$100 iphone app????

You must be kidding!! Just read a blog post that mentioned TomTom, one of the largest providers of GPS devices, has a $99 iphone app that gives you turn by turn driving directions in the US and Canada. I wonder how many people will be rushing off to itunes to get this GPS app. My Palm Pre has this built in and I’ve used this twice in the last 4 months. TomTom also has different countries available. So I went back to itunes and found that MotionX also provides a similar GPS but it’s only $2.99! And lastly the blog post that mentioned this said that Google is now offering this service FREE on all new android phones! Here we go again, Google giving it away free! News of this has brought the stocks of TomTom and Garmin down steeply. Check out more about this here with a very thorough blog post covering how Google has gotten into the map building business and the businesses of giving it away free.. or less than free.

Affordable Web Hosting Company Review

Wow! Just saw GoDaddy deal for $15 per month for unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth, and unlimited domains. You could host hundreds of sites for $15 a month. I’ve seen some pretty good deals out there but this takes the cake. Oh wait, Host Gator is also one I’ve used and they have a similar plan for $8. I’ve been very happy with Host Gator, from reliability to support they’ve been great! Their plan comes with your own toll free number which includes 100 free minutes! Both the GoDaddy and Host Gator plan comes with a free SSL cert in case you need to have a certificate for ecommerce or other secure transactions. For a control panel I’d recommend cpanel which Host Gator provides. It’s much easier to use. The Go Daddy panel can be difficult and limited in what you can do. Both come loaded with plenty of software so you should be good to go. My favorite of course being WordPress, a great blogging platform! Both plans also come with a credit to Google Adwords in case you’d like to market your new site through pay per click advertising.  Host Gator seems to be a step ahead with this one as well by offering $50 while GoDaddy offers a $25 credit. GoDaddy makes up for this though with a $25 credit to facebook (sorry facebook! wordpress wouldn’t allow me for some reason to link to you). Host Gator offers a 45 day money back guarantee while GoDaddy does not, but both are cheap and you can go month to month. Drum roll please….. dndndndndnd And the winner for the affordable web hosting award goes to HOST GATOR!! Good job Host Gator!! They also provide green web hosting that are powered and cooled by wind power in the state of Texas!! They also have a fall special so signup before Nov 1st to receive 20% off your order. And I have no affiliation with them I swear! Just a happy web hoster!

Network Solutions is getting desperate

Wow! I have a few domains still with Network Solutions, the original provider of the .com, and in the last two days I’ve received a call and an email trying to solicit me for web marketing. I guess it makes sense for them to get into this business since they’ve been around for so long and probably have a ton of resources and backing to start competiting in the search marketing space. The reason I’m writing this blog post though is to talk about the tactic this particular salesperson is using to try and solicit my business. I’m not sure if this is Network Solutions new tactic or just a pushy salesperson. I hope the former. In the call he claims to have already spoken to me.. ok i get it. And in the email he sends, there’s no subject line and he references the call he made.. the email is brief but again he states that I’m interested in getting more clients through the internet.. hmmm? It’s not a huge deal but I’m anoyed at the fact that he’s claiming we’ve already communicated and that I’m also interested in getting more clients through the Internet. In my opinion, it’s not the best tactic. I would of rather received some helpful info along with how they’d get me more business. Well good luck Network Solutions. I’ll pass on your search marketing plans! They’re also one of the more expense domain sellers now so I’ll bet they’re search marketing plans are not cheap. Please post a comment if you know how much they’re services are going for. Thanks!

Poor Ecommerce Site Design

Wow! I just came across this site through a Google ad when I did a search for “ecommerce software” and was shocked to find no pricing or no easily visible call to actions to get more info. They definitely push their video through a bright orange button that catches your eye but there’s no simple way to get more information other than clicking the contact button at the very top of the page. The Google ad drove me directly to their ecommerce page which is good but this page should of had a few easy ways for me to find out more about the product other than watching a video. The user also needs a way to learn more and should not be prompted to download a feature guide which is what they have in place. This site seems to be run by a decent size company who spent probably over 6 figures to build this site but it’s lacking some very basics. There’s also a list of data sheets which is fine but these pages could of been built in html and then the user could have the option to download the page or printing the page(s). So I was able to find out after downloading a 17 page PDF and running a search on what I was looking for but will the average user go through this many steps to find these answers? Probably not. You have less than a minute to capture the users attention and in most cases under 20 seconds. I actually stayed on much longer due to the point that I was shocked that there wasn’t an easy way to find out more!!

