The 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing Blog

The Domino Game of Duplicate Content January 2, 2013 – 3:23 pm				Cristiana

In the digital marketing era, many companies rely on organic search as a way of fostering interest in their brand and gaining leads. Organic search is popular because of its low cost, high ROI possibilities, with some companies able to rely on search engine optimization as their primary or even sole marketing engine.
Search engine optimization includes targeting specific keywords related to your website – in which you aim to rank for in user-generated searches. In a constant effort to eradicate the SERPs of ‘unworthy’ content, Google penalizes a number of elements that are aimed at taking down those that ‘SPAM’ their websites to trick search engines into ranking them. One of these factors is duplicate content.
In the past, optimizers were able to duplicate keyword rich content on their site. This did several things. It allowed search engines to index a higher number or pages – a ranking factor as well as opened up the number of entrance paths to their website. It also allowed several pages of keyword rich text to be tied to the domain, regardless of how relevant it was or if it were previously on the site. Nowadays, the existence of duplicate content on a website is a ranking factor – so webmasters must do all they can to ensure that content is relevant to a page and that it is unique (both to their own domain and to other sites online, and not just copied from someone else).

There are several tools available to check if you have duplicate content. You want to check both title tags as well as the copy itself. SEOMoz is a great tool that will compare your site to other pages within your domain and alert you to duplicate content. Google Webmaster Tools will also alert you to duplicate title tags.
Sometimes webmasters duplicate content and don’t even realize it. This happens one of two ways. We link to a particular page on our site and that exists in more than one subfolder. For instance, a page links from both the homepage and an inner page. Instead of linking a single URL, the webmaster will make the content available in both sections in an effort to keep the subfolder organized.
For instance:

http://www.bluelinerny.com/contact

http://www.bluelinerny.com/marketing/contact

While it may make sense to some webmasters follow the URL structure on individual pages, what this does it put the exact same content on two different parts of the site. This is most common on e-Commerce sites, with items in a ‘Sale’ section and their regular parent group as well. Search engines will read this as duplicate content and should be flagged for review. Unique content should only exist on a single page of your domain.
Another common cause for duplicate content issues is URLs themselves. URLs that feature varying upper and lowercase letters can be indexed by search engines, creating two identical pages of content without you knowing. Without checking in a tool, you can try this on your website by simply entering two different ways to write a unique URL.                                                                                                                                                                                        For instance:

http://www.bluelinerny.com/seo

http:://www.bluelinerny.com/SEO

http://www.bluelinerny.com/SeO

If all these URL variants were honored by the site (and you were allowed to visit each variation rather than be redirected), you may have a duplicate content issue.  Your next step is to check if these alterative URLs are being indexed.
If you have a small website, you may be able to rel=canonical the URLs with varying capitalizations. It’s important that all URLs canonical to a URL of similar structure. Thus, all should redirect to lowercase URLs (standard) and no uppercase letters should be honored.
It is possible that your URLs are too long or the site is too big and it’s not reasonable to rel=canonical URLs. A simple IIS rewrite rule (dotNetNuke) or script written for your .htaccess file can correct this by ignoring cases and matching URLs [A-Z].
There are several other instances of where duplicate content can appear, but these among the most common. Duplicate content can have very negative implications. While SEO is a long term plan of optimizing several smaller parts, fixing duplicate content issues is one of the few things you can correct and almost immediately see a positive impact. A duplicate content audit should be one of the first tasks undertaken in an SEO undertaking.

Posted by Cristiana
Posted in blog, eCommerce, Interactive Marketing, SEO / Search Engine Optimization (Pillar 3) | No Comments »
Tags: 7 pillars of digital marketing, blog, duplicate content, e-commerce, Interactive Marketing, SEO, SEO / Search Engine Optimization (Pillar 3)

Women Entrepreneurs #2: Debbi Fields – “I love chocolate” entrepreneur! August 31, 2012 – 11:54 am				Cristiana

“I knew I loved making cookies and every time I did, I made people happy. That was my business plan”

Debbi Fields is the Founder of Mrs. Fields Cookies. small business started in 1977 in Palo Alto, California as Mrs. Field’s Chocolate Chippery. The name of the company changed because it started diversifying the products. The company grosses over $300 million from over 1000 outlets in 9 countries.

