http://centersphere.com/blog/ Latest Blogs http://centersphere.com/OmahaMediaGroup/blog/search-engine-inclusion-proper-meta-tag-use/

Being the bonafide Google Developers we are we are often asked about how we go about conducting our search engine optimization and marketing strateg...]]>

Being the bonafide Google Developers we are we are often asked about how we go about conducting our search engine optimization and marketing strategies. These questions usually revolve around the proper use of keywords, site maps and robot texts, so to help those of you whom have been tasked with your own search engine optimization and marketing for your own websites we thought we'd write a quick article to help you on your way.

Search Engine Marketing a Rocket Science?
Thankfully Search Engine Marketing isn't rocket science, or is it? Yes, like painting a room in your house, servicing your car, anyone with the right initiative can perform their own search engine marketing with little ease using basic knowledge. In fact with just a little bit of search engine inclusion understanding, the right tools, and a lot of time you yourself can learn to become a search engine guru. The question is, do you have the time it takes to maintain your results? Probably not, which is why like the rest of our other search engine marketing customers you come to us to manage your search engine strategies for you.

But for those of you who want to try and perform your search engine marketing we put this article together to help you understand search engine optimization basics to get you started on your way to search engine wizardry.

Search Engine Optimization - Meta Data / Meta Tags

Simply put Metadata is information about data. Meta <meta> tag provides metadata about the HTML document to the search engine crawler and is never displayed on the page but remains machine parsable and is read by the search engine.

Meta Tag elements are typically used to specify page description, keywords, author of the document, last modified, and other metadata. This metadata can be used by browsers (how to display content or reload page), search engines (keywords), or other web services used during the inclusion process.

There are dozens and dozens of metas tags all which can be used to deliver information to the search engine, the most typically used tags are:

<title>
<keyword>
<description>
<author>
<robots>

Although the above meta tags are typical, as we already mentioned in our "Google Farmer/Panda Update Killed The Ranking Star" earlier this year the <keyword> and <description> tags are no longer essential to retrieving a good inclusion / rank within most search engines. In fact, Google would rather you NOT include and depending on the type of search engine strategy you are executing can even hurt your inclusion / rank. We will expalin in more detail below, read on...

So what are the essential keywords for obtaining a good organic inclusion for your website? We're glad you asked, they are:

<google-site-verification>
The first most important meta tag would be your site verification tag, issued by Google exclusively for your website during manual inclusion. This tag singly handedly tells Google that you are in fact a real website with valid content and there is a physical person maintaining the content of this website. There are of course a whole slew of other benefits to having a verifiec website but we'll let you read about them from Google's website.

<title>
The title tag is just that, the TITLE of your website. This tag's metadata is delivered to the browser's header and is by far the second most important tag you can use to be indexed correctly. The title tag is where we place the Keywords that we would have normally entered into the outdated <keyword> meta tag referenced above. Since it is our goal to make the crawler's life easier when crawling our website and Google specially tells us they don't want us to tell them what our website is about / that Google specifically wants to be able to decipher the page content themselves via your website's content we will trust Google to do it's job. This is a job that since February of this year Google does VERY WELL.

Let us say that again: Google DOSE NOT want you to tell them what your page is about via meta tags. Google wants to figure that out themselves via your page's content. This is one of the many reasons which drove them to create and release Panda/Farmer in the first place. This is by far one of the most misunderstood search engine optimization tactics by most web companies out there who claim to be SEO/SEM experts. Most failing to realize that the use of the <keyword> and <description> tags can essentially can hurt your inclusion, especially once the page's content has changed over the span of time. It's this easy, Google is Google, who are you to tell Google what and who you are? Forget about it..

Eliminating Unnecessary Meta Tags

To summarize the above brain spewage: Meta tags are an integral part of every webpage within every website and "most of the time" it is imperative that you take utilize necessary meta tags to best optimize your website for inclusion value/rank. However, since the release of Google Panda/Farmer earlier this year, there are some meta tags that in our experience, hamper or slow the process of Google and other search engines from crawling through your website.

If these meta tags are no longer relevant, then why on earth would we want to waste Google's time crawling through a portion of a website that is irrelevant? This is exactly why we are going to tell Google to focus on your relevant content and to bypass the irrelevant tags, css, and javascript that would otherwise prevent Google's crawler from ever making it to the meat and potatoes of your website.

Here are some tags that we definitely recommend you remove from your website:

<meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache" />
This tag tells browsers to not store a website in cache so it loads quickly the next time it is visited. Most browsers already give users the option as to whether they want for it to check for newer versions of the pages when visiting a website so it is best to leave it up to the person viewing your website. Don't waste Google's time with this meta tag.

<meta http-equiv="Expires" content="Date" />
This meta tag specifically tells the browser when a page expires and at that point in time, the browser will look for newer version of content upon every visit. Again, best to leave this functionality option to the user and don't waste the search engine crawler's time using this tag.

<meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="false" />
This meta tag disables the old image toolbar that used by Microsoft Internet Explorer. Give your search engine's crawler a break, this is not essential so do not crowd this into your meta coding.

<meta name="robots" content="nofollow">
This tag can be used to restrict the crawler on how it crawls your website. This has since been replaced with the use of robots.txt file.

Summarizing the Confusion

Wow, that seems like a lot to know about keeping your website optimized and/or search engine friendly isn't it? And those are basic principles too. Yikes you think to yourself… Never fear where there is a will there is a way and with a little reading, practice, and more reading and practice you will soon find yourself a search engine guru and will still probably be confused as ever. Why? There is an endless array of knowledge when it comes to search engine strategy and because all of those crafty blogs and articles you are going to find will have everyone preaching different strategies and/or different approaches to how they conduct their search engine optimization and marketing. Are they wrong? That's a tough answer. Why? Because each company will have their own strategy and they just might be right with in the context of their strategy.

