Sharewell Group News and Ramblings

YourKidsDVD.com is Launched

Brian Williams — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 21:40:00 +0000

This week we launched our personalized kids DVD "My Christmas Adventure" at YourKidsDVD.com. Some of the employees have already received their copies for their children and from what I hear, it's a huge hit with the kids. We've got some terrific partners lined up to help promote this, including Pat Sajak's Wheel of Fortune, AsOnTV.com and numerous affiliate marketers. We've also partnered with Operation Gratitude which helps support our troops -- always a great thing to do. If you want to buy this and support our troops, go to Operation Gratitude�??s website, click on the My Christmas Adventure.

Thanks for blogging with me.

Your friend in ecommerce,
Brian Williams

Happy Halloween? Page Ranking is Getting Spooky!

Anna Schuttenhelm — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 21:55:00 +0000

It's been a pretty spooky month with all the algorithm and directory updates going on.

First Google performed a long awaited directory update. They followed this up with an algorithm update on or around October 2nd. Reviews were mixed with some SEO professionals being very happy with the new and improved page ranks, while others were quite upset with lowered page ranking. Many bloggers were cursing Google and making broad statements about how Google is losing their grip on search. See this interesting survey at DigitalPoint.com for ongoing vote ins on the Google update.

All month SEM folks have been all over the blogs with complaints and conspiracy theories regarding the updates and the fallout of the updates. With sites like Youtube.com having a mysterious page rank of 3 (now back up to 8), everyone is skeptical. Many threads are discussing the infamous �??Google human rankers�??. Hundreds and hundreds of sites have lost at least 1 point when virtually nothing has changed on the site (creepy). Many are blaming it on a crackdown on sites that provide backlinks, which in turn brings down your site ranking. Others believe that the rating scale itself has changed and what used to be an 8 is now a 7, a 6 is the new 7, etc. This would not, however explain why some sites have gone up in ranking as much as 5 points.

One of my favorites is the Chinese Spam issue. This is the phenomenon where, during certain searches, Chinese Spam sites were showing up in the results similar to the following:

Valid Title
Some valid description with what appears to be advertising truncated in
URL ending in .cn

It has also been reported that if you click on the results you �??get infected with a virus�??. Others have reported extensions of .it and .org with the same phenomenon. While Matt Cutts acknowledged that there was at least one infrastructure change in this update to address the Chinese Spam issue, bloggers are reporting that this behavior continues. The issue was even written about in PC Magazine, but mysteriously the link to the article isn�??t working (scary)�?�. http://news.yahoo.com/s/zd/20070924/tc_zd/215816

For more information on this Chinese Spam issue, please see the SE Roundtable thread.

The scariest fallout I can see from this update is that the concept of Google Page Rank has lost a great deal of respect from the SEO/SEM community. It looks like less and less relevance may be placed on Google Page Rank and keyword search results and traffic will become the key indicators of a successful site. Isn�??t that what we are all striving for anyway?

And, just when we thought we would make it through October, yesterday Yahoo announced that they were rolling out their own updates to the Yahoo crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms. Yahoo states that these updates may cause some changes to ranking and some �??page shuffling�?? in the index. We will have to wait and see what the fallout from this update will bring, no doubt the blogs will be just as entertaining!

Contact Sharewell Group, Inc.

Sharewell Group, Inc. — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 06:58:00 +0000

Sharewell Group can be reached by calling (818) 876-7550 Monday-Friday 8am to 6pm. Please visit our Ecommerce Web Development website at www.SharewellGroup.com to learn more about our company, services and portfolio.

Rand Fishkin and Michael Gray Discuss Paid Links

Sharewell Group, Inc. — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 21:44:00 +0000

A continuation of the battle between the paid link industry and Google:

Check out the post at WebProNews.com.

Search Engine Strategies - Day 2 (San Jose)

Sharewell Group, Inc. — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 16:02:00 +0000

Day 2 of SES in San Jose, California. Director of Search Engine Marketing, Steve Wiideman, took a day to explore the exibits and converse with other SEM's. Surprisingly, the majority of vendors this year comprised of other SEM agencies. Other exibitors included web analytics providers (Omniture, Compete.com, Hitwise, AdGooRoo, and few others), contextual networks with both CPC & CPA, blogger networks, and of course the "Big 4": Google, Yahoo!, MSN & Ask.

