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Google Penalizes Text Link Ads
2007-09-06 05:58:00
Google is cracking down on link selling by going after the biggest text link broker, Text Link Ads. Do a search for 'text link ads' in Google and the Text Link Ads web site shows up 43rd. There is no other explanation for a web site with a PR7 not showing up for a search on it's own name than Google is penalizing it.
More About: Google , Link Building

Free Samples Equals Viral Marketing Success
2007-09-05 19:18:00
My company Kinoli handles the Internet Marketing for Petfresh, makers of the healthiest dog food on the planet. We recently redesigned the web sites for their two brands, Homestyle Select and Deli Fresh. After launching the new Homestyle Select web site, we sent an email to a list of veterinarians encouraging them to check out the web site and fill out an online form. In return they would receive a free sample of Homestyle Select. The only way to access the free sample form was through the link provided in the email. A few weeks after we sent the emails to our list of veterinarians our client noticed that they received a few hundred submissions for free samples in the time span of a couple hours.
More About: Link Building , Samples , Free , Viral

Tips for Starting your own Facebook Group
2007-09-04 23:38:00
Facebook groups have become the single biggest story in internet marketing and PR over the last few months. When Facebook first started out as a student only social network, Facebook groups were small gathering places for students to look outside their circle of friends and find people with similar interests and discuss anything from their favorite bands to their favorite sports teams. Students soon realized the power of these groups and began using them to organize and even protest. Now that Facebook has been opened up to the public the number and variety of Facebook groups has exploded.
More About: Social Networks , Tips , Facebook , Group

4 Reasons Not To Put Your Company in the Wikipedia
2007-09-03 03:25:00
A client of mine recently asked me if I thought they should write a Wikipedia article about their company. It may seem like a good idea to have an article about your company in the largest and most popular online encyclopedia. However, like I told my client, there are a few good reasons why many companies should stay out.
More About: Questions , Link Building , Company , Reasons

Google Gmail Behind the Scenes Video
2007-08-31 15:48:00
Here is the final version of the partial user generated - partial Google staff created Gmail video. The video is far from polished, and isn't trying to deliver some finely crafted corporate message. It's simple, fun, and after being online for only 2 days has 1.4 million views and growing. This is a great example of what can happen if you invite your audience to participate.
More About: Video , Branding , Google Gmail

Funny Video Friday: King Kong?s Kid vs Ford Ranger Commercial
2007-08-31 05:41:00
This weeks funny video is a made in Thailand commercial for the Ford Ranger Open Cab. Watch King Kong's kid try to destroy a truck. Enjoy the commercial and the rest of your Friday...
More About: Video , Funny , Commercial , Funny Videos

Video: Offline Postering to Drive Online Traffic
2007-08-30 18:36:00
If you have a niche product or service that doesn't get a lot of search traffic, you need to figure out alternative ways to get attention. Commenting on relevant Blogs and Forums, and participating in social networking groups are all great low cost ways to try and generate interest in your business. But have you ever considered good old fashioned postering as a low cost alternative to generate awareness and Drive traffic to your site? Here is a video created by...
More About: Video , Advertising , Traffic , Offline

Intelligent Domain Buying and Selling Tips
2007-08-29 13:39:00
I recently purchased an after-market domain from Buy Domain s for a project I'm working on. I believe that I paid much less than I should have because of the age of the domain, which goes back as far as August 2000 according to the Way Back Machine. There are still links coming into the domain that first appeared in 2002. Having an old history to a domain name and inbound links can drastically increase the value of a domain.
More About: Buying , Selling , Link Building , Tips

How To Monetize Social Networks like Facebook
2007-08-28 21:31:00
Social Networks are hot right now. This summer, I can't imagine any one company or brand getting more free PR than Facebook . Reporters are falling all over themselves to find Facebook related stories. I'm sure I'm not the only one who grins every time I hear "Are you on Facebook?" Social Networks have gone from popular to pop culture, and Facebook, youTube, and mySpace have all entered the general lexicon. With all their success and millions of monthly visitors, the one problem all social networks seem to share is how do we make money? And the answer everyone seems to be coming up with is targeted advertising.
More About: Social , Advertising , Social Networks

How to Create an Animated Favicon
2007-08-27 17:48:00
Since redesigning this Internet marketing blog, we've received numerous comments about our animated favicon. A favicon is a 16x16 pixel icon that is displayed in the address bar, on tabs and in bookmark lists of your browser. In this post I will show you how to put a favicon that animates on your web site.
More About: Web Design , Branding , Favicon , Animated , Create

Funny Video Friday: Start of a Murphy?s Law Day
2007-08-24 06:31:00
This weeks funny video is a commercial from Statoil. Who is Statoil? I have no idea, but the commercial sure made me laugh. This guy has a murphy’s law day ahead of him…
More About: Video , Funny , Funny Videos , Funny Video , Start

