SMT Internet Promotion Blog

Google Social Share Button

1/4/2011 11:28:00 AM

According to SEO by the Sea Google recently filed a patent to allow users to socially share information they like from websites. The patent information: Propagating Promotional Information on a Social NetworkInvented by Vinay Goel, Rahul Kulkarni, Subramanya Srikanth Belwadi, Siddartha Naidu, and Ramanathan V. GuhaAssigned to Google Inc.US Patent Application 20100332330Published December 30, 2010Filed: June 30, 2009 The present disclosure generally relates to creating and providing promotional information (e.g., advertising, public service announcements, etc.) to users of a social network (e.g., FACEBOOK, MYSPACE, ORKUT, LINKEDIN, TWITTER, etc.). A social network can be an online system that provides a forum for geographically separated users to interact with one another, where those users have defined a relationship between one another. Users can control who can view their information by identifying particular relationships with other users, and can also find new user from the group of other people who are "friends" of their own friends. Social networks can be aimed at different types of social interaction, such as friendship and business networking. A user of a social network can have a profile page (e.g., a web page on the social network) that provides information about the user to other users of the social network. A profile can include information regarding a user's acquaintance relationships (e.g., friends, colleagues, schoolmates, etc.) on the social network. In this way Google users can share information about websites they visit amongst their friends in a similar way to the way Facebook users can “Like” certain information. This seems to be another way for Google, who struggles on the social media front, to attempt to establish some relevancy in that field.

Boosting Search Engine Ranks with Bad Reviews

12/1/2010 12:31:00 PM

According to a recent article published in the New York Times entitled “A Bully Finds a Pulpit on the Web”, by treating your customers poorly and having them write a negative review you can actually use the Search Engines to drive additional business to your website. The article follows a top ranking site called Decormyeyes.com, and discusses the sad fact that some companies couldn’t care less about their customers or how bad an experience they have. The customers are finding themselves stuck with order problems, lack of communication and shipping errors, and no one at Decormyeyes is doing anything to help since there is no fear of the bad review affecting them negatively in Google. In fact the bad reviews they receive from these actions are actually helping them rank better. The more customers pushed their way from Google. The more reviews, good or bad, there are the higher the rankings in Google climb. It is a vicious cycle – for unsuspecting searchers at least. The article says that it is beneficial for sites that need better rankings in the Search Engines. However, the companies need to take into consideration that bad reviews, if actually read, will most likely turn more customers away than attract them. So to reiterate, by providing a bad customer experience and inadvertently producing bad reviews throughout the web, Google is helping the least customer friendly websites to the top of the rankings. Is it worth putting your customers through the hell? Check out the article and decide for yourself. A Bully Finds a Pulpit on the Web

What is Search Engine Optimization?

11/1/2010 10:44:00 AM

If you are just beginning to bring your business online you may hear the words Search Engine Optimization, SEO and Internet Marketing from vendors trying to sell you on the idea and need for it. Let's start at the beginning. What is a search engine? In its most simplistic form a search engine gathers and holds information about websites in its database. It then retrieves and ranks this information based on an algorithm when a user searches. Google, Bing and Ask are good examples of the major search engines. How does a search engine know how a site should be ranked? Search Engines have automated “bots” that “spider” across the internet following links to new pages and reading and recording (indexing) the page code. The page code is what the designer or webmaster used to make the site actually work. You can see this code for yourself in most browsers by right clicking and selecting “view source”. Using this page code combined with each Search Engines proprietary algorithm they are able to rank each site based on a users specific search query. Search Engines are constantly changing the way in which they spider websites, rank websites, or even list websites in their engines. Google’s Matt Cutts has even said that Google had over 550 Algorithm changes in 2009 alone. All these ongoing changes can make Search Engine Optimization a bit overwhelming and tough to get a grasp on especially, when you’re just starting to learn the basics of the online world. However, if you’re bringing a website online you should take the time to get a rudimentary understanding of what Search Engine Optimization is and how to use it properly so that it no longer is a complete mystery. If you’re dealing with a credible vendor, such as Sales and Marketing Technologies, they will have a team of marketers who will handle the minute details of Internet Marketing for you. This is the very basics of Search Engine Optimization, SEO and Internet Marketing. When you’re ready to dig a little deeper you can begin exploring the worlds of keyword analysis, differences between good from bad coding, well written content, link popularity, and how the affect search engines and your rankings. InternetPrmotion.net specializes in Orlando Interent Marketing. If you are interested finding out about how we can help your business grow, contact us online or call us at 407.682.2222 today!

