By Steve on February 11, 2007
Have you done a recent search for your firm in the three main search engines? I’m talking about a basic search on your firms name. I’ve had good success branding my website for the term rising stream
. A fundamental tool for accomplishing that is to include your key words in your domain name. I rank #2 in Google, #4 in Yahoo and #3 and #4 in Microsoft. Add associates to the search – rising stream associates – and I hit #1 in all three search engines.
What about someone searching for business, marketing or technology consulting, a perfect fit for me? Reaching the first page for any one of these services will be a long term commitment and require regular content updates on this site, especially when you look at the number of firms that rank high now. Notice the domain names? The keywords I’m using here are part of the domain name in the majority of the cases.
There is another way to address the problem. For both Yahoo and Microsoft, the main page of their search pages include the “Local” option. Google is a bit different – use
An important component of your Search Engine Marketing strategy should be to rank high in these local searches as well. Consumers are looking for ways to improve search results and the Local component is a simple method to achieve that goal.
Google makes it simple for you if you are not showing up in the local listings. Look at the bottom left of the search page and you’ll see a link for Business Owners – . The sign in process shows you what your listing will look like as you complete the information, including adding up to five categories for your firm. Confirmation is by postal mail or a phone call.
is the method for ensuring your firm will be found in their City Guides
. The process also goes smoothly and confirmation is noted as taking 3-5 business days. An email confirms your listing request has been received and provides links back to the Account Center.
Microsoft is an interesting difference. The boys & girls from Redmond are using a third party service for adding business listings to their Local service. Submit your . Microsoft was also the most annoying service I worked with, primarily because it insisted on using Chicago, IL as my default location, even though I was logged in with my Live.com ID.
Two final items. Google and Yahoo will tie your listing to your email address while Microsoft does not since it uses a third-party service. Finally, make certain that you include your address and phone number, in text format, on your website. A graphic will not be indexed by the search engines and make it that much harder for your prospects to find you locally!
Posted in Search Engine Marketing
By Steve on December 4, 2006
As I work to improve my understanding of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), a topic that in particular likes to explore is the difference in results that can occur between the primary search engines. My primary source for experimenting is the soccer blog that I maintain, , that is focused on high school, club and college soccer in the Ozarks area around Springfield Missouri.
I decided I’d try an experiment associated with the recent NCAA College Cup games that were hosted in St. Louis at St. Louis University (SLU). These games are the “Final Four” of college soccer and the primary branding for the games is “College Cup”. My goal is to see if I can rank high in searches for “College Cup Photos”. I chose that route since I was granted an (woo hoo) and that is my primary outlet for sharing the experience of attending the games with the Springfield Soccer
area.
I took two primary steps. The first was to title the three stories I wrote with “College Cup” in the title. On Monday November 27th highlighting the upcoming games. On Friday December 1st, noting that the games had been postponed due to the weather. Both of these used “College Cup” in the title of the article as well as in the body. Then on and , for the two days of games, I used “College Cup Photos” in the title while including the name of the teams involved as well, anticipating searches such as “College Cup photos UCLA”.
The second step I took was to label each of the 98 photos I uploaded to my Flickr account in a similar fashion as the game day articles. I also created a set and titled it .
The final step is to track the results in Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. I use Internet Explorer v7 on a new PC with the Live Toolbar installed so it’s a simple effort to enter my search term and then discover the results for the three engines. I added the competitive engines via a simple one-click process that Microsoft includes in the Live Toolbar set up.
I finished uploading the photos around 1am Monday December 4th after returning to Springfield MO from St. Louis and did the initial search when I came into the office around 10am today. The results for “College Cup Photos”?
- Yahoo has me and points to a photo from my Flickr photo set!
- Microsoft ranks me and points to my November 27th article
- Google ranks me but points to my World Cup 2006 category listing
An interesting sidenote is that Yahoo also points to another pointing to the College Cup.
Posted in Search Engine Marketing
By Steve on April 7, 2005
Rising Stream Associates is partnering with asiGuardian to offer Ozark’s area Banks the tools they need to enhance their IT security.
With their Certified Security Specialists, asiGuardian can help calm your fears when it comes to preparing for your next bank examination. Working closely with the OCC and FDIC, asiGuardian has helped numerous banks and financial services companies take a proactive approach to their information security and, in turn, receive glowing reports from federal regulators. Ensure that your internal policies are in sync with your IT initiatives. Attend this web seminar to learn more about achieving these goals.
