Internet Marketing Expert

Google's +1 Button - Reinventing the Wheel

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 13:12:00 +0000

Well of course Google has to ignore everything I have been saying for ages now, plus the rest of the authorities in the SEO industry... and go create their own version of Facebook Likes. Google is known for hiring the most talented and smartest people on the planet, so how come they are reinventing the wheel?!

Reinventing the Wheel
The answer to the question is easy, POLITICS! Facebook is the second largest website in the world, according to Alexa.com. It is the largest social networking site out there with 600 million users according to MSNBC (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40929239/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/). So why in the world would Google not use Facebook's data stream, find out how many Likes a website or product has, and mix that into their algorithm? Did you really have to go out of your way and great the +1 Button?

It's all about money!
The problem with Google is that they think the market is just a pie, a fixed pie that can't grow, so they have to fight over their market share. Obviously Google hates Bing for being so successful and to this date grabbing 13% of market share. This means losing some advertisers who choose to go with Bing rather than Google's AdWords program. Why did I mention Bing? Well, it is because Facebook announced that they will be using Bing as their primary search engine, and Google is hurt and heart broken over this.

Reason number two is that Google and Facebook are both advertising platforms. As a company, you may choose to advertise on either one of these website or both if you have a bigger budget. Here is where Google loses to Facebook: For you to use Facebook, you have to be logged in. So Facebook knows pretty much everything about you since you are on that website 23 hours per day. They know what your interests are, where you live, who your friends are, what your friends like, what you like, the history of your likes, your behavior, who your family members are (if you have specified them), etc. and the list goes on. Facebook pretty much knows EVERYTHING about you. They probably know you more than you know yourself through the data they collect from your account on a daily basis.

On the other hand, you don't have to be logged into Google to run a search, I mean that would just be too hard to do if Google worked like that. So they don't really have too much data to play with. Well yes they do track your account if you are logged in, and sure they do install cookies on your computer but they don't have nearly as much data on you as Facebook does...

So what?
Well, this means as advertisers, you can narrow down your target market and literally pin point the people you want your ads to appear for. This means $$ because you don't waste your money advertising to people that are not likely to buy from you. So it all makes sense or Google to be jealous and hate Facebook, I guess I would too.

This is why Google goes way out of their way to create the +1 Button for people to do the same thing they do on Facebook. Google, I love you guys, but I am telling you, this would be a big fail, like most other projects you start! Like the commenting feature you guys release couple of years ago. This would be a fail and you will have to drop it like the SUPER EXCITING Google Wave project you guys had.... why did you discontinue that?! I was looking forward to a revolutionary product to be the next generation email service.... oh yes, that's right... we do have something like that and it is called Facebook!

Dear Google, please just stick with what you do best. Stop trying to be like Microsoft and think you can do everything yourself. I learned this the hard way as a kid that I can't do it all by myslef and I have to use other people's resources to be better at what I do best. Just get the data stream from Facebook, combine it and cross check it with twitter and social bookmarking sites like Digg, Stumbleupon, etc. and add that in to your algorithm to rank the most valuable sites.

Likes vs. Links
It would be a genius idea to use Facebook likes as a factor to rank websites because black hat SEO companies out there are buying links and doing every little dirty trick out there to get more links. But, if Google was looking for Likes, it is very hard to get Facebook likes. It is at least 10 times harder for obvious reasons.

+1? Really?
I am just dying to know who actually came up with the name... +1? Really?! This is the most creative idea the genius team of Google could come up with? What does it even mean? So if it was three people that liked the site, it would be +3? So your +1 Button would be +3? I am not sure how this could work or if this would make any sense. If I called my friend and wanted her to like my site, how odd would I sound if I said "Hey, can you +1 my site?" At least Like makes sense because I am liking the site or the page but +1, I am not sure...

My Disclaimer
Don't get me wrong, I am huge Google lover... After all, Google defined my career and I have it all because of Google but it is like having a friend who is great 99% of the times and 1% he makes the most ridiculous mistakes. And as a great friend, I have to call them out on it because I want the best for them!

Ashkan Sobhe
SEO Los Angeles
Tel. (310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com

KLOUT

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 23:48:00 +0000

So there is a new buzz going around about KLOUT. Have you heard of KLOUT? Well, if you haven't, I'll tell you that I find it very useful and awesome! Here is why... I think at the end of the day, it is always nice to have some sort of metrics or tool to measure your work; for example, money is used to measure one's success, etc. Sometimes people use someone's net worth to figure out how successful they are. Is money everything? No, absolutely not. Is it a very accurate measure, no. BUT it is not a bad tool to be able to put things on a scale.

Now, back to KLOUT. This is a website, using an algorithm to measure how you are doing on Twitter. If you are active in the social media world, you know how important it is to be on Twitter, as well as other website, like Facebook Digg, Delicious, Reddit, Mixx, etc.