When it comes to a good search engine strategy we know what works best through our own experience and analytical data, all of which comes to us directly from Google. wink

Have you found yourself lost in search engine optimization and marketing land and would like some assistance getting your strategy on track? Call us, we manage SEO/SEM for small, medium and large companies just like yours and would LOVE to assist you too!



Omaha Media Group LLC
MONSTER Creative Management
PO BOX 390640
Omaha, Nebraska 68137
402.218.4423]]> http://centersphere.com/OmahaMediaGroup/blog/search-engine-inclusion-proper-meta-tag-use/ Wed, 07 Dec 2011 02:17:56 +0000 OmahaMediaGroup.com http://centersphere.com/OmahaMediaGroup/blog/new-project-omahamovieshowtimes-com/
Old Website



New Website



]]> http://centersphere.com/OmahaMediaGroup/blog/new-project-omahamovieshowtimes-com/ Mon, 22 Aug 2011 01:30:14 +0000 OmahaMediaGroup.com http://centersphere.com/OmahaMediaGroup/blog/promotions-the-most-powerful-way-to-grow-fans/

One of the many questions we receive every week is "how can I attract more people to my Facebook profile?". Like most social butterflies who have deci...]]>

One of the many questions we receive every week is "how can I attract more people to my Facebook profile?". Like most social butterflies who have decided to use social media to increase their business exposure you have been burning the might night oil trying to figure out how to increase your Facebook's fanbase with little or no success. Have no fear young social padawan, the simple fact that you're trying means that you have made the first step in creating that perfect social attraction for your business. So how do you go about building the social attention? The simple answer is for you to try and run a business promotion. Businesses marketing on facebook are building massive fanbases by running promotions.

Online consumers love contests and sweepstakes!
According to Jupiter Research, over 80% of all Internet users have participated in an online sweepstakes or contest in the past year, while another 50% enter them once a month. Creating an online sweepstakes is tantamount to taking advantage of human nature’s enchantment with the game of chance. Societies all over the world have a large chunk of their cultures bent on taking chances with whatever form.

Those who enter are more aware of the brand
According to a Razorfish study, of the 70% of consumers who they found participated in a brand-sponsored contest or sweepstakes, a staggering 96% are more aware of the brand; 96% are more likely to consider that brand when in the market for a product or service. Really? Yeah, no doubt.

Women click on promotions ads!
According to new research from rich-media solutions provider Unicast, among the ads that women will encounter online, this summer [2010], the most likely to resonate include those related to sale and discount codes, with 46% of women respondents said they would be keeping an eye out for such ads. They also found that 31% of the respondents said ads that involve creating/submitting an entry to win a prize would get their attention; 24% noted those ads that provide customized local information; and 22% said they'd likely respond well to ads that offer interactive surveys/quizzes. And be sure to keep this in-mind when you seed your promotion with advertising.

Build prospect lists
Sweepstakes offer an excellent way to build prospect lists for email marketing. Make sure you ask for a person's email address not only as a means to contact the winner, but also as a means to build your prospect lists for remarketing. You certainly do not want to be flagged for blind email spamming which is frowned upon in every portion of the globe. Shame on you, you pesky spammers.

Expose your brand
Contests offer an effective way to expose your brand to lots of people on facebook. Essay contests will get you the most entries, if that is your goal. Photos also offer an immersive experience for users. And video, though will bring in the least amount of entries of the three, will provide a higher quality experience for users, and content if the goal is to use it for other marketing purposes.

Let us help you start and manage your business promotion, call us today!

Omaha Media Group LLC
"Monster Creative Management"
http://www.omahamediagroup.com
13302 Millard Ave Suite 104
Omaha, Nebraska 68137
402.218.4423
support@omahamediagroup.com

Full Article

Read more blogs]]> http://centersphere.com/OmahaMediaGroup/blog/promotions-the-most-powerful-way-to-grow-fans/ Sat, 13 Aug 2011 16:00:37 +0000 OmahaMediaGroup.com http://centersphere.com/coachtoempower/blog/have-you-done-a-business-check-up-lately/ When one works in their business it is hard to consider how you can find time to commit to building a business. The only way we think that we have t...
Does this sound a little like your business? Many times we do not take the needed time to look at the different areas of our business so that we do not experience those highs and lows. Here are a few things to consider to help you “Diagnosis” your practice so that you can become more of a business.

1. Staff – are you keeping good staff members that are as passionate about serving your clients as you are?

2. Growth – are doing things that provide you with a steady growth in your business? or are riding a roller coaster?

3. Powerful Brand – have you built a name for your business? Do people in your community know who you are and what you do?

4. Longevity – do you have measures in place that keep your clients coming back or systems that ask for referrals?

5. Understanding – Do you really take time to understand where your business is at? Do you know your numbers – products, profit, expenses, growth, etc.

How often do you take time for a business check up? Would you tell your clients to see you in six months if you had never even completed an exam on them? So why do you continue to run your business with out completing the exam? What is holding you back from doing the same for your business?

If you are not sure how to find the time or where to start, we would like to help you. Give us a call today at (402)321-0016 or visit us at www.guidedempowerment.com to schedule a time to learn more about our Gap Analysis.]]> http://centersphere.com/coachtoempower/blog/have-you-done-a-business-check-up-lately/ Thu, 21 Jul 2011 17:55:28 +0000 Amanda Hebner http://centersphere.com/OmahaMediaGroup/blog/how-google-panda-changed-seo-forever-panda-v2-2/

Just as expected and right on time Google has released Panda v2.2. This time around Google has improved their ability to detect those pesky scraper we...]]>

Just as expected and right on time Google has released Panda v2.2. This time around Google has improved their ability to detect those pesky scraper websites and remove and ban them from SERPs. Naturally Panda updates are changes made to Google's algorithm and are not manual reviews of websites within their index - so expect some error for those of you unlucky website owners. So what all has changed? A lot! So you better have a good strategy or you will be lost in translation or even worse off, removed from the index.

We happily and successfully manage dozens of SEO/SEM for are various business clients and if are like the majority of our clients and do not understand what any of this means never fear, we can help. For the rest of you willing to take a crack at it yourselves read on.

