EPIC, also known as the Electronic Privacy Information Center has lodged a formal complaint with the FTC over the launch of BUZZ when they automatically enrolled 176 million users without their consent.

EPIC states BUZZ and Google is being “deceptive” and this violates consumer protection laws. “Twitter is a social networking site and people know what they are signing up for. With Gmail, users signed up for an e-mail service not a social networking service,” said Ms. Nguyen in an interview with the BBC

The complaint has asked the FTC to force Google to provide Gmail users with opt-in consent to the Google Buzz service  as well as provide notice and require consent from Gmail users before making changes to their privacy policy in the future.

I know it must seem like I am on an anti-Google tirade as of late but not only did Google automatically sign you up for BUZZ, they also created your circle of friends based on who you have emailed.

I am sorry Google, but don’t you think that should be my choice? Seems Google wanted to have an instant “Facebook” style platform to serve it’s ads and because you have a Gmail account, they signed you up for BUZZ without your permission.

Picture this, your automatic circle of friends just included all of your business contacts and your competitors because you have exchanged email with them in the past. Perhaps you are in talks with a new employer and your boss and the HR dept. of the new company are among your friends for all to see??

Are you being faithful in your relationship??

So what did Google have to say?

Google has apologized and said it has acted quickly to address concerns and introduced a new option to disable the service.

“If it becomes clear that people don’t think we’ve done enough, we’ll make more changes,” Todd Jackson, product manager for Google Buzz told BBC News.

He also stated that “tens of millions” of users were “rightfully upset” and that the firm was “very, very sorry”.

What I want to know is: If  Google agrees that I am “rightfully upset” why did they violate my privacy in the first place?

In an interview with BBC News, Mr Jackson admitted that testing of the service had been inadequate and that it was not opened up to a big enough group of people to try out.

“We’ve been testing Buzz internally at Google for a while. Of course, getting feedback from 20,000 Googlers isn’t quite the same as letting Gmail users play with Buzz in the wild.”

This example of blatant disregard of privacy totally debunks Google’s stance or the protection of, and right to privacy they expressed with China over the hacking of a few Gmail accounts said to be owned by human rights activists. There obviously is no need for any hacking, Google is more than willing to hand your list of contacts over to anyone and do what it sees fit with your personal information.

As an owner of a marketing company, if I sign you up for a Gmail account (which is required for an Adwords account) and your privacy rights are violated, I could be held liable!

“This case illustrates a lot about Google’s corporate culture where a company is run by computer scientists whose operating method is don’t ask for permission when you can always ask for forgiveness,” said John Simpson from EPIC. This statement could not be any closer to the truth.

If you have read my last article, you will see this exact mentality represented in the administration of Adwords accounts. It is becoming more and more obvious Google is taking it upon themselves to dictate who can be found in search results and what features your are being subscribed to. Top that off with the inability to cancel an Adwords account or remove your financial information from it… I think you can see why we our relationship with Google has soured.

My company firmly believes in the sacred right to privacy of all our clients and we will not jeopardize that without your written consent when providing you with services offered by Google as they are clearly demonstrating time and time again violations of the rights you have to protect you private information.

It is not very often that I go on a rant about a company that I was so vigilant with my support in the past but there are a lot of disturbing things going on in the Google camp and I am suspending setting up any Adwords accounts for my clients as a result and directing their business to Yahoo and Bing.

As one of the consultants of this company I feel it is my responsibility to look after the best interests of my clients and I am not confident promoting the use of a Google Adwords campaign is in ANY business owners best interest.

A bit of history… My last blog post of 2009 I expressed the results of an indexing study we did where the results suggested Google was purposely burring the links of legit companies  deep in the search engine result pages of relevant searches. Basically, the study suggested that if you were a legit business with a lot of content on your website you were being buried so far in search results you had to pony up for an Adwords campaign if you had any hope of being seen buy the customers you need to keep the doors open.  (AKA the monetization of search results)

As a result of that article, Google canceled our company Adsense account 30 days later stating we were a threat to their advertisers. Seems Google does not like it when marketing companies are bad mouthing them… No big deal I thought… The pittance we made from the ads was not worth the real estate on our company website so we deleted their scripts and wiped our hands of Google ads with good riddance…

Then we started to see something else we have never seen Google do before…

Google has recently been “luring” unsuspecting customers to it’s Adwords advertising program offering $100 gift coupons. A free $100!! Who would not take this bait! Customers would present these little gems and ask us to set up Adwords accounts for them…

And some set up accounts for themselves… only to come to us in total horror asking us for help.

Well I am going to beg every reader, PLEASE DO NOT set up an Adwords account with them. It will be something you will come to regret.

First, they camouflage your payment options during the sign-up process so you end up having a post-pay account… Meaning, they will run your ads and then bill you once you have received the clicks..

Problem is, once the account is set up, there is no way to cancel the account. In all fairness of keeping this article as accurate as possible, we did find a way to cancel pre-pay accounts but not post pay. Google states there is a way to cancel a post pay account in the help forum but when you follow the instructions posted in the help file, the link to “cancel” your account does not exist. And neither does Google Customer service.

You can have a credit balance, never served a single ad with them, and you can not cancel your account. If you are not computer savvy enough to figure out Awords you will just keep racking up the charges for ads unknowingly while Google just keeps billing your card…. Day after day after day after day… And if you try to call them.. you cant. Google is a multi-billion dollar company and they do not have a single phone number you can call if you need help. Trying to find a link to submit an email is virtually impossible and they never get back to you.

And would you also believe there is no way to change your billing options from post pay to pre pay? When trying to research how to remove a bank card from a Google account we found the only way to remove a card is to submit a new one…

It is a little hard to believe a company like Google can not put the ability to change the way you want to  pay for your adds in your account.. and you can not cancel that account to set up a new one with the payment option the way YOU want to pay. Ethical behavior? Not even close.

