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Search & Conversion Marketing Blog

Welcome to our blog! Here you'll find posts on the topics of web design & traffic acquisition, paid and organic search strategies, analytics & business intelligence, conversion testing, interviews, videos and more. We hope you find it useful, and invite you to read, share, subscribe, leave a comment, or just have a look at what's here.

Archive for the ‘Website Promotion & LinkBuilding’ Category

Goodbye WebShare, Hello Cardinal Path!

Monday, March 14th, 2011 by Corey Koberg

Six years ago we started WebShare with the singular goal of passing on the knowledge and skills we had acquired in Internet marketing to our clients and partnering with them to take their digital strategy to the next level.

Over the years we’ve been fortunate to experience tremendous growth that has allowed us to continue to add expertise and experience to the team, including a stable of experts in online advertising, conversion optimization, SEM, social media, and web design. But the area we’re probably best known for has been our analytics expertise. Offering a full range of services, from strategy to implementation and training to deep-dive analysis, our team includes thought leaders such as WAA Innovation Award finalists, industry authors, sought after speakers, seasoned trainers, and former Google employees.

Today we take a huge step forward with that growth as we combine the expertise of three of the industry’s top firms to create a world class organization featuring some of digital marketing’s finest minds. WebShare, VKI Studios, and PublicInsite will be joining forces to give our clients a true one-stop shop for all of their digital needs. This will provide clients access to a team with exceptional depth and expertise across a broad range of disciplines that include search marketing, usability and conversion testing, web design & development, training, business / competitive intelligence, and more.

Above all, we realize that we could not be where we are today without you – our clients, our team of employees, our partners, and our community. We would like to sincerely thank you all for being a part of WebShare, and we look forward to what the future brings.

If you’d like to learn more about the merger, we’ve set up a FAQ page, and don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions. We’ll be blogging, tweeting, posting and conversing from Cardinal Path from here on out, so don’t forget to follow, friend, subscribe and friend.

We couldn’t be more thrilled about our future with Cardinal Path and what it will mean to our clients, partners and team — both current and future!

Signing off from the WebShare blog,

Corey & Dave

Corey Koberg
Corey is a co-founder and principal consultant at WebShare...you can find out more about Corey here.

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Posted in Conversion Marketing, Google Analytics, Google Website Optimizer, Local Search / Google Places, Pay Per Click Marketing, Search Marketing, Social Media, Website Design, Website Promotion & LinkBuilding | No Comments »

4 Ways Companies are Capitalizing on the Buzz!

Tuesday, March 8th, 2011 by Heather Cooan

In the wake of Charlie Sheen’s recent shenanigans, companies with smart marketing people are jumping on the chance to capitalize on the buzz. In case you missed it, Sheen’s been quite busy the last couple of weeks. He’s ranted his way through several interviews, been fired from his hit TV show Two and Half Men, and even set a new Guinness World Record for Twitter for the “Fastest Time to Reach 1 Million Followers”. Oh, and who can forget his totally winning Ustream channel.

Sheen’s created quite a buzz recently and companies are cashing in, check out how these four companies have capitalized on Sheen’s buzz.

Poster Revolution

Poster revolution quickly grabbed a promoted tweet on the hashtag #tigerblood and #planbetter which started trending quickly after the ABC interview which aired the evening of March 1st and has been going strong ever since.

Why #tigerblood? Well that was one of the references Charlie Sheen has used during his recent interviews. Poster Revolution seized this opportunity and purchased a promoted tweet on the hastag and has been running this tweet on the stream to sell their Winning poster of Sheen.

At the time of this screen shot, the proted tweet has already received 825 retweets. I betcha they’ve sold a couple posters with this move. Pretty smart move I’d say.

Ford Vs. Iffinity

Car makers Ford and Iffinity have also jumped at purchasing promoted tweets on Charlie Sheen related hashtags. They’ve chosen to run on #Winning and you can now catch promoted tweets like this one from Infinity at the top of the stream for #Winning.

Infinity has chosen to tie the hash tag to a current promotional giveaway for a trip the NCAA Final Four. I’m sure they’re promotion has caught a bit more attention using these promoted tweets and surfing the Sheen wave then they would otherwise. Great job Infinity!

Spirit Airlines

Another interesting campaign that caught my eye is from Spirit Airlines. These guys have tied the Charlie Sheen phenomenon to a sale on airfare. They’ve dubbed it the “Living The Dream Sale” and are using tag lines like “Winning Fares”, and “Tiger Blood Not Required.

All of these companies are seizing the opportunity to jump into a conversation sparked by something totally un-related to their business. They’ve jumped outside the box and found a way to capitalize on a high volume conversation that’s already been ignited.

Don’t be afraid to try something different in your marketing mix, you can even celebrate your success with a Charlie Sheen cookie or a Charlie Dog topped with #tigerblood.

Heather Cooan

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Posted in Social Media, Website Promotion & LinkBuilding | No Comments »

Specify Your Business’s Service Area within your Google Places Listing

Thursday, May 13th, 2010 by Dave Reichenbacher

Did anyone notice that you can specify a service area in your Google Places Listing? Google Maps began rolling out this feature in late March with little publicity. This is quite a feature for businesses that want to publicize the different locations they serve; a great feature for businesses that will come to a home or for businesses that are actually based out of a home. Service areas listings give access to areas on the map where you may not have a physical address. For example, your business address may be in Tempe, Arizona, but in reality you can service any location within the Phoenix metro area.

