Captions on Your Videos Help Your SEO/SEM

By Jose Uzcategui May 9th, 2009 Internet Marketing, Social Media No Comments

I’ve already talked about videos on your site and how important it is for you to have one or two laying around. The problem is that, even though video enhances user experience, search engines and some visitors are not able to understand video content. That’s where captions come in.

Adding captions to your video will give search engines, hearing impaired and people who don’t speak your language the ability to read and understand the video.

When spiders crawl your site and they bump into a video, they only see your video’s file name (which should also be optimized) and move along. But if it’s a captioned video, (more…)

You Will Want This Metric Tool

By Jose Uzcategui March 24th, 2009 Internet Marketing, Social Media 2 Comments

Exciting new features from Radian6 from radian6 on Vimeo.

I want to bring up Radiant6 as one of those tools you, as an business owner or professional who is interested in what’s being said out there, should have an eye out for. (more…)

Trust – Another Reason To Be Out There

By Jose Uzcategui March 17th, 2009 Internet Marketing, Personal 1 Comment

Last night at Third Tuesday Vancouver Nate Elliot (http://nate-elliott.com), a market researcher and Principal Analyst at Forrester, gave a great presentation on social media and “influence”. He covered many interesting points, but the one thing that stood out above all others for me:

“People trust other consumers more than they trust ads OR third party reviewers.” (more…)

Divide and Conquer (and Marketing)

By Jose Uzcategui March 9th, 2009 Internet Marketing 4 Comments

A couple of days ago I got into a bit of a heated discussion about online marketing strategies. My partner, a young woman who I’ll call Lisa, defended the idea that the “dividing and conquer”  marketing strategy is not the best idea for what she wanted to do – *gasp!* According to her, it would limit her market. I argued otherwise – it is essential no matter what. (more…)

Book Comparison – Web Analytics and SEO

By Jose Uzcategui February 11th, 2009 Personal No Comments

Web Analytics: An Hour a Day and Search Engine Optimization: Your Visual Blueprint for Online Internet Marketing.

They’re good books but so different I though it might be good to let you know about them.

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Online Strategies Your Website Should Have By Now

By Jose Uzcategui January 13th, 2009 Internet Marketing No Comments

Around six years ago I became interested in a company that made air-powered cars, Motor Development International (MDI). Air-powered cars, cool right?

I entered my information to receive updates but, in the first year, I maybe received two of the most boring updates I’ve ever seen. For following years I visited the site but nothing seemed to change. Their News Room published infrequent press releases that were technical in nature and hard to understand. The site’s videos didn’t change. I eventually became uninterested, and finally assumed the business flopped because I didn’t get any updates.

Today I visited the site and, to my surprise, they’re still in business! At least it seems like it.

Who knows how much free press and how many potential investors MDI is loosing by not having a strong online strategy? Yes, there will always be a bit of a buzz out there. After all, we’re talking about an air car – pretty catchy stuff. But imagine how big they would be if only they’d made a decent effort!

MDI has now a one year-old website. It’s much better than the last, but even though it looks pretty, I’d rate it poor content and strategy wise.

These are just some of the basics we should all consider when thinking about business’ websites:

1. Write your press/media/news releases for a broad audience, not only reporters. Back in the days releases were only for the media, but that’s no longer the case. Most visitors are probably looking for information on your business or organization, and many times they will check the News sections on your site to get it.

Write releases so that as many (consumers, bloggers, reporters, lost surfers) can understand, rather than the few (reporters) typical media releases were intended to reach in the past.

2. Have easily accessible and well formatted news on your homepage. Many people visiting your site assume your “News” are the most up to date section of your site. Why not bring it right to the homepage? Not only will they find what they’re looking for quicker, but you also make it possible for user to stumble across information they didn’t know they wanted. Plus, pages that are constantly updated get a higher ranking on search engines.

3. If you publish news on a regular basis (and in most cases, you should) provide some kind of web feed - I hate to say it but, welcome to 2009! Many people give priority to the information shown on their feed reader (i.e. Google Reader, etc.), you should give visitors the option to add sections of your site to it – compare it with saving your favourite radio stations on your car stereo.

4. Have a blog. If you’re reading this, you probably understand the importance of blogs. People want to interact with people, not faceless organizations. A blog is a great way to communicate with your market, and for them to communicate with you. If you’re doing something right or wrong, they’ll let you know.

5. Websites are not like pastime magazines – they need good content! Pictures are good, but if a user is visiting your site it’s because she is looking for information, not waiting for her doctor’s appointment. Great graphics should complement great content.

I did a quick search to see if I could find a good website a company like MDI could learn from and quickly found one: The International Small Technology Network (www.nanotechnology.com)

As soon as you enter the site you the latest news releases, links to relevant questions, forums and some social media friendliness. Even with the poor graphics, the site feels user friendly and up to date.

Any other relevant examples out there?