Well, I’m glad you asked. As I mentioned yesterday I would be diving into sitemaps a little more in-depth this week I thought the best thing to do is explain first what exactly a sitemap really is.

I have always made the analogy that a sitemap of a website is similar to that of a mall map. Stores can come and go and the map is constantly updated like that of a website. It will reference the main points of a website. An example would be under Customer Service you might find Contact Us – Billing Issues – FAQ’s – Online Support – Chat Support – etc…

Below is snapshot of the sitemap for a sports introduction site that’s currently in development:

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Since I use Wordpress pretty exclusively I have found a plugin that generates the content into an XML file (.com/sitemap.xml) – this is good news for when you submit your website to search engines. More on that later.

You don’t have to use a “plugin” and can actually create one yourself but then again why recreate the wheel, right?

So, why do you need a sitemap for your website? Well, as I stated earlier it could help a reader figure out where exactly something is. Remember it IS like a map – of your content. This is big for site that end up growing over the years.

The second reason you need to make a sitemap is for search engines and I will dive more into this tomorrow but by having them for web crawlers they are able to crawl your content quicker and index your site.

Check out more @ Driven Media Group Blog

What Is A Sitemap Exactly

Two things I really didn’t expect but eh, what the hay. I saw the tweet from @copyblogger and being a ‘trusted source’ checked it out. Turns out “Social Media Commando” is running an 8-week course on this clean theme. I actually digg the theme but for the love of God can’t figure out how to implement ‘hooks’.

Now, since I have too much on my plate ‘right now’ that doesn’t mean I can’t learn and do it in the future. I highly suggest you check this out and sign up. However when I DID sign up and got the confirmation link to ‘activate’ my participation I got the infamous 404 page.

Hopefully this will be fixed soon enough and we’ll be rocking and rolling!

UPDATE: Looks like the confirmation link did in fact go thru and this is what you have to look forward to:

Week 1 – The Beginner’s Guide to Using the Thesis Theme for WordPress

Week 2 - Market Research: Discovering your Secret Niche

Week 3 – Google’s Magic Triangle: How to Design a Killer Site

Week 4 – SEO: Optimizing your Site for the Search Engines

Week 5 – Pay Per Click: Making Money & Avoiding Tactical Errors

Week 6 – Social Media Marketing: How to Build a Huge Network of Followers

Week 7 – Test, Track, and Retool: Learning to Make Sense of the Data

Week 8 – Final Thoughts on Thesis: Welcome to the WordPress Elite!

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Thesis Theme and Search Marketing

It’s been a horrible 24 hours. I was in night class when my wife sent me a text to let me know that the king of pop had passed away. I couldn’t believe it – It blew my mind but then again he had a stressful life. One I wouldn’t wish on anyone let alone the three children now left without a father.

Moving forward to the title of the post.

I don’t plan to get into the politics of the legend rather the findings from the whole situation. I had a question – who is profiting from the death of him? Who is utilizing the numerous search’s and tweets? It IS possible and in fact it IS being done.

I did a quick search regarding Michael Jackson’s Death:

Michael Jackson's Death Search

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Wow…really? I couldn’t believe it so I checked out all the Sponsored Links aaaand:

Profit on Michael Jackson Death

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Regardless of the ethical issue of trying to porfit of the man’s death but let’s dig a little deeper shall we?

AdWords and Micheal Jackson's Death

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Pretty interesting isn’t it? I can only estimate at this time that the average CPC will increase over the weekend and when the autobsy results return they will be huge. Why? Well, if you know a popular pop website that runs adsense why not try to get the readers.

What are your thoughts – ethical or just business as usual?

Check out more @ Driven Media Group Blog

Marketing To Michael Jackson’s Death

Earlier today I responded to an email to a co-worker who has a side blog (LDD Blog) about how companies really need to research the searching function of the internet. It got me thinking a little more.

I’ve written about knowing your companies keywords – what is it that you are offering and build your site/content around that. Yet, we need to go a little bit deeper into that. By using Google Analytic’s – Google Webmaster – Google Local Business Center and your cPanel statistics you should know just about everything about your clients.

