By Bob Speyer and Kristin Tomlinson – Web Success Team

SEO certification is one of the hottest topics among online marketers. It is one of the most controversial and misunderstood because there is no consensus on a uniform certification. Universities offer courses and certification, private industries have their own certification and even Google has entered the fray. What is certain is the growing demand to optimize a website for optimum search performance.

SEO certification is coming of age as an important component of an online marketer’s arsenal and being certified is key to being viewed as an expert in Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. Not only does a certification draw in future employers, but it also catches the eye of potential clients. The ability to brand your website with the “SEO Certification” logo instantly opens the door to countless opportunities including recognition from your competition, positive feedback from potential customers, and an increase in job opportunities.

Using Clay to Construct an SEO Model

Bruce Clay is an internationally recognized SEO expert and trainer. He is one of the best and brightest when it comes to all things SEO. He believes that the “mission of SEO is to make a site’s content worthy of higher search engine ranking by being more relevant and competent than the competition.” Clay emphasizes that in order to achieve web success, you need to follow Google Best Practices Guidelines and keep up to date on the ever-changing world of search by getting a SEO certification.

Many companies are now offering certification, including the 2010 Online Marketing Summit. Hosted in San Diego from February 22-25, 2010, OMS is the only marketing conference that is purely education-focused. Attendees will learn to execute some of the best practices in Online Marketing as well as discover new tools and actionable tactics. Before the conference, the Online Marketing Institute is offering a special Online Marketing Training workshop where attendees will gain credit toward certification. Classes at OMI are also offered both online for convenience.

Google offers certification from their Analytics Conversion University courses by taking the Google Analytics Individual Qualification test. The lessons are offered free from Google, but the GAIQ test has a nominal $50 fee. After completion of their advanced Training Course, an individual will be able to maximize the use of the Google tools and apply them to any website. And importantly, you will receive a Google certification that you can place on your website.

Taking a Spot at the Top

SEO Certification will give you the ability to implement the best practices to improve websites, blogs and other online content that has the potential to target countless markets. With a certification, you will be able to effectively optimize websites, improve their page rank, increase overall consumer visits, and improve conversion rates. A SEO certification badge on your website will also add to your portfolio as an expert in online marketing. Wouldn’t it be nice if the SEO certification were consolidated into one universal exam? Legitimate SEO and SEM marketers could then be recognized as professionals.

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By Bob Speyer and Kristen Tomlinson, Web Success Team

Text messaging has officially jumped ship from being a high school phase made popular by teenagers to an advertising craze utilized by business powerhouses to promote their brands. SMS stands for “short message service,” and is more commonly known as texting. This type of service can be found on an array of cell phones and allows text messages to be sent from one phone to another or from the Web to a cell phone.

The Coming of Age of Mobile Marketing
Demographically speaking, there are over 2 billion people in the world that own a cell phone, and of that number, 200 million are in the U.S. These figures alone make SMS Marketing very appealing to businesses. There is now great opportunity to target untapped markets for new and existing customers cost-effectively and achieve web success by delivering promotional online campaigns direct to cell. SMS Marketing gives corporations the ability to personalize and customize messages via text. Mobile SMS marketing is a quick, personal, and direct way to publicize products and services, producing real time measurable results.

In Text We Trust — to Promote

SMS allows you to send a variety of promotional materials, such as coupons, daily reminders for upcoming events, specials on products, and emergency alerts with the click of button. This form of direct response marketing is also beneficial because it allows you more personal contact with your clients “one-to-one” and enables you to reach customers anytime, anywhere. SMS Marketing is a great way to let your audience interact with your brand. Notable marketing campaigns include President Obama’s text notification of his pick for Vice President during the 2008 Campaign and the current Red Cross 90-999 Mobile Campaign to raise money for the earthquake victims of Haiti were groundbreaking and very successful.

Valuable Take-A-Ways to Consider

1. Pricing: At present SMS Marketing is new and therefore very reasonable.
2. Branding and Updates: It is a quick and easy way to connect with your customers and potential customers.
3. Captive and Unlimited Audience: Everyone has a cell phone. And they read their messages.

Get Your Slice of the Mobile Pie

With the Mobile Advertising Industry worth at least $1 billion, the informed are positioning to slice up the mobile pie. So now is the time to get in on the action. With Google’s recent purchase of AdMob and news that Apple is buying Quattro Wireless, the mobile advertising industry is fast becoming one of the biggest social media outlets since Facebook and Twitter. SMS marketing is easy, quick, and it falls directly into the palm of your very own hand.

