Getting Rid of Visual Deals in your Browsing

visualdeals

This is a really good hack if you ask me. Nobody sees it coming, then you just find yourself in a pickle seeing all these visual deals in front of you.

Thank you to http://www.coolcatteacher.com/videos/get-rid-visual-deals-popup-comes-pinterest/ for the straight forward article how to take it off.

And it’s simple. Get rid of the Pinterest Extension you have on your Chrome and you’re back to normal.

This may go to other browsers as well but I am not sure yet. But good thing to keep in mind, Pinterest = Visual Deals. I say no to Visual Deals and no to the Pinterest plugins.

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What WhatsApp, Facebook Acquisition Taught Me

whatsapp facebook acquisition

This was news, really big news. It doesn’t affect me in any way but it does give the people behind the brands the spotlight which then imparts really good sense for people like me.

As a Ronin in the SEO/SEM industry it is likely that I base my tactics on intuition of the things I read, and the statistics I study. What does work? and what does not.

$16B is such a huge amount and a lot of people are trying to understand why a company like Facebook would go to this extreme in acquiring a mobile messaging app. As with others who are still in the mix of understanding the scenario, I chose to focus on what I can get from it.

Be Patient and Believe

We all are doing what we can in life and not everyday we get what we want. What’s important is that we do not stop and we can continue to move forward to reaching our goals until we get there. As a very good friend reminded me that “whenever things don’t go your way, always remember that a Rolce Royce takes 6 month to build while a Toyota just takes 13 hours”

As long as we don’t give up, there may always be that shining light at the end of our tunnels. WhatsApp co-found Brian Acton really proved that. Being shun down by 2 of the biggest players in the industry Facebook and Twitter 4 years ago, he cashes out with 16x the valuation of Facebook on their IPO.

Mobile is here, and is here to stay

This tells me that mobile app development is here to stay and I need to identify the things I would need to have in order to manage it. As a developer, it has been in my bucket list to program mobile apps for iOS.

Apps can change the way people think and this is what WhatsApp tells me.

Global Communication is starting to make noise

WhatsApp has 465 million subscribers around the world and continues to grow. When you plan something similar to the age of websites before the perspective was local to global, years after it went back to global to local.  For Apps, it has been making its mark in the local to global perspective whereby location and globalization is inevitable and should be considered in every business model an app is designed for.

last but not the least

Value yourself correctly

Who would imagine that there would be bigger purchases than instagram of $1B and when Facebook turned public also declared $1B valuation. These were the success stories we target. I only target businesses I set up to sell for $100M the most, but then again, WhatsApp broke that rule and tells me that anything is possible and that given the right qualifications, they valuated the engagement to 16x the record holders established themselves.

Inspiring yet a big challenge. Now back to the GRIND!

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2013 Year in Review for Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing 2013

As I look back in the past year on how I have observed and implemented digital marketing. There are just a few points that really stand out that I think are worth mentioning.

Branding is Key

This is the first and foremost important trend that I have seen and implemented which has really made huge returns in both rankings and website effectiveness in the last year.

People are more and more inclined to brands which is most common in our non-digital industry. As digital progresses, branding is definitely something to look out for.

On how you would brand yourselves, that’s the question of the ages and for sure in this line of industry we can definitely build on something that would benefit your business long term. Branding is multifaceted and perhaps all the next topics are correlated with branding as a means of building digital mark.

Useable Content

Content as we term it as King in the past years still is. But right now, it is more on creating useable content that your readers will benefit from. Create something that someone will read and be thankful, throw in some keywords and then distribute to your niche channel and see the results!

What you do and how you do it is something that you need your thinking caps on. But with the latest Google Updates Hummingbird and so on, more and more of the SERPs are relating to what the users are trying to search for than with keywords that they are typing.

Useable Content is the new King!

Social Relevance

Social has moved mountains this 2013 and I foresee a continuous growth in the power of social for businesses may it be B2C or B2B.

Branding is all about sending the right message out there, being talked about the right way and social is one of the keys to a successful branding campaign. I do see the growth of Facebook PPC, and paid posts in the coming year.

Social networks have continued to grow and it’s segmentation just signifies how people are adjusting and coping with what’s available to a point on which one would suit them better. We have seen Vine, Instagram, Twitter, and even sites like Etsy put a mark in the social realm.

The Boom of APPS!

Well mobile apps has been in the industry in the last 3 years or so but 2013 shows a good trend that APPS are here and they are here to stay.

