Digg Adds No Follow

You Can’t Just Digg Your Way to the Top Anymore

Digg announced today (9/2/09) that it is now applying the no-follow attribute to any links that are deemed untrustworthy, effectively ending the constant stream of SPAM that is posted to Digg daily.   While they did state that they are going to continue to allow link juice to flow to “trusted” articles, and they are not adding the no-follow attribute to all links, they did not specify what would constitute a trusted article.   Links on user profiles, comments and not-so-popular posts will get the no-follow tag, meaning it won’t pass along link juice.

John Quinn made the announcement regarding the changes on the official Digg blog:

“We’ve made a few changes to the way Digg links to external sites that may impact some folks in the SEO community. These changes reduce the incentive to post spammy content (or link spam) to Digg, while still flowing ’search engine juice’ freely to quality content. We’ve added rel=”nofollow” to any external link that we’re not sure we can vouch for. This includes all external links from comments, user profiles and story pages below a certain threshold of popularity.”

From what I can tell initially, any articles that make the front page of Digg avoid the no-follow attribute, therefore allowing the social community to effectively police the articles that are posted to Digg.   If an article gets enough votes from the community, it earns the trust needed to garner the link juice that comes from Digg.

Seems fair to me…

Minimal Impact on the SEO Community

This really shouldn’t affect the good SEO’s too much.  Sure, you lose an easy source of links that can be built with keyword based anchor text, but Digg seemed to be cracking down on link spam in general, so this just takes it one step further, and does so in an orderly fashion.  This will really only affect the spammy SEO’s that are simply posting article’s for the single Digg link.  If you are writing good content, and it includes links to true subject matter experts, you will still earn your link juice, they’ve just made it much harder to game the system.

Secondly, the no-follow attribute doesn’t completely eliminate the passage of link value, it simply dilutes it.  How much?  No one but the folks at Google really know, and they’re not going to show their hand.   The best you can do is read up on Matt Cutts blog post about no-follow and link sculpting, and draw your own conclusions.  For the purpose of continuing to use Digg for SEO, you should have a quality copywriter that can captivate an audience with a great article (or at least a great title), and you should build your network of friends, thereby increasing your chances of hitting the front page.

Other Social Sites Soon to Follow?

It will remain to be seen, but the social media world is a copycat arena.  Twitter was strong-armed into adding no-follow to all of their links, and now Digg has gone the same route.   Digg has said that ” This work was done in consultation with leading experts from the SEO/SEM and link spam fields” and one can assume that the experts included Google.

If other social sites start to get the overflow of Digg spammers, they too may start evaluating their own links and whether or not they should follow links.  And you always have the possibility that Google will “help” them figure out how they should handle their links as well.   I think there’s a good probability that more social sites will follow suit in the coming months.

If This Hurts You, You Need Better Link Sources

This is a good thing for SEO.  It will force out some of the spammers that can’t, or won’t put in the effort to find their own natural link sources, and will reward those who have spent the time building their profiles and interacting on the site.   Great content is still going to get Dugg, and will still have the potential to make the front page, while your quick and easy link-spamming will deteriorate, although it may not come to a screeching halt.

Get that copywriter going, get back to writing good content, and seek other link sources.  They are out there, you just have to stop being lazy.

Manage Your Business Reputation Online

How important is your online brand?

It’s getting to be more important, and search engines are starting to place additional importance on the relevance of the content source.  Great content from well know brands is always going to rank well, so promoting your business through various mediums is going to be a big help in your branding and online reputation management.  The more places that people can find your business, the better.  Having more options for pushing and controlling your message increases your chances of reaching and engaging your target audience.

As you begin to build your online brand, it’s important that you carry a consistent message, and that you control the information that can be found online.  It’s extremely easy for customers, clients or competitors to write an article, blog post or review your company through a variety of social sites.  Making sure that you monitor, produce and manage your reputation is en essential step to an effective online marketing campaign.  The following steps can help you manage your reputation and come out looking squeaky clean.

