Archive for the ‘Starting Up’ Category
Friday, June 11th, 2010
June 11th 2010 - SAN DIEGO, CA
NEWS UPDATE - WebitMD Interactive Internet Marketing Agency is moving offices from our location at the Rio Vista Tower in Mission Valley to Sorrento Valley!
Here is the new address:
5775 Oberlin Dr.
Suite 301
San Diego, CA 92121
Tel - (800) 601-2990
Fax - (800) 601-2409
Expanding office space was vital due to the overwhelming number to prospects and clientele in recent months. Our new location will allow the team to keep up with the work load of our expanding business.
Contact one of our consultants for a FREE Internet Presence analysis of your business and get started with WebitMD today!
Cheers.
Tags: ppc management company, san diego internet marketing, san diego ppc management, small biz ppc, small business ppc, small business ppc management, webitmd moving, webitmd new office, webitmd san diego
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Monday, April 26th, 2010
Perhaps the most ambitious campaign of start-ups, Y Combinator is a hybrid venture capital fund and business school that invests in, advises, and literally, feeds 40 or so early-stage businesses a year. Paul Graham, it’s fearless and optimistic leader, supplements his nominally sized investments of under $25,000 with lots of smart advice, technical help, and sense of community. The model has produced 145 companies to date, a few sizable acquisitions, and copycat funds in cities across the country and around the world.
For all the pain of nurturing a start-up, Graham believes that founding a company is the most efficient way to create wealth — for investors, for founders, for society at large. “There’s this classic pattern that has happened over and over again throughout history in which something is made one at a time, very expensively and unreliably by hand, and then someone comes along and figures out how to make large numbers of them cheaply and reliably,” Graham says. “We’re pulling this kind of transformation with venture funding. We’re mass-producing the start-up.”
Graham is something of a folk hero to a generation of ambitious techies, who debate his essays, read his books, and pitch him start-ups by the hundreds. His philosophies are simple: founders should live as cheaply as possible so that they can first become cash-flow positive. Wealth will follow.
Indeed, there’s something exhilarating about Graham’s optimism, especially at a time when so many once-great companies are sitting on the verge of bankruptcy. Graham believes, deeply, that start-ups are the answer to the world’s problems; that they are easy to make if you are determined enough and cheap enough; and that it’s getting a lot easier to start one.
Tags: creating wealth, san diego internet marketing, start up business success, start up fund, venture capital, webitmd start up
Posted in Internet Marketing Fundamentals, Marketing, SEO, Starting Up | No Comments »
Thursday, April 15th, 2010
Search engine marketing spending is expected to be up 14% to $16.6 billion in North America in 2010. While growth in this marketing channel, which includes paid search, search engine optimization, and other search engine marketing technologies, slowed in 2008 and 2009, it still proved to relatively recession-resistant. As we progress into 2010, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) projects steady growth to return.
In a recent survey, SEMPO found that a majority of marketers planned to shift marketing budgets away from other channels such as direct mail and spend more on paid search and search optimization. Marketers see search optimization as a valuable means for increasing Website traffic and generating leads. In turn, site traffic metrics could measure the success of campaigns, such as conversation rate.
Respondents, however, are concerned about measuring return on investment, effectively optimizing their sites, and choosing the best keywords. Further, markets were also daunted with the challenge of integrating paid search and search optimization with other online and offline marketing strategies.
Tags: conversation rate, conversion optimization consulting, lead generation, paid search, san diego internet marketing, san diego online marketing, search engine optimization spending, SEMPO, seo growth, seo spending
Posted in Internet Marketing News, Marketing, SEO, Starting Up | No Comments »
Thursday, April 1st, 2010
Microsoft has settled on the next two spots for its nascent retail effort, with the software giant planning to open outlets in Denver and San Diego.
Those two locations will join Scottsdale, Ariz., and Mission Viejo, Calif., as the only places where one can experience the Microsoft Store in person, though Microsoft also has an online version of the store.
The Denver and San Diego stores are expected to open this summer, according to a source, with other outlets likely by fall.