KLOUT basically measure how many people follow you and how much influence you have on them. This is based on numbers, your followers and tweets, retweets, etc. If you want to know in details how they calculate your score, go to http://klout.com/kscore

Ashkan Sobhe
SEO Los Angeles
Tel. (310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com

Reputation Management

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 19:10:00 +0000

We have been getting more and more inquiries and request for Reputation Management. It seems like there are two industries that need Reputation Management more than anyone else; first one is the Finance industry. Given the crash in 2008 and the aftermath effects of it, it seems very normal. This doesn't necessarily mean that these companies did anything bad. It could be just as simple as the bank taking a home back because the owner refused to pay the mortgage and the owner now goes on the web and fills the internet with negative reviews and press about the bank.

The second industry is of course Hollywood. The entertainment industry is huge and it seems like with all these PR firms, etc, these stars get used to messing things up and having others clean up after them; which is fine I think because it creates more jobs for the country, so why not?!

Reputation Management
So what does Reputation Management mean in terms of what we do at IT Chair, Inc.? Well, it basically in simple terms means that if you Googled Mr. X's name and a lot of bad stuff showed up about him, we would go in, clean up these articles, reviews and posts as much as possible. And also, we would create a possibly tens and hundreds of mini-sites and pages, make them rank really high in Google for the keywords "Mr. X" and push the bad links to page let's say 10 of Google. No one really goes to page 10 so it is almost as if these websites and bad articles don't even exist.

Ashkan Sobhe
SEO Los Angeles
Tel. (310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com

Speed is nothing new...

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 02:15:00 +0000

I get this question all the time. Yes, the faster your page loads, the better it will be. This is one factor that Google looks at when assigning a ranking score to your site. This is nothing new, we have always loved speed. After all, isn't this why the more fortunate of us pays a lot of money for faster cars? We can't wait 15 minutes for our food to cook, so we buy microwaves. We have always loved speed. So it just all makes sense to favor faster pages over slower ones, doesn't it?

How to do it
See, this is where it gets all technical. First of all, make sure you have very minimal code. Don't clutter your page with code that you don't need. Less images, less flash, less object, etc. Less is more basically holds true here too.

Also, choose your server wisely. There are servers out there that are connected. They will find out the IP address of the visitor and would connect to the closest server for the pages to load faster. So do your research and find out a good reliable, fast server. Don't just simply go for the cheapest one.

In SEO, there is no speeding ticket so TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT! =)

Ashkan Sobhe
SEO Los Angeles
Tel. (310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com

Facebook vs. Google?! Unbelievable...

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 20:17:00 +0000

Now I am hearing business owners even considering advertising on Facebook rather that on search engines... What is your conversion rate going to look like?

Facebook's purpose
Facebook is a social networking website. When I go on facebook, it is not look for ads and shop. I go on there to catch up with my friends and maybe even try to spend a few minutes e-socializing. The whole point of Internet Marketing and SEO is to avoid traditional advertising techniques that never work.

Traditional Advertising
TV, Radio, Newspapers, and all the other traditional advertising methods have EXTREMELY low conversion rates. First of all, they are not very targeted, secondly they don't work because they are mostly at the wrong time and in the wrong place, when we don't really want to come across them.

Proof
On your way to work, school, or anywhere you want to go to, you see a ton of billboards. They are as big as they can big, with bright colors and the perfectly crafted marketing messages. I am sure even today, you have seen a lot of them. Do you remember any of the though?! Mostly likely not. Why not? Because we are used to subconsciously blocking advertising. This is what they are.... Ads ads ads.... everywhere. We are tried of seeing ads. Now we are used to having everything on demand, even our music and movies are on demand. I get them, when I want them.

Facebook ads are just like any other ad. They try to be as targeted as they can be, and based on demographics, etc. but one thing they can never do is to show up when you want them to. The main reason is because it is the wrong place. You don't login to your facebook account looking forward to reading the ads do you? Just like you don't start watching TV, counting the minutes for the movie to go by just so you can see the commercials.

Ashkan Sobhe
SEO Los Angeles
Tel. (310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com

Google vs. Groupon? Not a chance!

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 20:04:00 +0000

I honestly can't even believe people are comparing these too. You know where this is coming from? Mostly business owners who want their sales to double over night. I have been hearing more and more about this over the past few months. For some odd reason, some people think that Groupon will take over and this is where shoppers would conduct their searches and buy.

Well, why not?
Here is the issue, as a business owner I care about sales, my customers, and my business. For me to be successful, I need maximum results with minimum effort. Just like buying and selling, pay lowest price possible and charge highest possible that my customers can afford. A big part of my success strategy is to spend as little time and money in my marketing campaigns but get a lot more result.

