Google was just named the world’s top global brand for the second year in a row, topping such recognizable companies such as GE, Coca Cola, McDonald’s and Microsoft.

Google’s success goes without saying, however, when placed alongside such other giants as these, it is all the more impressive that Google has done so well in such a short amount of time.  The other companies on the list, especially those not related to technology, are more than mere household names; they are institutions.  To think that Google was founded less than ten years ago and has risen to such great heights already is astounding.  Just about everyone posited that Google could be “the next Microsoft,” but with it’s brand worth an estimated $16 billion more than Microsoft, it’s a wonder that we aren’t on the lookout for “the next Google” at this point.

As far as I’m concerned, Google’s success is due in large part to its overwhelming investment in its own human capital.  With more employed Ph.D.’s than any other corporation, Google is one of, if not the smartest company in the world.  Although it is a bit cliché to say that a company is only as good as its employees, in Google’s case, it couldn’t be more true.

So, congratulations to Google for their success and for this most recent acknowledgment thereof.  I’m sure we’ll see Wpromote climbing in the ranks soon enough, but give us a break… Google is three years older than we are!

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If you’ve messed around with creating a web page, odds are you’ve used tables. Tables are a great way for someone who is new to web design to start laying out their HTML. I know that’s where I started. While they can get the job done, tables were not designed to be the backbone of web page layout. The table element is meant to be used for displaying tabular data (hence the name). Time to learn some CSS!

What is CSS?

CSS stands for “cascading style sheet.” Think of it like this . . . there are two main properties to your web page. On one hand you have the HTML. Your HTML is responsible for the content of your website and has NOTHING to do with the visual representation. On the other hand you have your CSS file which tells your web browser how to display the content. Check out csszengarden for an excellent visual representation of this idea. Here you can see the work of advanced web designers applying unique CSS files to one common HTML document. Notice how each example contains the exact same content, but is displayed in a vastly different manner through the use of CSS.

Separating content and design is extremely important. One of the most frustrating things on the web is waiting for a web site to load. If I’m browsing the web and find myself stuck loading a page, chances are I close the window and find someplace else to go. So if you want to drive traffic to your site, you want to make it load as quickly as possible. This is where using CSS really shines! Browsers are much quicker at applying CSS properties to an HTML document then reading through HUGE table layouts. CSS files are also cached (stored) on the user’s computer which means it only has to be downloaded once. So if your web site has more than one page that references the same CSS file, load time is almost instantaneous.

Using CSS also addresses the issue of getting listed in search engines. The cleaner and more organized your web page is, the easier it is for search-engines to read and rank your site. If you have completely identical sites, in terms of content, where one is designed using a bulky table-based layout and the other using CSS, search-engines can make a more educated guess as to what the CSS based web page is about, and thus will receive a higher ranking and more search traffic.

Switching over to CSS layouts is a very important step in website optimization. While it can be pretty intimidating at first, it is a giant leap in the right direction. I highly recommend checking out the web tutorials found at Lynda.com to get started. If you’re more advanced with CSS, alistapart.com is a great site to learn more about professional techniques and web standards.

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The ongoing performance of a campaign is often determined in the long run by the landing page quality.

Google has three main factors in determining an advertiser’s positioning within their algorithm: bid, historical click through rate and quality score. From an account manager’s perspective, there are various factors on our end that contribute to the success of a campaign, however, most reside in the landing page quality. The most common issue we run into is inadequate websites as far as relevant content, navigable links and load time to name a few. Google created these guidelines to make the user experience as amiable as possible. Therefore, the most important ways to improve your landing page quality and in turn, decrease your minimum bids, increase your positioning and quality score, is to take the following into consideration on your website:

1. Relevant and Original Content
2. Transparency
3. Navigability

As a search engine user, I am often deterred when I enter a website and one or more of these factors are not in place. This is directly related to the bounce rate seen across most websites, which could be drastically reduced with simple yet effective changes.