Bing Promises a Beautiful New Search Experience

10/1/2010 9:40:00 AM

An enhanced web and search experience is promisesd with the combination of Internet Explorer 9 and the Bing search engine according to the Bing Blog. HTML5 is a major revision of the programming standard language of the web. By implementing it on IE9, developers will be able to do things at a faster pace and better use the power of computers and the web to offer visitors a richer online experience. Bing is always looking for new ways to perform searches on the web and compete with the current market leader, Google. Bing hopes that with a quicker than lightning Javascript engine, integration with Windows and hardware accelerated to extract the performance enhancements of HTML5 that visitors will be able to perform faster searches and make more informed decisions. Online search sessions can be quite long, as there is not a single answer to return. This means users have to engage in long research and discovery sessions and adding order to those searches is a challenging task. But Internet users do not want just facts, they also want to explore other aspects of a topic. Search will come alive with IE9 and Bings animations, smooth transitions, triggering previews of videos, texts and images. Bing will be pinned to your Windows 7 task bar and a smooth scrolling feature will make better use of the screen.

Is Your Website Working for You?

8/30/2010 3:14:00 PM

By “working for you” we mean…is it making the phone ring? Are consumers contacting you via email or through your online contact form? Are people utilizing your online e-commerce system and buying products? Did you answer no to any or all of the questions above? Well then you might need to re-evaluate your website. Although there are some sites that are just out there purely for informational purposes, most businesses are looking to ultimately make money. That is the entire reason for being in business in the first place – right? There are many things that should be looked at when determining what is interfering with your site actually “working for you" – • Is it user friendly? • Is there a contact form on your site?• Is there a contact phone number on your site that is easy to see?• Do you have a call to action? And if so is it immediately visible?• Is your checkout process complicated?• Is important product or services information easy to find?• Is your website being found in the search engines? Your website should be doing its share of bringing in new business opportunities. It is a marketing tool and should be viewed as such. It not only shows off your logo, product and services but should serve as a “salesman” for your company. It isn’t as easy as putting together a website using the free software that came with your accounting software and you’re done. Just because you have a website – doesn’t mean your work in the internet world is at an end. Oh no my friend – it is just beginning! And although the Internet has gotten more universally known and understood it still takes working with an expert in online marketing, website design and online strategy to get your website to the level it needs to be to start earning its keep. If you need help with your website and getting it to work for you please contact Sales & Marketing Technologies today!

Copywriters can take the pain out of content creation

5/13/2009 6:56:00 PM

If writing is not your thing then we recommend hiring a copywriter to help you with the creation of your web site content. There are many great copywriters out there that can (with minimal input from you) turn those blank white pages into interesting and engaging content for your web site. You will still need to read it over and make some corrections, however, it is much easier to tweak than to come up with all the ideas yourself.