So my company will no longer be recommending Google Adwords accounts to clients. In fact, we should have done this sooner as some studies are showing 18% of clicks on Google are fraudulent. Last year I wrote an article about the subject. You can read it by clicking here. There are also reports of Google being sued by advertisers because of these fraudulent clicks.

Consider this as well… How much does it cost you when your competitors click your ads only to deplete your monthly budget so their adds do not have to compete with yours??? Think it does not happen, think again.

I am finding it very hard to find anything I like about Google and their pay-per-click advertising business model anymore. I am also finding it hard to support a company that I feel is very unethical in the way they do business. For example, they sell their operating system for mobile devices to companies like Motorola and then shortly after completing the contract Google introduces a mobile device that is in direct competition to Motorola and other smart phone producers. As an industry response to this,  Apple fired a shot over the bow of Google and purchased a company to get into the paid advertising business… (I commend Steve Jobs for this decision and I really do wish Apple my best.)

Other reasons there is no love lost

As the company SEO specialist I also frequently use the Google webmaster tools setting up accounts for clients so they can track the performance of their websites in Google.

The dashboard and the functionality it provides is a complete joke. It just does not work. The information they give you is dreadfully inaccurate yet I read article after article telling me how “sophisticated” the Google algorithm is. If Google is so great at all things concerning the serving of information, why cant they even find all the links to a website??? Well because some of them are not relevant they say… Relevant to who???  They will even say they have not found them YET!

Interesting… I can do a search for rubber dog crap and get the following result:

Results 1 – 10 of about 2,520,000 for rubber dog crap. (0.36 seconds)

But Google can not tell me where all the links to my website are??? They can give me 2,520,000 results for rubber dog crap though…. 2 and a half million??? Really.. Think about that, two point five MILLION results for rubber dog crap… I think the only “Crap” is in Google search results.

What a joke. If they can not have any decent tools for webmasters or provide accurate information to website owners, how am I to believe Google is on the cutting edge of search technology when our results were very conclusive… Microsoft’s accuracy of indexing is 5 times better!

All the REALLY good SEO’s  know… the Google Algorithm is a complete joke and all the things you need to do to rank well in search results are no more than white-hat exploits of Google’s indexing inadequacies and serving A LOT of Google ads. A little bit of “horn or toad” and a pinch of “shittofbull” and a closed door deal or two and BINGO you are on page one.

Look at the search results… Why are some large companies dominating the first page? Look at their websites. If you are serving A LOT of Google ads you will be boosted to page one because the more clicks Google ads get the more Google makes. Even if that means cutting a few companies in on the deal and putting them on page one. Google wants maximum ad exposure and they do it at the expense of companies that deserve to be on page one because they have the best and most relevant content for the search query.

Well Matt, Eric, and all you other Google gong bangers, the gig is up. This search Ponzi scheme you have been running the last few years is not working and I am not buying into it or serving it to my customers.  Ebay served this flavor before and most of their power sellers walked as a result.

You are taking advantage of your customers, Google WAVE is worthless, your maps give wrong directions, Your browser CHROME is FULL of bugs and crashes constantly, your phone sucks, and I am really having a hard time figuring out what you are really good at??

Wait one thing comes to mind…

Serving a lot of Garbage at the expense of small business owners who are struggling in this economy for the sake of your company profits. As A result, and because I am an avid supporter of small businesses and their owners, I will no longer offer your company ANY support and hopefully my readers will do the same.

A lot is happening on the search scene with the boiling competition between Google and Microsoft’s new search engine – Bing. Bing has been live for better than half a year and the results of Microsoft’s efforts are proving to be extremely fruitful for local businesses.

For a long time Google has been preaching it’s strive to “return relevant results” to searchers and for the most part, compared to past search engines, it has delivered on that promise. Where Google has fallen short is in the realm of local search. Google “maps” and “local business results” were to be a search miracle for small, local business, but proved to be one of the company’s biggest embarrassments with the ease in which the local business results can be “spammed”. Since Bing was launched, Microsoft has delivered on its promise of more relevant results and has demonstrated the superior ability for small businesses to be found locally on the Internet and that ability is resulting in more conversions from a search engine with a smaller market share.

In my 6 months of testing Bing and Google side by side the results are much different than I expected. Using our company website, www.mymarketingcompany.com, and its many interior pages, I created a comprehensive list of the keywords used in the company pages and with the help of a tool from SEO Book called “Rank Checker”, I was able to compare the indexing and search results ranking of my company’s web pages side by side between the three major players in the search arena.

The overall goal in website development is to have the pages of the website indexed by the search engines for the keywords they are optimized for, and to have those pages rank well in search results of searches using those keywords. If a search engine delivers on its stated goal, to deliver the most relevant search results for keyword search queries and your web pages are relevant to that search query, they will be displayed in the search results. The more relevant the information on the page, the higher it will rank.

Well, in theory anyway but unfortunately for Google results, this has not been the case.

So who is doing a better job? Google supporters will be quick to bang the gong for Google and Microsoft supporters will be quick to cheer for Bing as you would expect, but the proof is in the results and the results of my study were quite interesting to say the least. Due to the disparity in the search results I need to separate them into two categories, local search and national search.

Local search is defined as any search query that a searcher will expect a result for a business located in his/her metro area. For example: Searching for landscaping company.

National search is defined as any search query that a searcher will not expect a result in any geographical location. For example: Searching for deals on airline tickets.

Local Search

For most small business in America this is the search category they are most concerned with as is our company. I optimize our company web pages for the service and geographical location we wish to provide a particular service in. Within those locations I have competitors so I would expect to see their web pages along side mine in search results.

