Vote for the Blog Writer You Like Best in Our Readers Choice Award

Join Our Readers Choice Award Contest

We’ve created a contest for our staff blog writers where you, our reader, make the choice on which writer or blog post you like best. The writer with the most Google+ +1 votes on their unique blog post entry page will win a nice cash award just in time for Christmas.

It’s easy to participate, here’s what to do:

  • Read each five blog posts that our staff writers have submitted for the contest from our pool of clients and then click the Google +1 icon on the page to place your vote.
  • Or choose to simply vote for the writer you like and know by clicking the Google +1 icon on their blog post page.

You will need to be logged in to your Google account in order to vote and have Google+ enabled in your browser. You’ll only be allowed to vote once. Once you vote the Google+ icon will show your name and open a field for you to share with others on Google+. If you click the +1 button again, you will remove your vote.

Voting will run from November 27th to December 11th. On December 12th we will award the cash prize to the top writer selected by Google +1 votes.

Here are some quick blog post lead ins to read. Just click the link at the bottom of the teaser to visit the blog post page and vote.

Jada

Tips for Saving  Money on Your Summer Vacation While  some people plan and book their summer vacations way in advance, if you haven’t  even begun to make plans, don’t worry. If you are flexible you may be able to  snag last minute deals. And you can take the LorMet Visa Travel Card with you so that you have the security of Traveler’s Checks and the convenience  of a Visa Debit Card. You can check your LorMet Visa Travel Card balance online  and take advantage of Online Banking to check on your LorMet accounts when you travel. Read the full blog post and vote now!

Jeff

The Best Worker is Usually the Most Comfortable One The call for more rain than last year in the fall has certainly been proven correct, especially for the East Coast. The weather gurus have also warned about more snowfall to be expected so the time to prepare is now.  It is a must to have the best clothing available when the weather turns bad as wet jeans just don’t cut it when the snow starts falling. Read the full blog post and vote now!

John

Traveling by Private Jet During Peak Seasons Whether you are flying in your own private jet or chartering an airplane, it can be difficult to travel during peak seasons. However, there are a number of things that you can do to ensure that your trip will be smooth and hassle-free. To get the flight or landing slot you want, you should make reservations at least a month or two before your trip. If you are traveling to a popular destination, you may have to book a few months in advance. Read the full blog post and vote now!

Rhonda

Blinging Up Technology Accessories What do you give a person who has everything this holiday season?  You can   forget about buying perfume or picking up a boring gift card this year.  For   those with money to burn, Apple has a great gift idea.  Along with their release   of the much anticipated iPad Mini, which hit stores on November 2, 2012, was an   interesting iPad Mini case that is not for the faint of heart.  You could choose   to purchase the cheap leather case for around $50 or you could indulge in a case   that is simply out of this world! Read the full blog post and vote now!

Sue

Space Center Offers  Exciting Insider’s View of Space Program Less than an hour from Epcot’s World of Tomorrow and Disney  World’s Fantasyland lays a place where dreams really do come true. The Kennedy  Space Center in Titusville, Florida is where rockets launched man into space  and is a must see if you are planning an Orlando vacation.  The space center is where Neil Armstrong took his last step on Earth before  leaving his legendary footprints on the moon. From this famous spit of land on  north Florida’s Atlantic Coast, every fire-belching Atlas rocket, Apollo  mission and shuttle flight was launched into the unknown as Americans pushed the  boundaries of exploration beyond Earth’s boundary. Read the full blog post and vote now!

Subdomains versus Subdirectories Per Google

Ever wonder how Google views subdirectories or subdomains when it comes to placement on Google.com? In this video Matt Cutts the Google spokesperson to my industry, talks about using each and how Google indexes each.

Previously some webmasters set up multiple subdomains in an effort to have Google show more results, but Matt Cutts now says that this is not a strategy that Google rewards. Google now recognizes subdomains as part of your parent domain listing on Google.com and “squenches those listings now all together on the search results page”.

Further he says the historical reasons on why you would have previously wanted to set up your website with subdomains do not apply as much on Google today. His personal preference and mine as well is to structure your website with subdirectories and not subdomains. However, he ends the video stating whichever tactic is easier for you, you should use that way for your own purposes.

 

Google AdWords – Why I Am Testing Dynamic Search Ads

I just asked all the time what are you watching, what’s new and exciting, what trends to you see happening? This week I will be writing three blog posts about what I’m watching and why. Today’s post is about the new Google AdWords Dynamic Search Ads.

This is why I am watching and testing Dynamic Search Ads right now:

1. With AdWords spidering my website and choosing to show landing pages that match a user’s query I may be able to expand my advertising reach and improve my conversions and ROI. In the hangout Google states the following statistics on performance.

“When compared to broad match keywords the click through rate will typically be 12% higher and the cost per conversion will be 25% lower.”

2. By not having to exhaustively select keywords for a program and with Google dynamically creating the ad title using the user’s search query, and Google choosing the landing page to show the prospect, targeting is improved and unique for each query.

3. Static information rich and e-commerce sites can benefit from Dynamic Search Ads (DSA).

4. DSA work with accounts that contain both regular keyword targeted programs. In fact Google states that with DSA the advertiser will get more activity than with keyword targeted ads alone.

5. The potential to know and understand the potential buyer and what the like versus what you are wanting to push may very well change advertising plans for some clients; allowing the user to be the advertising revenue driver.

You can watch the video from +GoogleAds from the hangout last week on the topic. I think you will find the potential for some clients very interesting.

SEO – Why I Am Watching Co-Citation?

I just asked all the time what are you watching, what’s new and exciting, what trends to you see happening? This week I will be writing three blog posts about what I’m watching and why. Today’s post is about why I am watching co-citation.

Nancy McCord is really watching co-citation for organic search placement.

Google has made really sweeping changes to how it rates websites and what used to work for years to garner organic placement is not considered spammy by Google and may even run into a placement smackdown filter. This is why I am very carefully and intensely watching co-citation.Here are a few articles about co-citation that you may want to read:

SEOMoz take on co-citation

Jim Boykin’s take on co-citation

In lay terms, co-citation is close to link bait and article marketing but with natural growth. Both authors state that Google and Bing as so smart now that they do not have to be fed keyword phrases, they will decide on their own based on the content that links to you. But, here’s the change it is not the link text that they are weighing, but rather the jist of the content where the link to your website is embedded. In fact, the page that links to you may not even link to your service and may not even contain keywords on which you want to place. Instead it is an “authority” factor.

So here’s what I understand so far…

Google and Bing spider the web, they read incidents of mentions of your name and content, they spider your own website and get a picture of the services you provide, then they review how what people say about you and the authority of the site that links to your site talks about you. They then use this in their algorithm to place you in importance to being an authority on a specific topic. Way Cool!

Although I don’t think that anyone in my industry really knows yet what works for organic placement in this new world on Google and Bing, but it is clear that content, the sharing of your content will be a very strong impact for organic placement.

I will be doing further research on co-citation and will let you know what I find out and what I think about it in the months to come.