Internet Marketing Blog

Weekly Blueliner Newsminer

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Welcome to the first edition of the Weekly Blueliner Newsminer.  We aim to bring a collective viewpoint on the recent news in digital media, putting it into accessible terms.  Across different angles, we can understand the present and future of internet marketing over a period of time.

We will look at the top five news stories, then discuss their impact.

1.  Google and Verizon Discussing Net Neutrality.  The latest on this story is that both firms are denying that a deal is in the works, but when there’s smoke, there’s fire.  This would be a huge determent on the business front.  It would really monopolize website optimization in terms of e-commerce and keyword search.  Larger firms would receive the bulk of advertising since they would be able to afford the delivery fees that Google and Verizon propose to regulate traffic.  Venture capitalists would struggle to research for innovative technologies.  The internet, on principle, would be undermined as an depot of information.

2.  UAE Set To Ban Blackberry Use In October.  Speaking of information depots, this story continues to build up steam, as the U.S. government looks to defend RIM’s data monitoring practices.  Earlier this week, the United Arab Emirates announced that it would ban Blackberry use in its borders starting this October due to security concerns.  The Canadian firm has superior encryption standards and routes data services through its proxy hubs in Canada.  The Middle Eastern government wants Hillary Clinton has went on public record, describing the behavior of UAE’s government as a threat the innate right of free internet access.  Undeniably, the potential for hegemony of content exists, especially in such a volatile region.  RIM is also in dialogue with India about similar concerns, so monitoring continues.  As of this syllable, Blackberry phones are still in use for all the aggravated investors in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

3.  Twitter Launches Suggestions Feed.  The Suggestions feed was rolled out this Monday by Twitter, and it looks to segment Twitterati into similar tastes and preferences not unlike social media rival Facebook.  So far, few people are in love with it, including myself.  The service, in my mind, is unique with its minimalist website design and character limits.  The suggestions feed uses an algorithm based on people you follow, their followers, and unconnected followers who you may find interested. Kinks are still being worked out, as the feed has crashed several times.  I feel that the suggestions feed suggest a desire to engage in a personalized relationship, which is the antithesis of a follower.  Nobody wants to be seen in this context.  One writer of the blog TechCrunch thinks this is just the beginning for Twitter’s social extension.

4.  Facebook vs. Google.  The battle for web advertising supremacy is going unnoticed by the general public, but digital media executives are watching really closely.  The search-advertising giant has made several efforts to enter the social media industry with applications like Wave and Buzz, only to watch them peter out due to privacy issues.  YouTube is one obvious success, but it was purchased by Google rather than developed from within the lab.  Facebook, on the other hand, has aligned with Microsoft Bing to leverage its superior depth of interpersonal connections.  It also acquired some patents from Friendster, which has been Apple’s strategy with mobile applications.  Google’s open source platform has been better received, with Android as a shining example.

Google is fighting different battles with China (firewall proxies), Apple (content syncing, television programming), Microsoft (office software, search), and the federal government (antitrust issues).  That is the reality of life when you gain accolades.  I feel like Google should place focus on development of certain programs, especially Analytics.  We use it as part of our SEO methodology, and the emergence of web and mobile advertising only intensifies the necessity for keyword tracking.  Google Reader is another program used by academia to conduct internet research for rare library content. A recent antitrust case concerning the application was closed, foreshadowing an opportunity.

5.  RIM releases the Blackberry Torch on AT&T.  Alongside the tiff with the UAE, RIM releases the Blackberry Torch on the AT&T network. The AT&T partnership is peculiar for several reasons.  Their inept coverage and network capacity has kept me from reaching for the iPhone, and the aforementioned device is included in their phone portfolio which could siphon revenue for each party.  Overall, the mobile platform has been rated as an improvement by tech reviewers.  I have yet to see the phone personally, so I can’t make a thorough judgement.  At first glance, it looked like a parody of the fallen Palm Pre, which this author views as a foreshadowing.  The smartphone race gets even more intense.

This is a wrap for the news.  Log in next week.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in Blog Marketing, Business News, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Video Sharing, blog, search engine marketing | No Comments »
Tags: abdul fattah ismail, Blueliner, Blueliner Marketing, digital media, internet marketing ny, new york interactive marketing agency, seo media agency, weekly blueliner newsminer

Bing and Google Look For The Perfect Tunes

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Google are a certified giant in the tech industry. They are reaching into digital media content at an accelerated pace.  Microsoft is another behemoth, but is a neophyte in the search world, with Bing.  The engine has gained some acclaim for it’s travel algorithms, but its durability against Priceline, Kayak, and Travelocity is in question. Everyone today uses SEO methodology to find and download our favorite artists online, especially through Google. A secret battle is lining up for the future of entertainment search inquiries.