In a wondrous video that should be watched by EVERYONE wanting to streamline the threshold of SEM wizardry SEO Guru Rand Fishkin takes us through some simple Panda 2.2 SEM strategy.

VIDEO LINK:
http://www.omahamediagroup.com/index.php/blog/article/how_google_panda_changed_seo_forever_panda_v2.2/

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

"Howdy, SEOmoz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week, we're talking about the very exciting, very interesting, very controversial Google Panda update.

Panda, also known as Farmer, was this update that Google came out with in March of this year, of 2011, that rejiggered a bunch of search results and pushed a lot of websites down in the rankings, pushed some websites up in the rankings, and people have been concerned about it ever since. It has actually had several updates and new versions of that implementation and algorithm come out. A lot of people have all these questions like, "Ah, what's going on around Panda?" There have been some great blog posts on SEOmoz talking about some of the technical aspects. But I want to discuss in this Whiteboard Friday some of the philosophical and theoretical aspects and how Google Panda really changes the way a lot of us need to approach SEO.

So let's start with a little bit of Panda history. Google employs an engineer named Navneet Panda. The guy has done some awesome work. In fact, he was part of a patent application that Bill Slawski looked into where he found a great way to scale some machine learning algorithms. Now, machine learning algorithms, as you might be aware, are very computationally expensive and they take a long time to run, particularly if you have extremely large data sets, both of inputs and of outputs. If you want, you can research machine learning. It is an interesting fun tactic that computer scientists use and programmers use to find solutions to problems. But basically before Panda, machine learning scalability at Google was at level X, and after it was at the much higher level Y. So that was quite nice. Thanks to Navneet, right now they can scale up this machine learning.

What Google can do based on that is take a bunch of sites that people like more and a bunch of sites that people like less, and when I say like, what I mean is essentially what the quality raters, Google's quality raters, tell them this site is very enjoyable. This is a good site. I'd like to see this high in the search results. Versus things where the quality raters say, "I don't like to see this." Google can say, "Hey, you know what? We can take the intelligence of this quality rating panel and scale it using this machine learning process."

Here's how it works. Basically, the idea is that the quality raters tell Googlers what they like. They answer all these questions, and you can see Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts were interviewed by Wired Magazine. They talked about some of the things that were asked of these quality raters, like, "Would you trust this site with your credit card? Would you trust the medical information that this site gives you with your children? Do you think the design of this site is good?" All sorts of questions around the site's trustworthiness, credibility, quality, how much they would like to see it in the search results. Then they compare the difference.

The sites that people like more, they put in one group. The sites that people like less, they put in another group. Then they look at tons of metrics. All these different metrics, numbers, signals, all sorts of search signals that many SEOs suspect come from user and usage data metrics, which Google has not historically used as heavily. But they think that they use those in a machine learning process to essentially separate the wheat from the chaff. Find the ones that people like more and the ones that people like less. Downgrade the ones they like less. Upgrade the ones they like more. Bingo, you have the Panda update.

So, Panda kind of means something new and different for SEO. As SEOs, for a long time you've been doing the same kind of classic things. You've been building good content, making it accessible to search engines, doing good keyword research, putting those keywords in there, and then trying to get some links to it. But you have not, as SEOs, we never really had to think as much or as broadly about, "What is the experience of this website? Is it creating a brand that people are going to love and share and reward and trust?" Now we kind of have to think about that.

It is almost like the job of SEO has been upgraded from SEO to web strategist. Virtually everything you do on the Internet with your website can impact SEO today. That is especially true following Panda. The things that they are measuring is not, oh, these sites have better links than these sites. Some of these sites, in fact, have much better links than these sites. Some of these sites have what you and I might regard, as SEOs, as better content, more unique, robust, quality content, and yet, people, quality raters in particular, like them less or the things, the signals that predict that quality raters like those sites less are present in those types of sites.

Let's talk about a few of the specific things that we can be doing as SEOs to help with this new sort of SEO, this broader web content/web strategy portion of SEO.

First off, design and user experience. I know, good SEOs have been preaching design user experience for years because it tends to generate more links, people contribute more content to it, it gets more social signal shares and tweets and all this other sort of good second order effect. Now, it has a first order effect impact, a primary impact. If you can make your design absolutely beautiful, versus something like this where content is buffeted by advertising and you have to click next, next, next a lot. The content isn't all in one page. You cannot view it in that single page format. Boy, the content blocks themselves aren't that fun to read, even if it is not advertising that's surrounding them, even if it is just internal messaging or the graphics don't look very good. The site design feels like it was way back in the 1990s. All that stuff will impact the ability of this page, this site to perform. And don't forget, Google has actually said publicly that even if you have a great site, if you have a bunch of pages that are low quality on that site, they can drag down the rankings of the rest of the site. So you should try and block those for us or take them down. Wow. Crazy, right? That's what a machine learning algorithm, like Panda, will do. It will predicatively say, "Hey, you know what? We're seeing these features here, these elements, push this guy down."

Content quality matters a lot. So a lot of time, in the SEO world, people will say, "Well, you have to have good, unique, useful content." Not enough. Sorry. It's just not enough. There are too many people making too much amazing stuff on the Internet for good and unique and grammatically correct and spelled properly and describes the topic adequately to be enough when it comes to content. If you say, "Oh, I have 50,000 pages about 50,000 different motorcycle parts and I am just going to go to Mechanical Turk or I am going to go outsource, and I want a 100 word, two paragraphs about each one of them, just describe what this part is." You think to yourself, "Hey, I have good unique content." No, you have content that is going to be penalized by Panda. That is exactly what Panda is designed to do. It is designed to say this is content that someone wrote for SEO purposes just to have good unique content on the page, not content that makes everyone who sees it want to share it and say wow. Right?

