More Visibility, a two time INC. 500 Company (and the only firm in their industry to have received such an honor), often releases free reports and whitepapers to their targeted audience and subscribers (distributed through various channels).

The one I was reading today was a little remedial, but a good primer for new website owners or netpreneurs who haven’t yet considered that there is more to the traffic equation than buying links from other websites.

“Marketing Strategies Beyond Traditional Search” is a tidy 13 page PDF file that discusses contextual advertising, local search, vertical search, affiliate marketing, display advertising, broadband advertising, rich media, and more. If you’ve been marketing online for any amount of time you will not learn anything new from this report, but it might be worth your while to read some of their other free white papers.

The kicker is in the conclusion of “…Beyond Traditional Search,” copied partially below. Remember this is a search engine optimization company (companies whose income depended solely on their ability to achieve top search engine positions for their clients) writing this. Read the rest of this entry »

Looking for a way to use Web 2.0 (either social networking or social bookmarking) online in languages other than English?

Connecting socially, a lot like Facebook

skyrock.com (also available in Spanish and Dutch)
Home Page: 6
Alexa Traffic Rank 10/07: 26

xiaonei.com (Chinese)
Home Page: 5
Alexa Traffic Rank 10/07: 362

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One of the latest comScore reports on social networking and e-commerce has just been released. You can read some of the findings, free, in the press release.

The reseach supports a similar study completed last year about this time. Last year’s study marked the beginning of my own journey into discovering where all the traffic had gone from my retail and affiliate based sites. (In fact, that statement alone reminds me to share the Boomerang Effect with you. It is the how/why data on consumer trends shopping direct from manufacturer. Perhaps tomorrow.)

Back to the comScore research. Here are a few snippets from the press release.

“…which showed that heavy U.S. visitors to social networking sites are significantly more likely than average to visit leisure-oriented retail site categories, such as music, jewelry/luxury goods/accessories, consumer electronics and apparel.”

“…exhibited a particularly high tendency to visit the more leisure-oriented retail categories…” Read the rest of this entry »

I must admit I haven’t talked much about Facebook publicly (only in my email newsletters). And until earlier this month I also haven’t done much with my Facebook account…

Since the start of the year I have been focusing on Web 2.0 properties that (a) have a finely focused niche audience, (b) provide some sort of search engine juice as a result of my efforts, and (c) allow me to partially automate the content creation aspect.

Caring Less and Less About Search Engine Love…(b)

These days I’ve been caring less about the extra search engine ‘points’ by having off-site content. (If you don’t know why I’m caring less, check yesterday’s post.) As a result of reader comments and a few discussions in Facebook I woke up and realized that other marketers, entrepreneurs and website owners are seeing the same anomolies about site traffic as I am.

For example, Allan Cockerill (one of my Facebook friends and fellow bloggers - www.AllanCockerill.com among others) openly shared through a discussion that began: “Will Social Media Become More Important Than SEO…?”

Allan shared: “…1600+ visitors to my blog during September, using nothing but Facebook, Stumbleupon, Twitter and Digg…has me pondering the future.”

Laura said: “…the wake up call came when I noticed clickthroughs from Google down - even though I held #1 spots and even though the # of searches per month, per keyword, was constant…”

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There’s a huge rush on - from marketers around the globe - to market their products and services (or increase their search engine position) by posting content and creating profiles on multiple Web 2.0 properties.

This is one way a very smart internet marketing trainer is teaching others to domninate the search engine listings for their select keywords.

It’s a great idea, but is it a viable long-term solution to increasing brand awareness and building business value? Or is it a short term solution to (hopefully) some fast cash?

Surfers Spending More Hours on Web 2.0 - Less on Search

Before you run off creating multiple accounts on multiple Web 2.0 properties and posting your proprietary content there in an attempt to dominate the top 10 results in google, consider Read the rest of this entry »