To register for this seminar, scheduled for September 15th, click on the asiGuardian logo above. You will be taken to the registration page for this upcoming event. If you have questions or would like a local representative to contact you, you may use the Contact Form.
Posted in News
By Steve on March 15, 2005
I was asked by my niece to assist with a video she was creating for a class assignment (8th grade) last week. Flattered, I of course agreed. It has been a few months since I last touched my MacG4 and iMovie but I was looking forward to helping her learn what it is capable of. She is already familiar with MovieMaker2, I showed her how to use it to make a photo slideshow last month. A 15 minute step-by-step example using her photos and she was up and running. My confidence was rewarded when she showed me a ‘congratulations & farewell’ slideshow she created for her best friend who was recently accepted into an IB program here in town.
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, this is the calm before the storm. Turns out that the host family for the production work only has an analog camcorder despite having every other toy an upper middle class family in this town wants including a new super SUV. So four girls show up at my loft on a Friday evening with the expectation that in 30-60 minutes they would walk out the door with a finished DVD. Ouch! I start casting about for a solution and think of the 9600 All-in-Wonder card I installed last fall. Turns out there is an AV-in option and luckily I find the external adapter without too much trouble (I just moved into a new office space). The first problem I run into is that the connector (S-video like) has bent pins and won’t work.
I then remember that another alternative I’ve read about is using a digital camcorder as a converter. There is only a single audio out port but I am able to connect a two-wire RCA cable from the Sony analog to my Sony PDX-10 and start capturing. Wait a minute, rather then capturing to miniDV tape in Recorder mode, it’s capturing to my Memory Stick card. Well, that works OK except that now I have MPEG2 and guess what, iMovie won’t work with MPEG2. So I move over to my XP machine and open up MovieMaker2. We start transfering to a new collection but I have to do it in a couple of transfers since my Memory Stick isn’t large enough to capture the entire 12 minutes of video they have. When I load the Memory Stick for the second transfer, my original transfer has been corrupted. Well, by now it’s been over two hours and ice cream only goes so far towards calming teenage girls and the parents are waiting to pick them up as well. I suggest I have some more homework to do and my niece volunteers to come to my place later that weekend to complete the editing once I have done my part. Everyone heads home and I start digging in.
Using MovieMaker2, the first thing to do is to transfer all video files to your computer. The software only creates links to the original files and that is what corrupted my earlier efforts – when I removed the Memory Stick the files went with. Once I loaded the captured video into a folder my niece was able to edit. The next problem we ran into is something I experienced last spring when I first tried to help a soccer mom with her video problems. MM2 doesn’t have DVD burning capabilities, a 3rd party product is required. I thought I had that covered thanks to the new dual layer Sony DVD burner I’d installed over the holidays. The Nero software that gets such good reviews wanted me to use their editing tools however, which meant starting over. This is Sunday afternoon and my niece is ready to get home to her Dad’s as is her older brother who is responsible for squiring her around that afternoon. I send them on their way and dig in again.
I ended up taking two seperate paths to completing the video. First, I attached my PDX-10 to the XP system and transfered the MM2 video to DV tape. That required a 90 minute rendering effort for a 10 1/2 minute video (!). Once that was complete, I transfered what is now a 3rd generation rendering (analog to MPEG2 to DV) to iMovie and burnt a DVD. There were other difficulties related to the rendering, including dropping frames, so the quality was poor but it did represent my nieces editing efforts which were good. She used titles and transitions to improve the production which from a content standpoint was excellent. The girls really did a good job on presenting the story of the Suffrage Movement and it’s key characters.
The final path I took was working on my All-in-Wonder card until I could get the connector to attach to the card. I once again captured the analog video to the Video Recorder in a better quality 480×720 pixel compressed file. Once that was done, I transfered it to my PDX-10 which allowed me to use it with iMovie. I recreated my nieces titleing efforts and added one transition near the end that she hadn’t used and it was time to send it to iDVD.
Anyone interested in seeing the result of that effort can visit . Not bad for over ten hours of labor eh?
Bottom line – when my niece asked me before production began if I would be able to help them I did not sit down with her and discuss the details. I assumed I would have DV to work with and it would be a straightforward editing effort. Don’t assume a thing!
Posted in Uncategorized |
Recent Comments