Using Social Media to Manage Your Brand – 4 Quick Tips

1. Choose the right avatar – Choose an image that is memorable, displays class and professionalism.  People will learn your avatar, and the impressions you make will stick with you for a long time. Your avatar is your face online, so make sure you put your best foot forward at all times.
2. Use consistent images – Representing yourself with an avatar is a great idea, and it’s important to use the same one for all your social profiles.  It helps when people can recognize you in different areas online, and allows you to build relationships with people in your niche.  Having social media friends will go a long way in battling negative press or libel.
3. Keep your eyes and ears open – Monitor your company name, blog and industry.  Social news spreads fast – good, bad or otherwise.  It’s important to monitor your company name, web address and social profiles, and it’s equally as important to respond quickly when someone questions or challenges your reputation.  It’s often possible to resolve disputes if you respond quickly, and before the negativity spreads.   Tools for monitoring your name or web address include Google Alerts and Twitter Search, among others.
4. Avoid accidental branding – It’s easy to wander through the social media scene without a clear cut message or purpose, and it’s also a bad idea.  Everything you publish online is visible to the public, and remains there as long as the web property is live.   Make sure that you are in control of the message you are delivering, and ask yourself if your post or image is something you would want a family member, friend, potential employer to find.  If the answer is NO, then you probably shouldn’t publish it.   People lose their jobs over Facebook pictures or blog posts, don’t let that happen to you or your business.

Ready to begin your social media campaign?

Social Media is a great tool for building relationships, promoting your brand, and managing your business’ reputation.  When used correctly, it enhances your ability to correspond with customers, gauge your competition and control the message that’s being delivered, but it takes some effort and the willingness to entertain and engage others’ opinions.

If your business takes the time to manage your brand online, you’ll find that you can create a loyal following and make sure that the information found on the search engines paints your company in the best light.  If you don’t have the time or inclination to do it right, you should avoid social media altogether, or hire a professional to manage your reputation and build your brand.

There’s only one way to do social media: the right way.

Twitter Black Hat Bird | Design by@surfdenver

Twitter is being spammed by Black Hat SEO’s to drive traffic to their websites, twitter profiles and blogs.  This is ruining the social media phenomenon and taking away from the community building that is responsible for Twitter’s recent rise in popularity.

I am seeing this more and more lately, and wanted to point out some of the less than savory tactics that are being used by these “Black Birds” so that you can spot them when they come to be your “Friend”.   This is in no way intended to be a list of tips, so the focus will be on some of the more obvious tricks that are currently being used, and I’ll stay away from some of the lesser known tactics.

5 Common Twitter Black Hat Tactics

I absolutely hate these tactics and feel that they could eventually hurt the platform if marketers continue to abuse them.  I merely point them out so that you know what kind of people you are associating with on Twitter, and you can make an educated decision on whether or not to continue that association.

1. Follow / Unfollow – This is probably the most common tactic that annoys everyone.  Someone adds several thousand followers hoping that they will follow back, and then shortly thereafter dumps all of the people they recently followed,  hoping that they don’t notice and continue to follow back.  This is especially annoying when you see your number of followers fluctuating throughout the day, and you are truly trying to make connections with people you see as valuable.
2. Unfollow / Follow – This is the reverse of the previous tactic.  When you start following someone, you show up at the top of their followers list.   Black Birds will unfollow you, and then come right back and follow you again so that they are shown at the top of your list of followers.  The hope is that they gain some additional followers by being associated with you.  This primarily happens to users with who follow a lot and are followed by a lot as the followers of these users are often great lists of people to follow.
3. Account Spammer – This is an obvious one.  A Black Bird creates multiple accounts so that they can continuously re-tweet their own spam and try to create a viral effect with their tweets.  This person is usually involved with the above listed tactics as well, but takes this blatant form of spam and throws it in Twitter’s face.  Obviously this can be policed if Twitter sees the same accounts re-tweeting the same content regularly, much like Digg outed some marketing firms for the exact same tactic.  The problem is sorting through the re-tweets that happen naturally amongst friends, and not being an iron fist that delets accounts on a whim.   Perhaps a social police method would work best for outing these chumps.
4. Autofollowers, and AutoDumpers – One of the great things about Twitter is the many apps that can be used to manage your Twitter stream and keep up with friends.   The negative is that the same apps can be used to abuse the platform and make the black hat techniques extremely easy to do.   There are many scripts that will automatically follow your new followers, and automatically dump people who un-follow you.  This is not a bad thing in it’s purest form, but for the Twitter Black Hat it is a tool to artificially manipulate your follower count and appear as though you are someone important that everyone should follow.  It artificially pollutes the Twitter stream with marketing garbage, and makes it harder for you to follow those people that provide value.
5. Autofollow Lists – It is easy to pick out those who automatically follow just about everyone who follows them. They will normally follow more people than their number of followers. Twitter has placed a cap on accounts allowing them to follow no more than 110% of their number of followers. Still, these accounts are easy to spot and has been documented both in this Twitter Autofollow blog post as well as the AutoFollowList Twitter account. Following the people on these lists will normally equate to a followback within 24 hours and thus helps to inflate the spammers’ numbers.

