Submit Express to Exhibit at Ad-Tech SF April 2-4

 

Our parent company Submit Express will be exhibiting at Ad-Tech SF next week in SF, April 2-4, 2012. We will be on the second floor. If you are attending, please stop by to find out about our services, which include: SEO, PPC Advertising Services, Reputation Management, Link Building, Landing Page Design and Oprtimization, and social media marketing services.

This will be a big show. They will have many great speakers speaking on topics such as internet marketing and social media marketing. In addition, there are hundreds of exhibitors exhibiting.

Why Landing Page Design is so Important

The place where people “land” after conducting an online search, selecting an ad, or opening an email, landing page design has become an important part of internet marketing. Without a quality landing page, users might not be convinced to take any action, even if your rankings are high in the SERPs (search engine results page). This is why it is very important to design a powerful landing page that focuses on conversions.

The question is: Is there a standard template for the ideal landing page? The simple answer is no; landing page optimization is an ever-evolving project, and search engine optimization professionals are constantly tweaking their campaigns to test out the latest tricks. However, there are certain design rules that can improve your landing page.

The fact is a powerful landing page can turn a mere browser into a buyer, or a surfer into a spender. There are many elements involved in landing page optimization, ranging from the look and feel of the page to a strong call to action.

Without the right skills, including Web design, analytics, and data, site owners simply don’t have the means to conduct testing on their own. This is why it is important to trust a team of professionals that can help you with proper landing page design optimization. Submit Express, a leading internet marketing firm in Burbank, CA, offers premium landing page optimization services that serve both the business owner and the online user.

The Advantages of Hiring an SEO Agency

Select your SEO agency wisely and you’ll be on track to improved online traffic and more engagement from your online audience. Folks in the business know that improved audience engagement is a surefire indication of incoming rises in profits or in the faster attainment of the particular goals of your site. If the purpose of your online portal is to recruit volunteers, you’ll have an immensely easier time going about it if the majority of the inquiries you receive from online visitors come from people who want to participate. You are probably all too familiar with how taxing it can be to your resources to field questions or comments unrelated to your enterprise.

Dealing with these types of issues is where SEO companies excel. They are the places to turn to when your in-house staff doesn’t have the time, or expertise, to craft compelling write-ups that can captivate and persuade readers; or, maybe they’re unable to implement changes to your site’s design that makes it be more in tune with major search engines.

What else can an SEO company do for you? It can help you construct a better image of whom, precisely, your core audience is. If you want to expand beyond it, say reach folks in a neighboring town that could be more responsive to your business, then delving into SEO work is the way to go. And although search engine optimization is primarily concerned with the search engines, part of its work today also involves “social media optimization.” Say Yes to improvements by saying Yes to SEO.

How to Remove Negative Reviews on Ripoffreport.com and Yelp

It happens to the best of businesses: an unhappy customer posts a negative review on the Internet about your product or service and it spreads faster than wildfire. Whether it is posted on a consumer complaint site such as Ripoffreport.com or a local review site such as Yelp, negative reviews on the web can damage your online reputation and destroy your business. For many business owners, this is a horrible nightmare come true.

While businesses have had to deal with unhappy customers long before the advent of the Internet, the web adds insult to injury by keeping a permanent record of negative or unflattering content. Unfortunately, negative reviews on sites such as Ripoffreport.com and Yelp are especially damaging because they appear prominently in search results.

So how does one remove negative reviews on sites like Ripoffreport.com and Yelp? Is there such a service as Ripoff Report Removal Service? Or are businesses forever doomed with unflattering information on the web? The answer is not that simple. Unfortunately, there is no sure fire way to remove negative reviews or content from the web. But there is hope.

The solution to combating negative reviews on the Internet is through effective online reputation management. You cannot actually remove negative listings from these sites or from the search engines, but through a combination of SEO techniques and social media marketing strategies, you can suppress the negative information about your business.

Many of the strategies, including link building, social media marketing, and reputation monitoring, are designed to burry negative content by lifting positive content higher in search engine rankings. Submit Express, our parent company, offers businesses a variety of reputation management services, including the Ripoff Report Removal Service and Yelp Negative Review Repair service.