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James Cameron’s Avatar has touched a nerve in our collective psyche. Much in the same vein, Social Media has exploded into our digital world, changing the landscape on how we think, react and do business.

What does Avatar and Social Media have in common? They are both brave new worlds that have captured our imagination and have connected us to each other. In a world gone wild with war, natural disasters and the human condition, we all yearn for a place (real or digital) that will give us meaning and a way to express our individuality and our humanity.

Our Primal Need

One of the most striking comparisons of Avatar and Social Media was the interconnectivity of the Na’vi to their natural habitat and to each other. Their umbilicus was a synaptic nerve cord emanating from their head in the form of a long pony tail. When physically connected to another life form, they had pure communication of thoughts and emotions, and could have a symbiotic influence on each other. Social Media networking is fulfilling that primordial need to be connected, to make our presence felt and have the ability to influence and be influenced. In essence, make our voice or vote count. We are not living and breathing avatars, but our digital networking is connecting our avatar to yours.

A modern day analogy happened in the 1960s when the youth felt disenfranchised from our society and found meaning in the proverbial “love-ins.” As the beat poet of that generation, Jerry Rubin, so eloquently noted, “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” Those words resonated around the globe. The youth were connected through rock n roll, the Beatles, the Vietnam War, and flower power. They influenced generations and these baby boomers are still a force today.

The Bonds that Influence Us

Trust is another comparison worth noting between the Movie and Social Media. It is the glue that holds both systems together. The hero in Avatar, Jake Sully, needed to understand the rules, the customs and learn how to move in an alien world. He needed to gain the trust of the Na’vi, not just live amongst them as a intelligence gathering project. But something happened once he truly felt engaged with his mentor and love-interest, he changed and the world changed with him. Social Media has its rules of engagement and if you are to be successful you need to understand that the process takes time. Watch, learn and build trust. Be a part of an online community and actively participate.

The effectiveness of Social Media is in building relationships, making your presence felt in positive non-exploitative ways. Establish your brand of influence, offer content, suggestions, advice, reliability. In Avatar, the Sky People (aka humans) saw “gold” and wanted to mine it, regardless of the environmental impact. Bulldozing your way through the jungle with purely self-interest objectives is counter productive. Short term gains, long term angst.

Standing Ten Feet Tall and Blue

Social Media enhances your brand image and makes you stand out from your competition and be that 10 foot tall blue Avatar. Take the time to understand it, cultivate it and fall in love with it. Enjoy the experience.

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Cyber Monday is a term coined by retailers to capitalize on the shopping season and traditionally know as the strongest day for online retail sales and web success. Point of fact, it is also generating more sales than in store purchases, making it bigger than Black Friday.
Cyber Monday is the traditional “kick-off” to the online shopping season. This year sales could exceed $900 million, making this the biggest day for online retailers according to the Dow Jones and Com Score. Sales rose 14% this year over last year’s haul and bought 30% more items per order as well.

Online shopping is a juggernaut that is here to stay. Be it convenience, time and cost savings, shoppers are rabid for deals. Couple this with the fact that Monday is a workday, imagine the lost productivity as shoppers take advantage of the Internet bargains.

Social Media Fuels Cyber Monday Sales

Retailers are capitalizing on this consumer onslaught by leveraging social media to drive sales, using their Facebook Fan pages and their Twitter accounts to offer huge discounts. Here are some Facebook page examples: Cyber Monday offering holiday deals for more than 700 merchants with “Deals of the Week” and “Deals of the Hour;” JC Penny offering huge discounts for Cyber Monday; and Wal-Mart with savings from their website on electronics, toys and groceries.

According to the Wichita Business Journal: “Electronics retailers will be the big winners during this holiday season with: Amazon had the most visits on Friday, up 28 percent from last year. Wal-Mart, Target, Apple and Best Buy, all of which have multiple stores in Wichita, were among the most popular sites. Apple’s traffic was up 39 percent from last year, the biggest year-over-year gain among most-visited sites.”

And since online holiday shopping is just kicking off expect more of the same great deals as we progress to Christmas, and the after Christmas sales to build even more momentum.

Capitalize on the Power of Social Media Marketing

If you still are underestimating the power of Social Media, think again and use all the tools that the web has to offer you to build your business online. The Web Success Team can you promote your business through the Power of Social Media Marketing. Contact us today and we’ll show you how to build an effective network to sell your products and services.

TeamWork Builds Web Success

The Web Success Team specializes in building and marketing direct response websites that take full advantage of the latest developments on the Internet. The Team has an arsenal of effective web strategies, online tools and proven techniques to promote your products and services. And we’ll show you ways to increase the amount of qualified traffic to your site through the expanding social media and online marketing strategies.