So what's your point?
My point is that every business wants repeat customers. We don't want to just do all this work for a customer to shop from us one time and never see them again. A repeat customer is when I don't have to convince them to buy from me; I have already done that once and now it is all downhill from here on. The problem with Groupon users is that they are bargain hunters. So next time around, they will do the same search and look to see if there are other places that can undercut you.

Infidelity...
Groupon users were never meant to be loyal customers. They are just simply shoppers that will buy from whoever that is willing to cut them a better deal. I don't know about other business owners, but I rather deal with clients that know price is not the only thing that matters in a service or product.

Ashkan Sobhe
SEO Los Angeles
Tel. (310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com

Google's Algorithm and the Future

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 07:25:00 +0000

For a long time now, Google has been looking at inbound links as a way to give rankings to a website. It is based on a lot of factors but it is almost as if the main factor is how many inbound links you have. Sure, the quality of them do matter but quantity is not something they ignore either?

What does this mean?!
Well, here is where Google's algorithm has flaws. Let's say you have website A and I have website B. My website is a lot older and I have been doing SEO on it for a while. This means that I have more inbound links than you do (website A). So basically, even if you have the better website, and almost no matter what, I will have the upper hand (better rankings) unless you literally do everything under the sun to out rank me.

The future
I'd like to think Google is smart and they only hire extremely talented engineers. So based on this assumption, or patter if you will, sooner or later, they will figure out that links are not a goo way to determine which website is better. They will roll out an update in the near future that would consider more popularity and introduce democracy to the Internet Marketing world.

The people shall vote
If you ask me, I would say that facebook likes are probably a way better element to look at when ranking a website rather than links. You can buy links and yes you can buy lots of them, but can you really bribe thousands of people to like your page on facebook? Now, I am not saying facebook likes would be flawless and there is no way to trick the system with that either.... but it is certainly more difficult and this is a more accurate way for people to voice their opinion about which website is better.

Ashkan Sobhe
SEO Los Angeles
Tel. (310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com

The Last Thing I need

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 02:18:00 +0000

I have been away from my blogging habits for a long time now. We have been extremely busy at IT Chair. The last thing I need is to get back on blogging again. Time is always the issue... only if we had 36 hours in a day rather than 24 but I am thinking if I write a short post here and there, it would be less time consuming than reading and responding to emails from others asking why I don't blog anymore.

So, for those of you who keep asking what's new in the SEO world and what we have been up to, I must say that for years now, I have been telling my colleagues in the SEO world to stay away from content farming. So many of our competitors (no, don't worry, I won't mention your name) would just spam the World Wide Web and their clients' sites with content. I am not going to lie, I was too, tempted to try it because it worked wonders for a little while there; but if something just doesn't feel right to you, just don't do it. It is a bit scary to see all your clients lose all their rankings at the same time.

I received a call last week, from Sam. He introduced himself, but I was not sure who he was. He mentioned the name of the company and I did recognize the name; one of our competitors. His business has not been doing so well, so he is putting the word out and contacting all the other SEO companies, hoping to sell his business. Yes, SEO is not easy and it is certainly not for everyone. It is not easy to keep up with Google's algorithm and constantly try to reverse-engineer it and discover what you have to do to make your clients rank high.

So here is my introduction to the rebirth of my blogging habits. I promise to try my best to give more tips as I find the time.

Until next time, be well.
Ashkan Sobhe
SEO Los Angeles
Tel. (310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com

Internet Marketing Expert

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:59:00 +0000

Internet Marketing Expert at IT Chair

Internet marketing expert Ashkan Sobhe of IT Chair has a proven track record of successfully promoting clients’ websites. Internet marketing is a technical area in which the competition is fierce. An experienced internet marketing expert is normally required to achieve tangible results.

Internet marketing is the process by which one’s website becomes visible to potential customers online. The primary way that people find websites is through search engines. When someone searches for an item or service, there will usually be both paid and natural (organic) results displayed on the search page. Studies have shown that most web-surfers ignore the paid listings and instead click on the natural results. An internet marketing expert is skilled at placing your website at the top of search page listings.

Keywords

Internet marketing experts know that web-users will search for some keywords or key phrases more than others. They can analyze the right keywords for your business using a variety of tools that track popular web searches. The internet marketing experts at IT Chair will perform the following steps to determine how to proceed in marketing your site:

• Check to see how your company currently performs in search engine results.

• Check how your site is listed using various related keywords. For example, if you’re a real estate agent in Los Angeles, your internet marketing expert might search for “homes for sale LA”.

Once your IT Chair internet marketing expert knows how your website is performing, they will then determine what changes are needed to optimize the site for the major search engines. For example, does your homepage and the site’s subpages have the right keyword density that search engines look for when crawling the web?

