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.

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.

I am always checking the keywords that bring people to our website. For the past couple months, I have been noticing an interesting traffic source. The phrase “Latest International News” is bringing us a few hits every month from MSN.com. What I really love about this is that we are ranked ABOVE abc.com for this phrase. I took a screen shot below just in case anything ever changes (as is probably should).

Watch this video.  This is a service that allows users to send Google local results to their car and can already be used in Germany.

Business owners who fail to grasp that this is how consumers want to use Internet-enabled products have a lot of catching up to do the longer they wait to create an search engine marketing plan!

I am presenting a seminar on March 22nd entitled “What Every Business Owner Need to Know about Search Engine Rankings: Even if they don’t have a website.”  It is a FREE seminar that is going to include information for business owners on how, when, why, etc. people are using search engines to find their businesses and what they can do to reach these people.  I am going to be giving everyone a free list of DIY resources that should help people find them.  You can learn more about the seminar on our Search Seminar page.

Miller Canfield, a Detroit based law firm, had a brief overview of the legal impact of a recent federal decision regarding the Internet marketing techniques of some businesses in one of their recent newsletters.

You can read their overview, but here is a short summary:  A company put a competitor’s name in its META tags and bid on their name for their PPC campaigns.  The competitor sued the offending company and lost, because the judge said that this practice did not confuse the customer.  But the decision will not create an end to cases like this, and further legislation could follow by other companies in similar situations.  So be careful when using trademarked terms in your Internet marketing efforts.  Even if you aren’t found guilty, you still might have to pay a lawyer to defend you.

I saw a posting on Reasons Why You Should Have a Website on another blog that I read.  I think the author has come up with some pretty general ideas about why you need a website, but the one thing that must be noted to small businesses considering a website is that none of his reasons to have a website will work for your business if people can’t find your website.  All the benefits are great, but without an effective Internet marketing strategy and implementation, your website will not reach its full potential.

Many businesses do not realize the benefit of being found online. They think that just because they don’t sell things online having information show up about their business online is useless. This could not be further from the truth. People are looking for local businesses online even if you only offer services or products in a storefront.

Google has started including local results for searches that they think are supposed to be local in nature in the “normal’ Google results. Here is an example of the results when you search for: restaurants rochester michigan. You can see that not only does it put the local results above all of the rest of the results, there are also reviews by other google users. Using the example above, you can see that if you click on “more local business results” and scroll down a bit further, even restaurants with no websites like Hamlin Pub are listed with their phone number and reviews.

I strongly encourage all business owners to see what happens when they type in their business type and city into Regular Google and Google Local and see 1) If their site comes up and 2) Are their any reviews associated with your business (You want to know what people are saying about you online). If you can’t find your business information online, read this article with tips on how to get listed whether you have a website or not.