At age 20 Debbi managed to get a loan. The first day was not encouraging at all… at least at the beginning, because Debbi had to wait a couple of hours inside the shop for sales. Since there were no customers, Debbi decided to assemble a couple of cookies into a nice package and offered samples to people who were passing-by. Fortunately, by the end of the first day, she got $75 in sales.

As the business grew, Debbi started establishing a special relationship with her loyal customers: coffee and cookies were ready when they arrived. Her receipt for success was very easy: make people feel they are special.

The company has enjoyed a tremendous level of success and in present has 5,000 employees. Besides the business itself, Debbi took the time to publish a cook book entitled, “I Love Chocolate”. She is currently involved into the company’s operations management, new product development, public relations and of course, brand name management.

Debbi had been cultivating her entrepreneurial spirit since she was at the age of 13 when she received her first paycheck from a job with the Oakland A’s baseball organization. She found that “real” ingredients such as butter, vanilla, and real chocolate made for “real” cookies.

A couple of business lessons that should be learned from Debbi’s business journey are related to the customer shopping experience and… the name of her venture itself. In other words, not only was Debbie focused on making sure her customers felt important but she branded her company with care from the beginning. Therefore, she changed the name of the company early on to include a broader range of cookies; so the impact seriously increased.

Posted by Cristiana
Posted in Content Marketing (Pillar 1), eCommerce, Interactive Marketing, Public Relations | No Comments »
Tags: chocolate, CRM (Pillar 5), customer analytics, customer experience, customer relationship, women entrepreneurs

Apple worth more then Google, Amazon, Ebay and Facebook combined!? August 28, 2012 – 11:58 am				Damjan Dano

Up until recently, the most valuable company in the history of modern business was Microsoft, with market valuation at $620.58 billion back in the 1999 – when they were doing things the right way… but since the evolution of the iPhone, the iPad and now possibly the Apple TV, the “most valuable company in history” throne has been taken by Apple, valued at approximately $623 billion.

Valued at this amount, Apple is worth more than Google, Amazon, Ebay and Facebook combined! Below are their market evaluations taken from Yahoo! Finance and visualized by the statistics portal Statista:

Even if the numbers are not the exact match to the real world situation and might not be properly adjusted for inflation, they are pretty close to the real value of the companies…

Why is Apple so different and what is the company doing right?

Here are few things out of many that I think Apple is doing JUST right:

1) They do a great market research and know what customers really want – and they know how to present it!
- When Bill Gates introduced the tablet PC, the world didn’t really care, but when Jobs re-introduced the improved “tablet PC” iPad the world went crazy…

2) Understanding marketing and NOT cutting-out of marketing budgets when market goes in downturn
-  Apple understands the marketing industry very good, from guerrilla marketing to social media, they are staying on top of things. They are even controlling brand exposure and marketing efforts internationally – every campaign that goes must follow strict brand standards (like for example> No Flash banners) and must be approved by the corresponding marketing department.

3) Investing into R&D
- Apple set the standards for many things, they created modern products that people adore… in order to do this, a lot of hrs need to go into research and product development and Apple makes sure of that.

4)  Pushing the limits and don’t applying the “regular rules”
- Like Steve Jobs, many people in Apple are visionaries that don’t believe in the regular set of rules and are prepared to shift the market and consumer’s perceptions.

5) Believing in quality over quantity
- Apple believes in quality over quantity, even though they do have huge factories in China and all around the world, they would rather make people wait for their desired Apple product then to go with higher supply.

Ofc, no need to say that many other things make Apple such a great company – from trade operations to  what not… but I outlined my personal favs above.

Posted by Damjan Dano
Posted in Business News, eCommerce, Marketing, Mobile (Pillar 7), Online PR, Public Relations, World | No Comments »
Tags: apple, best companies, best IT companies, ebay, facebook, google, Ipad, iphone, Microsoft, most valuable company, Yahoo

Facebook is rolling out new features and marketers are rolling their eyes August 22, 2012 – 5:52 pm				Damjan Dano

Today the largest social network made few updates to their Open Graph platform… it allowed users to tag their friends in 3rd party apps like social games (ex: FarmVille) and geo-location apps (ex: FourSquare)… it also announced that sponsored links will be shown in user’s searches on Facebook.com.