Microsoft’s retail approach takes a lot of cues from Apple, with a heavy focus on presentation, as well as a theater for training and an answer bar where customers can get technical help. There are also some unique-to-Microsoft touches like the tabletop Surface computers, Xbox displays, and a line of flat-screen displays creating a video wall that rings the store.
The company sells PCs from a variety of makers, though the systems come with a “Microsoft Signature” collection of software found only at Microsoft’s online and retail stores.
Info provided by: CNET News
Tags: denver microsoft retail, denver store microsoft, microsoft san diego, microsoft store san diego, san diego microsoft retail, san diego with microsoft
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Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
It probably hasn’t even crossed your mind that submitting videos to Youtube or other channels should be an essential part of any SEO campaign for you or your company. Well, new statistics gathered from various studies may make you consider video SEO a little more seriously.
Forrester Research claims that videos, properly submitted to an online site of course, are 53 times more likely to generate the first page Google ranking than traditional SEO techniques!
Other statistics provided by Treepodia, claim that by simply having a video on a product’s webpage assists in attaining conversions. This boost to conversions is often motivated regardless of whether visitors watch the video or not!
Video SEO also has two distinct advantages over traditional SEO techniques.
These being:
1. Search engines over the internet aim to providing its searchers blended search results that contains video, social networking feeds, and various others rather than just providing links. For this reason, they give a higher ranking to other forms of web content, like videos, in order to make sure search results are displaying a variety of content.
2. The majority of the millions of videos posted daily on various video sites are improperly submitted to search engines and their indexes. This leaves a wide open area for marketers to upload their videos and have them ranking over others before everyone else catches on.
Now, how do you submit your videos to search engines?
There are two main ways of doing so. The first way is in the form of an XML feed. Many search engines allow today allow sites to submit videos in the form of an XML feed but it is important that when considering which search engines to target, that you consider their guidelines for doing so. The majority of the guidelines provided online for the search engines are outdated or not useful, so one should contact that specific search engine to find out their policies and formats they prefer.
The second way would be to submit a page of yours with a video on it. The sites you submit should submit a permalink sitemap that mirrors their video XML feed. The title tags in particular should be identical to the video title to achieve the highest pagerank scoring to help you climb the ranks for certain keywords.
These stats provided here, whether true on a large scale or not, show us marketers the great potential for using videos as an effective SEO tool.
Information Provided By: Benjamin Wayne, Search Engine Watch
Blog Post Written By: Kent Seiders
Tags: google video seo, how to use video seo, san diego seo video, seo san diego webitmd, seo video strategies, submitting a video to search engines, video seo, video seo webitmd
Posted in SEO, Starting Up | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
Amazon’s Kindle has been on the market for consumers to purchase since late 2007; just before the holiday season had begun. The Kindle is a neat device. It comes in two versions: a 6” display and 9.7” display. The 6” display stores 1,500 books, has manual rotation of the display and is priced at $259.00. The 9.7” display holds 3,500 books; auto rotates its display and is priced at $489.00.
The Kindle store has more than 400,000 books for consumers to choose from and is accessible from the Kindle itself. Amazon pays for Kindle’s wireless connectivity so you won’t see a monthly wireless bill. GSM technology is the most popular mobile wireless standard; allowing coverage in over 100 countries.
Weighing only 10.2 ounces, the Kindle weighs almost as much as an average paper back book. It also comes with automatic library back up: “books you purchase from the Kindle store are backed up online in your Kindle book library at Amazon.com. You can wirelessly re-download books available in your library. This allows you to make room for new titles on your Kindle. We even back up your last page read and annotations.”
Sick of seeing a glare while working outdoors? The Kindle’s screen is designed to let you sit anywhere you want in the sun without a glare. The pages actually look like a real book too, without the evident grain pieces. Text on the pages can be adjusted to your comfort level, there are 16 shades of gray for pictures, and images can be zoomed to the full size of the screen.
There is also an option for you to listen to the text. With text to speech, the Kindle reads to you in a male or female voice at a fast or slow rate. It won’t ever lose your place on a page either.
The battery life is also impressive. You could go one week without recharging your device while having the wireless option turned on. On the previous Kindle, the battery lasted on average four days with the wireless turned on and one week with it off.
