Tag Archives: sem

How to Win Sales & Influence Spiders

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I learned about Catherine Seda back in 2004, when she published her classic book “Search Engine Advertising” (read the review here). Earlier in 2007, she came back with another title, “How to Win Sales & Influence Spiders“, one that handsomely complements her work and offers marketers and business owners alike a plethora of information to feed from and make the most out of the options available nowadays to catapult your business online.

With the assistance of contributing author Amanda Watlington (another legend in the Search Marketing space), Catherine covers PR, blogging, social networking, podcasting, e-mail campaigns, affiliate marketing, PPC and more sharing her knowledge while she interviews experts in each of the topics and wraps up each chapter with an insightful Success Story (read “case study”) to drive the points home.

In the end, between the material covered and its relevance, combined with Catherine’s fresh writing style, the book ends up being an enjoyable read that is worth thousands of dollars, if you apply her suggestions as a part of your marketing and PR efforts.

Get your copy of the book and, if you need assistance with getting a Search Marketing campaign off the ground, contact Avance Associates: we can help you.

Digg: The Traffic Hose

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Thursday evening I posted the video that my friend Danilo shot and edited on the arrival of 500 Mac Book Pros to Full Sail.

After I posted about that, I dugg the post and within seconds after hitting the Digg home page (after it had been dugg over 100 times), the traffic started literally pouring in.

It’s ironic, because the digg was in front of digg users probably for a matter of seconds (that is how fast content “moves” there -see Digg Spy, if you don’t believe me). Yet the net traffic it drove towards my blog was unprecedented:

-Almost 5,000 visits in the course of Friday alone. There were moments when there were well over 200 people hitting the blog in an hour
-Within ten days of the month of February, my previous monthly traffic record was shattered (I don’t know yet what the total traffic for the month will be, since there is still a healthy residual traffic coming as a result of the digg).
-Over 10 new blogs linked to “Ask Manny”, which had an immediate impact on my Technorati ranking: from somwhere around spot #129,000 the blog rised to #89,758.

Thanks to the blogs and feeds that linked back to the Mac Book Pro post:
http://www.mi3dot.org/news/comments/3196/
http://www.macsurfer.com/
http://tradermike.net/2007/02/links_for_2007-02-10/
http://blog.wired.com/cultofmac/2007/02/five_hundred_ma.html
http://www.sdjl.co.uk/2007/02/09/one-million/
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/02/09/a-million-bucks-of-macbooks/
http://www.iphonebitz.com/a-million-bucks-of-macbook-pros/
http://www.iphones4u.info/a-million-bucks-of-macbook-pros/
http://doggdot.us/?page=3
http://www.dwblog.net/
http://corejam.com/
http://apple.feedcollection.org/

Thanks too to all those who paid a visit to this blog in the past few hours.

I am honestly humbled and I thank Danilo for sharing the opportunity of getting so much traffic that, otherwise, I wouldn’t have gotten. Indeed the “cult of the Mac” can be a powerful attraction… much more than what I would have ever imagined.

How to Get Google to Notice You?

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I just read this very simple, yet powerful article posted yesterdat on USA Today, aptly titled How to Get Google to Notice You. It’s packed with simple, yet powerful advice for those who want to know what it is that Google pays attention to in a web site, in order to rank it better or worse for a particular keyword getting entered on their search.

If you want to go beyond the basics or you want an assessment on your site, let me know: I can help you.

Google Sued (Again and Again)

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When I read the headline, I clicked. Since the purchase of YouTube by Google, everyone began to expect the law suits to pour in… and they’ve started, but not the way most of us thought they would.

The producer of “The World According to Bush” has taken legal action against Google for distributing the film for free.

What’s “special” about this event is that it’s not YouTube that was hosting the infringing movie, it was Google Video! And if you think that is an isolated case, consider this other case against Google in Italy, that made headlines last week. Again, not against YouTube and coming from Europe.

Makes you think, considering the significantly smaller “inventory” Google Video had, what’s in store in the coming months for Google, in terms of law suits for content on YouTube. Anyone want to put a price tag on that? I don’t know, but my bet is that we’ll be seeing this headline quite often in the near future.

Making Flash websites searchable

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Earlier this week, I ran into a very good article that summarized the best practices to help make Flash websites searchable.

Though Google claims the opposite, Search Engines are mostly “blind” to Flash websites. Think of it as the same problem faced in the world of Artificial Intelligence: having computers tell the context within visual (photo, video) content -it’s a very tough problem that, to this day, still has few good solutions, most of which are partial and limited.

So, Jeff Kamerer, a computer scientist who has worked on the Flash authoring team since 2002 authored a simple yet fairly complete article where he summarizes the easiest things for you to do to help Search Engines find your Flash-based website. And the nice thing is that most of them don’t entail rewriting your Flash application!

No Such Thing As Guaranteed Positioning

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“… we offer guaranteed top-level positioning on the majority of the most relevant keyword phrases that people use to find your services.”

That’s one of the opening phrases that a friend of mine heard from a “Search Engine Optimization” firm not too long ago. It’s surprising the company that made the promise is still in business…

Why would an otherwise reputable-looking company (I refuse to give away their name), that has an executive team that looks so well educated on the outside (a host of MBAs and people holding Master degrees in it) do something so silly?

From day one, when you land in the world of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), you learn there’s no such thing as “guaranteed Search Engine positions” as impeccably explained by Shari Thurow.

So next time you hear these empty promises, put up your best smile, thank them for their time… and exit stage left, so you can save your money by putting it with some company that will be honest in telling you things as they are.

Avance Associates Launches New Web Site

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Our company, Avance Associates, launched its new web site today. The web site sports a slick, minimalist look that cleverly blends the colors of the company’s logo while it runs on a fusebox framework using PHP as the underlying language. It incorporates an RSS feed powered by Feedburner that spits out recent posts from this blog.

The design and development was done by Mat Giordano, whose services I highly recommend. He also counted on the guidance and instructive hand of Mike Edelnant of Visual Aesthetic.

We are proud to announce this major step in the evolution of our company and invite you to spread the word about it if you ever know of anybody needing help in the areas of translation, internet marketing, and design.

Some of the company’s current and past customers include numerous Major League Baseball teams, Border Trade Alliance, Addison-Wesley, AOL Latin America and Manduca Ventures.

¿Que es compuntoes?

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Desde hacia un dia venia viendo en Technorati como la “palabra” compuntoes estaba ranqueando de primera y me preguntaba de que se trataba. Hoy recien vine viendo de que se trataba el asunto. No es ni mas ni menos que un concurso de posicionamiento organizado por la gente de COM.ES (compuntoes, get it?) para lograr alcanzar una posicion elevada en los buscadores (Google, Yahoo! y MSN, sobre todo) para la palabra computoes.

Al igual que a otros participantes, lo que no me parece muy alineado con las buenas practicas de SEO (Search Engine Optimization, u Optimizacion para Buscadores) son algunas de las recomendaciones que los organizadores parecen estar patrocinando.

En cualquier caso, aqui vamos… me lo voy a tomar como un juego para ver donde caemos en Google para “compuntoes“. Pero hay quienes no se lo estan tomando tan en juego. Este blog ofrece una buena cantidad de tips, algunos de los cuales aplican perfectamente mas alla del tema del concurso.