Internet Marketing Is Like Sudoku

J. Warholic

A new study came out that studing the game of Sudoku and the logic involved with processing the variables could gain valuable insight into the world of artificial intelligence.

What is Sudoku?

Sudoku (??, s?doku?), also known as Number Place or Nanpure, is a logic-based placement puzzle. The aim of the puzzle is to enter a numerical digit from 1 through 9 in each cell of a 9×9 grid made up of 3×3 subgrids (called “regions”), starting with various digits given in some cells (the “givens”); each row, column, and region must contain only one instance of each numeral. Completing the puzzle requires patience and logical ability.

Reference: Wikipedia : Sudoku


Play the game of Sudoku

Princeton profs plum secrets of Sudoku
Why Sudoku makes your brain ache

In another study conducted by Professional Web Services, Inc., it was discovered that playing Sudoku helps in your Internet marketing intelligence. A daily dose of Sudoku helps the brain create new neurons to increase the level of understanding, through neural linking, into what is taking place on the Internet. EEGS have shown the brain has a heightened spike in the level of increased electrical neural activity immediately during and after playing the game. The residual memory affect on high level brain functions is a 75% increase in the baseline after one hour of playing Sudoku. 24 hours later, the baseline is maintained at a 25% increase from the first evaluation. Thereafter, on subsequent 24 hour measurements, the level of drop is not as great as the first day drop in the baseline. Measurements show only a 10% decrease from the previous 24 hour period measurements. Seven days after the initial test, the subject is still at a 7.7% increase from where they initially started.

Further Internet marketing intelligence studies are ongoing at the Internet Marketing Industry Blog.

Professional Web Services, Inc. offers strategic Internet marketing services, ethical SEO – Search Engine Optimization, online advertising strategies, blog marketing services, and Web branding solutions. Get your business discovered on the Internet. Contact Professional Web Services today to get a free online marketing evaluation.

More Sales For Your Business With Strategic Marketing

J. Warholic

Strategic Internet Marketing Services

Strategic Global Marketing
What is Internet marketing as it pertains to your business? Marketing a business online involves a multi-pronged approach. Starting with a domain name and a website presence is only a minor part of the overall challenge facing businesses today. The days of setting up a sign online, stating, “we are open for business,” and expecting the World Wide Web to open the door for hundreds of product orders daily without any marketing and advertising efforts, expenditures, and time is extremely naive business thinking.

We all want the quick road to success with very little effort expended. Being successful with Internet marketing still requires an understanding of the four Ps involved with marketing in the first place. Product, pricing, promotion, and placement or distribution are keys to understanding of how to use the Internet and all the related online tools to be successful for the long haul. Actually, having a thorough understanding of the customer’s needs and wants in a product or service can be critical to the introduction of the product or service online.

Get Your Business Discovered OnlineProduct understanding from the consumer, or end user, is important from being able to make the customer connection online. Too many times, companies from both the B2B – Business to Business, and the B2C – Business to Consumer side of the equation forget about the end users. Management so often is interested in using the exact terminology that only a very narrow spectrum of end users understand, has effectively alienated a large portion of market segments. Because of this lack of understanding by some organizations of how the customers are thinking, along with the refusal of management to even acknowledge the end users’ needs and wants, can really put a company behind the competition; especially when it comes to Internet marketing and online advertising.

Pricing, while important, is not necessarily the most important part of the equation. Value, and perceived value can help a business online.

The promotion of a business online has many challenges. Take for example a business that manufactures various OEM components across a broad spectrum of industries. Each of these industries has certain key names for their components and even the manufacturing process is also known by at least a dozen different names depending on which engineer and the industry is focused upon. How can a company be successful in targeting each of these industries and engineers online? There really is no simple solution. Market research continues to be a key factor in this area. Market research requires obtaining more information from customers than just calling them up on the phone and asking them what they do.