Need to browse the web? The Kindle comes with an internet web browser that is basic, and can be used to read simple text-centric sites like Google and Wikipedia. This is great for looking up movie times or a sports score.
Recently, the Kindle has been a popular topic. With Amazon stock on the rise, people think that maybe Amazon is feeling threatened by Apple’s latest creation: the iPad. Kindle owners need to know that they’re not alone in supporting a platform that won’t come undone against the colorful, touch screen iPad.
Information provided by: Amazon.com
Written by: Samantha J Stephan
Tags: Amazon Kindle, apple iPad, internet marketing san diego, internet marketing webitmd, Kindle vs. iPad, new technology, san diego internet marketing, webitmd internet marketing, webitmd san diego
Posted in Starting Up | 1 Comment »
Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Lately, AT&T has faced numerous complaints of poor or slow data bandwidth from its users of the iPhone, specifically the business users and the typical Apple consumer. Metropolitan regions like New York and San Francisco, where iPhone use is exceptionally heavy, make up the bulk of these complaints. AT&T’s main competitor Verizon even uses AT&T’s lack luster network in its marketing to differentiate their services.
With the introduction of Apple’s latest media technology the iPad, AT&T’s network could become even more crowded now that the iPad’s internet capabilities will be provided by AT&T’s 3G network exclusively, like that of the iPhone. To cope with the increase in users in their 3G networks, AT&T is really serious about expanding their network.
The expansion of AT&T’s networks began in 2009, where they added 1,900 new cell sites that expanded 3G coverage to over 360 markets enabling it to now reach an estimated 75 percent of the population.
AT&T is now looking to invest over $2 billion in 2010 to expand and improve the broadband data network even further… Finally! It plans to deploy fiber-optic backhaul, which will increase 3G data speeds even further, as well as focusing on boosting data capacity in troubled areas like New York and San Francisco.
AT&T CFO, Rick Lindner, offered this statement in response to AT&T’s excitement to take on the Internet capabilities for the new iPad:
“We believe, though, the device, based on where we believe it will be used–in homes, in offices, coffee shops, bookstores, airports, so on and so forth–will be used a substantial amount of time in a Wi-Fi environment. And so we’ll just–we’ll have to monitor this usage as the device gets out there. And if it’s substantially different, we’ll adapt to it. But right now, I think the economics will be very positive because it will be a very low-cost device for us–no cost, really, in terms of acquisition.”
Hopefully, AT&T can effectively expand and improve upon their 3G networks all over the world in order to better service its customers. Once they do this, and their Internet services become one without issues, their competitor Verizon will have to find another flaw in AT&T’s system to market against!
Information Provided By: Tony Bradley, PC World
Blog Post Written By: Kent Seiders
Tags: 3G Network improvements, AT&T 3G Network, AT&T internet expansion, AT&T internet improvements, AT&T network improvements, AT&T Network iPad, iPad and AT&T, iPad internet capabilties
Posted in Internet Marketing News, Starting Up | No Comments »
Friday, January 29th, 2010
Conventionally the purpose of link building is to give a website a better chance to be noticed by the search engines. Every SEO professional knows the key to high search engine ranking is link building.
However, most importantly we must not forget a website’s true worth according to the search engines, is the content it provides. Does the site present ideas, services, products and educating information to improve our daily lives? Much too often websites are packed with keywords in order to rank for a certain product or service while offering something completely irrelevant.
Sites that appear in the first pages of the search engines are the ones with the most relevant and useful information using honest and appropriate techniques. Some have developed sophisticated yet irrelevant SEO techniques that may be damaging the Internet’s value, however, search engines have responded to such techniques and will penalize websites by removing them from search results. Therefore, stay away from link farms, spamming, duplicate websites and keyword generated link pages.
Some SEO experts are seeing great success in achieving high search engine ranking through substantial effort put into receiving inbound links from high-classified websites. When your site receives links from pages with high page rank, your website is able to maintain or grow in page rank simultaneously.
