MINNEAPOLIS, MN — Internet marketing expert Jeff Foster will host two free webinars designed to teach businesses and website owners how they can increase search engine traffic using proven internet marketing practices.

The one-hour webinar, titled ‘How to Increase Search Engine Rankings’ will be offered on both January 15th and February 16th from 11:00 AM to noon EST – at no cost to attendees.

A webinar offers the same educational benefits of an instructor-led seminar. However, because it is conducted entirely online, costs and logistical problems associated with live training are eliminated. Participants simply log into a secured website and have access to live video and audio.

Register: Increase Search Engine Traffic
Hosted by: WebBizIdeas

So you want to start a vlog. You realize blogs are great branding & marketing tools and you want to take that next step. Here are 5 easy steps on how to create a video blog for $105.

1. Download www.WordPress.com
2. Buy a Vlog template
3. Hire this company to Install Wordpress for $35
4. Download CamStudio for free, or buy Camtasia for screen capture / editing video you took from a web cam or a video camera.
5. I have heard the Logitech QUICKCAM PRO 9000 Web Cam is pretty good webcam for creating online videos and the Flip Ultra Video Series is pretty good for the money as a digital camera; has a built in usb drive for easy transfer.

SEO Implications

Although Google has publicly said SearchWiki will have NO affect currently on normal organic search results, the future could. Google is always looking to make their search results better and knowing if 10,000 users don’t want to see a Wikipedia result #1 for every search result may be great information.

There have also been instances where sites without sitemaps have also made it to the search engines without much difficulty. That’s fine, but if you have a website that is not well reputed yet on the search engines, and have fewer backlinks, then submitting a sitemap may help. And if you have a website with large amount of content, a site map gives you an opportunity to organize the content and get the best ones out there on the search engines.

BUT, site maps are not required. Site maps won’t guarantee all your pages are indexed. Creating a Site Map will not fix poor coding, website navigational, keyword research, and Meta Data. In fact, if you need a site map to index all your web pages it means your web developer & programmers did a poor job building your site. It also means that you are most likely not benefiting fully from internally links.

A good web design company & software development company knows how to plan, build, and organize a website so it doesn’t need a website.

Read this article about, The Difference between a .HTML Site Map vs. .XML Site Map

Why do you see these Social Bookmarking Icons on every website? Blogs, forums, and even corporate sites have these images. This video explains (1) what they are (2) why the are important (3) how you can integrate them into your site.

What is Social Bookmarking? Article

What is Social Bookmarking? Video

Click here to read the Google Local Tutorial or our article on Video Distribution discussed in this video.

To read more view our full Google Local Tutorial.

The company sent over a fancy 10 page report “analyzing”  the client’s site.  They highlighted in RED the things he needed to change in GREEN the things that were good.  I can’t express in words how much I despise companies that do this because each one of them is a waste time. 

The are produced many times overseas in India by people that don’t analyze your business..  The companies just try to create a fancy report (cookie cutter template) to put fear in the website owner’s mind.  They don’t look to see what the website or each page is about, they are only interested in the end result.

Here is what they sent:  Reliable Listing Proposal

Here is my response:  Reliable Listing Response

This report is to (1) inform internet business owners not to do business with companies like this (2) to specifically tell customer not to do business with Reliable Listings.  On top of all this they have only been in business for a year; that is barely enough time to achieve good search engine goals.  In the next 1-3 months look for this blog post to be on the first page of Google when you type in “Reliable Listings.”  We will see who really knows a thing or two about search engine optimization & brand awareness. 

This report touched on the fact that Q2 & Q3 of 2008 has seen a decrease in online retail growth. In fact they showed since Q4 of 2007 the growth rate has significantly gone down from 19% to 6%. Gian Fulgoni, Co-Founder and Chairman of Com Score, touched on how offline retail spending was dragging down online retail sales. This was actually a good bit of data to hear since we had seen slower growth in sales despite increase traffic for our site, Wholesale Keychain.

The Rich are Still Spending Online!

I thought it was about right that the growth in higher income households saw a 15% increase in spending while the rest of the market segments saw a 3% increase.

What does this data tell Internet Entrepreneurs?

If you are looking to break into the Job Portal industry now would be the time. Monster.com, CareerBuilder, and CraigsList all are criticized for SPAM. If you have a bright idea on how to counter-act Job Posting SPAM and the capital to compete taking advantage of the “fear” of job security is at hand. If you are a strong writer and have experience, knowledge, and passion to help others starting an informative website in the Job Search, Financial, or Real-Estate Market would be a great idea. Affordable web content management software would allow anyone to start this type of internet business. Another segment not shown but discussed is the LARGE increase in classified sites; makes sense with the economy.

Sales Increases & Decreases by Category

Where to put your marketing dollars?

It isn’t any secret that search engines dominate online referrals, leads, and sales. This graph shows that 52.7% of referrals came from Search/Navigation. It wouldn’t be a bad time to look into internet marketing services & internet consulting services.