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Have you ever typed a word into a search box only to receive websites for which you were totally not looking for? Turns out, when you do a search, you really have to be careful what word you type in. And, the whole word search thing is actually pretty amusing.
Since anything amusing is one of my favorite things, I decided that I shall type in some common words into a search box and see what kind of crazy things I get. Yay! While planning on only spending a little time on this post. I had so much fun, I felt compelled to spend hours being amused by this! (Ha!)
So here are the results……
I typed in the word hair (pretty common word right?) The most popular question asked about hair was “Does Tim Mcgraw have hair?” Ha! And, this question was typed in the search engine 1,334 times in the last year! I guess people really want to know if Tim McGraw has hair.Here is another one about hair that I found amusing. “Even my nose hair is white” was typed into a search engine 74 times. What does that even mean? Is that a question, and what website are you looking for when you type that in? And some others that needed mentioning. How long do drugs stay in your hair (71 times), and my personal favorite “my fiance is getting his hair braided by his ex baby mama” (a whopping 41 times) Really? How often does that happen?
Here are the results for crazy. This is the word I thought of after seeing the results of the word hair. #1 “The Gods must be crazy” 104 times. (I say people are crazy!)”god is great beer is good and people are crazy” (26 times) and another one of my favorites “help my husband has gone batsh*t crazy” (only 5 times, and I may have been one of them, Ha!)
And the last one I will do for now is breakfast. #1 is “what do Japanese people eat for breakfast” (724 times), “What does Justin Beiber eat for breakfast” ( 20 times) You know you want to know!!! And my personal favorite, of course “did you eat a bowl of stupid for breakfast” (5 times) I ask this daily about people, I think it should have been searched much more.
So, the moral of the blog is, be careful what word you type in when you do a search. I also typed in the words bed and dog and the results were scary! I can’t believe what questions people ask in a keyword search! I will have to do this again since I was so amused by the results. I got a pretty good laugh out of a few of them and I hope you do too!
~Shelly Long
Have you ever noticed that guy jamming out to his music with a banana suit on while twirling a sign? Turns out that craziness has a name, it’s street corner advertising, and some business’s say it works!!
Would this work as a new online marketing strategy? After all – offline (“traditional”) advertising is still a large source of website traffic for many businesses. Some business’s are saying that the street corner advertisers are actually driving extra traffic to their online and storefront business. Weird, I know, but haven’t we all noticed the sign holders before? I think I have noticed them before, but more often than not, I don’t pay attention to what the sign says…I’m usually laughing at the dancing or the silly suit the person is wearing.
The pros of street corner advertising would be that it is inexpensive, effective, and easy. (If your not the one in the suit!) Most people are drawn to motion, so if they see a big sign moving around on a busy street, it could get your business noticed. A good way to use street corner advertising would be to try it out for a big sale, promotion, or event.
The cons would be that maybe you stand outside (in a banana suit) all day and you don’t drive any extra traffic to your business. Maybe your sign is tacky and it actually deters people away from your business. Or you hire someone for that banana suit and they are having too much fun dancing and ruin your sign and your whole street corner advertising campaign!
The moral of the blog is…… go dig out that banana suit from your basement, or hire someone else if your like me and are too embarrassed to do it, and try it out! Weird forms of advertising are becoming more popular these days. And this is definitely one of them! What does it hurt to try? Except maybe your pride!
~Shelly Long
11
If you don’t have a Facebook or Twitter account for your business, here are 5 reasons why you should
Social Media Marketing is used as an additional form of customer support. What do we all want when we go into or use a business? Instant information, Customer service and support!
Why not be available for support/service at your customer’s fingertips? We lead a fast paced life, nobody has the time or patience to wait on hold listening to boring elevator music for customer service/support answers.
When updating Facebook and twitter you and your business will always be reminding your “followers” or “friends” not to forget about you. While browsing the Internet the other day my stomach growled at me and I realized that I was hungry. Not a minute later I got an update from Chipotle on Facebook. Hmmm, coincidence? Maybe. But alas, where did I end up? Chipotle. I always want to be on my customer’s mind, don’t you?
The best place to receive feedback instantly on a new product or idea? Social Media Networks!