In addition, from our social media marketing services site iClimber, we offer social media profile creation service. Social media profiles have proven to be real powerfull in the search engines and often most company social profiles rank highly for their company names. The goal for you should be to own the Top 10 or even Top 20 results in the search enines for your company name. You should have control of all the sites listed in the Top 10, that way nobody can write anything negative about you and have it appear in the top 10. This is not an easy taks and it is best if you let professionals help you.

Company Develops Great Promotional and Link-Baiting Idea

By Pierre Zarokian, CEO of Submit Express/iClimber

How do you get the most for your promotional dollar? Online gift basket company GourmetGiftBaskets.com is a prime example of how to take an eye-catching stunt and turn it into a long-term tactic to increase publicity and links to their site. I was on hand at Blog World 2010 in Las Vegas when they rolled out the first part of their plan, and I can tell you that it was pretty ingenious.

On October 15, they set a Guinness World Record by brewing the world’s largest cup of coffee. It took eight hours to make the coffee and fill the specially-designed eight-foot by eight-foot cup, but when it was done they had filled a cup with 2,010 gallons of Colombian Arabica coffee provided by the Kerry/X Café of Princeton, MA – the equivalent of 32,160 regular cups of coffee. GourmetGiftBaskets.com shattered the previous record set in 2007 of 911.5 gallons – they more than doubled it!

They then turned around and set a second world record the next day for the largest cup of iced coffee ever made, successfully cooling the coffee to 45 degrees just before the show closed. It was two world records in two days for GourmetGiftBaskets.com.

I was at the show and saw the coffee firsthand, and I can tell you that it was amazing. It really was a feat of modern engineering – it required two 60-amp, 208-volt three-phase power supplies, two directly plumbed water lines providing three gallons per minute and the equivalent of 89,305 times the amount of coffee needed to brew your standard eight ounce cup of coffee. The cup was created for the world record effort by Chisel Productions Inc. of Georgia while the hard, polyurethane cup with a storage tank that served as a foundation was designed by Terracon Corporation of Boston. In order to break the world record, coffee baristas were up at 4 a.m. in order to finish filling the coffee cup by noon.

I spoke to show personal again at the end of the show about plans for the cup. My thought was that with something that big, it might be cheaper to destroy it than to ship it. However, the staff told me that they planned to ship it back to the company’s offices. Perhaps they want to try to break the record another time.

Obviously the main purpose of breaking such records is for publicity. I spoke to some of the booth staff about how much it cost to put on this stunt. They told me that it cost them about $70,000 to build the cup and ship it to the show. It also took them about one and a half months to build the cup and about eight hours to fill the cup with coffee using two high-volume coffee dispensers, which were donated by Bunn-O-Matic of Springfield, IL and produce 225 gallons of coffee per hour. After it was done, they drained the coffee in seven hours.

Since this was done at the show floor, it attracted a lot of attention and was the talk of the show. Logo Loc LTD of New Hampshire handed out t-shirts to commemorate the world record while the California company Marich Confectionary handed out samples of chocolate-covered coffee beans to keep the crowd buzzing.

It also was a great PR opportunity and the pictures and videos from the event showed up at blogs and online news sites throughout the world. They were even mentioned on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America.” It was a great PR stunt no matter how you cut it.

However, GourmetGiftBaskets.com was very smart and found a way to extend the usefulness of the stunt. They’ve put together a contest where they are offering prizes of free gift baskets for bloggers who mention their world record in a blog post. It’s a sneaky way to encourage people to write about the stunt after the fact, along with providing valuable link bait which will help in the site’s overall SEO campaign.

This is a perfect example of how SEO tactics, public relations, marketing and advertising can all work together in a synergistic campaign. By combining different elements, GourmetGiftBaskets.com was able to create a program that extended a one-off event well beyond its original date and maximize its value. It’s something that all companies should consider when putting together marketing campaigns.

At the end of the show, the staff was nice enough to give me and one of our own booth staff two free gift baskets, which you can see in the picture below.

Tales of a Link Prostitute: No Cash in Vegas Calls for Desperate Measures

It’s a widely known fact that what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Not quite as widely known, but still a fact is this: if you have no cash in Vegas, you stay in Vegas.

This is the position I found myself in when I attended PubCon, a conference for online marketers. I could only take out $80 a day in cash due to a mix up at the bank. Also, another mix up had depleted all of my credit without me knowing.

What was a girl to do?