There are plenty of other black hat techniques being used and new ones are popping up every day. Is it wrong to use these techniques? For many, the answer is no. Twitter is becoming an extremely popular social networking platform and many users are doing whatever it takes to get better numbers.

In the end, it isn’t so much how you get your followers as much as what you do with them once you have them. Trying to get a ton of followers in itself is not necessarily black hat. Getting a ton of followers and then tweeting your latest MLM tips, Forex tutorials, and porn videos is what truly defines spam and establishes the need to control black hat techniques.

Twitter Rocks

I love Twitter.  There it is, I’ve finally become a full twitter addict and it has virtually replaced all of my other forms of social media.  I still use Facebook to keep up with friends, and I still participate in the other social sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn and a myriad of others, but Twitter has become the standard for my social activity.

Why do I love Twitter so much?  There are several reasons but those listed below are the 5 main reasons I think Twitter is ‘Da Bomb!  I encourage you to leave a comment on the reasons you love (or hate) Twitter.

5 Reasons why Twitter is my Favorite Social Media Site

1. Twitter Provides Instant Gratification – I live in America and I’m a very busy man, so my time is precious.  Anything that gives me immediate gratification in a short amount of time is high up on my list.  Twitter allows me to push out my company news, personal info, and interesting reading to millions of potential readers in a short, quick burst.   The reach is amazing and the response can be instant.  On the flipside, being able to ask a question of your tweeps and get the same immediate response is a very helpful benefit.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked a simple question and received immediate responses from my Tweeps who always seem to be willing to help.
2. Twitter has Immense, Targeted Reach – The great thing about social sites in general is the ability to reach out to people you might not ever meet otherwise.  Twitter takes this to another level by allowing you to target specific niches based on their interests.  This is a very powerful factor for marketing, and for personal interaction.   By regularly interacting with your Tweeps, who likely have the same interests as you do, you can network with people that will help you in business, or in your personal life, and get immediate results when you ask for help.  Other social sites allow some of the same ability, but in my opinion they don’t accomplish it as well as Twitter.
3. Twitter Gets You Connected with Local Resources - When I moved from Seattle to Denver I wanted to get to know the local SEO scene and connect with some of my colleagues in the industry.  I didn’t know who was good, who was not, or who to avoid.  I simple sent out a tweet that I was looking to meet up with some Denver SEO’s and get to know them.  Within hours I had responses from some of the better local SEO’s inviting me to Denver SEO meetups, drinks at the local pub, and offering help if needed.  Thanks to Twitter I have made connections with some great SEO’s in the Denver area such as Knox, Zach Katz, and JimKrienbrink.
4. Twitter is a Learning Tool - In my early days on Twitter I was just trying to figure out what was going on and how people were using this social platform.  I didn’t really feel comfortable putting out my info there until I knew the audience and the norms.  (BTW – This is my normal protocol for joining a new social site.)  So what did I do?  I followed a bunch of people in my industry who are known thought leaders and innovators, and I watched their Tweets to see what they are talking about.  There is an amazing amount of information on any topic that is being regularly circulated through the Tweet Stream, and if you are looking to learn about a specific subject you don’t need to do anything more than search for the subject and start following.  Favorite the items you like and you’ll soon build a library of reference material that you can return to again and again.
5. Twitter Search Offers Real Time Results from Real People – As opposed to Google’s search results, which are a snapshot of Google’s memory of the web, Twitter search results deliver real time info as it is being tweeted.  There is no waiting for Google to index a page, which means that you can find information as it happens, and get your results from people, which are much harder to manipulate than Google’s search results.
   Two examples:  1. Plane catches fire at Denver International Airport and passengers tweet the information to friends and family before the airport can release the info themeselves.   2. Google bombers manipulated the search results so that George Bush was listed as the first result when searching for the term “Miserable Failure”.  This was changed back in 2007, but the point remains – If SEO’s want to manipulate Google so that Obama shows up as “Wasting US Tax Dollars”, they can, but getting the same results in Twitter would be nearly impossible, due to the large amount of Obama supporters that can submit their own views on the President’s Economic policies.  This is one of the many reasons that Google should be very worried about the future implications of Twitter on their market share.

So those are the 5 Reasons that I love Twitter.  As with most of my posts, this was supposed to be short and sweet, and 900 words later we come to a close.

