E-Life

I found an interesting discussion on LinkedIn tonight so I wanted to add it here as well:

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Question: Search Marketing - Fortune or Farce

Let’s talk about some of the most popular ‘hazards’ associated with PPC and organic search marketing. Why do most companies refrain from using these avenues, and why is there an air of uncertainty surrounding this marketing medium, in terms of scalability and ROI. Also, let’s discuss some of the basic reasons for the ‘dotcom demise’ at the dawn of this century. Can the dotcom bubble burst be attributed to Search Marketing avenues?

I’ve recently posted on this topic at the Ephlux blog as well. Feel free to use it as a reference in this discussion. Best replies will also be featured (with contact info) at our blog.

Related Blog Link:

http://blog.ephlux.com/?p=76
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Answer: Bryan Coe: Blackbird e-Solutions

I have to agree with Chris that search marketing was not the culprit that caused the dotcom bubble to burst. The main failure was the poor strategy and execution. Plus, most of them didn’t really have any substantial way of making money. Investors threw money at the dotcom companies based on ideas and promises. When the VCs realized they were not getting returns for their investment. The money dried up.

Unfortunately, since SEM is a relatively new industry and because it isn’t as straight forward as traditional advertising in the sense that you pay for an ad in GQ magazine and you see it next month, people don’t understand. Or traditionally you pay to have 3 months worth of ads in the magazine and they are there every month. Yes, with SEO there is a time lag for results and many people don’t understand this. People expect immediate results. Plus, they don’t understand that search is not a once and done deal. It is something that needs to at least be periodically monitored, because of changes in competition, trends and the all mighty algorithms.

I work with small to medium size businesses and the biggest thing that I see holding companies back from entering this medium is education. They just don’t understand how it works and fear the unknown. It is easier for them to do the old tried and true.

Read more: Search Marketing - Fortune or Farce

I use LinkedIn regularly. You can find me here. Bryan Coe As an entrepreneur and a business owner I use it to promote my business. I’ve noticed that many people are missing out on a simple way to increase exposure for their company name and website. There is an option to display your website on your profile. When you edit this you have several choices.

Most people choose the “My Website” or “My Company” or any of the “My whatever” choices. Then you are stuck with it showing on their profile this way too. If you choose “Other:” you are given the option to give it a custom title (see above). Then it looks like below.

This looks more professional and shows off the real name of the website you are linking. It helps increase the keyword density for your company name on the page. It also gives you a more relevant link back to your site. Both things are important factors for placement in search engine results. You could even use keywords in the title for a better link. In my case Localization or Translation would be good.

Want the printable version of this post? Get More Exposure for Your Website and Company Name: A Quick Tip For LinkedIn Users

It seems that the EU is having difficulties with finding enough Native English speakers for interpretation and translation. Learn languages or lose out on a job | Business | The Observer The article concerns the UK, but I see this as a concern in the USA too.

This is a less than ideal situation, because for quality reasons it is not recommended or highly respected to use a non-native speaker when interpreting or translating documents.

I have always found this unsettling that the percentage of native English speakers that know more then one language is much lower than other languages. Yes, English has become the international business language for most of the world, but if you are operating internationally it greatly improves your chances of creating successful business relationships.

Why is it that we native English speakers are so inept at foreign languages? Speaking from a USA perspective… One of the major reasons is the late start that US students get when learning languages. Most places don’t start language programs until high school. So, 9th grade! Fortunately there is a trend to start sooner (7th grade), but it is not widely done. Most other countries start languages in 5th grade or even younger! Studies have shown that learning a language is far easier when you are younger than older.

The best time is when you are first learning to speak. A great example of this is a close friend of mine who is native German speaker and his wife is from the US and a native English speaker. She speaks very little German. When they had their first child my friend only spoke German with their daughter. The mother only English. At 2 years old, the father said something to his daughter in German. His wife was there too. So, the daughter turned to her mom and said, “Mom, did you understand what daddy just said.” Mom replied, “No honey I don’t didn’t.” So, the daughter translated it right there perfectly without a thought. This is great! And at only 2 years old! Unfortunately most of don’t have the luxury of having bilingual parents.

It will be interesting to see what the Brits do to help this problem. Also, is anything being done in the USA?

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Many of us have heard stories about someone that lost their job, didn’t get a job or even didn’t get their teaching certificate because of something that was posted online. Whether you use MySpace, Facebook, a blog or you just have a website about yourself. It’s a big joke to Google yourself. It may sound arrogant or self fulfilling, but you might want to check it out.