What I used for my criteria as a means to “grade” a search engines ability to return relevant results was its ability to filter irrelevant web pages that contain the words that are used in the search query but the context of the web page is blatantly irrelevant to the intended search context. A search for “Sarasota Billboard Advertising” (which is only one of the 55 search terms used in the study) should display relevant results for companies that provide billboard advertising in the Sarasota area.

It would seem to be a simple exercise, right? Well the results will amaze you.

Let’s start with the 600 pound gorilla – Google. With 70 percent of searches being performed on Google, and as long as they have been providing Internet search services, you would expect them to be the master of search. Unfortunately the study proved otherwise. Google’s local results were, to put it bluntly, surprisingly pathetic. So pathetic in fact that our page dedicated to copywriting ranked number two in the search results of “Sarasota billboard advertising”.  On the copywriting page the only instance of the keywords “billboard advertising” was a link to the billboard advertising page. There was no other mention of the word “billboard” anywhere in the title, description, headers, or anywhere else on the page yet it ranked number two. Our web page on billboard advertising, which is loaded with variants of the keywords “billboard advertising” as well as “billboard advertising” being occurring in the URL extension, ranked 59. Our web page on billboard advertising also has more external one-way links to it than our copywriting page and backlinks are supposedly how Google measures the “importance” of a webpage.

Our competition did not rank any better, the number one billboard vendor did not even rank in Google, but their AdWords ad did… Seems rather easy to optimize a small add for correct keyword placement so then why does Google have such a hard time with a webpage?? I also found it highly peculiar that the website for the national media company, CBS, whom is the owner of the billboards in our area, was nowhere to be found in search results unless you performed the search inside quotation marks.

There are only 8 “local” companies providing billboard advertising in our community yet only 3 out of the top 11 search results were company web pages developed specifically for promoting billboard advertising services of some kind and I am stretching credit being given. Two were for mobile billboard ads, and one was for an aerial tow-behind-a-biplane banner company. The rest were just pages that contained the search keywords but not necessarily the context you would expect in a search for billboard advertising.

When you look at the data collected in the study, you are left to make an assumption as to the reason the most relevant pages of keyword search terms are being buried so far in search results. The study suggests this burial of relevancy is a means for Google to force the owners of the most relevant pages to either pony up and pay the “ransom” for an AdWords campaign or not be seen in search results. Of all the web pages we randomly examined, only 10 percent of those pages actually ranked in a position that would have a good chance of being seen, well, appeared within the first 3 pages of search results. This was not only endemic to our company pages, but also the pages of our competitors and other product and service providers.

Bing results were miles more impressive and much more relevant to the search query. Five of the top 10 search results were links to company pages intended to promote billboard advertising services in Sarasota, the remaining 4 out 5 were secondary links by online advertising services pointing to the same landing pages of the companies in Sarasota providing billboard advertising services.

Of our 55 keyword terms used in the study, we found Microsoft’s Bing to consistently display more relevant local business search results for a search query than Google. Google only indexed the correct page for the correct keyword term 27% of the time compared to correct indexing by Bing 76% of the time.

Accurate indexing of local content equals relevant and accurate results for search queries. It would appear that Bing’s indexing relevancy for local content is 3 times more accurate than Google’s.

National search relevancy

For national search terms we used 40 keywords and found there to be no major difference in overall search relevancy. For example the word “oyster” returned the results we expected for a single keyword. The results were quite evenly spread out among the most popular uses of the word oyster. From the edible bi-valve, to Oyster yachts, to Oyster hotels, the results were nearly identical.

However for our study Google performed slightly better in our relevancy standards of indexing and returning pages where content matched the keyword context 73 percent of the time compared to Bing’s 69 percent.

In Summary

Though it is not as obvious in highly competitive search terms, It has become extremely apparent Google is monetizing local search to its benefit. Relevancy on a local level seems to be second seat to selling pay per click ads. Google clearly has a better ability to match context relevancy to its search results than it is currently providing but instead has tweaked the algorithms to bury a large percentage of relevant pages so far in the search results that many local business owners must opt of an AdWords ad to be seen by consumers interested in their services. When you add that to the SEO circus Google has turned the Internet into, it is hard to maintain that warm and fuzzy feeling Google once provided its users. This writer firmly believes the game is rigged at the expense of local small business owners who can not afford an expensive AdWords campaign.

Google maps may have helped some businesses but with the ease of ability to spam the local map results it can not be deemed reliable in terms of relevancy or very reassuring that you are actually finding a local business rather than a referral service. The more “reviews” and the higher your “ratings” the higher you will place in the local search map. It really is as easy as getting all your friends to write a review for your business and you will be at the top of the list. I am sure many of you have heard of the locksmith referral examples that have swept the media, it was a referral service that had spammed the results and the same service was coming up in multiple metro areas nationwide and often had 20+ listings in each city.

Obviously Google and Matt Cutts’ war against spam has proved to be a complete joke when it comes to local search. They have done more to hurt the small local business owner than any large Internet company has ever done in the past by allowing the abuse to continue and remain in their search results. At one point in time the Internet held significant promise for affordable local business advertising only to be taken away by typical corporate greed. Google AdWords has gone from an opt-in form of advertising on the internet if you wanted more traffic, to nearly a required one if you want any traffic at all.

What is particularly perplexing is the fact that Google is aware of the problem with local search yet they do nothing to remedy the situation. It seems this further supports the monetization theory. If Google created something that was too good at returning relevant results to service and product seekers, the vendors of those products and services would have no reason to participate in an AdWords campaign.

An interesting side note; Microsoft physically mailed a letter to my company for us to confirm our location and business “existence” by sending us a pin number to verify our listing within Bing’s webmaster tools. Obviously Microsoft is determined to deliver a more relevant local search result and spam free user experience to the users of the new Bing search engine. Though I have never been a big fan of Microsoft or it’s products due largely to its “bully” mentality while Gates was in control, it would seem the “new” Microsoft is seriously working on its image and starting to produce the products computing consumers expect with its introduction of Bing, Windows 7, their push to a more standards compliant web browser, as well as working with the W3c in development of the next web standards.