Written By: Sam Kim
Tags: inbound link relevance, Link Building, link building strategy, link building techniques, san diego internet marketing, San Diego Link Building, seo strategy, webitmd internet marketing
Posted in Starting Up | 1 Comment »
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
iPad Specs:
Height: 9.56 inches
Width: 7.47 inches
Depth: 0.5 inch
Weight: 1.5 pounds
Display
* 9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPS technology
* 1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 pixels per inch (ppi)
* Fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating
* Support for display of multiple languages and characters simultaneously
Capacity
* 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB flash drive
Processor
* 1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed, high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip
Battery and Power
* Built-in 25Whr rechargeable lithium-polymer battery
* Up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music
The release of the iPad has obviously been hyped and swarms of consumers blindly following the newest most talked about trend will flock to the apple stores. Perhaps the question we should ask ourselves before jumping on the consumerism bandwagon is, will the iPad be able to perform all of the functions you need it to consistently and reliably? If the iPad follows the trends of the iPhone, then maybe we should think twice. Lastly, with iPhone prices being dropped down to an inexpensive $99 now, could it be difficult to justify spending $499-$829 on a product that is similar.
Tags: apple ipad release, ipad, ipad introduction, mobile internet, mobile media device
Posted in Starting Up | 1 Comment »
Monday, January 25th, 2010
Due to a rising middle class in the emerging countries, there has been a rising demand of the latest gadgets and online media activities while Internet users in the US and other mature markets are loosing their edge.
According to reports by Accenture, the top consumer electronics owned by US Internet users were computers and mobile phones, with web-enabled mobile phone usage increasing more than 300% in the past 3 years. Mobile phone and web-enabled smartphones taken together become the most important consumer technology to Americans.
Web users surveyed in emerging countries such as China, India, Malaysia and Singapore were ahead of mature markets such as the US, Germany, France and Japan in areas such as:
- “Emerging-market Web users were more than two and one-half times as likely to buy a smartphone during the next year (52%) compared with mature-market respondents (20%), and were also more likely to have bought a smartphone in the past year (67% versus 32%).
- Internet users in emerging markets were twice as likely to have bought a computer in the past year (40% versus 20%).
- Emerging-market respondents tended to spend more money on consumer electronics in 2009 than their mature-market counterparts.”
In addition emerging markets are showing more usage of Web activities than mature markets in areas such as – watching tv shows/movies on the Internet or mobile, working from home, managing photos and videos on the Internet, connecting with people on social networking sites, and blogging.
“One of the reasons for this emerging-country growth is the rapid expansion of the middle class with its substantial disposable income,” says Jean-Laurent Poitou, managing director of Accenture’s Electronics & High Tech industry group.
Written By: Sam Kim
Information Provided By: eMarketer
Tags: emerging markets, international mobile internet rise, mature markets, mobile tech growth san diego, online marketing mobile, san diego internet marketing, san diego tech growth, tech growth, web activity, webitmd internet marketing
Posted in Starting Up | 1 Comment »
Thursday, January 21st, 2010
According to the new edition of the SheSpeaks “Annual Social Media Study”, social networking profile penetration of women climbed from 58% in 2008 to 86% in 2009.
Along with this increase, there was also an increase in brand-related activities on social media sites of female internet users. The study shows that 80% of female users said that they had become a fan of a product or a brand on one of their social media networking profiles. In additon, 72% of female users had learned about a new product or brand, or joined a group about one.
Twitter has become the least-likely alternative to finding out about products or services via social networking sites compared to the rest, the study also demonstrates.
Also, according to the study:
One half of female internet users had bought a product because of a social media network, adding to the overall growth of purchasing with the influence of social networking sites and blogs over the last year.
Women have also been more receptive to social network advertising, where 2% in 2008 said that they look at the banner ads and click-through them which has increased to 9% in 2009.
Women seem to be responding to social network advertising and brand awareness more-so now than ever, so it is important to target them as best as possible. According to Aliza Freud, the founder and CEO of SheSpeaks, “Last year our members were going online primarily to research purchases, but now they are looking to social media to help them research, guide and facilitate every kind of transaction, from social exchanges to purchases. Women have become more comfortable using social media, and for marketers, the overall growth and habitual use of social media represents opportunities to reach and engage women of all ages, and influence their purchase decisions.”
