At ProspectMX, we try to do a variety of activities to counter balance the stress of working for one of the busiest web marketing companies around. And almost all of us have different things we do to relieve stress.

Some of us carry Nerf guns around the building and shoot darts at co-workers. Some of us wear t-shirts with funny one-liners that only geeks can enjoy.

And some of us, well… some of us smash pies in the face of our bosses.

Last week, as the culmination of a series of events and activities that raised over $1600 for March of Dimes, the co-founders of ProspectMX donned trash bags and had all of their employees gather outside during a lunch break for an especially sweet event.

Three lucky employees got to live the dream with an opportunity to “pie” Rory Wilfong, Steve Young, and Dave Conklin. And it was all done in the name of raising money for March of Dimes.

Luckily, we caught the event on film…

Rory, Steve, and Dave (along with COO John Fraunfelter, Sales Manager Jim Bradford and Customer Success Specialist Mike King of ProspectMX sister-company GetMyHomesValue.com) got pied by individuals who placed the highest bid on a pie during a week long silent auction fundraiser held for company employees in April. All funds raised during the silent auction were given to March of Dimes.

All proceeds raised and donated to the March of Dimes helps fund research and efforts to reduce premature births, birth defects, and infant mortality. To date, ProspectMX and GetMyHomesValue.com fundraisers have helped raise over $1600 to benefit the March for Babies campaign.

What Are Hoop Houses?

Hoop houses are low cost, easy to assemble greenhouses. To simply explain it, a hoop house is a greenhouse with a plastic roof draped over plastic piping. The hoop houses Esbenshade’s has sent to Haiti are pre-fabricated and customized at the company’s greenhouse.

According to the team at Esbenshade’s, nearly one million temporary homes are needed to shelter the homeless earthquake survivors in Haiti. To help, they have designed and constructed 14- x 16-foot “hoop houses” that can provide a temporary home for a family of up to five.

How Esbenshade’s Is Helping Haiti

Two hundred homes left a Florida port on Monday. When the houses arrived at the port of St. Marc in Haiti, a team of local YWAM personnel and construction volunteers from the Lancaster-area met the shipment. In total, YWAM plans on constructing 100 homes per acre – in total providing about 1,000 homes for Haiti’s homeless.

Esbenshade’s would greatly appreciate any financial contributions from the public to help continue the Hoop Houses for Haiti effort. The cost for one home (including materials and shipping) is around $300. Anyone in the Lancaster-area who is interested in volunteering their time and energy to assemble the hoop house materials in Litiz are also appreciated. Of course, volunteers are also in high demand in Haiti – for hoop house assembly and a variety of other causes.

Anyone looking for more information on Esbenshade’s Hoop Houses for Haiti program should call 717.626.7007 or visit Esbenshades.com.

The first internet marketing speaker we had the chance to sit down with was Michael Temple. Below is the transcript of our awesome conversation.

Q: Why did you get into Internet marketing?
A: I had a bit of a rough trip through the dot com bubble back in the late 90s and early 2000. I worked for a dot com that had a very good product and great concept, one of the few that was proven successful in the long term. Unfortunately we didn’t market very well and we ended up going under from lack of capital as so many other dot com companies did during that time. When the company failed like so many others my stock options became worthless and I lost a lot of money. I vowed I would learn everything I could about Internet marketing and the next company or project I was involved in would not make the same mistakes. I believe I have kept that promise I made to myself so long ago and I believe my clients all benefit everyday from my hard won experience.

Q: What types of projects and work do you do now?
A: The aspect of Internet marketing I find so fascinating is how much effect it has on almost every industry and company. I have never found a company that couldn’t benefit from doing some type of marketing online. Because of that philosophy I have been very fortunate and been able to work with companies in a variety of industries. I help clients in B2B set up lead generation online systems, eCommerce for B2C firms, and a variety of other projects like copywriting and search engine optimization. I am also a passionate entrepreneur so I spend a lot of time working on my own projects and web sites. I now have several different web site projects that earn an income for me and I am constantly tweaking them to make them better. Finally, I travel the country working as an Internet marketing speaker and training companies and associations how to use Internet marketing to build up their businesses.

