The title is of course, a joke, but one that illustrates a very good point for the audience- the readers of the web content you are attempting to produce are not only friendly robots- the spiders, the crawlers, etc. but ultimately fellow human beings who are overwhelmingly fluent English speakers.

Articles like this are examples of poor subject/verb agreement obvious to any high school graduate in the United States, and are frequently the result of a lack of proofreading by a native speaker.

Many articles are auto-generated based on past publications, resulting in inconsistent tense usage, and strangely poetic lines such as “…just to make it clear, I am in full senses and not in a mood to shoot myself in the foot.”  To the savvy web user or digital native, bizarre phrases and incorrect usage of English are dead giveaways, and the current equivalent of latin filler, an immediate turnoff to the viewer.

The inherent message behind poorly written copy is that those who comprehend the language are not the intended audience, and should avoid the page, thus lowering any hope of increased traffic.  Though bad copy may have all the correct keywords when scanned by a menial machine, when read by a highly complicated, literate human, the truth will out, as they say.

For quality traffic from actual humans, it makes more sense to hire a local, literate firm to represent you in a manner which speaks to your customers and the crawlers.  Insert hyperlinked keywords here.

Is there a reason why food resources are so difficult to distribute equitably during this economic downturn? How can the same the same tools used for internet marketing in Portland and Seattle be used to help alleviate some of the problems facing our part of the world? Non-profits are not the only ones who should address the shameful condition of hunger that exists in the Pacific Northwest. Non-profits use internet marketing tools in Portland and Seattle to get the message across. Here’s a sample from the Neighborhood Notes site:

With Portland’s ubiquitous farmers markets, a committed locavore “foodie” movement, and the great luck of being located in the Willamette Valley—home to some of the most fertile soil on the planet—how could the Rose City possibly face any food security issues? But the facts don’t lie. According to the Multnomah Food Action Plan, adopted by the County Board of Commissioners in January 2011, there are 36,000 people in the county who access emergency food boxes each month. Over half of county adults are overweight or obese. Nearly one-third of county children rely on food assistance programs.

Portland faces the same food security issues as the rest of the country, even the rest of the world. However, most people aren’t aware that it doesn’t really cost all that much to end world hunger, depending on your perspective.

What we are highlighting here is – even in the non-profit sector – sites that support charities, fundraisers and etcetera still gain overwhelming exposure by implementing internet marketing in Portland.

?The SMT is ready to assist your non-profit or for profit company with internet marketing targeted for Portland and Seattle.

As this site predicted back in 2007, Knol – Google’s dofollow answer to Wikipedia, and a great resource for SEOs looking to juice backlinks – is officially being scrapped. Google announced that Knol will be discontinued April 30, 2012.

True to its announcement, the home page for Knol now sports a closure message.

Transitioning all of your existing Knols to an existing Wordpress.com account is fairly easy, and it will keep all of your backlinks intact. We followed the instructions and the migration was seamless with no link loss (though domain age is an issue).

Part of a general “spring cleaning” of out-dated, ill-fated and poorly conceived products, Knol is joined by Gears, Wave and Friend Connect, to name just a few.

At this time there is no word on why Google, and its partners Solvitor and Crowd Favorite (a web design and WordPress theme developer) choose to utilize WordPress for Annotum, a web-based authoring, publishing platform instead of going with Google-owned Blogger…

But, if this snapshot of Solvitor-founder and CEO’s (Carl Leubsdorf) Google Knol is any indicator, we can probably expect some, ummm, briany stuff from the new endeavor.

If, just for kicks, you’d like to watch the new ensemble’s hits and misses as they develop, please check out Solvitor’s own Annotum in development. It’s great reading.

WordPress is, of course, thrilled to be part of the next stage of Google’s experiment. But again, Why WordPress and not Blogger, Google? Perhaps this does not bode well for Blogger? Or maybe this is Google’s way of acknowledging  Blogger’s limitations? This will no doubt fan the flames of the rumors last year that Blogger itself may get the axe.