An internet marketing expert will also check for external websites that link to your business as this is a key factor in search engine rankings. If you do not have sufficient inbound links, your internet marketing expert will help you in building up a list of appropriate links.

Full marketing services

Internet marketing experts should help with all areas of promotion including off-line promotional material, social networking, blogs, videos, online newsletters and email/texting alerts. Every opportunity to drive traffic to your web site is used, since search engines also consider traffic in ranking web pages.

Internet marketing expert Ashkan Sobhe and his professional staff can help your business succeed on the web. Please contact us to get started!

Internet Marketing Los Angeles
Tel. (310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com
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Google's New Feature

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 23:45:00 +0000

Have you seen the famous “This site may harm your computer” tag for the website you wre searching for ion Google?

This is a safe browsing feature that Google has provided for its users. It basically tags those websites that contain malwares and could potentially harm your computer by installing unwanted programs on your system. This feature has been introduced to make the Google visitors feel safer and more comfortable surfing the internet.

The first two questions that quickly come our minds are “What measures does Google consider to mark a website harmful?”, and “What are the possible ways of staying away or removing such tags from our website?”

Google follows StopBadware.com guidelines to determine which website receives the warning. According to the information provided by StopBadware.com, in general, a website is considered to be a badware website if it contains any of the following:

• Host or distribute badware directly on their site;

• Automatically redirect to a website that hosts or distributes badware;

• Link to executable files that are badware, whether hosted on their site or another site;

• Link to another website that automatically attempts to install badware by exploit onto the user’s computer;

• Cause the browser to automatically load code from another site that then attempts to install badware on the user’s computer;

• Contain substantial links (either in nature or number) to other website(s) that predominantly host or distribute badware.

To get more information about the guideline, click here.

It’s crucial for website owners to read and follow these guidelines to stay away from being tagged by Google as badware website. Once you have been marked, there is no direct way to remove it. However, reading the guideline help identify and fix the problem. It is also possible to send an email to appeals@stopbadware.org clarifying why you think your website was tagged and what you have modified on your site.

To be safe and protected from such warnings, be aware of links and programs that you put on your website and always keep your eyes wide open for hackers who may change or place badwares on your site without your awareness.

Ashkan Sobhe
SEO Los Angeles
Tel. (310) 927-2588
Email: info@itchair.com

Search Engine Optimization 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Fri, 15 May 2009 00:38:00 +0000

Search Engine Optimization 2.0 Can Help Grow Your Business

As a business owner, you already understand the importance of an online presence. But simply having a website is not enough. Potential customers need to be able to easily find you with the click of a mouse. You have heard about SEO and Search Engine Optimization before. But times have changed. Just like when we had Web and then came Web 2.0, we are now in an era that we have to use SEO 2.0 techniques to stay ahead of our competition.

When a website is optimized for search engines, this means the site comes up within the first two pages of the search engine. Therefore, if your business shows up on these pages, a customer is more likely to click the link to your website – resulting in more sales for you.

Benefits of Search Engine Optimization 2.0

 One can easily get natural linking via forums, blogs and socializing with the assistance of search engine optimization 2.0.

 The LSI structure of this tool not only targets potential customers, but also several search engines.

 Appropriate linking enhances the ranking of particular content.

 Search engine optimization 2.0 is widely popular because of its innovative techniques and methodologies. Now, obtaining high rankings is easier for most website owners.

 As far as the infrastructure of links is concerned, this tool has inbound links for all pages.

 An authoritative approach of this tool is quite beneficial, as every page resembles a home page.

Summary

Bottom line, search engine optimization 2.0 can assist you in obtaining high rankings in search engines; more than just regular SEO. In addition, it makes use of an innovative as well as authoritative approach in the content. Good content attracts readers and can help you capture more business.

Ashkan Sobhe
Internet Marketing Los Angeles
(310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com

Google Local Search Engine Optimization

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 19:07:00 +0000

Google has modified its ranking algorithm in the past couple of weeks. Google has improved three features that can be seen in their results page by all users. The one that has caught my eye the most is the Local Search Results.

Google has been developing the idea of local marketing for a while now. Many of the businesses rely on the local markets and are not quiet ready for a global or even a nationwide markets. For instance, if you have a business that sells furniture, you might be more interested in your local market than anything else. Yes you can ship furniture across country but it is more convenient to sell your products to someone who is willing to come to your gallery, pay for them, put them in their car and take them.

Google's new feature detects user's IP address and returns local result if possible. For instance, I live in Los Angeles, CA and if I run a search for "Carpet Cleaners" I see:

As you can see, without me mentioning anything about where I am or what city I am more interested in, Google automatically send back results that are in my local area. Google detects my IP address and my physical location; based on where I am, they will try to give me results that they think I might be more interested in.