Q: What do you think makes you different as an Internet marketing consultant?
A: Two things, first, I am not afraid to talk about and learn from my failures. I doubt there is a marketing person alive who doesn’t have failures. Unfortunately too many people are afraid to talk about or acknowledge those failures, which is unfortunate because I almost believe you learn more from them than your successes. My dot com failure back in early 2000 was big learning experience for me and while I certainly didn’t have control of the entire company I did still learn from that failure. Second, I am an entrepreneur out doing my own projects every day. The strategies and ideas I provide to my consulting and speaking clients are ideas I have tried with my own money and time. I didn’t just read about them on web site or in a book. I have actually tried and continue to use the strategies that are most effective. In addition, I am an adjunct professor of marketing at the University of Toledo and have the opportunity to do a lot of research and writing in my role with the University, which my clients get the advantage of.

Q: What great insight can you share with your readers?
A: Being successful in Internet marketing is about marketing – not fancy technology. I think one of the critical mistakes made during the dot com era was that people focused too much on creating marvelous technological advances without asking the fundamental question of who will buy this and why? I still see it today. Too many web developers focus on creating fantastic web sites that nobody ever visits. The technology is wonderful, but it is like building a 3D Imax Theatre on a dirt road, nobody will ever find it. You have to answer the fundamental marketing questions before you decide which technology tools to use. Technology is a tool, nothing more. It is a means to an end, not the end in itself.

Q: Can you give our readers a good tip on how to improve their marketing prowess on the web?
A: Yes, focus on the concept of direct marketing. Direct marketing involves writing powerful copy and persuading someone to take action. It is measurable and causes the proverbial cash register to ring. Remember nothing happens in business until somebody buys something so focus on the one area of marketing that has consistently produced money making results for decades and that is direct marketing tools and strategies.

About Michael
Michael Temple is an Internet marketing consultant, speaker, and entrepreneur. In addition to his consulting practice Michael also is a professor of marketing for University of Toledo teaching Internet and direct marketing to the next generation of marketers. He is the owner of several different businesses both on and off the web and is passionate about helping his clients achieve measurable and effective marketing results. If you need a consultant or a speaker for your next event you can learn more by visiting his web site at http://www.web2gold.com.

The League of Lancaster Bicyclists will be hosting a ride in Quarryville, PA to raise awareness for the local toy drive. The world headquarters of ProspectMX will serve as a toy drop-off destination. Good’s Store in Quarryville will also serve as a drop off location.

ProspectMX and the LLB need your help. The local non-profit is around 100 toys short from their toy goal for area children in need. If the organization doesn’t acquire its number of toys, THEN THE KIDS DON’T GET TOYS FOR CHRISTMAS!

How you can help:

1. Stop by one of the many area retailers that sells toys and pick one up.
2. Get a warm, fuzzy feeling inside as you purchase your toy.
3. Drive from area retailer to ProspectMX World Headquarters to drop your toy off.

Here’s ProspectMX’s address:

ProspectMX
221 Rohrerstown Road
Lancaster, PA 17603

Lancaster-Area Small Business Owners And Marketing Pros, Listen Up!

As an added bonus to you for helping ProspectMX make dreams come true this holiday season, stop by our offices and you can receive a FREE website consultation with one of our knowledgeable internet marketing consultants. Its the least we can do to show you how much we appreciate your generosity this holiday season.

For more information on the bike ride and toy collection, happening this Wednesday from 9am – 6pm, please give me a call at 717.406.1884. You can also hit me (@jonathanbentz) or Dave Conklin (@prospectmx) on Twitter and we’ll get you all the details.

Thanks in advance for your help this holiday season – we really appreciate it!

Allegedly, Tynt is a cool service for bloggers and other creators of written web content. Tynt provides a piece of Javascript that creates a backlink to your blog post or site when your content is copied and pasted by a third party into a content editor.

Below is an example of Tynt at work. Thanks to Patrick Altoft of Branded3 for noticing that the Daily Mail in the UK uses it, and blogging about it on BlogStorm. He wrote a great post that helped alert me to Tynt. His post was also so good that I impulsively scrolled my mouse over his text, hit “CTRL + C” on my keyboard, and hit “CTRL + V” on this blog post.