Not unlike their Farecast technology on the travel page, Bing has unique twists to segment themselves from Google.  They have expanded their entertainment menu to aggregate streaming from Zune, tour details, and links to buy music from a large database. Currently, Bing only has 9% of the search market. It could be all for naught, when facing Google’s capital prowess.

Google purchased Simplify Media in May to counter with a music download service that synchronizes the Android mobile OS and search engine.  Along with the planned upgrade of its video services, Google is really stretching its media boundaries.  We’ll discuss these implications in the future, as many could arise for the music and television industries.  One issue for the music industry is the regulation of infringing material on search results. Google and Bing could offer subscription services to access illegal content through sites like MegaUpload and Rapidshare. The sentence itself sounds unjust.  Chess pieces have only begun to align on this battleground.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in Business News, Search Engine Optimization, blog, online advertising, search engine marketing | No Comments »
Tags: abdul fattah ismail, Blueliner Marketing, google android, google tv, microsoft bing, Mobile Marketing, new york seo media agency, seo methodology, simplify media

Caffeine For Google Search

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Back in August 2009, Google solicited feedback on their new indexing infrastructure, Caffeine. Previously, Google’s crawling and indexing systems were batch processes. This means that Googlebot would crawl a set of pages, process the data, and add them to the index. The problem was that all the pages within a batch had to wait until the entire batch was processed before the changes went live. Now with Google Caffeine, pages are processed and sent live immediately. This will result in processing being sped up at a 50% higher rate. Storage capacity is another benefit of Google Caffeine, along with flexibility in storing information about documents.

It will be interesting to see how this affects search engine campaigns in the future, as new content is added to the search engine results pages at a much faster rate. Website owners typically rely on a steady flow of routine traffic with a Search Engine Results Page position. Google Caffeine may threaten that organic movement. Ranking improvements and demotions may happen even quicker than in the past. Content that you and your competitors create will have a faster impact on the results index. Nevertheless, the objective of any marketer is to deliver optimal value to your audience. In time, the optimization will catch up to speed.

Marketers will need to implement a targeted content strategy to ensure they are updating their sites frequently with relevant information. Programmers also need to build clean and clear sites that allow for this new content to be easily found and indexed. The code will need to be sharp, otherwise your keywords could become conflated or even dated next to rivals.

Google Caffeine will also have some effects on SEO methodology. Our own Prasad Sistla and Asif Anwar, two of our top SEOs, share their thoughts on the key points to pay attention to.

Page Load Time: Incorporating speed means that page load times are going to be an even bigger factor than in the past. While a low page load time is typically two seconds, it is more crucial with Google’s Caffeine jolt. This means that flash objects, videos, content, and so forth will need strong optimization for expedient loading.

Keywords and Phrases: Keyword relevancy is now a premium, meaning that your SEO campaign requires even more attention. This will be a challenge for some SEO professionals, but in these cases, the best ones will make adjustments and continue to thrive.

Social Buzz: Caffeine will really benefit social media and news results for general search inquiry. We also believe that more specific keyword searches will return more website results and advertising shelf space. It will benefit webmasters and SEO specialists in all phases of content to maximize traffic.

Content/Site Updates: Caffeine places further priority on regular content creation and site updates. This means that old, static sites sitting at the top of SERPs will need to produce fresh content to maintain their top standing. Sites that blog regularly and make regular adjustments will benefit.

Ads: PPC management will become more important as well. Caffeine prioritizes organic search results rather than paid advertisements. Thus, the advertisements used are even more important. The necessity for a strong page load time greatly affects your PPC management and Quality Score for AdWords.

Sitemaps: Sitemaps and navigation should be restructured to have deeper pages with fewer clicks and at good positions. Spiders will index the web faster and deeper, without going onto clumsy, discombobulated sites.

Avg Time on Site: Google Caffeine will factor in the amount of time that users spend on sites. Again, sites that have good content and great user experience will rise to the top. This is really Google’s ultimate goal, to deliver the best possible results and improve the user’s experience.