This is a very nice little feature. A lot of people run searches on Google without even noticing they need to be looking for local businesses. A lot of time people just type in the services they need, without their city's name. For example, people would put in "Dentist" but if the results come back for dentists that is in Miami, another in New York, and another in Chicago while you are in San Francisco, none of the results would be desirable to you. With this new feature of Google, you get what you are exactly looking for, easier than ever before.

Ashkan Sobhe
Internet Marketing Los Angeles
(310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com

SMM ( Social Media Marketing )

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 05:57:00 +0000

SMM stands for Social Media Marketing. Social Media Marketing is using social networking websites as a marketing tool to promote or drive more traffic to a website. If used properly, they usually make a huge impact and work great.

Some of these social networking sites work better than other. Here are some of the ones we use for our clients: FaceBook, MySpace, Orkut, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Mixx, Youtube, Linkedin and etc. All of them are free. All you have to do is sign up for an account and start adding people to your "friends" list and start posting information that would help you promote your site.

Use them; they work great, free and very powerful. If you are just starting, I would suggest you start with Twitter. Twitter is a micro-blogging site. You sing up for an account and you can just post little notes about what you are doing. You can say things like "I am working on my website ( http://www.itchair.com )". The website address mentioned will automatically be link to the site. People who are following you on twitter will see this and may click on your website. Once they land on your website, they might become interested in what you are offering there and become a fan and/or a customer of yours. You can do the same with almost all of these networking website. The goal is to create awareness about your existence and Social Networking sites are great for these purposes.

Ashkan Sobhe
Internet Marketing Los Angeles
(310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com

Pay Per Click & SEO Companies

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 01:43:00 +0000

I met with a new client today who is extremely unhappy with the quality of the job he has been getting from his previous SEO company. He has been giving this other SEO company a few thousand dollars a month for Pay Per Click and he is not getting any leads from any of his websites at all.

I went in and spoke with him and his financial consultant today. We ended up calling his SEO company and I spoke with them in attempt to figuring out what his money has been spent on. They charge this client a fixed amount of money and claim that they have been spending the money on Google AdWords for Pay Per Click. The SEO company was telling us that the other month the client got 200 clicks but no one picked up the phone to call for their services (they have a call tracking system on the site). So out of 200 visitors not one single person called! Not even by accident.

What is this mean?

Well, this could mean several things:

1) The phone number is not on the website (but this is not the case)

2) There is something on the website that turns visitors off and makes them leave the website without wanting to call.

3) This site has a very poor design, so bad that makes people leave the site without even looking at it

4) There is no call to action. Visitors are not encouraged to call. It is like walking in an store that has no salespeople there or as if the sales staff tried their best to make you not want to buy anything.

5) The ads were shown to the wrong kind of market. For example, ads were showing up for keywords such as "Cars" while the company sells "Shoes". Clearly, the visitors would not be interested in the services that this company is offering on their website if they are looking for something else on the Internet.

6) The SEO company is lying about spending the money. There is a chance that they just did not spend the money but claim they did and want to charge the client for a service they have not provided. Even if they did, there is a chance that they spend very little of that money (the monthly charge) on the client's advertising.

Bullet point number 6, is a very important issue. There are many SEO companies that do what is mentioned in number 6 above. This leads to client's dissatisfaction. In my company, we set up the advertising account with the client's credit card on the account so they will get the charge for the ads. This way they know exactly what they are paying and where their money is going. We usually charge a percentage of the spent budget for monitoring their ads and bidding on their keywords.

Ashkan Sobhe
Internet Marketing Los Angeles
(310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com

Internet Marketing eBook

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 03:41:00 +0000

A while ago I wrote an eBook on Internet Marketing. In this eBook I give tips to people on what they can do to promote anything they want on the Internet. The eBook worked out great for me; not only I sell copies of it, it has given me a good reputation. It helps my company because clients trust us more knowing that we know the field so well that have written a book about it.

My Internet Marketing eBook is an introductory eBook, covering the most used techniques on the Internet for marketing. The subjects covered in this eBook include but are not limited to: email marketing, blogging, search engine optimization, Alexa, Google, Yahoo and etc.

If you think it is proper and possible for you, try writing an eBook for your industry. Try giving people helpful hints, tips and secrets. If you would like, you can put out your eBook for free in exchange of people's email address and their name. This method helps you collect valuable information about people who are interested in your industry, services, products, and your business.

Ashkan Sobhe
Internet Marketing Los Angeles
(310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com

Google & Scams

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 23:14:00 +0000

Today I met with a new client. She asked me a lot of questions on how our company optimizes websites. She was worried we would use Black Hat tactics that would result in hurting her webiste.