More great reading here: http://ojasdeliverable.blogspot.com/2011/12/test-knol-number-four.html and here http://groups.google.com/group/annotum?pli=1 and here http://ojas-deliverable-non-annotum.annotum.net/2011/12/test-knol-number-four-gkgrwihhcv7j-4/

Fascinating Annotum, Carl

Are you prepared to take advantage of an improved housing market? Recent stats point to a slow recovery in the housing market in the Pacific Northwest and other regions of the country. Do you have the presence needed on the internet to make your company stand out?  If internet marketing in Portland and Seattle is part of your overall marketing plan the potential for increased market share may be linked to an  improved housing market.

This ran recently at Bloomberg:

Contracts to Purchase Existing U.S. Homes Hold Near 19-Month High: Economy

Jan. 25 (Bloomberg) — Thomas Lee, chief U.S. equity strategist at JPMorgan Chase & Co., talks about investment strategy and the outlook for U.S. stocks. Lee speaks with Betty Liu and Dominic Chu on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop.” Brian Battle of Performance Trust Capital Partners also speaks. (Source: Bloomberg)

The number of Americans signing contracts to buy previously owned homes in December held near a 19-month high, showing the stabilization in the market that began in late 2011 will extend into the new year.

The index of pending home sales decreased 3.5 percent last month after jumping a combined 18 percent in October and November, figures from the National Association of Realtors showed today in Washington. It was the best back-to-back reading since a buyer tax credit boosted demand in early 2010.

“We’ve had a clear turn toward positive momentum in the housing market,” Aaron Smith, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics Inc. inWest Chester, Pennsylvania, and the third most accurate forecaster of pending home sales. “Lower unemployment and higher confidence, coupled with record low mortgage rates, are coalescing to spur increased buying.”

The ability of the market to sustain gains in the absence of government incentives may mean housing has stopped weighing on growth. President Barack Obama yesterday proposed a plan aimed at reducing monthly mortgage payments, which would help combat a drop in home prices that Federal Reserve policy makers say is impeding the world’s largest economy.

Central bankers said today that they’ll keep their benchmark interest rate low until at least late 2014 to help stoke the economy.

Fed Statement

“While indicators point to some further improvement in overall labor market conditions, the unemployment rate remains elevated,” the Fed said in its statement. “Household spending has continued to advance, but growth in business fixed investment has slowed, and the housing sector remains depressed.”

Get prepared to position your internet marketing in Portland and Seattle with SEO from The SMT. You’ve held on this long so don’t miss out on the opportunity.

The most common question I get about SEO in Portland is actually part statement; “That sounds easy, why wouldn’t I just do it myself?”.  First, let’s unpack that sentence.

SEO is a highly competitive, extremely technical industry, and usually the reason that anyone thinks it’s not difficult is because it’s been explained in only the most rudimentary of terms.  To put it simply, the web as we know it is expanding at such an incredible rate that quantification is almost impossible, literally exploding with new forms of information, and more importantly, new forms of connection between sets of data.

Staying current with all the new applications, rubrics, and competencies is already a field of enormous depth, compounded by the fact that usually about half of it will be completely irrelevant by the time this article is published.  Knowing what to know is always the first job, and applying that knowledge is where the real work begins.

Getting a site not only recognized but popular is the full-time work of dedicated programmers, networkers, and content generators. Which methods are best for gaining his recognition and popularity is vital to making a site well ranking not only in the short term, but the long haul as well.  An overarching vision of the future of the Web, and the future of marketing is necessary to fulfill the long term goals of your site, all while producing relevant content which draws traffic every day.  Furthermore, strategies fall flat, servers die, and sometimes, the traffic just doesn’t happen.  Unless you are in the market for an all encompassing, social-life killing, unimpressive hobby, it just makes more sense to leave it to the pros, so that you can do the thing you actually want to publicize, as opposed to publicizing the thing you want to do.

Have you seen the commercials for Microsoft’s new Search Engine, Bing? You will.Bing is Microsoft’s latest effort to take a chunk of the search engine market share away from Google.

Frankly, it is going to be tough for Bing to woo searchers to abandon Google.

Microsoft Corp. released the redesigned search site on June 3 (two days ago) in the hopes it will lure more surfers than Live Search and MSN Search were able to tempt.

For the past five or so years, Microsoft has been stuck in third place behind Google and Yahoo in search engine popularity. (Remember, this is why Microsoft tried taking over Yahoo last year.)