Caffeine’s indexing could also benefit e-commerce sites that have quality products. Since results will be updated on a constant basis, the quality of traffic should improve, leading to more click-throughs and ultimately sales. Try Caffeine for yourself here to see the difference:

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in Business News, Search Engine Optimization, search engine marketing | No Comments »
Tags: abdul fattah ismail, bing.com, Blueliner Marketing, e-commerce agency, google caffeine, new york seo media agency, new york social media agency, search engine marketing, Search Engine Optimization

Internet Week, Sponsored By Yahoo!

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Yahoo’s Internet Week has been going on since Monday here in New York, showcasing the city’s vibrant tech community. The expo, as expected, is a smorgasbord of media platforms, complete with Twitter feeds and a live stream from the headquarter site in Chelsea. The website also has an abundance of information on workshops, press releases, and photography. Those interested in attending the HQ expos can do so for a $10 fee. Since the corporate sponsorship is filled with heavyweights, the gifts may be real interesting.  If anyone attends, please post your thoughts.  Click the apple to reach the website.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in Business News, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Video Sharing, search engine marketing, web development | No Comments »
Tags: abdul fattah ismail, Blueliner Marketing, Interactive Media, internet week chelsea, internet week new york, new york interactive marketing agency, yahoo internet week

Turning Prospects into Buyers with Content Marketing

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What do most marketers need when they want to attract, acquire and engage customers and potential accounts for their business? Consistently sharing information about their products or services can keep existing customers and the potential ones informed, thus creating a unique brand awareness which can result in increased sales and customer loyalty. In order to do this, you need to create and share informative and valuable content about products and services via different media.

This form of marketing is often referred to as Content Marketing, which is defined as “words and data to create unambiguous content that support meaningful, interactive experiences”, is now evolving as a new discipline. In addition to all your traditional marketing techniques, this form of marketing uses content to achieve higher sales through profitable actions from the customer and prospect sides.

What it takes, is an effective content strategy. Content development, delivery and administration are the three major points that need to be kept in mind when you define content strategy for any marketing plan. Rachel Lovinger explains more about content marketing in her article, Content Strategy – The Philosophy of Data. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Mohamed Mohideen
Posted in 7 Pillars of Internet Marketing, Blog Marketing, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Interactive PR, Marketing, Marketing Agencies, Mobile Marketing, Photography, Podcast Production, Public Relations, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Video Sharing, Website Analytics, Website Design, World, online advertising, search engine marketing, web development | 1 Comment »
Tags: Advertising, Blueliner Marketing, Content Marketing, digital marketing, Interactive PR, Mobile Marketing, Mohamed Mohideen, social media

Google Now Includes Site Speed in Search Rankings

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On April 9,  Google and their tireless innovators introduced a new tool for their search algorithms named site speed.  Site speed measures how fast a page uploads after the initial click.  The publicity has not been strong, but this will prove invaluable to agencies like Blueliner who specialize in search engine optimization. A faster site not only saves time for the host, but also makes a customer more likely to spend significant time browsing for information along with products.  As we all know, saving time saves operating costs. Google includes these free tools to gauge your site’s speed:

• Page Speed, an open source Firefox/Firebug add-on that evaluates the performance of web pages and gives suggestions for improvement.
• YSlow, a free tool from Yahoo! that suggests ways to improve website speed.
• WebPagetest shows a waterfall view of your pages’ load performance plus an optimization checklist.
• In Webmaster Tools, Labs > Site Performance shows the speed of your website as experienced by users around the world as in the chart below. We’ve also blogged about site performance.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in Search Engine Optimization, online advertising, search engine marketing | No Comments »
Tags: abdul fattah ismail, Blueliner, Blueliner Marketing, google, new york seo media agency, search rankings, seo marketing, seo strategy, site search

Hardwood Domaination by Converse

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Converse Domaination from Ross Martin on Vimeo.

Converse has come up with a clever and hilarious marketing campaign centered on keywords. Keywords, as I mentioned earlier this week, have not been utilized properly by corporations looking to promote their products in cyberspace. I guess they have been reading the minds of many executives still looking to optimize their search campaigns at a maximal level. Enjoy.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in Business News, Search Engine Optimization, search engine marketing | No Comments »
Tags: abdul fattah ismail, Blueliner Marketing, converse, converse domaination, search advertising, Search Engine Optimization, seo marketing, vimeo

Invisible Branding

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Sometimes, we use the search box just to see what comes up when researching a product.  You type it in, and get various results from leading merchants along with some surprises.  Advertising Age, however, poses this question:  Do the same results come up with a generic keyword correlating to the business?

