Author: J. Warholic

Cool Signature Blocks For Emails in Gmail

J. Warholic

Get Your Business Discovered OnlineIf you haven’t tried it yet, I suggest you get Firefox. As far as I am concerned, Firefox and Gmail go hand in hand.

I have had many folks ask me, how can I make a nice signature block, with a picture, and some other HTML links to be automatically added to my Gmail signature block?

First off, prior to an update feature set for Gmail (read on), Gmail provided a fairly rudimentary signature block that could be selected and customized somewhat from the settings page. However, it was limited to placing a url of the type www.pwebs.net or using the following type of http://jimwarholic.com plain link in the email with a name, phone number, address, or whatever you would like to say at the closure of your emails. The signature block with the plain links become automatic hyperlinks when it was added to the email, and the email was sent out. Google Gmail was updated in 2010 [this posting updated on 3/7/2011]: Gmail now provides a means to have full HTML email signature blocks for each specific email address you are using in your account, though at the moment it is one signature block to one email account. If you want to have more than one, then you can use the Firefox addon (see below) to provide more than one signature block for each email account.

If you want to add pictures, with HTML links or link text, also called anchor text, link labels, or link titles (the visible hyperlinked text) such as: Internet Marketing Services, use the signature block Mail settings feature, general tab, and scroll down to the signature setting in Gmail or install a Firefox addon. Firefox addons are simply little custom made, free programs, that are installed on top of the basic Firefox installation software package. In fact, there are thousands of addons available for download at the Mozilla Firefox website. If you don’t have Firefox, download Firefox for your PC, Apple, or Linux computer and then you can customize the Firefox application any way you like by downloading additional addons.

The addon that I have been using recently for Gmail signature blocks is called: Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures. Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures add-on allows you to customize multiple signatures and automatically add them to your Gmail emails below or above quoted text.

To install, go to the Firefox add-on page for Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures and click the “Add to Firefox” button. Once you do that, then you will have to relaunch Firefox, and the Signatures menu will appear when you go to write an email in the Gmail application. The first time you use it, you will need to customize your signature. You can have a number of different signatures, depending on what you are doing, or who your target audience is. Once the signature blocks are customized, Blank Canvas then “automatically inserts HTML signatures into your Gmail messages based on which address you are sending from. Maintain up to four signatures per address.”

I’ve created several different signatures, depending on how I feel the email should be signed off. Here are some examples of signature blocks I have created.

I call this signature block, my business S&M strategies.

Get Your Website Discovered Online 

Professional Web Services

Internet Marketing Services SEO Strategies

Find Out More Now

Jim Warholic

Professional Web Services, Inc.

www.pwebs.net

My phone number in the email.

This signature block is my SEO Internet marketing services.

Get Your Website Discovered Online 

Professional Web Services

Internet Marketing Services SEO Strategies

Find Out More Now

Jim Warholic

Professional Web Services, Inc.

www.pwebs.net

My phone number is in the email version.


Then this signature block is My Girl – Deal or No Deal!

Get Your Website Discovered Online 

Professional Web Services

Go To Professional Web Services

Find Out More Now

Jim Warholic

Professional Web Services, Inc.

www.pwebs.net

My phone number is listed here in the emails.

So, as you can see, you can have a little fun with your email signature blocks too.

If you don’t know how to write html code, don’t fret, there are free online html editors, using a “what you see is what you get,” WYSIWYG mode, that can be easily used to create a cool looking signature block with not having to know any html coding. Simply type what you want, grab a picture from your website, insert the image using a button, and lay it out the way you want. I suggest you use an image online, published at your website, or one that you have uploaded to an image hosting service that allows “hot linking” such as Photobucket, and embed the image using the image button in the WYSIWG html editor. Once you get the layout the way you like it, then go to the code mode and copy the html code into your Blank Canvas Gmail Signature create button, and save it in the default or several other selectable signatures. Then when you write an email with your Gmail account, it will automatically be added if it is the default or you can select the other ones if you desire.

This can be a very very powerful sales and marketing tool to use for your business. Get your sales people to send signature blocks with more information about your company links. Just a suggestion, it is probably wise to not go overboard with too many links or pictures in the signature block area.

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SEO Sticky Black And White Uppercase Words

J. Warholic

Questions asked:

Is it best to use the color black in creating the home page. . or is it alright to use gold or purple for the search engines?

