When building your site remember to have a specific goal planned. I have heard business owners describe the purpose of their sites in many strange and bizarre ways. From a marketing perspective you should have a predetermined goal for visitors on your site. I’ve come to the conclusion that there are generally 3 basic goals for business web sites. There may be some odd ones out there but they can usually be narrowed down into these 3 groups.

1. Revenue Generating
This site has some type of e-commerce where visitor can come in and buy something or this site generates revenue by selling ads/ad space

2. Lead Generating
This sites main function is to generate lead either through a form that can be filled online or pushing visitors to dial into a call center

3. Brochure Site
This is generally an information site. Although not the best use of a site, theses tend to lean a little towards Lead Generating.

Revenue Generating by far is the most common one. Just about every site you go on is selling something or has links that are selling something. These sites can also have shopping carts incorporated into them to increase the ease of visitors purchasing more products. You are also looking into security certifications here for credit card orders.

Lead Generating sites will/should have their phone number plastered everywhere. They can also point visitors towards an information form for the company to call or email them back. Another variant, of this model is to give something away, some type of review software with a time limit, a book or report in soft copy but you must fill out the form in order to receive it.

Brochure sites will have their contact information listed but they are not really pushing to get your information. The goal here may not be as clearly defined. Generally, these sites were built simply to have a web presence. Although useful for adding credibility to your company, it should be geared at least, more towards the Lead Generating type.

The moral of the story here is to always have a set goal for your web site. This information will help in the development and growth of your site. By knowing in advance where you would like your visitors to end up, helps to create what you will need to get them there.

MasterLink offers top ranking website design and development, graphic design, flash design, e-commerce programming and design, search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing services (SEM), database integration, software development, hosting, server collocation, Internet access, video streaming and video conferencing.

As users of what used to be DeepMetrix’s LiveStats analytics software, MasterLink was recently contacted by Microsoft about the upcoming launch of Microsoft Project Gatineau that we mentioned back in January. To sum the message up, Microsoft is planning on opening up the beta to Project Gatineau this summer (no specific date given). Also a feature of the new system that jumped out at me was a mention of demographic segmentation reporting in this new analytics solution. I am curious to hear more about this, but I guess all we can do is wait until they give us more info or give us something to look at.

Additionally, if you would like to give feedback to Microsoft on what you want out of their web analytics offerings, then you call fill out this survey. It looks like they have been advertising on the term “sitemeter” to get people to fill out this survey so go ahead and voice your opinions to help make Gatineau a better system.

Below is a copy of the email that we received:

“Dear DeepMetrix Customer,

We’re excited to update you about Microsoft’s activities since we acquired DeepMetrix.

Over the past year we’ve focused on building the next generation of Web analytics. We’ve reached a transitioning phase, and are now rolling out our new service. Because of this rollout, we’re no longer updating DeepMetrix products and support services will discontinue on January 31, 2008.

You may continue to use the unsupported products after this date. We also want you to know that we’d like to work with LiveStats.XSP customers to plan a smooth transition to the new service for you and your customers.

This summer you’ll be invited to try the beta of our new Web analytics service—Project Gatineau. Some of the highlights of the beta features include:

• Click and visitor tracking
• Marketing campaign reporting
• Conversion tracking
• Demographic and geographic segmentation
• Paid and natural search analysis

As customers of DeepMetrix and Web analytics, Microsoft values your business and hopes you’ll try our new Web analytics service.

We’ll let you know more as further information becomes available. For general questions or comments regarding DeepMetrix products or Microsoft Project Gatineau, please e-mail us at dms@microsoft.com.

Sincerely,

The Microsoft Project Gatineau Team”

-Mark Barrera

tags: real estate training, buying a business

So I was reading Getting Link Love From Google Custom Search Engines at Search Engine Land, where Eric Ward discusses the link building opportunities and possible effects that Google Custom Search Engines (CSEs) may have on the future of search.

I was inspired to create a Custom Search Engine for one of our clients who is an industry leader and definitely an authority in its’ market. Creating the CSE was simple and I am excited to see what kind of results and benefits we can achieve by incorporating this new CSE into our client’s Internet Marketing efforts.

After I created the CSE, I was exploring the different options in the account and reading the Google Custom Search Blog about CSE’s popular queries. I knew I wouldn’t have any statistics yet, as I just created the search engine, but I was curious so I accessed the statistics page for my new CSE and was presented with the following screen:

1970? Huh? I thought this was the future of search? What’s up with that Google?

Is it just me? Or is this a Google Co-op bug in all accounts for the new statistics feature?

We just received this email from Microsoft adCenter:

Dear Content Ads pilot participant,

You can experience new time-saving features within the Microsoft adCenter beta site, which will update over the next few days.

What’s new in the adCenter beta site?