If I get to a page about a motorcycle part and I am like, "God, not only is this well written, it's kind of funny. It's humorous. It includes some anecdotes. It's got some history of this part. It has great photos. Man, I don't care at all about motorcycle parts, and yet, this is just a darn good page. What a great page. If I were interested, I'd be tweeting about this, I'd share it. I'd send it to my uncle who buys motorcycles. I would love this page." That's what you have to optimize for. It is a totally different thing than optimizing for did I use the keyword at least three times? Did I put it in the title tag? Is it included in there? Is the rest of the content relevant to the keywords? Panda changes this. Changes it quite a bit.

Finally, you are going to be optimizing around user and usage metrics. Things like, when people come to your site, generally speaking compared to other sites in your niche or ranking for your keywords, do they spend a good amount of time on your site, or do they go away immediately? Do they spend a good amount of time? Are they bouncing or are they browsing? If you have a good browse rate, people are browsing 2, 3, 4 pages on average on a content site, that's decent. That's pretty good. If they're browsing 1.5 pages on some sites, like maybe specific kinds of news sites, that might actually be pretty good. That might be better than average. But if they are browsing like 1.001 pages, like virtually no one clicks on a second page, that might be weird. That might hurt you. Your click-through rate from the search results. When people see your title and your snippet and your domain name, and they go, "Ew, I don't know if I want to get myself involved in that. They've got like three hyphens in their domain name, and it looks totally spammy. I'm not going to get involved." Then that click-through rate is probably going to suffer and so are your rankings.

They are going to be looking at things like the diversity and quantity of traffic that comes to your site. Do lots of people from all around the world or all around your local region, your country, visit your website directly? They can measure this through Chrome. They can measure it through Android. They can measure it through the Google toolbar. They have all this user and usage metrics. They know where people are going on the Internet, where they spend time, how much time they spend, and what they do on those pages. They know about what happens from the search results too. Do people click from a result and then go right back to the search results and perform another search? Clearly, they were unhappy with that. They can take all these metrics and put them into the machine learning algorithm and then have Panda essentially recalculate. This why you see essentially Google doesn't issue updates every day or every week. It is about every 30 or 40 days that a new Panda update will come out because they are rejiggering all this stuff.

One of the things that people who get hit by Panda come up to me and say, "God, how are we ever going to get out of Panda? We've made all these changes. We haven't gotten out yet." I'm like, "Well, first off, you're not going to get out of it until they rejigger the results, and then there is no way that you are going to get out of it unless you change the metrics around your site." So if you go into your Analytics and you see that people are not spending longer on your pages, they are not enjoying them more, they are not sharing them more, they are not naturally linking to them more, your branded search traffic is not up, your direct type in traffic is not up, you see that none of these metrics are going up and yet you think you have somehow fixed the problems that Panda tries to solve for, you probably haven't.

I know this is frustrating. I know it's a tough issue. In fact, I think that there are sites that have been really unfairly hit. That sucks and they shouldn't be and Google needs to work on this. But I also know that I don't think Google is going to be making many changes. I think they are very happy with the way that Panda has gone from a search quality perspective and from a user happiness perspective. Their searchers are happier, and they are not seeing as much junk in the results. Google likes the way this is going. I think we are going to see more and more of this over time. It could even get more aggressive. I would urge you to work on this stuff, to optimize around these things, and to be ready for this new form of SEO."

Are you in need of some SEO/SEM strategy? Call us today!

Omaha Media Group LLC
Monster Creative Management
13302 Millard Ave Suite 104
Omaha, Nebraska 68137
402.218.4423 - Office
http://www.omahamediagroup.com]]> http://centersphere.com/OmahaMediaGroup/blog/how-google-panda-changed-seo-forever-panda-v2-2/ Tue, 05 Jul 2011 21:29:27 +0000 OmahaMediaGroup.com http://centersphere.com/OmahaMediaGroup/blog/dateomaha-com-omaha-stormchasers-love-seat-promotion/
DateOmaha.com has teamed up with The Omaha Storm Chasers for a one-of-a-kind promotion called...]]>
DateOmaha.com has teamed up with The Omaha Storm Chasers for a one-of-a-kind promotion called the "LOVE SEAT". During Thirsty Thursdays this summer one lucky member will get to watch and be be featured during a Thursday night Storm Chasers baseball game! The selected member will be featured to other singles at the ballpark throughout the game and if the member finds a date, or a date finds the member by the end of the game they will win an all expense dinner and drinks, movie and a complete prize package from our other selected sponsors.

The LOVE SEAT is the only one of its kind in all of Major and Minor baseball leagues. Because of it's unique appeal the promotion has attracted a lot of media attention and special PR campaigns are being tailored specifically to raise awareness for the promotion. This unique promotion is perfect for any business seeking exposure for it's products and services.

Sponsorship Opportunities:

Major Corporate Sponsorship

Expose your business's services and/or products in a unique summer-long promotion. Major corporate sponsors will receive in-game sponsorship recognition. The Major IN-GAME sponsor will also receive co-branding in all public/press releases, weekly and monthly email blasts, website banner rotation and media promotion, and co-branding in all other related print material throughout the entire length of the promotion.

Minor Cooperate Sponsorship.

Expose your business's services and/or products in a unique summer-long promotion. Minor corporate sponsors will receive co-branding in all public/press releases, weekly and monthly email blasts, website banner rotation and media promotion, and co-branding in all other related print material throughout the entire length of the promotion.

Sponsorships start at a few hundred dollars. To learn more about sponsorship opportunities please contact:

Omaha Media Group LLC
"Monster Creative Management"
13302 Millard Ave Suite 104
Omaha, Nebraska 68137

By Phone:+1.402.218.4423

support@omahamediagroup.com

Email / Contact Information

http://omahamediagroup.com/index.php/site/contact_us

DateOmaha.com LOVE SEAT Promotion Webpage

http://www.dateomaha.com/index.php?page=loveseat]]> http://centersphere.com/OmahaMediaGroup/blog/dateomaha-com-omaha-stormchasers-love-seat-promotion/ Thu, 28 Apr 2011 16:06:25 +0000 OmahaMediaGroup.com http://centersphere.com/OmahaMediaGroup/blog/google-farmer-panda-update-killed-the-radio-star/

Welcome to the wonderful world of Google Search Engine Marketing. We are Omaha Media Group "Monster Creative Management" and are your host for today's...]]>

Welcome to the wonderful world of Google Search Engine Marketing. We are Omaha Media Group "Monster Creative Management" and are your host for today's blog covering the Google Algorithm release known in our nerd world as "Farmer" or "Panda". By now you may have noticed that your search engine traffic has dropped significantly but may have no clue as to why. Or, you are a naughty marketing guru and have no idea or any clue that anything has changed. Shame on you!

