Friday, May 23, 2008

HomeAway Secures $160 million Financing, Acquires VRBO - Old news but still hot Vacation Rentals Market

http://www.homeaway.com/index.cfm/tgt/VRBO_press_release_111306

This financing deal caught my attention, and I wanted to blog about it. I will spend more time on this later.
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Thursday, May 22, 2008

Internet Marketing & Advertising

The Online Ad Market size - SEO market size too?

The Online Ad Story in a Picture - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

The article above from the New York times discusses the trends and facts of the Online Advertising numbers, Why? The talks of Yahoo and MSN is not just important to SEO Services people, but to all advertising and marketing people. Here is a quote from the article, we are covering this as the SEO landscape will dramatically change if Microsoft and Yahoo combine.

“Of course Google is booming and the traditional portals are struggling. But the numbers are stark: Last year, Google’s advertising revenue of $6 billion was roughly the same as that of Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft combined.

Google’s growth is slowing, but it continues to be a juggernaut. EMarketer estimates that ad revenue at Google will increase by 32 percent this year. That makes it the only one of these four companies that will grow faster than the ad market as a whole, which is estimated to expand by 23 percent this year. (To be sure, the uncertain economy makes any predictions especially suspect this year, but the relative trends appear stable.)

So as we try to second-guess the mating games of the big Internet companies, this graph raises the question: Does combining two past-their-prime giants that are both losing market share really solve any problems?”

The reason we are covering the recent news about the Microsoft and Yahoo is that this combination could greatly impact your SEO, SEM, and Marketing strategies. The combined search advertising and organic results, if that is what the solution will be, will be difficult for most small marketing people to ignore. Large marketing departments and advertisers do advertise on Microsoft and Yahoo, not just Google. They could quite possibly be the driving force behind another big option, not just being too dependant on Google. So our hypothesis is that a bigger advertising network other than Google is needed, and we support Microsoft as we are from Seattle.

As always we are just trying to provide you simple information for marketing your blogs and web sites. And, mixing in some shameful self promotion of us and our SEO services clients and marketing products of our strategic partners. Reminder, that is why I like blogging so much, and we created this free blogs site MyTypes.com. We found SEO advice all over the place, but we wanted to provide people a blogging tool, that would them actually SEO their blogs and websites. That is also why we finished our Marketing book, about the power of blogs for SEO and search marketing.

So we are going to plug in our web design St. Louis client, ArtWorksDesign.com, and we are also launching a sister blog at MyTypes.com/WebDesign where we will talk about the web design techniques especially as far as they relate to SEO. Last year we launched, GreenIsBetter.org for the energy saving infrared heaters, and air purifiers by Steril Air purifier. We think the web design blog will essentially lead to a portal or blogs or forums of sorts for SEO savvy web design topics. We have incorporated our end to end SEO and blogging techniques in our marketing book, so this should just be a continuation of those topics, only with more focus on web design.

As we started to sell SEO services a few years ago, we knew that we had to work with third party web design firms. The owners of the website simply did not have the capabilities to make the small changes needed to SEO the site. These minor changes have to do with proper Meta Tags, content and footer links. The majority of the web design companies now days know the basics of SEO, but SEO Services provide a lot of off-site services such as content and link popularity assets. This is why most companies large and small need to use an SEO services firm. Usually off-site SEO work will yield better results faster, once the basics are done. But, that is coming from Internet Marketing experts at MyTypes.com, we did write a marketing book on blogs, SEO, search and Social. But how well do we rank, you ask? We are only ranked top 10 in Google and other search engines for very competitive keywords, such as “Create a blog“, “Blogging”, “Free Blog“, “Wordpress SEO“, and we are usually ranked #6-#13 for “SEO“.

Monday, May 19, 2008

Microsoft Revives Yahoo Fight, Considers More Limited Deal

This article is from WSJ



Subject: WSJ.com - Microsoft Revives Yahoo Fight, Considers More Limited Deal






As mentioned before, Microsoft is relentless and very smart. It always wins, some times, it just takes them a little longer. I think another Search Marketing choice is good for consumers. We all don't want to be too depandant on Google. I actually wrote about this a few minutes ago, that Yahoo will soon be irrelevant in search, now it seems, mainly due to the MS deal.





*This article can also be accessed if you copy and paste the entire address below into your web browser. Below the Link is an article summary.

http://online.wsj.com/wsjgate?subURI=%2Farticle%2FSB121114039708401745-email.html&nonsubURI=%2Farticle_email%2FSB121114039708401745-lMyQjAxMDI4MTExOTExNDkwWj.html


Microsoft Revives Yahoo Fight,
Considers More Limited Deal

Search-Ad Venture to Fend Off
Google; Icahn Is Wild Card
By ROBERT A. GUTH, KEVIN J. DELANEY and MATTHEW KARNITSCHNIG
May 19, 2008; Page A1

Microsoft Corp. said it has resumed its effort to team up with Yahoo Inc. -- and reopened the door to the possibility of making a new bid for the Internet company.

According to people familiar with the matter, Microsoft has proposed to Yahoo a deal related to advertisements that run next to Internet search results, a large business that is dominated by Google Inc. The move by Microsoft appears to be an attempt to stop Google from entering a search-related deal with Yahoo that's now under discussion and could be announced in coming days.

In a statement, Microsoft said only that it has raised with Yahoo the possibility of a "transaction" that isn't an acquisition of all of Yahoo, and declined to be more specific. However, Microsoft also said in the statement that it "reserves the right to reconsider" the possibility of a bid for the company, depending on developments or talks with Yahoo or its shareholders or other parties.

