Chief Ingredient, Inc.

Why Should I Create a Business Blog?

Micah Johnson — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:32:36 +0000

This list the includes some of the major benefits to having a blog for your business. When consulting with our clients, we usually recommend moving their entire site onto a blogging platform, not just the blog itself. Contact Chief Ingredient for more info. By having a business blog, you’ll be able to leverage technology to achieve [...]

Identifying Quality Traffic

Jerry Holland — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 23:35:00 +0000

It’s one thing to get traffic to your web site and it’s a whole new ball game generating quality traffic. You’ve heard the pitch a thousand times “We can get you 6000 new visitors to your site a month!” Hmmmm… really? Are they the visitors that are specifically searching for your products/service or JUST visitors. When [...]

Blending In-Person Networking with Online Social Media

Jerry Holland — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 23:31:27 +0000

Ok, so you have networked with somebody at an event exchanged business cards, now what? For me, being a people-person, it is easy to connect and get a conversation started at a networking event, but in today’s internet world my next steps are usually online. Typically, I follow a specific format to connect with new business that [...]

Keeping Ahead of your Competition with Google Keyword Trends

Micah Johnson — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 01:29:55 +0000

What are Google Keyword Trends? Google Keyword Trends allow you to see how your selected keyword or keywords (separated by commas) performed over a period of time. Currently, you can view keyword trends both on the Search Volume and the News Reference Volume. However, Google Keyword Trends does not provide you with actual numbers for the [...]

Google Analytics Tutorials

Micah Johnson — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 23:08:23 +0000

Recently, Google has published a whole set of Google Analytics Tutorials on YouTube. These Google Analytics Tutorials include over 11 videos and have over 4 hours of tutorial footage. If you’re like many of our clients, you don’t have 11 hours to spend watching tutorials. However, to make qualified decisions both for your web [...]

Yahoo’s Tools for “Anyone Creating Content”

Micah Johnson — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:59:36 +0000

Yahoo! offers a whole slew of free tools for “anyone creating content” (their words, not mine) on the web. Although some of the tools are only related to their companies (like del.icio.us for bookmarking), overall they provide quick functionality to make your blog or web site a little user-friendlish. Y!Q (beta) Y!Q allows you to place [...]

25+ Tips to Perfect your Social Media Marketing Campaigns

Micah Johnson — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:40:08 +0000

Social Media Marketing takes time and patience, but when done correctly has tremendous rewards. The following are some ideas and exercises to help you get started in the right direction… Install Web Analytics As it has been said many times, “you can’t improve what you don’t measure.” It definitely holds true for your web site. Google provides [...]

New Keyword Research Technique: Keyword Supply and Demand

Micah Johnson — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 20:43:51 +0000

In economics, supply and demand describe market relations between prospective sellers and buyers of a good. (wikipedia.org) In search engine optimization, we can use the supply and demand model to describe the relationship between the people searching for specific keywords (the demand) and the people creating content to meet that demand (the supply). The following is a [...]

Learn to Tap Into the Cutting-Edge Trends in Your Industry in 4 Easy Steps

Micah Johnson — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 08:40:23 +0000

1. Pick an RSS Feed Reader to use. If you don’t have one already and you use Firefox, Wizz RSS is a good add-on that allows you to preview and read RSS feeds within the browser’s side bar. If you are looking for an online-only reader, Google offers one as well (Google Reader ). What’s RSS? RSS [...]

Social Media in Emergencies

Micah Johnson — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 05:55:43 +0000

Living in the middle of San Diego and trying to find out the latest news on the fires and evacuations has lead to some interesting discoveries into the power of the Social Web. Blog Streams and RSS for Emergency Situations Hats off to the San Diego Union Tribune. They have outdone themselves in the way they have [...]

Quantify your SEO Competition Using IceRocket’s Blog Trend Tools

Micah Johnson — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:05:39 +0000

The more information you can gather when determining your most valuable keywords for SEO and SEM, the better. With IceRocket’s Blog Trend Tool, you have the ability to find out what is most popular in the blogosphere and view the trends for any keywords (comparing up to three at a time). Google has a similar tool [...]

Nobody Builds Sites from Scratch Anymore…

Micah Johnson — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 09:16:16 +0000

If you do, or if you hire someone that does, you may reconsider after reading this post. Is building it from scratch working smarter? I’ve struggled with this for years. Deep down I tell myself that if I don’t build a site or web app from the ground up, then I’m probably going to regret it [...]

Netscape.com is now Propeller.com? Wha?

Micah Johnson — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 09:30:04 +0000

= According to a number of sites, as of August 2007 www.netscape.com was the #2 social bookmarking site. However, if you type in netscape.com now, it looks like… eww… AOL! What happened to all the news, and the social bookmarking, and the user accounts??! I don’t want AOL, I want the #2 [...]

URL Redirect

Micah Johnson — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 08:49:32 +0000

When looking for information on URL redirection, most searches turn up these amazingly long blog posts or technical documents with just a couple examples, none of them are a huge help. Instead of all the explanation, we decided to make it simple, and provide a quick reference for URL redirects using Apache and Rewrite Rules. Step 1: [...]

SEO Results: Analysis Heatmap Tool

Micah Johnson — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 22:26:09 +0000

In less than 14 hours a blog post regarding the Do-It-Yourself creation of keyword research and analysis heatmaps appeared #1 on Google for the phrase “analysis heatmap tool”. You can also find first-page results for the following variations: keyword analysis heatmap tool (#1 and #2) analysis heatmap (#4) create a keyword research tool (#1) create analysis heatmap (#1) heatmap analysis tool [...]

