Catchy Linkbait Is Worthless Without Really Good Content

Recently I read an article that came from Search Engine Land regarding LinkBait. What is linkbait? The best definition I could find on linkbaiting was written in a blog by a man named Stuart Brown -- ahhh the love of blogs ** sigh ** Linkbaiting is essentially a piece of content placed on a web page - whether it's an article, blog post, picture, or any other section of cyberspace - that is designed for the specific intention of gathering links from as many different sources as possible. Does it work? It can if it is done the right way but it should not be considered as a sole source of long term traffic. Check out this post from Digg which basically says the best way to handle Linkbait is with really good quality content. Getting to the top spot on Social Network's doesn't mean you will automatically get the inbound links you really want....

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Vocus and Hostway Corporation Announce New SEO

Vocus, Inc (NASDAQ: VOCS), a leading provider of on-demand software for public relations management, and Hostway Corporation, the global hosting and web services leader, announced today that they will enable Hostway's customers to distribute press releases via Vocus' PRWeb.

For those of you that don't know Vocus acquired PRWeb in August of 2006. The acquisition of PRWeb positions Vocus as a very large player in the world of online Public Relations. The partnership between PRWeb/Vocus and Hostway is an interesting one and has been long awaited, as it was heavily pursued by the FORMER EXECUTIVE TEAM of Affinity Internet, mainly by William Toll previous Director of Product Management, PRIOR to the acquisition of Affinity Internet by Hostway in April 2007.

I am glad to see that my previous employer was finally able to make this partnership work. Their clients will be pleasantly surprised by how well this can work for their search engine optimization efforts. It's too bad that the Press Release they created to announce the program was not optimized as well as it could have been for keywords that should have linked to their SEO Services, such as, SEO, Search Engine Optimization Services or SEO Consulting, just my opinion.

Check out the story anyway it was a good read and the service is definitely one that everyone should incorporate in their strategic internet initiatives.

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Favorite Pay Per Click (PPC) Blogs

Recently I came across an article regarding, Top Blogs Focusing on PPC (pay-per-click, or paid search advertising) for Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, Microsoft adCenter, etc. I felt compelled to share this information that I learned from Clix Marketing. The list is pretty extensive, if you feel the urge to add to this list please feel free to do so.

Sneak Peak:

PPC Lab
PPC Super Affiliate
PPC Think
RedFly Marketing
SEM Geek
The AdWords Addict
The PPC Book

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U.S. Album Sales Fell 9.5% in 2007 - Online sales up 45%

Album sales in the United States plunged 9.5 percent last year from 2006, as the recording industry had another weak year despite a 45 percent surge in the sale of digital tracks, according to figures released Thursday.

This is a sign...as online sales continue to climb large and small businesses alike have to remember to think of the future and their Online Marketing Strategies.

read more | digg story

Whopper Freakout Commercial VIDEO

What would you do if you entered your favorite local Burger King all set to order your favorite Whopper meal and the employee behind the counter said, “I’m sorry but we no longer serve Whopper’s. Burger King’s marketing group staged the publicity stunt in order to capture the reaction of their customers.

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Blogging is a Powerful Online Marketing Tool

Recently I posted a blog about how my daughter and I were having problems accessing her favorite website “webkinz”. Their website was having some serious issues with uptime and the volume of traffic was extremely high on Christmas Day so virtually nobody was able to login and adopt their pets.

In my total frustration I posted a blog about our webkinz problems. Low and behold there were many others who were feeling the exact same way we did. To my surprise my blog popped up in the SERPS (search engine results pages) the same day I had posted it and the traffic to my blog soared. Although I did not realize it until almost 5 days later when went back to check my traffic stats.

Knowing this it seems like a no brainer to continue to blog in this fashion attempting to drive more and more traffic to my blog which can hopefully find its way back to my website. The point I am trying to make is blogging has been said to be a very powerful and FREE Online Marketing Tool that many small business owners are not wrapping their hands around just yet and they seriously need to. So don’t wait any longer, start a blog today.

Whopper Freakout is Brilliant Branding Offline and Online

The last month or so I have been seeing the commercial about Whopper Freakout, and I have to say those commercials crack me up. They took me back to those candid camera days, are you old enough to remember those? Allen Funt hosted the shows and basically pulled pranks on everyday people. What a great concept.

Well with Burger King they were out to make a point, that the Whopper is King – America’s favorite burger! So what would happen if they just removed it from their menu, well the commercials show snippets of actual events that took place real emotions from customers. One person even said “So what are you going to put on the logo now? Home of the, whatever we got?” They even showed two guys who looked like they were straight out of the 70’s saying, “Burger King without the Whopper? You may as well call it Burger Clean!” They even brought in the King to break the good news to their customers, that is was just a joke. All I can say is this is brilliant branding once again by Burger King’s marketing team.

Burger King has brought out some of the most interesting online marketing ideas such as the subservient chicken, simpsonizeme, and now the Whopper Freakout. If you have not gone to their website to check out all of the footage do so soon because it is funny and well worth the 7 minutes.