If you're like a lot of our *NEW* clients you maybe thinking, so wait a minute, what happened to all of my search engine traffic this month? You were most like struck by Google Farmer/Panda.

On February 24th, the Google Farmer/Panda update was implemented and changed 12% of Google's search results. What?!?! That's right, nearly 12% of all of those tireless hours you spent optimizing your website against your competitors was probably just thrown out the window, that is if you were doing your optimization and marketing strategies incorrectly.



Okay, wait.. what? Seriously, what just happened to my search engine rank? Well, let's check in with our development partners over at Google to hear what they have to say.

Google’s words:

"Our recent update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites, so the key thing for webmasters to do is make sure their sites are the highest quality possible. We looked at a variety of signals to detect low quality sites. Bear in mind that people searching on Google typically don’t want to see shallow or poorly written content, content that’s copied from other websites, or information that are just not that useful. In addition, it’s important for webmasters to know that low quality content on part of a site can impact a site’s ranking as a whole. For this reason, if you believe you’ve been impacted by this change you should evaluate all the content on your site and do your best to improve the overall quality of the pages on your domain. Removing low quality pages or moving them to a different domain could help your rankings for the higher quality content."

Great, thank you Google, I will break that down for the rest of you:

This algorithm specifically targets sites (not necessarily content farms) that are low quality in a number of ways, such as:

1) Shallow content (not enough content to be useful)
2) Poorly written content
3) Content copied from other sites
4) Content that’s not useful

So who did Farmer/Panda impact overall?

Well, nearly 98% of the Google indexed population. Or, the ones that we like to call "the people that either have no clue what they're doing, or are doing their search marketing improperly". Let's face it, there is an unlimited amount of quote "SEO/SEM Professionals" out there who will quote "Get your website to the top of the search rankings" so be careful who you choose to get your online business included correctly. If you hear the words "Keyword(s)" do yourself a favor and run!

What can we learn as "good" search engine marketing gurus? A lot really.

Let's summarize it for you:

- Substantial low quality on a site can cause the rankings for the entire site to decline (even for the high quality pages)

- Evaluate your web site for poor quality pages (not useful, poorly written, non-unique, or thin) and remove them

- Overall user experience is likely important: design and usability, ad-to-content ratio, brand perception

- Look at both content and page templates (do the templates overwhelm the pages with ads? Provide a poor user interface?)

- After ensuring all content on the site is high quality, focus on engagement and awareness (through social media and other channels) Did you hear me? Social Media MATTERS!!

- Diversify into other channels and even within search, look beyond web search at Google News and “one box” style results such as blogs, images, and videos

- We can potentially learn from content farms, particularly in how they pinpoint what audiences are interested in and what problems they are trying to solve as well as how they harness crowd sourcing.

So now what? I've lost all of my traffic and now I'm showing up on page 20 of my search phrases.

We are very glad you asked that question. The simple answer is to call us. We would be happy to sit down with you to discuss a more proper search engine strategy as well as provide you a practical on-going maintenance plan and road map for proper tracking REO.

Would you hire an auto mechanic to fix the hole in your roof or worse yet try to repair it yourself?

More importantly we will help you decipher those pesky and hard to understand elements such as Brand Perception, Quality Content Ratios, Factors of Impact, Associated Content / Associated References, and Building Content for Searcher Needs (Duh!!).

We are Search Engine Professionals and would LOVE to assist you! Call us today for your free consultation and a free tour of our production studios.

Omaha Media Group LLC
"Monster Creative Management"
www.omahamediagroup.com
13302 Millard Ave Suite 104
Omaha, NE 68137
402.218.4423
support@omahamediagroup.com]]> http://centersphere.com/OmahaMediaGroup/blog/google-farmer-panda-update-killed-the-radio-star/ Fri, 08 Apr 2011 13:36:58 +0000 OmahaMediaGroup.com http://centersphere.com/brian-hamburger/blog/it-s-who-you-know-and-what-you-can-do-for-them/ It's Who You Know... and What You Can Do for Them

Building lasting professional relationships requires more than exchanging business cards.


Bet...]]> It's Who You Know... and What You Can Do for Them

Building lasting professional relationships requires more than exchanging business cards.


Beth Douglass Silcox
October 14, 2010

Networking isn’t a meeting you attend once a month or a speed-dating event, complete with bells ringing you on to the next pitch. It’s not an after-hours cocktail party, and it sure doesn’t end with passing out business cards.

Networking is a mindset. It’s a philosophy, a lifestyle and a discipline. It’s a conscious choice to genuinely connect with the people behind the companies and titles so elegantly embossed on their business cards. And people who are most adept at networking realize motive makes all the difference in connecting or not.

The importance of winning friends and influencing people is not a new concept. Dale Carnegie’s classic book, a must-read for networking, helped lift people out of the Depression and continues to offer valuable wisdom today.

Still, you’ve met people who don’t get it: The Schmoozer, The Gossip, The Name Dropper. They’re at every First Friday event across the country, strong-arming you to buy whatever they’re selling, give them a job or offer them sales leads. Their efforts are short-sighted.

“If you’re entering a relationship and networking just for personal gain, personal interests and personal goals, then you’re going to enter into very shallow, very self-serving relationships, and that’s not going to get you anywhere,” says Tommy Spaulding, former CEO of Up With People and author of It’s Not Just Who You Know.