Using the adCenter beta site is now easier and more efficient. The updates provide you with improved campaign management, navigation, and reporting. You can:

• Save time importing campaigns. Directly import your campaign structure from other search advertising programs into adCenter. Update your existing campaigns, ad groups, ads, and keyword bids and match types using a single Microsoft Excel or CSV file.
• Preview your ads on Live Search. Visualize how your ads will show up on Live Search with Ad Preview in the ad list.
• Search within your campaigns. Full text search allows you to easily find ads, keywords, ad groups, accounts, or campaigns that contain all or part of a query string.
• Manage keywords faster. Edit keywords in bulk to simultaneously change settings for all keywords or delete poor-performing keywords from your campaigns.
• One click adCenter dataset downloads. Download your adCenter datasets into Excel with one click—making campaign management that much simpler.

Learn more about how you can save time with these updates—read the adCenter blog post and watch our webinar.

As a Content Ads pilot advertiser, you have a first-hand opportunity to use these time-saving improvements in the adCenter beta site. If you have any questions, please visit our support center.

Sincerely,

The Microsoft adCenter Team

Let’s hope that these upgrades will do what they promise. I have not been very happy with the interface and the ability to manage keywords easily. Check out Shoemoney’s rant to see what has everyone so upset with Microsoft adCenter

The next DFWSEM Association meeting will be held on Monday, February 19, at the Renaissance Hotel in Richardson. This will be an open networking and informational event that will follow up on sessions from Search Engine Watch Live in Dallas. Time is from 6:30 PM to 8 PM.

Meeting Place: Renaissance Dallas-Richardson Hotel located at 900 East Lookout Drive, Richardson, Texas 75081.

The hotel is in the Richardson Telecom Corridor, on the east side of 75 Central Expressway, approximately one mile south of George Bush Tollway. Symphony Room. Hotel Phone: 972-367-2000 Map: Renaissance Richardson

I recently stumbled across a post by Ian Thomas that confirms that Microsoft is working on its own analytics software – a modified version of the analytics software created by DeepMetrix (who was purchased by Microsoft last year).

We attended a presentation last year and first reported about adCenter’s 3.0 beta upgrades. During this presentation, I asked about Microsoft developing an analytics solution for its advertisers. At that time, we were only told that the adLabs group was working on something but no more information was provided.

Now, we are sure that Microsoft is working on this and has codenamed this analytics project ‘Gatineau‘ (note- this link will not allow you to login or register as it has not even reached Beta stages). Gatineau is the name of a city in Canada that at one time housed the headquarters for DeepMetrix.

Not much else has been released at this time, but expect that this should launch hopefully before the end of the year. I do expect the system to fully integrate your adCenter data for advanced tracking.

Now, on to the other product we asked Microsoft about – When are we going to see a publisher network come out of adCenter so that advertisers can get increased exposure, and publishers can get some money?!?

Most posts on our blog deal with web design or Internet marketing news, but I felt that with all the news announcements about new technology products this week, a few of them were worth mentioning. Why? Because, they have more to do with Internet marketing than first meets the eye.

The biggest news of the week is that Apple Inc. (yep, they dropped “Computer” from their name) announced a new cell phone that also doubles as an iPod. They are calling it the iPhone even though Cisco owns the trademark on that name (and as I expected the lawsuit has been filed). Now, I am sure that Apple was aware that this would happen because I have been reading for weeks that Cisco had the trademark. So, one wonders if Apple did this to stir up more hype around the product, settle the suit, and pick a new name – in the hopes that this would help sell more phones. Or maybe, they actually believe somehow that Cisco had no write to trademark the name in the first place for some reason.

Other big news is that Apple introduced its Apple TV. This allows you to view on your television any media that is on your computer. So now, any videos you download via their iTunes can be watched on your television instead of only your computer monitor. I personally don’t think this product will last too many years because most the the new HD-TVs being sold have computer inputs. I myself already have my TV and computer linked so that I can view my computer media files on my TV, and I didn’t have to pay $299, my TV had the input so I paid $10 for a simple cable. I think the only people that need this box are the ones with non-HD televisions but those are be gone by February of 2008 as their signals will be cut off.

In related news, Microsoft announced that you can now use your Xbox to watch television via your internet connection on the new IPTV enabled Xbox. The offering is expected to deliver world-class TV experiences such as digital video recording capabilities, with gaming, movie viewing, and even voice and video communications.

So What How Does This Affect Internet Marketing?

These new products are the future of the platform that media will be delivered to consumers. More and more consumers are gaining more ways to be exposed to digital marketing. The cable networks are being pushed out by new IPTV technology and this could changes the way we watch commercials. The benefits of a television, DVR, and the Internet are all merging into one. Newspapers are already feeling this crunch on their industry as consumers move to the Internet to read their news AS it happens, not the next day.

More people are looking for their cell phones to do more such as play music, text, surf the web and more. Phones are essentially becoming miniature laptops. I know I just bought a Samsung Blackjack and it has been a life saver for checking email and surfing the web. Using cell phones combined with GPS technology, local advertisers will be pushing out ads to cell phones in ways never previously imagined via text and other alerts.

We are seeing a massive media convergence that is being adopted by consumers and is surely the wave of the future. So, pay attention, learn all you can, and make sure that you are using every means possible to reach prospective customers.

I would first like to wish everyone the happiest of holidays!