The art of listening, and focusing in on the keywords used by various customers, is of prime importance when setting up a strategy online. Setting up an Internet marketing plan that integrates the ongoing market research along with the changes in the marketing landscape can really help propel a company using some very powerful Internet marketing tools. Keep in mind, that the Internet marketing tools also include using online advertising, blog marketing, email marketing, news releases, RSS feeds, and a host of other new and related technologies. Audio and video are becoming more important as consumers and B2B customers are expecting to be able to view product demonstrations.

Internet Marketing StandoutOther market research tools should include Web analytics. Understanding of how a customer finds your website online can give great insights into the customer’s thinking. How is the website navigated? What is important to the customer? These are just a couple of the questions that need to be continually evaluated for good website optimization. The website is a time to showcase your business, but don’t make the mistake that many in the industry think that the home page is the most popular entry point to the website. While the home page may be popular with people that already know the name of a business, it is the ones that don’t know the name that may find a website when searching for the products or services provided by a business. For that reason, Web analytics can give the Internet marketing team the internal feedback required to improve the website structure. Additionally, as in the previous OEM manufacturer example, a potential B2B customer from one of the diverse industries could enter into the B2B website from one of the many product information pages through a Search Engine search. Each web page may very well be specific to a particular industry, and as such, the navigation of a potential customer could be significantly different than would be typical of some other industry. A dental or medical tools manufacturing company would probably not be interested in products built for cellular phones, or NASA antennas. Likewise, the keywords used by each would be completely different when talking with the engineers. That means, each web page must be evaluated and targeted to the specific industry. B2C, Business to Consumer can have the same type of web issues to contend with. This is where Internet marketing analytics and good market research can pay off dividends for both B2C and B2B companies online.

Placing and the distribution of a product or service can have many channels online. For example, Google provides a service to website content providers in what is know as their AdSense program. The Google AdSense program is an advertising revenue sharing program that content providers can sign up for to display targeted advertisements based on the content of the web page and the website. This blog can be considered a distribution channel for any advertiser promoting a product or service through the www.pwebs.net network of websites. Google is in a type of symbiotic relationship with content providers. While at the same time, advertisers can be using Google AdSense program as both a form of advertisement and a distribution channel. Taking this a step further, Google also offers free product placement (products submit) on their free Google Products distribution system, by allowing anyone to upload a product or bulk list of products for sale, a business now has another channel for online distribution. There are other forms of distribution on the Internet that often get blurred as to the meaning of distribution (placement) or product promotion (advertising). Building quality links with other websites and relationships with other businesses on the Internet is definitely a major factor in building a business today.

Professional Web Services, Inc. offers strategic Internet marketing services, ethical SEO – Search Engine Optimization, online advertising strategies, blog marketing services, and Web branding solutions. Get your business discovered on the Internet. Contact Professional Web Services today to get an online marketing evaluation. Find out what needs to be done to get your business more web traffic, visitors, qualified leads, and more sales originating from your website.

Claim Your Blog At Technorati

J. Warholic

Technorati Profile
By: James A. Warholic

Technorati is an area online where you can search for various blogs, find out what is popular at the moment, check out the top blogs, and top favorite blogs and searches.

For example, below are a number of the hottest blogosphere items currently being talked about:

[hottest_blogosphere_items]

You can submit your blog with free registration, and also keep track of your own favorites.

With some cool search tools that can be added to your browser, a person can discover how many blogs link to any particular website or other blog.

Check them out at www.technorati.com

Check out Professional Web Services, for Internet marketing services, ethical SEO, search engine optimization, online advertising strategies, web branding solutions. Contact us today for a free Internet marketing evaluation. Get your business website found on the Internet.

Keep Your Friends Close, Keep Your Enemies Closer

J. Warholic


In a technology article at ZDNet, concerning Microsoft and the Mozilla Firefox teams, Microsoft extends an invitation to work together.

Microsoft extends a helping hand to Firefox developers – but why? by ZDNet‘s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes — It seems that Microsoft wants to help aid in the development of the Firefox browser and has extended an invitation to the Firefox and Thunderbird teams to visit with the right people to get Firefox running under Vista. The invitation came in the form of a message posted last Saturday by Sam Ramji, Director of Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft to the mozilla.dev.planning newsgroup. But why?

