So if a picture is worth a thousand words how much is a video worth?  We are soon going to find out. Dror is out at the store picking up a new digital video camera with a ridiculous sized hard drive as I write these very words. After much delay, I gave in and agreed that we should get yet another electronic device that will potentially complicate our lives. The excuse is that we just can’t go on this way without making some videos for this website. We tell each and every client that they must include video on their sites to create a truly compelling visitor experience - no matter what business they are in. So it’s time the shoemaker got his own kids some shoes. So to all of our fans out there - get prepared to start to get to know us a whole lot better. Think I can convince Dror to only film me on my “good hair” days?

If you manage a website or are somehow involved in online marketing, so there is no doubt you know what keywords are. But the mistake that many people make is to be obsessed with a few or even several keywords and then to believe that they need to focus on getting ranked for just those keywords. For example, a company in the bicycle business may focus on getting ranked for a highly competitive term like “bicycle”. They may believe that appearing in the top results of the search engines for “bicycle” is their best opportunity to bring traffic to their site and convert visits to sales. However, they may are very mistaken! First of all, they will need to make a tremendous effort to achieve high ranking for such a competitive term - over 45 million results in Google. Second, I am not so sure that most people who search for “bicycle” are ready to purchase. Such a generic search is just as likely to be about research.

More and more, potential visitors are using keyword phrases to search — to the point that the average search today is about 4 words! So start thinking in terms of phrases, not words.

Now there are 2 key things for the bicycle shop to consider if they are serious about their efforts to gain sales through organic search. Read more »

Sales Message, Layout, Design, User Experience, Search Engine Visibility, Credibility . . . All of these elements and more must be taken into consideration when building your online presence! But it is very rare, even on today’s “mature” Internet, to find many sites that even begin to approach succeeding to reach this balance. And you may be surprised that i am saying this but, it actually is due to a lack of trying. That’s right — all those marketing directors, Marcom experts, VPs of Business Development . . . None of them are even trying to reach this balance because they simply are not aware of how important it is for their businesses. They still don’t recognize the value and the importance of establishing the right online position for their organizations. But that is good news — because it’s not because it is too hard to achieve this balance. It merely involves getting focused and making the effort. And anyone reading this has the ability to get there.

When clients come to us about “SEO” I find that many of these companies are not there yet. They want to be number 1 on Google and to see their site traffic skyrocket. But often they forget about the basics – about building a compelling experience for their visitors, about ensuring that they capture some footprint and about using their Internet presence to truly conduct business. Recently, we had a client who launched a beautiful site a few months ago and was disappointed that he did not get inundated with new leads. People told him, “ You need to SEO your site.” He ended up calling us, among many other vendors. But before we jumped into the optimization, we explained that we must first look under the hood and find out what is going on - on his site, in his business, in his market and among his competitors. We looked at his overall goals and at the opportunities that exist for expanding his business internationally via a strong online position.  Now, his CMS is being overhauled to align with his needs, his target audience is being well defined to ensure the site provides them with a compelling experience and his site will be positioned to maximize exposure to relevant traffic. Further, we opened this non-hi-tech business man’s eyes to the realm of opportunities for his traditional brick and mortar business on the Internet.
When I see what goes on with many SEO companies, I am reminded of a bad experience I had in a home renovation Read more »

Some people called my production “infantile,” but I found the process of producing video clips to be one of the better ways of delivering a marketing message to the masses.

It was a fun and effective exercise. And no, we haven’t seen any real results yet in terms of growth of traffic and sales (I posted it two days ago and it’s already #1 for relevant searches!), but it made us take a fresh look and ask hard questions about the promise of the product. Read more »

It seems like today, almost everyone we know is somehow involved with a website - either they write content that gets distributed online, they have a business and probably have a website, or they are relying on particular websites for their work, studies or pleasure. In short, today, most people recognize the value of Search Engine ranking  - because they are either looking to be found by others or they themselves are looking for good results.  When a topic like search engine ranking, which was until just a few years ago, a non-issue even for most online businesses, starts to become a commonly understood topic, things start to get more complicated. Read more »

Lately, I’ve been talking to a lot of potential clients that know they need to be well established online, but have absolutely no idea what that entails (lately, our high search engine ranking for particular terms is generating some great leads, especially in Israel!). So I’ve been doing some basic educating. It’s good to remind ourselves every once in a while that no matter what business we are in, we are immersed inside — and people that are not living in that world on a daily basis - understandably don’t know exactly what goes on there and why. So in talking to “lay” people, carefully explain things in terms they can understand. Even the most seasoned business people, I have found, are not familiar with basic Internet marketing concepts. Anyway, here is what I wrote to a recent lead and it seemed to help him “get it”. Read more »

You know that business is good when you can smile while you are writing checks. While we are still in a beta phase, the first payments are going out today for the Optenet PC Web Filter affiliate program. We have found some terrific partners to work with. The nature of the product naturally leads us to a good group of people - people who want to help others, who are concerned about the problems that Internet access has introduced to our lives . . . Anyway, it’s a pleasure to send out commission checks - and to do so even earlier than what we are committed to do. Thank you to our first Optenet PC affiliate partners!

In the pre–multimedia Internet era, it was was easy- you just looked at page views, unique visits and demographics. But all of that is changing now . . . and at lightning speed.  Read how Internet TV and web 2.0 applications are reshuffling the rules of engagement.

Read more »

I can’t believe I did not post for such a long time. Shame on me! But it is all for a good cause — for our wonderful clients who need us more than we apparently need ourselves. Does that make sense? I actually appreciated a site I ran into the other day by a design firm. It was basically a nice “under construction” page with a note saying that the fact that they did not yet build their own site was simply a sign of just how dedicated they are to their customers - where they put their real efforts. Of course, I did not make any further effort to get to know that particular company, but I appreciated the spin on the situation.

Anyway, on the way home from a meeting with a client, we were talking about the two architects we are considering for designing our new office. One bid is 3 times more than the other. We were trying to decide what could possibly make one 3 times better/worthwhile than the other. Read more »