Blog Action Day, a national movement focused this year on raising awareness for poverty, took place on October 15th. Our blog post that day described the challenges faced by people in Winnebago county concerning hunger and poverty. But raising awareness wasn't enough, we felt like there was more we could do, so E-Power Marketing decided to host a food drive.

Bags and boxes of food were collected, and though we lost our conference room to all of the donations, we were happy with the progress. In just three weeks, E-Power Marketing collected 880 pounds of food.

E-Power Marketing employees delivered the donations to the Emmanuel UCC food pantry on Tuesday Nov. 25. As part of its sponsorship, E-Power Marketing matched $1 for every pound of food donated. Along with the 880 pounds of food that was donated, Larry Stopa, President of E-Power Marketing, will present a check for $880 to the Emmanuel UCC food pantry.

E-Power Marketing would like to thank all those who donated to this cause, it was a great success! Though both the food drive and Blog Action Day are over for this year, E-Power Marketing continues to stay involved with our community. Stay tuned for future updates on what we're doing!

Photo Captions:
Above - E-Power Marketing President, Larry Stopa, happy with the Food Drive's success!

Left - Some of the donations, ready to get weighed and taken to the Emmanuel UCC food pantry.

Labels: E-Power News

People who contact E-Power Marketing often tell me that they have tried search engine optimization, but it did not work. From talking with them, I find they've used one or more of these common SEO techniques that quite simply, do not work. If your search visibility depends on these techniques, I strongly recommend that you stop wasting your time and money on them. There are many effective search engine marketing agencies you can use who will establish search visibility and search referral traffic to your site, so why waste your time with these?

Submit to Search Engines

There is no point in submitting your Web site's URLs to search engines. Search engines will crawl your Web site if there are links pointing to it. If you have no links pointing to your site, then you will have no search visibility no matter how often you submit to search engines.

Rely on Meta-Keywords

For many years now, search engines have ignored meta-keywords. Long ago, a key SEO technique was to stuff keywords into meta-keywords. This worked when Bill Clinton was President. Not today. Yet I still see new sites that depend on meta-keywords to develop search visibility.

Free or Cheap Means No Results

It is true you get what you pay for. Free or cheap submissions to search engines have no impact. Cheap link building will not establish long-term search visibility. Effective search engine marketing is highly valuable to business. It is brutally competitive because many know how to do it well. Someone who understands the complex art and science of Search Engine Optimization usually has a good idea how to price services. Yes, there can be a huge difference between the fees of qualified search engine marketers. Nonetheless, a competent search optimizer will charge more than $500 a year. If that is your budget, don't expect miracles.

Scams

The search engine marketing community has long been plagued with unscrupulous people seeking to take your money and run. That has not changed. Search engine marketing is valuable for business and few decision-makers understand how it works, making SEM fertile ground for scam artists.

Consider this real example. A rep from a "search engine" you never heard of calls you and asks you to look at your traffic report. He notes that his "search engine" is driving nearly as much traffic as Google. He offers to sell you "Sponsored Listings" to drive even more traffic to your Web site. If you check traffic more than four months previous to the call, you won't find any traffic from this "search engine." That is because this "search engine" manufactured phony traffic to your Web site in recent months to set you up. Hang up the phone immediately. This "search engine" has been running this scam for several years. Apparently there are plenty of suckers who buy into this scam. Don't expect any real traffic.

Check out this lawsuit filed by the Washington state Attorney General. Beware of unsolicited high-pressure telemarketers offering Search Engine Optimization.

Respectable search marketing agencies very likely could use telemarketers. Simply make sure that you can call them back. And check them out before giving them your credit card order.

The Bottom Line

Before hiring an SEO agency, check them out. Confirm they have a solid methodology and a record of success. Ask for references and call them. If the SEO agency does anything listed in this Blog post, than just don't choose them.

It's up to you to be careful with your company's online presence. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. SEM is not a magic wand. It takes time and hard work to get results. Don't allow yourself to fall for the quick fix or the cheap scheme. In the end, you'll just get burned.

Labels: Organic SEO

Holiday Season 2008 ? What can you expect?

The holiday season is fast approaching, and in the current economy, it may seem even more stressful than usual. A recent study released by the Mediamark Research & Intelligence company states that more than 62 million Americans will start their holiday shopping before Thanksgiving. That means that 1 in 3 shoppers will begin making Holiday purchases this month. Will those shoppers be buying from you? According to results of the 2008 eHoliday Study, more than half of online retailers expect their holiday sales to increase at least fifteen percent over last year. Can you say the same?

The Internet has gone from being a luxury to the holiday shopper, to becoming a necessity. Referencing the 2008 Holiday Consumer Spending Survey, the number of people buying gifts online is expected to remain steady, and consumers will be dependent on the Internet like never before. As the survey stated, ?the Internet will influence 33.6 percent of holiday purchases, up from 30.2 percent last year and 28.9 percent in 2006.? Consumers are using the Internet to compare prices on hot gifts, explore stores, come up with gift ideas, and make some of their holiday purchases from the comfort of their own homes.

In a study completed by Shop.org, consumers acknowledged that it was the convenience of 24-hour shopping that is one of the main reasons why they choose to buy online. Shoppers? other top reasons for buying online instead of in stores include ?not wanting to fight crowds? (41.1%), ?easy price comparisons? (36.4%), and ?free shipping? (33.3%). Also, nearly one in four shoppers says they are spending more online due to high gas prices, more than double the number which said the same last year. So there will be plenty of consumers online, will they find you?