Now your friends can tag you on 3rd party apps and you will receieve the notifications about the tag – via a Mention or Action method.

The difference between these two is outlined below:

This feature will not be added by default, users will give permissions for tagging to the apps, the same way they do now when they want to interact with some app. (tip: If you currently have some active apps on your profile, in order to use this you’ll need to renew the permissions, you can do that with  going to Account settings > Apps).

The second update marks a direct poke from Facebook to Google (maybe because of this Google is running around crazy), and will allow businesses to bid for user’s query in the search box and results page like shown in the image below:

While the tagging feature update is clearly a long awaited and requested from the 3rd party app providers and many users, the second feature update is clearly a shot to make the shareholders happy and to bump the price of current low-performing stock on the market.

Most likely the first feature will be accepted very well by the users, and the second one will likely be highly ignored with very low click-throughs as most of the current sidebar ads on Facebook. I have trouble figuring out why Facebook – platform that has tons of data and behavior patterns for all of us, still can’t figure out how to make money and how to properly integrate semantic marketing and targeting, but are copying some old-school concepts.

Posted by Damjan Dano
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, Business News, Content Marketing (Pillar 1), Digital Media (Pillar 4), eCommerce, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Online PR, Pay Per Click (PPC), Public Relations, SEM (Search Engine Marketing), Social Media Marketing (Pillar 6) | No Comments »
Tags: Digital Media (Pillar 4), facebook, Facebook marketing, foursquare, google, Internet Marketing, search marketing, semantics marketing, Social Marketing, Social Media Marketing (Pillar 6), social networks, tagging, tags

Drowning in e-mail? You’re not alone. February 14, 2012 – 7:41 pm				Damjan Dano

Another awesome infographic on the topic of e-mail communication, developed by the Boomerang for Gmail tool that helps you schedule an email to be sent later.

The infographic shares insights from 5 million analyzed e-mails and explains that the average e-mail user received 147 messages every day, and spends around 2 hours on e-mail daily. Which is a lot of time!

Many other interesting details worth reading are included in this graphic:

Couple months ago I’ve read an interesting and controversial article in the news about a former French finance minister, now CEO of Atos Origin, one of the largest IT companies in France, who gave it’s employees 18 months to adapt a practice of not communicating via e-mail.

After the deadline, the company will only communicate via phone, IM chat and in person communication.

The decision by the executive Tiery Breton was made after analyzing over 200 company e-mails and concluding that only 10% of the e-mails are valid and useful, while the rest are distraction. They also concluded that employees are spending from 5-20 hrs a week only on e-mails,

What’s your opinion on this topic? It’s certainly an interesting discussion. How do you handle e-mail?

Posted by Damjan Dano
Posted in Blog Marketing, Business News, eCommerce, Email Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Online PR | No Comments »
Tags: best time to e-mail, drowning in e-mail, e-mail, e-mail response rate, marketing comm, marketing communication, sending e-mails, when to send e-mail

Handsome Leather Gifts For Father’s Day June 14, 2011 – 11:56 am				Abdul Fattah Ismail

Father’s Day is just around the corner.  If you have not made up your mind and want some ideas, we suggest pieces from Jack Georges. The leather briefcase company has a unique portfolio in their e-commerce store, with some great gifts for your dad.

This example from the Jack Georges Elements collection is a best seller for many reasons.  The triple gusset flapover briefcase (Elements #4505) is handcrafted from European leather. The beautiful, rich grain has a scratch resistant coat with a steel frame top that folds reflexively.  Inside the bag, you get a padded compartment storage for a laptop equivalent to 15.6” along with an Easy Access Organizer for writing utensils and accessories.  An open back pocket rests on the side panel for your file documents.

Jack Georges has other fine products available for shipment when you order by 12 noon EST on Thursday, June 16th. Here is a second suggestion.

Nevada Collection 19” Duffel Bag.

Built for the weekend trip, this gorgeous duffel bag is made from a pebble grain crushed fabric and flecked with suede pieces.  It comes with durable handles made from full grain leather, containing zippered pockets on the outside and inside of the case.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, Digital Media (Pillar 4), eCommerce, Social Media Marketing (Pillar 6) | No Comments »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, digital marketing agency, handmade leather briefcases, Jack Georges, jack georges success blog, new york ecommerce agency, online marketing agency

Internet Week, Day 2 June 9, 2011 – 12:06 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

I’m back at the Metropolitan Pavilion for Yahoo’s Internet Week Conference.  Traffic isn’t nearly as intense.  The Ford Focus still illuminates the main space, crowded next to endless sponsorship signs.  Yahoo Studios flashes programming from their several content stations.   

