to try to prevent any client hesitation
every page that they click should provide and explanation
should be easy to understand like having a conversation
when you design the style go ahead and use your imagination
but make sure you use correct color combinations
do some investigation, look at other organizations
but don't duplicate or you might face a litigation
design done, congratulations but it's time to start construction
follow these instructions when you move into production
your photoshop functions then slice that design
do your layout with divs make sure that it's aligned
please don't use tables even though they work fine
when it come to indexing they give searches a hard time
make it easy for the spiders to crawl what you provide
remove font type, font color and font size
no background colors, keep your coding real neat,
tag your look and feel on a separate style sheet
better results with xml and css
now you making progress, a lil closer to success
describe your doctype so the browser can relate
make sure you do it great or it won't validate
check in all browsers, I do it directly
gotta make sure that it renders correctly
some use IE, some others use Flock
some use AOL, I use Firefox
title everything including links and images
don't use italics, use emphasis
don't use bold, please use strong
if you use bold that's old and wrong
when you use CSS, you page will load quicker
client satisfied like they eating on a snicker
they stuck on your page like you made it with a sticker
and then they convert now that's the real kicker
make you a lil richer, your site a lil slicker
design and code right man I hope you get the picture
what I'm telling you is true man it should be a scripture
if it's built right you'll be the pick of the litter
everyone will want to follow you like twitter
competition will get bitter and you'll shine like glitter
if you trying to grow your company will get bigger
design and code right man can you get with it

Organic SEO: Analytics and Technology

Most people think search engine optimization is about meta tags, keyword stuffing and anchor text. While those efforts do help improve rankings and generate traffic, they're often viewed as the only factors in an SEO campaign.

In the last few years SEO has taken on a whole new meaning in the world of internet marketing. With the emergence of Web 2.0, mobile technology and virtual worlds data for SEO purposes can now include everything from psychology, semantics and site usability to interactive elements like video, instant messaging and games. This is a very exciting time for internet marketers and hopefully search engines like Google and the highly anticipated Cuil will help us to be able to interact on the web, with eachother, in an entirely new way.

Today there are many powerful Internet marketing tools available online which vary in price from thousands of dollars to completely free. Click Tracks (no affiliation) makes an excellent product that uses the correlation between hand/mouse and eye movement to track everything a searcher does on any page of your website. It then makes a digital "heatmap" that shows how people are viewing and navigating your website and reveals tons about your page’s design, content and usability. One recent study of an affiliate website promoting Nike’s footwear showed that a high percentage of searchers were repeatedly clicking on their banner graphic. It revealed that searchers thought the banner was a link to a new Nike running shoe but got frustrated and left after attempts at clicking the image. They changed the banner to an image link and found their bounce rate for that page decreased by almost fifty percent and it was all based on this valuable data. This is just one example of the many advanced tools used today that provide unique insight into search behavior. Making these kinds of changes to your Internet marketing campaign can be costly but well worth it if there is a demonstrated ROI.

Budget constraints aside, many companies miss golden opportunities when it comes to Internet marketing and forget to focus on the basics like great content, clear communication and clean design. I’ve recently heard this mindset referred to as “functionalism” and to me it is an integral part of organic SEO and is one of the most accessible and budget friendly. This blog post, for instance, is an example of organic SEO and was designed to hopefully spark your imagination, promote my services and contribute something of value to the web.

The proliferation of this mindset of organic SEO is gaining momentum, especially as search engines like Google continue to "try" and improve their algorithms that encourage higher standards for website design, development and classification. The benefits of an organic SEO strategy have a tendency to resist changes to algorithms and build real strength in fostering an environment of innovation.