Now is the time to learn from the pros!

Dear AdWords Advertiser,

Would you like to sit down with an AdWords expert to learn how to help more customers find your business online? Now’s your chance.

Attend our AdWords Seminars for Success for in-person, hands-on training with independent search-marketing professionals. You will receive tips and strategies to help you manage your online advertising.

Join us in San Diego for the following:

AdWords 101 on June 20: Discover how to organize your AdWords campaigns, and craft keywords and ads that give you the most bang for your buck.

AdWords 201 on June 21: Take your account to the next level. Learn how to turn clicks into customers by identifying keywords that really work, and by improving those that don’t.

Join us in Los Angeles for the following:

AdWords 301 on June 6: Hear about advanced optimization techniques and advanced tools and features that can help you drive more profit from your online advertising.
AdWords 302 on June 7: Learn about advanced tracking, ROI analysis and bidding strategies to build on your advertising success. We will also discuss how to implement strategic tests.

1-day package: $299 and earn $50 in free AdWords advertising

2-day package: $549 and earn $100 in free AdWords advertising
Register Now

Register now for San Diego or Los Angeles.

For details on each course, please visit our Seminars for Success site.

Here’s to your advertising success,
The Google AdWords Team

Business Journal to Launch Web Site Pay Wall
MEDIA: Redesigned Home Page to Be Part of Changes Set for April 20 By Julie Gallant Monday, April 18, 2011

In an effort to give paid subscribers more value and to more effectively manage its online content, the San Diego Business Journal is launching a pay wall on its Web site, sdbj.com. The pay wall will be implemented at midnight April 20. In concert with the launch of the pay wall, the Business Journal will introduce a new front page to its Web site.

Paid subscribers to the print edition of the Business Journal can log in to the pay wall by following on-screen instructions found by clicking on the log in button on the upper right-hand corner of the new front page. Visitors to the Web site must subscribe to the print edition to read the Business Journal’s daily and weekly content online. Visitors without a subscription will be able to access the Business Journal’s events postings, pages that contain the lists published in the annual Book of Lists, and will be able to conduct archive searches and purchase individual stories using their credit card.

All visitors will see an image of the front page of the current issue prominently displayed on the new front page of the Web site.

Visitors to sdbj.com may subscribe by following instructions also found on the Web site log in button on the upper right-hand corner.

Creating Value

President and Publisher Randy Frisch said the pay wall is being introduced because the newspaper’s content has value.

“Our content helps San Diego businesses grow and maintain a profit,” Frisch said.

Reo Carr, editor-in-chief of the Business Journal, noted that publishers throughout the industry are erecting pay walls to enable them to better serve their paid subscribers.

“The news, information and data we publish have true economic value,” Carr said. “Our paid subscribers recognize that value. We want to serve their interests first and foremost.”

Content on the Web site is updated daily with local business news. Visitors may access advertising information, the Business Journal editorial calendar as well as contact information for the entire Business Journal staff.

Daily e-news alerts will also continue to be distributed to all current recipients without charge.

Director of Ciculation and Marketing Linda Olander notes that the changes are being introduced without altering costs for subscribers.

Providing for Our Customers

“We’re ensuring we can provide value for our customers,” Olander said.

As part of that process of offering value, the sdbj.com Web site was revised and upgraded more than a year ago. Features such as podcasts of current editions and daily e-news alerts will continue to be delivered to readers who are currently registered to receive them.

In the near future, the Business Journal will formally be launching its digital edition.

As is the case with the Web site, the digital edition will only be available to subscribers and at no additional charge. Readers will be able to download the digital edition directly from the front page of the Web site.

The digital edition is designed to operate on all computing platforms, including PCs and Macintosh computers, tablet devices such as the iPad, and on Android tablets as well as smart phones. The digital edition will be similar in appearance to the print edition, and it will include advanced tools to aid in the navigation of the online newspaper and to link visitors to the SDBJ editorial content and advertisers’ Web sites.

“Response to our digital edition from our test group of readers has been overwhelmingly favorable,” Carr said.

Previously all of the content on the business journal’s sites was free to view for the general public, but going forward you must be a subscriber, as was just confirmed by their San Diego office.

There is another local business publication called sddt.com or “San Diego Daily Transcript” that has had a pay wall up for some time now.

What will this mean for their monthly traffic figures?

Lets take a look at the current stats:

SDDT.com – 20-30k views average per month over the last 6 months
SDBJ.com – 8-12k views average per month over the last 6 months

Now that the SDBJ.com (San Diego Business Journal) has erected a pay wall, it will be interesting to see if their average monthly visits will fall or remain the same. If they fall, how much will they fall by? We will see in the coming months.

The NYTimes.com recently established a pay wall as well, and they are doing okay so far with 100,000 paying subs in the first month of it being used. News publications around the world are starting to consider pay walls as options as their traditional revenue channels (mainly print ads in actual newspapers) are dwindling. As of just recently, online advertising revenues worldwide have surpassed print ad revenues worldwide.