Since July, my business has received roughly 80 percent of its Internet leads from a search engine that only occupies 10 percent of all searches conducted on the Internet.

And best of all, all those leads from Bing were free.

Be thankful Bing is replacing Yahoo. Perhaps then many of us local business owners will no longer be held for ransom as we are now and we will actually be able to be found on the Internet more readily. That is of course, until Microsoft follows Google’s lead…

Article written by Lisa Clift

Harness the Power of Profiles. In parts 1 and 2 of this series, respectively, we looked at how to market your company to the trade press by building relationships with chief editors and becoming a knowledgeable source who is quoted in articles. The next step in your press coverage plan should be to attract a media outlet to write a company profile about your organization. This coveted coverage can do more to boost sales than any marketing brochure, provided you know how to deliver the right content to the press.

The best company profiles focus on what I call the golden triad: a proven track record of successful business strategies, outstanding human resources, and above-average community involvement. Why? Because balance is the key to excelling at all things in this world—including building a business.

If your company is approached by a media outlet to be the subject of a profile, you must be willing and prepared to provide information on all three of these areas to ensure that the article will present your business in the best possible marketing light. Even if the writer isn’t sharp enough to ask all the right questions, your organization should be smart enough to have the foresight to provide all of the right information needed to help set the direction of editorial coverage.  If an article does not present information on all three of these areas, it will not hold up under reader scrutiny as an industry benchmark case study.

Here are the top three things your company can do to provide detailed information to the press and, as a result, receive above-average marketing benefits from a company profile.

No. 1: Request Questions. It’s appropriate to ask a writer for a list of interview questions and an outline of specific things about your company that prompted the desire to write the story in the first place. A good writer will do this when you ask for it, an even better writer will do this at least a week in advance and send it to you along with a summary of how he or she believes the article angles might develop.

As a chief editor, I had a standard outline of my own that included a list of questions for each part of the triad. I used it to evaluate whether or not a company would make a good profile story. When I identified a company that met the criteria, I would share my outline and a summary of thoughts with the writer assigned to the story. If a writer pitched me a story, I expected the same amount of preliminary research. This is the level of prep work that a good publication/media outlet will undertake, so it should not be a burden to modify the information and share it with you. If you request questions and a writer balks, it’s a fairly good indicator that he or she is not prepared and the resulting article will suffer. If that’s the case, you might want to think twice about going forward with the story.

No. 2: Take Time to Prepare. Once you receive questions from a writer, use them to prepare! I can’t tell you how many times I have shown up at a company to find that the executives I am scheduled to interview have not even looked at the questions I sent in advance. This is a warning sign to the writer that your company is not serious about providing in-depth information for a story. It screams fluff is coming, watch out! Here are three suggestions on how to optimize the preparation process on your company’s end:

• Have one person who is involved in your corporate marketing efforts assigned to distribute the questions to the people who will be interviewed. Have that individual provide assistance in collecting any information, such as statistics and financial numbers, that will be necessary to fully answer the questions. Make sure that information is on paper and in the hands of those who will be interviewed before the interviews take place.
• Prepare a press kit for the writer that includes a summary of vital statistics about the company (sales, locations, number of employees, product lines, etc.) and copies of any positive press coverage the company has received in the past.
• If you are going to provide a facility tour as a part of the interview process, make sure all of your employees know how to respond if a writer asks a question. Take the time to meet with employees and brief them on how to interact with the press. It will make a difference. Trust me on this one.

No. 3: Go the Extra Mile. Of course you are going to tell the press what sets your company apart from the competition during an interview, but will your customers and suppliers say the same things if they are approached by the writer for the article? When you are getting ready to participate in a full-length feature profile, you will get better overall coverage if you take it to the next level by making sure the company has a list of contacts within its immediate supply chain available. It should include representatives from suppliers and customers who are aware that your company is going to be profiled and who are willing to discuss your business positively on the record. This is not a guarantee that a writer will not seek his or her own sources, but chances are a writer will follow-up on leads that you provide too.

Overall, the primary purpose of a profile article in the trade press is to provide a case study of best practices for an industry. It is designed to help educate readers and show them examples of what a company is doing right. Therefore, if your company measures up, you need to be willing to share enough details about your operations in the areas of business strategies, human resources, and community involvement to become a benchmark. Otherwise, the article will not have the depth necessary to make your company shine in the media spotlight.

Article written by Lisa Clift

Become a Credible Source. The best way to receive free press coverage is to become a sought-after, quotable source.  Why? Because when you have something insightful to say—and you are not afraid to stand behind your words—you build a reputation as an expert within the markets your company serves.

During two tenures as a chief editor over two decades, I have found that the most engaging interview subjects for trend-based articles and columns are those who have enough industry-specific insight and confidence to talk both on and off the record without using PR and marketing scripts. Also, their conversations flow without awkward pauses and the repetitive use of words such as “like,” “well,” and “you know.”  Here are the top three things you can do to develop your reputation as a knowledgeable contributor to trade media outlets.

No. 1: Know Your Industry. Intelligent business people, just like smart editors, get out into the market and continuously learn, track happenings such as mergers and acquisitions, and look at economics outside of their business areas. They are inquisitive, connect with other industry executives, and are good at identifying patterns that foretell future trends. Editors are professionally trained to do this, and when they spot industry leaders that have the innate gift of seeing the big picture too, they are drawn to them as sources. It’s the Law of Attraction in action.

One of the best ways to get to know an industry and its key players is to attend events including trade shows, conferences, and industry summits. They cost money, but the intangible returns in terms of heightened visibility and opportunities to learn what’s happening in your business world are worth every penny. And, as discussed in Part One of this article, you need face-to-face events to make contact with the trade press and start building a rapport.