Google Analytics

I could write a book about the various things you can do with this to see where / how / when people are coming to your website.

- Did you tweet a specific url for a special on a product?

- Did you write a guest post at another site or were you mentioned on a different site?

- Did you Digg / Stumble! / Sphinn / etc?

How long are these people staying and how far in depth are they going. Breaking down each of these statistics only benefits you.

Google Webmaster

Another excellent tool that shouldn’t be held lightly. This will let you know the popular search terms people were finding your site and the position you were ranked in it. If you have a site about “needle nose pliers” and you’re 4th on the search for “nose pliers” – it’ll allow you look over your competition and how they’ve made 1-2-3rd place above you.

In doing all that though you need to double check a few items such as:

- How is your sitemap?

- Is your site verified?

- Does it navigate well or do you have several hundred categories and just as many sub-categories yet not that much content?

- Do you have any ‘warnings’ – 404’s // 301’s // etc?

Knowing this type of information will let you know what is working and specifically what isn’t on your site. It’s great so you don’t have to check each page – each link. That can be tedious if you’re content grows.

Google Local Business Center

Something new Google has offered is reports which can be extremely useful if you have a brick and mortar business or if people just want to know “more information” about your company. While before this they just showed basic statistics (impressions / actions) and offered “coupon” options.

Now, with reports you can find out all sorts of great items:

- Are people looking for reviews on your business?

- Are people interested in your business hours / types of payments?

- Are people looking for directions to your business?

Just a few items and once again it shows the top queries on how users came to it. I will be keeping a close on this particular feature in the coming weeks just to see how effective it can be.

cPanel Information

What does your control panel say statistically? Are users just going to one item on your site to get information or coming by accident? Is your db (database) running slow when people are doing simple search’s WITHIN your site: what ARE they searching for?

Answer these questions along with the previous data and you know now how exactly your clients are.

- How they’re coming to your site -

- What they are looking for -

- How long they are staying -

- What specially they are looking for -

Without Speaking To Them!

What say you? You’re thoughts on the subject?

Check out more @ Driven Media Group Blog

Know The Search – Know Your Clients

It’s a simple question with no simple answer. A domain name if you have figured it out just yet is the website address or referred to as an URL. A domain can say a lot about you and your products brand and/or service. It tells possible customers how you’re associated with the product.

A question that explore this question would be – would you rather buy from “Ebay.com” or “Ebay.Blogspot.com”? If you were searching for Zune software (as I’ve been doing recently) would you download the software from “Mp3Software.com” or “ZuneForum.com”?

The abvoius answer is that of straight to the point in reference domain.

When doing business online we need to make sure our domain name says something about our product/service. Is it our brand? Does it represent us? These are important questions and need to be answered before going online. When starting a business you didn’t just “pick” a business name – you developed one. The same principles come into effect when picking a domain name.

When I picked Driven Media Group LLC for my business I had an idea behind it. I knew where it was going (and still do) and looked into developing the brand that went with it. One thing I was happy about was going from “Driven Media Group” to “DrivenMG” – you google that and you’ll see nothing BUT Driven Media Group information. The point was to become a face to the name. The domain does this same thing.

So, what does your domain say about you?

Check out more @ Driven Media Group Blog

What’s In A Domain Name

Back in October I wrote a post on how to put your business on all the top mapping sites (google maps, yahoo, msn, mapquest) and since then I am amazed of how effective it has been. I did it for myself and the Dayton Chess Club (brick and morter business) and as you can see the results are ‘great‘ but could be better (I don’t like to settle).

Here is a quick screen shot of searching for the company.

Results with Maps

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This is excellent for brick and morter businesses. You can input the hours open and all the contact information you want.

Yet, why do it? The easiest response would be again, why not? Don’t you want people to get a hold your business? The first thing people are doing today is search your business and what happens when this is the first result? Great things!

Now onto the back end of things.

How well is it REALLY working?

