Month: February 2007

Poor Sheryl Crow, first she get’s dumped by Lance Armstrong, then she’s on the dumbest commercial of the Super Bowl! Here are the top 5 reasons her commercial was so bad:

1. Too Long! Did you all feel the way I did, it just kept going and going and going…You would have thought this was a commercial for Energizer but 100 times worse.

2. Who is their target audience? This is football, not couples ice skating (nothing against ice skating but come on)! Is a football game really the best target audience for hair products?

3. What were they marketing again? Like was said before, they were marketing the wrong product to the wrong audience. But beside that, the ad didn’t really tell us anything about the product or give us a good idea about what it did, not that we really cared!

4. They spent $5 million on that? Wow, interesting use of a marketing budget! Maybe they should get a “marketing consultant” from Moller Marketing! 🙂

5. The Male Hairstylist…Need I say more?

To watch the hideous event (if you dare), click here

What do you all think? As I watched the news tonight after the game, the top 10 Super Bowl Commercials came on; only a few of them were really funny to me, but the main question is, “How effective will they be for the companies that invested millions in advertising money to be seen during the Super Bowl?”

I liked the “Things you can do with one finger” by e-Trade. The Budweiser beer commercial were everyone was slapping one another was pretty stupid. What was the point? I liked the “beard comb over”, but was it really that effective for Sierra Mist? What kind of ROI will they get, or was their entire plan to brand themselves more effectively? The Kevin Federline idea by Nationwide was really pretty funny – it had great meaning – “life comes at you fast”, just like it did for Kevin Federline and Brittney Spears. The snickers commercial “accidental kiss” was pretty funny, but how effective was it for Snickers? Was it really worth the $1,000,000+ they probably spent to get on TV during the Super Bowl?

What did you all think? Why do these companies invest so much? What confirms their buying decision? Can they actually track the response of viewers or do they care?

After making the post about PageRank yesterday, I decided to read a little more in to the value of PageRank versus when you were last cached. Not to my surprise, SEO Blog has a great point: PageRank isn’t quite as important as it used to be…or maybe better said – Cache Date is the New Google Page Rank. As Aaron Wall mentioned:

What Google frequently visits (and spends significant resources to keep updated) is what they consider important.

How do we get cached more often? Revise content, add new content, help Google see that we are providing valuable information all the time. I’ve been watching my blog since I started making posts and it is cached so much more frequently than my older, higher page ranked clogging shoes website. I’m sure that’s primarily because I don’t change the home or sub-pages very often on that site. In contrast, with my blog, the consistency is there: new posts are made almost every day, the content stays true to a general idea or theme, and I make it a point to give credit where credit is due with anchor links to viable sources.

Running a website, or multiple websites, is definitely not a “turn key”, sit back and watch the money role in business. Like anything, it takes hard work, well thought out plans, and action. If we want to increase the frequency that Google caches our site, we better get our butts in gear! Jim Boykin offers a free tool to check the cache date of your web pages.

I know, some may say that PageRank isn’t that important anymore. However, I still think it’s a great indicator of Google credibility. For this reason you should check out this cool tool: http://www.prtool.info/multiple-pagerank-checker.php

Let me know what your PageRank is!

In a nut shell, this is some of the best advice about SEO and eCommerce from Jim Westergren, owner and operator of www.addurl.nu. He’s been in the SEO industry for quite sometime and always has great information to share. I’ve seen, as I use the strategies for my clogging shoes site and others, the results come.

I really feel that if my clients can use these tips and specific strategies, they will be successful!

It all starts with effective “Keyword Research”

• Target the best keywords based on relevance (I use Wordtracker numbers at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com and www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion)

On-Page Optimization

• Domain name: Get the most important keyword in the domain name. Don’t make it look spammy: if the visitor feels it spammy, Google thinks so too!
• Title: Use variations of keywords. Don’t repeat the same word more than 2 times. 6-8 words maximum.
• Internal navigation: Each web page HAS to be reachable within two clicks. If not with navigation structure(like a side navigation bar or links at the top) then with a sitemap.
• If some pages are much more important than others, isolate them by getting more links pointed there. For example if the homepage is very important make a link to it from each page – both for the visitors and for the Search Engines.
• Meta description: Use keywords in the beginning and action for the visitor in the end. ie. Find clogging shoes for men, women, and children. Ask about dance team discounts.
• Pages should contain quality text: Each page should have at least 250 words.
• Use the Title attributes in the anchor tags. (ask me if you have questions on this)
• Use keywords in the ALT description tags for images. (Search engines only see pictures if we do this – otherwise there is nothing there to a search engine.)
• Use the strong tag if possible to emphasize keywords.
• Keyword repetition is good. However, spread out the keywords within the body of the text. Keyword density is important but if it feels spammy, it probably is. Remember, you write for the visitor, not just the search engines.
• If you have any tables, use the summary attribute.
• Avoid frames and flash.
• Keep your files under 100K. (Spiders may disregard bigger files. You can see how big your page is by looking at your site in google.)
• Have your content changed/updated on a regular basis so the spiders will come more often. (Check cached option in google to see how often spiders are coming right now.)
• Never link to any site that could be seen as a bad site.

There’s much more to come. I’ve reworded things, made some adjustments based on what I feel clients will understand (Keep It Simple Stupid idea!) and hope you will use these suggestions to better optimize your site!