Now that the year is coming to the end, I thought I would do a post that looks back at all of the things that we covered in our blog. While we didn’t blog as much as I had hoped, there were some good things that came out of 2006. In 2007, our blog will become a lot more active so please sign up for our RSS feed and get ready for a great year ahead.

Here is a list of all the different topics that we covered beginning in February of this year in chronological order:

• MSN Team Gives First Public Demo of MSN adCenter 3.0 presented to DFW SEM
• Search grows by 75% Google’s share tops 48%
• MSN Adcenter Taking Away Clicks from Yahoo Search Advertisers
• Is there a Rogue Google Data Center not Using the Sandbox?
• Google to Provide Hosting? – What’s Next?
• MSN adCenter Ads soon to be on Xbox Live? You bet!
• Microsoft adCenter Support/Help Desk Phone Number
• Yahoo Index Updated
• Yahoo Search Marketing Upgrade in Beta Testing: Great for Advertisers
• MSN adCenter Launching New Features
• Pew Internet & American Life Project: Report on influence of the Internet
• Creating Web Pages & Driving Search Results Based on Analytics
• MSN adCenter Launches; MSN Contextual Advertising Coming Soon
• Free Yahoo Sitemap Creator: Converts Google Sitemap to Yahoo
• Yahoo Undergoing a Major Overhaul
• Blogging Below the Belt – Corporate Blog Support Services and Blog Monitoring Services
  
• Adwords PPC Advertisers Another Have Another Required Task
• Yahoo PPC and Microsoft Search Deal Comes to an End Today
• Benefits of Email Marketing
• Yahoo Delay’s Search Marketing Upgrade
• An Intern’s View on Search Engine Optimization
• Matt Cutts Video Blogs Some SEO Answers
• The Internet Marketers Creed
• Accessibility and Web Design with the Search Engines in Mind
  
• Yahoo and Google Fall Updates
• Yahoo Launches New Search Advertising Platform: “Panama”
• Hitwise Releases Top 10 Search Terms in 10 Categories
• Why I Love My Job in SEO
• My Top 10 Reasons to be Thankful for my Job at an SEO Company
• “nofollow” – Does it Really Work Like Google Claims?
• Relative or Absolute Links for Search Engine Optimization?

I am fairly new to the SEO game and being Thanksgiving week, I thought I would follow up my “Why I Love My Job in SEO” blog with my personal top ten reasons to be thankful for my job at an SEO Company.

10. I am thankful for being in an industry that is constantly changing, each day is new and different and I am continually learning.

9. I am thankful for tools like Web Position, Google Analytics and Digital Point for making my job easier.

8. I am thankful for blogs and forums, like SEOmoz and WebProWorld, where industry experts are eager to share their knowledge with newbies like me.

7. I am thankful for MasterLink’s own experts; Mike Shaffer for his technical expertise, and Scott Peterson for his design expertise.

6. I am thankful for Firefox and tabbed browsing! (And also some very useful extensions.)

5. I am thankful for Clif Thompson being hired on to join our team as PPC Specialist. (I am terrible with numbers!)

4. I am thankful for never having to deal with the Google sandbox. (Knock on wood.)

3. I am thankful for advanced searches, like “linkdomain:” for link building strategies. (Now if only Google would play nice with me.)

2. I am thankful for Mark Barrera, my boss, teacher, mentor and friend. I have learned so much from him and he makes everyday of work fun.

1. I am thankful for MasterLink and Brenda Molloy for giving me a chance with a job in SEO when I had relatively no knowledge of SEO only 8 months ago.

I have a crazy love for and collect two things, monkeys (not live ones, of course, though that would be kinda cool) and kaleidoscopes. Monkeys are just so fun, I smile every time I see one. I love kaleidoscopes because they are so beautiful to look at the ever-changing colors and patterns. You will never see the exact same design twice in a kaleidoscope and can never predict what pattern you will see at the next rotation.

So, what does this have to do with why I love my job in SEO? Well, it reminds me a lot of my two favorite things in several ways.

How does my job in SEO remind me of monkeys, besides the fact that Ask.com is using monkeys in their new commercials? Well, SEO is fun. Monkeys are fun. My job can also sometimes be quite tedious. Take yesterday for example; I spent the majority of my day doing link building for a client. Now, this reminds me of monkeys simply because I believe I could train a monkey to do link building for me. Search, copy, paste, repeat. (Now if only I did collect live monkeys, I’d be set!)

As for kaleidoscopes my job in SEO reminds me of them because it too is ever-changing. Yesterday, I was link building. Today I am blogging and writing articles and press releases for clients. Tomorrow, I may be doing some keyword research or on page optimization for another client. Another similarity between kaleidoscopes and SEO: the ever-changing SERPs and search engine algorithms. You may find your site ranking well for a particular term one day and fall back down the following day. Like a kaleidoscope you can never predict what results you will get.

My job in SEO, like monkeys, is fun even though sometimes it can include some tedious monkey-work. My job in SEO, like kaleidoscopes, is ever-changing; and that is a beautiful thing.