The best form of (free) advertising is through customer recommendations. Why not make a (free) web page on a (free) social networking site where happy customers can suggest you to their friends? Hey, It’s free! Do we get the theme yet?
Who doesn’t have Internet access anymore? Get your business out there! It’s all about being everywhere, all the time!
~Shelly Long
From time to time, a business owner simply has to look at their own model and say… “okay, its time for a change”. We did this at ScottOrth.com recently and realized we’re growing faster and stronger than we thought. So, we’ve started inviting employees and partners to contribute to the ScottOrth.com blog in order to keep our readers informed of whats going on in the marketplace.
Since we’re all busy, I expect the ramp up will be slow… but in the end I hope we’ll have a ton of great, educational content to share with everyone.
To get started, Shelly Long is joining the blog as a key author and will be contributing a great deal to the fundamentals of SEO, Pay-per-Click, Social Media, and other online strategies to improve your business. So watch for upcoming posts from Shelly… I think we’ll all learn from her insight.
In-house Internet Marketing has been coming up more and more lately. I moderated a panel on the topic at last week’s SearchFest in Portland, I’ve received several questions on it since, and now I am preparing my updated curriculum for yet another in-house SEO and PPC training course for one of my customers.
So it seems time to line out what it is and why you should care… or not care.
Back in the mid-to-late 1990′s you either did Search Engine Optimization for your own business, or you were a consultant for others. There really were no ‘in-house’ SEO’s. SEO was a new concept back then, so there weren’t employee positions for this.
Now - many expert SEO’s charge $200, $500, even $1,000 per hour – and may still not offer expertise in Pay-per-Click, Social Media, Usability, and Analytics… all things a company needs for success in today’s online world. So many companies are re-thinking their online strategies and are comparing the benefits of a consultant or agency against an in-house team. But is this the right move for you? Let’s lay it out a bit.
A typical Internet Marketing Services (IMS) agency will charge a minimum of $1,500 per month for their services. In many cases, this rate will be their bottomfeeder rate, and you may not get the service level that another client gets who pays…say $5,000 per month. It can be frustrating for small businesses who truly value an expense like $1,500 per month. At the same time, a smaller company like this could never afford an in-house person, or team.
Why? To start, a low salary for someone who only knows SEO would be in the range of $35 – $50k per year. For someone a bit more experienced and with knowledge in SEO, PPC, SMM, Usability, Analytics… an average salary would be more like $75 – $90k per year. Management salaries are far more, with VP positions reaching as high as $300k per year.
There are also things like conference expenses so your in-house person or team can stay educated on the changes in the search market. Expect to pay at least $10k per year, per in-house person, for these conferences.
Then you will need to budget for tools. This may not be as expensive, but you’ll usually need tools for:
- Keyword analysis
- SEO tracking and scanning
- PPC management (maybe…maybe not)
- Social media and reputation management monitoring
- Competitive intelligence analysis
- Usability testing
- Analytics
- and others as necessary
In total, these tools may cost as little as $500 per month…or on a high end, you may need to budget upwards of $25 – $35k per year – but this is usually reserved for big-business needs.
Now, total expenses will vary greatly depending on whether one person can handle everything in-house, or if you will need a 3-5 person (or more) team.
There really is no magic formula for this. If you prefer more control of an in-house person or team, then the business need may outweigh costs. If you can find a good, personable consultant, you may be far better off outsourcing. But if you are focused on significant growth, and you expect a large portion of your revenue to come from the web… you may want to consider building an in-house team.
One final note. Unless you pay top-dollar, and recruit people who are already highly experienced in the field to run your in-house team (expect salary in the range of $120k – $200k)… expect to keep a consultant on for a while…even after your in-house team is built. This is primarily for ongoing training, and ensuring your team is equipped with everything they need to exceed.
For more information on in-house Internet Marketing team creation and training, visit http://www.scottorth.com/in-house-seo-ppc-consultant.html.
My excessively long day of networking, socializing, and overall conferencing, has finally come to an end.
The Governor Hotel proved to be a great venue for an event that showcases Portland’s search talent, and brings speakers and guests from around the nation.
