The official Google name of the 
latest update for quality websites: Penguin
The changes in their search algorithm is based on the philosophy to bring better search results to the people doing the searching. We all know that for us individually, this Google update is good for all.
In order to improve search, it is important to clean out the websites that are using outdated tactics that really are just bad ways to 'trick' search engines in believing that their site is the better one to show up on the first page.
- Keyword stuffing
- Cloaking
- And other tactics that actually violate Google's guidelines.
Overuse of keywords throughout page content (why would you want to annoy your audience and also Google? Well that is a tactic used by website designers / SEO people not willing to put the proper work into providing great content)
The biggest takeaway from this update is that Google is really digging in to make sure that the results shown for a given search criteria are representative / accurate / best for the individual doing the search. Remember, website design may look good, but quality content and solid SEO will get it to the right target market.
Penguin went live on April 24, 2012. If your traffic has changed since then, it may be a good time to seek someone to analyze the situation and develop an up to date process to improve your websites performance.
Tru-Market is all about giving your online visitors the information to be educated, nurtured, and motivated to become customers, it's GPS For Business
Why being a neuroscience 
specialist helps in creating website design performance.
After reading several snippets from some pretty reputable sources, I now see social proof for what I have chosen as my profession. The years of understanding the ins and outs of being involved in the diagnosis and treatment of mental health patients has taught me much.
In today's economy, people don't make decisions based on economic profiling. Or shall I say that the new generation of behavior(s) created in the last 5 years can neither be systematically or logically calculated. The behaviors you are looking for aren't always that easy.
Having a high sense of faith and intuition without discernment will lead to many failures is one thing, however I believe that we as a society have put too much into one basket (that is the basket where mathematical calculations for all business opportunities).
While analytics give strong indicators for future actions, it is amazing that our economy shows mathematical muscle, the reality for predicting behavior on a grand scale is not the case anymore.
Try this with an irrational decision maker? Our economy has created many of them, and they are searching everyday for their needs & wants.
The economy has created so many different scenarios that mathematical calculations are not the best way to predict behavior. Why? It's because the scale is too large, people don't jump onboard just because everyone else is doing so, it's become much more granular.
Lower interest rates are supposed to elicit a time honored path, right? Wrong. Not in these times. People make decisions on their own personal situation, it is the internal processing that leads to moving forward in actually making a decision online or off.
When we provide our target market a well thought array of options, we should be able to expect them to answer a certain way, right? Wrong.
How do we get a stronghold of this so called new way of behavior? We don't. The best that we can do is build it, test it, improve it over and over again. Whenever it works extremely well, the time to pay attention is even higher. who wants to lose valued business because your tactics aren't working anymore?
I remember a patient that was trying desperately to get feeling better after years of illness. She got what she wanted, and guess what? Once she felt better and started putting her life back together, she ended up relapsing. Why? Well, it is work when you have run out of reasons not to put forth effort. When you're used to not having to put in the work and can have others do it for you, why would you change? Again, this was a granular position, not all went this way.
Did the system do its job? Yes it did, however the system was built on mathematical models and did take account of those patients that would need a different version of help once they reached a desired state of improvement.
We find over and over again that training in neuroscience pays off in building performance into websites. Understanding and delivering a postive buyer behavior experience with strong analytics to know when you are doing it right is the best way to get your clientele to connect/engage/convert and have analytics/profit to show it.
As far as a website design performance experience, does anything else matter? No.
flickr photo by david.orbanTru-Market is all about giving your online visitors the information to be educated, nurtured, and motivated to become customers, it's GPS For Business
I can't help but share my online marketing insight into the recent
conduct of Best Buy and its leader.
This is in no way down playing the success, just reflection of how things are changing.
April 10, 2012 was the day that Brian Dunn stepped down as the powers within the organization pressured his action.
While the economy has challenged all of us, the big giants are not immune. What matters here is the way that our culture has changed with the internet.
No longer is the goal for ultimate power & dominance without reaching the valued target market with what they want, when they want it. Without inbound marketing today, companies are expected to overspend to reach their business objectives.
This was not the case 10-20-30 years ago. Then the tactics that worked were built on pushing for performance. As outlined by a statement in the Star Tribune: Brad Dunn would say,
"We need to sell X number of extended warranties, and Brian would beat the hell out of the sales team until he got them, " Matt Henderson recalls.
Today, that doesn't work as well as it used to. The internet has created an arena where the buyer is in control, not the pushy seller.
This was so true for so many companies, and the powers that run them now, still want to use intimidation to drive sales growth. I know, I worked for Bristol-Myers Squibb for 14 years and they always drove it with fear. Was it great? Absolutely, I loved it.