Is it better to make a lot of uppercase words?

When making a site ‘sticky’ does that apply for the most part to the Home Page?

Let me answer your second question first about using all UPPERCASE words.

If you are going to use all uppercase words, do it in extreme moderation. All uppercase words looks like shouting to most people, and in my opinion the search algorithms tend to categorize all uppercase words as shouting too. What I am saying, is the engineers at Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft Search are always tweaking the algorithms to get the best search results possible. They don’t want search results pages that look like they are shouting at people either. Now, that doesn’t mean that the search results pages are not going to pick up any (all uppercase) pages in the search results, it is just a guideline to think about when you are designing your website and performing SEO Best Practices.

Try to use good writing techniques in all your published writing on the Web. I am of a strong opinion, that the search algorithms are actually being engineered to analyze writing styles, proper writing syntax, and text semantics. If you write and publish on your website using good sentence structures, then the search algorithms will tend to give your website higher marks. It’s just like a writing rubric grading system at school, but this grading system is truly color blind to unjust prejudice.

Don’t fret if you are not a literary genius, or have a tendency to misspell words, or have other dyslexic writing tendencies. Use web browsers that have automatic spell checkers, like Firefox, or write using Microsoft Word or equivalent word processors, and have these programs do automatic spell checks and syntax checks for you. If you want additional writing help, there are automatic programs such as WhiteSmoke that will help analyze, proofread, spell check, and edit your text to make it much more palatable to your visitors and the search engines too. The WhiteSmoke writing program has various writing modules available for help with general, business, creative, Hi-Tech, Bio-Tech, and executive writing styles. In addition, it is wise to have others check your published works. Don’t take constructive criticism personally, and continue learning from mistakes. The best way to improve your writing skills is with practice; there is no other way.

What color should I make the home page for the search engines?

I’m convinced that color schemes in the website pages are not so much as an important factor for the search engines, as it is for your readers, and people that are likely to link to your website in the future. It you have body text, that is not hidden in the page, the search engines can read it regardless of what color your page is. An important point here is, don’t make your body text hidden by doing some form of Blackhat SEO tactics. The search engine algorithms are getting much more sophisticated, and will likely give your website a search ranking penalty if you use Blackhat SEO tactics. You however do need to make the page easy to read for your online readers. Typically white on black is harder to read than dark on light colors. Once again this is just a guideline. I have used both at various times. If I have a lot to say, and I expect my readers to be able to spend a lot of time on the website, then I would make the pages as easy to read as possible. If I have a little bit to say, and I want to use a little bit more creative license in my web designs, then experiment with other color schemes.

For example: My Backflag site that I use for Internet shorts, is light on dark backgrounds which in my opinion is harder to read. On the other hand, my According to Jim site is mostly dark on light backgrounds, for easier in-depth reading. See Marketing-101 for an overview.

Now, if you look closely, you will see that I actually use both, dark on light, and light on dark backgrounds, at www.jimwarholic.com. The header area is a dark background and the body is a light background.

Does making a site “sticky” apply, for the most part, to the Home Page?

The term “sticky” generally refers to the ability of a website to capture the attention of a reader in order to draw that reader back to your website, and the ability to empower your reader to interact with the site by having them explore the website pages and read more content. How well you do this through out the website will determine how sticky your website is. Different types of websites have different degrees of stickiness. As far as how sticky your Home Page should be is concerned, it all depends on what you intend to do with the site in the first place. In my opinion, the Home Page should be an overview guide about your website. If someone comes to your website the first time through the Home Page, and you have very little information, they will have no idea what it really is about.

The example you gave, about the “Company of Winners” books is an example of an overview Home Page. This one is a graphic, which generally speaking, an all graphic home page is not the best from a search engine optimization perspective to be search engine friendly, but it does however show the point I am trying to make about the home page being an overview guide.

Hope that helps you.

Best regards,

Jim

Set your business apart with creative online marketing results. Learn how Internet marketing can help your business get discovered on the Web. Contact us for a free website evaluation today.

Spice Up Your Email World With a New Theme on Gmail

J. Warholic

With Gmail, your choices are cool and the themes are very cool.

Google came out with Gmail themes for customizing the look of your Gmail account. Check out the Official Google Gmail blog article: Spice up your inbox with colors and themes.