Guests gather for a wonderful plated breakfast at SearchFest
SearchFest 2010 was filled with great sessions, some of which were standing room only. I moderated a session on PPC for Social Media with Luther Lowe of Yelp and Marty Weintraub of aimclear, followed by a session on In-house Search Marketing with Derrick Wheeler of Microsoft and Laura Lippay of Yahoo!
Lots of great take aways… and its always great to catch up with all my search friends and colleagues, most of which I only see at conferences.
SEMpdx put on a great show – and received more media attention than ever before (thanks to Amy Rosenberg). I’m already looking forward to SearchFest 2011!
For those of you that don’t already know, SEMpdx’s Searchfest moved to a new location this year. Though the Oregon Zoo was a unique and fun environment for our show, we finally outgrew it.
I am at the event right now, which is being held at the Governor Hotel in Downtown Portland.
So far, I would rate this as our best SearchFest ever. Though we have a much larger crowd, and our location gives us a much more professional, maybe even elegant appearance; we are still the same down-to-Earth group we started out with.
Too make sure everyone knows this, we gave all of our speakers a custom Snuggie, and are offering these as prizes and give aways as well. I bet you can’t name a search organization that has ever given away Snuggies! Now that is SEMpdx.
So far, I’ve watched a fantastic presentation by Stefan Weitz of Bing, and a great competitive intelligence, look-behind-the-scenes-of-your-competitor, presentation by Spyfu creator Mike Roberts.
Now I’m off to our morning break where we will hear from the folks at the Oregon Humane Society about some of their wonderful pets looking for a new home. More to come…
Full Disclosure: I know Scott Hendison (creator of SEO Automatic) personally, and serve along side him on the SEMpdx.org Board of Directors. That said - this is my independent, non-sponsored review of the SEO Automatic application for iPhone. So here you go…
I downloaded this app last month, and have used it several time, for several client websites, and even used it to check my own work on www.99seoReports.com. It’s nice to at least get confirmation that all is well.
I have used the regular version of SEO Automatic at Scott Hendison’s site, and I think the information is pretty valuable. It’s great to have one place to go to check your titles, Meta tags, header tags, keyword use, and a myriad of technical elements like HTML file size, canonical URL, and more.
So how does the iPhone app stand up to the regular version? It’s awesome. it IS SEOautomatic, just in a mobile form. And let’s not forget, you get all the same great info, but for a $10 one-time fee, rather than a monthly fee like the web version.
So is it all perfect? Well, no. As an SEO consultant of 10 years myself, I would like to see a little more meat in the report – but I’m a bit biased… and some would say picky. 
For instance, I love that the tool checks for the robots.txt file. But even if the file is there, it might be totally screwed up. Scott has installed comments to this affect – but the tool does not actually look at the robots.txt file for accuracy and give fix-recommendations. I would LOVE to see it go that extra mile.
Really though, that’s about all I can complain about. The SEO Automatic tool looks at pretty much everything you would need to know to properly optimize your site. Some might complain that the tool is cluttered with “un-needed” details like the Meta Keyword tag – but I’m with Scott on this one… even if an item doesn’t seem to be what Google is resting their hat on right now, that doesn’t mean it won’t be a more important factor later.
There are also thousands to small, unknown search engines out there; many of which are quietly trying to find a hole in Google’s armour so they can be the next big thing. Some of these guys may be looking at elements that Google has passed on long ago.
My point is, why not follow best practices, cover all of your bases, and be better prepared ANY time the engines decide to swap the weights around in their algorithm? I really like the fact that SEO Automatic looks at all the little details – not just today’s HOT items.
Oh, and one request for Mr. Hendison… maybe you could bold the header of each section? I was getting a little confused about where one section ended and another began.
Thumbs up, green light, or whatever you want to label it – I vote ‘YES’ for the SEO Automatic iPhone app, and I highly recommend you kick in the $10 to get it yourself.
For Technorati
Well, I guess it’s time to start blogging again! After a significant hiatus, I shall once again try to post some stuff here every so often. I had to move everything over from eradicateperplexity, since it has been grabbed by a low-life spammer. But that’s okay, cause I needed to consolidate things onto my new site anyway.
So here we go! Welcome, and I hope you enjoy. I will write about my standard SEO, PPC, Usability stuff and the like, but I will also add some personal flare to hopefully make it more interesting.