“You could become a link prostitute,” one search engine marketer volunteered at the bar. “Sell links from your website to make mad dollars.”

Some online marketers buy links to their website to help them rank higher on search engines – but none will admit to doing it. It’s a bad idea.

But desperate times call for desperate measures.

I take you through the steps of degenerating into a link prostitute while living it up in two luxury hotels in Vegas.

Palms Place

I arrived at Palms Place late at night on Monday and couldn’t believe my amazing room and warm reception. I stayed in a gorgeous studio with black hardwood floors, a mammoth king-sized bed, a sleek well laid out washroom, and a fully functioning kitchen.

The room also came equipped with a sitting area, comfy sectional couch, and an amazing view of the mountains and the Strip, which I used to make new friends who were staying at a not-quite-as-stunning hotel down the street.

One thing that everyone needs to know about Vegas is that you need cash to get around. Most cabs don’t accept credit cards. I tried to take out some money as I was leaving late for my first day of the conference.

“Insufficient Funds”, the machine said.

Crushed.

Palms Place is not the sort of outfit that caters to folks with insufficient funds. Did I sleep walk to the craps tables, conveniently placed at Palms Resort and Casino just down the way? I broke out into a nervous sweat.

The hotel staff let me use their front desk computer – which was great customer service by the way. I learned that the bank machine was stupid, that I had more than sufficient funds, I just couldn’t access them. Again, the staff went out of their way to flag down the only cab in Las Vegas that accepts credit cards. I made the conference on time.

Learning You Have More in Common with the Thieves Than you Thought

The next morning, I called my lovely bank to ask them what the %&@*! was going on. They had reset my daily withdrawal limit so that I could only take out $80 cash, they explained, because they felt that my card had been compromised in May 2009.

Could they raise my limit for the duration of my stay?

“No. The thieves might have greater access to your account if we do that,” the lady said.

Well, at least I had something in common with my frenemies in debit card fraud: neither of us could access large sums of cash from my account. How comforting.

Encore at the Wynn

One plus about working for Kiwi Collection is that you get to move around every couple of days and experience the best hotels in a given area. Using my allotted $80 USD, I zipped from the conference center to Palms Place, and then over to Encore at the Wynn, one of the newest (and most gorgeous) hotels on the Las Vegas Strip.

Encore is a sister property to the Vegas landmark Wynn Las Vegas. It opened in December 2008.

I entered the complex at the Wynn Las Vegas. As it turned out, I couldn’t check in to Encore from there, and had to meander through the elaborate red-carpeted halls, lined with shops, casino areas and restaurants (poor me!).

My suite had a comfy king-sized bed and separate sitting area, a great view of the strip and a big desk for post-conference work. My favourite thing about the room was the bathtub, which I made immediate use of.

I had the Grilled Jidori Chicken at Society Café at the hotel. And, over a glass of sweet Riesling, all of my cash-strapped stress was melting away…at least until it came time to pay.

“This credit card is declined,” the barman said. “Can I put this meal to your room?”

He didn’t seem rattled – and even believed me when I explained that I was “surprised” and “shocked” and that there “must be some mistake”. This is Vegas after all: after five days, most people’s credit cards don’t work.

Sparing the boring details – my credit card disaster was the product of yet another “misunderstanding” that would need to be sorted out once I arrived back home in Vancouver. If I could get back to Vancouver, that is.

Meeting Your Inner Degenerate

I used my remaining $20 American to hitch a ride to the networking event held by Pubcon. Since I wouldn’t be able to buy anything there (ie. booze), I figured it would be safe to go in my frazzled state. Also, I was looking forward to getting in my exercise, walking the 10 or so miles back to Encore at the Wynn when the festivities were over since I now had no cash or credit.

I was met by a hundred or so friendly online marketers all of whom had lots of suggestions on how to make a quick buck. They all agreed that with this crowd, the most valuable thing I could sell would be links from my website. This would allow me to return to Vancouver, where I could shake my fist at my bank in person.

Michael Bonfils of SEM International – a company that specializes in international online marketing strategies, chose to buy me a beer instead of buying my links, promising that it would make me feel better.

Jill Sampey of Blast Radius was also sympathetic, and offered to feed me tequila shots when she realized my night had gone awry.

My new friends Alon from Israel, and Allen Horwitz and Pierre Zarokian from Submit Express, an SEO Company, provided much assistance in finding a cash machine at three minutes to midnight so I could withdraw my $80 allowance for the day.

