Did you update your site to HTML5, while updating your meta data to reflect the new SEO keyword research done in AdWords, that will best help the webpages PR and PPC quality score so the keywords appear above the fold in the SERPS. Did you have trouble understanding all of those interactive marketing acronyms and terms used in the above sentence? Most people do and that is why we are here to help you have a better understanding of the world of web marketing!

Web Marketing: Internet marketing, also known as digital marketing, online marketing, search marketing or e-marketing, and is the marketing of products or services over the Internet.

HTML5: Hypertext Markup Language version 5 or in simpler terms, the way your website is most likely built or going to be built in the near future

Meta data: data that provides information about the other data managed within an application or environment or in simpler terms, background data on a webpage that helps the search engines figure out what your webpage is about.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing):  is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization): can be referred to as organic, natural, or algorithmic rankings and it is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines or in simpler terms, the optimizing of a webpage by changing known factors that best help said web page rank higher in Google.

Keyword Research: is a practice used by search engine optimization professionals to find and research actual search terms people enter into the search engines when conducting a search.
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How are you choosing your domain name? Is it part of your marketing strategy? A short, memorable domain name will let people remember your product or service, but a short dictionary word domain name will also help your SEO positions.

Although many good names may have already been registered, you can still find good names available on secondary market websites such as Sedo and SnapNames.

The Value of Short Domain Names
It isn’t hard to understand why short domain names are valuable. A generic dictionary word domain name may cost thousands of dollars—or even millions. According to DN Journal, Social.com was sold for $2.6 million in the past July. However, don’t be discouraged! A recent study by SnapNames says that a vast majority of the domain names are bought and sold between the $500 to $5,000 range.

What’s a fair price for a domain name?
Generally, the more words in the domain name, the less it is worth. But a common two-word name is worth more than a rarely used single word name. A domain name without dashes or numbers is often worth more because typical users do not use dashes when they search. (Google, too, ignores dashes when you search.) Names ending in “.com” are also more popular than “.net” names because most people equate “.com” to the Internet.

Buy your Ideal Domain
Even when a domain name is listed for $10,000, you may still be able to buy it for significantly less. Like everything else, domain name prices can be negotiated. You can find out the domain owner’s information by looking up its registration records from DomainTools. One word of advice: don’t assume the domain owner is “squatting” on a domain name. Many domain name owners are very organized and have a large portfolio. A few of them are even public traded domain investment companies.
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You know what they say, “All good things must come to an end…” While I’m sad to say that next week marks my last week as a web marketing intern here at EIM, I’m proud to say that I’ve truly enjoyed my time here over the past few months. To say I’ve learned a lot during my summer internship here would be more than an understatement.

Working at a small interactive agency like EIM really gave me the opportunity to gain a lot of hands-on experience. I got to work on several client tasks such as search engine optimization, pay-per click ad management, social media management, and weekly / quarterly reporting. While working closely with the web marketing team, I’ve learned all about the different aspects of search engine optimization including keyword analysis and research, meta-tag writing, content enhancement, video optimization, and link building as well as how to effectively utilize various online marketing tools and resources like social media, keyword tools, and Google Analytics. In addition to learning more about interactive marketing, my internship at EIM has also helped me develop my skills in collaboration, time management, internal communications, and problem solving.

Overall I feel like my time here at EIM has been a great success. I came into this internship as a fresh college grad with very limited knowledge and experience in interactive marketing and now after spending my summer here at EIM, I feel confident and well-prepared to take on the interactive marketing world as a full-time professional! Thank you to everyone at EIM for making my internship here a great experience…I will be sure to keep touch!

…And to close out my last blog post as an EIM intern, I’ve compiled some helpful tips for students or recent grads looking to make the most of their internship with an interactive agency:
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As we all know, and often write about, Google is always making changes (aka “making us crazy”). Whether an interface, algorithm, or product change, sometimes these stay at the “test” status and never really have an impact on a business’s SEO efforts, other times we’re not so lucky. Either way, it’s important to watch them for cues from Google that you can use to drive new search marketing tactics.