Bing Video Results

Wow! Another cool feature for Bing! So I did a search for our company this morning, emarketed, and then clicked the video button up at the top. It then displayed all the videos on our YouTube.com channel. When I hovered over the videos I discovered that most of the videos will play directly on Bing within the thumbnail.  See below for an example. The left navigation also lets you narrow down the search by length, screen type, resolution, and source. I still haven’t made the switch but this is a cool feature. I imagine Google will follow. I also noticed this morning that Bing had my search history for the day and this was actually from searches I made this morning on Google.. hmm..

banner to good landing page design

Just clicked a Facebook banner ad that was showing up on Facebook while I was emailing a friend. The banner is to the right here and is targetted to adults that have kids or teens which I do.  Once you click the banner you get taken to a home page that is a good example of a landing page. The page presents you with a few options and has a clear message as to what this site is about. The site also does a good job with video on the sub pages. There’s definately a lot to be learned on this site which I’ll take some more time to peruse.

See below for a few screen shots of the drugfree.org website.

google size..

Found these stats intersting.

Site hacked and pulled down by Google

It’s been far too long form my last post. Will start trying to make a better effort to blog more! Lets get right to it.

I had a site this week that was hacked! The site was compramised over the weekend and I found out Monday morning. Got the below error when visiting the site in Firefox. Had to submit a request through Google Webmaster Tools for Google to review once we removed the line of code that caused Google to pull the site down. Basically the site was still in tact but the hacker embeded the site in an iframe. The URL that was in question was showing up in the background.  I found this blog that covers the story with more details. The error stated that the site you were visiting is a “reported attack site!“

reported attack site

So once we removed the code and asked Google to review we had to wait a few days. There was no way to expedite this! I tried calling some of my contacts at Google to expedite this but they said there was nothing they could do…

Anyhow the site is back up and our client is happy.

Twoogle anyone or Tw{msn}ter

Well there are more talks coming up in the search industry about Google and Miscrosoft bidding for Twitter, the micro blogging champ. Hmm? I wonder what this would look like. Both plan on using the site to push adverisements and are also bidding on becoming the advertisment provider with sponsored ads. Google of couse has a much larger network and a proven sponsored ad program while Microsoft has been playing catch up for the last few years. I think if I had to choose between Google and Microsoft, I’d choose Google. I just feel they’d do a better job with Twitter and let Twitter keep to it’s own plan and just try and monetinize the ad placement. Twitter is making out either way of course and that’s where I’d like to be in 5 to 6 years. If Google or Microsoft is reading this blog, make a note of emarketed and come looking in about 4 years. Hopefully sooner but a lot of things need to happen first!

Why Twitter?

Twitter is a useful internet marketing tool that is extremely popular and has become the rage of this year.  Using Twitter is an effective way to reach hundreds, even thousands of people and have them start following your status updates.  Signing up for Twitter is easy and free and you can get started in mere minutes. Twitter is a useful resource for individuals used to blogging, business owners and anyone looking to network and find out more about billions of different micro-topics.  Following are a few of the reasons that Twitter is the buzzword of 2009.

You can always widen your network and Twitter allows you to follow “tweets”, topics and people that you are interested in and allows other to follow you.  If you are interested in learning about anything new there are experts and individuals with a plethora of knowledge that Twitter turns into 140 character or less micro blogs or status updates.  It’s a great place for people to share their personal interests, skills and thoughts and link other people to things that you think are interesting.  It’s debatable for some to choose whether or not to be constantly “online” and “available” but updates can be sent from cell phones and other mobile devices meaning the information stream is constantly changing and in real time.  Use responsibly and enjoy the ability to market, be found, and find others with similar interests and goals.