Moreover, if you really want to get the most out of events, become a speaker. If it is intimidating, start out by participating on panel discussions and then work your way up to bigger presentations. Not only are you likely to get press coverage for the event at which you are speaking, you will be at the front of the interview list when an editor knows that you are knowledgeable enough on a particular subject to discuss it in public. Whenever I was planning an article on a specific topic, I would review the agendas of recent and upcoming industry events and identify speakers to call for interviews. And many times during the course of a subject-based interview I would learn interesting information about that individual’s business that would prompt additional coverage in future issues, and it might even lead to a company profile.

No. 2: Share insider information. Most trade media outlets are not looking to develop reputations like tabloids. They are in place to educate and report on industries, not see how far they can push the limits of liable law. Objective news reporting is a keystone of any good publication and, honestly, I’ve never met a trade editor who purposely intended to slander a company in print. So have some faith and develop a relationship with at least one editor you believe is going to respect your confidentiality. In return, it’s likely that individual will look out for your best interests in the press by notifying you of editorial opportunities or giving you the inside scoop on things before an upcoming article’s publication date.

Good chief editors understand the concept of off-the-record information and use it wisely to make informed decisions about which stories to pursue and the angle(s) to take on a particular subject. If you told me something was for my knowledge only, it was off the record. I knew that if I breached a source’s trust I would lose his or her confidence and word would get around the industry that I could not be trusted. Many times, for example, close confidential sources would steer me away from covering companies if they were aware of potential trouble behind the scenes. I worked in industries where most of the firms were privately held, and it was difficult to dig up accurate financial information. However, there were a lot of closed roundtable networking groups, and people often would tip me off if I should avoid a particular company that was in financial or legal trouble.

No. 3: Avoid Canned Commentary. Do you remember the old commercial “Is it live or is it Memorex?” If so, think about it when you agree to an interview. You will be wasting your energy if you start playing back a tape that the sales and marketing department downloaded into your brain. Canned responses end up in the editorial trashcan because they lead to boring discussions about your company’s products rather than lively talk about the topic at hand. (I’ve had to throw many tapes in the garbage after coming away with nothing but marketing fluff.)  If you know a subject, you are going to be passionate about it, and it will come through positively in an interview. If you are nervous and fearful of saying anything significant, don’t bother.

In preparation for an interview, it is fine to ask for a list of questions beforehand. However, it is not acceptable to ask for the opportunity to review an article before publication. You shouldn’t give an interview to a publication if you do not trust the capabilities of the editorial staff. If you step over the line by demanding to see something before publication, a credible media outlet usually will cut your material from the story.

I also know it’s easy for an editor to say “trust me” and not take that obligation seriously or quote something out of context. For that reason, I suggest you do a little research before agreeing to an interview, especially if it is regarding a controversial subject. Find out who will be writing the story, read other stories that the editor has authored, and then call some of the people who were quoted in those stories. Ask them how the writer conducted the interviews, find out if any mistakes were made, and determine how impressed these people were with the final stories. Finally, the sign of a careful editor is someone who calls back to clarify quotes and ask follow-up questions. If you feel that an editor might have been unsure about something you said, trust your instincts and contact him or her to see if there is anything from the interview that you can clarify because it’s much better to be proactive than reactive.

Article written by Lisa Clift

Know the Chief Editor. Why? Because he or she just might be the right marketing connection to help successfully promote your business and put it into a positive media spotlight—without costing your company a dime.

During a 20-year publishing career, I held the position of editor-in-chief for two well-respected industry magazines, both of which were owned by top 10 business-to-business publishing companies in the United States.  Drawing on this background, this series of articles offers you a unique perspective into the editor’s world and how to play an important role in it—one that will position your company to receive credible coverage through feature articles, interviews, and news columns.

The trade press can be an excellent vehicle to promote your company at no cost—provided your business has something meaningful to cover and you know how to pitch it properly. Your first step on this marketing journey, and our first topic, is how to cultivate a lasting relationship with editorial gatekeepers, which includes understanding the boundaries between advertising and editorial coverage, and then doing your best to show consideration for them. Here are the top three things you need to accomplish to create a lasting bond with the top editors in your field.

No 1: Establish Contact: I know we now live in a virtual business world, one that is quickly becoming dominated by the Internet and online media channels, but I have yet to be convinced that personal contact doesn’t matter anymore. If I can’t look into people’s eyes and experience their personality and interact with their energy, I’m hesitant to make a judgment on whether or not they are credible and trustworthy—and when you are an editor nothing is more critical than guaranteeing the quality and truthfulness of the information you present to an industry. Not only are you liable for the content and its accuracy, you must ensure that you are not playing into and promoting false business claims and marketing hype.

If you take the initiative to meet the editors of your industry’s media outlets at trade shows, conferences, and other in-person events you will have a much better chance of breaking through the barriers that separate the average corporate Joes from the valued industry sources in the eyes of editors. And when you do make connections, be honest, straightforward, and truly interested in the business trends of the day rather than focused solely on pushing for media coverage of a new product or company announcement. Truly exceptional editors do not soley report on industries, they also are active participants within them, and they are looking to align themselves with people who have a similar modus operandi.

No 2:  Be Available, not Arrogant: As an executive or representative of your company, your personality is a reflection of your business image. Don’t squander the headway you may have made through personal contact by being arrogant and not making time to nurture an editorial relationship.  This leads me to the next important point, which is to never be too important to return a phone call or e-mail, or to take the time to offer advice or leads. Editors work on deadlines and they don’t want to have to go through secretaries and assistants to relay messages and receive information. It screams out that you are not interested in helping the industry or giving back if it’s not a convenient time for you.

