Abraham Lincoln once said “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” In the business of online marketing, the best way to sharpen the tool is to find a better tool. As online marketers, we are always on the lookout for better tools for our clients.
Here is a list of 100 Web Applications for Small Business.
Some of our favorite tools are:
Keyword spy was brought to our attention by Rob a 262 blog reader. Thanks for the addition Rob!
If you are an e-commerce business, you need to make sure you get Internet Retailer Magazine.
In their June 2007 issue, they just published The 2007 Top 500 Guide. This issue provides mountains of data on what the best e-commerce websites are doing online. It is full of great information!
Here is just a brief overview of some of the great data:
Check out the magazine for a lot of other great information.
David Sifry is the CEO of Technorati, and he had written a great post on The State of the Blogosphere and Social Media. It provides great information on blogs and other social media trends. Great information!
Here is a quick summary:
There are a couple of great e-commerce tools we recommend to all of our e-commerce website clients. These tools let customers participate in live chat.
Each of these tools is a little different, but they’re all relatively inexpensive. Live chat tools help online visitors send quick instant messages to you so they can find what they need quickly and efficiently. Otherwise, they may get frustrated and leave your site because what they want to find is buried somewhere.
Some of these tools will allow you to track visitor activity on your website in real time, monitor PPC campaigns, view web analytics reports, and get real time page error alerts.
Live Chat Tools
Having an avenue to communicate with clients is really important for e-commerce sites. These live chat tools allow you to do that without breaking the bank.
Webstie analytics tools, like Omniture (the tool we use) and Google Analytics (a free tool), are meant to help companies look at their website traffic and analyze the data in order to make good business decisions about marketing and website usability / design.
Website analytics software can tell you things like:
I recently worked with two very large Fortune 500 clients (we still love small business customers too) who had over $5 million each invested in website analytics technology that did not work. Their IT guy made excuses and blamed it on his predecessors. The software vendor blamed it on the hardware configuration and the old IT guy. My thought was “Hey, who gives a damn. Someone give me the $5 million back right now.”
If I paid someone $5 million, I assure you the damn thing better work, or I would be getting my money back. By the way, if you want to give me $5 million and get nothing in return, I could write this blog from the beach instead of my office! Sometimes big companies amaze me!
Continue reading “The Truth About Website Analytics” »
With over 70 million blogs on the Web, searching for the best blogs can be an overwhelming process. The good news is, there are a lot of “Top Blog” lists out there. Everyone likes a Top 10 list – especially in the blogosphere where we like to scan.
The most well known top blog list is from Technorati. This a list of the Top 100 Most Popular Blogs on the Web. This list is based on the number unique links acquired in the last six months.
Another great list that focuses on marketing blogs is The Power 150 Top Marketing Blogs by Todd And. Todd’s rating system is based on:
There is also a list of over 300 Search Engine Marketing Blogs. Of course, our favorite search engine marketing blog is right here.
These top blog lists serve two purposes. First, these lists help us all find the best of the best. Second, they serve as link bait for these sites. People all over the Web link to these lists of top blogs and check them regularly for updates.
Once you have found a few blogs you like, you should check out NetVibes. They have a great tool that enables you to browse the lastest headlines from your favorite blogs all in one place. And you can setup different tabs for the different types of blogs you like to read.
I read over 100 blogs using this great tool on topics ranging from search engine marketing to leadership to blogging. I think that knowledge is the only thing that separates our Atlanta search engine marketing firm from the competition, so I read all the time. My favorite blog is Be Excellent from Six Disciplines.
If you need help setting up or marketing your blog, give us a call at 404-541-9780. Happy reading.
There are a couple of ways to take advantage of social networking sites to grow your business:
The golden rule of social networking is to be honest and genuine. Remember that at the end of the day, people like to meet other great people. Making connnections with others is the purpose of social networking sites and it’s also the best way to build a business – online or offline.
To show you that we practice what we preach, here are a couple of links to two client’s that have also become great friends. Lets see if they mention these links I added from our blog to their site / blog: Golf Franchise / Kids Furniture. Just passing the “link love” around.
The very first social networking site was Classmates.com, formed all the way back in 1995. Today, there are hundreds of social networking sites – each with their own target community and each with their own unique purpose.
One of the reasons for the growth of social media is the notion that we trust each other more than we trust businesses interested in their own self promotion. Social networking sites enable us to find good, reliable information generated by others.
According to eMarketer, U.S. ad spending on social media will hit $900 million in 2007, up from $350 million last year. By 2007, it’s expected to reach 2.7 billion.
Different Types of Social Networking Sites:
Sites like del.icio.us and Digg allow users to share information about the websites they like most, so if you want to find cool new websites that you may not know about, give these social networking sites a try.
Sites like MySpace are more for social purposes. They connect like minded users with similar interests (mostly teenagers and young people that like music and chatting online).
Sites like LinkedIn allow users to share their network of friends and business associates (mostly business people sharing business connections).
To sign up for some of the most popular social networking sites, check out these links:
For a complete list of social networking sites, check out Wikipedia.
I am not a big fan of podcasts. I don’t like podcasts because I like to surf the Web and browse information before reading it in-depth. If you listen to a podcast, you have to sit and listen to someone’s entire opinion – no skipping to the good stuff.
BUT, if you want to create podcasts for your own website, here is a short list of all the equipment you will ever need:
If you have just built a new website using a new domain name, I have some bad news… You are not going to rank well in Google for competitive keyword phrases for at least a year…maybe two. Google penalizes new websites just for being the new kid on the block.
That said, we did some extensive search engine optimization (SEO) work for Kudzu.com back in 2005. Kudzu was a new site then, and despite this ‘new site penalty’ imposed by Google, we were able to get some pretty good traction in Google’s natural search results pretty quickly.
The difference between Kudzu.com and most other sites is that Kudzu is owned by Cox Enterprises. Cox owns a number of large websites, including AutoTrader.com (also a client) and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper site.
Kuzdu.com had an advantage because they had the ability to get these other large sites owned by Cox Enterprises to link to their website. By getting large, credible sites like AutoTrader.com to link to their site, Kudzu.com was able to get decent natural search rankings in Google within a few months – rather than a couple of years. And over time, they were able to dominate the natural search results for many of their top keyword phrases.
If you want to start a new website, count on using pay per click marketing as your primary source of traffic for the first year or so. In the mean time, start building links and content. Or hire an SEO firm to do it for you!