You can read all you want about how to run a successful SEO campaign. Buy SEO software. Get an SEO “audit” for your site. Do whatever you like… the fact is that nothing replaces creativity, comprehensiveness and tenacity and here’s a story that proves that point.
MedNet Direct is one of our ongoing marketing clients and as part of their SEO program, we created and issued a press release for their brand new, washable puppy pads. It was spotted by Distinctive Assets, an L.A. based promotions company that assembles gift baskets for celebrity events. They contacted us and, long story short, MedNet’s washable puppy pads were included in the Hollywood Earth Day 2010 gift basket, which was distributed to eco-minded celebrities including, Leonardo DiCaprio, Pink, Melissa Etheridge, Sheryl Crow, Drew Barrymore, Orlando Bloom, Bette Midler and Barbra Streisand. Subsequently, MedNet was included in dozens of other press releases and articles about the event.
That’s what professional SEO looks like. It’s not just about aggressive calls-to-action and choosing “buy me” colors. It’s about marketing. It’s about creativity. It’s about the big picture… and it’s about time you called us to see what we can do for your business.
… see what we did there? Clever wordplay is just one of our many tools.
The new platform operates entirely within FaceBook, the ubiquitous social media network, offering merchants an exciting new opportunity to connect to their customers in new ways.
ShopFans isn’t simply a store within FaceBook. Its features allow customers to interact with the store… sharing links, creating wishlists and allowing users to “Like” specific items.
Kevin Harman (our fearless leader) has packed up his shiny new iPad and his tattered passport in preparation for his trip to Toronto and the Search Marketing Expo (April 8-9).
He’ll be attending conferences, shamelessly networking and handing out business cards like there’s no tomorrow. If you see him and you want to learn a heck of a lot about Volusion marketing services, please be sure to introduce yourself.
… the rest of us, on the other hand, will be back here in Michigan, holding down the fort. We sure as heck won’t be sneaking out early just because the boss is out of town. No way. Not us.
Search Engine Optimization (as we’ve mentioned multiple times in this blog) is a mysterious thing. Ask 20 people how to optimize a web page and you’ll get 20 different answers, but the one thing that you’re likely to hear over and over again is “quality content,” which is why quality content is an important element of every SEO campaign we manage. Of course, saying that you need quality content is easier than creating quality content, so we’ve put together a couple of tips that may help you out. Check them out after the jump…
In perhaps the least surprising finding in the history of research, apparently the lion’s share of the nation’s advertising dollars are moving to the Internet.
In other breaking news, bunnies are adorable and water is generally quite wet.
Brand Labs is now an official Google AdWords Qualified Company! Let the bells ring out and the banners fly!
… but what exactly does that mean?
Well, it basically boils down to two things. First, we’ve exceeded the required minimum AdWords spend within programs that we manage. As a matter of fact, we overshot the minimum by 50% (because we’re a bunch of brown-nosing Google-lovers). Second, we had to have three staffers take and pass the AdWords certification test. We’ve got five, meaning that we overshot that target by 66.6%.
Now, we’re not math scientists or anything, but we’re pretty sure that those two facts make us 116% more qualified than we need to be in order to be totally awesome by Google’s standards. That’s a pretty high percentage of awesomeness, so you may want to check into our Pay Per Click management program… unless you hate awesomeness and high ROI.
In another in a series of extremely clever and attention-grabbing marketing moves from the fine folks at Burger King (remember the Whopper-scented perfume?) you may now purchase any one of several different greeting cards from the fast food giant for just one dollar. They’ll address it and mail it for you, but before they do, they’ll tuck a real, live dollar bill inside so that the recipient (should they so choose) may go and buy themselves a nice hamburger to celebrate the birth of Christ (or the miracle of Hanukkah or Winter Solstice or Kwanzaa or the culturally-appropriate holiday of their choice) . So, for just a buck, you can send your friends and loved ones a holiday-themed advertisement and an apology for doing so, provided that you consider money to be an appropriate way to apologize for transgressions. We sure do.
It seems that Senator Kay Baily Hutchison (R-TX – pictured here) committed a cardinal sin, at least as far as search engines are concerned, and found her site banned from Google and Yahoo as a result.
Apparently the website for the Senator’s campaign for Governor was discovered to have thousands of hidden messages throughout the site, which as far as Google is concerned, is reason enough to ban her from their search results, which is exactly what they did. Yahoo followed suit. According to the Senator’s staff, the entire debacle came as a result of their having hired an SEO firm that employed the use of an automated tool that sought out popular searches and embedded them invisibly in the site. Not only is this a huge no-no from an SEO standpoint, but it also resulted in the inclusion of at least one message that implied that Hutchison’s opponent was a homosexual. Apparently, there are a lot of people searching “rick perry gay.”
The Senator has fired the firm reportedly responsible for the transgression and has had to take on a pair of new domains in order to regain the traffic lost as a result of her banishment.
For people who wonder what the impact of SEO can be on a site’s traffic, or those who wonder why they should hire people to run their campaign, as opposed to leaving it to automated tools, let this stand as the only example that you should ever need.