It clearly depends on your website’s search optimization.  I searched for ‘deli sandwiches’ and this was my result:

The results were interesting in that Schlotzky’s Deli came up second, and I haven’t seen a Schlotzky’s since I left the midwest nine years ago.  In fact, the closest location is in Newport News, Virginia. The company must have a strong web development team to reach second on the results list.  The Texas-based chain underwent a bankruptcy filing and complete overhaul of their operational structure.  They have expanded in the Plains states last summer with more locations coming in the near future, both domestic and international.

I also did a test for the dying record store industry in New York.  I typed in “record stores nyc” and got these results:  

The local business results in this search were quite predictable.  Other Music has been renowned for years with a solid inventory of used and new albums, along with imports and rarities.  I did find interesting that they were ranked second behind Citidex, which is a nondescript guide that has images and coding similar to the Yellow Pages.  In conclusion, major retailers are still working on getting their site optimized for keywords and losing ROI in the process.  Blueliner can come to the rescue today.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in Search Engine Optimization, search engine marketing | No Comments »
Tags: abdul fattah ismail, Blueliner Marketing, new york seo media agency, other music, ROI, Search Engine Optimization, yellow pages

A History of Tweets, Made Searchable by Google

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Innovation seems never ending when it comes to Google. From its  early days with search, Google has continually developed and acquired  products  such as Finance, Orkut, Maps, YouTube, Chrome, and it never stops. This  time Google has added a new feature to help us mine the never-ending Twitter updates.

Partnership deals with Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have already made Twitter profitable. Twitter now has made all of its historical, archived data (Tweets) available to the public. Many of us have often wondered what was going on about certain topics around the world, and the best way to be kept updated was to read newspapers, watch news channels, and online research. This has been simplified to a good extent and now people’s reactions via Twitter are searchable through Google.

You can try it out by following these simple steps, Enter your search topic in Google > Show options > Updates. Whats more, you can pause and reset the updates as per your preferences. The first page will show you the familiar latest and greatest short-form updates from a comprehensive set of sources, but now there’s a new chart at the top. In that chart, you can select the year, month or day, or click any point to view the tweets from that specific time period.

Giving more details is like spoiling the fun. You must check it out and stay updated about your favorite topic. Google plans to index tweets going all the way back to the very first one, which took place on March 21, 2006. This is a revolutionary feature of sharing updates and making information available publicly worldwide. There could not have been a better tool for startups, if they had to find out about the discussions that were going on related to their businesses, and also giving a sense of the current market trends.

Posted by Sandeep Bhandwalkar
Posted in Business News, Social Media Marketing, search engine marketing | No Comments »
Tags: chrome, current market trends, google, history of tweets, new york seo media agency, Sandeep Bhandwalkar, twitter, YouTube

Metrics: Creativity: Kryptonite?

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In a recent article from Advertising Age, Patrick Sarkissian of Sarkissian Mason, makes an argument that metrics are killing creativity in advertising.  He feels that many shops have been overly reliant on improving their data technology rather than trusting their instincts.  To quote Shakespeare, I feel that this is much ado about nothing.  In our era right now, with so many shifts, metrics offer agencies a chance to deliver a more concise campaign.  We here at Blueliner specialize in SEO methodology for this very reason.  Our objective is to deliver a thorough ROI-driven campaign with a reasonable price point.

As a creative writer, I have been drawn to products and stories that connect with my life story on an emotional level.  Thus, I understand his rationale for creative directors to ensure this does not go by the wayside.  However, emotions fade after an initial reaction, then consistency becomes important in measuring the success of a campaign. Focus groups and metrics ensure that human behavior is captured on a balanced scale. Quality storytelling, then, drives the campaign home as icing on the cake.

To conclude, metrics and creativity are like dance partners who need to reach a serendipitous point where chemistry takes over. In a business environment with declining revenue, agencies need to be more fiscally responsible yet connect on an emotional level with their clients.  A difficult task, but far from impossible.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in Business News, Interactive Marketing, Marketing Agencies, Search Engine Optimization, online advertising, search engine marketing | No Comments »
Tags: abdul fattah ismail, Advertising Age, Blueliner, Blueliner Marketing, patrick sarkissian, seo media agency