Real Time Search And The Google Superbowl Commercial

During the Superbowl I did a couple blog posts with the second one being firmly planted in my mind as a good test for what real time search can do for traffic and why paying attention to real time SEO for certain events can help drive visitors.

Being in the field we are in I was interested to see if Google would do a search commercial or something around the Nexus One, I was actually pleasantly surprised to see it was a commercial based on search, actually all the different things search can do for someone using all the capabilities Google has. Most people are not aware of the way they can use search and this was a nice venue to show them.

All that said, I knew there would be a ton of search done on Google Superbowl Commercial and although I had real honest commentary on the subject I also knew that it would be a real time search trend that would trigger Google into having their scrolling box in their search results page scrolling news as it happened from Twitter and blogs.

Well, the results, in a very short period of time I had hundreds of visitors to the one post, you can see a bit of what I am talking about by looking at the keywords  sending traffic to my blog below for just a few seconds, click on the image for the details:

This is the tail end of the real time traffic that came in, I wish I would of caught it from start to finish but this will give you a good idea of the terms that were sending traffic from the real time search box that scrolls on Google.

Just an example of how social media and taking advantage of it can do.

Domaining.com Adds Feeds – Deletes Feeds – I Add Them Back

My turn to jump on the bandwagon. As has been reported on many domaining blogs over the past few hours Francois decided to do a couple things today that frustated people:

• Added a donate button with some fairly direct language it would seem to make a point
• Added in some feeds that on the face of it seem to not be related to domaining

Well, sure the donate button probably offended some but I will let other people discuss that.

What I found interesting is that the feeds he added were feeds I had manually added into my feed list on Domaining.com, the bummer is when he removed them it removed them from my list too. Oh the horror of having to go back and spend 30 seconds adding them back in.

In all seriousness I actually appreciate the fact he tried to add some variety into the Domaining.com feed, I have said too many times before that domainers need to step back and see where domains fit into the bigger online world and make sure we understand what is happening around us. It is way to easy to get wrapped up in your own little niche and not see the  train coming.

Sites like Mashable.com, Techcrunch.com, and ReadWriteWeb.com all provide valuable insight and what they discuss actually is information that will help you plan your domain business and also help you understand what changes are coming and how to react.

I was just glad to see Francois chose great sites, as much as we domainers do not like Michael Arrington's view of domains TechCrunch is one of the sites I visit frequently, sites like Mashable keep you abreast of the social media world. We should consider these valuable sites, good try by Francois.

Well, they are added back into my feed, they were there before this and they will be there moving forward too.

How Social Media Helps Website Marketing

One of the things I was curious to see was how much traffic I could get to my new Hyperlocal SEO site that I launched a few days back. As with any new site getting awareness and traffic to it can be a challenge unless you are putting an advertising budget in place.

With this site though I thought it would be a valuable tool to see what having an established blog along with Twitter and Facebook could do. As someone who has seen the benefits of what it can do for a site like this one and what I have witnessed on even small business sites in rural Missouri I knew social media can have quite the impact.

In reality I was hoping for something in the range of 50 visitors or so would be a good start for the first few days then build up links from there and continue to use Twitter and Facebook to promote new posts.

Well, I was wrong, WAY wrong.

Here is the number of visits per day:

Jan 18th (launch day, partial day) - 239

Jan 19th - 246

Jan 20th (partial, data as of 6:30 or so CST) - 155

Do you think that could of happened without the power of social media, and in this case I can see that Twitter was the larger portion of that?

The answer is no, to launch a new site in such a competitive niche as local search would of been a long process. I cannot wait to see what happens as new writers come on board.  A special thanks to George Pickering again for his commitment to contributing to the site, just wait until the blog gets put into the mix at TargetAudience.com which will have real small business owners reading it daily in their feed, nice name George is working with there, cannot wait to see how that goes!

HyperlocalSEO.com Launches Today – Want to Write A Guest Blog Post?

I wanted to do a quick announcement concerning the "soft launch" of HyperlocalSEO.com. I had been contemplating launching a separate blog focused more on local seo and local search in general but wanted to make sure that I could put in the time necessary.

Well, the great news is thanks to George Pickering from LocalExperts.com I have a solid partner in this new blog who will be doing posts as well. George is a true success story in the development of geo targeted niche sites that generate real business for his customers.

Between the two of us plus a some articles some of my team will be doing I expect this blog to do quite well and provide valuable information to small businesses looking to grow their business online and take advantage of local search growth and the trend towards more hyperlocal content.

