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From Our Web House To Yours, Happy New Year 20062005 was certainly a year of Internet change. Much has happened online with a ton of new B2B, B2C, and C2C Internet marketing, advertising, and sales tools to help a business reach their targeted audiences. As the Internet continues the exponential expansion in just the sheer number of pages alone, it will continue to become more of a challenge for businesses to get found online. The good news is, while getting found online is becoming more difficult, there are significant online marketing and advertising strategies that a business can use to help reach new customers. In addition to strategic marketing and advertising concepts for reaching the B2B and B2C market place we now have three main search engines on the landscape. Google, Yahoo!, and MSN all are striving to capture the search audience of the world. Each of these companies has approached the market place from a slightly different perspective. Google started only as a search engine, but have added significant Internet marketing and online advertising tools to empower businesses to reach new customers. Read the history of Google and take a look at some of the tools available. Yahoo! started out of the gate as a Web content Community Portal with a ton of consumer email addresses and with these same consumers having set up their home page with the Yahoo! brand to begin with, it was only natural that Search would become a big focus for them. Early on, Yahoo! added search using the Google Search Engine. After a while they decided to build their own engine. Starting with the Google model, Yahoo! Search was shown to be similar to the Google parent but in order to try to establish their own brand identity in the search market, they have re-branded themselves and moved significantly into their own algorithms for displayed results. Microsoft not wanting to be left out of the search algorithm party equation, having their own website, decided that they needed to have an engine too. So, before Microsoft could develop their own, they got together with Yahoo! in much the same way that Yahoo! used Google in the early years as their search engine. After some years of development Microsoft branched out on their own in 2004 - 2005, and the MSN Search Engine was born. With each of the three major players in Search having unique identities it is becoming apparent that quality content is one of the main keys to becoming found online. In years past having just a few pages of new information and a few links to your website could propel a website to the top of the search results. As the algorithms have changed and improved it takes a more directed or targeted strategy for each and every business with an online presence to be found for certain keywords and keyword phrases related to their industry. Unfortunately with the tightening of, and improving the search algorithms we have seen a major war going on in the unsolicited email world and the selling of keyword schemes. Businesses looking for a quick way to get to the top of the search results have fallen victim for these online schemes. In many cases these unethical companies have taken professionals and businesses for thousands of dollars with nothing to show in the way of any quality visitors, new leads, or customers for the professionals. Some of the new products and services that have taken off in 2005. Google Gmail - Gmail became much more mainstream in empowering individuals to be able to save and never having to throw away any old emails to make room for more. The Gmail service started out with some individuals to be controversial with targeted ads displayed based on the content of the email. But, after people understood that no one was really reading their emails and with a trusted Google brand, more people started using the service. Naturally, searching of the emails was just one of the benefits of using Gmail. Other benefits included being able to access your emails anywhere in the world, forwarding and POP access, view Microsoft Office, OpenOffice or .pdf attachments as HTML instead of having to download the files to begin with, mail forwarding, vacation auto-responder, labels, shortcuts for package tracking or maps and directions to addresses, configure Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape Mail, Thunderbird, or any other email handlers to read from the Gmail account. There is even an email notification program for both Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X system. Build your own Google homepage - Google wanting to provide more of a customized service for those that wanted to have certain information at their fingertips came out with the Google customizable home page.
Mozilla Firefox - Mozilla Firefox is a new browser that is based on the Mozilla platform. This is an open-source software package that is supported by the open-source software engineering community. Several of the key features are faster browsing, better privacy and security features, and tabbed browsing (which is a key benefit for those that that are doing research or comparing of consumer prices online from various websites) Targeted PPC Pay-Per-Click Advertising - Google, Yahoo!, and MSN continue to make strides to make it easier for companies and individuals to target other businesses and consumers online. Online advertising, commonly referred to as PPC, is the single greatest growth area of advertising spending. Television, radio, magazine, and newsprint Ads have declined in the past years, mainly due to the fact that people are spending significantly more time on the Internet and less time in front of the TV or newspapers reading the news. National, International, and even Local advertisers are starting to understand that they can really target the proper market audience online. Imagine, when someone is searching for a car online that the ads on the top and the right side of pages will be car ads. An advertiser can even target the type of automobile being searched for. For example, the higher end cars such as the BMWs, Porsches, Lexus, Mercedes, Ferraris, and Jaguars can all be keyword targeted by dealerships or even individuals, to advertise and sell to that target group. In fact, now anyone can set up a new ebusiness and in a matter of fifteen minutes be advertising online. With such a direct target market; online advertising can be the best return of investment of any type of advertisement spending.