"This year I noticed a trend in product mix at SES", said Wiideman, "with agencies simplifying collateral with a focus on conversion rather than competence. Venders of niche link development tools, such as bloggers, paid inclusion, textual link brokers, and content networks were all using Web 2.0 branding to promote their services. SEM agencies were less focussed on 'what we do' and more focussed on 'conversion improvement'.

The three sexiest products I found at SES were an inclusive SEO-based commerce solution, a relevant article-based link management/purchase system, and a competitive analysis tool that provides insight to paid and organic tactics being used by eye competition."

Meet Steve in Los Angeles at the next SES, scheduled for November-December.

Steve Wiideman at SES San Jose 2007

Working with Google's Universal Search

Sharewell Group, Inc. — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 23:48:00 +0000

Recently, Google upgraded their search engine by integrating news, video and enhancing personalized search. For users, this means more refined results and full length videos mixed into search results. On May 16, 2007, an explanation was posted on the Official Google Blog regarding Universal Search.

So how does this impact our ability to help our clients with Search Engine Marketing (SEM), specifically in Google.com, who according to Hitwise has 64% market share in the search industry?

According to Steve Wiideman, Search Engine Marketing Director at Sharewell Group, Inc., "This enhanced search is actually great news for our clients, since we've been working with them to include syndicated news feeds, video podcasts, and by diversifying the channels in their internet marketing campaigns."

Who should be worried? Those far and few "Black Hat SEO's" who have managed to spam their way to the top by acquiring inbound links on non-related websites, or those not well equipped to expand beyond organic SEO alone. These few ruffians will survive at Live.com for awhile, or at least until Yahoo! exec's finally get over themselves and merge with Microsoft.

"Best practices are not carved in stone when it comes to Search Marketing.," says Wiideman, "They evolve and improve for competitive equality and for the greater good of the searcher."

Universal Search is great news, for you and for Sharewell Group, Inc. Call us today to learn more about this recent change and how we can help if the change affected your position in Google's search results.

How to Get the Best Leads for Your Business

Sharewell Group, Inc. — Sat, 26 May 2007 07:48:00 +0000

So you've got your website up, you've emailed all your friends and associates, updated your MySpace page, submitted press releases, published articles, blogged and pinged your heart out, maybe even bought some PPC terms in Adwords, YSM or AdCenter. Yet, despite all your efforts, you're still finding yourself in a web traffic lull. What do you do?

Well, you could follow our footsteps and call the best lead provider in the business: Kingsbridge Marketing Partners, Inc. We've been extremely pleased with results from our past campaigns where we purchased several opt-in email lists, business leads, and response buyer lists.

As it turns out, Kingsbridge gets it's data from a legacy list management company that has access to thousands of leads from Fortune 500 companies (including online CRM forms from popular websites). Unlike InfoUSA.com, these leads are fresh, detailed, and extremely targeted. Visit www.KingsbridgeLists.com or call them at (877) 700-9815 for a free quote. Tell them Sharewell Group referred you and receive a 20% discount!

In other news, our office in Calabasas is nearly ready for our rapidly growing firm. We expect to be moved in by 15th of June. We'll post a video in our blog with team introductions once we get settled. Stay tuned for updates...

Welcome to the Sharewell Group, Inc. Official Blog!

Sharewell Group, Inc. — Sat, 26 May 2007 00:27:00 +0000

Hello, and welcome! I'm Steve Wiideman, the Search Marketing Director at Sharewell Group, Inc., an eCommerce & SEM agency based in Calabasas, California. Beginning today, we will be using this blog to present company news, events, and ramblings. I have a habit of sharing methodology and techniques that we use to enhance our web projects; I do this despite the constant grumblings of my peers because I understand the value of sharing what you know.

If you have an existing website or are planning to build one, I highly recommend that you take a moment to add our blog to your Blogger Email, so you won't miss out on all the cool tips and tricks we'll be writing about.

Also keep your eyes open for photos, videos and event updates.

Best Wishes,
Steve Wiideman