A major new initiative (reported by the Wall Street Journal will radically change the wireless landscape; it’s called WiMax. Really big companies such as Sprint, Google, Time Warner and Intel are jointing forces in a new broadband venture to expand coverage of wireless broadband connectivity.

Wifi can download about 1 megabit per second at from 100 to 300 feet. The new WiMax can reach you at 6 miles and download up to 5 megabits! This drastic improvement is sure to lower costs for infrastructure and thus consumers eventually.

What does it mean to smaller businesses? More access to your websites. As more laptops and cell phones have better access to the web, people will become even more dependent on Internet information. New kinds of devises will also be developed to fill the need to be connected all the time.

What do you do about it? Pay attention to your website with more zeal.

It seems like there are more SEO experts out there these days. Most do not know what they are doing, so you need to weed them out. Back in the dark ages of the Internet (pre-dot com bust), we had the same situation with Webmasters. The dime a dozen of Webmasters are now gone because the market matured. SEO has not matured yet, but you have a major advantage over the dark ages, we have Google. Google allows you to see exactly how successful an SEO expert is.

So the Golden Rule about SEO experts is that they must have a HIGH Google Rank on their website!!!

After all, Google Rank is what tells you the power of your page in relation to your competition. So, logically, your SEO professional should have a high page rank. How can you tell? Download a Google Toolbar, so that you can see the PageRank.

Once you have the bar loaded the Google Toolbar in your browser, go to the homepages of the guys you are looking at. Once there, you will see the rank, and if you want to know what the Google PagerRank means, here is a handy chart.

The annual survey of Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB) reports that the average adult spent 145.4 minutes online vs. 109.7 minutes last year. The gap with TV narrowed by over 30 minutes, TV viewership slipped (206 minutes compared with 246.7) last year.

This is a remarkable finding given that our TV habits are so engrained. Some polls have previously reported that some age groups (teenaged boys) were now online more than the time they watch TV. But the overall population shift is steadily following the boys.

Other significant changes include lower newspaper readership overall, but the differences in media use is striking as well. Newspaper readership for instance is less than 20 minutes per day for the 10-49 age group while it is 43.2 minutes for the over 65 crowd, less than 1/3 the time.

Other trends:
TV and newspaper viewership drops with higher income and education
Magazines are read more by the over 65 group but other groups are similar
Internet usage drops by age, but increases by income.
Cell phone usage among the 18-24 group is 4 time that of the over 55 age group

For years our biggest customer service problems have been generated by customers email issues. For the last few years, those problems have almost gone away with our use of Everyone.net email for our clients. We still get a number of questions about new accounts and setting up unusual email programs.

Here is a list of great resources for your email questions.

Everyone.net Email Setup (Outlook 2003) - Email Setup (Mac users)
Everyone.net Mail Status - If you are having issues connecting, check the server status.
Blackberry Setup for Everyone.net Users - NEW
Screen Shots of Outlook 2003 Setup
Screen Shot of Mac Mail
Email Setup - PDF - How to Configure Outlook Express (pre v.6)
Trouble Shooting - PDF - Troubleshooting Outlook Express (pre v.6)
Email Blocked? Are you leaving a email copy on the server?
Suggested Policy - Your Company’s Email Policy
Suggested HTML Coding - Java Script Email Scramble

As always you can check our Technical Support or contact us with more questions.

by, Jon Burgess, M.B.A.

Are you puzzled by what the word “Bounce” in your Analytics report actually means? Think of “bounces” as driving down a road in Boston, and being very late for a meeting, when you suddenly find the bridge you need to cross is on the map. However, when you arrive to your anticipated crossing, you learn that construction isn’t slated until next year. What do you do? You make a wild u-turn, slam you foot on the gas and make a quick dash towards an alternate route. You don’t have time to waste.

Similarly, bounces indicate that someone was seeking info they needed and, with a quick glance, realized they weren’t going to get the information they were seeking on your website. If your website is getting too many “bounces” then there is a strong likelihood that you are NOT communicating well to your potential customers.

It is that simple. When a web-surfer shows up to your site believing it contains the Mother Lode on the topic he is researching, you have only a few seconds to show them your stuff before they immediately turn around and leave.

This can mean your site does not have what the customer was looking for, or it could indicate that people were looking for something totally different. Worst-case scenario is that you are actually not a very great communicator. No one likes to feel like they were lured somewhere on a false pretense. “Just Kidding!” is very irritating to anyone who is looking to locate something they need.

Internet surfers are usually able to drive search engines towards the information they are seeking. During the dark ages of dial-up, there was a general rule-of-thumb that viewers would not wait more than eight seconds for a page to load. Page loading wait time has very little to do with communicating your product, it is simply a measure of efficiently. With the availability of high-speed Internet, impatience has mounted, and people want a confirmation of what they are looking for in under eight seconds. If they searched a keyword, they want confirmation NOW!

Common sense regarding online buyers

When was the last time someone walked up to Wal-Mart’s front door, walked in, looked around for 8 seconds and walked out? It doesn’t happen. People wanted “Wal-Mart”, they drove to Wal-Mart, and they shopped at Wal-Mart. Buyers generally know exactly what they are looking for online, they don’t window shop like they do when at their local mall.

Common sense about online Surfers

Surfers are like your mother-in-law who goes shopping with your wife on a Sunday, while you watch a football game. They drive to the mall and walk all around. They may walk into some shops (or all of the shops); and they may buy one or two things. Shopping is more about social interaction than buying.