Tynt At Work

Tynt Insight monitors copy and paste behavior on billions of page loads per month across hundreds of thousands of web sites . Our data shows that up to 6% of page loads results in a user copying content! On a site that has 20 million page views per month – cont

Source: Add links when people cut and paste your content with Tynt

My Reaction To Tynt

Wait a second… where’s the link?!?!

When Tynt works its magic, the title of Patrick’s blog post on BlogStorm (Add links when people cut and paste your content with Tynt) should have been hyperlinked directly to his post. After all, I directly copied and pasted his content into my Wordpress editor – no Jedi mind tricks here.

So… where’s the link?

The Problem With Tynt

Turns out Tynt’s Javascript code inserts the link to your blog post the second someone copies and pastes your information into a WYSIWYG text editor.

In contrast, I use an HTML editor to create my blog posts, rendering Tynt’s magic useless. Also, because of the way Tynt’s script works, their attributions are very easy to remove. A novice web plagiarizer can easily take them out of a post once they have copied and pasted your content.

Tynt is promoted as a “provider of SEO benefits by generating more links back to your content that are search engine visible.” Read more: http://www.tynt.com/#ixzz0XnNAbeTL

See – even when HTTP code is used for link placement, it is still ineffective.

Is Tynt worth adding to your site to be an assistant to your link building efforts? Sure. But will it actually produce a quantity of links for you? No.

I get that bloggers and news sites are tired of having sites steal their content, and I 100% agree with your gripes. As an alternative to using Tynt for building links when your content is stolen, I would personally recommend Wordpress users check out Joost de Valk’s RSS Footer Plugin.

After reading over Michael Gray’s testing with this plugin, the RSS Footer Plugin seems much more effective at putting content bandits to work for your link building efforts than Tynt.

At ProspectMX, we are proud to say that we aren’t just another internet marketing company that can rank websites with no regard for business goals. While sending an increased amount of traffic to a client website is a goal in nearly every campaign we launch, that increase in traffic is worthless if it doesn’t lead to more conversions on a site.

One of our clients recently came to us with a great question after noticing that a keyword was converting on their site while also generating traffic to on more than one webpage:

“Which landing page converts the best on my site for this keyword?”

The video above is a Google Analytics tutorial showing how to find keyword conversion by landing page. Hope you find it helpful. Enjoy!

So why is this Google Analytics tutorial valuable?

Because the information this analytics data provides can dictate which pages should rank for a particular search query in order to maximize conversions.

In the video above, the webpage that is home to our SEO link building chart drives more traffic than our homepage for the search term “SEO link building.” However, when reviewing goal conversion data by keyword, our homepage generates a much higher percentage of web leads and proposal requests for that same keyword.

So, from an search engine rankings perspective, the page hosting the link building chart is considered more relevant for the term “SEO link building” than our homepage. The ProspectMX.com homepage, in contrast, seems to be the better choice for generating conversions for that same keyword.

Based on these findings, it would be my recommendation to the client that the higher converting page should have a stronger presence for the search term. Perhaps a link building campaign and a review of the on-page optimization could done for that page, with the goal of creating an indented search result of the higher converting page underneath the higher ranking, traffic-generating page.

Search result listings that also include indented listings generally acquire a higher percentage of clicks than surrounding results without an indent. In some studies, the no. 2 search result with an indent even gets more click-throughs than the no. 1 search without an indent.

While the rest of you tweet using your fancy iPhones, your massive TweetDecks, or your mini Twhirl’s and TwitterFox’s, I use the original method – “from web.” I realize this totally makes me a dinosaur, but I don’t care.

Anyway, for marketers, bloggers, and PR folks, one of the biggest benefits of using the actual Twitter website is the ability to be able to watch and respond to trending topics. Twitter always provides the 10 hottest topics people are tweeting about on the site in real time, in the right sidebar. The same topics are also listed right underneath the search box on the homepage of the site.

Over the last few months, many of the world’s biggest news stories and popular entertainment topics have come and gone from the rankings of Twitter Trends – District 9, Snow Leopard, and the Iran election to name a few. But over the last month, one particular trending topic has outlasted them all, and the subject may surprise you.

Jay-Z.