Many papers across the nation (Wall Street Journal, New York Times, SFGate.com) are starting to (or at least consider) erecting pay walls in order to generate additional revenues by forcing would-be news viewers to pay for the content they want to see. Paying for news online is a new phenomenon; many are probably taken off guard by having to pay for something that for so long was just assumed to be a “right” on the internet. The internet was and still is to a degree a “free for all,” as content of all types can be found readily available in all formats (news, photos, video). This even holds true for some sites that have pay walls, as many have relatively easy ways of circumvention.

Video Production is an important aspect of SEO in that you can utilize it to market products/services online and effectively do what is referred to as “Video Marketing.” The most popular way to do that is by producing video and using SEO to target your audience with keyword research and proper copywriting/titling.

In order to be #1 on the internet, you need to show up in the first page or 2 of Google/Bing…

Really to succeed, you need to show up on page 1, and within the first few results…

We decided to put ourselves in an interesting position – lets challenge ourselves publicly to see how long it will take from start to finish to get our San Diego Video Production website on page 1 of Google. Can we even pull this off? How long will it take?

This sounds like a fun project, so we are going to be tackling it soon enough. As of now, we have only a skeleton website in place – in fact it’s just a free WordPress template that we found… All we have done at this point is simply setting up the menus with links (which we will be tweaking some more). Soon, we will get the screen casting software set up and we will fully document the project from start to finish..

We figure this way, instead of claiming that “we are good at SEO” like EVERYONE else claims, we will fully document the process and show the results as they happen.

We will list at the beginning of the project which terms we will want to rank well for. Since the main service provided by SDVideoProduction.com is “Video Production” and the focus is on “San Diego” then you can be assured that a big keyword phrase we will try to rank well for will be “San Diego Video Production.”

Stay tuned for more articles and Videos as we proceed from terrible results to page 1 (we hope).

Hello,

We’re writing to let you know about a change in bid management on the Google Display Network. In an effort to simplify and clarify how your default bids work, we’re retiring the managed placements default bid. Instead of adding two separate default bids for managed and automatic placements on the ad group level, you can now just use one. This will help you to set default bids for any ads shown on the Display Network while still maintaining control over bids for individual managed placements.

Starting on March 15, 2011, we’ll be removing the managed placements default bid in your account. We’re taking several steps to make sure that this will have no impact on your current bid amounts or where your ads currently appear. Here’s what you can expect based on how your ad groups are currently set up:

- If your default bid and managed placements bid are equal, and a Display Network bid is not set, we will simply remove the managed placements bid. Any managed placements with individual bids will still keep those bids.

- If your managed placements bid is equal to your Display Network bid, we will simply remove the managed placements bid.

- If your default bid and managed placements bid are different, and a Display Network bid is not set, we will copy your managed placements bid over as the new Display Network bid. Any managed placements with individual bids will still keep those bids.

- If you have separate default, managed placements, and Display Network bids, we will copy your managed placements bid to individual managed placements. Note that this will happen only if these individual managed placements do not already have their own placement-level bids.

- In the rare case where you don’t have an ad group default bid and are only using a managed placements bid, we will copy the managed placements bid over as the new default bid. Any managed placements with individual bids will still keep those bids.

We hope this change will help to simplify the bidding options in your account. For more information on this change, please visit https://adwords.google.com/support?answer=1143657.

Sincerely,

The Google AdWords Team

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043, USA

You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your AdWords product or account.

We just received this email below:

Dear Yahoo! Video user,

The Yahoo! Video Team

It appears that Yahoo is not allowing users to upload any more “user-generated” content – and in fact will be deleting all of the videos that have been uploaded.

Has Yahoo found their Video site to be unpopular or not a worthwhile monetary investment?

Perhaps they are working on a new Video Platform as we speak?

Hopefully word gets out on this fast so that people don’t waste their time uploading to Yahoo for no reason.

More updates to come….

Examples of Internet Marketing include not only the standard methods of SEO, but but additionally SEM and Video Marketing. Using a variety of means – diversifying – is the best and most appropriate route to success on the web.

If you have a narrow marketing approach on the web, and simply go about posting multiple videos corresponding to your product/service, chances are you won’t be very successful. On the other hand, if you think you can simply post a lot of back links and “rule page 1 of Google,” you are also mistaken.

Google is a dynamic entity. Google constantly changes its search algorithm as the rules and norms on the web change; Google’s search engine is modified by both its algorithm and by Google employees. What this means is that if your website is highlighted as possibly being a potential spamming site, if the Google employees manually search out your site and find that it is not a spamming site because you have a diversified approach to marketing on the web: you have incorporated Video, SEM, SEO, Press Releases, Article Marketing, etc. over several channels – that you will have a better chance of standing up to the Google police.

Google isn’t perfect, yet they do a pretty good job in general at feeling out which sites are good and which are not. This is important to helping all of us have a better user experience. It also helps them generate more money from more focused Advertising.

See a trend here in being Focused?

The web is so enormous, that you must be focused. You must target something and do it well, or you will get lost in the crowd.
Unfortunately, Google also rewards constant activity; you may have the best content around, but if you don’t keep updating it, another website with less quality content but more quantity of content may soon overtake you in the search rankings.