The author of the article lays out some interesting points and makes the argument that Mozilla Firefox teams should accept the offer by Microsoft to work together because, in the words of the author, “It could be a great opportunity. If nothing else, it’ll probably be fun.”

In my estimation, Microsoft has much to gain from getting more of the inside scoop from the Open Source developers than do the Open Source developers to gain from Microsoft. Microsoft has slowly started to loose market share in the browser battles, and what better way to stay on top of what the Open Source community is doing then to have an inside perch. One of the reasons Microsoft has been pushing for their new IE7 browser is because of the improved technologies in the Firefox browser for tabbed browsing, advanced security features, clearing private data, faster browsing, improved pop-up blocker, integrated search, live bookmarks, and a number of other features that really make Firefox standout when compared to Internet Explorer.

Now, it is not like the Firefox code is secret, after all it is an open source code, but how much sense does it make to give a head start to someone that would like to do away with you in the first place? In this particular case are the Mozilla developers going to call Microsoft, friend or foe? Who really is the fox here?

Professional Web Services, Inc. provides Internet marketing services, SEO, ethical search engine optimization, online advertising strategies, and web branding solutions for B2B and B2C on the Net. Contact us today for online
technology solutions.

Developing Your Company Brand

J. Warholic

Company brand development occurs in more ways than one.
by: Jim Warholic

How does good customer service develop your B2B or B2C brand?

In an article by: Chuck McKay, What do your employees need to know before they deal with customers? Chuck’s article, Ten Steps To Great Customer Service, is an interesting look at the inside workings of a company and how they interact with customers.

While Chuck goes over the aspects of how employees respond to a customer, there is another aspect of this important article that needs to be addressed. Good customer service develops a brand.

GoDaddy and Dell Computer are two companies that really come to mind in which good, (actually great) customer service comes to mind first and foremost about their brands.

Godaddy.com is the leading domain registrar website portal where domains can be purchased for a very reasonable price along with a host of other online services. But this does not really tell the story of the GoDaddy brand. The strength of GoDaddy is not their great prices but the fact that a customer or potential customer can call up GoDaddy 24×7 and communicate with a real live person for purchases, questions, or help is a testament to how strong their brand really is. This is really what makes their brand strong.

Dell Computer is another company that has built a reputation of great customer service. Many customers of Dell’s computers are buying third and fourth generation of computers for personal use and their businesses. Dell has really stood behind their products and extended great customer service. Even in the latest explosive situation with a major recall of Dell laptops for batteries, supplied by Sony, that get too hot and catch on fire, Dell is going to come out of this as a stronger company. It has come to light that other laptop manufactures have also used batteries from Sony in which these other computer notebook manufacturers may be facing the same situation. But, even this recall is really not at the heart of the branding matters. Imagine the financial pressures that a company faces with the largest computer recall in history. This is going to have a short term hit on the company but in the long run customers are going to know that Dell is going to stand behind their products. Businesses and consumers will ultimately stand behind the Dell brand because Dell does the right thing. Yes, doing the right thing is the key. Even the stock market took notice of this. On the day Dell announced the recall the stock went up.

Many B2B and B2C companies talk about good customer service but very few actually live it. Typically management loses sight of the company’s foundation. The ethics involved in the company itself becomes glossed over by exuberant business factors both from inside the company and controlling forces from the outside. Many companies have in place an orientation for new employees, but managers and even owners themselves forget the “ten steps to great customer service.”

While your company may not be as large as Dell or GoDaddy, the lessons we can learn from these two companies are enormous. Customer service is really the driving force of a brand for companies that deal with consumers and businesses. Certainly good products are the starting point of a brand, but it is the customer service that makes a brand strong.

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Professional Web Services builds up strong Web brands for B2B and B2C companies. We provide Internet marketing services, SEO, ethical search engine optimization, online advertising strategies, and web branding solutions. Contact us today and ask for our offer of a free online marketing evaluation.

A Great Addition of Features to Gmail

ProWebs

Google has recently added a few new features that make your Gmail box even easier and more powerful to use. Review the Gmail Tips.