I am glad that the playing field has been leveled. We here at Tru-Market are working with companies that want to improve, see results, get strong connections with their target market.
Sure, many companies will continue to push for increased market share in their own way. What will stand out will be the leaders that recognize the new information about how buyers want to participate instead of being 'told' what they need.
Best Buy will have to change, adapt, grow towards what buyers want, when they want it. Online / inbound marketing continues to drive buyers, let's hope BB can do it. If they don't, they will continue to fall and become history. They are closing stores, trimming the excess, but more is needed. The connections once were in the stores, decisions were made in minutes. Now, people use the internet to educate, nurture their needs/wants, and read blogs, reviews and have 100x the knowledge before they enter a store, this is how it is working.
The internet gives people choice, purpose, education to be knowledgeable. Make the purchase easier based on information, not 'Ours is Better than Theirs'.
Tru-Market is all about giving your online visitors the information to be educated, nurtured, and motivated to become customers, it's GPS For Business
Rich Snippets are a good friend for Minneapolis Online Marketing
There is much to be discovered on a daily basis with regard to how Google is reshaping online search. The goal for rich snippets is to provide additional value to bring search closer to what the visitor is actually looking for, leading to higher quality experience.
Here is an update on how Google is bringing rich snippets to the forefront of quality on-page SEO.
Google wants to bring the best possible results to individual queries. Having quality content on your pages can now be brought to the SERPs. (search engine results pages).
Adding quality markup language will show additional information demonstrating the quality of the listed results page, thus helping users recognize when your site is highly relevant and adding additional reasons to click on your pages.
Google supports rich snippets for the following:
Reviews
People
Products
Businesses and Organizations
Recipes
Events
Music
Here is the way that you use this new tool:
- Choose your markup language:
Microdata
Microformats
RDFa
- Mark up your content to reflect the type and value you choose to bring to search engine results pages
- Test your markup. Using the Google rich snippets testing tool will make sure that it is read and presented properly
Please note that it will take time for this to show up in results, as Google needs to crawl your site and pull the marked up data. This update / video is the property of Google.
For additional information
Tru-Market is all about giving your online visitors the information to be educated, nurtured, and motivated to become customers, it's GPS For Business
It is important to understand search engines and the visitors habits when they get to the results they are looking for.
According to an updated study using eye tracking software, it was found that:
"Approximately 90% of participants looked at the sponsored results above the organic results in each search task…...
Fewer participants looked at the sponsored results on the right side of the page – only 28% of participants looked at these results on Google and 21% on Bing…..
100% of participants looked at the organic search results in each search." (Minneapolis Online Marketing gurus, pay attention!)
This data represents a much different picture to when Bing did the same study back in 2009. (both of these studies used both Bing and Google for testing)
Also noted was the difference between the two search engines based on amount of time on the top sponsored ads (this was due the fact that Google offered more information for each sponsored ad than Bing).
The take away here is:
- organic results are more stable, get highest percentage of viewing time
- Regardless of the search engine, people focus on the center of the page with 100% on organic and almost all looking up at the sponsored results.
- The right side of the page gets very little attention
Advertising is all about getting the most attention. With hit rates 3x and gaze time 5x over anything on the right, the top two search engines will continue there work to be the best, while us inbound marketers will continue to drive top 3 organic results for our clients, putting them in the path of their target markets viewing focus.
photo along with this study was done by UserCentric.com/eyetracking.
Tru-Market is all about giving your online visitors the information to be educated, nurtured, and motivated to become customers, it's GPS For Business
Minneapolis Website Designers are great at building exactly what you tell them to do.
The reality of our wonderful internet is that a great looking website may be what is wanted, yet not exactly what is needed for running a successful Minneapolis online business. You can have both.
Are you asking your website the right questions? What about business income, visitors to conversions to paying customers.
This is the actual chart from the dashboard of our content management system. This is showing the top 5 landing pages along with their conversion rates.
Why doesn't everyone show this? Well, the answer is pretty simple, not everyone is concerned about performing pages.
We in the small business world have strong knowledge and experience in developing results. No results equals no customers, as I see it, there is no place to hide (like say that in a corporation with 40,000 employees and too much middle management).
These numbers are quite normal for a website that is designed with performance as it's lead indicator (not design). While I do like and appreciate good design, I'm going to go with a stronger emphasis on content and performance (the preference for content is 70% while design is 30%)
People are looking for quality answers to their issue, not website design. FACT.
Now there is an problem with this context for Minneapolis Website Designers, they don't want to be held accountable.
It is easier to feed the ego of the business owner into thinking / believing that their site is the best out there, than it is to prove with ongoing testing of landing pages, A/B testing of calls to action, what colors fit the target market, what elicits strong feelings to engage and tell others about your product / service. That too can be presented as a fact.