Apps go from your social game to industry specification mobile applications that can be useful. All websites are trending to have their own app in its own way. More so, websites have evolved to become responsive in design so to appeal to the mobile market.

Mobile will continue to grow and Apps should always be in the equation in setting up an effective branding campaign.

Web UI/UX and Engagement

The evolution of the web simply gives more emphasis on how important a website is to its customer. More and more people are starting to use the net and more and more websites are popping up.

Does your website give off the right vibe, and convert as you intend it to be? This is a known fact that big brands have been working on from years on then but 2013 just gives more boost on how important a visitor and how can you ensure its conversion.

That sums up my look back for 2013, I simply see each avenue continue to grow and increase its relevance in every market out there. Online Branding is definitely something to look into more deeper and how we can use what is available and what is more accepted in order to give our brand that right boost in the digital realm. Looking forward to huge leaps in digital marketing this 2014!

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Getting Rid of WordPress SPAM Comments

One of the most common things that well crawled WordPress sites have are tons and tons of SPAM comments to a point that you won’t be able to identify which ones are legitimate and which ones aren’t or it’s too troublesome to identify the legit ones over the hundreds of spams.

I know there have been a lot of articles already written about it but here’s my take on it.

Ask yourself if you can manage the comments?

Comments are for engagement, discussions, and relative opinions, how much time do you have to handle the comments. If you can moderate your comments daily then you’ll be fine.

Otherwise you might probably consider known methods in fighting wordpress spam.

Akismet

Akismet

Definitely something that is available since the beginning of time. And by default comes with every WordPress installation. The only cons with Akismet is that it’s a paid plugin. But otherwise if you have the money to spend which isn’t really much, having Akismet is a good first line of defense.

recaptcha

reCaptcha

The next best thing would be to use reCaptcha in your comments area.

facebook

Facebook Comments

The main idea of commenting is to generate a discussion but spam bots are trying to ruin that by dropping links, adverts and what not. The popularity of Facebook came to since most of the people that you would engage in is tied in with a name, a real person that you communicate with. This is what the trend of blog comments are becoming since it is easier to manage and have a lot less spam (it’s an effort to do so and it’s easy to eradicate)

Though not all markets have Facebook but this is applicable to most.

Last but not the least…

Wordpress

Use WordPress native Settings

This came from a series of research and discussion until it finally made sense. As we want people to feel free to leave us a message and engage on a discussion with our posts, the internet is evolving to be a really social environment and if you really want to leave a legitimate comment on a post that you feel your opinion should be heard, then you would want yourself to be known.

Turn on the settings that Only Registered Users can comment on your WordPress settings.

WordPress is a very powerful CMS in the industry today and most of us do love how easy it is to manage and design it. For marketers alike, I prefer to use WordPress over any other CMS out in the market.

Happy new year everyone!

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How Digital and Social Can Influence the Success of your New Business

To start off with the article, let’s define some key information that we will refer to in the whole document.

Local business – literally any physical store, shop, or any form of business that has a physical presence.

Digital and Social Factors

  • Website
  • Facebook Page
  • Twitter
  • Other relevant social media

As an aspiring entrepreneur living within in the search marketing industry I have made it a point to be very observant on how the industry is flowing and how things work in order to perspective on what is happening and be able to make smart choices in the future when needed.

Recently I have witnessed the rise and fall of 2 businesses in which each has its similarities, and based on their differences you can compare how each one did in the industry.

Commonalities

  • Both business are in the fitness industry
  • Was owned and maintained by a very credible individual in their respective industries on fitness
  • Both established a location in the metro (rents are much higher as with people traffic)

Differences

  • One has a website, the other didn’t
  • One pursued social (Facebook), the other as well but in smaller engagements

Ofcourse each business has it’s own unique target markets even though both are in the fitness industry and each of their chosen field have a wide range of potential customers.

In the span of 12-18 months both businesses did their thing and promoted as how they would, focusing on their talents and positives. Each business did have their initial clientele and each of which did what they do best.

As you would note in their commonalities and differences, one business placed time in doing digital marketing and giving themselves an online marketing brand that people would be gearing towards to.

They started by setting up a clean looking website with information about the business, published relevant articles in their blog, and also placed contact forms for entertaining people inquiries.

Another key factor that they put focus into was making sure people engaged in their social presence. In other words they placed more focus on their Facebook publishing relevant and interesting posts regularly and keeping their followers engaged.