Information Provided By: eMarketer
Blog Post Written By: Kent Seiders
Tags: internet marketing women social media, ladies social media, san diego internet marketing, san diego social media, san diego women social media, social media targeting women, social media women rise, women and social media, women social media branding
Posted in Internet Marketing Fundamentals, Starting Up, Web Development | No Comments »
Monday, January 18th, 2010
Although Pagerank is not available on the Google Toolbar, Google still ranks websites higher in their index if they have a higher Pagerank. It would benefit your website greatly within the search engines if all of the pages within your site’s directory contained high Pageranks so that each page is ranked higher for the keywords they possess, but this is hard to come by.
Normally, the homepage of your website is usually the page with the highest Pagerank because when online users share and link to your site (link-building), they are linking to your homepage’s url the majority of the time, rather than the subpages’ directory urls of your site. This makes your homepage more visible in search engines leading to higher traffic over the rest of the pages your site contains. Many ask the question: In theory, would it benefit my website’s subpages, and their Pagerank, if they had their own subdomains rather than using their current directory urls?
A change for a subpage’s directory url to a subdomain would look like this:
WebitMD’s current blog directory url is http://www.webitmd.com/blog
If we changed the blog’s directory url to make it a subdomain, some examples would look like this:
http://www.blog.webitmd.com/ or http://www.webitmdblog.com
By changing your subpages’ directory urls to their own subdomains, this would allow those that share and link to your site’s content to drive straight traffic to your subpages thus increasing their Pagerank individually. This is because Google looks at subdomains as individual websites themselves. This in turn, will allow visitors to come across these subpages more often in the organic results of search engines.
Is this strategy worth pursuing on your site? In theory, yes and no.
If we look at the basic rules of SEO, fresh and interesting content is key! If you have a website that has subpages where you often update and provide interesting content for the online audience, this subdomain strategy can help tremendously provided that people are linking to your subpages and the content is rich in SEO text. For those pages that are not updated very often, this would be a waste of time.
It is important to note that if you do pursue this strategy, you may experience an initial drop in Pagerank when you first create the new subdomains from your original homepage at first, but provided you stick by the smart rules of SEO, you may end up with three or four websites with high rankings instead of just one. This is certainly worth the time!
Information Provided By: Entrepreneur’s Journey
Blog Post Written By: Kent Seiders
Tags: how to use sub domains, how to use subdomains, san diego internet marketing blog, san diego subdomains, SEO San Diego, subdomain blod posts, subdomain blog posting, subdomain blogs, webitmd internet marketing
Posted in Starting Up | No Comments »
Friday, January 15th, 2010
Jeff Walker is considered one of the best Internet markers and is known for the “Product Launch Formula”. His methods have been used for nearly all big launches in the last year including “StomperNet”, “Pipeline Profits”, and “Mike Filsaime’s Butterfly Marketing”.
It seems however, the perfect formula for Internet marketing is being applied to the Internet marketing world, which has already been saturated with launches and therefore a terrible place to apply the strategies. Recent success stories have been emerging from non-internet marketing industries.
When you’re looking to launch a product or a service, Jeff’s Product Launch Formula is the standard however there is some good info that can be obtained for free as well.
“The email list is the key component behind most product launches and it acts as the main communication medium between the expert or company, and the prospects.” Mistakes in this area can be critical.
The 3 following rules, which may seem very basic, are critical:
1. Always send a test email to yourself before publishing
2. Test all links in the test email
3. If any changes are made after your test, repeat the test with your new email
When you ask yourself whether you conduct the 3 steps before you send an Email Newsletter, how frequently does that happen?
A few simple, quick and easy steps can help you avoid adjusting errors after the fact.
Written By: Sam Kim
Information Provided By: www.entreprenuers-journey.com
Tags: email marketing, email newsletter, Internet Marketing, product launch, san diego seo webitmd
Posted in Starting Up | No Comments »
Thursday, January 14th, 2010
It is surprising that even today website owners haven’t discovered how to make their sites user friendly. People like aesthetically pleasing sites that cater to them: the customer.