10:43:  Keynote Presentation by Robert Bowman

MLB Advanced Media CEO Robert Bowman is talking about the mobile experience enhancing interactivity for the fans.  In his mind, baseball remains the ultimate representation of theatre in sports.  They are also talking about the interactivity that spreads beyond the diamond with fantasy leagues and microsites like MLB FanCave.  The actual fan cave exists in the old Tower Records space in New York’s Greenwich Village, and it has offered exclusive program with baseball figures. Their Twitter feed has grown with followers by the day as content continues to gain traction.

11:10:  The Art Of The Side Project

Rick Webb of The Barbarian Group moderates a panel of serial entrepreneurs who talk about the balance between a full-time career and working with a side project.  Again, the crowd din makes it difficult to hear the panelists clearly. If they do it here next year, I’d recommend better audio equipment or hold panels in a separate auditorium. According to them, motivation is something that ebbs and flow with side projects.  Content must be regulated to attract unique visitors, advertisers, and so forth.  Once the side project rises in economic value, decisions must be made. The most common factor is enjoyment.  Is there a desire to leverage this into a career? You’d be surprised that sometimes, it is not.

11:20: Noah Brier talks about selling off Brand Tags for this particular reason. Brand Tag is deemed “a collective experiment in brand perception”.  He felt that the project grew into such a livelihood where other minds can carry it to a full potential. He also mentions that he never consciously refused to apply this side project in his traditional work setting. The time was just not available to direct focus in that space.

11:31:  Who Is Alex Blagg?

On the AOL stage, Alex Blagg of Bajillionhits.biz talks about how the Internet has statistically filled the Internet with endless content.  The effect on human discourse is brought out.  According to him, “A Grilled Cheese Sandwich Store just raised 10 million dollars in venture capital.” He also states that Internet hits are worth more than Dollars, Euros, and Yen combined. The dude is hilarious. He correlates content with basic internet principles, like SEO and online advertising scale. Only content exists, and there is a way where great content stratisfies the future. His keys: Not Too Many Words, Cheap, Disposable, Addictive, Effortesly, and mostly insanity. The mocking is classic. If only you could sit in front of him. He called MySpace “an apocalyptic wasteland where content zombies roam”.  My words don’t do it justice.

That’s the first half wrap. More to come in the afternoon.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, Business News, eCommerce, green marketing, Interactive Marketing, Marketing | No Comments »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, digital marketing agency, internet week chelsea, internet week new york 2011, new york interactive marketing agency

Mobile Payment Sector Zaps Up Currency May 25, 2011 – 4:32 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

This summer, the banking industry and technology companies look to help consumers move around. Their money, that is. I spoke a few weeks back about the seismic shift in activity. The intensity is stronger from many angles over the past couple days. The mobile payment sector has built itself through small companies producing site platforms to hold beginning applications.  Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, believes the mobile marketplace is seeing the revolution come to pass.  In this piece from Financial Times, he talks about the changes in depth.  

PayPal has been a steady performing company for years with the stewardship of eBay.  The revenues have tripled since 2005, making them the market leader of mobile payments.

Google has announced the release of an application that will allow consumers to make purchases with a wave of their mobile device. Tablets are also eligible to make payments with participating retailers.  Google is taking on the leader of daily e-commerce coupons, Groupon, with a new coupon service.

According to this piece in the Journal, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and J.P. Morgan Chase are the banks looking to launch a  mobile payment system where customers send money from checking accounts to merchants with a phone number or email system.

This shift could be a watershed for e-commerce retailers who do not have existing debt in brick-and-mortar venues.  It could also intensify security encryption for personal data. Stay zapped.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, Business News, eCommerce, Interactive Marketing, Mobile (Pillar 7), Mobile Applications | No Comments »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, digital marketing agency, Mobile (Pillar 7), mobile marketing agency

Book Industry Turns The Digital Page May 12, 2011 – 5:30 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

This week in London, the inaugural World E-Reading Congress met to discuss the state of books in a digital age.  As we know, the print market has been in turmoil for years.  The conference taking place in London was befitting since some of the most seminal stories in Western Civilization were created between those shires.  Paidcontent.org had several publishing executives talk about how information is flowing through multiple devices.  They also held seminars to discuss interactive marketing strategies for a new generation.

