A Good Blog Title is Like Wrapping Paper on a Present

I always loved Christmas as a child and love it today as an adult. It is filled with family, great food, and presents. As a child I liked the family and presents; as an adult I love all three. The difference is as a child I liked to receive presents and as an adult I like to give them. While I probably didn’t care much about the wrapping paper as a child, I do as an adult. I think the wrapping paper and presentation should be as good as the present itself. Gifts for adults need perfect corners, while gifts for children need lots of ribbon and a piece of candy on top to peak interest Read more

The Value of Search and the User Experience

I’m currently reading a book titled Search Patterns by Peter Morville and Jeffery Callender. Picking up a book is a rare treat for me, so even though this book is technically work-related I’m don’t mind. It is a good book and speaks to the Internet geek within me. As I read through the pages I’m awestruck by the explanation given for the qualities associated with the searcher’s experience. The authors boil this down to a simple illustration called the User Experience Honeycomb. Read more

Conflicts Within Marketing, Social Media, and ERP

Since college I have loved ERP software.  I embraced the concept of an order entry system back in 1993 when I created a tiny Lotus 123 script to enter a basic sales order.  From that day on I was hooked.  I mean really hooked.  I fell absolutely in love with technology and could not turn back no matter how hard I tried. After college I found a temporary position at a barcode and data collection distribution and before I knew it, I was a full-time employee running their operations.  Why?  Because I fell in love with the ERP system they installed three months before my arrival.  That Read more

Internet Guru Matt Cutts Talks Sock Puppet Marketing

Last week Google’s Internet marketing Guru Matt Cutts posted a new video in their Webmaster Central Channel on YouTube.  I love these videos because they are short and to the post and without any pitch or longwinded verbiage cluttering the real message.   The video that caught my eye was Matt Cutts’ discussion on Sock Puppet Marketing.   Yes you read that correctly.  Mr. Cutts is talking openly about puppets. Puppets aside, the discussion was in relation to an individual or company creating fake Internet personas for marketing purposes.  While Matt did not go into how Google would Read more

Google and Twitter Make Social Search a Reality

Last week Google officially announced their newly formed partnership with Twitter.  The officially statement indicates this partnership will allow social media updates on Twitter to appear in Google’s search results.  Google also demonstrated their new Social Search feature at the Web 2.0 conference to really get Internet marketing consultants excited.  Although this new feature isn’t live yet, Social Search will be launching soon on Google Experimental and Google Labs. What does Social Search mean to you? If you use Twitter for business, it means you’ve just had your world expand Read more

Google Degrades PageRank

Much to the surprise of many Internet marketing consultants, Google recently removed PageRank information from their Webmaster Tools.  In a response to a posting on Google’s Webmaster Central forum, Susan Moskwa stated “We've been telling people for a long time that they shouldn't focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it's the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it.” Ms. Moskwa then points Read more

Google Officially Announces Meta Keywords Are Dead

Google, and in particular Internet guru Matt Cutts, formally end SEO consultant chatter and announce Google’s policy of keyword utilization by posting a video on Google’s Webmaster Blog. In the very direct posting, Matt said Google no longer uses meta based keywords for primary organic search, but quantified this statement by also stating Google does still use meta keywords for the search appliance. What does this mean? For some SEO consultants, it means meta keywords can be completely ignored. I consider this the lazy approach. For me, this means I will take note and simply not place Read more

Michigan Embraces Social Media with Pure Michigan

I am a born and raised “Michigander”. I am also, an Internet marketing consultant. This summer my two loves united as the State of Michigan embraced social media and pursued vacationers through hardcore social media and online advertising. I am not only a Michigan girl; I was raised in a very small northern Michigan town that financially existed off of tourism. The survival of my little town of roughly 2,000 people is based on the cottage rentals, canoe trips, and bar tabs of summer vacationers. In recent years I’ve watched many of these businesses close as tourism flattened in Read more

How Long Does it Really Take to Get Indexed by Google?

It seems like just a few years ago it took Google forever to index a new URL and website. Well maybe not, but for anyone working on Internet marketing it felt like it took Google forever to index a new URL. Things have changed and Google is different these days. Remember the Six Million Dollar Man intro? “We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was before. Better. Stronger.” That’s what I think of Google. Google is better. Okay I may have just dated myself with the analogy, but Google reminds me of the TV show intro. Google is better, Read more

Google Insights for Search is an SEO Consultant’s Dream

I love Internet marketing because each day I learn something new and discover more SEO tools that make my job easier. As an avid Internet user and passionate online consultant, I try to forward these tips onto others. Today my tip is Google Insights for Search. As usual, Google continues to provide free and valuable tools to webmasters and online marketers. Their Google Insights for Search tool allows users to view search volumes, geographical hot spots, and search volume increases. For my example search, I selected “marketing”. Internet marketing scored fourth with online Read more