I use a different theme to help me keep track of the Gmail account I am on. I color code the Gmail accounts for different customer’s Gmail accounts.

Take a look at this feature and all the themes that are available. I’m sure you will find one that you will like. My wife found her favorite. And since I couldn’t make up my mind which one I liked the best, I reverted to using a classic style for one and some hip-hop styles for others.

Have a little fun. Put some creativity into your life. You never know what might spur a new creative marketing thought in the brain.

Best regards,

Jim

Google is Your Website Home Page

J. Warholic

Most people in the business world don’t have a clue that their home page of their website is not really their home page at all. The home page of a website is Google.

G Marketing Your CompanyLet me explain that statement and expand on the Google Home page premise for your website. The majority of people that find your business online for the first time probably are looking in one of two ways. One way is they find your business online through an online directory with a small snippet of information about your website, or they go to Google Search and type a keyword search term that hopefully your business is showing up for that particular term for which the keyword is related to your company’s products sold or the services provided by your company. The person first reads an online snippet of information on the Google Search results page, and this effectively, or for many businesses the case may be — ineffectively tells about a particular business page or website. Businesses sometimes spend thousands of dollars with graphic designers to design a beautiful website, and think wow that looks great! But as is the case the majority of the time, very little thought went into the sales and marketing presentation from the Google Search home page perspective. Words are key for search branding, and not necessarily the words displayed in a graphic image format, but the actual body text written in the web site.

How boring the graphic designers say. “You mean I can’t have the pretty font, that sweeps up on the tips of the letters? You mean I have to worry about people resizing the body text in the browser? You mean I can’t build an all Flash website and force people to read the text in small print? But I’m a graphic artist, and this is how it looks the best. I can’t let people mess with perfection!,” exclaimed the graphic designer.

Well folks, let me tell you the truth. You can spend thousands of dollars on a B2B or B2C website design and get very few buyers or consumers, let alone Web site visitors, because you broke the number one cardinal rule for website design online. You did not make the decision to go with a search engine friendly website design. Anyone in business that takes this extreme view of thinking that the graphic design for a website is the most important aspect for a website, is cutting their business throat from a search perspective. There needs to be a balance between graphic design and search engine friendliness.

While the search perspective is certainly key for the sales and marketing aspect of the business’s success, there is another very important brand image implication that must be taken into account too. In fact, the brand image may be one of the most important aspects to long term online and offline success for your business. Brand awareness is the process of when people start recognizing your business as you. This can be both good or bad, depending on your brand image; but having the brand association of customers and potential customers recognizing your products or services as provided by your business, are keys to implementing long term sales and marketing strategies for sustainable business growth.

The process of building up a quality brand image online begins with the website structure and the words used throughout. This means not only the words of the text seen, but also the words in the Titles and Description tags of your website HTML coding. The foundation of the website doesn’t stop there. The pictures you use, how you name them, and even the Alt tags (Picture Description Tags) are keys to your brand image online. Many of the tags are seen only by the search engine robots. These robots record the underlying information and assign a value to each particular foundation item. Note: These items are only a small fraction of what needs to be taken into account when designing the website and expanding upon what has already been established, in the case of an older website.

Good Internet Marketing Means Not Walking Away From Your Website Design

Don’t think that you can put a website together and then walk away from it after you are finished with the design. First off, a website is never finished. You might think it is, but believe me when I tell you that it should always be in a state of improvement. It’s not like you have a Pablo Picasso masterpiece hung up in a art museum and all you need to do is sign your name at the bottom, and say, “I have a masterpiece, now come and see it for yourself.” No no, that is the wrong marketing attitude. Online marketing and the website itself is all about the art of revision. Revision of both the writing and the foundation of the website needs to be an ongoing work of art. Everything from the brand images displayed to the words used behind the front page scenes needs to be taken into account for properly developing the total online brand image.

When a business understands the interaction between marketing, advertising, and branding online, and develops their website taking into account all aspects; then your business will start to see much more success and sales online.

Are you curious about how your business looks online? Act now, and get a free online branding report today.

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Online Branding Matters

Creating Gmail Email Filters in Your Email

J. Warholic

Google Gmail group adopts one of my suggestions.

I don’t claim to be the only one that has suggested the following, but I see that Google has added another Gmail menu item when creating a filter.

