Ironvine Search Marketing

Google has opened up the Google Analytics API (export) for general use!

http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/gdata/1.0/gdataProtocol.html

Alex C wrote a quick PHP script to pull pageviews from all available accounts. Read the setup here: http://www.alexc.me/using-the-google-analytics-api-getting-total-number-of-page-views/74/

My friends over at the OtherPage have announced the launch of the OtherPage Merchant Beta where merchants can join for free and list their products similar to other comparison shopping engines.

As a special note, the first 25 merchants who sign up for OtherPage will receive preferential treatment for life!

Join the OtherPage merchant beta!

OtherPage is launching a consumer facing website in April, 2009, through which we hope to drive tremendous end user product demand. We have some very unique marketing strategies we will be deploying, and invite merchant participation at no risk.

A Revenue Share Business Model
Unlike the vast majority of merchant aggregation systems, OtherPage will work off a percentage of sales that we drive. Our pricing is determined by the category in which you sell. Check out our prices, and then sign up for free.

http://OtherPage.com

Hello Everyone,

I apologize for the downtime over the last two days. I was down with the flu and our hosting decided to do some updates which broke pretty much everything. Bad timing.

Everything should be resolved now (I had to fix it naturally) and we should be back on track.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

ChannelAdvisor Lays off 19% of its Workforce

Sad to say, I was one of them. Apparently there were 32 Employees let go in the US offices.

http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y09/m01/i23/s04
http://onlinesaleschannels.wordpress.com/2009/01/22/my-liquid-lunch-with-ex-ca-employees/

I look at this as a good thing though as I was the only member of the Seattle office left on staff after they vacated the office building in Oct 2008. (Yes, no more west coast office). I have had to work out of my home office since then. It will be nice to be able to get back into traveling to work and getting to talk to other people, sharing and learning new things.

If anyone knows a company looking for a Search Marketing guru feel free to contact me at steve @ ironvine.com!

My condolences to all the other employees that were let go this week I wish you all the best, and to my former co-workers it was a great 2 years. Take care!

Amazon Webinar - September 10, 2008

ChannelAdvisor will be hosting a webinar this Wednesday, September 10, 2008, at 2 p.m. EST on how to build and grow your Amazon business.

Listen to Scot Wingo and Sam Wheeler, Director of Merchant Services at Amazon Services, as they discuss the various Amazon programs and best practices for succeeding on this channel. Better yet, they’re available for Q+A after the main act to answer questions that you may have.

Click here to register for the event.

ChannelAdvisor, Amazon, Webinar

Below is the latest press release from ChannelAdvisor about the securing of a new round of venture capital funding.

CHANNELADVISOR SECURES $20 MILLION IN FUNDING
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Leader in E-commerce Channel Management Accelerates Path to Profitability

Research Triangle Park, NC – September 04, 2008 – ChannelAdvisor, the leading provider of e-commerce channel management solutions, today announced it has received an additional $20 million in funding to accelerate its growth. The funding round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) with participation from current ChannelAdvisor investors Advanced Technology Ventures, Kodiak Venture Partners, eBay and Southern Capitol Ventures.

Additionally the company plans on implementing a restructuring plan that will both streamline operations and accelerate the company’s path to profitability.

“We continue to be increasingly impressed with ChannelAdvisor’s superior technology, significant traction in the retail sector, and leadership in the software as a service e-commerce industry,” says Patrick Kerins, General Partner of NEA. “We’re not only excited that the company continues to grow rapidly, but will also be able to do so profitably.”

During the past year, ChannelAdvisor’s revenues have grown over 55% and gross merchandise value (GMV) has grown over 45%. Additionally, the company has experienced significant customer growth, now boasting more than 100 top internet retailers from the prestigious Internet Retailer magazine’s Top 500 list.

With several acquisitions over the past two years, ChannelAdvisor has expanded its paid search offerings, distanced its leadership in the online marketplace space and most recently entered into the rich media segment with the acquisition of RichFX.

“ChannelAdvisor has grown rapidly over the last two years, both organically and via two material acquisitions, and has strengthened its leadership position in the e-commerce channel management space,” says Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor. “With the additional financing and restructuring of the company, we are excited about accelerating our path to profitability. We have reached not only a revenue scale that very few Software-as-a-Service companies have achieved, but also outstanding growth and profitability metrics.”

The following ChannelAdvisor leaders will take on expanded roles as part of the restructuring:

David Spitz, Vice President of Operations, is responsible for global products, services, and finance operations.

Michael Jones, Vice President of Business Development, Marketing and Strategic Partnerships, currently leads ChannelAdvisor’s global marketing, business development, corporate development and acquisition strategies. Jones will be expanding his role to include global sales and revenue responsibilities.