The language in the statement, while vague, appears to represent a notable shift in Microsoft's stance. In recent days, Microsoft had told Yahoo representatives that it no longer intended to pursue a takeover of the company, according to people familiar with the matter.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Wetpaint Raises Money Zimbio Keeps on Trucking

No matter how much money a company raises, my bet is always on the best products. I love the Zimbio products Wikis, they do a great Job of importing your blogs. Zimbio is also Much easier to use than Wetpaint. Wetpaint as a portal is well designed, and they do have the Seattle thing going for them, which I am fan of.

Zimbio just has better technology in my opinion, check out their Alexa traffic for both sites, neck and neck. And I bet Zimbio is inching forward organically, which is where bigger growth comes from.

VS
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Blogging or Rambling?

Some times, I think it's ok for blogging and ramblings to be the same. Professional bloggers certainly don't want you to, but I am ok with it, as blogging is suppose to be opinionated truth, your truth in a journal format. And, as a blogging expert, i want people to just vent and ramble. This way they can start blogging and get their voices heard. The reason for my supporting of ramblings is that too many people don't know what to write, and there for don't blog at all. So I say ramble on baby, let's rumble about ramblings versus blogging?

I have not blogged much lately, too busy finishing the marketing book and other stuff. I do have two kids to play with, and it is Sunday. The weather in Seattle has been awesome lately, what am I doing in side you say? Well, I spent the whole day at two view parks with friends and kids, just came in to recharge, and watch a little tennis. And, ofcourse to SEO my favorite web sites and clients via blogging. Work never stops:-), oops forget to mention the ArtworksDesign.com website, these guys are one of the best "web design st. Louis" houses, and our website design st. Louis partners. You will see us do more and more writing about SEO Services and web site how we really need to talk to web designers.

Here is promotional blogs promoting our business stuff, enjoy:

Not thinking about heaters in May

So why am I promoting blogs below on the marketing of our marketing book? because this Infrared Heater and Air Purifier blog has a page rank of 4 and it’s a valuable property, and any links from here help to rank other sites. Getting powerful links from blogs to your website is one of the key’s to getting high rankings. But, you already knew that, if you read our marketing book:-), enjoy the blog and buy the book if you want to promote your business on the Internet and especially Google. Don’t forget to buy air purifiers or Infrared heaters from our sister site at GreenIsBetter.org.

We are doing a test of a couple of titles of our marketing book, here is a blog I wrote about it in our SEO blogs. We know a thing or two about SEO services, SEO, blogs, and internet marketing/advertising and marketing, but we still don’t know what to name the marketing book. Here are the two names we are testing, one at Amazon, and the other on Lulu.com. I am very upfront, my favorite is the first, “Marketing & Motivation; in the Internet Era, learn the secret powers of blogs, search, and social marketing“, second is “Marketing is a Contact sport: make contact through blogs, SEO, search and social marketing“. Which one do you like better?

Just to do a plug for our SEO Services, Keith and Bennett are looking to get a few SEO services clients, if you know anyone looking to get ranked in the top 10 in Google check out our SEO Services area by clicking Here at SEO, or do a search on Google for the keyword “SEO” we are currently ranked #12, was #7 for a few days last week. We are obviously one of the 10 best SEO and search and Internet Marketing companies in the world.

A Marketing Book or book marketing ?

Book Marketing - Research Competing Title Sales And How To Market Books Online

The article above covers the topic of Marketing a book, which is dramatically different than “A Marketing Book“. It’s amazing how sequence of words can make a big difference. Some times keywords confuse us and don’t provide the proper search results, especially regarding “Marketing book“. So we have a marketing book, as titled above by our blog title, “Marketing & Motivation in the Internet era“. We just published it through Lulu and soon it will be on Amazon, within days, well actually it’s already there for it’s Kindle ebook format. That marketing book title is “Marketing is a Contact Sport; make contact through blogs, SEO, search and social marketing”. You can say we are doing a marketing research test to see which title sells. We are also promoting the book, to see what works, and looking for testimonials for the marketing book. We wanted to position the book not just for Internet Marketing, SEO, and Search marketing, but for the wholistic marketing view.

The article linked above on marketing a book talks about promotion via your website, and another top book marketing expert talks about blogs as a way to promote a book. Back in 2003 when I started blogging, I had heard of a woman getting a $Million+ contract for publishing a book. Maybe that was one of my motivations for blogging and working on my writing. I can’t express the value of blogs not just in book promotion, but in SEO and Internet Marketing as a whole. That is why we created the MyTypes blogging platform, and turned it in to a blog promotion and social marketing site to help people promote their blogs and build community. We really do go by the saying “No Blogger left behind”. We have been busy, providing SEO services to clients, and they all want to be #1. The cheapest and the best thing they can do is write smart blogs and do quality linking, you don’t need an SEO Services company to rank you high, unless you really have a very competitive keyword.

So many people ask me the secrets to SEO and search engine rankings, especially as we are ranked in the top 10 in Google for some major keywords. My answer is always to start blogging, and of course to get links. There really are not too many secrets, but there is a lot of work building content and links. Page Rank is becoming more and more important in the quality of links. So start blogging, keep blogging on our free blog system, and get others to provide link to your quality content. And, do yourself a favor buy the marketing book, it really will be the investment you will make. I mean it, well you will be doing me a favor to, so thanks!

Oh, it wouldn’t be a promotional SEO blog, If I didnt’ plug in one of our hot clients such as the Air purifiers from Steril Air Purifier, these are a hot item folks.