I could so rule the world if I only had pinball mind control.

I was browsing Twitter yesterday, reading various tweets from local search marketing companies and came across one that had tweeted several times that day about something going on in his personal life. Now I won’t get specific and certainly won’t tell the name of this tweeter as this post is not about him in particular but more about the practice of tweeting personal information. (By personal information I mean tweeting about what’s going on in one’s life personally not professionally)

So my question is, why do so many people that are relatively unknown, meaning not a celebrity, a public figure or the head of a high profile company, feel the need to tweet about personal things? Who cares? If you have never met me and only “know me” because my business has a twitter account what can you learn about me that will help you decide I’m capable of implementing a successful search marketing campaign for you from a tweet where I reveal I’ve just taken out the trash or bought a new car? I would contend nothing!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying people who use Twitter as a personal tool shouldn’t tweet their every move, that’s what Twitter is for but business owners who have a Twitter account should use it to give insight into their company or their industry. That’s what I’m saying. Now I’m not perfect and when I first started using Twitter I tweeted a couple of “personal items” but I’ve stopped and instead have tried to tweet things that relate to search marketing.

So I’m going to challenge those business owners who use Twitter to put their ego aside because the general public doesn’t care about your new house they want to know about your business.

The Info Group has partnered with OnCourt OffCourt to implement a website re-design, seo and social marketing campaign. OnCourt OffCourt is the tennis industry leader in creative tennis training tools, training aids, and practice equipment. OnCourt OffCourt is dedicated first and foremost to education. Founder Joe Dinoffer personally travels and speaks at numerous conventions throughout North America and internationally each year, addressing more than 10,000 sports coaches, teachers and business professionals.

RealtyRatings.info has retained The Info Group for an organic search engine optimization campaign. RealtyRatings.info provides a free realtor rating report for visitors looking for productive realtors in their city. Currently RealtyRatings.info covers the Dallas / Fort Worth metroplex but has plans to expand throughout Texas in the near future and the entire U.S. as a long term goal.

Owner Troy Perkins said “we’ve had a lot of success using paid search and know we are limited there so the natural move was to organic listings. I feel great partnering with The Info Group and expect to be hiring soon to accomodate all of the new leads.”

RealtyRatings.info realtor reports are non-baised and are completed using MLS data so the results are up to date. For more information visit RealtyRatings.info

Google rolled out personalized search to every user of their search engine and with that signaled the final days of top organic rankings being the metric to measure your SEO efforts with are clearly in view.

Say what? In a nutshell Google places a cookie on your machine and gathers your search history over time and then uses that information to show you what they think you are interested in. For example if you search for diamonds and click on every diamond ring dealer’s website and you do this several times over a period of time you will begin to see less results like Wikipedia (which doesn’t sell diamond rings) and more results for diamond ring merchants at the top of your results page when you continue to search for diamonds.

So what reason is there for SEO? Well, this doesn’t mean Google is giving up ranking sites it just means they want to deliver more relevant results to each user. With that said you will need to optimize your site for your products and services but you should look at traffic, visitor behaviors like time spent on site, etc to gauge the effectiveness of your SEO campaign.

Why wouldn’t I just do nothing but PPC? You should engage in pay per click but keep in mind some studies show 70% of search engine users don’t click on PPC results, so if you only engage in pay per click you are limiting your audience reach.

I have no doubt personalization will impact rankings, it’s a foregone conclusion but it shouldn’t impact your SEO efforts. We moved away from trying to sell rankings a couple of years ago and moved toward selling the impact of SEO, like targeted traffic, etc. So if you are hung up on where your site ranks, GET OVER IT, because where it ranks on your machine probably isn’t where it ranks on mine.

I just wanted to take a minute and wish all a Happy Thanksgiving. Times are tough and it seems we hear more negative than positive everywhere we turn but we probably all have at least one thing we can be thankful for, I know I have many. So Happy Thanksgiving and GO COWBOYS!

The test was successful and pretty impressive. 34 minutes from the time the post How long does it take Google to add a page to their index was published it appeared in Google’s index.

What does this say for fresh, unique content? Google loves it!

What does this mean for you? You should be updating your site on a frequent basis.

This is a test of Google Indexing speed. I have added this post at 3:26 pm CST and will post a response when it has been indexed by Google. Remember this is only a test, please try this with your own site.

Since it’s the week before Thanksgiving that means Christmas is upon us and you should have started or be prepared to start a Holiday PPC campaign. I thought I would give a few tips that are the basis to all of the Holiday PPC campaigns we run for clients.

Keyword Strategy:

• Seasonal Keywords - Look for keywords that are unique to Christmas such as Christmas gifts, Xmas gift, Holiday parties, etc. Don’t forget this is a holiday season for many religions, not just Christians.
• Longtail Keywords - While researching your seasonal terms don’t forget the longtail versions. People searching for Christmas gifts may extend that to tie gifts for Christmas. Remember longtail keywords typically convert at a high rate.

Ad Copy Strategy:

• Keep the holiday season mindset when developing ad copy. Use terms that relate to Christmas, Hanukkah and typical holiday speak like “Tis the season”. Don’t forget many shoppers wait until the last minute so if you offer last minute or overnight delivery this is a great time to let people know.
• Sales - Using the term Holiday Sale can be very effective as can be catering to the early shopper with terms like Beat the rush or Order early. Providing a discount to early orders is an option to keep open as well. “Order by Dec 10, Get 20% off!

Landing Page Strategy:

• Holiday look and feel - You’ve enticed the customer to click on your holiday ad so keep them in the spirit by giving your landing pages a holiday look and feel. Maybe it’s a color scheme or adding snowflakes or using holiday lingo like “HO, HO, HO - Welcome!” or all three, keeping the holiday theme going will enhance the visitors experience.
• Expectations - If you are promoting a product that is very popular you want to keep the visitor informed as it relates to stock and delivery. The same is true for last minute shoppers, posting the drop-dead cutoff date for shipping to arrive before Christmas is not only informative but good customer service.

2009 has been a tough year and this holiday season could be make up for a lot of lost revenue. Take more time than normal and put some effort into creating your Holiday PPC Campaign and may the season be a blessed one to you.

If you’re looking for professional pay per click management we are Google Adwords Certified and Microsoft aD Excellence members and welcome the opportunity to speak with you.