Here is a good, quick explanation of the long tail of search.

If you have not heard by now, Bing and Yahoo are partnering to challenge Google.  At this point in time Google dominates 65-to-82% (depending on how you measure this…) of all search queries.  The landscape is obviously changing, Bing will gain more relevance, but at this point in time certainly not to Google’s expense.  After the merger Bing is estimated to have approx 28% of the market share.  Bing is definitely worth optimizing more for if this deal goes through, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions at this point in time and we’ll keep you up to date as soon as the dust starts to settle.

Have you grabbed social media profiles for your brand name and key employees?

Managing what people see when they search for you or your business is important step in today’s brand management strategies.

Creating profiles on popular social media websites like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and many others can help you manage the search results for your brand and employees.  Even if you don’t plan to actively participate in the site, it prevents other people from registering your brand name

I can’t believe it has already been over a month since I started my internship at Magro International. I was so excited to be given the opportunity to work here this summer completing an internship in the field I am going to school for. In the beginning, I was not 100% sure about all the things I would be working on and learning, but just from this past month my expectations have been exceeded.I work more on the marketing side of Magro International with Julie. I have been focusing on helping her put together Local SEO reports for companies they do work for. I really enjoy doing the SEO work because many business owners don’t know exactly how to get their business out there and how to get their search engine rankings higher, which is something Julie has been teaching me how to do.

Something I have been working a lot this past month at Magro is link building. I have learned how important it is to get links to your website from other sites. This can be a very time consuming process, but in the end I know it pays off for the companies we do it for.

Something else I have been working on a lot is keyword research. By knowing the keywords potential customers are searching for can really help your ranking on search engines such as Google and Yahoo. I have been using a tool called Google Ad Words which shows me the amount of times a certain keyword has been searched locally and globally. Keyword research can help companies more ways than just for search engines, it can also help to decide what to name a video listed on YouTube. By knowing these highly searched keywords, you can increase the viewings of your YouTube videos, and website.

I have been learning about all the local search engines to submit businesses to such as Google Local and Yahoo Local. These listings should be step number one when listing a business. Also, I just learned of a new website, universal business listing, which can help to list a business to many different search engines.

Overall, my experience at Magro International so far has been excellent. Leonard and Julie are very willing to help me with anything I need and encourage me to as questions when I am unsure of anything. I like how they are actually teaching me skills that I will use in my future and I know over the next couple months it will only get better.

Kelly Cindrich

Magro International’s recently released video.

Happy New Year!

It’s been a while since we were active on our blog.  2008 has been a successful year for Magro International, it kept us busy with various business operations, new service offerings, new and old clients, more research and learning.

This year we plan to be more active and bring you useful internet marketing resources to help you grow your business.

Here’s a couple of new things for you:

1. Blogflux a portal designed to be a central destination for the blogosphere, providing you everything you need to get your blog up and running – Blog Flux Local – Michigan

2. Stay connected to Magro International on Facebook.

More to come soon…  In the meantime may 2009 be a prosperous year for you and your family.

Most of my time each day is spent helping to improve other businesses online strategies.  I really like what I do and love seeing the difference we make each month, but recently I got the idea to start a website of my own due to a problem I was having.  I am an avid online shopper.  Because I am a working mom, I find it very difficult to get out of the house to get my shopping done.  So I buy most things online, from paper towels to laundry detergent to strollers.  In the course of shopping, I am often very frustrated with the amount of pictures provided on most websites…and hence my idea… www.baby-product-video-reviews.com a website devoted to bringing parents real pictures, videos, and opinions on baby and kid products from a real mom in a real home.

The site is a work in progress, because each review takes awhile to make, but I am making progress, and soon there will be many more video reviews to view.  I also started a new blog related to this website at blog.baby-product-video-reviews.com and deals mostly with being a working mom and entrepreneur.  So if you have a second, take a look.  I would love to know what you think.

In addition to being a small business owner and operator, I am a mom.  Therefore I subscribe to several e-newsletters from baby and kids stores, some of which only sell toys made in the US or Europe (I love wooden toys).  For the life of me, I can’t figure out why I haven’t gotten one email marketing message from one of them saying “worried about lead in your kid’s toys?  All of our toys are made in Germany with Lead Free Paint.”

This could be a huge opportunity for them…parents are at a point where they are reconsidering the toys that they buy for their children and/or buying them new toys for the ones they are returning/throwing out.  Why not remind them that the toys they sell are safe.  Even if they don’t send out an email marketing correspondence, why not run a PPC campaign for the keywords like Mattel recall list — Lawyers are doing it or put something on their homepage that says “All of our toys are lead free.”

I don’t know what your business is, but take a look around to see what news stories could be affecting your business/industry even if they don’t mention your business specifically.

We are moving offices, so I was just updating our “Contact Us” page with our new address. I went to Google Maps to get a map to link to from our page, when I discovered that you can create personalized maps in Google now.

Why I think you should create a personalized Google map.

1. When people click your web site’s “map” link, they will be taken to the Google Map homepage where you can reinforce your brand with custom messages and information about your business. Your personalized map can include information like your phone number, URL, a description of your business, even photos and videos – provided they are already hosted online.

2. When people click the “print” button on Google to print the maps, there is an area for them to write down notes. Having your phone number and address on the Google page so they only have to copy it from there helps your customers.

3. Personalized maps are searchable by the public (you can make it a private map if you want) and we don’t know exactly how Google will use these maps in their algorithms – but it definitely can’t hurt.

How to create a Personalized Google Map:

1. Type your address into: http://www.google.com/maps

2. Choose “Save to My Maps”

3. Put in your desired information and choose Save.

The right-hand box allows you format your text, upload pictures (pictures will already need to be hosted online), upload video, and add your hyperlink, but all of this text will only show to users if they click on Title of of the address.

The left-hand box is a text only box, but you can still list your phone number, URL, and any marketing message you want to include. The benefit of this box is that it will always show all of the text, no one will have to click on anything to get your phone number from your map.

And that’s it you’re done!

Saw this free tool on the Grokdotcom website that allows you to test how well a page on your website is customer focused vs. me me me focused. Visit the We We Calculator to test your website.