Global actions can be taken across a whole select set of emails with a few simple clicks of the mouse. See: How do I apply an action to all messages in a label?

With this addition to Gmail, Google has made it much easier to manage a large number of emails and perform a global action item. There are numerous other new features that I personally use, but one feature that is really cool for me is the ability to allow Gmail to handle multiple email accounts from just one account. In fact, Gmail can send an email as though it is from one of your other email accounts. If your like me, I suspect most people have at least a couple of email addresses. These other accounts could be forwarded to the Gmail account or kept separate. By customizing the settings in Gmail a person could send an email, using Gmail, from their other email account. See: How do I customize the ‘From:’ address on outgoing mail?

The advantage of being able to do this is that many times you might not want to use your personal Gmail email address for sending a inquiry notice or wish to keep your email private to just a select few individuals. This allows you to use your other account directly without having to log off and log in at the other one.

Check out some of the other cool features.

Professional Web Services provides Internet marketing services, online advertising strategies, ethical search engine optimization, and web branding solutions for B2B and B2C businesses.

The DMOZ Report

J. Warholic

The Open Directory Project (ODP), also known as dmoz (from directory.mozilla.org, its original domain name), is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links owned by Netscape that is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors. Cite: wikipedia.org

As many of you know, getting a website listed in the ODP DMOZ has provided in the past, an increase in the page rank weight factor in the search engine algorithms. In meeting with a couple of Google engineers at the 2006 Google Dance involved in improving search engine results, the weight factor given to certain categories of the ODP project have been limited in the search results algorithm. There was a Google Dance attendee present that spoke with the engineers about a certain DMOZ category that was severely limited from any other websites being added because the editor for this particular category had a conflict of interest. In fact, the editor was one of the website owners listed in this category and was preventing anyone else within a small group to be added to the list.

Google engineers have started taking more notice of this type of activity and are now taking a more proactive stance by what sounded like a change in the search algorithm to give less credit for links in this group.

One of the factors that is important to understand about the DMOZ is that other websites take the feed results from the DMOZ and produce it on their website. This has the effect of creating additional links for any website that is listed in the project.

We at Professional Web Services have tried for years to get listed in the Internet marketing area of the ODP. This has been a very frustrating experience and what we have read from others is in fact the typical reaction of most people trying to get their websites listed. The submission guidelines are very clear, however, once a website is submitted there is absolutely no follow-up emails from the ODP, or ever an indication that the website is ever reviewed.

Certain areas of the Internet have become like a closed knit group of individuals that go out of their way to prevent anyone else from gaining search exposure. Many of the large directories are simply no more than a link farm with old websites that are defunct. There is very little incentive for anyone or any editor to change the way it is currently being done.

We don’t have the answers, but we do know that this will become increasingly challenging for all the search engines to get a handle on. As the Internet adds websites at an ever increasing pace, the challenges facing other businesses to have their B2B or B2C websites found in the search engine results pages will become even more of an issue as time goes on.

Internet Final FrontierProfessional Web Services provides Internet marketing services, search engine optimization, online advertising strategies, and web branding solutions for B2B and B2C businesses online.

Contact us today for the 24 x 7 x 365 solution to get your business found when searching the Internet.

Impressive Google Online Advertising

J. Warholic

Well, I must say that I am impressed with some of the new interactive ads that Google has been serving to their AdSense providers.

Internet AdvertisingFor those that are not familiar with the AdSense program, Google has a affiliate program whereby a content publisher can serve ads on their content websites. These ads come from the Google AdWords program in which advertisers can create both text and graphic ads to be displayed in the search results as well as on content providers’ websites.

Some of the new cool features of the new ads is the built in interactivity in the form of buttons or highlighted areas for different items of interest. Other extremely cool ads are in the form of video. See Web 2.0 Advertising. Yes I know, there have been moving ads on the Internet for a long time, but typically those old ads were very annoying in both sight and sound. What Google has done is control those annoying features by strictly regulating what ads are approved. Additionally many of the video ads have a control bar for playing the ad if you want.