Careerbuilder.com recently posted and article on their sight One-in-Five Employers Use Social Networking Sites to Research Job Candidates, CareerBuilder.com Survey Finds. Surprised? Don’t be! It is becoming more and more prevalent that employers will check out potential candidates online. It’s happened to me too. Before I decided to go out on my own I was running my business on the side as a part-time consulting gig. I had an interview with another company and in the middle of the interview the interviewer asked me, out of the blue, “So, what’s Blackbird e-Solutions?” I was prepared for something like this to happen because I track and control what is online about me.

According to CareerBuilder.com 34% of the hiring managers they surveyed said that they found content online that caused them to dismiss the candidate. Here’s how it breaks down:

But there is still hope. 24% said that they found something that helped them make their decision and they chose the candidate:

Careerbuilder.com also gives some tips for how to keep your presence professional and clean:

1) Clean up digital dirt. Make sure to remove pictures, content and links that can send the wrong message to a potential employer before you start your job search.

2) Update your profile regularly. Make sure to include specific accomplishments, inside and outside of work.

3) Monitor comments. Since you can’t control what other people say on your site, you may want to use the “block comments” feature.

4) Join groups selectively. While joining a group with a fun or silly name may seem harmless, “Party Monsters R Us” may not give the best impression to a hiring manager. Also be selective about who you accept as “friends.”

5) Go private. Consider setting your profile to “private,” so only designated friends can view it.

I read an article tonight about the a company called Language Weaver which offers automated translation. Their claim is that because they have lowered the cost of quality translations dramatically they are opening new markets for translation. Currently the translation industry is estimated to be $14 billion according to research and consulting firm Common Sense Advisory. Supposedly with the lower cost translation that Language Weaver offers with their translation technology, they estimate untapped markets that could reach a value of more than $67.5 billion.

I have never specifically seen how well their software translates, but I am hesitant to believe that it can really replace humans. There also many levels of acceptableness for translation, and I don’t doubt that companies are looking into it. I mean we’ve all had an experience horrible instructions for assembling our latest toy. For something informal, maybe automated software is good enough, but for technical manuals, novels or marketing materials such a website. I would definitely invest in a real set of eyes having a look at it.

There continues to be a lot of buzz about location data and local search. Both Google and Yahoo have developed services giving any, website using the code, the power to know a visitors location, including mobile devices and even without using a GPS. Google is doing this with their Gears Geolocaiton API and Yahoo! with their Fire Eagle service.

The new Gears Geolocation API can find your mobile device using cell phone towers that are close by or via your phones GPS. For PCs it uses the computers IP address. What advantage does this give users? Google uses the example of the European travel site LastMinute.com. The site has a location enabled restaurant finder for cell phones used to find restaurants near you.

Google states the location is not saved in anyway, but is simply used to provide more relevant search results. Websites must ask if it’s OK to track your location, and of course Google suggestion exercising caution when visiting sites you are not familiar with. So far Gears only works with Internet Explorer on Windows Mobile devices. For desktops IE or Firefox can be used. Google claims that the use of their API reduces the amount of time it takes to enter your location data each time you visit a site.

Yahoo’s Fire Eagle allows people to direct their phone to use location based information for third party sites. Or you can manually enter your data in the Yahoo system.

Maybe the scenes in sci-fi movies where you walk past a sign, it knows who you are and gives you a personalized message are not so far away. Could our phones be used to do this?

Yesterday I posted about the Catalyst Code website and how I was surprised to see them using Black Hat SEO tactics. I was really surprised because it appeared to be the official blog for the book and authors. They were listed at contributors. I couldn’t believe that such a high profile group would resort this. So, because I found the book quite valuable and was having a hard time swallowing this, I thought I would go straight to the source and ask them why they were using such tactics. It turns out they were shocked as well. Here’s the response that I received from coauthor Richard Schmalensee:

“Thanks very much for your note – which surprised us all. Here’s what we’ve heard from our web people so far:

‘Someone obviously spammed our site … actually went in and embedded that code in our site. We are working on it, but a note back to thank him for bringing to our attention the fact that we were spammed was very helpful – and we are taking steps now to address that, e.g. eliminate it and track back to see if we can determine who might have done it.

I just spoke with Todd at Sabre, he is speaking with his developers now to see how someone could have embedded code onto the site. Todd told me to call One and One, our hosting company to figure out how that may have occurred.’

Thanks again for letting us know we’d been spammed. It will be fixed.
Best,
Dick Schmalensee”

So it looks they were the victims of some hacker that was using their site to do what is called link spamming or spam indexing. Although, this is not something fun if it happens to you. I am glad to hear that they were hacked and it wasn’t something that they consciously did or approved.
Ah, the world is good again.

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