Protect your website from SQL Injection Attacks

4/22/2009 12:03:00 PM

Is your website vulnerable? Very possible. You could do a few quick checks, but explaining how to write SQL Injection code is out of the scope of this blog. Websites written using Classic ASP language, PHP, AJAX, and other website languages are vulnerable, but that doesn't leave .NET websites in the clear. Any website that gives full access to the SQL database is vulnerable. That gives the hacker full range at manipulating the information in your database. So, what are some ways to protect against SQL Injection? Below are some recommendations on how to protect your database from SQL Injection Attacks. They should all be done, but some can be done independently or not at all. One way is to take an inventory of all dynamically driven pages. If it uses or talks to a database, it could be vulnerable. More investigation in the programming would identify if it is the extent of it vulnerability. There are some inexpensive automated tools out there that will identify the holes you may have in your website. For example Acunetix Web Vulnerability Scanner has a free version. Validate all data that gets passed to the database. For example, if the web page expects an integer data type, check to make sure a hacker is not trying to pass in a line of hacking code and only accept an integer value. Eliminate any inline SQL that is used on these pages and change them to parameter based stored procedures. When you use a stored procedure to talk to the database and use parameter objects, the data that gets passed to the database must be the right type. Stored procedures by themselves are not the answer alone. Limit the website login to the database to only run the stored procedures needed for the website. DO NOT give the website "dbo" access to the database. One way for hackers to grab the sensitive information is by viewing any errors from the website that their hacking attempts display. It is a way to grab sensitive data, like credit card number. Use a server 500 redirect page to redirect and SQL errors returned so they are not shown to the hacker. A recent widespread attack across the glob used access to the sys objects in the database to break in. So, deny access to the sys objects in the database to the web user. Never store sensitive information in clear-text within a database. Encrypt your sensitive passwords, credit card data, social security numbers, and other private information. There are more advanced articles that explain these techniques and explain some of the terms used above in more detail. But I wanted to keep this article simple and to the point. You can read more at ScottGu's Blog Tip/Trick: Guard Against SQL Injection Attacks

Parsing data in C#

4/22/2009 11:02:00 AM

Parsing data in C# is a simple process, and can be done using some basic language syntax. Sub Strings provide this functionality, and when used properly can make data collection, or simple parsing operations a much easier task. First when parsing data from sources such as a web page, it is important to first remove all data at the beginning of the document which is unnecessary, in order to prevent the parsing utility from finding the wrong information. website design search results http://randomexamplesiteurl.com/ en Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:31:33 GMT Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:31:33 GMT website design - sample feed http://randomexamplesiteurl.com/testimage1.gif http://randomexamplesiteurl.com/ Small Businesses Receive Web Design Financing from Wildfire http://randomexamplesiteurl.com/testlink1.html Wed, 15 Apr 2009 07:15:30 GMT This is a sample description I am using for testing purposes Effective website design for successful ecommerce http://randomexamplesiteurl.com/testlink2.html Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:23:38 GMT This is a sample description I am using for testing purposes website design - XML Sample Finding unique tags to mark the beginning of the data to be parsed is the key to building an efficient parsing utility. In the above sample, all of the text prior to "" is irrelevant if you are only attempting to gather the item data, and will not be needed to complete the parsing process. To remove this from your text use the following code: (code assumes data is loaded in a string variable named strData) int intStartPos = strData.IndexOf(""); strWorkingRSS = strData.Substring(intStartPos); Once the irrelevant data has been removed, you can then focus on parsing the remainder of the string, with the following code this can be done by using any unique string at the beginning and the end of the data you would like to capture. The following code will always stop at the first instance of search string so if you continue to trim the text as you work using the above sample, you can easily write a loop to pull out each of the items until the data has all been parsed successfully. The below sample will result in assigning the variable strTitle with the text in between the "" and "" tags. string strOpenString = ""; intStartPos = strData.IndexOf(strOpenString ) + strOpenString .Length; int intEndPos = strData.IndexOf(""); int intLength = intEndPos - intStartPos; string strTitle = strData.Substring(intStartPos, intLength); This should be enough information to get any parsing project started. The data that I used for my sample may have been XML, but the real value in this type of parsing utility, is in cases where data from an HTML site, or group of HTML pages needs to be moved to a dynamic location such as a database. Many times the only viable option for data transfer is to use a "screen scraping" application, and this code provides a general outline for how to build one for most any circumstances.