It's just not our style to be stuck in the year 2000 with design, we'd rather go for the money, the results. If your getting traffic and not converting, well, maybe you are reading the right blog this evening.
Tru-Market is all about giving your online visitors the information to be educated, nurtured, and motivated to become customers, it's GPS For Business
Want great results from your online website redesign?
While this is a hefty goal, there are some pretty important things that go untouched when dealing with website designers, such as:
- It needs to attract visitors. This is unbelievable how many don't understand or are left to believe in the concept without daily, weekly, monthly proof of performance.
- It needs to educate the targeted visitor. Albeit complex, some believe that a online brochure is all that is needed (if that is the case, good for you, let's hope your competitors aren't reading this).
- It needs to convince them to buy. Nothing speaks volumes about running a business than the bottom line.
What is amazing from all the data that HubSpot demonstrates is that the role of your website is much of what your outdated tactics used to do.
To learn more, this call to action is filled with action items that will give you the perspective you'll need to command authority within your target market as the 'go to people' for their situation.
The best part about Inbound Marketing is that it has built in it, checks and balances. Unless you want to spend countless hours (driving down your profitability), it does make good business sense to check into managing all of this from one system. Plus it is more profitable.
This offer is available without any form or email address....use it in good online marketing.
Tru-Market is all about giving your online visitors the information to be educated, nurtured, and motivated to become customers, it's GPS For Business
Are you getting traffic like this? This is the graph from one of our new accounts. The key take away is that they have only been utilizing our services for two months.
While having a very low score on the various parameters that make up for how a site is ranked back in January, we have
- Revamped the website (every page receives purpose/intent for its targeted audience)
- Given many reasons to engage
- Blogging on a regular basis
- Highly targeted landing pages
- A/B testing of calls to action (which demonstrate which ones are converting and which ones should be tossed out)
Are you seeing the pattern here?
- Traffic continues to grow
- We get valuable data the guides us into making better decisions moving forward
- Sales have increased
- Customer satisfaction increased
- Lower cost per lead
And through the process we are ahead of schedule on traffic, leads, conversions, ROI.
All because the process gave us the information for business decisions. Is this unrealistic? Only if you 'wing it' when preparing. Mpls Online Marketing is only as good as the platform and people that you have doing the work. We have a checklist for every day, week, month, 6 months to make sure that we are aligning up with the business objectives developed collectively with our client.
We believe in this stuff!
Tru-Market is all about giving your online visitors the information to be educated, nurtured, and motivated to become customers, it's GPS For Business
Today, the internet came to a screeching halt for a few. There were over 20,000 registered for this webinar.
Today's webinar was to demonstrate the movements of Facebook towards a higher engagement of visitors for small businesses who put energy into their social platform. Are you ready for this change?
This caused a serious technical issue with HubSpot's IT department. Why does this matter? It matters because it shows how changes like this are best served while the ability to take positive action exists. Just do it.
Mpls online marketing is a tough market, everyone seems to have the right ticket for your success. If you don't believe them, just ask them, lol.
We don't believe that we have every online solution to your business objectives, some just are not going to work. What we do know is that options are good, especially when enough research allows for a solid business decision to take place.
April will be the month of major change for FB, be in the know on how to jump ahead with this move.
It always amazes me how decisions like this keep on getting shelved by Minneapolis small business owners (out of sight, out of mind). All I am saying is that change is happening faster than any other time in our world, stay with it or get left behind. The results won't be felt immediately, but its like watching grass grow, pretty soon you have a problem.
Act today, not tomorrow for learning about how to capitalize on change.
Tru-Market is all about giving your online visitors the information to be educated, nurtured, and motivated to become customers, it's GPS For Business
- 60% of all organic clicks go to the top three organic search results
- 75% of users never go further than the first page of search results
- 89% of US internet users search online before they make a purchase (even for local)
- Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links, this gives you the clear advantage by helping you get to the top three in organic results listed above
What does all this mean? To the one that considers the internet a place where leadership is key to success, this means taking action to lead and not accept mediocre.
Minneapolis online marketing is a process, it takes time/energy, not everyone is going to see the success they wish from it. Not because of the work they put into it, usually because of a lack of knowledge to take action (with of course a high level of discernment).
Knowledge is only as good as it relates to achieving a particular goal. The bottom line is that you need to keep up with the tools that bring results.
What becomes our reality is what is decided by the observer. Every tool that we use is tested and compared for accuracy & ROI. Next week, Google will add more and more tools to refine search and change who comes up in search results. Stay ahead of your competition with an online marketing tool set that gives you that edge.
Tru-Market is all about giving your online visitors the information to be educated, nurtured, and motivated to become customers, it's GPS For Business