One of the problems with launching my initial blog on BruceMarler.com is I could not really have multiple writers on the site, with the launch of HyperlocalSEO.com I envision overtime having a group of contributors that all benefit from the successful site and I will just be one small piece of it.

There may not be much up there right now but look for tons more coming soon.

If you have interest in the local seo or geo targeted search market and would like to do a guest blog post or be an author on the site shoot me a message.

Are We Affiliate Marketing Hypocrites

Shane (from DomainShane.com) left a good comment on a post I did earlier today (The Art Of SEO) about using affiliate links in blog posts and the risk of starting to seem like an affiliate marketer and then no one believing what you have to say anymore. He was not saying that I was necassarily doing that but did mention that people do start to be turned off when affiliate links are used.

I get that, and funny enough recently I even went back to some old posts and removed affiliate links to certain products that I do not actually use (or use no longer) so it was funny to think about how that relates to a post I did where I actually believed in the products I had links too. (Before you start looking I am sure there are some stragglers left but I did try to remove those from products I do not use).

Are we hypocrites when it comes to affiliate links? We as domainers and web developers like to talk about monetizing our traffic, etc but when we see one of our own actually make money off of something they actually used and recommended why do we complain. I have to be honest I have actually had the same thought when I went to other peoples blogs and realized we are a bit hypocritical when we dismiss domain bloggers for having affiliate links in their posts.

The funny part is that the money I make off affiliates is so low because I really do not use them all that much, most of the advertisers on my blog are paid spots, there are some affiliate spots but all of them are actually products or services I use.

So, is it wrong to actually profit from content that I, or other bloggers, generate (for free) when I actually believe in a product, is it wrong for a fellow blogger to benefit from affiliate links on their blog?

I guess what I am saying is that with all the talk about monetizing traffic most of us have sites out there with affiliate revenue coming from them and I guarantee that most of us have never used the products on those sites so why is it wrong for a blogger when they actually believe in the product?

This post is not really about me or my specific post, it just brought up some hypocrisy that I have had happen a couple times, my Hostgator post about upgrading servers and the great service I got from them also had the same conversation come up. Weird that people think it is wrong to have affiliate links in when you are actually saying things you experienced but they do not have a problem with it on sites they have developed themselves when they have not used the products.

Starting A Business Is Bad For Your Health

Wow, what a difference a year can make. I am just kidding about the title of the post but I have been a major failure at keeping myself in shape this year. I just saw some Christmas pictures from last year while we were looking at some digital pics from this year and all I can say is CRAP!!!

It is time to get my no excuses attitude back towards staying in shape and eating right. It is something that for several years I have been almost religious about after seeing the difference it made in my life. When I was 29 years old (I am 36 now) I was 244 lbs, in comparison in 2008 between September and December I did a triathlon, multiple half marathons and a full marathon along with a few bike races and smaller races.

Not only that, running, biking, and eating right makes your brain work better, period. It has been proven over and over again. I can say without a doubt that I focus much better when I am running or biking everyday.

Well, this year I let it all go, as much as I am much more sane now that I stepped away from my past world I am really unhappy with the fact that I let myself make excuses for not staying in shape. I am not back where I was at  when I was 29 but I am not where I was last year at this time.

This is not a New Years resolution (New Years resolutions are crap, if you want to stay in shape you make a LIFESTYLE change). This is me realizing that I improved my life on one side by starting a business but failed miserably by letting one side of my life go in a bad direction.

Time to fix that. I think it is time to pick a marathon to run and start training, I like goals....

Getting Back In The Groove

I have tried to be as disconnected as possible the past few days which has now put me more than a bit behind on email and basically every other communication method I use.

We live in the same area the majority of our family lives in which means we had three places to visit on the 24th, three on the 25th, then two on the 26th. I am Christmas partied out. Which means it is time to start getting back in the normal groove, although I made promises to the kids to NOT work or be on the laptop as much this coming week since I now have more say on my own schedule than in past years. I will keep that promise to them.

As I prep to get back in the after-Christmas groove I am reviewing as much end of year data as possible on local search, online advertising, mobile search and areas related. Although most data you find this time of year is estimated only (since there is a whole week left....) I like to have an idea how the trends have looked over the year so you can find things to take advantage of going into the New Year.

Long story short, make sure you watch the trends and plan your attack for the New Year, review what has worked, what has not worked, where various trends are headed and plan your strategy accordingly.

All that said, as I get back into normal blogging this week I will show some of the interesting stats I have been finding (some not just end of year but just local search related trends in general).

Continue to have a great Holiday!