When you meet someone new, flip the typical, “What can you do for me?” thought process on its ear. Ask, instead, “What can I learn from this person and how can I help them?” That, by Spaulding’s definition, is netgiving, a pay-it-forward concept that’s gaining ground. “Netgiving is all about entering relationships with a ‘servant’ mentality versus a ‘to-be-served’ mentality.”

Calculated and manipulative relationships aren’t genuine and won’t work long term to build your sales, your credibility or your résumé. On the other hand, Spaulding says, “Every relationship I’ve entered and built on serving them, I’ve gotten back tenfold.”
Of course, you can’t serve everyone. You will wear yourself out. Focus on those with whom you have an authentic connection. Find them by choosing your networking opportunities carefully and daring to break out of the proverbial networking box.

Given the choice to attend a typical after-hours networking event or a Big Brothers, Big Sisters training workshop with 100 other young executives, Spaulding votes Big Brothers every time. “Ever build a house for Habitat for Humanity with a bunch of jerks? It just doesn’t happen,” he says. Quality people equal quality relationships. Look for like-minded people involved in like-minded activities. That’s where you should network.

Reaching Out
“You have to have a knack for doing things a bit differently if you want to have different results,” says Eddie Armstrong, whose own story is a testament to the power of networking, as well as his own persistence.

An at-risk, Arkansas kid from a loving single-parent household, Armstrong learned debate skills at the local Boys & Girls Club that ultimately led to his winning the organization’s prestigious national competition and a scholarship. Along the way, he brushed elbows with a Who’s Who of business and government leaders.

The business cards he brought home weren’t simply mementos to be thrown in a dresser drawer, and he knew it. These were people he could learn from, people he wanted to know better. So the teen reached out. “I got in the habit of writing unique letters and personalized notes,” Armstrong says. “Over time, it became a way of life.”

Putting himself out there made a big difference. “Every professional relationship from Tyson Foods to Boys & Girls Clubs of America, they all spun out of my creating the relationship with them in the first place. If they knew nothing else about me, they knew that I had reached out,” says Armstrong, who landed government-liaison jobs with Boys & Girls Clubs of America and later with Tyson Foods as one of its youngest executives. He’s now a consultant specializing in government relations, diversity relations and community affairs, and heads a foundation providing scholarships to minority students from single-parent homes. Armstrong counts as his closest mentors those relationships he cultivated as a teenager.

Of course, Armstrong started from scratch. He hadn’t yet graduated high school. But adults delving into networking come pre-loaded with existing relationships. Bob Beaudine, an executive recruiter and author of The Power of Who: You Already Know Everyone You Need to Know, puts it this way: “You could be standing in the midst of your own diamond stream and not see it.”

Beaudine’s 100/40 strategy re-centers networking around your closest friends. “It’s a false notion to think that your success will come from a bunch of people you don’t know,” he writes. So, get off the “Lone Ranger treadmill” and ask for a little help from your friends and their friends.

As he explains it, there are roughly 100 people within your spheres of influence, each circle of friends marked with varying degrees of relationship strength. Heart connections—maybe 12 people—live at the center. Radiating outward are “Who” friends, allies, advocates, acquaintances and fans.

Building Transformational Relationships
The trick here is to “go deep” with friendships—not wide. That means spending more time building transformational, not transactional, relationships. Cultivate your “Who” friends and increase their numbers. “When ‘Who’ friends open up their world to you and invite you in, you have now been given access to a whole new group of quality people, each of whom have their own ‘Who’ world,” Beaudine says. “Those overlapping circles are the ‘Power of Who.’ It’s a whole different world than mere networking.”

On a personal level, all you have to do is join LinkedIn, the online professional networking site, to understand how your friends’ connections might impact you and how yours could impact them.

Tony Jeary, coach to some of the world’s top CEOs and author of Strategic Acceleration: Succeed at the Speed of Life, built a career by helping people connect. He’s opened doors that were otherwise closed. He’s made phone calls and introductions, linked some of the world’s highest achievers, and you can bet if you’ve ever given him your business card, he still has it or, at least, a copy of it!

“I believe you become much more valuable to the world if you can help link and connect people. But where so many people miss out is in their willingness to do favors for people up front,” Jeary says.

For decades, Jeary has jotted notes on business cards and diligently returned them to his office for copying. He has binder after binder after binder of copied business cards, front and back, organized week by week, year after year after year. If you met Jeary around Halloween 2004, he’ll find your card and know what you talked about.

Roadmap to Success
Of course, he also uses an extensive database and plugs people into his cell phone, but the methods, discipline and mindset that make Jeary a successful networker can be had for a $3 binder, some copy paper and the willingness to give something of value to another person without asking anything in return.

Jeary and his staff continually look for ways to reach out to the people he’s met and give them something of value. It could be as simple as forwarding an interesting website link or as complex as connecting two CEOs from different industries to brainstorm marketing strategies. Either way, Jeary brings value to the relationship without expectation.

“Part of who you are and how people see you has to do with the people you know. If you can bring that to the table for people, then your personal brand is greatly enhanced. Whether you’re looking for a job now or later down the road or looking for investors or partners, people are attracted to people who can really help them,” Jeary says.

Whether we realize it or not, networking is part and parcel of everyone’s life. Our concentric circles of relationships from business, the ball field, church and school impact our lives. What we choose to do with them is up to us.

As Eddie Armstrong sees it, “The new road map to success is built on relationships. If you pay it forward and give more than you’re asked, you’re destined for great things.”]]> http://centersphere.com/brian-hamburger/blog/it-s-who-you-know-and-what-you-can-do-for-them/ Tue, 25 Jan 2011 14:41:06 +0000 Brian Hamburger http://centersphere.com/92west/blog/92-west-a-rant-on-branding-for-2011/ 92 West | We're in the Idea's Business

It's 2011 and we here at 92 West think it's time to get back to basics; namely branding and brand development....]]> 92 West | We're in the Idea's Business

It's 2011 and we here at 92 West think it's time to get back to basics; namely branding and brand development. The basics behind branding is that people often fail to recognize the difference their brand and their brand identity. Similar terms, but different in what they mean to your marketing and advertising efforts. Also, knowing some of the basics will better equip you when dealing with your preferred identity, graphic or web design professional.
What is a Brand?