Jay-Z’s Tremendous Twitter Trending

During the month of September, Jay-Z seemed to be a trending topic on Twitter literally EVERYDAY. His reign as a trending topic began on June 5 when his single “Death Of Autotune” was released. An admitted Jay-Z fan, I was quite surprised to see my favorite rapper trending on my favorite microblog in June.

Jigga (never thought I would use the word “Jigga” in something I wrote at work) then showed up maybe once or twice during most of July and August as the single “Run This Town” and its video were released. Then his album leaked on August 31…

and then Rhapsody announced a Jay-Z twitter contest on September 2…
and then Roc Nation started a Jay-Z themed hashtag game on Sept. 9…
and then the Blueprint 3 was finally released on Sept. 11…

and people STILL continued to tweet about him through Sept. 24, when Jay-Z was on Oprah.

And through all of that time, Jay-Z remained one of the hottest topics on Twitter. Not the no. 1 topic, mind you, although he did wear the crown at some point on September 11. He did, however, remain enough of a topic to stay trending in the top 10. By the time his album hit stores, I had grown tired of seeing Jay in the list of Twitter trends… and I wasn’t alone.

In total, Jay-Z was a trending topic on Twitter 23 days between June 5 and the end of September, according to TweetStats.com (see photo above). Since September 24 of last year, that amount of time as a trending topic on Twitter puts Jay in the same company as Sarah Palin and Xmas, and only 3-days behind Michael Jackson.

Analysis Of Jay-Z’s Social Media Marketing Campaign

So, after all that attention on Twitter, did social media marketing mean big business for Jay-Z and the Blueprint 3? Sales figures seem to point to a resounding yes.

Despite the web leak 10 days in advance, the Blueprint 3 debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 and sold around 820,000 copies in its first two weeks of release. Only one album in 2009 has sold more copies through its first two weeks of release than the Blueprint 3 – Eminem’s Relapse.

On top of those totals, multiple Jay-Z tracks ranked in the top 10 digital downloads following the release of the Blueprint, and the song “Run This Town” peaked as high as no. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Did Jay-Z over saturate the Twitterverse as part of marketing for the Blueprint 3? Yes. Did the social media blitz pay off?

Yes.

To date, the Blueprint 3 has likely exceeded 1 million units sold in less than one month of release. In today’s music industry where traditional sales are far exceeded by downloads of the legal and illegal type, that total seems remarkable. The album should be considered a certified smash.

The amount of money Atlantic Records and Roc Nation were able to put behind the Blueprint 3 typically far exceeds the budgets many companies have to devote to strategic internet marketing.

However, the amount of buzz Twitter generated for Jay-Z and the Blueprint 3 is just the latest example of how social media can pay big dividends on the bottom line.

So, for those of you who still think social media marketing doesn’t apply to your business, I have to ask – why?

And also… can you really afford not to give it a try?

Unlike its competitors who always seem to fail at adapting their service offerings quickly enough to match the constantly evolving landscape of social media/networking, Facebook has now added the ability to tag friends in status updates.

The ability to tag friends in updates isn’t particularly fascinating, especially for those who “tweet” regularly. But Twitter-tagging is limited in terms of effectiveness for online reputation management (ORM).

Why? Because anyone who has a unique username (“unique” = not the same name as your birth name) in Twitter loses out on ORM-benefit because the link text is irrelevant. When I have a Twitter conversation with “@bhawk988″ (known to his friends and family as Kevin Doory), the link at the beginning of my Twitter message to him doesn’t help his profile rank for the search “Kevin Doory” in Google.

However, when tagging a friend in a Facebook status message, placing the “@” symbol in front of the person’s name creates an anchor texted, SEO-friendly link from your profile to your friend’s profile. It also creates a similar internal link to your Facebook page on your own Facebook wall. Check out these images below for an example of this concept at play:

How Facebook Tagging Can Help Protect Your Online Reputation

There is plenty of documentation out there stressing the importance of managing online reputation. Facebook tagging helps manage online reputation because a user profile earns a quality, authoritative, internal link with each tag in a Facebook status.

Anyone who was part of the Facebook username rush back in June and managed to secure their own name is likely concerned with their online reputation. Getting these internal links from across the Facebook universe to a Facebook profile naturally increases the authority of that profile. Those same links also improve the chances that a Facebook profile indexes in the Google search results for a related search term (like my Facebook profile for my name, for example).