Generally, online surfers will find your website, but they are not really your target buyer, so if your website does not show strong sales to visitors, then maybe you are inviting in the wrong buyers. Sometimes, visitors and views are a waste of your time.

For example, we have a great page on a local site about parks. We wrote the page’s content to include every single park in the Inland Empire of Southern California. The problem is that on the average, the is the 4th highest ranked page on this particular website, and it has about a 75% bounce rate. In simple terms, we too highly crafted the keywords on the site,using the word “park” for our market place. this resulting in getting a many views, with no return visits, since surfers for “parks” are not in Southern California.

If you say what you mean you may or may not get what you are looking for. The key to understanding is in routinely analyzing your web traffic’s bounces. If you observe a definite negative pattern, switch it around and see if anything changes. When true communication clicks, your sales will soar!

Anyone who sells SEO or search copy for your website should have a high ranking and a lots of back links to their website. I attended a very good program on writing Emails from a professional and experienced web writer. While I found no fault with her knowledge (in fact she has many good insights), her website Google ranking are seriously lacking.

The Google Ranking system is a logarithmic scale from 1 to 10. Getting a ranking of 2 or 3 is not difficult although requires well organized pages. This site has a 4 and just 11 back links on the main page, and NO ranking on the page that discusses Search Engine Optimization.

This is unacceptable.

While a 4 is respectable, most of the secondary pages are not even registered with Google. Here is the problem, this person can write fine copy, but she is not a webmaster and doesn’t understand the rest of the technical issues that Google needs to find the pages.

Words do not matter if Google doesn’t know they are there!

Contrast this with the RedFusion Media website that is ranked a 6 with 300 back links. To put this is rough proportions, it is much more difficult to get from a 5 to a 6 than from a 4 to a 5. Meaning the ranking from a 4 to a 6 is several times higher than just 2 more.

If you are serious about increasing your ranking, only companies that are achieving these results should be hired, because this is expensive. Most SEO people quote about $100 per page, after your website is built.

Writing is very important to increase your search position, but only the right combination of writing and technical tricks can get the job done.

We have had a number of clients ask about alternative websites to market their products over the years like; eBay, MySpace, YouTube, Craig’s List, and others. For many clients, you need to think about your brand and your operations before jumping into a solution that does not fit your marketing goals. This being said, social networking sites really have become a great source for reaching huge numbers of what could be your target market.

In a study by eMarketer of market share of social networking sites, the top four; MySpace (41.5%), Facebook (8.29%), YouTube (7.39%), and Craig’s List (2.81%), are great places to think about your market. Both MySpace and Facebook are great locations to find Generation Y and X, so if you are marketing to that crowd, building a page in those sites may generate some positive traffic.

YouTube is great to recycle any of your video, whether it is a commercial, how-to, training video, or just something fun. The traffic on YouTube is so huge, you may have people find your video then find your site, in such a way that they would have never viewed your site in another manner.

Craig’s list is a great place to get rid of extra products or used equipment. Remember, people are looking for deals, so you may help you self get rid of junk and at the same time, build a new relationship that will help your business.

Many clients ask me if they should place advertising on their site to monetize it, and because it is so easy to add Google Adsense, many people think they should go ahead and just do it.

I would strongly discourage the addition of advertising to any corporate site. While you may need to monetize a magazine or community service type website, I believe that you should never place ads on a corporate site for two reasons.

1. You lose your viewers to your direct competitors. Imagine, going to a sales meeting and handing out your competitor’s business card at the end of the meeting. You would never do that in real life, do not do it on your website. If you understand how Google works, you’ll understand that they are good at what they do and if you write a page about a niche subject that your business provides, Google will place ads on that page with competitors that match your keywords.

2. You do not make enough money to justify the loss of customers. Google Ads can make you money, but not as much as you think. I make about $5.00 per 1000 page views on some of our websites, so it is fairly meager. I would guess that our average corporate client may get 2500 to 5000 page views a month, so you would make about $15 to $30. Would you sell your leads and customers to your competitor for that much?

Philosophies differ on what to do to build business if we are in a down economy. Some say this is precisely when ad budgets should go up, but historically when business is bad, media companies are the first to see a drop as ad budgets can be cut so easily.

The top 100 companies spent less in 2007 overall but increased their advertising over 40% online! It is very clear that online ad revenue will continue in a tough market, but where is overall advertising?

According to eMarketer and Universal McCann data, Total US media advertising spending was flat in 2007 but will increase 3.3% this year and 1.9% in 2009.

The “Microsite” is becoming recognized as a part of a website dedicated to a specific subject. It is a separate section or a separate website, sometimes with its own domain name.  Microsites are set apart in that they have a rich media component like video, flash, or audio.

A new concept developing over the last year or two, it is now the subject of more research. One such study among marketers finds that the Mircosite is being used as much as video in specialized pitches, product demos and other short term information. This is somewhat surprising as online video has been well excepted among both marketers and buyers.

RedFusion Media builds Microsites generally for specialized media and subject. Examples include online personalities that guide the user through filling a form, or making an online sales pitch. This is particularly effective as the video can be both the demonstrator and closer. Additional questions can be referred to a FAQ section, technical specifications section or any possible objection to the close.

Our experience shows increased completion of forms and signups for service. Microsites, while not really very different from the Website, may become another hot trend, in that it is a way to work on a specific subject in an intense way without effecting the general Website. Microsites can also be built by outside vendors for larger corporate Websites without engaging the webmaster for creative, a task that most marketers find compelling to get the product they envision.

See http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006226 for the full article.