So let’s look at one of my favorite recent updates in Google house cleaning news.

Google Places Pages: Google recently updated their Places pages, de-cluttering and reprioritizing certain elements. In the process, they hid some information that always seemed important to SEOs and provided tantalizing keyword opportunities. However, no big surprise here, the pages are much more streamlined and user friendly.

The biggest change and takeaway is related to reviews. Google has added big pretty buttons inviting visitors to write reviews of the business (as seen in the screenshot below), and they they are no longer displaying reviews from 3^rd sites right on the page (they are instead still linking off to some of those sites, though).

This is Google moving into the social realm (in line with Google+),  competing with sites like Yelp, and telling us that customer feedback is important.

So what do you do with this? It’s simple! Just like you (hopefully) already have subtle drivers from existing marketing touchpoints to sites like Yelp where customers can share their experiences with your business, it would be a good idea to more actively ask them to also drop praise on your Google Places page. It is Google, after all, so it’s probably smart to build up your presence there. Start with your Facebook page, where you should have a nice community of your most loyal customers. Post a light message thanking them for all their support, share your Google Places link, and see if they’d like to share their positive feedback there.
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It’s no secret that Cubs fans are everywhere, not just in the Chicago city limits, not even just in Illinois. This became especially clear to CubWorld.com through engagement with their growing social media community. In fact, it’s the fans outside Chicago who seem to be some of the most active participants on CubWorld’s Facebook page!

With this in mind, CubWorld wanted to find a way to let Chicago Cubs fans’ voices be “heard”—from wherever they may reside. So EIM worked with CubWorld to launch CubWorld Nation.

Fans simply provide their name, zip code, and email address, and voila: the map is marked with an appropriately blue-hued baseball cap, denoting that passionate Cubbie blue is bled in that part of our nation. Excuse me, our CubWorld Nation.

The exact count of fans represented by each hat can be viewed by clicking on the respective hat. And through the power of a Google API, this map comes with tons of flexibility and room for growth. So CubWorld Nation is a tool we expect to see more from — stay tuned for fan photo-sharing, CWNation contests and giveaways, and more.

If you root for those lovable Northsiders, be sure to stake your claim on the CubWorld Nation map. Or just go hat-clicking to see how many Cubs fans live near you!

It hasn’t even been a month since I started interning here at EIM, yet I feel like I’ve already learned so much. Prior to arriving at EIM, most of my experience with digital media involved managing social media accounts for various local events and businesses and maintaining my own personal blog. As a recent college graduate who studied media and communications for four years, I felt very much aware of the power of social media and how sites like Twitter and Facebook have been reshaping our lives and the way we do business.

But while social media channels can certainly play a great role in things like brand management and customer engagement, it is really just a piece of the marketing puzzle. It’s not enough to just make a Facebook and Twitter page for your business and wait for fans and followers to roll in. It is very important to make sure your social media efforts line up with your overall marketing strategy. It’s also useful to find ways to integrate your social media pages into other channels such as your website, newsletters, mobile apps, print ads, and even TV commercials (see: American Express)

As social media strategist Jay Baer puts it, “Social media is not a solo act. It’s best as part of a jazz combo.” And one very important player in that combo that I knew very little about before coming here was “search marketing.” While working closely with the Web Marketing Team here at EIM, I’m really starting to recognize the importance of search marketing. SEO, SEM, paid search, and search engines in general all play huge parts in gaining traffic to your company website and reaching your marketing goals, whether that means increasing product sales or raising brand awareness.
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The web marketing team here at EIM often gets asked casual questions about search engine optimization, be it at the office or even out at a social event. A client might ask about the newest tactic they happened to read about or how social media impacts organic search results. A family member might ask for an explanation of what exactly SEO means (this is a very common one). And we still get people wondering if you can pay for the top spot in the organic results of Google (you can’t).

With all these questions and varying levels of understanding, and with the almost daily changes in the search and social marketing industry, I thought it would be good to take a look at some basics in SEO philosophy.