One chap would only agree to buy my links if I would sell 500 of them for $5.

I wasn’t prepared to go that cheap.

But then I saw him, from across the room. It was Danny Dover – a young up and coming SEO who surely wouldn’t know any better than to buy my crap links for cash. Why I thought this, I don’t know. In reality, this young grasshopper works at the famous company SEOMoz and has just finished writing an excellent Internet Marketing book all about doing search marketing the “right way” and not needing to resort to buying links from link prostitutes like me.

After talking at this poor man for about an hour, he decided to feed me more shots (probably to make me shut up). That’s when my inner degenerate made a guest appearance.

The rest is a blur of generous Americans offering me money not to link to them and blackjack dealers getting angry at me for stumbling through their “working area” at 4 a.m. Thankfully, my new best friends Michael and Danny led me back to Encore at the Wynn, since I no longer had motor skills and was easily distracted by shiny objects.

The good people at Encore took pity on me, and allowed me to check out late. I spent the day with the blinds closed, contemplating what I had done, and working on materials for my friends back at the office.

At the end of my time in Vegas, I realized that being a link prostitute was just not the career for me. I was lousy at it. Also, I wouldn’t be able to tell my mother what I was doing at night.

However, I did learn a lot about how fun and friendly Las Vegans can be (even if you have no money), and that I was good at getting free tequila, business cards and cab rides.

And if that doesn’t make for a great trip to Sin City, what does?

Story submitted By: Melissa Mewdell from Kiwi Collection
Danny Dover is the author of Search Engine Optimization Secrets.
No parts of this story may be copied or duplicated without permission from the author.

Bing adds Real-Time Twitter to Search Results

As part of an effort to integrate real-time data into search results, Microsoft has announced that its one-month-old search engine Bing now includes the latest tweets of Twitter users. While Bing will not feature all of Twitter at this time, it will index a few thousand of the more prominent Twitterers based on their follower count and volume of Tweets. The list of Twitter users includes everyone from search technology journalist Danny Sullivan to people like Al Gore and Ashton Kutcher.

In a blog post about the announcement, general manager of Microsoft’s search technology center Sean Suchter wrote, “There has been much discussion of real-time search and the premium on immediacy of data that has been created primarily by Twitter. We’ve been watching this phenomenon with great interest, and listening carefully to what consumers really want in this space.”

When Bing users search for people in association with Twitter, the search results will bring up their latest Tweets along with a quick link to more tweets. Users can type in queries such as “Ashton Kutcher Twitter” or “Ashton Kutcher tweets.”

This is a major step for Bing in terms of competing with search giant Google. The New York Times reported that while all major search engines index Twitter profiles and some older tweets, “Bing is the first major search engine that is integrating with Twitter in this way.”

-Melanie Saxe

New Common Tag Format to simplify Searching and Categorizing

A group of web companies–Yahoo!, AdaptiveBlue, DERI (NUI Galway), Faviki, Freebase, Zemanta, and Zigtag–have created a new tagging format for Web pages called Common Tag. The new format, according to the official press release, enables publishers to use semantic tagging to improve their content by making it more “discoverable, connected, and engaging.”

While tags have long been used to organize, share, and find content on the Web, the advantages have been limited. For example, a tag for the word jaguar could represent the animal, car company, or operating system. Additionally, in many cases individual things are represented by several tags, making it hard to organize related content. Common Tags, on the other hand, are references to specific concepts, equipped with metadata and their own URLs. Content related to jaguar the animal is therefore tagged with one concept for jaguar the animal. The new tag also connects users to helpful metadata that defines each concept and explains how they are related to one another. Ultimately, Common Tags will help users, publishers, and developers create topic groups, share their content, and improve their pages with free data, images, and widgets.

Peter Mika from Yahoo! Research said, “Semantic tagging is an important next step in the evolution of the Web. When we add semantic meaning to tags, the content that is tagged becomes significantly easier for machines to understand. That in turn allows for the development of more intelligent applications for aggregating, searching, and browsing the Web.”

To use the Common Tag format, publishers can employ automated tagging tools such as those provided by Zemanta or tag their content themselves. In addition, social tagging services such as Faviki and Zigtag also allow end users to tag content using this new format.

-Melanie Saxe