An example that we have recently experienced involving landing page quality was with affiliate websites on Google. Google is now cracking down on all affiliate sites due to their poor landing page quality and undifferentiated traits on their sites. Consequently, these sites are being given a low quality score which is the direct cause of poor performance and high minimum bids. To alleviate this issue, advertisers can create a unique website with unique content or turn completely to Yahoo and MSN to meet their advertising needs.

Clearly, the integrity of the user experience is what is at stake in this ever-changing form of advertising, and having reputable advertisers only creates a sound experience overall. Landing page quality is a win-win for all parties involved, and can only enhance campaign performance making a solid long-term investment. Advertisers who wish to succeed in paid search should make sure to pay as much attention to the destination of the paid search traffic as to the placement and quality of the ads sending it.

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I’ve been asked this question by several friends and colleagues as well as by several clients who own numerous domains and don’t understand what is the smartest way to utilize them.

First off, it is generally best to take the oldest domain you can find (based on its ‘creation date’ in WHOIS or from the Wayback.org results) that FITS with your site’s keyword targeting.

For example, if you have a great old domain, say runningshoes.com that was registered in 1994 and you also have woodenbarrels.com that was registered in 2005 it really depends on WHAT you are selling.

The goal is to rank high for things that your target consumer is already typing into Google now.

So if you are selling ‘Wooden Barrels’, then the choice domain to build around has got to be woodenbarrels.com.

Okay, so with that said, if you still own the runningshoes.com site and can’t do anything with it, simply 301 the site to woodenbarrels.com and forget about it until Nike offers you thousands to buy it.

Onto your barrels now - here is the question: Should I buy woodenbarrels.net, woodenbarrels.org, barrelswooden.com, thewoodenbarrel.com, woodenbarrel.com, woodenbarrel.net, woodenbarrel.org?

Are you ready for the real answer here?

Here is the catch:

If you really want to rank first for “wooden barrels” and drive traffic to www.woodenbarrels.com, it isn’t buying the domains and forwarding them that is the key here. The real key is your competitors and preventing them from owning domains with the keywords you want to rank for.

So, go ahead and buy any domains that a competitor could potentially purchase and compete against you with, especially if your main keyword phrase is in it.

Initially you may think, “I don’t have to worry, I have woodenbarrels.com”. Then when you see Pay-Per-Click ads for ‘woodenbarrel.com’ coming up for searches on “Wooden Barrels” you’ll kick yourself for saving the $9.99 in the decision not to buy the domain when it was available.

Another alternative(which you should be doing anyways):

Build a really really great site, with awesome content, updated daily with meaningful information related to your topic and become the authority on Wooden Barrels. In conjunction with SERIOUS link-building, that’s the secret to ranking.

Your friendly neighborhood Rockstar SEO

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Being new to the SEM industry, I was intrigued to learn Pay Per Click has a sister, Pay Per Call, who is attracting a great deal of attention within the mobile advertising industry. Whether the younger sister proves to be the more attractive one is yet to be seen.

In short, Pay Per Call is self-explanatory: advertisers pay for phone leads instead of click leads. On March 19th, 2007, mobile advertising giant Medio announced a partnership with Ingenio, a major leader in the Pay Per Call market. As of now Medio has inked deals with cellular carriers T-Mobile & Amp’d for their mobile pay per click services. As the two coalesce, they will offer Pay Per Call advertising on a mobile level. While this all sounds exciting, in my humble opinion, the partners are facing huge obstacles in tapping into this market.

As is with Pay Per Click, the idea is to use highly targeted keywords to reach as specific of an audience as possible. With PPC II, users will be delivered text ads that contain a title, description (sound familiar?) and a phone number. When the user calls the number Ingenio has provided them with, the advertiser is charged a bid rate for the call. While this is a GREAT solution for small business owners without a website, I see three main problems with this strategy.

