Atilus Internet Marketing & Web Development

Don’t break the rules! I just discovered an interesting thing. My colleague, senor Scott Clark, wrote a post about his new blog youtech.me. I did a quick search for the title online:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Promote+your+web+venture

Atilus does pretty well, between 1 & 2 depending on when you search. Not bad at all! Google is routinely indexing the site and we have seen our posts on Google in as little as 5 minutes.

But, as many of you know I authored a post the other day on “How to get on techcrunch.com,” and I decided to quick see if that one was popping up:

http://www.google.com/search?q=How+to+Get+on+TechCrunch.com

No Atilus. Strange.

I then searched for the actual page and wah-lah (is that how you spell that)…. nothing.

It seems that Google completely ignored or excluded this page from their index. Why? Well, it is really my fault. Most of it was copied (although cited) verbatim from the original post.

The point is DO NOT COPY TEXT FROM OTHER websites. It will not be indexed and may hurt your rankings.

I am going to lick my wounds, edit the post, and pray that Google forgives me.

30 Jul | Post by Zach Katkin. Filed under Internet Marketing, SEO, Search Engine Optimization.

Found this very recent search engine optimization article from USA Today care of a terrific Search Engine Watch post. REALLY want to know how to get your website to rank well and perform on the search engines (driving traffic and business). Well it’s simple according to Matt Cutts, Google engineer, the process is simple. Simply follow these five website ranking gems:

1. Spotlight your search term on the page

2. Fill in your “[meta] tags”

3. Get other sites to “link” back to you

4. Create a blog and post often

5. Register for free tools

For more information I highly recommend checking out the original USA Today article.

05 Jul | Post by Zach Katkin. Filed under Blogging, Internet Marketing, SEO, Search Engine Optimization.

At this point you would have to be crazy if your business is not located in the major Internet Yellow Page search engines. Or perhaps you don’t know about them. If the latter is the case, welcome; visit the sites below and begin placing your business in as many of these sites as you can!

What are the Internet Yellow Page search engines (IYPs)?

you ask, well my friend they are a number of websites that list your company or organization based on a geographic location. And many of them are FREE! I won’t bore you with unnecessary jibber jabber, I’ll just list a number of IYPs I’ve found over the years. And please bookmark this page as I will be adding to this list as I continue my everlasting search. Do visit these sites and take a few minutes to add your company. It will help us die-hard local searchers find your company, and bring you additional customer to boot.

Without further ado, in no particular order, the list:

Nationwide Internet Yellow Page Web Sites:
Click the “Add my business” link to add your business today.

• Google Local Add my business to Google Local
• Live Search Maps Add my business to Live Search Maps
• Yahoo! Yellow Pages Add my business to Yahoo! Yellow Pages
• YellowPages.com Add my business to YellowPages.com
• AnyWho.com AnyWho.com data comes from YellowPages.com
• Dex Dex data comes from Embarq YP
• SuperPages.com Add my business to SuperPages.com
• Switchboard Switchboard data comes from SuperPages.com
• Local.com Add my business to Local.com
• AOL Local
• AOL Yellow Pages
• ASK City
• da+
• LocalSearch.com
• MerchantCircle
• TrueLocal
• yellowbook
• YP.com by LiveDeal

Local City Guides and Recommendation Web Sites:

• YellowBot - Add my business to YellowBot
• Yahoo! Local - Add my business to Yahoo! Local
• MSN City Guides
• Citysearch
• areaguides.net
• Hello Metro
• insiderpages
• judy’s book
• yelp

Region Specific Internet Yellow Page Sites:

• bestredyp - Various States
• kudzu - Various Metros and growing

Mobile/Cell phone Friendly Internet Yellow Page Sites:

• go2
• 4INFO

Coupon/Savings Internet Yellow Page Sites:

• welcome wagon

Info/Data Companies for Internet Yellow Page Sites:

• Localeze
• infoUSA

If this has helped you in anyway let me know. Leave your comments below. Thanks.

10 May | Post by Jermaine Primus. Filed under Internet Marketing, Local Search, SEO, Search Engine Optimization.

It’s Sunday morning and you’re in the “library” flipping through the newspaper sales ads. Joe’s Furniture Store (Art Van where I’m from) has a full color circular in the mix every week. Why? They’re hoping to catch the attention of someone who might be in the market for a recliner.

It’s the end of April and the temperature is starting to rise. Now’s the time window & siding people come sniffing around. How? Door to door, if you can believe it! This is incredibly intrusive and annoying.

Mail arrives daily with offers from credit card companies hoping I’ll spread some of my debt to them. Like I need help increasing my debt!

What about the phone calls at dinner time? TV ads that aren’t watched because we’ve all got DVR? Radio ads we tune out, billboards we don’t notice anymore… The list goes on.

