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.

As seen on Fox News:

SAN FRANCISCO — Anna Patterson’s [Ex-Google executive] last Internet search engine was so impressive that industry leader Google Inc. bought the technology in 2004 to upgrade its own system.

She believes her latest invention is even more valuable — only this time it’s not for sale.

Patterson instead intends to upstage Google, which she quit in 2006 to develop a more comprehensive and efficient way to scour the Internet.

The end result is Cuil, pronounced “cool.” Backed by $33 million in venture capital, the search engine plans to begin processing requests for the first time Monday.

See rest of story here.

28 Jul | Post by Scott L. Clark. Filed under Tech Trends.

You have already taken a huge step towards marketing success by choosing to create a website to promote your company, sell your products and services, as well as brand your company online.

But with all the ways to conventionally and unconventionally market your website, which direction is best?

Read the rest of this entry …

16 Jul | Post by Scott L. Clark. Filed under Business, Internet Marketing.

Google is much more than a search engine. It is the ultimate, most advanced network on this planet. No company can outshine Google at this point. It is without question that Google, along with the internet revolution has made our lives so much easier and has changed the internet for the better. With that being said, when comparing to other search engine resources, Google includes an astronomical variety of programs and new product developments. Most of them are not very familiar to most people. Before I joined this internet marketing team and started exploring the tools associated with SEO, I know I wasn’t aware of Google’s capacity. I have been introduced to a great amount of Google applications and was so impressed that I wanted to become more experimental with Google.com. After playing around with Google.com for several hours, I was so astounded that as a result of this brief research on the corporation, I can shamelessly admit that I have become seriously consumed and overly obsessed with it.

What do you know about Google?

Besides the search engine, I am sure you are all aware of Gmail, Picassa, Google Earth, Google maps, Google Images & Videos, yet there is still so much more. Google’s website is comprised of desktop products (standalone applications and desktop extensions), mobile products (online and downloadable), hardware products, web products (advertising, communication & publishing, development, mapping, search, and statistics), and even more.

“Huh?”

Don’t worry, I will go through a few of these handy applications and will explain some of the “Google Tricks” that I picked up on.

The first Google product that I found interesting was IGoogle. IGoogle is a personal Google webpage designed by Y-O-U, complete with multiple tabs of your interests (ie. Art tab, News tab, Humor tab, Entertainment, etc) as well as the search engine across the top of the page. You can design your Igoogle page so it suits you. You are able to make a personal to-do list, calendar of you personal events, your horoscope, and more that you can design for your homepage. One can create an IGoogle page by visiting to www.Igoogle.com.

Google Notebook and Google Docs are also useful apps, but they are entirely different. If you are at a website and come across content that you would like to save for later, Google Notebook allows you to highlight the content, clip it to the e-notebook so it is saved for future use, and finally add comments about the selection. This is very helpful, especially when researching a topic. Google Docs on the other hand is perfect for uploading, editing, and sharing your own documents, presentations, and spreadsheets with others on the web.

Google Sky is a particular function within Google’s mapping designed to view the stars and galaxies. There are several other off-the-wall mapping tools that are attention-grabbing too. To name a few, there is Ride Finder and Google Transit. With Ride Finder, it will show the real-time position of participating shuttle, limousine, and taxi service in 14 US cities. Google Transit makes planning public transportation trips trouble-free.

Goog411- By adding the number 1-800-Goog411 to your mobile’s address book, you can call Google’s 411 Directory for various listings and directions. Also, by adding the number 46645(Google SMS) to your phone, you can text Google to find out all sorts of listings. Google SMS can provide people with local businesses, weather, glossary, sports, movies, flights, weather, translation, stocks, airlines and more. Example: By texting Google with “Weather, 33928”, you will receive the weather forecast for that area.

Google Answers- Have a few questions? Google’s question and answer service allows users to pay researchers to answer your questions.

Google Calculator- Are your math skills a little weak? Well worry no more. Google, The Math Master, has made it incredibly simple for you! Type in any equation into the Google search engine and it will automatically calculate it for you. How neat is that?

Scholar- If you are researching a topic. Google Scholar provides relevant scholarly journal articles on the topic you are investigating. Professors and college students will love this app!

Blogging and Google Reader- Blogging addict, you’re in luck! By joining Google Blogs and Google Reader, you can blog on your own and can also subscribe and stay up to date with all of your favorite blogs. Google Reader is a tab located at the top of your G-Mail account that categorizes and updates your most preferred blogs and blogging sites. With this added application, you can participate daily in blogs and share them with friends!

Google toolbar- If you decide to download the Google toolbar, you will never see a flashy ad or mock computer system alert pop-up again. Phewww!

Google talk- Google Talk is very similar to Skype in that it allows you to IM and call your contacts for free from your computer. It is beneficial for communicating between businesses and for keeping in touch with close friends and relatives.

Real player- I was completely unaware of this tool. If you enjoy downloading music and videos in your spare time, this is ideal for you. This Google gadget allows you to transfer music and videos to your Ipod or MP3 player. Simple as that!

Google’s Business Solutions are extremely helpful for Atilus and we use them consistently throughout the day. We use Google’s Adwords account for SEO and PPC. We also use Google Analytics to monitor the traffic on our clients websites and our own. Google’s other business solutions services are located at www.google.com/services/.

The tools I have listed are only a few selected from Google’s limitless list of entertaining and useful applications. Google even has different kinds of communicating services and social networking memberships within its site. If you are interested in seeing what else Google has to offer, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products or browse around on http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/.

15 Jul | Post by admin. Filed under Blogs.

Amidst internal office discussions, as we love to keep the watering hole occupied, Pay Per Click marketing became a topic of discussion- as it often does.

I had a thought, “The constant changing of the Google PPC algorithms has refined the process to a science. Does that mean individuals who participated in early stage PPC marketing, who failed to achieve the results promised at the time, would be discouraged in pursuing modern day strategic PPC campaigning?”

Many things have changed over the years, making PPC internet marketing subsequently far more precise, effective, and cost efficient. However, the unfortunate early pioneers who dared to dabble before its refinement period may have produced a permanent bad taste on their marketing pallets.

I am here to challenge those pioneers to smell a coffee bean and pop a Mentos because it simply doesn’t get any better than PPC! There may have been a time in which thousands of your dollars were dumped on text ads that were loosely and arbitrarily placed based on erratic, weak, simplistic, easily manipulated and ill thought out algorithms, but Google has since dumped millions of their own into creating arguably the greatest method for todays big and small businesses alike to capture the consuming audience in the emotional buying moment, as quickly as they ask for it by simply running a textual search query. And the arsenal of tools offered by Google and the like to maximize ROI are only growing and getting increasingly more effective.

So put that cigarette out, cap the whiskey, stop feeling sorry for the past, and put on that suit that you once wore to take on the business world at large and get back in the internet marketing game. The game just got fun again.

This ain’t yo Daddy’s PPC anymore, son!

10 Jul | Post by Scott L. Clark. Filed under Internet Marketing, Pay Per Click.

I know internet marketing is still very mysterious, difficult to comprehend and often easy for marketers to hide behind fraudulent or misleading web analytic reports and false promises, which ultimately lead to zero delivery.

It sucks. I know. But I’m here to help…

Here is a list of the 5 questions you ABSOLUTELY should be asking your Pay Per Click marketer before signing into a business relationship:

Read the rest of this entry …

18 Jun | Post by Scott L. Clark. Filed under AdWords, Pay Per Click.