Welcome to SageRock.com Web Marketing Blog

Here’s a nice overview discussion thread on how to do seo from the ground up. I haven’t gone through all of details of the article. But it definitely looks like it’s on the right track:
Cre8asite forums. Chat and Rave - send2paul - Cre8asite Example Of The Year 2004. [ Search Engine Optimization, Usability and Web Design. ]

“Google plans to make these tools available to web site owners and marketers to better enable them to increase their advertising return on investment and make their web sites more effective. ”
This purchase is definitely a logical evolution for a search company. It will be interesting to see how Google uses them.
Google Agrees to Acquire Urchin

“Creative Commons offers a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors and artists. We have built upon the ‘all rights reserved’ of traditional copyright to create a voluntary ’some rights reserved’ copyright. We’re a nonprofit. All of our tools are free.”
I just heard a saying recently, “hyperlinks subvert hierarchy”. This plays right into that idea.

Here you will find audio, images, video and text that you can use, modify and build on.

Brilliant!

Something else I recently heard was that innovation comes from chaos. So, in effect, you have to create chaos to get innovation. This appeals to that ideal as well.
Enjoy.
Creative Commons

InterActiveCorp (IAC) is the owner of websites like Expedia, Ticketmaster, Home Shopping Network, Match.com and CitySearch. Now they can add in all of the Ask Jeeves sites. IAC purchased AskJeeves for just under $2 billion. This might give AskJeeves the boost it needs to wrestle with the big boys, Google, Yahoo and MSN.

IAC/InterActive owns a variety of Internet businesses. Its principle holdings are Expedia, Ticketmaster, Home Shopping Network, Match.com and CitySearch. Advertising spending on search sites is rapidly growing and Mr. Diller’s company appears to be trying to tap into a market dominated by Google and Yahoo…

CitySearch, one of its holdings, is a network of city guides that provide information on restaurants, bars and events in different cities. By marrying a local-search business with a global search engine, Interactive hopes to benefit from further growth in targeted keyword advertising, the executive involved in the deal said.(NYT)

This should be an interesting story to follow.
The New York Times > Business > Ask Jeeves Inc. to Be Bought for $2 Billion

InterActiveCorp (IAC) is the owner of websites like Expedia, Ticketmaster, Home Shopping Network, Match.com and CitySearch. Now they can add in all of the Ask Jeeves sites. IAC purchased AskJeeves for just under $2 billion. This might give AskJeeves the boost it needs to wrestle with the big boys, Google, Yahoo and MSN.

IAC/InterActive owns a variety of Internet businesses. Its principle holdings are Expedia, Ticketmaster, Home Shopping Network, Match.com and CitySearch. Advertising spending on search sites is rapidly growing and Mr. Diller’s company appears to be trying to tap into a market dominated by Google and Yahoo…

CitySearch, one of its holdings, is a network of city guides that provide information on restaurants, bars and events in different cities. By marrying a local-search business with a global search engine, Interactive hopes to benefit from further growth in targeted keyword advertising, the executive involved in the deal said.(NYT)

This should be an interesting story to follow.
The New York Times > Business > Ask Jeeves Inc. to Be Bought for $2 Billion

“If you find that your site is being effected by the Google Sandbox, the best approach we’ve found is to just ignore it. There’s very little that you can do to prevent the Sandbox effect. Our advice is that you just keep building links, adding content, and optimizing your site as you would normally. ”
This is good advice. It’s extremely hard to do. But it’s good advice.
MarketPosition Monthly - March 2005

Watch out Overture, you are on the way to losing another partner:
MSN To Launch Its Own Paid Listings Program
“How about launches of the program — which currently has no name — beyond France and Singapore? MSN isn’t saying when that will happen. Given the six month horizon we already have, I’d say don’t expect this until the end of the year, at the earliest. MSN has no need to rush. Its deal with Yahoo for paid listings runs through June 2006.”

