Mark8t: SEO, SEM, E-Marketing And More

Mozilla Firefox 3.5: Upgrade and Google Toolbar

Mark8t Staff — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:02:59 +0000

The new Mozilla Firefox 3.5 is a super upgrade, and I highly recommend it. You can read about all the wonderful features here. The main interest for marketers will be Geo Location or Location Aware browsing. As Mozilla describes it : “Websites that use location-aware browsing will ask where you are in order to bring you more relevant information, or to save you time while searching”. You can read all the details here or see the demo here. Info on how to implement it on your site is here.

Another cool feature will be what is the fact Firefox 3.5 is the first browser to support open video and audio formats. This means web pages can be developed to display media without requiring a plug-in or a proprietary software download.

Finally, we also wanted to point out an issue with the upgrade to Mozilla 3.5 we encountered. You will need to make sure to upgrade your Google Toolbar. You have no choice, otherwise it will not work. You can download the latest Google Toolbar here. Make sure you are using Version 5.0.20090324W

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Google Maps: What’s here?

Mark8t Staff — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 15:26:03 +0000

A couple of weeks ago we spoke about Google Local. We hope you took note and implemented this as part of you marketing strategy. This past week Google gave you another good reason to make sure your business is listed they announced the release of Google Maps “What’s Here”.

How does it work? When you go to Google Maps, you now have a new option when you right click you have the option “Whats here”:

As Google describes it:

This feature takes into account the zoom level you’re looking at, and gives you the most appropriate geographical entity at that point. For example, if you’re zoomed in closely on Manhattan, you can get the full address of a point by clicking on “What’s here?”. Additionally, by combining this with the “At this address” feature that you may have seen in the left-hand panel, you can also see a list of the businesses located at that place.

I have added the emphasis in bold to make sure its clear. When someone is in the neighborhood, and looking for a flower shop, they can click “Whats here”. Bedsides getting photos and user generated maps, the customer will get places around that location. Not only that but the user will have the opportunity to “Explore this area” or search for something local around them (in this case flower shops). Now more than ever it is important to make sure you are listed with Google Local. Don’t let you competition steal way all your customers because you’re not in the game.

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Best Free Web Analytics: Google Analytics

Mark8t Staff — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 21:13:38 +0000

We have finally released the May report for the “Best Free Web Analytics“. In short, we can confirm (for the most part) Google Analytics is the best freely available web analytics. The downside of the Google solution, such as lack of real-time stats, is compensated for by the richness of features the other companies lacked in their free offering. We also discovered some some of the companies we choose to rate were in an unfair competitors. In following months, we have decide to refocus on the following companies only:

BLVD Status
Clicky
Google Analytics
Quantcast
StatCounter
W3Counter

We will be open to other companies joining, but we now have a better baseline of what can be considered worthy of comparison.

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WordPress 2.8: Update Tips and Tricks

Mark8t Staff — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:35:16 +0000

WordPress yesterday released WordPress 2.8 and I love it! The upgrade process was easy, and no errors (unlike the last time). I used to have fears with WordPress upgrades, but it really isn’t something to fear. WordPress has this handy guide you can follow and we also have our super handy (paranoid edition) below. Please note this works on the assumption, you are moving to just previous version, not jumping from a really old version to the latest release. So here it is Mark8t’s WordPress Upgrade tips for the paranoid:

First, if you don’t have it get the handy Maintenance Mode Plug-in. Activate it after customizing it with your own message. Then go into your PHPAdmin (or MYSQL Admin), and download a backup of your whole database via the export commmand. You can use the DBManager Plug-in, but I like to get it straight from the source. This is the curcial step, because if you lose your database, you lose all your work.

When I export, I choose the SQL format in GZIP format. it’s the qucikest way to restore your blog if you need to. Next copy all the files on your host from your WordPress site via FTP to your hard-drive. Why? In case everything goes wrong you can easily revert back to 2.7.1 or whatever version you have. The next step is then to disable all active plug-ins except for Maintenance Mode Plug-In. Now you can select “WordPress 2.8 is available! Please update now.” at the top of the screen. You then need to click Upgrade automatically. Wait until the upgrade is fully complete.Go get a soda from the fridge an relax until you see the below:

Click to go back to the dashboard. You will need to log back in. Got to the dashboard again. Make sure everything looks okay. Head to the Plug-Ins and activate them quickly by selecting “Recently Active ” . Use the bulk action to reactivate. Surf to your site, log in, log out, search, etc….Everything should work. If something does not work, it will likely be a conflict with a plug-in. To troubleshoot this, disable all plug-ins and re-enable one at a time. Test the site after each activation to pinpoint the issue. You can then identity the issue of the plug-gin and possibly address the issue with the plug-in creator. If all else fails, upload your backup files and import the old database. Have fun!