Scott Alridge, Vice President and General Counsel, will be expanding his role to include human resources operations.

About ChannelAdvisor Corporation
ChannelAdvisor Corporation provides technology and services that enable leading online retailers to maximize their products across multiple ecommerce marketplaces such as eBay, Amazon.com and Overstock.com, comparison shopping engines such as Shopping.com, Shopzilla, Nextag and Google Product Search and search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN. In 2007, ChannelAdvisor managed over $2.1 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) on behalf of its customers. ChannelAdvisor solutions combine best practices, on-demand software and integration technology to help retailers sell more products, faster, by automating labor-intensive, manual functions so they spend less time optimizing campaigns and more time solving marketing and business issues. ChannelAdvisor has expanded its retail technology and services by acquiring Rich FX media solutions. MyRichFX™, RichImage™, RichCatalog™, and RichCircular™ are now part of the ChannelAdvisor rich media technology and service solutions that ChannelAdvisor offers. ChannelAdvisor’s customers include Wal-Mart, GSI Commerce, Brookstone, Abebooks and Motorola. ChannelAdvisor Corporation is headquartered in Research Triangle Park, NC with offices in Atlanta, Seattle, New York, the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland and Germany. For more information, visit http://www.channeladvisor.com/.

Contact:
Ashley Jones
ChannelAdvisor Corporation
Ph: 919.349.4177
ashley.jones@channeladvisor.com

32 Most Important SEO Tips
By Edwin Reyes (c) 2008

Following these simple tips will definitely boost your traffic and search engine rankings for free.

1. Make sure your site is not under construction or incomplete with little or no unique content.

2. When your site is ready, submit it to Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.com. Consider also submittíng to other search engines but most of them are powered by these four leading search engines. Also submít your site to reputable high PR web directories, open directories, yellow pages and social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us, furl, etc.

3. Submit your sitemap to Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.com (sitemap for search engines usually in XML format)

4. Offer a sitemap to your site visitors for easy page navigation. (sitemap for visitors in HTML format)

5. Create unique and rich content sites. Avoid duplicate content. Do not create multiple pages, sub-domains, domains, mirror sites or sites with different domain names but the same content.

6. Check your keywords and make sure they are relevant and actually are contained in your site. Avoid keyword stuffing.

7. Use text instead of images in your content, links and important subjects.

8. Make your TITLE and ALT tags descriptive, simple and keyword rich. Avoid irrelevant and repeated keywords.

9. Your Title tag should be 60-80 characters maximum length.

10. Your Meta tag description should be 160-180 characters, including spaces. (about 25-30 words)

11. The keywords Meta Tag must be 15-20 words maximum.

12. Optimize pages with Headings (H1, H2, H3..) containing your site’s primary keywords.

13. Validate your CSS and HTML. Check for errors and broken links.

14. If your site contains dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a “?” character), make sure you use SEO friendly URLs. Search engine spiders have difficulty indexing dynamic pages.

15. Maximum links per page must be fewer than 100. Avoid the risk of being flagged as a link farm by search engines.

16. Use Lynx as text browser to check your site.

17. Allow search bots (good ones) to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site. Using these techniques may result in incomplete indexing of your site.

18. Check your web server/host if it supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. It tells search engines whether your content has changed since your site was last crawled. It will save you bandwidth, resources and avoid server overload.

19. Use a Robots.txt file to manage and control search engine spiders that index your site. You can allow and disallow spiders and choose directories you want to be crawled and indexed. With bad bots or spam bots you need to modify your HTACCESS file to properly and effectively manage bots or spiders. Visit http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html to learn more about the Robots.txt file.

20. Do not attempt to present different content to search engines than what you show to your site visitors.

21. Avoid dirty tricks and exploiting loop holes to improve search engine ranking.

22. Avoid links to bad neighborhoods such as web spammer, link farm, phishing, hacker, crack, gambling, pörn and scam sites. Linking to them will greatly affect your search engine rankings.

23. Do not attempt to join in link schemes, excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging and link exchange web rings.

24. Do not use unauthorized programs or online tools to submit your site, check page rankings or perform other automated queries. Avoid the risk of being flagged as a spammer.

25. Do not use hidden text and links. Show the search engines what you show to your vistors. It will greatly affect your site’s reputation.

26. Do not attempt to create pages that contain phishing, scam, virus, trojan, backdoor, spyware, adware or other malicious programs.

27. Make your site useful and informative.

28. Improve your link building. Link to high PR websites. Quality of relevant links is far more important than quantity. Links will greatly improve your site’s visibility, popularity and ranking. Search engines consider links as votes to your site.

