Antioxidin

Report: Rise in pay-per-click ads leads to increase in click fraud: http://bit.ly/sm0sU Good reason to focus on your SEO.

CareerBuilder is hosting contest to craft an ad for Super Bowl XLIV & winning contributor gets $100k: http://bit.ly/GbhU7

Google Launches Search Options, Declares Real-Time: http://tr.im/ldhy #seo

Google Launches Search Options, Previews ‘Google Squared’ http://tinyurl.com/qj3lgr

How Not to Promote Your Blog: Top 10 Broken Blog Promotion Strategies http://tinyurl.com/puh85r

Study: Even when a simple click on a banner ad will do, many consumers prefer to use search: http://bit.ly/17tgNS

3 months after being acquired in bankruptcy auction Linens N Things relaunched ecommerce site today: http://bit.ly/NuBoe

Countries for which Google will not investigate the use of trademarks as keywords: http://bit.ly/ozuML #ppc #sem

Google, on June 4 will begin selling trademarks of competitors as keywords for sponsored search ads: http://bit.ly/Gszph

If you like what you see, then please Follow Me on Twitter.

Getting a professional massage is therapeudic. I know I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. I wish that health insurance would pay for at least 1 massage per month. How about one massage per week. Personally, my ideal situation is to get a massage once every 2 weeks.

In New York City there are a few good spas. I’ve been to Cornelia Spa. I haven’t been to Exhale Spa. Corneila is amazing. I highly recommend it.

I’ve also been to Red Door Spas in New Jersey. And, I know that’s a chain. But they are totally worth it.

Stop what you’re doing right now, and make your reservation!
You’ll thank me

I just wanted to take a moment to highlight a few very interesting videos from Google on their ‘Insight’ tool. For those of you that didn’t know, Google has more than a few handy tools for conducting KW research including;

Google traffic estimator sandbox - a tool that gives estimated traffic clicks and cost for given terms on Google Adwords. This is another handy metric to have when doing KW research.

Adwords Keyword calculator - Google’s adwords estimator tool. Also handy… but still, more PPC data for cross referencing.

Google Search based KW tool – this one generates keyword and landing page ideas highly relevant and specific to your website. In doing so, the tool helps you identify additional advertising opportunities that aren’t currently being used in your AdWords ad campaigns.

But there’s one more…

Google Insight for researching KWs
Enter Google Insights for Search

These are all great for getting some keyword / phrase ideas and even some general search traffic numbers; but what about trends? Sure you could use Google Trends – but it is a bit lacking in this author’s opinion…

And so you check out - Google Insights for Search tool - much like Google trends for looking at search data. It is seriously great for KW research purposes. Now this isn’t really a NEW tool, but it is one I have been turning to more and more of late with my SEO programs…

What can you do with it?

1. Historical term popularity
2. Geographic usage
3. Suggests other top terms
4. Compare multiple terms
5. See up and coming ‘Hot searches’
6. Use empty search box to see general trends

New videos bring business intelligence

As I was saying, this tool has been around for a while; it is simply more recently that I have included Google Insights into the main stream of my keyword research tools. In truth there is a great deal of business intelligence to be gleaned from this bad boy.

Last week Google put out a few interesting videos which are well worth watching to get an idea of the various types of BI available to you… have a watch won’t you?
Google Insights for Search: Creating Advertising Messages

Learn how to use Google Insights for Search to capitalize on search trends to create relevant advertising messages.

Google Insights for Search: Evaluating Brands

Learn how to use Google Insights for Search to help you identify brands competing with your product to see how your brand stacks up.

Google Insights for Search: Measuring Campaign Impact

Learn how to use Google Insights for Search to analyze the impact of your marketing activities on people’s ability to recall and search for your brand

As you can see, this particular tool has legs, now we just need to test it some more to see how accurate the data is. For that, I’d play around with some products, terms and query spaces that you’re familiar with. Does the data play out? Even most of the time? So far it’s been pretty good.

I just got a new road bike. It’s been 25 years since my last purchase.

A good bike isn’t cheap. It cost me $1,500. Yep. That’s right.

My intention is to ride on it almost everyday. The weather is nice now. It’s the spring. And, it’s time to loose some of the winter fat.

To get the most out of your Twitter experience, I recommend following a group of people that share your same interests. That will increase the probability of interactions, retweets, and business opportunities.

Another way to build your brand, is to build a relevant group on Twitter. Many people think social media in general is a waste of time, but it’s not.

The way people use the web is changing. Even, Google is starting to gear up by introducting “Google Friends”.

It ain’t easy thinking of stuff to blog about everyday. And, then, once you thought of the subject, you have to write about it. Hey, did anyone ever hear of writers block? Even the best writers get it.

Once you thought of a subject, then you should do research on the internet. List your sources. If you use photos or videos, link to the source. Be generous with links.

Well, that’s it for now. I gotta go think of something “for real” to write about.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Today in the 21st century, prospecting for new business is a little easier than it was 30 years ago.

Business Development or “Biz Dev” as some call it, has evolved with the use of the internet.

Here’s how I like to do it:
1) Read about a company in the news, or get a list of companies from a trade show, or a list of companies from an association.

2) Use Hoovers to discover who is the best point-of-contact for what you want.

3) Use Linkedin, Google, Facebook, and Twitter to research the individual. Try to find their email address.

4) Use Google to search for [email @companyname.com] to find the email format the targeted company uses. DomainTools can also be useful for getting email information.

5) Use a short (few sentences) introduction email, asking for a phone chat.

Thats it. Happy hunting!