***Update***
Users with free hosts with banner ads (such as GoDaddy free hosting option), might face an issue. Regular paid hosting has not been an issue on 12 upgrades we have done so far, including on GoDaddy.

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WordPress Search Engine: Get Beautiful and Relevant

Mark8t Staff — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:17:30 +0000

Mark8t has finally upgraded the WordPress default search on this blog. We had been suffering from bad search with this theme. If you think about it, though, that’s pretty funny for a blog about Search Engine Optimization and Marketing. Truthfully, though, we were focused on content more than anything. And besides, it is well known that WordPress Search isn’t that great on any blog. Just some of the issue include: searches are listed by date and not be relevance, there are no images or native thumbnail support, there is no ability for suggested searches or spell check and there is a limit of 10 results per page. So how did we fix it? Use of a couple of plug-ins, and some helpful Bloggers. Being that this blog is about learning too, we thought we would share these resources with our users. So if you WordPress search sucks, we recommend highly the following posts: David’s post on Improving WordPress Search and Joost’s post Make WordPress’ search function suck Less. Don’t forget to get his Search Suggest Plug-in. You should also consider these Plug-Ins: Kenny Katzgrau’s WpSearch, Scott Yang’s Search Excerpt WordPress Plug-in and for excerpts with thumbnails, look to Radu Capan’s Plugin Thumbnail for Excerpts.We hope the above list of resources saves you much time in upgrading your WordPress default search. It took a lot of work/reading to finally get our search to a respectable level. But don’t fear, the above articles will make it a lot easier/quicker for you. Trust us, finding the help was harder then implementing it. Good luck!

Post from: Mark8t: SEO, SEM, E-Marketing And More

Going Local With Google Search

Mark8t Staff — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 17:27:53 +0000

One of the hard things about a local business is getting noticed beyond your direct sphere of influence. As we have covered before, the web is the new Yellow Pages. People search for the business they want through the internet and rarely use the big yellow book anymore. If they want a number or want to find a business, they type in such things as “Montreal florist” or “best steakhouse in Toronto” into their favourite search. Of course, as a business owner, your goal is to be right near the top of results. Now while we still feel that most business should consider a website, Google Local search does not require you to have one. All you need is a listing. And with a recent announcement, they ensure the minimum of having this listing is a much more attractive proposition than with any other local search engine. Google is now offering the following: A reporting dashboard to learn how people find your business, and more. So how to do you get started?

First create an account at Google. Add information such as business info, phone number and address. Once submitted, your account will be in process. Within two weeks, Google will send to you (at the address indicated) a PIN number to activate your account. Upon activation you will get access to all the wonderful tools in the dashboard. Including the following:

Impressions: The number of times the business listing appeared as a result on a Google.com search or Google Maps search in a given period.
Actions: The number of times people interacted with the listing; for example, the number of times they clicked through to the business’ website or requested driving directions to the business.
Top search queries: Which queries led customers to the business listing; for example, are they finding the listing for a cafe by searching for “tea” or “coffee”?
Zip codes where driving directions come from: Which zip codes customers are coming from when they request directions to your location.

If you already have a listing or account, you claim your account as well. Do that here: Google’s Local Business Center (LBC). Even if you hadn’t claimed it until today, you’ll still be able to use the dashboard. Google is automatically populating the dashboard with data from the past month. When you do log in to the LBC, you’ll notice a new “View report” link right under the general statistics. Clicking on that link will take you to the dashboard page, where you’ll find several features. You get information about “Impressions”, which refers to the number of times that users saw your listing. You will get info about “Actions”, which refers to how many times users interacted with your listing, for example to get direction. You can also change the date range selected to view more or less data. the best aspect of all, however, is you’ll find a list of the top search queries people used to discover your business listing. As Google points out:”This gives you valuable insight into the ways that your potential customers are looking for you, and what terms are associated with your business.” We feel that these innovations are crucial to any brick and mortar business. We strongly urge you, if you have not already, to sign up at the LBC. Google has also put together the below video explaining the benefit of using their Google Local Business Center:

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We’re on Amazon Kindle!

Mark8t Staff — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 03:41:50 +0000

Just wanted to let you know if you have a Kindle, our blog is now available for your device. Check it out here!

If you have a blog, and you wish to list it at Amazon.com for Kindle users, start the process here.

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Google Analytics And Bing.com

Mark8t Staff — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 03:16:57 +0000

We’re all about free web analytics, that’s why we started our web analytics study (and don’t worry our monthly report is coming). Nevertheless, we have come across a situation which we wanted to report to our readers ASAP. Our current article about our custom Google Toolbar button for Bing.com is generating a lot of referrals from Bing.com and Google. At least that is what StatCounter is telling us in their search engine referral report. Currently 75 % of searchers came from Google and 23.4 % came from Bing.com– at least in the last couple of hours.

