edu.clickbooth.com : In a year when many businesses reigned-in charitable giving, Clickbooth chose to share its good fortune, donating 000 to national and local nonprofit organizations.
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Clickbooth.com Gives Back $50k To Non-Profits
The Way Of Making Money
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Internet Marketing
In a recent article , we looked at a debate over what is better between search engine optimization and pay-per-click. Of course both should be used typically, but on a recent panel at SES Chicago, participants were asked to pick a side to highlight the benefits of each compared to the other. It made for some pretty interesting conversation. Both SEO
As a follow up to a recent article we ran on how press releases can be great for search , a representative for PRWeb , a press release distribution company, contacted us with another interesting example. This one looks at the shelf-life press releases can have, with regards to search traffic. “A small business called Leatherup.com, which sells peripheral gear for motorcycle riders issued a news release on November 6, 2008, titled, ‘LeatherUp.com 2008 Sales Explode to over $20 Million,’” the representative tells WebProNews. “This year alone, this release has received more than 11,000 unique page views excluding advertising (I can see that Leatherup.com used this release as a landing page for some Doubleclick ads which boosted the total unique views to more than 20,000, so have excluded them).” “Once I had the 11,000 number, with the exclusion, I looked at the entrance sources,” he says. Among the top ten, these include (all numbers are unique views): Google:
Press releases are not only great ways to spread the word about any announcements your business might have. They can also drive traffic, particularly from search engines. This is not news, but it’s a commonly overlooked fact. Have press releases brought you significant search traffic?
We’re well into the holiday season now, in terms of having sites ready for holiday sales. That said, it’s never too late to improve your site. Your sales may depend on it. There are lot of key ingredients that go into the recipe of a successful e-commerce site: marketing, analytics, customer service, prices, competition, and the list goes on. Somewhere in there is design, and more importantly, usability. With said holiday season in full swing, it can’t hurt to brush up on a few usability tips. Usability issues are sometimes debatable, and a matter of opinion, but accessibility plays a vital role. Make sure your site is accessible (at least to the best of your ability) to those with disabilities. It’s not only the right thing to do for them, but it also opens up the door for them to give you their business. Designer Chris Spooner has a nice list of usability crimes (things to avoid). This list includes things like logos that don’t link to the home page, not specifying visited links, not indicating active form fields,
It’s easy for businesses to get caught up in Google’s expectations for their sites, when trying to market through search. That’s certainly a wise thing to do, considering Google dominates the search market by a huge margin. Still, there are other search engines that people are using, and it is also wise to make sure your site is performing to the best of its ability in those too. I’m obviously talking about Yahoo and Bing, but Yahoo’s share is declining, while Bing’s is gaining . Furthermore, if the deal between Microsoft and Yahoo goes through, Bing search will be talking over Yahoo anyway. We don’t hear as much about what Bing wants out of a site for rankings, but Rick DeJarnette of Bing Webmaster Center has shared some dos and don’ts of link-building for Bing . Not surprisingly, a lot of his advice for honoring Bing’s policy, does not differ too much from advice that Google would give you. It is, however, still always nice to see how they feel, just to clear up any possible confusion. Like Google, Bing places great emphasis on quality links to determine its rankings. “Just don’t make the mistake of believing it will result in instant gratification. Successful link building efforts require a long-term commitment, not an overnight or turnkey solution,” says DeJarnette. “You need to continually invest in link building efforts with creativity and time.” What Not To Do DeJarnette shared a list of things that you should avoid in your link building efforts, if it is a good Bing ranking that you are after. Here is what Bing says will get your site reviewed more closely by staff: 1. The number of inbound links suddenly increases by orders of magnitude in a short period of time 2. Many inbound links coming from irrelevant blog comments and/or from unrelated sites 3. Using hidden links in your pages 4. Receiving inbound links from paid link farms, link exchanges, or known “bad neighborhoods” on the Web 5. Linking out to known web spam sites “When probable manipulation is detected, a spam rank factor is applied to a site, depending upon the type and severity of the infraction,” says DeJarnette. “If the spam rating is high, a site can be penalized with a lowered rank. If the violations are egregious, a site can be temporarily or even permanently purged from the index.” What To Do DeJarnette also shared some tips for getting more quality links. Following are Bing’s tips for effective link building (paraphrased): 1. Develop your site as a business brand and brand it consistently 2. Find relevant industry experts, product reviewers, bloggers, and media folk, and make sure they’re aware of your site/content 3. Publish concise, informative press releases online 4. Publish expert articles to online article directories 5. Participate in relevant conversations on blogs/forums, referring back to your site’s content when applicable 6. Use social networks to connect to industry influencers (make sure you have links to your site in your profiles) 7. Create an email newsletter with notifications of new content 8. Launch a blog/forum on your site 9. Participate in relevant industry associations and especially in their online forums