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So, you took the time to put your company “on the map” and now you want to see the results. Well, here you go. You’re getting “good” impressions and minimal views but then again people could just be clicking directly on the url (www.daytonchessclub.com) instead of the “more info” related link. Which is fine but we want to encourage this though so we would look just below on the Google Local Business Center and what do we see?

Google Local Business Center Options

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From here you can create FREE coupons and FREE products/events on Google Base (which I’ll be covering later).

Now, if you have the dough then you could create an adword campaign but then again why pay first when you have all these FREE options?

Check out more @ Driven Media Group Blog

From Google Maps to Company Coupons

The web is a fecal place. The days of posting something from images, video and basic content then deleting it knowing no one will find it are looooong gone. Let’s all thank Google and their “cache” abilities. You might have posted a ‘tweet’ about a past employer only to find out that while looking for another job a future employer stumpled upon it. The principle is valid and honest – you need to research the web capabilities.

Google Yourself

Whether you know it or not you are on google, msn, yahoo, ask, etc – you might have joined myspace when it first got  online only to have stopped two weeks later. Guess what, your content is there STILL! You need to make sure what ever you put up is going to be direct representation of you and your talents. There have been too many reports of college kids posting videos and images of them partying. Pretty harmless in nature but after they graduate what does that tell a future employee. Maybe that guy doing a keg stand is studying to become a kindergarden teacher? How about that young women making suggestive sexual gestures with other women looking to work in the marketing field?

Don’t forget to set up google alerts for different variations of your name as well.

Write About Yourself

That’s right – if you’re not online (your name or business) then make yourself known. Why? The basic reason is that one way or another you WILL be online but the question will be on whose terms? Start taking innovative put yourself in light that you want to be in. The last thing you’d want is to have someone write about you or tag you in an image that you don’t want to be tagged in.

Join Social Networks

It CAN be a chore if you make it but objective is simple. Just by writing about yourself is only half the equation. By joining these networks and having the same message across them then that will ensure that you or business will be first in search instead of anything negative. This will help boast you rating online quickly and easy.

Sync Those Networks

So you have a message you want to put “out there” and you’ve joined all these social networks – sync them. The last thing you’d want is to have all these networks under your umbrella and have no correlation between them. If you’re on myspace promote your twitter. If you’re on facebook then promote your blog. In the same sense make sure each and every network has the same name extension. If you search for “drivenmg” you’ll see my various networks I’ve been apart of from myspace to linkedin.

The bottom line is this: get your name – your brand out there before someone else does. If a blog is created every minute then how soon before someone writes about you or your brand? Get a head start and do it yourself but be smart and reasearch it before doing so. The last thing you want is to do all the work and not know how to utilize the content media networks.

Check out more @ Driven Media Group Blog

Research Before Going Digital

I’ve been reviewing Google Adwords: Keyword Tool and while I brought it up before when reviewing the time frame for launching a campaign it’s time to get to specifics on keywords.

Putting up a site (for the example we’ll keep with the “chess” niche) and littering with nothing BUT top adwords in that particular category won’t sprint you to the top of the results.  The game plan is to start small (specific) and work your way to the big time (general).

Get As Specific As Possible

In our example we are using a chess niche site. So, some great examples of specific targeted keywords would be:

hand carved wooden chess set pieces

wooden hand carved chess set pieces

wooden chess set pieces hand carved

now while the top ’searches’ are for “wooden chess set” there are a few out there looking for the specifics and whose site comes up first? That’s right YOURS!

Lose A Word At A Time

Now, after a few weeks (heck I’d say 60 days) of allowing Google crawl your site and indexing your words start pinpointing the specific keywords. Go from the above mentioned to leaving out “hand“.

Do not remove the keywords you already have in-place. That last thing you want to do is possible be removed from that search string (what people are searching for) and your no longer there.

Do this each month and soon you’ll be down to “wooden chess set” and you’ll be ranking in no time.

Using Specific Keywords

In this image I made sure to bring up the ‘lowest’ (i.e. not enough data) for search volume.

What do that mean to you?