I always had an A-list of industry executives that I called on a regular basis to hash out economic trends, sort out which acquisition and merger rumors where true and which were bogus, confidentially verify facts, and throw around story angles and coverage ideas. Remember the old saying, out of sight, out of mind. The people I trusted and talked to on a regular basis were much more likely to receive prime press coverage when something big happened at their companies because I heard about it immediately and directly from the executives in charge.

No 3: Respect the Editor’s World: When pitching your company to a trade press outlet for coverage, be aware of the tug-of-war that a chief editor typically endures behind the scenes. Often, there is a constant pull from publishers to support advertisers, and there is a push back from editorial to try to maintain ethical journalism guidelines (which will be the topic of another article in this series). Editors walk a tightrope here, and it makes them very touchy and standoffish when companies that advertise develop an attitude of entitlement when it comes to editorial coverage.

Don’t fuel the fire. Recognize when you are treading on thin ice with the editorial staff and back off with demands. You may win the battle at hand with threats of pulling your schedule, for example, but likely you will lose the war. In the long run, your company will be marked either consciously or unconsciously as unethical in the eyes of editorial, and that will impact your opportunities for coverage in the future. It is human nature to pull away when something is forced upon you, and editors are no exception to this rule. I’ve been there many times myself, and it’s hard to get over resentment in these situations. As a result, your company is likely to get passed over in the future as a quotable source or to be included in subjective editorial coverage on a particular subject related to the services your company provides.

In the editor’s fantasy world, there is a brick wall that separates the editorial and advertising divisions or, even better, these two groups are located at opposite ends of the country. Make no mistake, resentments do develop, divisions occur, and fights happen. It can get even trickier when the publication or media outlet is owned by an association. The politics of the organization can be overwhelming, and it can result in even more drama behind the scenes.

Remember, a chief editor’s reputation is on the line with every issue. If something reported is blatantly untrue or exaggerated claims about a product are made, it will be embarrassing at a minimum and even could be detrimental to the reputation of the media outlet and its editorial staff. Under this pressure, editors do recognize and gravitate toward the companies that are doing everything possible to present their business activities honestly within trade media outlets. No doubt it’s hard to do this when economic times are tough, but there are great payoffs, which include credibility as source and increased opportunities for prominent press coverage and feature articles—and there is no better marketing promotion than a glowing report from a credible editorial source. It’s something you just can’t buy for any price.

Roy Hunter

September 11, 2009

MyMarketingCompany.com

Keyword Terms

Keywords are what searchers use to find information, they can be single words but are most often short terms specific to the information they are searching for. One of my company’s most popular keyword search terms is “Sarasota Marketing Consultants”.

For part two of this series I want to discuss further choosing keyword terms and their placement within your website that is very important to search robots as well as the beginning of optimizing your website copy for search engines.

When choosing keywords you need to focus on the terms most relevant to your site and variants of those keywords. Google uses a stemming technology that when appropriate, will search not only for words that are your core search terms, but also words that are similar to some or all of those terms. Basically, you don’t want to use the same keywords over and over again. Mix it up a little but stay on subject. A great resource for finding similar keyword terms can be found here: http://www.visualthesaurus.com/ This is a visual Thesaurus and a very handy tool for discovering similar terms for keywords that’s NATURAL to your readers and effective for search engines.

Keyword Placement

In part one of this Internet copywriting series I defined the most important sections of your website to include the keywords and keyword terms that are the most relevant to the information on your website. The next things that would fall sequentially in the list I  began in part one are the following:

• Anchor Text: Anchor text are links to more information on your website. If you have a company that provides a kaleidoscope of services such as ours does, your website will be very segmented. Each one of those segments will be linked to, and those links begin in anchor attributes <a></a>.  Here is the basic html code for a link:

<a href=”http://www.mymarketingcompany.com/marketing-plans.html” >Business marketing plans</a>

There are two very key parts of the link, the filename in italics and the description of the link in bold. Search engines use this information to begin to understand the content of the page being linked to. In this case, the link points to our page on developing marketing plans. File names or descriptions that do not use keywords are not of any use in explaining content to search engines. When everything counts, you have to do everything you can to define the content of your pages.

• Alternate Tags: Alternate text is displayed in place of photo’s when your website is being viewed in a text only browser. If your photo’s theme is relevant to your website, it is a good idea to use keywords that are also relevant to the page the image is located within. Here is an example of an alt tag used with the title of the image:

<img alt=”Let us steer your business in the right direction” src=”business-development-image.jpg” />

• Directory Names: Keep your directory names specific. If you decide to break down and file information by category, keep the file names relevant to the information contained within them. We have a page for website development; this would not “fit” in a folder named “brand development”.

When writing effective copy for the Internet, remember the pyramid example from part one. The inverted pyramid style of writing is what is the most effective for of internet copywriting. Focus on keyword terms and their placement, and you will be on your way to having an effective website that ranks well in search results.

Roy Hunter

September 11, 2009

MyMarketingCompany.com

There are some pretty vast differences between writing copy for print articles and writing copy for the Internet. When writing copy for magazines, newspapers, etc., you focus on conveying compelling information to the reader through the introduction of an idea and a follow through of support. When writing copy for the Internet, you have two “viewers” you need to consider, the person who will be reading your website, and the robot that has been sent by the search engines.

Writing copy for your Internet searchers is all well and good if they can find the information you are publishing. If you do not consider how that information is found, your website and its information will be lost somewhere in the Internet abyss never to be seem by anyone.

There are two very distinct styles of writing between print media and website. Think of a pyramid, print copywriting begins at the top of the pyramid. An idea is conveyed and as you progress through the article more substance supporting the idea is revealed and ends with a summary.

Internet copywriting is completely opposite. Invert the pyramid. Cover the most important information first and work your way down to a basic subject. Website readers form an opinion of your website is a matter of seconds, if you can not grasp their attention immediately with the information that is relevant to their search, they will navigate away for your page and find one that will.