First off, filters are very powerful automatically executed items that can be created by users that allows the user to automatically do things to specific emails that arrive to the inbox such as: add labels, archive emails, forward emails, and other actions.

Choose action – Now, select the action you’d like to take on messages that match the criteria you specified. When a message arrives that matches the search: from:(), do the following:

  • Skip the Inbox (Archive it)
  • Mark as read
  • Star it
  • Apply the label:
  • Forward it to:
  • Delete it
  • Never send it to Spam
  • Also apply filter to 62 conversations below

Now, the specific item that was recently added was a filter that never sends it to Spam.

You might be wondering, why in the world would you never want something to go to spam. Well, part of the spam monitoring algorithms sometimes segregate certain emails from online formmails as spam. If you are forwarding a formmail to your Gmail email box, these have a habit of sometimes landing in the Spam folder because it looks like gibberish at various sections of the email and may not look exactly like a proper email from the online formmail form. Because an email address sometimes ended up in the spam section, you had to constantly check the spam box to make sure you did not receive an important email. By creating a filter from a certain email location, you can now specify that those emails will always show up in your inbox.

To create an email filter, simply click the link near the top of Gmail, “Create a filter” and follow the instructions: “Choose search criteria. Specify the criteria you’d like to use for determining what to do with a message as it arrives. Use “Test Search” to see which messages would have been filtered using these criteria.” You can specify keywords to include, keywords to exclude, subjects, from or to email addresses, and attachments as the starting criteria for the next step. The next step is doing an action. Skip the Inbox (Archive it), Mark as read, Star it, Apply the label:, Forward it to:, Delete it, Never send it to Spam, and Also apply filter to (number of) conversations below.

For example, if you receive emails from family members or even a specific family member such as a brother or sister, and would like to apply the label “Jim” to emails from Jim automatically, use the from: Jim’s email address, and automatically apply the label “Jim” to new emails that arrive, and also apply the label “Jim” to past emails from Jim too. Now, when an email arrives from Jim, you will see the label “Jim” added also. Note: This however, is only half the filter I really want. If I also want to automatically apply the label “Jim” when I write an email to Jim, I need to create a second filter that applies the label “Jim” when I send an email to Jim’s email address. Now, when you click on the label “Jim” you will see all emails to and from Jim for quick reference. Additionally you can even color code your labels by clicking the little square box right next to the label area on the side and add a specific color to various labels for quick reference. By-the-way, you can automatically execute more than one filter item and provide multiple labels to any email.

Another way of using filters, is with your cell phone number, text messaging, and or pager notification. You can automatically have an alert send a message to your cell phone when a certain email arrives from a specific location. This in essence forwards the email to your cell phone text messaging area. Note: All cell phones and pagers have their own email addresses that are specific to the cell phone or pager number. See Gmail Cell Phone and Pager Notification for more information on this process. Try this feature out. It’s pretty cool.

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Requirements of The CAN-SPAM Act for Commercial Email

J. Warholic

(Note: Information links below open in new windows.) The following are the commercial emailing legal requirements that must be followed.Commercial Email

I read a good article about sending bulk commercial emails by Eric Sindrod, a San Francisco attorney that covers in depth about the legal requirements for mass email marketing campaigns.

First off, below is the actual language from the Federal Trade Commission website of the Federal CAN-SPAM Act requirements and The CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business. The Act covers commercial email; non-commercial email is not subject to the Act. See below for more information.

The CAN-SPAM Act: Requirements for Commercial Emailers

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) establishes requirements for those who send commercial email, spells out penalties for spammers and companies whose products are advertised in spam if they violate the law, and gives consumers the right to ask emailers to stop spamming them.

The law, which became effective January 1, 2004, covers email whose primary purpose is advertising or promoting a commercial product or service, including content on a Web site. A “transactional or relationship message” – email that facilitates an agreed-upon transaction or updates a customer in an existing business relationship – may not contain false or misleading routing information, but otherwise is exempt from most provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the nation’s consumer protection agency, is authorized to enforce the CAN-SPAM Act. CAN-SPAM also gives the Department of Justice (DOJ) the authority to enforce its criminal sanctions. Other federal and state agencies can enforce the law against organizations under their jurisdiction, and companies that provide Internet access may sue violators, as well.

