Friends Don’t Let Friends Choose Bad SEM

Thursday, July 30th, 2009 | Internet Marketing, Local Search, PPC Advertising, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments

Just read a terrific article with MediaPost Publication which summarizes ten reasons clients don’t pick the right SEM company: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=101432

This article is about prevention. A warning to companies to choose and choose wisely, because in SEM mistakes are costly, and in today’s economy nobody has time or money for mistakes. To save you from reading the entire article (although it’s a worthy read for businesses) we’ll summarize a few key points:

1.Don’t fall for the magic act. We’re talking about the wining and dining and 1-2-3-Presto! presentations that don’t really say anything and make unreal promises. No company worth its salt should guarantee you immediate results, and those that do will either resort to industry-termed “black hat” tactics which can get your site barred from advertising on the most important search engines.

2. Ask for references, and then actually check up on them. If your advertising doesn’t have a clean Carfax-like report, don’t bother. Take the time to talk to provided references and get a feel for the SEM agency’s handle on their business, their vertical, and their long-term relationship together.

3. Rockbottom prices mean rockbottom results. Yes, the economic cash crunch is being felt by everyone, but when it comes to your business nothing can be more damage than an off-the-shelf, cheap solution that will have you shelling out big bucks to repair later. We don’t think you should get swindled, but the cheapest guy in town is cheap for a reason.

4. Spend some QT together. The SEM agency you hand your baby, erm, business over to should be one that you enjoy an open dialogue with, and someone who you can see yourself growing your business with for the next 3, 5, even 10 years. Your SEM agency is not a vendor, like the article points out; it’s a relationship, and is only as effective as the lines of communication.

At NetSearch we do our fair share  of repairing damaged goods.  As a business, it breaks our heart to patch up companies suffering in the aftermath of a poorly constructed search engine marketing effort. It’s also frustrating because, much like a healing heart after love relationship has ended, these business owners build walls around their company hearts and are afraid to reach out to try new things. We’ve been up against those companies who wine and dine their potential clients and promise them the moon – sometimes clients recognize the song and dance early but we’ve also lost a few good potentials to the magic act. It happens. We just don’t want it to happen to you.

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Tags: good sem agency, how to find a sem agency, NetSearch Direct, online advertising agency, richmond seo agency, sem agency

Wanna Hunch.com?

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 | Search Engines, Social Networking Sites | No Comments

If you haven’t already heard, you no longer have to make decisions on your own thanks to Hunch.com!   Launched publicly June 15th, it has solved the problem that other search engines are still trying to figure out:  how to answer questions.  Sure, Bing prances around calling itself the “decision engine” but only Hunch.com has been making all my important decisions all week.   I recently asked it; What should i have for lunch? And by gosh, it told me exactly what i was in the mood for; Thai food.  Genius!  Still not a believer? Check out this answer when I had asked it; What is the  best profession for me?

Did hunch.com read my bio? (“…In her free time she likes to watch episodes of Lost, paint, play outdoors and daydream of living on a deserted island. “) or does Hunch simply have ESP?   Not exactly, it asks you a serious 5-10 questions about yourself and then displays an answer based on algorithyms, trends and other technical junk.   I still like to imagine that Hunch.com is my new best friend and knows me best.  Maybe we should start dating…

Hunch, should we go on date?

67% No, you should not

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Tags: hunch.com, what shoud i have for lunch?

Microsoft getting closer to nextgen Search Engine

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 | Search Engines | No Comments

Yesterday Bing annoucned it was “bringing a bit of twitter to bing” by pulling tweets from “select users” into their search results.  So when you do a search on Bing for “Shaq Twitter” you will now get the tweets from Shap himself on Bing.  Many people today in the social world should be excited about this added feature.  Although when I do a search for matt oliver twitter or @mattoliver10 my tweets are not shown.  Guess I am just not as exciting or important as Shaq!

It appears eventually you will be able to search for everyone’s latest tweets on Bing which is pretty cool.

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Tags: Bing, social media, Twitter