What do these marketing methods have in common? They’re not targeted. They waste a lot of money on consumers who won’t or aren’t ready to consume. They’re fishing for sales rather than strategically positioning themselves where those searching for their product can find it. This is where search engine marketing (SEM) comes in. If the goal is to sell a recliner, money should be spent wooing people who are in the market for cushy seating. Consumers are savvy. They’re online researching products, suppliers and prices. SEM nails them when they’re most interested. Benefits include, but are not limited to; low cost, measurable, and easy to change. Cost is low because you’re only spending money on consumers who are interested in your product. Results can be measured on a number of variables such as click through rate, conversions (did they do what you wanted them to), and at what point shoppers abandon your site. Campaigns are easy to change if they’re not producing desired results. Testing can be done on multiple campaigns simultaneously and results are available in real time. Can’t say that about print ads.

I’m not saying the other methods don’t have merit. If used in conjunction with one another they can be effective, especially if personalization is included. BUT, nothing is as cost effective or has as great a return on investment as SEM. With SEM you don’t have to hope that the consumer seeing your ad might be looking for your product – they came looking for you, they want it. And that is the furthest from annoying.

For more information on how Atilus can help with your SEM, please contact us at www.atilus.com

07 May | Post by Meaghan McCann. Filed under Internet Marketing, SEO, Search Engine Optimization.

Yes, internet marketing works! When you think of looking up information or an address where do we usually turn to? If you said the internet you are correct (MSN, Yahoo, AOL and Google).

Google holds about a 70% stake in the internet search business. So why is Google, so important? Because if you rank on the first page for search terms related to your business is likely to increase a great deal, because majority of users do not go past the first page to find results.

There are several way to the top of Google’s rankings, but one leaps ahead of the rest in terms of return on investment… Blog, Blog and Blog you can never blog enough.

Google uses the most current information to rank. BTW there is a complicated formula they use to rank their Search Engine Optimization. Also, if you notice when you go to www.google.com if you type in a search term and at the very top of the page towards the right hand side it says “sponsored links.” These are links and text that companies are paying for. How do you pay for these? You can hire a Google AdWords professional to do what is called Pay Per Click marketing, so you only pay for what people use. In other words, the price depends on what “words” you choose. Very common words are going to cost you more money, but again it’s about ranking in the top five results.

23 Apr | Post by Zach Katkin. Filed under AdWords, Blogging, Blogs, Internet Marketing, SEO, Search Engine Optimization.

Before going into detail about how you can optimize your website for search engines I would like to quickly explain what search engine optimization is and why it is so important.

Right now the web is dominated by three major search engines: Google, Yahoo, and MSN (live).

What is a Search Engine?

A search engine can be thought of as the largest storefront of all time. But, it dispenses EVERYTHING (all information on the web). You walk up to the counter (visit Google.com) and ask the magical clerk anything (type in your search), you hit “go” and off he runs back into the largest warehouse of all time to find you exactly what you need. In a matter of milliseconds he’s back with a list of the things he thinks you need. Essentially this is how a search engine works.

Read the rest of this entry …

17 Apr | Post by Zach Katkin. Filed under SEO, Search Engine Optimization, WVO, Web Basics.

In the first corner, standing 5′6, 360 lbs, blind in one eye and wearing a knee brace is the 78 year old former heavy weight champion of the world conventional OFFLINE marketing!

And in the second corner, standing a proud 6′2, a solid 225 lbs, is the fresh, fit, 22 year old undefeated light heavy weight champion of the world ONLINE Internet marketing!!

Hmmm… doesn’t sound like much of a fight, but I’d stick around for the finish. It’s gonna be quick.

Read the rest of this entry …

16 Apr | Post by Scott L. Clark. Filed under Internet Marketing, Pay Per Click, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Uncategorized.

I have been writing an in-depth article about search engines and search engine optimization for a number of local publications. Although I can’t reveal the entire multi-part article yet I did find something today that I thought would be a really great preface.

Matt Cutts’ (from Google) blog revealed some great simple insight into how search engine spiders or robots operate:

Think of search engine spiders much like small children. They go around the web clicking on links. Unless there’s a link to a page, it can be hard for a search engine to find out about that page.

Please check out the post for some very simple and basic rules regarding your web site and search engines.

12 Apr | Post by Zach Katkin. Filed under SEO, Search Engine Optimization.

First of all, let’s get this out of the way… you need a website. Period.

And not just any ol’ website, but a great website with clear, crisp professional, easy to navigate design with superb user ability and functionality. Furthermore, you need a website that is just as easy for you to use administratively, as it is for your site visitors to use.

It doesn’t matter if you are a national corporate brand, a smaller brick and mortar with ‘plenty of business’, a brick and mortar with only local business, or an ice cream shop that only sells to people between 5′10 and 5′11 wearing baseball hats before 3 pm only… you still need a website! Your business can be broad or niche, it can be large or small, and despite what you may believe… you need a website!

Now, what does a website cost?

Read the rest of this entry …

10 Apr | Post by Scott L. Clark. Filed under Blogs, Business, Design, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Web Design, social media.

As an internet professional, I often take my knowledge for granted. So I have taken the liberty of expressing some random thoughts that I have about internet marketing that upset me on a personal and business level…

The 7 “YOU MUST KNOW’S” of Internet marketing:

Read the rest of this entry …

08 Apr | Post by Scott L. Clark. Filed under Email Newsletter, Internet Marketing, Pay Per Click, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Web Basics, Web Design.