29. Check your page link structure. Every page should be reachable by a single static text link.

30. Be extra careful in purchasing SEO services. Some use illegal and questionable methods to improve rankings.

31. Do not buy or sell links.

32. Do not create sites that contain purely affiliate links and no valuable content that is useful to users.

I hope these tips will add more popularity and visibility to your site. Enjoy!

About The Author
Edwin Reyes is a Web Developer and the Webmaster of Findmesoftware.com, a Philippine based website that provides free software downloads, tools, reviews, online tips, blogging resources, tutorials and Free SEO Tools and Software Download.

CHANNELADVISOR ANNOUNCES ACQUISITION OF RICHFX

Acquisition Helps Internet Retailers Offer Increased Usability, Improve Conversion Rates with Fewer Clicks via Rich Media Applications

Research Triangle Park, NC– July 16, 2008 – ChannelAdvisor, the leading provider of e-commerce channel management solutions, today announced the acquisition of RichFX, further increasing its multi-channel offerings to online retailers. A leader in the rich media image space, RichFX’s rich media solutions have been helping retailers design, implement and manage effective rich media across online channels since its inception in 1997.

The combined companies will offer three new rich media products for Internet retailers with proven abilities to increase website usability and improve conversion rates with fewer clicks. ChannelAdvisor’s myRichFX™ is a hosted rich media platform that enables retailers to quickly implement and manage enterprise-scale rich media image, catalog and circular solutions including:

• RichImage™ – The Rich Imaging solution allows retailers to manage their digital assets and add dynamic merchandising to their e-commerce products. In addition to standard zoom and pan functionality, comprehensive merchandising solutions are possible such as builders, configurators and more.
• RichCatalog™ – For retailers that have a printed catalog, the catalog can now be brought online with a much richer and integrated experience. Consumers can click through the RichCatalog experience directly into the e-commerce site.
• RichCircular™ – For retailers with regional circulars, RichCircular brings the regional circulars online. Buyers can now search, click and view multiple regional circulars and then buy the products online or order them for in-store pick-up.

RichFX has over 200 retailers as customers, including over 45 that are included in the coveted Internet Retailer 500 list. RichFX’s customer list includes Wal-Mart.com, Disney, Saks, Lillian Vernon, Men’s Warehouse and Brooks Brothers. RichFX customers report a 10%+ increase in online conversion when their online merchandising is enhanced via one of the RichFX offerings.

“MyRichFX provided a cost effective way to help me dramatically increase clicks and conversion rates,” said Anthony Johns, Web Merchandising Manager of Lillian Vernon. “I was amazed at the platform’s usability and flexibility right from the start. The rich media experts proved that they cared about my results with insights and tips after the sale, and provided personal attention throughout the implementation and incorporation processes. A great overall business decision.”

“As we’ve worked with thousands of retailers to manage their e-commerce channels, we have become convinced of the advantages of conversion enhancement technologies,” said Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor. “We are constantly looking for ways to open up more multi-channel functionality to our customers to help them succeed. With rich media’s ability to enhance website interactivity and attract more conversions, RichFX appeared to be a natural extension of ChannelAdvisor Complete core capabilities.”

ChannelAdvisor plans to aggressively offer rich media solutions to its existing customer base. In addition, ChannelAdvisor will extend its ChannelAdvisor Complete e-commerce solutions for search, comparison shopping engines and marketplaces to the existing RichFX customer base. Several integration points are being developed as well. ChannelAdvisor is also working on solutions tailored to SMB and mid-tier internet retailers. Before the ChannelAdvisor/RichFX combination, world-class rich media Internet solutions were out of reach for mid-tier and SMB retailers.

Eoin Townsend, RichFX CEO, will join ChannelAdvisor as General Manager and Vice President of the RichFX business unit.

“At RichFX, we’ve been dedicated to finding innovative ways to help our customers increase conversion rates. That’s why partnering with a company like ChannelAdvisor who is equally committed to customer care seemed to be a perfect fit” said Eoin Townsend, General Manager and Vice President of ChannelAdvisor. “We see this combination as an ideal opportunity to apply our understanding of the elements of enhanced conversions with a like-minded focus on expert services to increase the multi-channel sales opportunities for our customers.”

To learn more about the new rich media Internet solutions, ChannelAdvisor will host a webinar for existing ChannelAdvisor customers and prospects on Wednesday, July 23 at 3:00 pm EDT. To sign up, visit http://www.channeladvisor.com/richmediawebinar.