We all know that there are a lot of scams in the Internet Marketing industry. A lot of companies that claim to do SEO ( Search Engine Optimization ) do many shady techniques to get a website ranking high. Some of these practices could get the clients in big trouble and potentially banned from Google.

Over the past few years Google has been paying more attention to such practices; the punishments have become tougher and tougher. Google has very strict policies now, both for Organic Search Engine Optimization and Pay Per Click. For instance, you may not use the word "Best" in your Google advertising unless a well established source recongnizes you as "the best". You need to mention the source with a valid link to the section that they recognize your company or product as the best, on the same page that you are directing your advertising to.

I am not saying using tricks is not ok. You can use tricks unless they are prohibited or conflict with Google's policies. Read the Google's policies in detail and read them often becuase they change from time to time.

Ashkan Sobhe
Internet Marketing Los Angeles
(310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com

Internet Marketing? What is that?

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 20:21:00 +0000

Sometimes when I meet someone for the first time they ask me what I do; as soon as I say the words "Internet Marketing", they ask me what that is.

Internet Marketing is marketing website(s), product(s), service(s), or a person online and on the web. Here is a quick short list of what Internet Marketing could include:

Search Engine Optimization (Organic SEO)
Search Engine Marketing (Pay Per Click)
Email Marketing
Social Netweorking
Blogging
Link Building
Video Marketing
Article Marketing
Press Release Marketing
Buzz Marketing
and etc.

Each of these categories have many subcategories. For example, Social Networking contains a lot of other subcategories, each of which could be broken down into even more subcategories.

Every business is different and Internet Marketing is a case by case project/process. As an Internet Marketing company, we throughly study and research our clients' industry to find out what works for them.

Take a look at all these possible marketing techniques and see what works for you and your business best.

Ashkan Sobhe
Internet Marketing Los Angeles
(310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com

How To Pick The Best Search Engine Optimization Company

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 23:42:00 +0000

This is a very tough question and it is a question that a lot of people have on their minds. To tell you the truth, there is no exact formula to find out if the Search Engine Optimization company you are talking to is the best one for you and your company. But, I can give you some tips.

If you don't know SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and how it works, at least try to know the SEO company. By that I mean, if you don't know how the technical matters work, try to know how the company operates and work. Try to get to know the salesman and try to get in touch with the manager or even better, the CEO of the company. See if you feel comfortable with them and can trust them.

Ask them many questions and see if they would try their best to avoid the technical lingo and try to break the process down for you in the most simple terms so you know how it exactly works. If they try to confuse you by throwing big words at you, you need to stay away from them.

Ask them if they use any illegal techniques to optimize a website. Note that it is absolutely OK to use tricks as long as they do not conflict with Google's policies. See if they are aware of the latest changes of Google. Make sure they respect Google's policy and have read the most current version of it because it changes quiet frequently.

The big question that we always get from our new clients is "Do you guys guarantee your work?" and since the first day I started getting into Search Engine Optimization, my answer has always been "Absolutely NOT!" If any SEO company say they guarantee their work, this is when you need to thank them for their time and leave the building as quick as you can. Absolutely no work can ever be guaranteed under any circumstance! Google make this very clear on their website, under their policies, that they are operated as a privately owned company would. No one has access to their process and besides Google, no one can ever guarantee you any results whatsoever.

Look at the company's portfolio and see how they have done on their other clients' websites. Ask them for some references and call their clients to find out how satisfied or dissatisfied they have been with this SEO company.

Take a look at their own rankings. See how well they rank in their own industry. If the SEO company claims that they can do so much for you, they better be able to do something for themselves. It is like going to a dentist that has very bad teeth. It makes you wonder and think "... if he is really a good dentist and says that he can make my teeth look amazing, how come he doesn't do that for himself?!" or going to a hairstylist that has the worst hair you have ever seen in your entire life. Would you trust this person to work on you? I wouldn't!

Google the company's name and see what you find about them. See if other people have talked about them on their blogs or etc. See if you find anyone that has not been so happy with their work and try to figure out why.

My last personal recommendation is to make sure they have a physical location. By that I mean make sure they are not just a site with a telephone number. You want to make sure if bad things happen and they cannot deliver what they said they would, you are able to meet with them in person and figure out where they have gone wrong. On that note, the ideal situation would be if they are local company, rather than working with a company that is overseas.

There are many companies and individuals out there that claim they do Search Engine Optimization. None of which are certified or have the knowledge to optimize any website. Do your research and make sure you are getting a return on your investment. SEO should not be a cost, it should be an investment that pays way more than itself.

Ashkan Sobhe
Internet Marketing Los Angeles
(310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com

PPC ( Pay Per Click ) - Google AdWords - Online Advertising

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:04:00 +0000

I get this question all the time: "So how does Google's Pay Per Click system work?" There is no simple answer to this question but surfing the web, I came across this fantastic video that I thought might be very interesting to you.