Number one: when that water pipe burst in your house last night, did you hop on your Amp’d cell phone, get online, and search for a plumber? I think not. If you did, aside from being a huge dork, you probably hopped on your Blackberry or I-phone and searched Google. Let’s see: Medio vs. Google? Number two: the bid rates per call make your neighbor’s home business keyword bids look like chump change. At $2 - $20 per call, those leads better be converting. Number three: PEOPLE DON’T LIKE MOBILE ADS. Released in 2007, ‘Universal McCann conducted a survey among 9,500 people and found that 61% of respondents rejected ads on mobile TV & Internet services.’

While I am in no way, shape, or form opposed to serving niche markets through innovative technology; I do not see PPC II stealing the Beauty Pageant crown from her sexy older sister anytime soon.

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SEOmoz, one of the best resources for general advice and expert opinions on all things SEO, featured an enraged article yesterday regarding the low priority that startups are advised to put on SEO in relation to their other advertising ventures. Rand, SEOmoz’s esteemed CEO, focused not on the idea that startups are ignoring SEO–although, for all intents and purposes, many do–but that they are being advise by so-called and often self-proclaimed “startup experts” that this behavior is right and justified.

Three things compelled me about this article:

1. The colloquial and comedic way in which it was written,
2. The conversation it sparked in the comments below,
3. The fact that Rand is completely right; everyone should be engaging in SEO, most of all startups.

Here is an excerpt from the article that I found particularly engaging:

Let’s imagine you’ve just dreamed up some brilliant new web startup company that’s going to change the world and fill this great unfulfilled need. Now, if only there were some way to figure out if other people were interested in solving the same problem. If only we had access to some sort of a repository of human queries that would tell us how popular and worthwhile our idea might be… Gee, that would be great…

For f***’s sake, people - get a clue.

Rand is, of course, talking about Google. When put into language like this, it sure makes a compelling case to engage the search engines, doesn’t it? Google, boiled down to its most basic function, is the world’s biggest forum for getting X to people who are trying to get X. If you’re looking for X, Google doesn’t give you Y or Z, it gives you X. If you are a vendor of X, you should probably be interested in a forum that does the qualification for you.

I can only imagine that the experts that Rand describes in his article–the ones continue to dole out SEO-free startup advice–were either lucky to have succeeded sans SEO in the first place or succeeded before SEO in its current form existed. Either way, an ignorance of SEO may be a decent enough excuse to ignore it on an individual level, but to advise others against a medium that could be so potentially helpful is just unscrupulous, especially when considering that even great startups need all the help they can get.

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Last week, the Account Development department welcomed its newest member, Amir Shoucri. Not surprisingly, Amir’s fresh perspective introduced a compelling blog topic…He wrote:

With all the immunity granted to the ignorant new guy, I’m going to throw this out there – I never clicked on an Internet ad before working here. I realize I’m walking a fine line, and at the risk of subverting what we do, I’ll be upfront about it. Like many people, I associated search-engine advertising with a variety of other negatives – spam, pop-ups, spyware, viruses etc. What’s more, I considered myself sophisticated enough to avoid all the traps set to ensnare the casual web browser. I use search engines; they don’t use me, kind of thing.

That having been said, I will admit to some misapprehensions. I don’t think I understood what a Google ad was until recently. The most I ever thought about it was the time I was discussing my private life in an e-mail and suddenly noticed I was being offered a variety of mental health services. Having now attained some background, I’m fairly impressed with the standards Google maintains for ad style, content, and security.

Web advertising is a pervasive new industry. I’ve worked in other pervasive industries, and all of them felt underappreciated. In television, it was always about the Nielsen ratings (Q: How come no one is watching our show? A: Because, Donnie Wahlberg is in it). In the education field, it was similar (Q: Why does no one value us? A: Because, knowledge makes people unhappy). Determining cause and effect was a game of constant guesswork.

With online ads, however, it seems the proof is in the pudding. If someone clicks on an ad, navigates to a site, and makes a purchase, that to me is literal, definitive evidence that advertising works. This is not the gray area of traditional advertising or sociological academia; the ability to assess is tangible and simple. People, despite what I would have guessed, are clearly clicking on ads.