Search robots “read” the information the same way. The subject of your website is mined in the first few lines of text in your HTML code. If you do not effectively describe the content of your website in the first few lines, your website will not be indexed the way you hope it is.

HTML copywriting structure follows this hierarchy:

• The page title: This is the information described between the <title> </title> tags found between the <head></head> section of your website. It is also the first line of the search results. You have a limit of 80 characters, including spaces, for your title. You need to include the most important keywords that describe your website content as well as a location if your services are limited to a certain city or state. For example here is the title of the homepage for our company website:  <title>Sarasota and Tampa Florida Business Advertising and Internet Marketing Services</title>

• The page description: This is the information contained in the meta description tag of the <head></head> section of your website. You have 160 characters and spaces to give a little more of a broad keyword phrase description of the content of your page. Here is the meta description for my website: <meta content=”Our company based in Sarasota and Tampa can help your business maximize its marketing efforts through a professional partnership of marketing consultants ” />.

• The heading tag or “headline”: This is typically the first text your viewer will see on your web page and it begins in the <body></body> section of your website. Here is our company headline tag: <h1> Advertising and Internet Marketing Services for Sarasota and Tampa Florida Businesses</h1>.

• Paragraphs: <p>The first paragraph plays a critical role in the optimization of your website. <b>The keyword phrase content, and elements used to display the text are essential</b> to optimizing your copy for the search engines. The first 160 characters of the first paragraph are the most important real-estate on your website and I will often use the same text that is in my “Meta Description” as the beginning sentence of my first paragraph</p>.

If you properly imbed the most relevant keyword terms of your website within those four sections, you will begin to ensure your website will be indexed properly for the terms most relevant to the content of your site. These four sections will be the make or break difference of you being found in search results by people most interested in the information on your page.

In part two of this Internet copywriting series I will discuss keyword optimization and proper placement of keywords throughout your website.

Roy Hunter

August 17, 2009

Florida Marketing Consultants

There are a lot of different types of web page layouts, as many as you can creatively imagine, but what are the most effective for driving conversions and being found on the internet?

I think if you ask 30 different people you will get 30 different answers.

I prefer a segmentation design approach. What is a segmentation approach you ask?

Simple.

Most businesses today are doing more than one thing. Take a piece of paper and write down all the things your business does and break them down by groups. Lets use something difficult for an example, a law firm.

Your typical law firm website will have one landing page, it is the “home” page for the site that all the traffic is driven to. This page will have information on the partners, and the scope of the services, perhaps a contact form, and that is pretty much about it.

Informative? Yes. Effective? No. What has been created by this type of page is another drop in the bucket of all the other web pages on the internet for lawyers. Makes it a little hard to compete and optimize a page for a lawyer who is really, just another lawyer.

A much more effective approach to web design and search engine optimization is segmentation of a business. Our law firm example specializes in four different fields, personal injury, divorce, litigation, and criminal defense.

Create a page for each service as if it was the only page you are going to create and optimize that page for that segment. Correlate all the pages together with one common header and footer and make those four pages your theoretical individual home page. Your default home page, the page that is reached when someone enters your URL into the address bar, should only be what I call a traffic control page. It should only be a quick introduction or flash presentation that will allow the viewer to find the other segments or categories of your business.

You say: “That is how most pages are built”, it’s not. The overall focus should be having your category pages the pages that are found in search results, not your default home page. Rather than focus your optimization efforts on a single home page, focus your efforts equally for each segment, or category page.

I have also had the experience with using separate domain names for separate categories, each page was an individual domain, the header and footer of each page was identical, the pages all linked together through that header, and if you did not pay attention to the address bar, you would swear you were on the same website. This also proved highly effective, especially when using keyword domain names.

These design considerations can prove to be very highly effective ways to optimize your business for search results. If I am searching for a divorce attorney, the page that has been optimized the best for that search term will be the page at the forefront of the search results and then all the “law firm” pages that deal with divorce and everything else will follow.

Basically, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Think of creative ways to be found on the Internet. There is a lot of competition; you need to be smarter and more creative than the rest to get the leads and sales your business needs to be profitable.

If you would like to see an example of a highly effective segmented home page, please follow the link to our website.

Florida Marketing Consultants

While you are there stop by our new marketing forum. We have a board specifically for business listings. Feel free to drop off your virtual business card there. You will get a bit of free advertising and create a one way link to your website to help with your SEO, the listing is completely free and it will remain there for the life of the forum.

Roy Hunter

www.MyMarketingCompany.com

I have written a few articles about the specifics of SEO techniques but I still get a lot of emails from people asking me what all the things are they can do to get their Internet website  to rank higher in search results and become a more effective marketing tool, so I created this list of “tips” to be a guide for someone taking a hands on approach to optimizing and promoting their website.

I would suggest you “grade” your site before you begin and try these tips, you can follow your progress toward improvement of your sites SEO by using the web site grading tool found at websitegrader.com.

Assuming of course you have created a good website with useful information and unique content, these are your next steps.

1.  Verify the code in your page using the W3c validation tool and fix the errors.

If a crawler can not easily navigate through your site due to errors in the code you could have some problems. A few errors are probably OK, but if you have 10 or more, you are probably asking for trouble. W3c also has a link checking tool so while you are there, verify your internal links to make sure everything functions properly. A broken link will stop a search engine crawler in its tracks and return an error to the search engine.

2.  Optimize your keywords for the most popular keyword terms if you feel you can compete, if not, optimize for the “mid level” keywords or the ones used some of the time by searchers looking for your goods and services.

Keywords are very important, these are the search terms that people are going to use to find you. Optimize your keywords in your title, H1 and H2 tags and have a variant or two mentioned in your first paragraph as well as the “meta title” and “meta description” in the HTML code. The “mid level” terms will be the middle-ranked keywords using the Google keyword tool. If your main keywords are very competitive, it is better to be seen by some, then not seen at all. You can use an Adwords campaign to be seen in the difficult keyword categories.