Christmas Office Prank At It’s Finest

Things have been NUTs around the office this month but it is Christmas time and well, a laugh needed to be had. We keep pretty serious around here most of the time but when it gets close to the holidays a little lighter atmosphere can help people stay motivated  and decrease the stress that tends to occur around the holidays.

Well, I thought I could keep things light going into Christmas after I was inspired by an episode of The Office (man, that is scary). My family and I decided that Rob, my operations guy, needed to have a little prank pulled on him. So here are the results of our first annual office Christmas prank contest (because you know that is what just happened....):

Yes, we wrapped each thing on his desk individually, my personal favorite is the mousepad and mouse being wrapped separately so they were usable. My son had the great idea of actually wrapping the cup and putting it on the coaster.

A little closer view above.

Here is the finished result, very nice work on the chair wrapping and kudos to my daughter for the garland.

Unfortunately he got in early today (of all days) but he did record his thoughts (although sideways, but hey it was early).

Thanks for being a good sport Rob!

I know my blog has been light on content lately, after the holidays things will be back in gear. Thanks for letting me have some fun here!

Wordpress 2.9 Released

I love Wordpress plain and simple, whether you want to run an active blog or use it to have an easy content management system for a corporate site it can fit the bill. Well today Wordpress 2.9 was released and there are several new features that have been added (one report says there were over 500 fixes, etc in this release).

I will be upgrading my most active sites over the next few days but here is a quick list of top features to consider:

Image editing - This has been something I have wanted for some time, the Wordpress functionality for images had been pretty limited as far as cropping and other editing features go but now you can crop and rotate images along with other tweaks from right within Wordpress. Your not going to ditch your graphics editor but I think this is pretty useful for pics that you need to get up fast. This would of been a God send for our Tour of Missouri site.

Trash can - YES, there have been times I have screwed up and deleted something to quickly (the first time I created my media page I did this). Now you have something much like the recycle bin in Windows within Wordpress. Nice.

Bulk Wordpress plugin updates - If you use Wordpress and have more than a couple plugins installed, as easy as it is to upgrade it is tedious to have to do several, this feature will allow multiple to be upgraded at one. I do not like to do things over and over again, repetition sucks, this takes me out of that mode, at least for a bit.

For more info on the new Wordpress 2.9 release check out: TechnoSailor.com

Missouri.me and Localtek Keep On Rollin

I know the blog has been a bit quiet this week but sometimes the focus has to be on the real business and this past week was one of those. Between seminars, server growth, and customer meetings there was not much time to do much else which is just fine with me.

Although I always tell people not to confuse activity with productivity this was a week full of productive things. One of the more productive things was something I could not of imagined a week ago.

During one of our recent seminars one of our regional competitors was in the first row, now let me say that I knew of the company and had heard good things and everyone always had nice things to say about the owner of the company. The company provides various online services and technical services to small businesses throughout the area, helping them get online, promote themselves and also keep their technology running smoothly.

Well, when you have a competitor directly in front of you when you are giving your whole story that can be a bit interesting, you better have your game face on and feel confident that what you have to offer is unique and valuable. Our customers tell us that everyday so I felt real good....

During the presentation I even pointed to the individual and had direct conversation with him about their company probably witnessing some of the same things we do. It was really quite  fun and enlightening.

After the seminar I was headed to the back of the room (another story there, one of the best things ever happened, customer walks up and says ok I am ready, what do I do and how much? Keep in mind I never even talked about what our products are, now that is fun...).

The competitor stopped me after the first customer and said that he would like to look at partnering rather than competing, WOW, did not see that coming. We discussed a bit longer and decided that further meetings were in order rather quickly.

We sat down the next day and in short order were able to work out how we would do business together and I quickly learned this person had been looking for a partner he could pass over his online services business too. He had been looking for a company that understood more than just web development but had a full solution that could help these customers. Luckily my seminar came at just the right time, based on some research he had done on us before the seminar he felt comfortable.

What is great is that it turned into a very symbiotic relationship, we get a lot of requests for tech services since many times the customer see the technical side of what we do and ask if we can support their various needs, now we have someone in a region of the state that can take that on.

On a separate note we also had our first meetings with initial customers for a niche geo domain that covers a statewide industry, the site will be a business in and of itself but ties nicely into Missouri.me advertising packages as well. Keeping a common thread through product sets is always good, it benefits the customer and keeps you close to your core business, if you cannot find away that makes sense to tie two products together then it means you have moved away from your core too far. Re think if you want that business.

Anyway, just a few notes and info on why the blog may of been a bit quiet.

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