The first thing you’ll notice is that Bing lists “related search terms” on the left (Google displays this on the bottom), which is much more accessible.

After toying around with it a bit, Bing delivers good search results, but only if you know exactly what you’re looking for. If you misspell your query, you will get nothing near what you were searching for because there is no Google-like hint that pops up saying “did you mean” and your search query spelled correctly. In my opinion, if you want to lure users away from a very-forgiving and efficient search engine like Google, your engine needs to out-gun and out-class your adversary. So far, Microsoft’s New Search Engine, Bing doesn’t come close.

Is it too late to market your goods or services to China? If internet marketing in Portland and Seattle is part of your overall marketing plan the enormous potential to sell into China still exists.

It is also no secret that China’s economy is slowing. Property prices are falling in many major centers, raising concerns of a real estate crash.Even China’s exports, one of its traditional drivers of growth, are shrinking. In the latest U.S. trade statistics for November, imports from China were down 2.6% to $36.81 billion.

It’s enough to send U.S. businesses looking for new markets into the arms of Brazil and elsewhere. But seeing the forest through the trees, there are plenty of opportunities for American companies in China over the long term.

“There is an extreme amount of volatility in the global market. But if you take the long-term view, the potential for companies to grow their revenue is going to be in markets like China,” said Chris Lewis, executive vice president, head of trade and supply chain North America, for HSBC Bank USA, N.A.

China’s 20-year growth record — it hasn’t had a contraction since 1992 — isn’t in danger just yet.  The Economist Intelligence Unit is forecasting  that growth will slow from 9.1% in 2011 to 8.2% in 2012. “China in a bad year drops to 8.2% GDP growth,” said Leo Abruzzese, director, global forecasting, Economist Intelligence Unit. While he didn’t rule out a crash at some point down the road, China will get back on track quickly, he said.

What U.S. companies can’t afford to ignore is that China’s consumer story has only just begun. According to The World in 2050, a forecast by the global economics research team at HSBC, China’s per capita income will grow 800% over the next four decades. Even with this gigantic leap, the per capita income in China will still be only 32% of that in the United States.

“You haven’t missed the boat on China,” said Karen Ward, U.K.-based senior economist at HSBC, and author of The World in 2050report.

China is undergoing a mass urbanization movement. Currently, 40% of China’s workforce labors in the fields.  As these workers migrate to the cities — 15 cities will have 25 million-plus people over next decade or so — they also move up the value chain in terms of the products they consume.

This bodes well not only for American suppliers of infrastructure and commodities needed to build cities, but also for suppliers of consumer goods and services.  Companies have to stop looking at China as a cheap labor story and start looking at it as consumer story, Ward said.

The opportunities are there for commodity and infrastructure based companies that provide value. Internet marketing for companies in Portland and Seattle and beyond are an effective and efficient way for exposure to China markets.

Internet commerce is the most important channel for most businesses who either conduct e-commerce or using the internet to advertise and market services. For your internet marketing in Portland or Seattle  the recent actions by the Department of Justice against Megaupload  demonstrate how important security is and knowing who you are doing business with. In the world we live in is it possible to protect our interests while at the same time explore new avenues of exposure and marketing?

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/January/12-crm-074.html

Department of Justice

Office of Public Affairs

WASHINGTON – Seven individuals and two corporations have been charged in the United States with running an international organized criminal enterprise allegedly responsible for massive worldwide online piracy of numerous types of copyrighted works, through Megaupload.com and other related sites, generating more than $175 million in criminal proceeds and causing more than half a billion dollars in harm to copyright owners, the U.S. Justice Department and FBI announced today on a topic of interest to anyone involved in Internet Marketing in Portland and Seattle.

This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States and directly targets the misuse of a public content storage and distribution site to commit and facilitate intellectual property crime…..

According to the indictment, for more than five years the conspiracy has operated websites that unlawfully reproduce and distribute infringing copies of copyrighted works, including movies – often before their theatrical release – music, television programs, electronic books, and business and entertainment software on a massive scale. The conspirators’ content hosting site, Megaupload.com, is advertised as having more than one billion visits to the site, more than 150 million registered users, 50 million daily visitors and accounting for four percent of the total traffic on the Internet. The estimated harm caused by the conspiracy’s criminal conduct to copyright holders is well in excess of $500 million. The conspirators allegedly earned more than $175 million in illegal profits through advertising revenue and selling premium memberships.