I welcome comments and would love to hear other reasons people love Twitter!

Social Media Marketing for Business

Social media marketing is no longer just a successful novelty, but a powerful medium that is changing the way the world communicates. Its power stems from crowd-sourced communities like wikis, blogs, online bookmarking and social voting sites, all of which allow the instant sharing of information between people with related interests.

Participants in these effervescent communities can expand their networks, advertise their company and/or skills, as well as receive recommendations and referrals from current and former clients. This is true because social networking sites aggregate web surfers who share common passions and views, resulting in a tight, reliable group of friends or colleagues who are connected by virtual means. Consequently, when a blogger or member from such groups makes positive comments on your company or endorses your statements, this generates “word of mouse” promotion for your business.

If so inclined, social media marketers can build their own fan base on social media sites. This can be accomplished by becoming an authority, opinion-leader, niche researcher, mentor or clever commenter. By building relationships in relevant, appropriate communities, marketers can attract more prospective customers, which will ultimately lead to more profits.

Note: Although social media marketing appears to be an easy solution, companies should stay away from building fake profiles to praise their firm (unless you’re doing this for clear humorous purposes), as this would likely to hurt the business’ reputation.

Online social networks are no longer a kids game

Social media sites are booming all around the Internet and do not apply solely to specific industries.

The current most active communities are those that allow shared content and information, e. g., Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, MySpace, Squidoo, Tagged and Friendster. Sites that let users bookmark links and/or vote for them, like Delicious, StumbleUpon and Digg are also popular.

Traffic to social media sites increased by an astounding 774% between 2006 and 2007, as reported by a comScore study. According to the Pew Internet Study, around 50 million U.S. residents read blogs and an huge number of adults are becoming more and more active in the social media universe.

See this Wikipedia entry for a comprehensive compilation of social media and networking communities.

Selecting your social billboards

The social media arena offers a number of opportunities to small business owners. Similar to several search engine marketing practices, social media marketing isn’t too expensive, but it does demand time and willingness to:

a) find sites

b) produce and track content

c) monitor hits and leads

d) improve tactics to achieve better results

e) rinse and repeat until you get where you want

The following is a list of effective actions to get you started. As you familiarize yourself with the social media world, you’ll find more ways to reach your desired audience. Make sure to offer valuable contributions instead of focusing purely at self-promotion, as social media marketing is most effective when the focus is on helping your group.

1. Join a group formed by people who are similar to your typical customers.

When studying the profiles, forums and posts of an online group, it is easy to learn what the members are interested in, where they live and other basic demographics. After spotting a group that represents your business’ desired clientele, you’ll be able to catch the members’ attention in various ways.

For example, Rob Spees runs an LED Sign business from his office in Denver, CO.  His company has a network of dealers located in 100 or more cities throughout the United States.  When the distributors have featured inventory on hand they post ads to the local Craigslist highlighting the featured items.  At any given time the distributors may be selling signs through Craigslist in approximately 100 cities throughout the country, making sure that his posts reference the company website.  This approach gets great results.  In an average month, Factory Direct LED will receive about 30,000 visitors to his website, primarily driven by Craigslist.  This is his main form of Internet advertising, followed by GoogleBase, OutdoorBillboard.com, OTX and a few others..

“It is a great advertising medium that allows us to reach customers across the country for free.  The only investment in our Craigslist advertising campaign is the time it takes to manage the listings.  When you consider that we get about 1,000 visitors a day for about one hour of work, the ROI is phenomenal,” said Spees.

2. Leave comments on popular blogs in your niche.

Never underestimate the power of the blogosphere. By mid-2007 almost 100 million blogs were being written, according to the popular blog search engine Technorati. Start reading and commenting on a few blogs that relate to your industry. You can find such blogs via Technorati or by visiting professional association and/or trade publication sites that will provide links, as well as site recommendations.

Remember to only leave comments that match the blog’s topic, style, audience and policies and be careful not to offend anyone or generate a negative reaction.

3. Invest in viral video creation.

Nowadays, web videos are an inexpensive, accessible and easy to distribute media. Create a short (2-3 minutes) video presenting or explaining your site, business, services or industry. When complete, upload your video to YouTube, MySpace or other video sharing sites and direct visitors to your homepage. When you link your videos to your profile pages on social bookmarking sites, you will build a small group of connections that search engines will be able detect. Increased site traffic is crucial to generating more business.