The Search Crowds

It is certainly no secret that search engine use has been on the rise since their inception. According to a recent report by PEW Internet, ?The percentage of Internet users who use search engines on a typical day has been steadily rising from about one-third of all users in 2002, to a new high of just under one-half (49%).?

Avid searchers are more likely to be the consumers you want, because they buy. A recent comScore study, illustrates the correlation between how much someone searches and how much they spend. The "Heavy searchers" group makes up just 16%of the population online, but spends a robust 35% of total dollars online. The next group, "Medium searchers,? comprises 23% of the population online and spends a significant 34 percent of total online dollars. So what does this mean for you? If your company wants to do well in the online retail market, you need to position yourself in front of the shoppers, by using the tools they use, search engines.

How to reach them?

Search Engine Marketing is one of the most popular means of staying competitive this holiday season. The Shop.org study offers an insight into what SEM services online retailers are utilizing. 42.6% of the online retailers who participated in this survey said they were adding product videos. 32.7% were adding customer reviews and 25% said they were creating Facebook pages to promote their sites. To appeal to price-conscious customers, 27.1% said they were adding clearance sale pages to their sites, Shop.org said. Most of the online retailers who participate in the survey said they also planned to offer free shipping to attract customers, but 21.3% of them said they would raise the minimum purchase requirement this year.

You know your customers are online, and you know they?ll be using the internet and search engines this holiday season, the question is, will they find you? Search Engine Marketing will prove to be a powerful means for getting the online business your company wants, especially in the upcoming months. Though SEM is a long term strategy for getting high search results, targeted traffic, and measurable ROI, there is still time to implement some changes that could benefit your company this holiday season. Don?t lose your customers to the competition. Step up your SEM campaign now!

Labels: Link Building, Organic SEO, PPC Advertising, Social Marketing

Time. Something we all wish we had more of. There are never enough hours in the day. As in all good things, time is a main attribute needed in a search engine optimization program. Without time, an SEO campaign cannot fully develop and flourish. Therefore you need to give an SEO program time before seeing results. An SEO campaign is not a quick fix for traffic problems. It is a long term project that needs to be given time to kick in, take hold, and yield results. You need to understand the process of Search Engine Optimization, and give your SEO campaign an adequate amount of time before jumping to conclusions on whether it was successful or not.

Believe me; we understand you need proof that the budget you got approved for a Search Engine Optimization program is or will deliver results, especially in these economic times. However, that is not done with a snap of the fingers. Search Engine Optimization is an ever changing, interactive field, and when an SEO campaign begins, it takes time to really take effect for a Web site. That's not to say that optimization is done and then your SEO team will sit idly by to see if what they did works. Often times, steady progress on optimization services are what will gain the most results for you. Time needs to be a driving force in any organic search engine optimization program. Use caution if another search marketing company tells you otherwise.

With a SEO campaign, you are committing to a long term program. The time it takes for an organic search engine optimization program to fully work to its capacity depends on many factors. Not only is your Web site's history, inbound links, content, interactivity, etc. factored into success, but the search engines themselves require time as well.

If new or revised content was added to your Web site or technical issues hindered the ability of search engines to properly crawl your Web site have now been corrected, you must now allow the search engines themselves time to properly crawl and index your newly optimized Web site. Typically the search engines crawl Web sites within a few weeks, however depending on the depth of your Web sites original state; this could take up to 2 ? 3 months.

Now, let's say you launched a strategic linking or a Social Media Marketing program with your SEO campaign. You must provide time for the search engines to crawl all those Web sites you now have now gained links with. This could take a few months before your Web site is properly credited with popularity from those new inbound links.

Lastly and most importantly, Google rewards trust. More than anything, history and trust are by far some of the largest factors in Google's search positioning algorithm. You cannot gain trust quickly. It takes time.

Overall, you need to allow your search engine optimization program at least 6 months to begin performing at the level it can perform in the long-term. A year is a much better comparison. The search engines have compiled their algorithms in this manner to prevent quick, spam techniques from being successful. A trusted Web site provides more to the search engine's ultimate customer, the end user.

Labels: Organic SEO, SEM Back to Basics

Sparked by Blog Action Day, on October 15, 2008, E-Power posted our concerns about Hunger in Winnebago County. We encouraged all bloggers in the area to get involved with the fight to end poverty in the area and stated that we would be sponsoring a food drive to benefit Emmanuel United Church of Christ.

E-Power Marketing will be collecting nonperishable food items to be donated to the Emmanuel United Church of Christ food pantry in Oshkosh November 3rd through the 18th, as well as making a monetary donation of $1 for every pound of food donated, up to $1,000.

Food donations will be collected at the E-Power offices located at 111 N. Main St, Suite 405 in the US Bank building during normal business hours from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Donors may also contact E-Power to have their items picked up throughout the week.

Below is a list of items most in need for the upcoming season:

• Cereal


• Canned Fruit


• Canned Pasta Meals (ravioli, spaghetti o's, etc.)


• Spaghetti Sauce


• Canned Vegetables


• Canned Soup


• Any non-perishable items in general will be greatly appreciated!

Help E-Power shell out $1,000 towards a good cause, and remember every little bit helps!

Please contact - info@epowermark.com for more information on how you can help.

Labels: E-Power News