I get the sense that I’m not alone in my initial misconception of this industry. What impression do most people really have?

After putting some thought to the issues raised by Amir, I wrote this response. Several points probably deserve a lot more attention (see future blog posts) but there’s plenty of food for thought:

Before I joined the Wpromote team, I could have counted on one hand the number of times I clicked on Google and Yahoo ads. Sure, I used the search engines extensively when I was curious about something, or working on a research paper. Google was my homepage for at least two of my four years in college (AltaVista was probably my homepage for the first couple years, if you can cast your memory back that far…) and Yahoo was never far from my address bar, but my cursor never strayed from those organic results.

To this day, every time I talk to someone about what I do at Wpromote, the conversation inevitably turns to organic search. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say “Well, I hardly ever pay attention to the advertisements on (preferred search engine). Can you help raise my position in the search results?” Well, as a matter of fact, we have an entire department devoted to that: Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It will cost you more money and take far more time, but we can help move your site into the elusive and coveted Top Ten.

So then what? Let’s say you have a site that sells hand saws, and we get your site into the Top Ten for keyword searches of “hand saw.” Well, now you’re wedged somewhere between image results, a Wikipedia entry (see future blog entry), an article on “How to Choose the Right Handsaw”, and a few manufacturers websites with far more awareness and visibility. What have we accomplished? A spot in the Top Ten, and little (if any) additional traffic.

Internet advertising continues to struggle with its longstanding reputation for poor user experience. Anyone who’s ever been on a computer has probably dealt with pervasive and intrusive pop up ads. Many have had a computer infected with Spyware and other privacy-invasive software, which sometimes host viruses that render computers virtually worthless. User distrust of online advertising is understandable, if a bit misguided. As the saying goes: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Unfortunately, many internet users categorically ignore or dismiss all forms of advertising they see online.

Still, I don’t hear anyone suggesting online advertising is overvalued. When News Corp acquired MySpace for $580 million in 2005, you could hear jaws hitting keyboards worldwide. Now analysts are suggesting the site would be worth $15 billion in today’s market! Elsewhere, advertising megafirms are producing million dollar “Viral Videos” for clients to flood the web and rack up view counts on YouTube, all in the hope that they will translate to increased sales. Some of these videos don’t even feature the client’s name, logo, or slogan, but hope the subject on screen will subconsciously register with viewers. The traditionally held concepts of brand identity and recognition in the advertising industry are being shaken to their foundations as the World Wide Web continually repositions and reinvents itself.

Right. So we’ve got subliminally encoded videos and privacy-invasive software logging our every move online to figure out the way we think. Is that what people want? Seems to me that anytime an ad pops up in my face, even if (read: especially if) it’s advertising a product I want, it will only evoke Orwellian fears in my mind. People don’t want to be spied or preyed upon; but, when they want something, they want it as quickly and conveniently as possible. Which brings them right back to where we started: their trusted search engine.

Having said all this, the fundamental issue still remains: the Google and Yahoo advertising departments could stand to hire their own PR reps. Should they advertise their own advertising? How can they regain the trust of internet users who clearly want the advertised products, but fear the links will implant some sort of tracking software on their hard drives? For one thing, they can continue to offer the user-friendly advertising they’ve become known for. The cream always rises to the top. More and more people will eventually catch on to what’s happening on the right hand side of their search results pages. It certainly helps when online businesses have well built, highly targeted, and closely managed ad campaigns. I, for one, have come to discover that I’m actually more likely to find what I’m looking for under the sponsored links.

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How landing page load time can affect your Quality Score

Earlier this month Google modified their Quality Score algorithm to include an assessment of landing page ‘load time’. Incase you are not familiar with landing page terminology; the ’load time’ refers to the amount of time it takes for a user to arrive at your working landing page, after they have clicked on your ad. If you check out the Keyword Analysis page you should be able to view your load time grade.