4. Sign up with one or more business-oriented networking sites.

This may or may not work for you and it will depend on the products/services you promote and how you develop relationships inside these communities. If you are a PR professional or consultant, professional networking sites can help you find clients. LinkedIn, Facebook, ZoomInfo and Xing are great places to start.

5. Start a blog.

The hardest thing about blogging is building an audience and finding the motivation to produce strong content on a regular basis (always linking to your firm’s site, naturally). Read this guide on how to launch a blog.

It may be best to try some of the above listed tactics before launching a blog unless you are already driving significant traffic to your site. Be sure to first familiarize yourself with the social media environment and then you will be more prepared to make the most out of your blog.

The last tip, and probably the most important one for getting started with social media marketing is to ADD VALUE to your community, rather than trying to shove it down someone’s throat.  You will find that if you give first, you will make friends, grow your network and build your brand.  It takes time but the investment is well worth the effort.

In social media communities, if you give you will receive.

In this post, Darren Rowse of Problogger gives us 3 relevant reasons to consider using Video on your Blog or your website. This is entirely Darren’s content, but I thought it was an excellent article and worth sharing.

Earlier in the week I wrote a post arguing that Text is King in the online space which caused some interesting discussion (both in the comments and on Twitter).

While I did try to qualify the post by saying that I do think video has its place and that it’ll continue to grow as a medium, particularly in some demographics, some people saw my post as me ‘writing off’ video.

So today I wanted to write a short post giving three reasons why I do believe in video and will continue to use it on my blogs. I won’t do it exclusively (ie I’ll primarily be investing my time into text) but I do believe that it’s a great compliment to the written form of communication that I focus upon.

1. Video Gives You a Voice and Face – perhaps the biggest thing that I noticed when I started posting videos here at ProBlogger was that I noticed readers interacting with me in a different way. Suddenly the emails I received had a more personal edge. Strangers started emailing me using a tone and language that was more familiar – as if they knew me. At first I didn’t realize what was happening – but after a while I realized that people felt like they ‘knew’ me. This happens with text as well – but video has a way of showing your personality. It shows your face and lets people hear your voice as it really is. This ‘personal’ aspect is powerful.
2. Video Connects with Different Personalities and Learning Styles – another thing that I noticed when I started using video was that I started getting comments on video posts from people I’d never heard of before. I started getting comments that would start with – ‘I’ve been reading your blog for 12 months but never commented before but just wanted to say…..’. We all have different learning styles and personalities – some of us learn better by hearing and seeing – while others by reading. Video appeals to a different crowd and can potentially widen your audience.
3. Video Opens Up Opportunities to Illustrate Certain Principles in Creative Ways – some things are very difficult to communicate in the written word. There are just some times when you need a tone of voice or body language to be able to ’show’ people what you mean. Video allows you to do this. It also opens up different ways of illustrating the principles you’re talking about. For example in my last video on First Impressions I started the video with a little sequence that illustrated what I went on to talk about – that sequence was commented upon by many and wouldn’t have been achievable with text (or at least not in the way I did it).

Should you write off video? No way! It is definitely a medium that I feel is worth experimenting with (and so far it seems 67% of you have been doing just that if our latest poll is anything to go by).

I guess all I was trying to say with my last post is that just because video is on the rise doesn’t mean that Text is dead. I think it is here to stay and will remain ‘king’ for quite some time yet!

Text, Video, Audio and other forms of communication online all have their place and can all be powerful. I find them especially powerful when you combine them rather than focus upon one – (but that’s partly just my style). Choosing your mediums and working out how much to focus upon them will probably come down to weighing up a number of factors including:

• Your topic
• Your audience and what mediums they’re most comfortable
• Your personality and how you best communicate
• Your skills in presenting, speaking, writing etc
• Your resources and access to cameras, bandwidth etc

OK – so that is enough of me – what do you think?

Darren Rowse is widely considered one of the top experts on blogging and his is one of a handful of blogs that I read daily.  If you have a blog and you have not visited ProBlogger, you are missing out on a valuable resource.

Barack Obama on Twitter

Social Media is changing the way that we communicate.  Much like email and the popularity of the Internet, Social Media sites are becoming the preferred way tocommunicate with friends and family, and are increasingly used for promoting brands, companies and other commercial interests.  They are not a fad and will not be going away anytime soon.

If you want evidence of the growing importance of Social Media sites, you need not look any further than the President Elect Barack Obama.  Everyone has heard that Obama did a great job of using new media and the Internet to promote his campaign ideas and reach new audiences.  A large part of his presidential election can be attributed to his ability to embrace and utilize social media to communicate with his followers in real time.  No delays, no media spin, just the info that Obama wanted you to see, delivered before, during and after the event – direct one-way communication with his followers.

