Spark Internet Marketing

A humorous take on Java vs .NET

hbond — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 16:02:02 +0000

For you all you developers out there this video should tickle your funny bone. It’s been making the rounds at Mashable too – where I picked up on it and just thought it was too funny not to share.

Matt Cutts Talks About Caffeine – The New Google Index

hbond — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 21:52:58 +0000

Matt Cutts at SMX Advanced speaks about Caffeine – the new Google Index which has launched!

Mashable’s Answers To What Is Social Media?

hbond — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 17:42:51 +0000

I read this today and really liked the answers so I thought I’d share it with all of you. I particularly liked the answer:

2. Network: Social media is a phenomenon which creates a personalized network for sharing digital content among all people in the cyberspace. – Rohan Aurora

Read the entire Mashable post ” Top 20 Mashable Reader Responses to “What is Social Media?” ”

How to add an hcard to your website and improve your local rankings

hbond — Mon, 31 May 2010 02:00:50 +0000

hCards like their vCard counterparts are a wonderful way to share your contact information with the world. From a local search engine optimization perspective they have a small role to play in instructing the search engines where in the world (geographically) you’re located.

An address and contact information constructed as an hCard looks exactly the same to a visitor on your site as compared to an address without the extra markup. To a search engine it’s completely different. Since the content is tagged as an address the search engines don’t have to guess what the content is – they know without question that it’s an address. This is how it helps your local SEO efforts.

For the average person creating an hCard is quite complicated and not likely to be done. However, there is a nice little tool that can help you with it. It’s an hCard creator. Simply enter your contact information into the form fields and then presto – the hCard code is available for you to copy and paste into your website page. I would remove the text reference to the tool – it’s not necessary. If you want to add your address information too you should have a look at this bit of extra code:

You can paste this code into your web page and style it with CSS or simply send it to your webmaster and have them add it for you. There are lots of neat little tricks and hCard enhancements you can make to this too – but that’s for another day. For now you should concentrate on adding an hCard to your website!

Get The Most Out Of Your Home Page Title Tag

hbond — Wed, 26 May 2010 13:00:50 +0000

One of the most crucial parts of your entire online marketing campaign is an often overlooked little bit of text called the Title Tag. You’re home page title tag to be specific. You may have spent thousands on SEO, PPC ads, directories, sponsorships and more to drive traffic to your website. But you may not be getting the best results from that marketing because you’ve got a poor title tag on your home page.

The title tag is the bit of code that appears at the top of a browser window when viewing the page and is also in the HTML code. It often looks like this:

The home page is your most important website page because it’s going to rank on the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs) more frequently than others and receive the most amount of traffic.

Let’s take a look at what the title tag looks like in the SERP’s for “maid service toronto”. These first two examples look great.

Disclaimer: Both of these maid service companies are clients of ours

Now compare this to another example from the same search. This example is not using their title tag effectively and therefor not ranking as well and certainly losing visitors to other sites. This is not a client of ours!

So I encourage you to have a look at your home page title tag. Does it contain your most valuable keyword and is it written in a way to compel visitors to click your listing before anyone elses? Have a look at what your SERP competition have written and do something even better!

How to get a free link from Google

hbond — Mon, 24 May 2010 13:58:39 +0000

Links are an important aspect of your search engine optimization efforts. There is a simple way to get a good link from Google to your site and that’s through your Google Account Profile Page. I don’t want to get into the debate as to whether this is a great link for SEO or not – as that can be a very lengthy discussion. For the purpose of this post – this type of link is just that – a plain old link!

You’ll need a Google Account. You can create one by going to http://www.google.com/accounts
Login and go to http://www.google.com/accounts to edit your profile
On the “Edit Your Profile” page towards the bottom left you can see a section to Add Links. Add as many as you like. Be sure to use a keyword and link to a page deeper into your site beyond the home page.

Bonus Tip

When you’re editing your profile you can also customize your Google Account URL. I made sure mine reflect my name as that’s what I wanted this profile to rank well for.

You can view my profile here http://www.google.com/profiles/chriskata.

Will the new Google SERPS layout affect click through rates?

hbond — Sat, 08 May 2010 19:27:06 +0000

Now that Google has rolled out it’s new layout for the SERPS showing the left hand side column I am wondering if it’s going to affect click through rates on lower listings. The extra left column makes the organic listings space a bit narrower causing the page to be longer. As a result it’ll be interesting to see whether sites further down the page will see fewer click throughs making it even more important than ever to be in the 1-4 spot for your given keyword.

What do you think?

Creating a Review Site With WordPress

hbond — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 02:04:24 +0000

{{chris}} I’ve been working on quite a few wordpress sites for a few clients and in the process came across the need for a reviews plugin. In the research process I came across some pretty amazing review plugins. The good ones are not free like most WordPress plugins. However, I have to admin the ones I found are worth paying for. I’ve not tried them yet but I plan on doing so over the next several weeks. I’ll keep you posted on my thoughts as I have a look at them.

The first one I’ll be testing out is called WordPress Review Engine and the developer license cost $169 which allows you to build an unlimited number of site with the plugin.

Antiques Dealer Toronto

hbond — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:39:56 +0000

“As a result of our work together, I’ve gotten a flood of leads – more that I can handle. It’s an old case of ‘Careful what you wish for, it just might come true.’

Right from the start your process was very sound and the service level was incredible. I would be glad to refer you to others, your company does incredible work, and delivers results!”

Internet Marketing Company Toronto

hbond — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:39:32 +0000

“As CEO and owner of Spark, I am thrilled with the work my team has done on our corporate website. It is true that we spend far too much time working on our clients and ignoring the organic Optimization of our own website.

When I asked my director of search to go to town on one phrase for the fun of it, he did exactly that. And I cannot tell you how happy I am to know that we have employed the best of the best. With a handful of links and on a few hours, he has beaten all other firms with a significantly longer online history and links for the phrases I have asked him to work on. We are aware that our competitors have teams 10 times the size dedicated to these phrases.

I am also very pleased with the response we are getting with our PPC team. I love my job and working for the clients of Spark and of course call me biased, I strongly recommend this team. We have managed to attract and retain extremely competent staff that will not cut corners or stretch the truth in any way.”