It will involve a different methodology of storytelling.  You wonder if parents will be able to read with their children off of an Amazon Kindle or iPad at bedtime.  Primary school teachers who nurtured the art of penmanship complemented with illustration must develop new strategies for engaging young minds.  Will literacy develop a wider class gap in correlation with access to new tech equipment?  

A second topic discussed involved the general operations of the book publishing industry.  We have seen corporations with e-commerce stores enter bidding wars on book price scaling. Authors have eliminated agents by self-publishing novels before they are distributed in print among declining book hubs. Licensors worry about intellectual property rights being infringed upon, not to mention piracy.  Internet giants like Amazon are also creating original content for publishing.

Executives are clearly losing sleep these days. HarperCollins’ international CEO Victoria Barnsley wonders about web developers entering the industry, especially titans with social media tendons. She also wonders this:  ”Can publishers replace their lost revenues from physical through digital sales? The answer is probably ‘no’, unless they can significantly lower volumes.”

Web applications for tablets and smartphones get mixed reviews so far, but their maturation as a commodity will allow publishers to scale for subscriptions.  Lenders can also, as mentioned, assure that encryption is mandated to protect the integrity of business relationships in which so many people latch onto in the sector.  These are fast times for Publishing High.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, eCommerce, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Mobile (Pillar 7), Mobile Applications, Social Media Marketing (Pillar 6) | No Comments »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, digital marketing agency nyc, ecommerce development agency nyc, social media marketing agency, social media news

Digital Acquisitions Upon Digital Acquisitions May 10, 2011 – 3:48 pm				Abdul Fattah Ismail

This week has seen a flurry of activity between digital corporations from various angles.  Microsoft purchased Skype for $8 billion and Groupon struck a deal with Live Nation to offer exclusive music concert deals. The venture will be an online ticket microsite called GroupLive. Live Nation has seen sales suffer for many tours in the past calendar year and is looking to recover some sales growth. Groupon is looking for valuation. They have already struck partnerships with some Hollywood studios to soft release discount tickets for special new releases.  Microsoft, on the other hand, is losing profit share in the ultra-competitive consumer digital marketplace. Apple and Google lead that sector with several strategies including SEO and mobile technology.

These acquisitions are interesting for several reasons.  Both deals consist of longtime corporate entities (Microsoft, Live Nation) who have lost their energy due to a flagging economy, improved competition, and bad strategic decisions. Groupon is rising quickly to become the Amazon of the online deal marketplace. Like Amazon, they started from a segmented portfolio of services (deals for health, beauty, and wellness patrons) then branching into endless consumer goods and assisting with brick-and-mortar experiences.

Skype has been an internet darling since its inception.  eBay attempted to bring the VoIP service provider into its online marketing strategy, but logistics and software problems persisted. The growth figures never reached satisfactory levels, and Skype was sold to Silver Lake Partners.  As the WSJ mentions, Microsoft could face resistance for wireless share from customers and telecommunications agencies.  Groupon is looking to leverage their partnerships and investors for an IPO. The alliance with Live Nation comes at an opportune moment with summer festivals on the horizon.

All of these acquisitions are filled with potential to market several products across different hardware. I see Live Nation especially engaging viral strategies like online video advertising attached with a deal to entice consumers. Microsoft’s entry into the marketplace with Skype is unclear in that businesses have yet to assimilate Skype into their international phone service at a high volume. The folks at Blueliner have used Skype to maintain operating margins and flatten communication channels with SMS and VoIP. So far, so good for a company on our scale. On a wider scale, Skype’s growth remains to be seen. Microsoft has made a stronger effort in marketing their new portfolio of digital services.  Hopefully, the Excel spreadsheet adds up.

Posted by Abdul Fattah Ismail
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, Business News, eCommerce, Interactive Marketing, Marketing | No Comments »
Tags: Blueliner Marketing, digital marketing agency, ecommerce agency new york, ecommerce development news, groupon news, new york interactive marketing agency