For more tips, tools and articles of interest, become a fan of the WebSuccessTeam Facebook Page and learn more about online marketing, SEO and social media.

Contact the Team today for a complimentary consultation to your web success!

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Attention fellow fans and friends of the Web Success Team Fan Page! We have recently posted an exclusive report regarding specific points of “How Facebook Can Help Your Business – A Few Proven Results” and we want to offer it to our fans first.
The Web Success Team is sharing this report to help you achieve web success with direct response online marketing, search engine optimization, online branding, and online business strategies.

10 Specific Strategies to achieve facebook success

In this report you will learn It how your Facebook fan page can help further your business and increase your sales. We are more than happy to share our wide range of tools, tips and suggestions to educate the online business community to help make it better and more informed about choices regarding websites, how to target niche markets, and how to maximize growth and accelerate ROI.

Facebook is proven to boost traffic and sales, it produces guaranteed results. Web Success is our middle name, and we want to show you how to achieve it via Facebook. Whether you’re a small business or large cooperation, success doesn’t discriminate and neither does Facebook. The report illustrates how Facebook can make your business goals a reality. Through the various media outlets that Facebook has to offer, you can accomplish your goals, increase your traffic and sales, and reap the rewards, all with the click of a mouse! It’s that simple!

So if you are a WST Facebook Fan download your version! Or Fan the WST today for tips, tools and articles of interest and FREE stuff.

And of course do feel free to share, blog, tweet and Retweet!

To your Web Success
The Web Success Team

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Back when blogs didn’t exist…or did they?

By Eric Pangburn Web Success Team Contributor

Looking back, it is hard to imagine that there was a time when things such as “blogs”, “blogging” and “bloggers” didn’t exist. Yes, some of us have been around long enough to remember when everyone didn’t have some sort of online presence. Things are a lot different today as blogs are routinely used by everyone in order to achieve web success, implement corporate branding and act as an effective tool in direct response marketing. In fact, direct response websites – of which blogs are only some of the more recognizable incarnations – can be some of the most effective tools to have at your disposal to grow your business online. The online world is a constantly changing environment and you neglect the blogging phenomenon at your own risk.

Communication in the pre-blog age

This is not to say that people didn’t have any means by which to share information, we have indeed advanced dramatically since the “two cups tied to a string” phase, thereby enabling peers to interact with each other before the advent of blogs and blogging. Back then, there were actually numerous thriving digital communities, among which the legendary USENET, GEnie, BiX and CompuServe reigned supreme. In addition, there were also e-mail lists. By the time the 1990s rolled around, certain enterprising individuals and companies banded together to create WebEx, which was the first online service to introduce the concept of “threaded” conversations. Tell that to the Facebook-happy online cowboys of today! This early online communications model – which can be paralleled to posting and replying to messages on a corkboard– served as the blueprint upon which virtually all online communications services that have come along since then have been built on.

While CD’s were busy outselling vinyl, blogs were busy putting outdated and old fashion norms of communication six-feet under… permanently. The fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 indeed marked the end of an era that was defined by ancient forms of communication, and introduced an uprising of technological advancements in blogging and the online world.

Online diary and so much more

The next significant phase in the development of blogging occurred between the years of 1994 and 2001, where the concept of “the blog” as an online diary first took root. This essentially meant thousands of people kept an online record of everything that went on in their lives. The term “blogger” wasn’t used then obviously – in fact, it probably hadn’t even been conceptualized yet – and most people who engaged in such online activities referred to themselves as “diarists” or “journalists”. Many of these practitioners were members of the academe and the scientific communities, and these people are recognized today as the earliest “bloggers” in the modern sense of the word.

It is surprising to note that these early blogs actually had more in common with modern blogs than you would think. An early blog called the Wearable Wireless WebCam utilized text, graphics, and video in pretty much the same manner that modern blogs do today. Of course, the results were far from the smooth and slick displays that confront you with some of today’s more impressive blogs, but you can definitely see the roots of today’s current blogging scene at work in these early examples.

Blogging trickles down to the masses

As significant as all these previous events have been, these wouldn’t have been much different if it weren’t for the introduction of easier to use blogging tools that essentially served to democratize the entire blogging process. Back then, blogging remained a “black art” for many of the less technologically inclined Web residents, many of whom didn’t have the slightest idea about how to go about putting together a blog. Apparently, Borders didn’t carry “Blogging for Dummies.” This eventually led to the rise of a new stream of online publishing and made it easy for anyone anywhere to post his or her thoughts online without having to know very much about the underlying technologies. These days, you can simply download some sort of browser-based blogging software, of which services such as WordPress, Movable Type, Blogger and LiveJournal are some of the most widely used.