Here is a list of the social media profiles for president elect Obama:

• Twitter – http://twitter.com/BarackObama
• Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/barackobama
• MySpace – http://www.myspace.com/barackobama
• LinkedIn – http://www.linkedin.com/in/barackobama
• YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/barackobama
• Flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/barackobamadotcom
• Friendfeed – http://friendfeed.com/barackobama

So what did this do for the Senator’s campaign?  Here are some of the statistics taken from a post by David Bullock’s site www.barack20.com.

“Per the story run by the Washington Post, this is a brief summary of the Obama Campaign online operations stats:

– 3 million online donors

- 6.5 million online donations adding up to more than $500 million.

– Of the 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in amounts of $100 or less.

– Upwards of 13 million addresses were captured

– More than 1 billion e-mails sent during the campaign

– Approximately 1 million mobile phone numbers collected

– 2 million profiles created on the My.BarackObama.com social network

– 5 million supporters on other social networking and multimedia sharing sites.

These are the fantastic results of the campaign, no doubt this will be a topic of conversation for years to come.”

So the question is:  Are you using Social Media to expand your network, connect with former colleagues and classmates, and look for new business opportunities?

If you have not yet jumped in, now is the time to get started.  Go on, create a profile and start connecting!

Mountain View Chevy

Auto Dealers are having trouble with sales in this economy.  Many dealerships are closing their doors.  But it’s not all doom and gloom.  There are some savvy Internet sales managers taking advantage of the downtime to create Internet Video Marketing campaigns that they hope will pay off big when the economy rebounds.  Early indications show that they are on to something.

One example of an automotive dealer that is excelling with the use of online video is Mtn. View Auto Group in Chattanoga Tennessee.  The Auto Group is currently running video marketing campaigns for both their Ford and Chevrolet stores.  Led by eCommerce Director Don Erwin, Mtn. View has embraced Online Video Marketing and they are dominating the local car market online.

By utilizing as many as 10 different video sharing sites, and embedding their videos on a separate blog, Don is able to make sure that their videos are getting maximum exposure, and targeting their local auto enthusiasts and car buyers through as many channels as possible.   Running a variety of campaigns allows them to provide more content to their viewers, and highlight specific vehicles that need to be moved off the lot.   Don’s team runs separate campaigns to target different vehicle buyers – one campaign spotlights used vehicles, another campaign focuses on trade-ins and yet a third is composed of new vehicle walk-arounds.

By using separate campaigns, they have been able to target specific vehicle niches, and the buyers associated with those markets.  Their videos show up in the search results for keywords related to thatsubject – I.E. someone searches for the term “Chattanooga Corvette” they will find Mtn. View Chevy’s video of a 2009 Corvette Z06 in the top 3 results – which means that the viewer of the video fits their target audience from a needs standpoint, as well as geographically, and in most cases this means that they are in the buying phase and looking for the local dealer.

Not only does this strategy lead to ranking for highly targeted search terms, but it drives more traffic to their website, and takes up more positions in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP’s).   The benefits of owning more spots in the SERP’s is that you create a larger online presence, you have more control over what is being said about you online, and you are able to push your competition down in the results.

By strategically targeting customers through online video, Mtn. View Auto Group has increased their overall Internet sales, gained a larger share of the online market, and reached more customers than ever before.  As they continue to work with online video, they are honing their processes and improving their effectiveness, and their reach begins to grow as well.  They are gaining valuable knowledge and experience, not to mention maket share, and when video marketing online begins to hit it’s prime, they will be well positioned to dominate, and take their sales to a new level.

While there aren’t a lot of businesses that are embracing online video marketing with the same vigor as Mtn. View Auto, this model can be adapted for almost any business, and now is the time to get in, while errors will be forgiven, there are fewer competitors, and the market is not yet saturated.

Any predictions about the full scope of online video in the future are pure speculation at this point, but the potential implications for business are huge, and when Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 Billion in October of 2006, it was a pretty good indication that the world’s leading search engine has plans to make it big.  Bundle that with the introduction of Universal Search, and it’s easy to see that online video marketing has a bright future.

There is a huge opportunity for those businesses that are early adopters of this increasingly powerful advertising medium.  Starting an Internet Video Marketing campaign now will pay off big dividends down the line.

Get in now or get left behind.