If your keyword was given the, This page loads slowly grade, your quality score will take a hit. If Google finds your page to have an acceptable load time your Quality Score won’t be impacted and you will receive the very exciting, No problems found, grade. If however, Google finds your landing page’s load time to be faster than the average in your server’s geographic region, your Quality Score may be positively affected.

Speed is now an important factor in determining the Quality Score of your landing page but not the only one. Google wants publishers to create landing pages that feature unique and relevant content and also are quick to load as this improves the users experience. Advertisers benefit from fast loading landing pages because users are less likely to bail on a site that loads fast as lightning versus one that makes you want to gauge your eyes out from boredom.

So, How does Google grade the load time? Well, First, they look at the destination URL associated with a specific keyword. If you have a destination URL assigned at the keyword level then your grade will be based on that specific URL. Otherwise, Google will grade you based on the slowest load time among the ads in the ad group. Google will take into account your hosting servers geographic region and calculate the grade in relation to the average to other servers in that region.

Tips on improving your landing page load time

If you find that some of your landing pages are reporting a bad grade on their load time fear not. There are many ways of speeding up your load time and Google re-evaluates load time grades on regular basis. Follow some of the tips below and should see lower minimum CPC bids and an improved Quality Score.

General Tips

1. Use fewer redirects
2. Stay away from using interstitial pages.
3. Use iframes only when necessary
4. Take out any unnecessary multimedia ( songs, very large images, videos, background music, etc.)
5. Compress your images as much as possible. If you use Photoshop you can use the, Save For Web option to find the best possible compression setting.
6. Use GIFs wherever possible – as long as they are not the animated kind.
7. Use the height and width tags on all your images. This lets the browser know where everything is before the images are loaded and will give your users a better experience.
8. Remove the empty lines spaces between your code.

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The damage of undercover cameras and leaked footage reaching the Internet has been a dilemma music labels and movie studios have been battling for years. Leaked music videos (i.e. 50 Cent ft. Robin Thicke – Follow My Lead), movie trailers (i.e. Wolverine, which isn’t even set to be released until 2009) and other media often reach the masses and many times do more harm than hype. But now it’s not just large companies battling these leaks, rather individuals who are at the forefront of incriminating information, photos and videos posted about them online.

Recently, the Baltimore Sun broke the story about Officer Salvatore Rivieri and a questionable video of him man handling a skateboarding teenager.

Since then he has become an Internet phenomenon.

The original story was dugg by 8652 people, a second incident dugg by 5981 people, and the infamous YouTube Video titled Baltimore Cop Vs. A 14 year old Skateboarder has garnered over 1 million views. At this rate, if another video pops up, maybe he’ll become more popular than the Star Wars Kid.

So where does Officer Rivieri’s online reputation stand at the moment? Not so positive as you would probably imagine:
We’ve given this over a week’s time to see how the rankings from various news sources, blogs, and video searches populate. We tested a few different combinations of searches on Google for his name:

Google Search for Officer Rivieri
Google Search for Salvatore Rivieri
Google Search for Officer Salvatore Rivieri

From all of those searches, an overwhelming number of the top 100 results for each search query was overwhelmingly negative, if not all. In essence, one YouTube video manages his online reputation.

So, what options does one like Officer Salvatore Rivieri have to repair his online reputation?

1. Go for the source.

Online video repositories such as YouTube, Myspace, Google Video, and ReVVer have ways for copyright owners to request their media to be removed. Labels and studios have been doing this for years, but everyday users can do the same. But be noted, you must be the copyright owner to do this. Each company has its own procedures and requirements for takedowns.

YouTube Content Takedown
Myspace Copyright Violations
Google Video Copyright Information
ReVVer Copyright Information

2. Google Webpage Removal Request Tool

A less well-known feature of Google is that you can request that web pages be removed from its index. While it is true that you can use nofollow, noindex, and Webmaster Tools to remove pages on your own domains, this tool is designed particularly for removing pages hosted on other servers. If a particular page has personal information such a signatures, social security numbers, or credit card numbers, it may be grounds for a Google Removal Request.