As new companies come out, competition increases and creates a near infinite amount of choices. Companies need to look for ways to connect to customers to create lifelong relationships; connect emotionally and become irreplaceable...

Case in point... I don't need Starbucks... I love them... Although I have my questions if they love me back .

In any case, a strong brand will stand out in the densely crowded marketplace. People fall in love with brands (Starbucks ), trust them and truly believe in their superiority to their competitors.

A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, service or company and illuminates answers to the following fundamental questions:

* who you are?
* who needs to know?
* how they will find out?
* why should they care?

To sum it up, a brand should help consumers choose from the infinite amount of choices and should reassure the consumer that they've made the right choice through communication on the intrinsic quality of the item they purchased. Also, a brand should use distinctive imagery, emotional associations and language that encourage customers to identify with their brand.

Honestly, there's a lot more to this basic branding, but I think your getting the picture. Choose your audience. Communicate with them often and with consistency. Calibrate your message to entice your demographic to identify with you. Simple words... sometimes hard to do.

"It's never to late to be what you could have been."
- George Eliot

Communication is the key to great branding and when I was at AAA as an Advertising Coordinator they really stressed that their brand was at "Every Point of Contact". That message (thanks Becky!) has stuck with me and our clients have benefited greatly as well from that doctrine.

Points of Contact... Not all, but a decent list:

* Website
* Newsletters
* Business Forms
* Signage
* Packaging
* Exhibits and Trade shows
* Proposals
* Email
* Voicemails
* Publications
* Web Banners
* Letterheads
* Business Cards
* Billboards
* Ephemera (something transitory or short-lived)
* Vehicle Graphics
* Services
* Employees
* Speeches
* Presentations
* Networking Events
* Telephone
* Word of Mouth
* Direct Mail
* PR
* Blogs
* Social Media
* Sales Promotions
* TV, Radio
* Print Advertising
* In-Store Experiences

Now, every point of contact may seem like not a big deal but have you ever called a company and simple decided against using them from how they answered the phone. Or how a sales person treated you on the floor. Even some of the best restaurants with great cuisine will continue to be unvisited because of one bad waiter. There's a great deal of choices out there... why would a customer subject themselves to anything less than a great experience.

Be the best brand you can be: Combine imagination and craft with intelligence and insight.
One eye sees. The other feels. That's brand identity.

Brand identity is something that appeals to the senses and generates a tangible experience. You can touch it, hold it, see it, hear it sing and watch it move. It is the fuel that drives recognition and amplifies the companies difference from it's competition. Brand identity makes great ideas meaningful and accessible; truly taking many different elements and unifying them into a seamless system.

Make Sense?

If not... look at Target. Pepsi. Coke. Amazon. Many parts. One unified message that organizes color, spirit, message and design. The end result is something that embodies the intangibles... emotion, context and things that matter most to today's consumers... the essence of the company.

All branding is design driven and victory belongs to the most persevering. Look at GAP... they changed their logo in 2010 and a week later moved it back because of customer backlash.

Fact. Not all ideas are going to work... even if they seem great.
Victory goes to those who don't "Market Safe" and persevere even when the chips are down.
So now that we know what a brand is and what a brand identity is... let's talk on the tactful art of Branding.

Branding is a disciplined and in-depth process that is used to build awareness and extend customer loyalty. Great branding is driven from the top down... meaning if the CEO isn't behind what marketing is doing... you'll find their graphics staff in the bar after work bitching about why the message is failing. Make no mistake. Investing in your brand is an investment in your companies future. As technology advances we must seize every opportunity to express why individuals should choose your brand over another.

Great companies will outpace their competition or give off that perception even if they are neck and neck.... Really... what's the difference between Nike and Rebook in the 90's.... I didn't know then... and I've never invested the time... but I know that I like my Nike's .

As you proceed with your companies marketing efforts remember to invest in your core strengths and don't skimp on understanding the consumer... you may be surprised that your strengths are not what you thoughts. Next... don't fear innovation. It's a driving force that won't let you sit still and finally... remember to communicate and do so often!

The process of branding is simple and structured.

1. Conduct Research - Your brand is not what you say it is... it's what they say it is.
Process: Perception > Behavior > Performance
2. Clarify Strategy - The best brand strategy is developed as a creative partnership between the client, the designer and the strategist
Alignment: Vision > Actions > Expression > Experience
3. Design Identity - The right name connects people and captures the imagination
Process: Naming > Tagline(s) > Vision > Meaning > Authenticity > Differentiation > Duribility > Coherence > Flexibility and Commitment > Value Proposition
4. Create Points of Contact - Social Media is Word of Mouth on Steroids
Brick and Mortar > Web & Traditional Media > Blog > Social Media > SEO
5. Manage Your Assets - Keep to your strategy. Build a Brand. Protect the Message. Engage Your Costomers

Well... that was a bit longer than intended, but I think it's a great start for Branding Basics . I'll write more on the topic as the weeks go by.

Contact 92 West today for a quote or more information on identity, print, web or seo today!

Troy Kadavy
Creative Director
92 West | We're in the Ideas Business

13302 S. Millard Avenue
Suite 104
Omaha, Nebraska 68118
t. 402.237.8235
d. 402.677.6241
f. 402.953.4395
http://www.92west.com
92 West Site Links:
Logo Design | Graphic Design | Web Design / Development | Photography]]> http://centersphere.com/92west/blog/92-west-a-rant-on-branding-for-2011/ Thu, 13 Jan 2011 03:59:28 +0000 Troy Kadavy http://centersphere.com/92west/blog/search-engine-optimization-in-omaha-nebraska-and-beyond/
Yes. It's true. We have it. You want. A search engine optimization (SEO) specialist who is certified ...]]>
Yes. It's true. We have it. You want. A search engine optimization (SEO) specialist who is certified in doing those geeky things that you don't want to do but need. Who is he you ask... our own Jamie Kadavy. He's savvy. He's smart... and even better... he knows how to get you ranked higher!