The origins of the word

All this still hasn’t explained where the term “blog” came from. As it turns out, the term “weblog” was introduced by Jorn Barger, with Peter Merholz later coming up with a shortened term “blog”, and the rest is history. It was shortly afterwards that “blog” came in the popular usage as both a noun and as a verb.

Blogging is a potent political tool

Beginning roughly around 2001, blogging became particularly prevalent among certain individuals in the American political scene. Blogs such as Politics1.com, Political Wire, Instapundit, and Little Green Footballs all greatly contributed to the wider spread exchange of information among political analyzers and the public. One blog called The Daily Dish achieved considerable popularity in the days after the September 11 tragedy involving the WTC twin Towers.

More recently, blogging has been used to marvelous effect during some of the more newsworthy political campaigns, such as the drive to instill now-President Barack Obama into the White House. If that doesn’t drive home the influencing power of the blog, then we don’t know what does!

Blogging made easier

By the end of the year, blogging was sufficiently popular to inspire the release of several blogging how-to guides, all of which aimed to instruct the general public on the finer points of blogging. At the same time, blogging’s role in the community outside of the Internet increased exponentially as well. In fact, even many of the more established journalism schools all over the world were looking into the implications of blogging as it related to traditional journalism.

Blogging today and in the future

Today, blogging has undeniably penetrated the mainstream, with everyone from high-powered corporate executives (and those involved in scientific and academic pursuits), to housewives (and even younger children) blogging on a regular basis.

It remains uncertain as to what the different forms of blogging would take on in the coming years. Even now, many bloggers have moved on from the Web into various other media such as radio and television. The migration process has gone the other way as well, with many personalities associated with “traditional” media having gone on to become influential bloggers in their own rights. One thing is for sure, with the many benefits that blogging continues to offer, anyone who is looking to achieve web success, grow your business online, launch a direct response marketing campaign, or simply get their thoughts out for the world to read, blogging will remain an important facet of the online experience for many years to come.

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By Bob Speyer and Eric Pangburn Web Success Team

You can have the flashiest and most visually impressive website on the Internet, but if no one ever visits it, then your site isn’t really doing you that much good. By the same token, an e-commerce site that pulls in a fair amount of traffic but very little actual sales isn’t living up to its potential either. In both cases, the one factor that can tip the scales in your favor is effective lead generation. And not just any leads, mind you; what you want are leads that are targeted specifically to build your business.

While there was a time when leads were typically gathered by way of telemarketing and e-mail databases, these methods have largely been supplanted by more currently accepted methods using online avenues. E-mail marketing is particularly deemed outdated, since this opens you up to accusations of spamming. In most cases, the customers that you’re targeting may simply be annoyed by your marketing efforts. Worse, they may even get you in trouble with your e-mail provider. For this reason, more and more people are turning towards online means of lead generation as opposed to cold calling, telemarketing and e-mail.

Below are some effective ways by which you could generate leads and achieve web success in the face of today’s changing online world.

1. Locate the Target: Find out where your customers are and how they can be reached. You can’t go after your target market if you don’t know where it is; it’s that simple. If you have written a book on gardening, the obvious places to look for leads are gardening websites and forums.
2. Join Relevant Communities: Once you have figured out where your potential customers hang out online, join in on the community that they are a part of. Resist the temptation to blatantly market your products or services to them, and instead strive to become an active contributor to the online community. This will allow you to build a rapport with your potential market base that can be used as a foundation for a solid marketing campaign effort.
3. Advertising and Link Exchange: Find out what other websites your customers visit regularly and check them out as well. They may prove to be fresh ground for your marketing and/or advertising campaign. Find out if the website in question accepts advertising and what their rates are. They may even accept article submissions in which case you will want to find out what the terms and conditions of use are. You may even be able to exchange links with the website owner. Don’t automatically disregard a site just because you deem it as a competitor. You may be surprised at the number of websites that are willing to work with the competition just as long as they can benefit from the arrangement as well.
4. Build Your Email List with Value: While unsolicited e-mail can definitely hurt your marketing efforts, a mailing list is almost essential for keeping your existing customers in the loop. Make sure that you do have something extra to offer your customers that are on your mailing list, so that they will feel privileged and being a part of it.
5. Paid Search: PPC or pay per click advertising has been around for a number of years now. While it has its fair share of detractors who feel that it is somewhat outdated and ineffective, it is still a pretty viable means of generating leads. Google’s AdWords is still used by many individuals and companies who want to achieve greater visibility on the Internet. The rates for such ads will vary depending on how crowded your particular field is and where on the page your ad will be placed, among other factors. The beauty of AdWords is that they offer you plenty of flexibility with regard to how much you spend on your ads. Furthermore, you only pay a fee when a visitor clicks on your ad.
6. Blogging: Developing and maintaining an active blog is critical to your lead generation efforts. Posting relevant articles, tips and tidbits peppered with keywords will help drive qualified traffic to your website. One of the weaknesses of a site owner is never having enough time to blog post. We cannot stress this strongly enough. If you don’t have the time, hire a freelance writer.
7. Article Marketing: Get published! A good way to generate new leads is by writing articles that your potential customers may be interested in and getting them published on relevant websites. Most of the websites that allow article submission will feature your author bio as well as a link to your website. There are article aggregators (paid and non-paid) that will circulate your articles on directories, newsletters, blogs, websites to save you time. You submit one article and they distribute it to hundreds of relevant sites.
8. Social Media Networking: Finally, don’t neglect the popular social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and even YouTube. Such sites regularly pull in thousands of people every day, so you can imagine just how vast an exploration area that is for your marketing efforts. The field is wide open for you to reap the leads that your online business needs, and you would do well to explore them as a part of a holistic online marketing campaign.