What the CAN-SPAM Law Requires

Here’s a rundown of the law’s main provisions:

  • It bans false or misleading header information. Your email’s “From,” “To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person who initiated the email.
  • It prohibits deceptive subject lines. The subject line cannot mislead the recipient about the contents or subject matter of the message.
  • It requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method. You must provide a return email address or another Internet-based response mechanism that allows a recipient to ask you not to send future email messages to that email address, and you must honor the requests. You may create a “menu” of choices to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to end any commercial messages from the sender.Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your commercial email. When you receive an opt-out request, the law gives you 10 business days to stop sending email to the requestor’s email address. You cannot help another entity send email to that address, or have another entity send email on your behalf to that address. Finally, it’s illegal for you to sell or transfer the email addresses of people who choose not to receive your email, even in the form of a mailing list, unless you transfer the addresses so another entity can comply with the law.
  • It requires that commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender’s valid physical postal address. Your message must contain clear and conspicuous notice that the message is an advertisement or solicitation and that the recipient can opt out of receiving more commercial email from you. It also must include your valid physical postal address.

Penalties

Each violation of the above provisions is subject to fines of up to $11,000. Deceptive commercial email also is subject to laws banning false or misleading advertising.

Additional fines are provided for commercial emailers who not only violate the rules described above, but also:

  • “harvest” email addresses from Web sites or Web services that have published a notice prohibiting the transfer of email addresses for the purpose of sending email
  • Generate email addresses using a “dictionary attack” – combining names, letters, or numbers into multiple permutations
  • Use scripts or other automated ways to register for multiple email or user accounts to send commercial email
  • Relay emails through a computer or network without permission – for example, by taking advantage of open relays or open proxies without authorization.

The law allows the DOJ to seek criminal penalties, including imprisonment, for commercial emailers who do – or conspire to:

  • Use another computer without authorization and send commercial email from or through it
  • Use a computer to relay or retransmit multiple commercial email messages to deceive or mislead recipients or an Internet access service about the origin of the message
  • Falsify header information in multiple email messages and initiate the transmission of such messages
  • Register for multiple email accounts or domain names using information that falsifies the identity of the actual registrant
  • Falsely represent themselves as owners of multiple Internet Protocol addresses that are used to send commercial email messages.

Additional Rules

The FTC will issue additional rules under the CAN-SPAM Act involving the required labeling of sexually explicit commercial email and the criteria for determining “the primary purpose” of a commercial email. Look for the rule covering the labeling of sexually explicit material in April 2004; “the primary purpose” rulemaking will be complete by the end of 2004. The Act also instructs the FTC to report to Congress in summer 2004 on a National Do Not E-Mail Registry, and issue reports in the next two years on the labeling of all commercial email, the creation of a “bounty system” to promote enforcement of the law, and the effectiveness and enforcement of the CAN-SPAM Act.

See the FTC Web site at www.ftc.gov/spam for updates on implementation of the CAN-SPAM Act.

The FTC maintains a consumer complaint database of violations of the laws that the FTC enforces. Consumers can submit complaints online at www.ftc.gov and forward unwanted commercial email to the FTC at spam@uce.gov.

For More Information

The FTC works for the consumer to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair practices in the marketplace and to provide information to businesses to help them comply with the law. To file a complaint or to get free information on consumer issues, visit ftc.gov or call toll-free, 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357); TTY: 1-866-653-4261. The FTC enters Internet, telemarketing, identity theft, and other fraud-related complaints into Consumer Sentinel, a secure online database available to hundreds of civil and criminal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad.

——-

Eric Sinrod, a Duane Morris partner in the San Francisco office, covers fast-breaking issues where the law and technology intersect in a weekly column published online at CNET News.com and Findlaw.com. He wrote an article titled, “Commercial Email – Getting It Right“

Now, with the importance of email marketing, it is wise to brush up on the law when it comes to sending out mass emails for commercial purposes. As more people have gone to the Internet for their online shopping, and in most cases have bypassed the traditional print media such as daily newspapers for reading the current events of the day, and hence the print advertising does not place your business in front of a majority of the buyers as it once did; it is wise to expand your online marketing efforts to not only online advertising but also including some form of email marketing campaigns.

There is much to digest from not only understanding federal laws, but there are also state laws, and international laws regarding bulk commercial emails that must be carefully evaluated for companies in order to maintain compliance across the great Internet divide.