The indictment states that the conspirators conducted their illegal operation using a business model expressly designed to promote uploading of the most popular copyrighted works for many millions of users to download. The indictment alleges that the site was structured to discourage the vast majority of its users from using Megaupload for long-term or personal storage by automatically deleting content that was not regularly downloaded. The conspirators further allegedly offered a rewards program that would provide users with financial incentives to upload popular content and drive web traffic to the site, often through user-generated websites known as linking sites. The conspirators allegedly paid users whom they specifically knew uploaded infringing content and publicized their links to users throughout the world.

In addition, by actively supporting the use of third-party linking sites to publicize infringing content, the conspirators did not need to publicize such content on the Megaupload site. Instead, the indictment alleges that the conspirators manipulated the perception of content available on their servers by not providing a public search function on the Megaupload site and by not including popular infringing content on the publicly available lists of top content downloaded by its users.

As alleged in the indictment, the conspirators failed to terminate accounts of users with known copyright infringement, selectively complied with their obligations to remove copyrighted materials from their servers and deliberately misrepresented to copyright holders that they had removed infringing content. For example, when notified by a rights holder that a file contained infringing content, the indictment alleges that the conspirators would disable only a single link to the file, deliberately and deceptively leaving the infringing content in place to make it seamlessly available to millions of users to access through any one of the many duplicate links available for that file.

The indictment charges the defendants with conspiring to launder money by paying users through the sites’ uploader reward program and paying companies to host the infringing content.

The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia and the Computer Crime & Intellectual Property Section in the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. The Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs, Organized Crime and Gang Section, and Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section also assisted with this case.

The investigation was initiated and led by the FBI at the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center), with assistance from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations. Substantial and critical assistance was provided by the New Zealand Police, the Organised and Financial Crime Agency of New Zealand (OFCANZ), the Crown Law Office of New Zealand and the Office of the Solicitor General for New Zealand; Hong Kong Customs and the Hong Kong Department of Justice; the Netherlands Police Agency and the Public Prosecutor’s Office for Serious Fraud and Environmental Crime in Rotterdam; London’s Metropolitan Police Service; Germany’s Bundeskriminalamt and the German Public Prosecutors; and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police – Greater Toronto Area (GTA) Federal Enforcement Section and the Integrated Technological Crime Unit and the Canadian Department of Justice’s International Assistance Group. Authorities in the United Kingdom, Australia and the Philippines also provided assistance.

This case is part of efforts being undertaken by the Department of Justice Task Force on Intellectual Property (IP Task Force) to stop the theft of intellectual property. Attorney General Eric Holder created the IP Task Force to combat the growing number of domestic and international intellectual property crimes, protect the health and safety of American consumers, and safeguard the nation’s economic security against those who seek to profit illegally from American creativity, innovation and hard work. The IP Task Force seeks to strengthen intellectual property rights protection through heightened criminal and civil enforcement, greater coordination among federal, state and local law enforcement partners, and increased focus on international enforcement efforts, including reinforcing relationships with key foreign partners and U.S. industry leaders. To learn more about the IP Task Force, go towww.justice.gov/dag/iptaskforce .

This action is by far the largest ever taken by the DOJ against an internet company. Along with the foundation of support for SOPA, will it affect your Internet Marketing in Portland or Seattle ?

As of last week: Google is unrolling a Free PC operating system to rival Microsoft … Call it a touche’ to Microsoft’s recent attempt to tread on Google’s search engine turf with Bing. (Want to compare Bing vs. Google search engine results side-by-side? Check out http://bing-vs-google.com/)

Google pretty much much owns search engine land, but it only recently made a dent in the internet browser field with Chrome and it’s slight and simple

Office-like suite. The operating system, incidentally, will also be named Chrome, according to news reports.

Google made this last announcement a month after Microsoft launched Bing, its first search engine.

Chrome OS will be available in the second half of 2010.

Google is working with Acer, Asustek, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments on the project.

WEB- A new eye-tracking study performed by the folks over at Explido has ranked the “big three” (Google, Bing, Yahoo) against more specialized engines (WolframAlpha, Collecta, OneRiot), and a few foreign up-and-comers (Baidu,Yandex). This is key data for Businesses in Portland that are monitoring their SERP rankings.