Study: Consumers Delete Cookies at Surprising Rate: “Nearly 40 percent of Internet users delete cookies from their primary computers on at least a monthly basis, according to a study by JupiterResearch. ”

I’m pretty skeptical of this. Just because I know a lot of internet users and I don’t think 40% of them would even know how to delete a cookie if they were forced to. But then again, I thought Kerry was going to win. What do I know.

The point of all this, which I do think is valid, is that we need to look at our statistical data more as a survey than as actual precise data. The 60% of people who don’t delete their cookies will give us enough data to make educated decisions on what marketing is working and what isn’t.

Wow! My mug is on the home page of Ohio.com. It’s probably just today. But it’s very fun!

Ohio.com : Northeast Ohio’s source for local news, sports, jobs, cars, homes

Welcome Akron Beacon Journal readers!

I’m very excited you had the opportunity to come to our weblog. I happen to be an avid BJ reader myself. So, you are something of a kindred spirit to me.

This is a very non-traditional post on this blog, as we take great strides to only post items that pertain strictly to web marketing. But today’s article calls for special circumstances. I wanted talk to you a bit about blogging and possibly how it might fit into your business.

If you are a high level executive at a local company possibly you have at least casually considered how blogging might fit into your company culture. Otherwise, you probably wouldn’t be here now. But you might be concerned as to what good it would do for you.

Our blog consistantly is the leading traffic generator compared any other section of our web site. More people go to our blog than go to our article sections or our service sections. Our blog also has the highest rate of return visitors.

On average people come to a site 13 times before they buy as we reported in this blog post:
SageRock Web Marketing Weblog: Connecting nonconverting keywords to conversion outcomes. You have to give them a reason to want to return to your site 13 times.

It is also very easy to update. As you can see below, Joe Abraham posted to our blog yesterday ? Sunday (no, I don?t make people work Sunday). He did this from his home. Because the publishing tool is web-based, anyone who is permitted to post to the blog can add an article from anywhere in the world.

Additionally, this is not something that just small companies are doing. High level executives from major corporations are getting involved. The Vice Chairman of GM, Bob Lutz, is an avid blogger. He posts regularly here:
Detroit Auto News - Auto Industry News from the GM FastLane Blog and Bob Lutz. This is a great opportunity for him to quickly address the public and also discuss some of his philosophical business views. This blog in particular is a very interesting read for the business community at large.

Because a blog is really little more than a web-based publishing tool, it can be used for many things. It could be used as an internal discussion platform for your company’s employees. You could use it as Bob Lutz does as a way of casually communicating on a regular basis to his company, shareholders and the public. It could be used as a way of communicating directly with individual customers - keeping them up to date with their ongoing projects. If you have information you would like to make available to anyone, chances are you could fashion a blog to help you achieve this goal. And as Erika points out in the article today, it is free. Just go to Blogger.com, or any other blog publisher and set up an account. The point of blogging is to bring publishing to the common man. Everyone now has a voice… not just publishing houses and the technology literate. This is ultimately why blogging is becoming such a hot topic.

Erika Smith and I had a very interesting discussion about how very few Akron-based companies were experimenting with blogs. I certainly understand why that is. There are many reasons why a company wouldn’t want to delve into this topic. Possibly you feel it would be too complicated, the cost of entry would be too prohibitive. You and your employees are too busy as it is. It doesn’t look like it would be of value to your company. But clearly you are still reading
So here is our offer. If you are an Akron-based (or in close proximity) organization we will make available our time to help you set up a blog, or at least consider a blog for your company, non-profit or other organization. We’ll offer this for free. But you have to call or email us in the next week - that way this isn’t an open ended offer. If we get a lot of takers, we’ll set up a seminar at our office here in Akron. But if it is just a few of you, we’ll gladly talk to you one on one. We are clearly major advocates of blogging here at SageRock.com. We would like to help push Akron into the Blogging arena. As Erika and I talked last week, I didn’t quite know who would be a good evangilist for blogging. The more I thought about it, it seemed that we might be as good as any.

You can call me, Sage Lewis at 330-379-9000 and I will gladly get something set up to help you establish your blog.

Thank you very much for reading and thank you, Erika Smith, for the excellent article and pictures today.