Ashkan Sobhe
Internet Marketing Los Angeles
(310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com

Are you on Twitter.com?

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 03:25:00 +0000

Twitter is another Social Networking website just like FaceBook, MySpace, Orkut, and etc. Twitter is a little different than the sites I just mentioned. It is not as complicated and there is not as much things to do on it but it is HIGHLY addictive.
You sign up for an account and you can update you status and let your friends (Twitter calls them your "followers") what you are up to. For example, let's say tonight is my birthday and I am going to go to the McDonald's by the beach. So I will put on my Twitter "Celebrating my birthday at McDonald's on 3rd St. & Sunset Blvd. with Danny, Mike, & John. Come by if you have nothing to do!"

My twitter friends will see my update and they can come and join me. Twitter saves you that phone call to all your friends. A lot of times friends call each other to see what they are doing or what they are up to. With twitter, you don't have to do than anymore. You can just go to twitter.com and login to you account and see what all your friends are doing.

At the first look, this may sound a little odd and may make you think that nobody will ever use this website. I am afraid that you will be wrong if you think that. Twitter is growing rapidly and has many users. You will not believe me if I told you it is probably the most addictive Social Networking tool on the Internet. One of the reasons why it is so popular is that you can update your status from you cellphone just by sending a text (SMS) to twitter. You can also set text messaging alerts so you will receive a text message if your friends update their status. This means that you will be connected with all your friends 24/7.

Aside from all that, as an Internet marketer, I look at this as a great opportunity to get even more exposure to the people that are out there. I have found so many resources and clients just by twitting people on Twitter.com.

I hope you all use it too and if you do, don't for get to follow me on there.

Ashkan Sobhe
Internet Marketing Los Angeles
(310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com

Full Sentences vs. Keywords

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:15:00 +0000

It has been a while since I have noticed more and more people are Googling full-complete sentences than just keywords. For example, people are now searching for things like "how to lose weight fast" rather than just keywords such as "weight loss".

What does this mean?
This for people like us ( Search Engine Marketers ) means that we need to be targeting more specific audiences. Nowadays, searching has become more like a question and answer scenario. People expect the search engines to know exactly what they are looking for. People expect the search engines to return results and answers to their problems.

The other day I was chatting with a friend online. She was looking for a personal trainer. She asked me if I knew any and I said "No I don't; why don't you Google it?" She came back online and said she could not find any. This surprised me so I asked her what she looked for. She said "I went to Google.com and I put in Experienced Personal Trainer Near Beverly Hills". Realized that she did not just put in "Personal Trainer" or "Personal Trainer Beverly Hills".

This is definitely something to keep in mind when optimizing a website. When doing SEO for a website, know that people may look for various keywords, sometimes keyword that may not be very commonly used.

Ashkan Sobhe
Internet Marketing Los Angeles
(310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com

Best Search Engine Optimization Company in Los Angeles

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 13:58:00 +0000

Hello Everyone,

I haven't had a post for a while and the reason being is that we have been extremely busy which is not a bad thing. In this economy that is breaking everybody's back, we have been doing better than ever. I am assuming that has something o do with it; a lot of people are now thinking about finally investing their marketing budget in Internet Marketing. It is the only form of advertising that is working and you actually get your moneys worth.

Back in November 2008, I posted a screen shot of Google Results Page for the keyphrase "Search Engine Optimization Los Angeles". This keyphrase gets a few thousand searches annually so we decided to invest a little time on it. In November 2008, www.ITchair.com (our company website) ranked 7 out of 700,000 entries. That was not good enough for us so we had to work out magic.

Today, there are over 2,000,000 entries for the same keyphrase (Search Engine Optimization Los Angeles). As you can see, the competition has almost tripled over the past 4 or 5 month. We have gotten stronger too and discovered more brilliant ways to rank high in Google.

WOW! We are ranking 1 in Google. The keyphrase is "Search Engine Optimization Los Angeles" so does this mean we are the best in Los Angeles? We think so. This keyword is returning mostly all the Search Engine Optimization Companies in the greater Los Angeles. Search Engine Optimization means ranking high in search engines. What is higher than this?! So I guess this truly means we are the best in Los Angeles since all these websites coming up for this keyphrase, claim that they do Search Engine Optimization as a profession and they are really good at it; but yet, we rank higher than them.

Ashkan Sobhe
Search Engine Optimization Los Angeles
(310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com

Tips for Search Engine Optimization

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:01:00 +0000

On-Page Search Engine Optimization can get too detailed but in this post I would like to give you some basic tips that are very powerful and can change the ranking of your website entirely.

Let us start with the design of your website. Your website must be very simple. The ideal website for SEO is a website that is in html with minimized use of scripting languages like ASP.NET, PHP, JSP, CFM, and etc. Make sure your website has no or very minimal JavaScript. If you are using JavaScript, make sure it is an external file, not on your page, between the contents.

