How to promote your website - SEO and SEM

Today ends the Internet Retailer conference in Chicago, IL and I had a truly amazing time here. Not only did I have the opportunity to learn from the many great speakers but also networking with the vendors and other attendees like myself.

Photos taken with my iPhone
Chicago is an amazing city and the weather has been so nice this week. I will post a few photos that I took during the conference and around the Chicago area.

This first one is from my room at night, I was on the 31st floor of Hyatt McCormick Place.

This one I took the second day of the conference

And this is just a random photo taken while walking over a bridge somewhere near the Hyatt Chicago

Contacts and Networking
One of the best parts about this conference is the ability to network with other people who attend. I want to mention a few who I had a great time talking to and connecting with:
Kathleen with Zippo
Mark from ML Consulting
Ryan with PlubmerSurplus
Robert with Digital Transactions
Susan from Always for me, Inc
Robert from ebay
Angela from SIGMA

Some Great Vendors
I am so glad I finally was able to meet in person a few of the individuals I have only spoken to over the phone. Some are vendors I am already doing business with and a few are ones I hope to be working with in the future. Here are just a few of them:
Brad with Bronto Software
Shannon with McAfee
Jonathan and John(Mr. Powers) with Power Reviews
Brigitte and Brian with position tech
Michael with Rich FX
Chris and Ed with SLI Systems
Jeary with LivePerson
Fred with MyBuys
Kriss with RedSun Systems
Dave, Sundeep, Brad and Todd from Rich Relevance
Kathy from Fast Transact
Amber from BazaarVoice
Randi from mercado

Magicians?
Oh, I almost forgot to mention the cheezy magician at the Collabera booth! Great job getting attention, but does anyone remember what the heck Collabera does? I still have no idea.

I don’t think this actually helps you with website promotion, but I did find this information very useful so I thought I would pass it on.

You can add “+” and “.” in the first part of your Gmail address and it will still work. Here are a few examples:

original Gmail address: johndoe@gmail.com
Modified: johndoe+emaillist@gmail.com or john.doe@gmail.com or j.o.h.n.d.o.e@gmail.com

The periods can be placed anywhere in the first part of your email. The “+” sign must follow after the first part of your email address. I think it would become very useful when signing up for email lists and such. It will save you lots of time when you are making customized rules in your Outlook or Mail application. For the full article go here to read more about this.

I added a Digg widget to the left sidebar of my blog today. It displays all of my most recent Diggs and here is were I went to get the widget. They have a simple customization form and it even shows you what the widget will look like. As seen in the screenshot below:

Here is a blurb from the Digg page: You can easily display the latest Digg news on your site by adding a Digg Widget, now with more choices for what to show and how it’s displayed. When news is updated on Digg, it will automatically be displayed on your site, in the format that you choose.

Once I finished customizing how I wanted the widget to look I had to change the width of the widget to 175 pixels to fit in my left sidebar. The size will depend on your wordpress theme.

Then you just paste the code into your sidebar widgets in the presentation area of your wordpress admin. Good luck!

Here is my Digg page.

I just started using adobe air today. Wow, what a neat application. I still do not understand all that it can do but so far I am impressed. Here is some info posted on Adobe’s website about it: Adobe AIR enables you to have your favorite web applications with you all the time.

The only app I have used so far is twhirl. Twhirl is a free application that makes it very easy to update your Twitter status. I also has many other useful features. So, if your a twitter user be sure to try this one out.

Here is a listing of the current Adobe Air apps

Go here to download Adobe Air.

If you are already a facebook user you may be familiar with facebook pages. Facebook pages gives you a simple and free way to advertise for your business. You can create a page that other people can become a “fan” of. Once someone has become a fan of your page or business, you can then send them updates, event notifications, and start discussions. It is a great way to spread the word and if you want to target a niche group of people you can do so by advertising your page on facebook. Facebook provides excellent ways to promote your page by PPC(pay per click) ads.

They have built in statistics for your pages and your ads. It is nothing like Google Analytics but you can at least find out basic stats about your page.

You can find more info about facebook pages here

Well, I was trying to access Digg today and it’s not up.
Here is a screen shot I took.

Here is what it says on the site:

We’ll be back shortly.

Only two months away from the Internet Retailer conference in Chicago and I am already excited about it. I was informed by a good friend of mine who will also be attending this event that I am featured on their website here: IRCE 2008 Conference and Exhibition

screenshot from the IRCE website

photo of me sitting at the IRCE 2007 event

I am the one in the blue shirt on the front row. The two individuals on my left are from American Micro Industries and the lady on my right is from Sigma Micro LLC.

The IRCE 2008 event is June 9th-12th and if you have not yet signed up to go you should do it now. It is an event you do not want to miss.

I just returned from the Catalyst conference sponsored by ChannelAdviser, held in Pinehurst NC at the Carolina Hotel. I think the event was a great success and I feel as though I have not only learned many new things but also made many new connections with other fellow e-retail marketers like myself.

One of my favorite sessions was when Vince Monical, director of commerce and analytics, at Google spoke.
He spoke about many of the new tools that Google has and then he told everyone about all the secrets about how google does search algorithms (yeah right!) … ok but he did show some things that I had not seen before on google’s website… stuff like Google Labs and how you can use it to see search trends. If you have not tried this before and you do SEO or PPC you really should try it.
Here is a cool slide he showed in his PowerPoint presentation:

Another great session was the “Live! From the Consumer” panel of teens and adults that shared their online usage habits.

I had the opportunity to meet some incredible people at this event. Here are just a few of the individuals I met and their websites:
David Dang - President and CEO of BananaToys.com
Dan Foster - Enterprise Sales Executive at ChannelAdvisor.com
Noah Boswell - Internet Marketing Manager - LooktotheRight.com
Emma Cumming - Director at GolfClubWarehouse.com.au
Jeff Mitchell - search marketing specialist at RockBottomGolf.com

McAfee has acquired ScanAlert, Inc., the creator of the HACKER SAFE website security certification service for approximately $51 million in cash. Hacker Safe protects over 50 million e-commerce transactions per month and pro actively advises consumers about which sites are safe for shopping, but primarily using your credit card. The ScanAlert technology will be integrated into McAfee’s SiteAdvisor.

If you have not yet installed SiteAdvisor into your current browser I would suggest doing so. Site Advisor tests the Web to help keep you safe from spyware, spam, viruses and online scams.

Also, if you are currently doing ecommerce online I would strongly advise purchasing the HackerSafe logo ASAP! With this recent acquisition of HakerSafe by McAfee the cost may go up very soon. I was looking around on HackerSafe’s website and found some neat statistics hidden away on their site. When you go to the HackerSafe website and click on the small “Copyright 2008 McAfee, Inc” text at the very bottom left hand side of the page it will take you to this page: Hacker Safe Average Sales Increase Statistics
They have dozens of statistics here about A/B testing, percent of sales increase calculators and other neat stuff.

Here are just a few great posts I found reading the Natural Search Blog:

Googles Ranking Advice

Create a Blog Feeding Frenzy

Subdomains and subdirectory advice for SEO