About ChannelAdvisor Corporation
ChannelAdvisor Corporation provides technology and services that enable leading online retailers to maximize their products across multiple e-commerce marketplaces such as eBay, Amazon.com and Overstock.com, comparison shopping engines such as Shopping.com, Shopzilla, Nextag and Google Product Search and search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN. In 2007, ChannelAdvisor managed over $2.1 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) on behalf of its customers. ChannelAdvisor solutions combine best practices, on-demand software and integration technology to help retailers sell more products, faster, by automating labor-intensive, manual functions so they spend less time optimizing campaigns and more time solving marketing and business issues. ChannelAdvisor’s customers include GSI Commerce, Brookstone, Abebooks and Motorola. ChannelAdvisor Corporation is headquartered in Research Triangle Park, NC with offices in Atlanta, New York, Seattle, the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland and Germany. For more information, visit http://www.channeladvisor.com/.

Back in March Google announced that there would be a new factor in the Quality Score algorithm, landing page load time. With this, not only does the quality of the page content affect your ranking, the speed of which it is displayed will come into play.Last Thursday (May 8, 2008) Google added a new feature to help facilitate the management of landing page load time and its affect on your keywords.

On the Keyword Analysis page you will be able to find the load time evaluations and from that data take appropriate measures to help increase that performance on your site.

You have a little bit of time to evaluate your page situation and get any changes done before the landing page load time will start affecting your Quality Score. The implementation for the algorithm change is scheduled for mid-June 2008.You can read more about how load time will affect your landing page quality in this AdWords Help Center article.

Technorati Tags: Google, Landing Page, AdWords, Ironvine

Here is a first look at a new visual search engine at searchme.com.Searchme does look good, resembling a mashup of Google with Apple’s popular Cover Flow three-dimensional graphical user interface used on its iTunes service, with a little of Ask.com’s categories thrown in.For now, Searchme is only going into private beta, adding users by invitation only.To create the page-riffling effect, Searchme has been working with Adobe. The top screen, after a search term has been entered, then creates a stack of pages to represent the page links on a list below.Technorati Tags: Searchme, Searchme.com, Search, Engine, Google, Apple, Ask, Ironvine

Google Closes Acquisition of DoubleClick

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., (March 11, 2008) – Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that it has completed its acquisition of DoubleClick, a company that offers online ad serving and management technology to advertisers, web publishers and ad agencies.

Eric Schmidt, Google’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said, “We are thrilled that our acquisition of DoubleClick has closed. With DoubleClick, Google now has the leading display ad platform, which will enable us to rapidly bring to market advances in technology and infrastructure that will dramatically improve the effectiveness, measurability and performance of digital media for publishers, advertisers and agencies, while improving the relevance of advertising for users.”

About Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

About DoubleClick, Inc.

DoubleClick is a premier provider of digital marketing technology and services. The world’s top marketers, publishers and agencies utilize DoubleClick’s expertise in ad serving, rich media, video, mobile, search and affiliate marketing to help them make the most of the digital medium. From its position at the nerve center of digital marketing, DoubleClick provides superior insights and insider knowledge to its customers. Learn more at www.doubleclick.com.

Caution Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including statements relating to our ability to improve the performance of digital media and the relevance of internet advertising. Actual results may differ materially from the results predicted. The potential risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ include, among others, risks related to our ability to identify and pursue the technologies necessary to achieve these goals, as well as those risks and uncertainties included under the captions “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations,” in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2007, which is available on our investor relations website at www.investor.google.com. All information provided in this release is as of March 11, 2008, and Google undertakes no duty to update this information.

Media Contact:

Ellen West

212.565.1986

ewest@google.com

Investor Contact:

Maria Shim

650.253.7663

marias@google.com

Technorati Tags: Google, DoubleClick, News, Search, Marketing, Ironvine

Today CNN published an article about some major changes in the way Ask.com is going to be doing business moving forward. They are changing their focus from an all inclusive, interactive search engine and adapting it to target a specific audience.

With the change it will return to its roots by concentrating on finding answers to basic questions about recipes, hobbies, children’s homework, entertainment and health.

The decision to cater to married women primarily living in the southern and midwestern United States comes after Ask spent years trying to build a better all-purpose search engine than Google.

While I am fully supportive of them creating a niche market to provide specific answers, this comes as a strange choice to me. Thinking economically that demographic isn’t among the stronger per capita income areas. They are going to have limited influence in the market base with advertisers who will also be constrained by their focused market.

It seems as this is yet another down turn in the search competition world, Ask.com is starting to fade away into its own corner and returning a small portion of the market share back into the search pool.

You can read the full article at CNN - Ask.com gets a makeover, lays off 40

Technorati Tags: Ask.com, CNN, Search Engine, Marketing, Search, Ironvine