Anyone can change their business service area by logging into their Google Places account and editing your business listing. Look for the section labeled “Service Areas and Location Settings”. Below we are using an example from a WebShare client that sells custom doors and windows in the Orange County area. As you can see, you can choose between specifying a radial distance from your location or simply listing the locations you want to show that you serve. If you have multiple business locations, be sure to edit all of them.

Distance from one location view:

List of areas served view:

Below you can see an example of what a listing will look like in Google Maps. This client has four showroom locations but obviously they install door and windows anywhere within Orange County. Now customers can clearly see what areas Renaissance services if they are shopping for a door and window contractor.

Did anyone notice that you can now specify a service area in your Google Local Business Listing? Google Maps began rolling out this feature in late March with not much publicity. This is quite a feature for businesses that want to publicize the different locations they serve; a great feature for businesses that will come to a home or for businesses that are actually based out of a home. Service areas listings give access to areas on the map where you may not have a physical address. For example, your business address may be in Tempe, Arizona, but in reality you can service any location within the Phoenix metro area.

Anyone can change their business service area by logging into their Google Local Business Center and editing your business listing. Look for the section labeled “Service Areas and Location Settings”. Below we are using an example from a WebShare client that sells custom doors and windows in the Orange County area. As you can see, you can choose between specifying a distance from your location or simply listing the locations you want to show that you serve. If you have multiple business location listings, be sure to edit all of them.

Dave Reichenbacher
DR directs program management and operations at WebShare. He also is one of our Seminars for Success instructors and has an affinity toward local search marketing. You can find out more about Dave here.

See more posts by Dave Reichenbacher

Tags: Google Local Business Listings, Local search
Posted in Local Search / Google Places, Search Marketing, Website Promotion & LinkBuilding | 2 Comments »

Search Activity Posts Big Numbers

Thursday, November 15th, 2007 by David Booth

It appears that the search market is alive and well. ComScore released the findings from their report showing the worldwide search activity in August of 2007. Google is still the worldwide leader with over 60% of the market share. It is interesting to note that Youtube searches (5 billion) account for a little over 13% of all Google searches. Yahoo comes in at a distant second while Chinese search engine, Baidu comes in third place. Microsoft continues to hold a minor presence in the search market in fourth place.

We should note that this data does not include searches conducted on public computers or mobile devices. This would indicate that there are actually even more people performing searches on the internet. As mobile device and wireless technologies continue to become more prevalent, the number of searches performed will continue to grow. A couple of interesting notes include the fact that the Asia-Pacific market has the highest search volume of all regions, while the Latin America region having the smallest internet population has the most searches per searcher. If these markets continue to grow at their current rates, they could open some great international search marketing opportunities.

To put this all in perspective, let’s take a look at the average number of searches in a little shorter time period. Breaking down the number of worldwide searches conducted in August of 2007, you can see that the average number of searches performed worldwide on a daily basis is nearly 2 billion! That’s over 22,000 searches conducted per second, which presents a whole lot of marketing opportunity!

With an audience that size the question isn’t, “Why would I start a search marketing campaign?” It’s “Why wouldn’t I start a search marketing campaign?” WebShare is a Google Website Optimizer and Analytics Authorized Consultancy as well as a Google Adwords Qualified Company. We offer a variety of services including search engine optimization and search and conversion marketing to help you make the most of your search marketing efforts, and get an edge on your competitors.

David Booth
David is a co-founder and principal consultant at WebShare. You can find out more about David here.

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Posted in Search Marketing, Website Design, Website Promotion & LinkBuilding | No Comments »

WebShare Rolls out Managed Email Marketing Services

Monday, September 10th, 2007 by David Evans

This week we’ve rolled out a new service in response to the overwhelming need we’ve seen recently for a solid email marketing solution that allows for easy management, conversion testing, and perhaps most importantly, industry leading deliverability.

Frustrations with the management and legal aspects of opt-in list management are commonplace these days, and being able to perform A/B/N split testing or even

multivariate testing on your email blasts is becoming a necessity in the online marketing world. And once the mails are sent, keeping your email broadcasts out of the SPAM filters has become a problem that requires an entire department to manage.

We’re proud to offer our clients access to a system that can address all of these concerns and more – and has been helping businesses for more than 6 years and boasts over 10,000 users around the world. Depending upon your level of expertise or customization, we offer services from complete self-service email marketing to advanced services such as statistical experiment design and analysis of individual email broadcasts.

If you’re already doing email marketing, then you know that mailing lists, newsletters, email blasts, and customer communications can mean a big boost to your website’s ROI, and using professional hosting can help you make sure that you’re getting the most out of these efforts.

If you haven’t yet explored the powerful tool of email marketing, then what are you waiting for? You could be reaching your customer base and tapping into a fantastic

source of traffic and conversions for just pennies per email!

Find out more about WebShare’s email marketing solutions here and contact us when you’re ready to take your email marketing efforts to the next level.