VMB News: Job Board and Paid Reviews
2007-08-23 14:11:00
It's time for a Virtual Marketing Blog update... Internet Marketing Job Board With the help of Job-a-matic we were able to add an Internet Marketing Job Board to our site. Check it out if you're looking for a new job, or for $19 you can post a job that will stay at the top of the job board for 60 days.
More About: News , Reviews , Paid

youTube Has Chosen It?s In Video Ad Platform
2007-08-22 17:43:00
After months of testing youTube has finally rolled out its inVideo ads to the public. 15 seconds into a video, an overlay ad will appear over the bottom 20% of the video. This overlay will be 80% transparent and will animate for up to 10 seconds before disappearing on its own. You will have the option of closing the overlay ad immediately if you want. These overlay ads will contain links that can trigger a video ad. If you choose to watch the video ad, the video you are currently watching will pause, and then the "player-in-player" video ad will begin playing, and disappear once it is finished. Google estimates that 75% of people will watch the full player in player ad.
More About: Youtube , Advertising , Online Video , Platform

Internet Marketing Case Study: Wakamow Heights Bed & Breakfast
2007-08-21 15:36:00
In April 2006 my parents sold the house they had lived in for the past twelve years and purchased an historic mansion in Moose Jaw, Canada. Originally built in 1908 by one of the wealthiest men in the city, the 3-story mansion has been a bed and breakfast since 2001. Seeing that Moose Jaw had become a tourist hot spot over the past decade my parents intended to keep running it as a bed and breakfast. I volunteered to help them with their marketing efforts and this case study outlines the things we did to improve the profitability of the business.
More About: Marketing , Internet , Study , Internet Marketing , Breakfast

Using Google Adsense to Distribute Video
2007-08-20 17:19:00
There has been a lot of buzz over the last couple days about Seth McFarlane (creator of Family Guy), and Raven Symone, (star of the Disney's That's So Raven) deciding to use Google Adsense to distribute their original video content. Seth McFarlane is planning on creating 50 animated shorts and Raven Symone is producing a series of short "how-to" videos. The videos will appear in a video box on a targeted webpage that the viewer will have to click to play. Each video will be accompanied by banner advertising and either a pre-roll or post roll video ad. There has not yet been any mention of product placement, or specific brands tied to the project.
More About: Video , Branding , Advertising

Link Buying vs Media Buying: Where is the 15% Commission?
2007-08-20 17:10:00
Question: Should SEO professionals get 15% commission on the links they buy for their clients? Most ad agencies and media buyers make a 15% commission on the media they purchase for their clients. This includes the placement of television commercials, radio spots, print ads, web site banner ads, billboards and more. Ad agencies and graphic design firms also make a 15% commission on the printing of brochures, magazines, stationary and so on. This commission comes out of what the client pays to the media and printing companies.
More About: Media , Buying , Link Building , Link , Commission

SEO for Wordpress Part 6: Custom Query String
2007-08-17 20:59:00
This is the sixth part of my SEO for Wordpress series. Previously I wrote about title tags, header tags, filenames, meta description and duplicate content. Today I am writing about a Wordpress plugin that allows you to modify the default number of posts displayed by the Wordpress loop before it creates a new page. By default, the number of posts displayed by the Wordpress loop before it creates a new page is the same for all pages that list multiple posts. (ie. home page, category pages, search page) This can have a negative effect on our SEO efforts because it places less importance on our older posts by putting them a few pages deep.
More About: Part , String , Custom , Query

Funny Video Friday: Berlitz Commercials
2007-08-17 14:54:00
Berlitz, providers of language instruction, translation and localization services is the focus of this Friday 's funny video. Let's make that one funny video and one not-so-funny video. Berlitz tries to use humor to sell their products and I applaud them for their effort. They did an amazing job with the 'We are sinking!' commercial. It is one of my all-time favorite commercials.
More About: Video , Funny , Funny Videos , Funny Video

Save 25% on BOTW Directory Submissions
2007-08-15 22:47:00
I received an email this morning from Best of the Web offering 25% off on new submissions and sponsorship in their directories until the end of August by using the promo code: SIZZLE25. Best of the Web has two directories: Best of the Web Director y BOTW Blog Directory This is a really good deal considering the regular price is $79.95 recurring annually or a one-time fee of $239.95.
More About: Link Building , Save , Tory

Google uses youTube to promote Gmail
2007-08-15 06:21:00
With it's latest Gmail promo video, Google shows us once again, that simple ideas are viral ideas. The catalyst for this collaborative video campaign is "help us imagine how an email message travels around the world". Google set the ball rolling with a short somewhat comical clip of google employees passing around an oversized Gmail M-velope. They invite people around the world to download and print the M-velope and create their own 10 second clip to ad to the video. Google will select it's favorites to complete the video, and the video will then play on the Gmail homepage, via youTube of course.
More About: Youtube , Promote , Viral Marketing

How to Create an Alert Box in Flash
2007-08-14 19:43:00
We got a call the other day from a prospective client telling us that another interactive agency in town was claiming that they made the Crawford Group web site which we actually created a few years back. The best solution to this problem would have been to put a signature at the bottom of the site that says 'Website designed by Kinoli'. This is not always possible for us because we work with a lot of creative agencies who prefer that we don't put a link on their site back to ours. In return, many of these agencies outsource all of their web work to us.
More About: Flash , Web Development , Alert , Lash , Create