SEO Results: Alternatives to Overture

Micah Johnson — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 21:36:18 +0000

Recently Overture’s Keyword tool has been shut down. To help the thousands of developers out there that used that tool, Chief Ingredient created a short list of the alternatives available. This was posted our new site on the 17th of September, 2007, and within 18 hours had already reached #5 under the term “alternatives to [...]

Create a Keyword Research and Analysis Heatmap

Micah Johnson — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 05:10:10 +0000

Looking for an easy way to visualize your keyword research? In 10 simple steps and Excel 2007, you can build your own Keyword Research and Analysis Heatmap. 1. Come up with a 5-10 seed keywords to perform the research and analysis on. These will be the basic words that everyone will type in for what you are [...]

Alternatives to the Overture Keyword Selector Tool

Micah Johnson — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 00:36:38 +0000

EDIT: The Overture Keyword Tool is back online… However, the data is still from January 2007, which is very outdated. So, whether this keyword tool will remain to be around for some time, the links below still provide alternatives to the Overture Keyword Tool that are more stable, faster, and have more accurate and up to date [...]

Customers Don’t Want Examples, They Want Real Applications

Micah Johnson — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:15:32 +0000

If you are selling a product, service or technology, invariably you are going to run into the issues of marketing it. The question is, do you just tell people about it, or do you show them? Examples vs. Real Applications Yahoo! has been promoting their new “Search Assist” feature for the last couple weeks. While [...]

Web Meetings Versus Person-to-Person Meetings

Micah Johnson — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 07:05:11 +0000

We had an interesting conversation over lunch today with a friend who has worked in a variety of companies and industries over the last 15 years as a technical writer. Although it was a tangent from our main discussion, we arrived on the topic of meetings — and whether they should be held in-person or [...]

Ongoing Social Media Marketing Tasks

Micah Johnson — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:36:23 +0000

Once you have all the preparation completed for Social Media Marketing, you should know what keywords will generate quality traffic, what types of content may become viral, how to position your company as an industry expert, how to advertise without advertising, and more. However, Social Media Marketing doesn’t stop there. It takes practice, patience, quality [...]

If You are Looking for Multiple Revenue Streams, Affiliate Programs may be your Solution

Micah Johnson — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 21:25:42 +0000

Affiliate solutions can be a great way to promote your business. Many shopping cart applications now include an affiliate program framework. There are also a number of online web solutions that cater specifically to building full-blown affiliate programs and solutions. With your business you can take advantage of both angles: Getting additional sales of your product [...]

Content Creation Guidelines for the CEO

Micah Johnson — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 21:22:29 +0000

Make it comprehensive Spend time doing the research Accumulate resources, information and statistics on your subject. This creates value and makes you look like an expert When it’s useful or “viral”, there’s a good chance people will [...]

Social Networking Guidelines for the CEO

Micah Johnson — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 21:19:34 +0000

Each “connection” or “friend” is a gateway to more traffic. The key is networking Join groups Make friends Post Comments Participate in polls, forums, and the overall community Use the bulletin-type features the same way you would post to a social bookmarking site.

Blogging Guidelines for the CEO

Micah Johnson — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 21:13:32 +0000

Blogging is a fantastic way to: Get ideas out of your head Share solutions to problems that you have encountered in your business Build search engine friendly, keyword-rich content that will have great chances of getting included in search engine rankings Build a list of prospects for future information products and your services Enhance your [...]

Build Expert Status through Question and Answer Web Sites

Micah Johnson — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:03:54 +0000

Q&A-type sites have been around in some form or another for many years. However, until recently they haven’t made a large impact in the scene. In today’s World Wide Web, even the big players are getting in on the Q&A action. Yahoo has their own “answers” community. LinkedIn.com has recently made a Q&A [...]

Google Local Listings and Goog-411: How to get Listed

Micah Johnson — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:00:51 +0000

1-800-Goog-411 has recently graduated from Google Labs to become a full-fledged Google product. It’s a free service that allows anyone to call in and find local business information. However, what becomes more important than the service itself, is how to make sure your business is listed. Google Local Business Center If you have been wondering how other [...]

Learn to Gain Users and Traffic Through Social Bookmarking

Micah Johnson — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:53:05 +0000

Social bookmarking is an integral part to any Social Arena Marketing campaign. It enables your content to be easily found, saved and shared. With the right keywords included in the content, you may find your bookmarked content appearing on search engines like Google in as little as 24 hours. Top 7 Guidelines for Social Bookmarking Don’t [...]

Are You Using Current Trends for Search Engine Optimization and Viral Traction in Your Web Site?

Micah Johnson — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:49:45 +0000

Looking at what trends are popular will allow you to turn ordinary content into potentially viral contributions. Example Trend: Green / Eco-Friendly Related Content This trend is growing by the day. In addition, it is becoming one of the most important movements in our time. Not only will this trend help you enhance your content, it [...]

Jump Starting a Viral Movement in your Business

Micah Johnson — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:43:15 +0000

Many businesses will have a valuable asset which most of the other community contributors will not have: Employees. To help jump start a viral movement with your business’s content or contributions, you will have the option of using your employee base as the beginning of your online network, social supporters, followers, friends, and other elements [...]