Here is a short checklist of dos and don’ts for anyone working on the internet to sell their product or service.
- In the space “above the fold,” state what the site is aiming to achieve. The area above the fold is the section that is seen without scrolling down. This space should be used to tell the consumer what you do exactly. Why does your site exist? This should be clear to the audience in one quick glance. “You can’t solve someone’s problem if they can’t even figure out what it is that you do.”
- Use large fonts and plenty of white space. “This is a no brainer. You want your website to be read by as many people as possible so don’t use tiny fonts, don’t use clever fonts, just keep it simple, double spaced and big. You wouldn’t whisper your sales pitch to a potential customer in real life, so don’t do it online.”
- Keep it simple- not too fancy. Text comes first to graphics; the words on the page are primary. “Graphics should only be used to enhance the presentation of text and never hinder or distract the visitor from what they are supposed to do at your website – read it!”
- Use headings, bolds, and lists. Unfortunately, people today are getting lazier and lazier. People don’t want to read your five paragraph essay on your product or service. They want to see bullet points, lists of benefits and get information as quickly and painlessly as possible.
- If you aren’t as technologically advances graphic wise as you’d like to be, just use one nice text-based page. “You can have tremendous success online by using a webpage that is just a simple letter format. Follow the rules above and tell your story using just words. If you can’t do website design yourself or can’t afford it, you can keep things simple and still have a very effective message. It won’t be pretty, but like I said, pretty doesn’t sell – the words do.”
Information provided by: entrepreneurs-journey.com
Written by: Samantha J Stephan
Tags: checklist for websites, internet marketing san diego, san diego internet marketing, tips for websites, webitmd internet marketing, webitmd san diego, website tips
Posted in Internet Marketing Fundamentals, Marketing, Starting Up, Web Development | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010
Out with the old and in with the new! A new year has begun and keeping up with SEO trends should be at the top of your to-do list. So for 2010 here is a list of trends to keep an eye out for:
- Site Speed – Site speed may be used as a new ranking factor in 2010. Make sure your pages load quickly by decreasing load time. “The order of things on your page will affect its load time, so make sure you’re using proper HTML, and cleaning up your CSS and JavaScript so that users aren’t left waiting when they try to access your site.”
- Mobile – Research done by Neilson shows that there are now 56.9 million people looking for information on mobile web sites, which is up 34% from last year. First you should find out how your site performs on small devices. There are paid services which provide feedback for this. Then, once it is functional, take advantage of Google’s new mobile services and free online coupons.
- Online Video - YouTube was made the second largest search engine last year. With larger companies dropping out, more space is available for small to medium sized companies which could use the attention. So make a video and post it soon!
- Reputation Management Meets Real-Time Search – “When Google put real-time search updates into the SERPs they unleashed a potential online reputation problem of epic proportions. They essentially opened the floodgates to give angry customers immediate power in the search results. You no longer have a window to reach out to an angry tweeter to ask them to amend their update or tone down that Blog post. Google is pulling from tweets, from Blogs, from news, from articles and other Web content and throwing it immediately into your search results, often right above your own site. All of this means that you need to be even more vigilant about monitoring the conversation in an attempt to protect your brand. For a small business owner, your best line of defense is to build a listening station that will help keep you abreast of conversations as they happen.”
- Increased Awareness of Local – “If you haven’t tied up all your local listings and profiles, it is beyond time to do that. The search engines, especially Google, are looking at the consistency and completeness of your local listings in order to rank you for relevant queries. That’s a huge ranking factor that is 100 percent in your control. Take advantage of it!”
Information Provided by: Smallbiztrends.com
Written by: Samantha J Stephan
Tags: 2010 trends, internet marketing san diego, internet marketing trends, internet marketing trends 2010, san diego internet marketing, seo trends for 2010, top new trends 2010, webitmd internet marketing, webitmd san diego
Posted in Behavioral Marketing, Marketing, Mobile Marketing, SEO, Social Media Networking, Starting Up | No Comments »