Heavy.com introduces it?s own Brand of Ad Supported Video
2007-08-13 22:23:00
Heavy.com has created the Husky Network to market it's own brand of ad supported video network. It consists of surrounding or wrapping a video player with a large static ad. Publishers would have a choice of embedding the ad supported video into their web pages, or alternatively having the ad and video open in a pop up or an overlay. Anyone familiar with watching videos on the Heavy.com will already be familiar with the format.
More About: Video , Advertising , Online Video , Brand , Heavy

Everything You Need To Know About rel=?nofollow?
2007-08-13 20:03:00
Introduced by Google in 2005 and initially intended to prevent blog and forum comment spam, the rel="nofolow" tag is used to instruct search engines that a link should not influence the link target's ranking in the search engine's index. Most blog software like Wordpress and some forums use the "nofollow" attribute on links that readers submit. Individual search engines handle rel="nofollow" differently: Google does not "follow" the link at all. Yahoo! does not use the link in it's ranking calculation, but does "follow" the link and index the page. MSN does not use the link in it's ranking calculation, but there is little data to show whether they "follow" and index the link's target. Ask.com does not support the attribute.
More About: Nofollow

Funny Video Friday: Japanese Game Shows
2007-08-10 20:33:00
With this post we introduce a new institution on the Virtual Marketing Blog: Funny Video Friday. We figure that after a hard week of work you deserve to watch a funny video or three. Why is it that we import a lot of our game shows and reality TV from the United Kingdom (Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, American Idol, The Weakest Link...) when we could be importing game shows like Human Tetris, Crazy Piranha Game and Don't You Laugh from Japan?
More About: Funny Videos , Funny Video , Japanese

Adam Curry Discusses the Future of Online Video
2007-08-10 20:16:00
I highly recommend anyone interested in online video read a recent Adam Curry intererview by Jack Myers, over at the Mediapost TV Board. Adam Curry, ex MTV VJ, current host of Podfinder and partner in the social audio/video network www.podshow.com compared the recent online video explosion to the early days of MTV, and argues that the future of marketable online video lies in episodic content. YouTube, with millions of single-click unlinked video fragments, is not the future of broadband entertainment. ITunes, with a closed business model focused exclusively on selling iPods, is also not the future... The future is ?serialized episodic content that bridges the gap between TV networks and YouTube.
More About: Video , Future , Online Video , The Future

SEO for Wordpress Part 5: Duplicate Content
2007-08-10 04:32:00
This is the fifth part of my SEO for Wordpress series. Previously I wrote about title tags, header tags, filenames and meta descriptions. Today I am writing about duplicate content issues for Wordpress blogs. What's Wrong With Duplicate Content ? When search engine bots see duplicate content, they try to determine the original source so that they can choose which version to display in the search results. Duplicate content is often associated with content theft, spamming, splogging (example of splog: http://howtoblog.cc/?p=254) and other SEO bad practices, so it is possible that a site or pages within a site can be penalized.
More About: Part , Tent

Google CEO Eric Schmidt Answers ?What is Web 3.0??
2007-08-09 06:39:00
While giving a speech at the Seoul Digital Forum, Eric Schmidt , Chairman and CEO of Google , was asked by a member of the audience "What is Web 3.0"? Watch this quick clip for the answer. He starts by making a jab at the term Web 2.0, but then responds with a very insightful answer, that probably has more to do with Google's than Web 3.0, if you can differentiate the two.
More About: B News , Online Video , Answers

SEO for Wordpress Part 4: Meta Description
2007-08-08 17:39:00
This is the fourth part of my SEO for Wordpress series. Previously I wrote about title tags, header tags and filenames. Even though the meta description tag is less relevant for influencing search results than it was a few years back, it can still play an important role in bringing traffic to your site. Most search engines put the first 190 characters of your meta description tag below the linked title of your page in their search results. If written in a compelling manner, combined with your title tag it may draw searchers into your site.
More About: Part , Meta , Description

AdPerk Rewards You For Watching Video Ads
2007-08-07 19:39:00
Here's how it works, an advertiser has a video ad she wants you to see, the magazine publisher has a magazine he wants you to subscribe to, and you want that magazine. This is where AdPerk comes in. They?ve created a web page where people can watch video ads in return for free or discounted magazine subscriptions. You can earn a free subscription to Popular Mechanics or 50% off Dwell Magazine. It looks like Ode and Alternative Magazine are on board and will be available soon.
More About: Video , Advertising , Online Video , Watching , Rewards

SEO for Wordpress Part 3: Filenames
2007-08-07 13:25:00
This is the third part of my series on SEO for Wordpress . The first two parts were on title tags and header tags. Filenames Important To Search Since the filename of a page is an important factor in search engine algorithms it is important that we name our pages appropriately. Ideally we want the main keywords of our article separated by dashes. For example, a good name for this page would be 'wordpress-file-names' or 'seo-wordpress-file-names'.
More About: Part , Part 3 , Ames , Names