It is interesting to note, that the CAN-SPAN Act covers commercial bulk emailing only. Mr. Sinrod writes, “It is important to note that while the Act does regulate bulk email, it does not prohibit its transmission. Moreover, non-commercial email is not subject to the Act, and transactional or relationship messages generally are not subject to the Act (apart from the prohibition against materially false or materially misleading header information).”

If you are a large company or even a smaller company contemplating doing a bulk commercial email campaign, it is advisable to make sure you are email complaint before stepping out on the limb, and having it break.

Contact Professional Web Services today for online marketing expertise to get your business found on the Internet today.

Google Increases Search Productivity – IT Cost Savings

J. Warholic

Internet and intranet (private computer networks that uses Internet Protocol technology) search and productivity, along with savings in the IT costs can be realized with Google Apps, cloud based aps for businesses. The implementation of various Google business solutions for making things better, easier, faster, more efficient, more productive, improved cost savings for businesses looking for ways of searching for data within corporate intranets, and improving online collaborations between workers was the focus at the Google Innovation seminar.

Cloud Computing The Google Way
Global Computing and Marketing Worldwide
Wow, What A Google Day!

I got a chance to attend a really informative half day Google Innovation seminar held at the Santa Clara Marriott. The conference theme was how Google is innovating for businesses in the form of cloud computing applications and passing cost savings through some really wild changes for IT departments to save tons of time and money over traditional ways of finding, sharing, and the securing of all internal data, along with major improvements in the productivity of workers and huge cost savings to both big and small enterprise companies.

Read more about the cloud computing concepts at the Google Innovation for Business seminar, along with a first hand look at what the opposition (Microsoft) had to say.

Improve your online search engine exposure for your business website with professional Internet marketing services from Professional Web Services today.

Online Advertising For Today is a Good Marketing Strategy

J. Warholic

Creative AdvertisingGood advertising is a natural extension of marketing.

Marketing and advertising go hand in hand. Doing one without taking into account the other is like eating a steak without a good baked potato. Edgar Watson Howe, an American novelist and a newspaper and magazine editor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries put it this way, “Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing but nobody else does.”

When the internet was in its infancy, with only a few million pages of information, getting your message in front of the right audience was much easier, as compared to today. Why the difference? The bottom line is that it mainly has to do with the billions of new webpages online today. In fact, the number of websites going online is very difficult to calculate at any given moment. But, at the midpoint of 2007, the total base of domain name registrations worldwide was 138 million across all of the Top Level Domain Names. This represents a 31 percent increase over the same quarter last year. (VeriSign) Every country has its own top level domains, with over 840 domain name registrars worldwide. Keep in mind, that while the number of Domain Names for all Top Level Domains are able to be counted, this does not accurately reflect the true nature of the actual number of websites online today. With subdomain names being considered as separate websites, the true number of websites online is substantially greater. Many Second Level Domain names have thousands if not millions of subdomains, each having hundreds or thousands of webpages. Take for example, www.blogger.com. The .com represents the top level domain name, and Blogger represents the second-level domain (SLD) names, and the www and all others represent third or higher level domain names and are also known as subdomains. Here are two other examples of subdomains on top of second-level domains. See Advertising.pwebs.net and B2B.SalesAndMarketing.ws both of which are separate websites.

How Are Search Engines a Marketing Force Factor?

So, it really comes back to understanding search engines and how they will display the results for any particular search query. Imagine how many times your particular keywords of your business are used throughout all of the webpages online. Google gives an estimate as to the actual number of pages that have a particular keyword or keywords within the webpages themselves.

As you can see, to display any business online, within the natural search results takes quite a bit of webpage and website optimization to develop the keywords within the site, and the time and Web patience in developing quality links back to the pages of a website. Quality links back to webpages effectively provide a type of authority vote online that the page represents what it is talking about. During this period of time when the website is being optimized for its keywords, there is another way of quickly getting a business found online. This is through online advertising models.

Online advertising for today represents a viable solution to bringing in new customers and leads through the internet. Advertising online also is a great tool for testing and evaluating additional horizontal or vertical markets for any business today. Advertising campaigns can probe the market places quickly and help determine if there really is an additional horizontal or vertical market or markets in which to concentrate your company’s Internet marketing dollars and other forms of marketing efforts upon.

Professional Web Services is a company that has the experience for developing new markets through effective online advertising solutions and internet marketing know-how to bring in new customers via the Net. Contact Professional Web Services today for a free internet marketing evaluation of your business website.

Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Advertising?

J. Warholic

Where to place your advertising dollars online…

The following chart is showing where most of the searches are occurring. When deciding where to invest your online advertising dollars, it might look like Google is the only place to invest, however, depending on your particular business, whether technical oriented, business oriented, or consumer oriented; it is probably a wise decision to try some test advertising campaigns in Yahoo and Microsoft also.

In October, Google Sites increased its lead atop the core search ranking with 58.5 percent of U.S. searches, gaining 1.5 share points versus the previous month. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 22.9 percent, followed by Microsoft Sites (9.7 percent), Ask Network (4.7 percent) and Time Warner Network (4.2 percent).

comScore Core Search Report*
October 2007
Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations
Source: comScore qSearch 2.0

Core Search Entity

Share of Searches (%)

Sep – 07

Oct -07

Point Change Oct-07 vs. Sep-07

Total Core Search

100.0%

100.0%

0.0

Google Sites

57.0%

58.5%

1.5

Yahoo! Sites

23.7%

22.9%

-0.8

Microsoft Sites

10.3%

9.7%

-0.6

Ask Network

4.7%

4.7%

0.0

Time Warner Network

4.3%

4.2%

-0.1

* Based on the five major search engines including partner searches and cross-channel searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in the core search numbers.

In October, Americans conducted 10.5 billion searches at the core search engines, marking a 12-percent increase versus September. More than 6.1 billion core searches were conducted at Google Sites during the month (up 15 percent), while Yahoo! Sites recorded 2.4 billion (up 8 percent). All core search engines posted solid gains in search query volume in October.

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Google PageRank Perspective 1 to 10 or 1 to 100

J. Warholic

Page Rank Curve
For the non Search Engine Techie, Google PageRank™ is a value Google places on your page with a number between one and ten. Generally the more important a page is, with links back to the page from other well ranked websites, will improve the PageRank from Google for any particular page.

Here is what Google says about PageRank

PageRank Explained

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.” Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages’ relative importance. Read more about Google Technology.

To view a Google PageRank for any web page is as simple as installing the Google Toolbar with PageRank turned on.

Much has been talked about over the years by people on the inside at Google, and those in the Search Engine Optimization, SEO world concerning PageRank. While PageRank was at the heart of the Google algorithm for page ranking within the search engine results pages, I believe PageRank has evolved over time to be only one aspect of a page ranking well within the search engine results pages.

First off, just from the shear numbers of pages being published online, and to only have a page ranking system from 1 to 10 does not leave much room for scores on new websites that have great information, but have only been around for a short period of time.

During one of my visits (a couple of years ago) to Google, I spoke with one of the Google Engineers about the PageRank issue. I mentioned to him that I seemed to notice that the PageRank for the majority of sites was being adjusted from time to time with lower PageRank values than what was previously assigned to the website or more specifically the web pages. He gave me the impression that was indeed what was happening with PageRank across the whole Google Search landscape, but because it was being applied to everything in general, that it would not matter that much from a search perspective. In essence because all sites are being equally applied to the same Google PageRank scoring perspective, that the overall search engine results rankings would not significantly change. It’s kind of like grading on the curve. The top guys still have their top scores and the bottom guys still have the bottom scores.

Google PageRank Scoring System

My suspicion is that Google has a PageRank scoring system that is more than a 1 to 10. Google displays only the PageRank they want to show. What I mean by this is that Google probably has a ranking system of 1 to 100 or even 1 to 1000 or more, but they choose to only display it from 1 to 10 for your grade (so to speak). Maybe the algorithm is more like a curve than a straight line or some combination of both. But, however it is, their interest is to show the most relevant pages for any particular search result, regardless of PageRank values.

Many in the SEO world cry out when their PageRank takes a drop on some key websites. This is very naive of everyone to suggest that Google is doing this to punish a website or websites in general. Get off the PageRank bandwagon. Even sites or web pages right now that do not have a PageRank ranking (tongue tied) or a PageRank value being displayed of “0” probably does have a hidden ranking in the search algorithm. Google just chooses not to display the value.

I wonder, would it make any difference if Google displayed a PageRank value between 1 to 100 to the Internet world?

Time will tell.

As always, have a great Web day and stop by and say hello to Jim.

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