Make sure you are not using pictures as links or adding JavaScript to your links (for example for a rollover effects). Make sure you are using CSS for your website. The CSS should not be on the page, attached to every entity. The CSS should be on an external file (you can call it "style.css") and import it in the pages, as opposed to having CSS/Style attributes in you html code.

Search Engine Optimization is very important for a lot of businesses. This is to a point that you can sacrifice the look of your website for a better SEO performance, most of the times. Generally speaking, the websites that have great SEO results are not the best looking websites. The reason for this is because we would like to keep our website as simple as possible so search engine spiders do not have a hard time indexing our pages.

Also, for great Search Engine Optimization results, we must stay away from some of the things that make a website look nicer; like Flash, Pictures, and etc. Don't get me wrong, you can use these but remember that if you are including your keywords in a flash animation or a picture, there is noway that the search engine crawlers than see it and consider that in pulling up your website on their search results page.

Some people who are new to the Search Engine Optimization go crazy on meta tags and add many meta tags to their web pages. Meta tags like author, copyright, revisit, and etc do not generally affect the ranking of your website for the good. They may make your web page larger (in terms of its byte size) and too heavy for some search engines to index the entire page. So do not add extra-pointless meta tags.

Stay away from tables as much as possible, especially nested tables. You can use div tags instead. They work just as well as tables.

Make sure every picture on your pages have an alt attribute and don't stuff them with keywords. Make sure you are not repeating the same keywords in the alt-tags of every single picture on your pages.

These tips should give you some ideas about what sort of things you need to keep in mind when designing your website or revising your pages for better Search Engine Optimization results.

Ashkan Sobhe
Search Engine Optimization Los Angeles
(310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com

Sitemaps & SEO

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 03:50:00 +0000

Is having a sitemap important? Will it help my SEO?

What is a sitemap? Sitemap is a file or page that lists all the pages in your website. You can imagine it a set of bullet-list that gives the users or search engine crawlers the ability to see what pages you have on your website.

Sitemaps are important and in my opinion it is necessary to have sitemaps on your website. Here is two main reasons why:

Users will be able to navigate through your pages easier and find what they are looking for on your website a lot faster (specially if you have a large website with lots of page)
It helps search engine crawlers or spider not miss any of the pages and index every single one of them.

Now the question is, in what format should you have this sitemaps? I like XML and here is how it works: You create a sitemap in XML version, and then submit it to Google and the Google spider will crawl all the pages listed in this file and will index them. So this will help your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) because it will help Google know about all your pages and index them and pick up the content and the keywords from each page.

Here is a little secret (Don't tell anyone!): Don't know how to create an XML sitemap? No Problem! You can easily create a sitemap by using this XML sitemap generator. This web application will crawl your website and find all the links on your pages and automatically create an XML sitemap that you can upload on your website.

Ashkan Sobhe
Search Engine Optimization Los Angeles
(310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com

What is Alexa Rank

noreply@blogger.com (IT Chair) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 02:17:00 +0000

Alexa is an internet company based in California and it is an Amazon.com subsidiary company and it is best know for providing website traffic information to people.

Alexa has a toolbar that you can download for free and use. They collect data from people who have this toolbar installed on their web browser plus their other data sources to rank websites. This is a good way to know how much traffic a website is getting. If you would like to find out how popular a website is, just go to www.alexa.com and type in the website address that you are researching, in the traffic rank section and they will give you a rank for it.

If the website is not popular at all, it will say "No Data" which simply means that Alexa does not even have any data from this website. The worst rank that I can remember I have seen was 25,308,810 and the best ranking belongs to Yahoo.com at 1 and at number 2 stands Google.com (for now).

This rank is calculated based on two factor:
1) How many people visit the website
2) How many pages these visitors visit from that website

I guess you can determine how interesting a website is, through Alexa. If the rank is really high, then this means that this website has lots of visitors who are viewing lots of pages on this website so it must be an interesting website.

Alexa.com also keeps track of how well or poorly the website has been doing in the past three months and it gives you a percentage of how much increase or decrease there has been for each "criteria".

One of "criteria" is called reach. Reach is the percent of internet users in the entire world who visit this site. So let's say the reach for the website you are researching is 2%. This means that 2% of all the internet visitors visit this website. Yahoo's reach is usually 27% which means that 27% all internet users visit Yahoo.com.

The other criteria is Page View. As the name applies, this is the average number of the pages visitors of that website visit from the website, per day.

So if someone tell you that they have a very popular website with millions of visitors per day, you can check their alexa rank and take a look under the hood and see if they are being honest with you or exaggerating a little.

Ashkan
www.ITchair.com
(310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com