3. Official Press Releases

Because Officer Rivieri is employed in a public department, there may be more red tape for him to make a public announcement or issue a press release. But for those who do not have such restrictions, issuing an official release may be a great option. Contact the news agencies and bloggers who wrote or reported the original story, offer your press release, your side of the story, and to answer any questions. Bloggers tend to eat up press releases from people who have made a mistake and admit to. By visiting the top 20 negative search results that appear in a search for your name and personally contacting each one, some damage control can be done and prove successful in closing this chapter of your life.

4. Hire An SEO or Online Reputation Management Company

Hiring an SEO company can have its benefits. With experience in search engine optimization, the company can help you create search engine optimized press releases, build up your social media accounts, optimize your personal web pages, and work you on the road to a positive image on search engines. Wpromote does offer SEO and custom reputation management packages.

Preemptive Measures To Online Reputation Management:

3 Things You Can Do In 15 or Less Minutes:

1. Buy Your Name.com

Buy your name.com. If you have not already and assuming the domain is still available, purchase it! Our advice to Officer Rivieri would be to purchase one of four of these sites (or even all): SalvatoreRivieri.com, Salvatore-Rivieri.com, OfficerRivieri.com and OfficerSalvatoreRivieri.com. As of this morning, all four are still available.
If your name.com is already taken, try different combinations, adding your middle name, or use a hyphen to separate your first and last name. .net, .org and .us extensions are also popular.

2. Add New & Valuable Content

Have your domain? Add a blog or use Google’s Page Creator to populate it with some positive and useful content about yourself.

3. Set up a Myspace Account

Register on Myspace. As much as you may hate it, Myspace has proven to rank well in search engines and when you have negative press, building a positive page can do wonders. Register there, create a profile, fill in some basic info, and even set your profile on private if you’d like.

With time, assuming you do not have a common name or share one with a celebrity, these two sites alone should begin ranking in first page results when searching for your name.

Online reputation management is generally the kind of issue that many people never think about until something bad and public happens to them. If one waits until that moment, though, then something negative may already be defining you. We’ve all heard the old adage that bad things happen to good people and it’s proven to be true. Taking preventative measures to establish an online identity for yourself that portrays you the way that you wish the world to view you is one way to fight bad press before it happens.

Hopefully, nothing as bad as what happened to Officer Rivieri will ever happen to you, but if it does, it’s best to be prepared!

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With power comes responsibility.

Or at least that is what Google would like us to think.

Don’t get me wrong - I applaud Google’s announcement that they are partnering with the city of San Francisco to provide the homeless with free voicemail and a lifelong telephone number. And even if the feelgood move is little more than a PR stunt (and I’m using that term loosely) to make Google seem more friendly in the eyes of the public, which as of late has become increasingly aware of Google’s ability to screw them by sharing information without their consent, I believe any organizations who poll resources for the greater good are doing something right.

The free voicemail offering for SF’s homeless community arrives thanks to an innovative partnership between Project Homeless Connect and Project CARE (Communications and Respect for Everyone), the non-profit initiative of GrandCentral Communications, which Google acquired last summer. What’s the plan? GrandCentral will host the technology, and Project Homeless Connect will work to raise awareness of the program in the homeless community and get people to sign-up.

“We’re firm believers in the power of technology to improve the daily lives of individuals and communities as a whole, and we recognize that access to phone and voicemail services is one way that Google can help San Francisco’s homeless stay connected with family, friends, social workers, health care providers, and potential employers.” - Craig Walker, Senior Project Manager, Google (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/project-care-in-san-francisco.html)

In theory, once a homeless person signs-up for the free voicemail and phone number, he or she will have a better chance at success. And while a phone number and voicemail service would certainly make it easier for a person to connect with the outside world, simply throwing freebies out there is no where near a real solution.

It is this short-sightedness in their approach which makes Google’s goodwill offer