After about 18 months, I heard that the business who just did what a traditional business would do is now offering to sell their business or close down completely. I know that this is negative news on their part but this also signifies the relevance of new factors that people usually don’t mind when starting a business.

I simply must conclude that on both occasions one thing was of constant effect, the business that had more online presence had more engagement, more inquiries, and more customers over time.

Social is one way of sending a message to your customers, your prospective customers and the friends of your prospective customers. We need not underestimate how it values at this point of age as its something that can now influence the success of your newly opened local business.

It is best that you start it now than never, you will never understand how it will make a difference in the next 3-5 years.

When you have constant updates, people know that you care for the business and its customers, people feel important and it empowers your growing community. Social may not just be the way, but it is definitely something not to consider in starting your business.

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Milestone Alert! – Rank 1-2 Google.com.au

Part of the things that we will be publishing would be milestone alerts or in other words verification!

In the industry of internet marketing, it’s very easy to say that this method works and these are the things that you need to do and these are not. I have been working a brand for a while now and one of the keywords that it has been targeting was Skincare Products for the Australia local search engine (Google.com.au)

In the beginning it was a hell of a lot of keywords which still are by the way, but the most general and highly competed one was for the keyword Skincare Products. We simply wanted to associate the brand as your go-to for skincare products as it is all organic and is very effective.

Today as we did our usual rank check we found that we have made a great achievement. Google.com.au – Rank #1 on our Moz Rank Checker and number 2 on the live results though I think it’s because of the current location I am in which is not in Australia.

Pevonia Organic Skincare Products

 

It’s all in the spirit of hard work, real assessment and legitimate search engine marketing practices! Salute!

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To Meta Description or Not

Matt Cutts recently released statement on how to decide whether to put a meta description tag on all pages or not. Click here for the article.

I have been in the industry for a while now, and needless to say that our meta description is quite the 2 seconder that we need to sell our pages. Whenever you come up in the results, it’s that little space that Google gives you to promote whatever you want to in the page that was indexed and shown in the SERP (search engine ranking page)

organic-skincare

So for me it really depends. An initial assessment of a specific business website knowing all of its pages can lead to knowing if creating a meta description for all the pages be necessary.

A key process is to identify the potential of the pages that your website has and will have. As you valuate each page, you would then be able to classify the page’s part in your business model.

It is but normal to be in the situation where you will need to audit a full functional website already and at some cases implement the optimization for each page to target their keywords. There is no 1 page that can target all the keywords that a website wants or potentially can. So in the process, you will need to do some keyword matching understanding the nature of your pages and the keywords that it can target.

After matching each page with the keywords you want it to target, you should then run through all the pages again with the question of “Would this page qualify as an effective landing page?”. Whenever the answer is YES – then you should start creating a unique meta description for that page.

Another method would be working backwards. Look at your Analytics and see which are your most effective landing pages or in other words your entrance pages. How are people coming to see your website and where do they land the most. These are your most effective landing pages which you will need now to make sure that it is optimized well for your business model. These pages surely need unique meta description.

In conclusion, if you are to Meta – Meta it correctly or NOT Meta at all! 🙂

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Jobs the Movie

gty_steve_jobs2__dm_111006_wg

Not sure how to start this post but this is supposed to be my review or reaction to the recent Jobs (or Steve Jobs) movie starring Ashton or I might say Chris Kutcher.

I am coming from a real fan’s stand point where #stevejobsismyhero and have probably watched Pirates of Silicon Valley, as well as read his book (biography).

After watching the movie my initial reaction was, is that it? What about NEXT, what about his new wife, what about how he came up with the iPhone? Is there a sequel?

This really isn’t intended to put too much heat on the most recent movie but just a reaction, a blog. At any rate, I did expect more from the movie, more from Ashton as well. There were moments that are brilliant, some others just plain “That 70’s Show” feel.

I would give the movie a 6/10 rating just because it is a Steve Jobs film. His ways in getting to his dream, and not stopping in pursuing what he deems is his is very brilliant in itself.

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Turning Off Autocorrect on Skype

Has Skype been giving you problems lately? So you are typing in a multi-language conversation and suddenly words get changed and now it appears wrong. The thought is there but for sure it’s auto spelled incoorrectly.

Most likely you tried to turn this off but you couldn’t find how so you just gave up. It happened to me, and finally I found the right place to turn this off.

Go to EDIT >> SPELLING AND GRAMMAR

Then un-check all the options you want off.

Easy right?! But who figured it was on the EDIT menu and not on the main preferences!

Check out the official Skype post here

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