As you can see, lead generation is a multi-faceted discipline that involves several different methods. The key to success is pinpointing which of these methods actually deliver results and focusing your efforts on them. Not all methods will work the same way for your site as it does for another, so you should carefully consider all your options.

The Web Success Team

SPECIAL: Solopreneur Package – Jump Start Your Business
The Web Success Team’s Solopreneur Package includes a 5-page custom direct response website fully branded and optimized for Search Engines with 6-months of online marketing, social networking, blogging, article marketing and much more. Lock in your special pricing now before the rate goes up! Contact the Web Success Team at 818-222-5643 or email bob@websuccessteam.com. To your web success!

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By Bob Speyer, President, Web Success Team

Duplicate content is pervasive on the web. It’s so easy to take someone’s article or text and place it on your website or blog. “Everybody does it, so why shouldn’t I?” There are a great many reasons why you shouldn’t and this article will address them and make a good case for putting in the extra effort and develop original content. I will also discuss how you can eliminate duplicate content and therefore improve your search engine rankings and visibility.

How Search Engine Spiders Find Duplicated Content?
Duplicate content is when the search engine spiders detect content that has the same correlation and scoring with two or more web pages. They detect “edit distance,” in which the spiders determine how many changes are made to make it look like another document. Another determinant is they first identify and then eliminate items such as Nav Bars, Footers and Headers before comparing the documents in question. On a larger scale, they sort documents in similar categories and compare those groups to detect the duplications.

Detecting and Eliminating Duplicate Content on Your Website
If sites are determined to run duplicate content, then those questionable pages are barred from the search engine results pages (SERPs) and they will not appear in a search. However, there are tools that can help you identify the offending content in a website and help you restore the page in the SERPs.

Fortunately, there are tools out there that can help to identify Duplicate Content within a Website and assist in restoring the Webpage in the SERPs. Select a tool that will identify the exact correlation between a multiple number of documents and between your website pages; and not ones that just compare two pages. Once you make the corrective changes, run the tool again to see the results.

Of course there are things you shouldn’t do, such as: not writing content that is placed in a common area and shared (like the Header, Navigation and Footer). Also avoid changing words to their synonyms, like car and automobile or switching word order. And make sure you have enough content on each page, the less content the greater possibility of duplication detection.

Be Original, It Pays Off
Play it straight. If you develop content that is original you will greatly benefit. For starters, you position yourself as an authority on your subject matter. You site will get better rankings and hence more visibility. You will attract more authority links or inbound links that also help with search engine ranking. If you don’t have the time to write content consider hiring a ghostwriter. You can do the research and give them the direction. And remember to add content to your website at least once a week. And anything your write should have your keywords embedded for search. Take the time, it will pay off and you won’t have to worry about not being searched. Remember the spiders aren’t human and do not hold grudges. They simply go tirelessly around the clock searching for ways to knock you down on the rankings. Don’t give them the satisfaction, be original!

The Web Success Team

SPECIAL: Solopreneur Package – Jump Start Your Business
The Web Success Team’s Solopreneur Package includes a 5-page custom direct response website fully branded and optimized for Search Engines with 6-months of online marketing, social networking, blogging, article marketing and much more. Lock in your special pricing now before the rate goes up! Contact the Web Success Team at 818-222-5643 or email bob@websuccessteam.com. To your web success!

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