Contact 92 West today for a quote or more information on identity, print, web or seo today!

Troy Kadavy
Creative Director
92 West

13302 S. Millard Avenue
Suite 104
Omaha, Nebraska 68118
t. 402.237.8235
d. 402.677.6241
f. 402.953.4395
http://www.92west.com
92 West Site Links:
Logo Design | Graphic Design | Web Design / Development | Photography

Advertising and Marketing Services]]> http://centersphere.com/92west/blog/search-engine-optimization-in-omaha-nebraska-and-beyond/ Wed, 15 Dec 2010 17:09:40 +0000 Troy Kadavy http://centersphere.com/92west/blog/92-west-we-re-in-the-ideas-business/ 92 West specializes in logo, print and website design for Omaha, Nebraska and beyond.



Contact 92 West today for a quote or more information on identity...]]> 92 West specializes in logo, print and website design for Omaha, Nebraska and beyond.



Contact 92 West today for a quote or more information on identity, print, web or seo today!

Troy Kadavy
Creative Director
92 West

13302 S. Millard Avenue
Suite 104
Omaha, Nebraska 68118
t. 402.237.8235
d. 402.677.6241
f. 402.953.4395
http://www.92west.com
92 West Site Links:
Logo Design | Graphic Design | Web Design / Development | Photography

Advertising and Marketing Services]]> http://centersphere.com/92west/blog/92-west-we-re-in-the-ideas-business/ Wed, 15 Dec 2010 17:03:33 +0000 Troy Kadavy http://centersphere.com/auleman/blog/great-home-loan-give-away/ http://centersphere.com/auleman/blog/great-home-loan-give-away/ Tue, 02 Nov 2010 16:18:20 +0000 Annette Uleman http://centersphere.com/daisycurtis/blog/ready-or-not-the-holidays-are-here/ http://centersphere.com/daisycurtis/blog/ready-or-not-the-holidays-are-here/ Wed, 20 Oct 2010 19:54:29 +0000 Daisy Curtis http://centersphere.com/OmahaMediaGroup/blog/tap-53-million-facebook-users-for-free/

Okay, now let's get serious. Here are some quick stats on Facebook which should be of interest to any business:

1. More than 53 million active users. Wow!

2. An average of 250,000 new users join every day. Double Wow!

3. About 34% of users work as professionals, sales, executives, educators or are in technical careers. Triple Wow!

4. The fastest growing demographic on Facebook consists of users 25 and older. Yeah, that makes sense doesn't it?

It is common knowledge that Facebook started in the student demographic but did you know that it is now quickly growing out of it? Our guess is that if you have a product or service offering, chances are that at least a few of those 53 million active users (which spend about 20 minutes a day on the site) are prospective customers of your business. The question is, what do you do about it? No seriously, what are you going to do about it?

Until recently, only big businesses with big marketing budgets could setup a Facebook account for their companies and/or brands. Examples included Verizon, Walmart, Victoria's Secret and other well known companies. For these brands, Facebook users could become "fans" by adding the brand as a friend (much like they would add a person as a friend). This was pretty cool, but pretty expensive for those companies that wanted to tap into this feature. Not anymore.

Now, any business can create a Facebook profile, or business page, which any Facebook user can become a "fan" of. You no longer have to be a Fortune 500 company to afford this. It's free. Yeah, NO KIDDING!

But that sounds so difficult, you could never accomplish that, right? Wrong! It is EASY! Here's how to do it:

Creating A Facebook Business Page

1. Visit this URL: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

2. Decide what the best category is for your business. (Spend a couple of minutes on this as you can't change it later easily).

3. Enter your business/product/brand name and click "Create Page".

4. At a minimum, we suggest entering a short description of your business and a website address. This is in the "Add Information To This Page" area. We also advise uploading your logo as a photo/image.

5. Click on your business name in the top left corner (it's a hyperlink) and then click "publish this page" (until you do this, nobody but you will be able to see your new Facebook business profile).

6. Finally, and this is important, from your new profile page, click "Add to my products". This way, you become the first "fan" of your business.

Now comes the fun part. Once you've become a "fan" of your business, your friends on Facebook (some of which are likely customers) will see a message in their home page. Something like "Miley Cyrus is a fan of Omaha Media Group LLC". Hopefully, some of your Facebook friends will befriend your business. Then, their friends will see a message, and so it goes… before you know it you're social networking your way free advertising.

If you want to see a sample Facebook business page, you can check out Omaha Media Group, LLC on Facebook . In fact, you can even add Omaha Media Group, LLC as a friend (once you visit the page, click on the "Add Product" link in the right column. There are two benefits to becoming a friend of Omaha Media Group, LLC: One, you'll feel a positive glow of good karma. Two, you'll have our attention, and our gratitude. Oh, and if we like you or your business we just might blast you to our own network.

Any questions? Just post them in the comments.]]> http://centersphere.com/OmahaMediaGroup/blog/tap-53-million-facebook-users-for-free/ Tue, 28 Sep 2010 02:21:40 +0000 OmahaMediaGroup.com http://centersphere.com/Elizabeth_Nelson/blog/quarterly-website-marketing-to-new-residents/ Promote your business to new residents to the Omaha metro quarterly or yearly. The quarterly plan is great for seasonal services like lawn care and sp... Business promoted through www.welcome2town.com also get a link back to their website. But if you don't have a website for your business let www.welcome2town.com serve that need until you get your own up!

Contact Elizabeth Nelson for more info. 402-533-2217.]]> http://centersphere.com/Elizabeth_Nelson/blog/quarterly-website-marketing-to-new-residents/ Tue, 24 Aug 2010 23:34:13 +0000 Elizabeth Nelson