How this plays out for the customer conversions is still being studied, but I would venture to say that there might be a higher conversion with this type of advertising. As is on the Television where people can click away from an ad, the Web visitor now has more control over what they are willing to take a look at, as opposed to what they are forced to watch. As these types of ads become more plentiful, Web Surfers will be much more likely to extend a measure of trust to both the advertiser and the website publisher.

Ultimately these ads bring a high degree of value to everyone. Publishers, Advertisers, Servers, and Web Surfers all profit.

If you would like profit from a website that is search engine friendly and can be found online visit Professional Web Services to learn how our Internet Marketing Services can help your B2B or B2C business today. Get more information about Online Advertising Strategies and Web Branding Solutions.

For a Free Internet Marketing Evaluation contact us today.

Staying on Top of The Internet

J. Warholic

Understanding The Online Web

The Internet is becoming much more interesting in our life and times as time ticks on. Staying up to date with the latest technologies available is most important for the B2B – Business to business, B2C – Business to consumer, and the C2C – Consumer to consumer world. Most small businesses today are not taking advantage of even a fraction of the power available through the Internet. The Web has created a solid foundation for marketing, advertising, and sales for all types of small businesses.

Large corporations for years have been using the Internet as a means of having their websites be a supplement and in some cases the main tools for bringing products and services to the market place. Large corporations have worked hard to establish their brand with the consumer or in the case of B2B; other businesses. For the small biz community however, many have not even thought about how they can establish their brand online through Web traffic on the local Internet markets.

Even with the advent of the Internet, consumers still purchase goods and services locally which supports businesses, stores, and service providers in their local communities. However, marketing and advertising in the past was through a Yellow Page Ad or the local newspaper. Things certainly have changed in how consumers and buyers find things. Now, because of the behavior of consumers and buyers, there is also a need to market and advertise a local business using the Internet.

Consumers and businesses continue to push the big Yellow Page books off to the side. In fact, if you haven’t looked at a recent Yellow Pages book; the publishers are trying to reduce the costs to print these books by making the text type so small that you need a magnifying glass in order to read it. I have become most disgusted with our local Yellow Pages for this very reason. I am now much more inclined to go to Google Search and do a local search in my community rather than pull out the fine print. I suspect that the younger generation (post Internet) uses the Yellow Pages printed book even less.

Millions of consumers are using the Internet daily to search out small biz. These figures are growing, especially as High Speed Internet has become more popular. Local directories are sprouting up all the time. These directories are becoming a way of providing a link to your B2B or B2C website that can support your business. Having information related to the specifics of your business can be an excellent way of being able to market and advertise 24 x 7 x 365 days a year. See information about various small biz strategies and expanding market reach online.

We have heard the story from some businesses having had a website for years that, “no one ever comes to our website.” In their mind they have written off the Web and their website as being, “a waste of time and money.” These business owners have placed very little effort into marketing their business online through good search engine marketing strategies or what is known as SEO, Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization is actually a misnomer. The term SEO or Search Engine Optimization and another term often used is SEM or Search Engine Marketing are actually terms used to describe optimizing a website for the particular keywords and keyword phrases to be found in the search engine searches for industry specific keywords related to particular fields of business. The search results pages for keyword queries can be a boom for sales on all types of products, services, organizations, and brands if a company starts being displayed in the search results pages. The SEO and SEM needs to be much more than just an optimizer of the company website. There are hundreds of onsite variables that affect the ranking of a website. Additionally there are countless other offsite variables that directly affect a website showing up in the results pages. For example from a Search Engine Algorithm, the quality of, and the topics of other websites that link directly to another Web site is a key variable. Certainly as Search Algorithms have been improved over the years has had a direct impact on the value of links from other sites. See: Search Engine Optimization Question

The process of marketing and advertising online is in a state of flux for B2B, B2C, and C2C. But, that is no different than having to battle the competition in other media outlets for any business. The Search Engine Companies are looking for the best results possible. Search Engine competition is good for the consumer. If there was only one search engine on the horizon, with one group of search engine results, and only one online advertising model, then they would have a monopoly online. The search engine company could make it so no other website could ever get into the natural or organic search results. A monopoly search engine company could force everyone to start paying for online advertising. This however, would be very foolish indeed. Consumers and businesses are free to use Google, Yahoo, Bing or any number of other smaller search engines that are starting up.