It means to Google that those specific keywords aren’t that important enough to be tracked by them…yet.

The first one is “youtube chess” – put in the search and you get 2.4 million results.  Getting a little more specific like “youtube chess openings” and it drops down to 58,000. Getting a little MORE specific like “top youtube chess openings” it’s down to 45,800. Let’s try one more – “top 10 youtube chess openings” gives us 33,400

So, from 2.4 million to 33,400 – not bad uh?

Try your hand at it and let me know how it works out.

Check out more @ Driven Media Group Blog

Beating Your Competition In Specific Keywords

Okay, so yesterday we went over how to find out who exactly your PAID competition was so the next step is reviewing their site and listing off pro’s and con’s as to when development for your own comes into play.

Here is the first one:

Review Your Competition

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Now, I’m only reviewing the ‘top fold’ (that is what you first see when you come to the website). First off the images grab your attention a little TOO big (for my taste). That’s not the biggest problem with the site however. There is no CALL-TO-ACTION on their main page.

A call-to-action tells views to “Buy Here” or a “Click Here” or even a “Purchase Here“. Customers need their hands held as much as possible BUT not being talked down to. It’s not hard but yet so many companies fail to do this.

Apparently they are having a Spring Sale but it’s not even highlighted that well. People want to see “SALE” that’s where retail stores excel in. The contact information is barely legible on the top right corner. The menu bar is basically non-existent. Speaking of which the text under the main navigation – you can’t read it – why even have it there.

Ok – that was the con’s (if you haven’t noticed) now allow me to go into what I think they got going for themselves. Their logo is the top left which is the first thing people see. That is great for branding purposes. Now, while the “Mcafee Secure” image is small it is a GREAT thing that shows possible customers that when they do shop online they will be protected.

On to example two:

Checking Out The Competition

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Wow, what a big difference. A lot more cleaner and crisp layout. Call to action buttons (left menu bar) are fantastic. I know you can’t tell but the large item of the chess pieces and board are actually a featured content meaning there are several images that scroll through. I’m a fan of these for information and e-zine sites but not sure about a shopping one really. Nonetheless they used the top fold really good making sure that the featured content scroller did not overlap.

While they do have a cleaner look I wonder if the white space could’ve been used better. I have to scroll down the site to see anything about the security of purchasing online from them. People need to be aware that when they buy from you online they are doing so with peace of mind.

My question to you all – which one would you buy from website #1 or #2 – why?

Check out more @ Driven Media Group Blog

Reviewing Your Competitions Website

Online competition can prove to be healthy or it can hurt you. It is you who determines which ones happens. Yesterday I wrote about the “WHEN” of marketing/advertising a product – today is going to be focused on competition – part of the “WHO” portion while the other part is based on possible customers.

Search Results for "Chess Set"

This is done simple by searching for something you might be providing. As I did yesterday I’ll be going with “Chess Set” since that is the area I’m going to break into in the coming months. As you can see they have quite an extensive list of results: 1.78 million along with the paid advertisers.

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Right now I’m going to focus on the ‘paid’ portion because customers are automatically going to see them first. They are at the top after all, right?

Sponsored Links for "Chess Set"

So, by going to ’sponsored links’ it brings us to this. Holy cow – that’s a lot of paid advertisers right? I didn’t say it would be easy now, did I?

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While a 150 results might seem like a lot the focus is on the first few pages because on all respect just like ‘organic results’ i.e. non-paid results – people don’t go past the first 2nd or 3rd page. So from here the next step is to examine the top 36 results.

The best way to do this is by going to each of their site and reviewing their layout and making notes. Where are they excelling and where are their pitfalls. Go through the order process and ask yourself if it feels ’secure’. Is the site offering anything else for you or is just a shopping cart? What about the colors and the usability of it?

These are all questions that need to be asked for your competition so that when its your turn you can excel on all points of interest.

Tomorrow I will be going through some of these sponsored sites and showing you exactly what I mean in detail and please feel free to let me know if I’m wrong on any points.

Check out more @ Driven Media Group Blog

Knowing Your Paid Competition