3.  Create a blog so you have something to submit to Digg, Blog Catalog, Technorati, EzineArticles, etc. Wordpress is best for the platform, make sure to use the SEO plugin for Wordpress and fill out all the SEO options for an article. (tags, keywords, descriptions, etc.)

Blogs are a good way to be found. The more sites you submit to the better your chances are that you are going to be found and get your site linked to. The more quality links you can create, the better.

4. Submit a sitemap to Google, Yahoo, and Bing (search “sitemap generator” for a free online tool that will create one for you)

With new websites, submitting a sitemap to the search engines helps to expedite the indexing process. Rather than just submitting a site, show the search engines your sites structure.

5.  Write another article for your blog.

The more content you create, the better your chances are of getting linked to.

6.  Participate in forums where the links in the posts have been tagged “index” in the metadata of the forum page.  Post comments and questions and make sure you include links to your website so people and search engines can see you outside your web page. Your posts will help to create vital links to your website which will help with your page rank value over time.

7.  Write another article for your blog

The more content you create, the better your chances are of getting linked to.

8.  Build a Squidoo lens for your website

Squidoo is a neat little site for creating a mini web page and this also helps your website get linked to.

9.  Advertise your business in local magazines.

Most local magazines will also publish links to their advertisers websites on their own page. Not only is the local publicity good, you also get a link the search engines live to see, a one way link from a quality site.

10.  Submit your website to the DMOZ directory.

Though the quality of the DMOZ directory has gone down hill a bit as it is maintained by volunteers, it is free to submit to and if you get in the directory, it certainly will not hurt. Others to consider are:  JoAnt, AboutUs.org, and the Yahoo directory.

11.  Comment on some blog articles related to your business.

Go where your target market hangs out and you will be seen. Don’t forget to hyperlink your name to your website. Don’t just post an http link, use your company name and hyperlink your name to your website. Your company name will give some relevance to the link, create brand awareness, and Google will find the link by the hyperlink you created with your business name.

12.  Get all your friends to bookmark your site in Google Bookmarks and in Yahoo’s Delicious, at least 20 of them.

But make sure you tell them to tag the bookmark with a keyword. For example if you have a jewelry store tell them to tag the bookmark with the word jewelry. This will help other bookmark searchers find you and if you get enough bookmarks it is possible to end up on the popular bookmarks page and this will drive more traffic to your site.

13.  Promote your website on Twitter and Facebook.

Try to get people that run businesses similar to yours to follow you. Tweet your URL on Friday as that is the day most people follow their tweets. It is possible to get a good link this way. Facebook has groups that will be made up of people in your target market.

14.  Write another article for your blog

The more content you create, the better your chances are of getting linked to.

15.  Make sure you have updated all your accounts in Technorati, Digg, Blog Catalog, and EzineArticles

Pretty self explanatory, you need to keep your sites updated for the most impact.

16.  Make some more comments in forums.

Again, hang out where your target market does. It is possible to get some good links this way.

17.  Write another article for your blog

The more content you create, the better your chances are of getting linked to.

18.  Pay PR web for a press release

One of the good things with PRweb is your news release is guaranteed to be shown in yahoo news. A good chance for someone in your market to find you. If you are curious how good your press release is, there is a handy tool located at:  Press Release Grader it will give you some tips on creating a good press release for your business.

19.  Make sure you get a listing on the Yellowpages or Superpages website.

These sites place high in search results so it makes it easier for your customers to find you. It is free to submit your business, though I would opt to spring for their basic package. You can find them here: Superpages and Yellowpages

20.  Pay Yahoo to be listed in their directory

Yahoo is being purchased by Microsoft so it is anyone’s guess what will happen to the directory, for the time being a listing in the Yahoo directory gets you in the yahoo search results. At $299 it is a little pricey but it will get you seen and create another link to your website.

21.  Build a web page on MerchantCircle

I think this is one of the best things a new company can do to be found at the top of the search results. Keep focus on optimizing the keywords in your MerchantCirle site as this is what will determine where your MC listing will be found in search results. I would not invest in their Pay-Per-Click advertising, 80% of the money you pay will go to promoting the MerchantCircle website, not yours. Send connection invitations to the local businesses in your area, you will be able to send coupons to the businesses that accept you invitation.

22.  Write another article for your blog

The more content you create, the better your chances are of getting linked to.

23.  Submit your website to the ZoomInfo  directory.

24. Did I mention you need to write another article for your blog?

25. Include your domain name in any advertising you do. Also, if your domain name is hard to remember, this will hurt you in the long run, a good domain that is easy to remember can be much easier to brand and it also will have some SEO benefit. For example my company domain; www.MyMarketingCompany.com, is much easier for a business owner to remember than the name my company.

A great domain name can become a big part of your website and company “brand awareness”, a business owner that can remember your website domain name will contact you first when they require your goods and services.

___________

Different businesses will have different SEO and marketing requirements, this list of tips will be a good place to start and steer your business in the right direction.

One thing so many business owners forget, in order for your website to be an effective marketing tool, you need to market your website. Focus on getting as many people as you can to see your website, if they like it, they will link to it. The more links to your website you have, the higher your website will place in search results.

If you are looking for a new forum to participate that is new which is a good place for you to be the topic creator rather than a reply poster, you can find it here:  Free Marketing Forum with “follow links”

I created this tool specifically to help people just like you so please take advantage of it, it was a lot of work!

If you are looking for links to business development information (probably the biggest directory of its kind) you can find it here: Business Development Directory

It is also something our company created to help you as a business owner.

You can start your SEO process this very second by posting a comment to this blog. Looking for other articles you can reply to that relate to to this subject? You can find them here: Florida Marketing Consultants Blog

So go ahead, what are you waiting for! Promote your website!