5 simple SEO philosophy reminders:
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1. Discipline yourself to stay focused. Content structured smartly and targeted tightly around your product or service offering will attract a more valuable corner of the search engine market and generate higher conversion rates once your visitors arrive on your site.
2. Think about your consumer. Content they want to see and anything that makes their experience on your site more engaging, more pleasant and more productive will lead to them talking about you and linking to you.
3. There are very few quick fixes when it comes to SEO. Search Engines are looking for who’s growing a following, developing quality content, and building a solid reputation within their respective space. The way a business would ideally gain attention and increase sales over time organically is exactly what SEO professionals are trying to emulate. So yes, the very nature of SEO is a manipulation of that organic growth, but it still needs to in fact emulate it. Any tricks that someone might suggest for “sneaking” your site up the results pages is bad business and will likely end up hurting you.

It’s time to get reacquainted with an old web marketing friend: Google AdWords. In case a recap is needed, this is the platform through which ads are developed and managed for display on Google’s search engine results pages (the listings you see at the very top of the page, above the organic listings, and stacked along the right side of the page).

With new social media tools constantly being introduced and ever-evolving mobile marketing technologies to stay on top of, AdWords is really a breath of fresh not-so-traditional-advertising-but-more-traditional-than-social-media-and-stuff air.

Yes, a good marketing strategy includes a combination of tactics designed to work together to achieve a common goal, and that may mean introducing some newer options. But in all the excitement of what’s new and popular, have you forgotten about some “older” standbys? Paid search advertising through AdWords might be just what you need to pump some new (old) life into your online marketing.

Let’s look at a few benefits of Google AdWords to remind ourselves why this is:
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1. First things first: Bing is out there and growing. It’s an important search engine to many and should be considered in your interactive marketing plans. But Google still has the much larger market share, so that’s why we’re focusing on it.
2. Adwords’ paid search ads allow you to target an Internet user at precisely the moment they are searching for what you sell. And if you optimize your ad, campaign settings, and landing page well, your ad should gain optimal exposure to this target audience member. You don’t have that kind of control within the organic side of the search engine listings.

We talked last week about the 5 year anniversary of Twitter and the crazy growth it’s seen and will continue to see. The numbers don’t lie–people are on Twitter, and no matter what you may think, those people aren’t just the gum-smacking tween types. While the adolescents are certainly out there in the Twittersphere, the biggest estimated group on Twitter right now is in their 20s and 30s, and there’s a strong representation of users in their 40s. So whatever your target audience, it’s a good chance they’re hanging out on Twitter and that this is a social media platform that needs to be monitored and considered in your business’s web marketing plans.

One challenge of Twitter is maintenance.  While it doesn’t seem so bad to share a few 140-character thoughts every once in awhile, building relationships and making connections on Twitter requires relatively regular monitoring. And building relationships is really what you want to be doing on Twitter. It’s a tool that will give back what you put into it. So with that in mind, here are some thoughts on how to make the most of Twitter and to build your loyal network, even if you don’t have a ton of extra time:
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1. Know what your fans and potential customers are interested in. Follow conversations on Twitter about topics important to you. Search for tweets about products you sell, services you offer, the industry you work in, etc. You can make decisions–both on and off Twitter–about your business based on this information.
2. This is a simple one: know who’s talking about YOU. Do regular searches on your own brand and misspellings of your brand name. If you find people referencing you, talk to them! And follow them! Don’t be shy…but DO, of course, stay sensitive to what it is they’re saying.

If you’ve turned a blind eye to the chatter about how videos can enhance your ranking in the search engines, listen up my friend – especially if you’re an online retailer. Video SEO is here to stay, and it can increase revenue by 10-15%. Here are some compelling stats that tell us why:

• Nearly 40% of users that search Google see video options in their universal results
• Search appears to be how most web users are finding video today, and 80% of folks view a video in its entirety – 25% click through to purchase a product
• 34 of the top 50 online retailers were using video in last year
• Videos can drive an overall revenue lift of 10-15%

So we’ve talked before about how the holidays are right around the corner, and I’m sure you’ve got your planning well underway.
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