Then we got a huge surprise when we looked at our Google Analytics stats tonight. This is the “Search Engine War” graph for June 3rd:

Not a mention about Bing.com in this graph.At first I thought Google was completely ignoring Bing.com, but instead they are listing them in the “referring sites” section.

As you can see, according to Google Analytics, we are getting 68% of our referrals from Bing.com….Wow! a lot more than what we know from our server logs or StatCounter.

So what’s our take? This is a good reminder that you should consider, in addition to Google Analytics, other free web analytics packages. We hope when our web analytics study is completed, it can help you with this task. In the meantime, we suggest statcounter.com to be a safe second choice.

*** Update***
We found a hack to fix this: How to add Bing into Google Analytics. Hopefully Google will make a change shortly.

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Strong Start for Bing: Yahoo! and Google Lose Share

Mark8t Staff — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 01:35:04 +0000

Yes we know its early, but congrats to the team at Bing.com. Even though Bing.com is not even 1 week old, it is already off to a strong start. According to the latest stats from Statcounter.com, Bing is now the number 2 search engine in America with 16.2% share. Google still is over 70% and Yahoo is third at 10%.

Pre-Bing, the Windows Live search was 6% share, Yahoo was a solid 13-14% and Google rarely went below 75%. A note about the Statcounter stats, because they seem to me the most accurate. Data ise based on aggregate data collected by StatCounter on a sample exceeding 4 billion pageviews per month collected from across the StatCounter network of more than 3 million websites.

The real question for Microsoft and the Bing.com project is will users keep coming back? Simply put can Bing.com get brand stickiness? I think the idea of Bing as Google killer is fantastical and thankfully it is not being thrown around in the media the way it was with Cuil.com. Furthermore, Google is not a vulnerable target, As an article in AdAge recently noted about a Google study: “Google has conducted internal tests, according to ‘people familiar with them, in which the company put its logo and treatment on another engine’s search results. Users still prefer the results with the Google logo, even if they’re not Google results.” There would need to be a fundamental change of users habits,and this doe snot happen over-night. I think Yahoo! should be much more concerned, I also think its good to hear the Microsoft be realists about their efforts in the Search Engine wars. As Steve Ballmer recently noted at the D7 conference ” [Bing]differentiates itself from Google. It might not appeal to everyone, but if it appeals to 20 percent of them, that’s a success.”

The real trick will be to see if the Bing 80 Million advertising campaign can solidify their spot as the 2nd most popular search engine and in the process, make some people change their Google only habit. Truthfully, the real goal is to create competition. Michael Arrington sums it up best : “whether Microsoft ultimately succeeds or not in ‘winning’ the search war, the competition is very good for the rest of the Internet. Google needs to be pushed to try innovating new things. And search marketing competition will ensure that Google doesn’t get too greedy. We don’t need Microsoft to win, but we do need to avoid a world with just one search engine that matters. Maybe Microsoft can win that lesser war, at least.”

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Bing.com: Get It On Google Toolbar

Mark8t Staff — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 03:03:15 +0000

We had covered the new Bing.com a couple of days ago, but it seems the production product is a little different. No matter, though, Bing is still great. Many of the features and benefits show a lot of thought went into fixing search we didn’t even realize was broken. Frankly Bing’s ideas on image/video search as well as the “extra content” feature” are welcomed. I am not sure Google will be dethroned anytime soon in search, but competition is good. It also breeds innovation. Not that Google lacks innovation, but it never hurts to have another set of eye s on an “old” problem: searching for information. The major hurdle will be Bing’s (Microsoft’s) ability to make people switch or even given them a fair shake in the search biz. Using Google is a habit hard to break, especially when there is no compelling reason to switch brands. Time will tell how successful they are. Right now the Google habit is hard to break. To this end we created a way to help you use Google, but also see how Bing does for you on searches….and wait for it….all from the Google Toolbar. Now sure you can download a Bing Toolbar, but real-estate in the browser is precious. And besides, all you need is search. So today Mark8t is proud to announce our custom Bing.com button for Google Toolbar. If you are using the Google Toolbar, just click here to add Bing.com to your Google Toolbar. When you click the button you toolbar will look like the below.

Basically there are two features we wish to point out:

1- Highlight and Search: If you are on page, even a Google search result pages, highlight the result and click the Bing logo. It will look like the below:

2- Direct Search: Sometimes, you wish to search a term directly in Bing. To do so type the information in the “search box” and click the Bing logo

Or if you like, you can change the Google search to automatically search Bing.com on any search term ( see drop-menu above). Making the selection will ensure all terms in the search box will be done by Bing.com. It will look like the below.

So now you can use both Bing.com and Google.com from the Google toolbar. No need for multiple toolbars, no need to change your default search engine. Just quick way to see who gets you the better results. We appreciate any and feedback, and will look at adding new features in the future as seems sensible. Happy surfing!

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