The best approach is to understand what you can, and cannot accomplish when you start out. Know who your competitors are, what they focus on, why they focus on it, and what type of results they receive from those actions. Are you exactly like them? In most cases you might not be. Your services may be related – for example: “Used Car Lots in San Diego.” Perhaps you and your competitor both have used car lots and yours is located in Carlsbad, and theirs in located in Kearny Mesa. What can you do to win more business – more specifically, how can you bring more customers to your website and generate more incoming phone calls from prospective car buying customers?

We will tackle this in the next Blog Post: San Diego Car Lots – Internet Marketing Example

Stay tuned…

Originally a 10-minute video limit, it has since been lifted and replaced by the 15-minute limit. The software automatically matches the content of the whole video or parts of it to the others being uploaded. In advance, regular users can choose whether to make money, get statistics, allow fan interaction and alleviate or avoid infringement of their videos. This allows full control on how user-uploaded videos will be distributed. Many media companies have used it to profit from their monetizeable videos, giving their fans the chance to become the marketers and distributors of their content. This also gives the Video Creators the full credit to block and prevent uploading of their content without their permission.

This change is not applicable to all users especially to those whose videos are not frequently viewed by the community. Other copyright rules such as the simple manual takedown may be applicable. YouTube will also give this kind of privilege to the so-called “good users,” not to all users at once that is. Those said privileged users are the ones who are trusted by the hosting site because of how they have abided by the guidelines and policies in the past. Many users frequently try to break rules or circumvent copyright rules set about by YouTube.

So if you think you are one of those video creators making lengthier videos and wanted to share more with the world, you can check their ContentID sign up page. This will not just allow you to upload longer videos but will also give you the power to have control over them and be assured that what you have shared will never be misused or abused by anyone.

How does this affect Internet Marketing you ask?

Sometimes Video Marketers have a good reason to include lengthier videos – whether it be to further engage the viewer, or post long excerpts of an extended video piece.

How can you leverage this for SEO in San Diego you ask?

There are advanced search options within YouTube where you can choose “Video Length” whether a Video is in HD or not, etc..

If users begin to start only wanting to watch videos that are beyond 15 minutes, then they effectively will NOT see your Videos (unless of course you have videos that are longer then that).

Some uses we can see implemented with the new change:

1) Extended length excerpts of Movies for the indy film crowd. This will help to get more of the word out about their films and spread virally.
2) Companies can use this new-found flexibility to post San Diego Instructional Videos on products or services.
3) Schools can use this to highlight their programs and activities.

These are just a few of many uses that can be found for the new added limits.

For some strange reason, even though you spent good money on your website, and it appears to be perfect, you still aren’t making any sales or getting any visitors to your site. You aren’t happy with the results or the ROI. What happened?

You may have a great website, but if nobody can find it, especially in a large city like Los Angeles, Irvine, or San Diego, then you won’t generate any real traffic from the website. This is even more important in these larger cities as the competition to win a limited amount of search engine traffic is fiercely intense. Maybe you are a law firm – maybe you need to rank highly in search engines in order to get new clients. There is only one “first page of Google.” If there are 100 law firms in San Diego, and they are all trying to get on the coveted first spot on Google (or Bing, etc.), you will need to put forth a great deal of effort to reach that spot. Also, it will take some time. Don’t trust any SEO that tells you it can happen overnight – it is simply not the case!

Search Engine Optimization Services include:

1) Press Releases
2) Content Generation
3) Backlink Building
4) Video creation and Posting / Marketing
5) Social Media Optimization & Marketing
6) etc..

Instead of paying for “traditional advertising,” those in the know realize that today’s world is a new and changing landscape which requires adapting to the Internet. Instead of paying for Yellow Page advertising which before was the advertising standard, today all businesses need to focus on Internet Marketing – one subset of which is SEO (Search Engine Optimization). If you put effort into SEO, you will see improvements in your website’s ranking, and this will in turn drive more traffic to your website, which will lead to an increase in sales.

For affordable and professional SEO Services, please contact us today to get started!

Paying a little up front instead of continuously paying for ads is a wise decision.

Those are basically your 2 choices when it comes to marketing on the web:  Paying for Ads or performing SEO work which includes:

1. Search Engine Optimization (both on and off page)
2. Social Media Optimization (LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc.)
3. Content creation and distribution
4. Link Building (falling under off page SEO)

The third and final option would be to initiate a SEO strategy and then supplement that with an Ad strategy.  Typcially, for small to medium sized businesses, the process involves working on a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign, whereby paying for Ads only when a person clicks on the Ad – hence the name “Pay Per (each) Click.”

We can help with Search Engine Optimization in San Diego – or if you require Social Media Optimization / Content Creation we can help with that as well.

Video is becoming a very important force on the internet – All new TVs being sold will soon have internet connections making Video Marketing very important.

We partner with SD Video Production here in San Diego to handle client Video Production needs.

They do it all – from conception, to script writing, to filming and editing the final project.