Local Search Marketing And Advertising Improvements - Local search websites are starting to ramp up as more businesses discover that the local people are using local search to find community websites; with products and services being sold in the area. From finding a local pizza place or discovering the new restaurants in the community, to finding the plumber or electrician in a town; local search marketing and advertising will continue to grow. This is all the more reason to consider placing a website online today to increase brand awareness and get found online. Blogs - Additionally it would be wise to consider placing a Blog online as a means of staying in touch with your business community. Blogs are a great way of sharing current information with customers, getting new leads, and increasing brand awareness. Think of Blogs as a content management system. And, just like websites can be found in the general search results, blogs can also be found in the search engine results pages. Additionally, they can even be used internally on the internal intranet system to communicate with managers and other employees. A group collaboration Blog can be configured to keep a timeline of events for developing new projects or following the progression of jobs or other types of collaborative communications. Look for improvements in search algorithms and the way searches are conducted. Companies are coming out with automatic contextual searching in a small window while you type in any document on your computer. We will also see further improvements in desktop searches now that Google has led the way with the most improved desktop search for the Windows operating system. Increased capacities in hard disk drives along with new types of optical media drives will increase the capacities of what can be stored on computers. Online storage will also be expanded from emails to include files in protected areas. Imagine, not having to be tied to any one computer for those important files. New and improved Web applications. Look forward to Web Apps including: online word processing, spread sheets, presentation software, database structures, drawing and graphic programs, billing and ecommerce systems, and even the capabilities of building web pages with online programs. The days of having to go to that certain computer with a word processing program in order to type up a business proposal or using a spreadsheet program to lay out a chart of the latest sales for your business will be a thing of the past. Streaming video and audio will continue to make improvements as more folks get hooked up to the Internet with Broadband and DSL. In fact, there will be downward pricing pressure on many of the ISPs, Internet Service Providers, because more cities will become a blanket of wireless high speed hookup for free. Free Internet service will be provided and financed through an online advertising business model. This form of advertising will not be the type that is intrusive but will add to the content based on the contextual area online. More websites will be launched in which advertising will also help support the services provided. Businesses will begin to feel more comfortable providing additional information for the searcher online. Look for some of the large online content providers to wake up to the fact that the Internet has no boundaries. Large companies which are trying to capture and keep a surfer from going off to another site will figure it out that it is impossible to put up a fence to keep the person in. One only has to look at the AOL model to see the writing on the wall. Look for additional improvements in privacy and security. This is an ongoing war with battles being fought daily. Reminder; running without a current up-to-date anti-virus software package is like running through a minefield. Just visiting a website can be a place where you can pick up something that you didn't even know was out there. In addition, we can be sure of one thing; there will certainly be new and exciting things on the Internet horizon. Right now some individual is sitting out there on the Web with the next revolutionary idea. Maybe they don't even know what it is yet. However, with the way the Internet brings out the creativity in people, don't be surprised when the next wave hits. See more information about other items in the news at: Internet News And Online Advertising World Report and Internet Marketing Comparisons For B2B vs B2C Message To You Thank you from Professional Web Services, Inc. to all our customers, readers, friends, and relatives for a year filled with warmth and joy. As we reminisce about the Internet past, we look to the future and imagine the possibilities for the success of all your business ventures. Wishing your business a Happy And Profitable New Year. James A. Warholic Email us today for: Internet Marketing Services, Online Advertising Strategies, And Web Branding Solutions, To Provide More Sales For Your Business Tomorrow. Sign up for our Free Sales, Marketing, And Advertising Newsletter. Most important of all, get the 24X7 X 365 Business Solution for B2B and B2C. The home of the Eclectic Marketing page.
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