Trust is the key. Without trust and another all to often forgotten concept, Internet ethics, consumers could very easily migrate to other search services. Search as we know it is quite new. In just the past ten years we have seen Search develop into what has become an Internet marketing facilitator. The whole process of search can be summed up for the business world as a Marketing Middleman. The industry for business is about connecting buyers to sellers; matching up the needs of some with the products and services of others, and focusing on the transfer of information from one entity to another. If everything was Black and White it would surely make for a very dull colored world. That is why we will continue to see innovations, new technologies, and powerful online programs that will provide a great benefit to all business in the world.

The future of Search is limitless. I suspect in another ten years that we will be blown away at the power at our fingertips. Consumers and businesses will continue to embrace the Internet for eCommerce, research, and a host of other solutions that have not even been invented yet. The only question is; will you be on the forefront of the solution and embracing the Internet for your business?

To get your business found online contact Professional Web Services today. With powerful solutions for your B2B, B2C, or C2C business through Internet marketing services, Online advertising strategies, and Web branding solutions. Get the Business Solution today.

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Tweaking Your B2B or B2C Brand Online

J. Warholic

Snippets of Your Brand
By: James A. Warholic, President of Professional Web Services, Inc.

Snippets sounds like some sort of cereal.

What are snippets and how do they affect your brand?

Snippets in the search engine world are a small sampling of a web page. When someone does an online search; this produces a results page with content snippets of various pages of information from many websites. If the search algorithm determines that a page from your B2B, Business to business or B2C, Business to consumer website has relevant information related to the searched for keywords then a small sampling of the page will show up in the search engine results pages.

Serious BusinessIt is important to understand that the first contact a person may have with your website is not when they actually go to the website but when they view the search engine results page. This is why from a marketing and advertising perspective that your brand “be the best that it can be” within the realms of a realistic approach to optimizing the page for Readers and the Search Engines.

As a President or CEO of your company you must consider at least two distinct ways another business or consumer views your brand online through the search engines. One must consider that someone already knows about your company name, and uses the search engine search bar to type in your company name to go to the website. The other way is that a consumer or purchasing manager from another company types in the keywords in the search bar, and your website shows up in the results pages. Both of these examples are typical of how a customer would find various businesses online. Each has its own unique approach for management, of the brand that needs to be portrayed to the customer.

Breaking this down further, it is also helpful to understand to which market segment your business is in. For example: vertical markets also known as niche markets are a very narrow or dedicated spectrum of products or services delivered to consumers or other businesses; while horizontal markets cross over a broad spectrum of products or services provided across multiple industries. Each of these business categories and buyers and sellers markets needs to have a particular brand approach to Internet marketing and advertising online that are going to be quite different. This will also be a factor in determining what your goals are for showing up in the search results pages and how your brand needs to be displayed on the Internet.

Search algorithms continue to change and improve. As the search companies fine tune and in some cases drastically change their algorithms this will also change to some degree the way the snippets are displayed for each website. A person can fine tune a web page to provide a better branded snippet while still maintaining the structural integrity of the page for the search engines and the readers. It is important to understand that changes to a web page can affect the page for the keyword search engine results. But, with quality writing, and proper and ethical search engine optimization techniques a person can actually improve both the branded snippets that are portrayed along with the ranking of the page in the search engine results.

Branding on the Internet does take time and effort to improve the image of a company. The days of just slapping a website together and saying, “that is it, and there is nothing more to do,” are over. Efforts need to be expended on a regular basis to view and analyze the results in the search engines. As the analysis is made, small or sometimes drastic changes need to take place to the website or web page in order to provide a better Brand for your company on the Internet.

Professional Web Services provides Internet marketing services, online advertising campaign management, and web branding solutions for your company online. Contact Professional Web Services today to get started toward more sales tomorrow.

Get Your Website Discovered Online
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