The breakdown of the study is that the foreign sites are essentially using a “Google classic” format, though we expect to see more search-centric categorization in the future, along the lines of the big three.  Google continues to dominate in search results, but the Bing and Yahoo universal results seem to fare just as well.  A lot of the favoritism towards the big three appears to be user familiarity, so the social engines may become more popular in the future.  Utilities like Wolfram Alpha continue to struggle in the consumer market, but are quite useful for generalized information, which is the stated goal of the program.

All of this generally points toward an expected increase in topical search, with increasingly compartmentalized streams of information designed to satisfy the educated consumer.  Search marketers certainly will have their hands full for the forseeable future!

In a blog post, Google demonstrates how it traces a person’s eyes across search results pages.

The post reads, in part:

“Based on eye-tracking studies, we know that people tend to scan the search results in order. They start from the first result and continue down the list until they find a result they consider helpful and click it — or until they decide to refine their query … most users found what they were looking for among the first two results and they never needed to go further down the page.”

Google’s eye-tracking research helps advertisers to realize that the first search results page is the only one likely to be seen. Which is where good SEO and copywriting becomes worth its weight in gold…

You may feel the earth shake under your feet, but despite rumors to the contrary, we are in no way responsible for the recent succession of Earthquakes in San Diego in Southern California, even though we DID just roll out a hot new SEO model that has already caused rumblings in the SEO world:

On-Spec ads have traditionally been unofficial, proposed advertisements to ad agencies. They are usually from creative, “regular dudes” or grassroots startups who sit down at a computer and bang out ads that are much better than anything the suits could ever dream up, and The SMT has just started doing them beginning with a “Portland Jewelry” or “Portland Jeweler” campaign.
Remember that iPod Touch ad with the CSS soundtrack? That was created by an 18-year-old student attending Leeds University. Spec ads are usually edgy and fresh.

On-Spec is short for “on speculation”. It’s something you’re doing on your own to build your portfolio. This isn’t a “real” assignment. It’s material you’re creating to show potential clients or employers samples of your stuff. A real chance to flex your creative muscle.

It is work, such as SEO, that is done for a client without a contract or job order, for which the client will pay only if the work is to be used. When a job is done on speculation, the person doing the work takes the risk in the hope of making a profit, gaining a valuable credit, or for some other reason. In the SEO business, creative talent will often work on spec in order to establish a name in the industry.

For example, if you have no writing samples, you can write SEO on SPEC. You can take any SEO and give it your own personal touch. Make sure you clearly label it as SPEC SEO.

If you’ve always wanted to work in the SEO industry and you don’t have any experience, the dilemma can seem overhwelming. Many people figure they’ll never get a job in SEO for this very reason.

But there are ways around this obstacle.

Speculative SEOs are the key. These are SEOs you’ve created and hosted yourself.

Quick. Write an SEO site for one of the brands you see around you. You’ve just created a SPEC SEO, as it’s known in the industry. These SEOs show a potential employer/client your talent.

In your portfolio, you’ll really want to showcase your SEO.

Smaller agencies are generally more receptive to a portfolio full of SPEC SEO sites. Don’t rule out the smaller agencies in your search for an SEO position. It’s an excellent way to build up your portfolio so you can shed those SPEC SEOS in the future.

Another option to consider is an internship at a local SEO agency or a business with its own in-house web design team.

Internships at SEO agencies are competitive and you should research an agency to see their types of clients. This helps you determine what types of materials they handle so you can build your portfolio appropriately.

Companies with an in-house web design team manage most, if not all, aspects of their SEO. They have a complete web department that produces all sorts of materials for the company. The only downside is that the in-house group only produces materials for that one company. That’s generally not a problem because the types of materials produced are so various to promote the company and its products.

When searching for a position in the SEO industry, especially if you have little or no experience, you’ll have to rely on your SPEC SEOS to spotlight your ability to do the job. And while your talent may be great, don’t forget to show your enthusiasm. Enthusiasm can go a long way in this business.

For more on how we are doing this, check out The SMT’s “Portland Jewelry” and “Portland Jeweler” campaign, but don’t go blaming those San Diego Earthquakes on us!