Facebook tagging is likely to create a classic case of “he who has the most links wins” in search engine results for people and company names.

The implications of Facebook tagging don’t just end with the Google search results benefits, either. I don’t have confirmation on this, but look for Facebook tagging to begin to have an impact on internal searches within Facebook. If a searcher is looking for a certain “Jonathan Bentz” in Facebook, for example, the fact that I am tagged in more status messages than my co-Jonathan Bentz’s will likely cause me to rank higher than the others.

One of our company’s co-founders, Steve Young, has been named to Central Penn Business Journal’s (CPBJ) annual “Forty Under 40″ list for 2009.

Young is the second ProspectMX co-founder to earn this recognition from CPBJ. In 2006, Rory Wilfong was also honored with the same distinction.

While Young plays an important role within ProspectMX, he also manages the day-to-day operations of GetMyHomesValue.com. GetMyHomesValue was the first company Steve, Rory, and Dave established in 2003 that was a finalist for CPBJ’s Emerging Business of the Year Award in 2006 and named one of Inc. Magazine’s 500 fastest growing private companies in 2008.

Young was selected for this year’s Forty Under 40 for “his commitment to business growth, professional excellence and the community.”

Nominations for the Forty Under 40 program ended in late April, and a panel of four judges who have all won the award in the past selected the top 40. This is the 15th time CPBJ has honored the region’s top young business leaders.

Young and the other 39 recipients will be honored at an awards reception on October 23. The winners will also be featured in a special supplement to the October 30th edition of the Central Penn Business Journal.

Central Penn Business Journal is an award-winning business newspaper for Central Pennsylvania that provides more information, analysis and advice for business than any other local publication. The Journal has served the Central PA community for 23 years.

Congrats Steve!

Achieving top rankings for high volume, highly competitive keywords is the top goal of every SEO services campaign we start at ProspectMX. However, top ranking for competitive keywords doesn’t normally come without long term strategies, like on-going link building and social media campaigns.

That doesn’t mean internet marketing can’t be measured for success in the short term. In order to gauge short term success, traffic and conversion increases generated by long tail keywords should be more closely considered than improvements in rankings for high competition keywords.

What are long tail keywords? Why do they matter?

Long tail keywords are more specific queries that help searchers pinpoint what they are looking for. Searching for “fried chicken recipe in deep fryer” over “fried chicken” or “fried chicken recipe,” for example.

Like children, websites have to crawl before they can walk. Long tail keywords are the search terms that get organic search engine traffic off the ground. Generally speaking, long tail keywords are easier to achieve high rankings for in a short time period. If on-page search engine optimization is done properly, websites undergoing the first phases of SEO should see traffic generated quickly by long tail keywords while other internet marketing services work to improve rankings for highly competitive terms.

How Long Tail Searches Immediately Impact Organic Search Engine Traffic

Consider the following charts as evidence that long tail keywords can immediately have a major impact on quickly generating organic search engine traffic. The three charts below were taken from website analytics of non-paid searches from three ProspectMX clients. The non-paid search volume includes searches of a client’s target keyword terms PLUS all long tail keywords associated with that term from February 1 to May 31, 2009.

CASE A

CASE B

CASE C

In all three cases above, a significant spike in traffic was achieved in as little as one month thanks to on-page SEO that targets a highly competitive keyword as well as its affiliated long tail keywords. As link building was conducted over the course of 90 days, organic search traffic generally continued to increase for each client.

The Moral Of The Study

The end goal of every internet marketing or search engine optimization campaign should be top rankings for a high volume, highly competitive, revenue generating keyword. While the work is being done to top your competition for top keywords, however, there are a lot of highly targeted customers searching for exactly what they want.

Customers that enter a site through long tail keyword phrases are often some of a site’s highest converting. Long tail searchers know exactly what they’re looking for and are ready to buy.

Companies can establish themselves or their particular brand as the industry leader through ranking for a highly competitive term. While this can be achieved through a long term internet marketing plan, there’s a lot of money to be made as the top ranking result for multiple long tail terms.

Don’t lose sight of short term success by focusing too hard on a long term goal.

For more information on long tail keyword searches in your industry and how they can benefit your bottom line, consult with one of our experts.