http://omahamediagroup.com/blog/ en support@omahamediagroup.com Copyright 2013 2013-05-07T14:53:30+00:00 /blog/article/omg_powerball_challenge/ /blog/article/omg_powerball_challenge/#When:14:53:30Z OMG Powerball Challenge The current estimated Powerball jackpot is $222 Million, a $144.5 Million cash value! As most of you know anytime the Powerball Jackpot gets over $150 Million we like to have a little fun here at the Omaha Media Group offices and go buy a few tickets. Here is your chance to get in on our ticket winnings, should we win! We decided to have some more fun and to buy 5 tickets, which if we win we will share a sum of $10 Million equally with you! In order to get your share simply do the following: 1) LIKE our Facebook Page 2) LIKE this image post 3) comment on this image post 4) SHARE this post to your Facebook Profile. 5) Join our company newsletter below You must have your LIKES and SHARES completed by no later than 9:30 PM Wednesday May 8, 2013 to be eligible. We will be keeping track of the likes via emailContactor.com's social integration tracking plugin to validate your eligibility. MAKE SURE you are eligible, if we win and you aren't we will not be sharing the $10 Million Dollar portion of the winnings with you should we win. Good luck to everyone!! Subscribe to our Newsletter Here! Email: First Name: Last Name: Company Verify: Enter the text as it appears on the image   Subscribe Unsubscribe   The Vast Universe 2013-05-07T14:53:30+00:00 /blog/article/happy_st._patricks_day/ /blog/article/happy_st._patricks_day/#When:16:36:38Z  Saint Patrick's Day or the Feast of Saint Patrick (Irish: Lá Fhéile Pádraig, "the Day of the Festival of Patrick") is a cultural and religious holiday celebrated on 17 March. It is named after Saint Patrick (c. AD 385–461), the most commonly recognised of the patron saints of Ireland. Saint Patrick's Day was made an official Christian feast day in the early seventeenth century and is observed by the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion (especially the Church of Ireland), the Eastern Orthodox Church and Lutheran Church. The day commemorates Saint Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland, as well as celebrating the heritage and culture of the Irish in general. Celebrations generally involve public parades and festivals, céilithe, and the wearing of green attire or shamrocks. Christians also attend church services and the Lenten restrictions on eating and drinking alcohol are lifted for the day, which has encouraged and propagated the holiday's tradition of alcohol consumption. Saint Patrick's Day is a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Newfoundland and Labrador and Montserrat. It is also widely celebrated by the Irish diaspora around the world; especially in Britain, Canada, the United States, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand.Learn more about St. Patrick's Day here The Vast Universe 2013-03-17T16:36:38+00:00 /blog/article/introducing_charley_morris/ /blog/article/introducing_charley_morris/#When:17:39:24Z      The Vast Universe, Graphic Design 2013-02-19T17:39:24+00:00 /blog/article/evasi0n_jailbreak_for_ios_6.1_download/ /blog/article/evasi0n_jailbreak_for_ios_6.1_download/#When:17:05:47Z  We are happy to announce that evasi0n for iOS 6.1 is now available for download. Jailbreak away! Enjoy!Compatible with all iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and iPad mini models running iOS 6.0 through 6.1 LINUXMACWINDOWSOfficial Mirrors Server OS Link box.net Linux SHA1: c9e4b15a161b89f0e412721f471c5f8559b6054f Mac OS X SHA1: 23f99a0d65e71fd79ff072b227f0ecb176f0ffa8 Windows SHA1: 2ff288e1798b4711020e9dd7f26480e57704d8b2 MEGA Linux SHA1: c9e4b15a161b89f0e412721f471c5f8559b6054f Mac OS X SHA1: 23f99a0d65e71fd79ff072b227f0ecb176f0ffa8 Windows SHA1: 2ff288e1798b4711020e9dd7f26480e57704d8b2 RapidShare Linux SHA1: c9e4b15a161b89f0e412721f471c5f8559b6054f Mac OS X SHA1: 23f99a0d65e71fd79ff072b227f0ecb176f0ffa8 Windows SHA1: 2ff288e1798b4711020e9dd7f26480e57704d8b2 Requirements 5 minutes of your time!A computer, running Windows (XP minimum), Mac OS X (10.5 minimum) or Linux (x86 / x86_64)An iPhone, iPad or iPod running iOS 6.0 through 6.1 (you may check in Settings / General / About => Version)A USB cable to connect the device to the computerImportant! Read me! Backup your device using iTunes (or iCloud) before using evasi0n. If something breaks, you'll always be able to recover your data.Please disable the lock passcode of your iOS device before using evasi0n. It can cause issues.Avoid all iOS and iTunes related tasks until evasi0n is complete. Why not just enjoy a brief break from the computer to stretch your legs?If the process gets stuck somewhere, it's safe to restart the program, reboot the device (if necessary by holding down Power and Home until it shuts down), and rerun the process.If you get an error on OS X 10.8 saying that evasi0n can't be opened, control-click (or right-click) the app and on the revealed context menu, choose ‘Open.’ On the ensuing dialogue box, choose ‘Open’ as well. Official Website: http://evasi0n.com/Special thanks to the evad3rs team for the excellent work! Mobile Applications 2013-02-04T17:05:47+00:00 /blog/article/jailbreak_for_ios_6_6.1_officially_enters_private_beta_testing_stage/ /blog/article/jailbreak_for_ios_6_6.1_officially_enters_private_beta_testing_stage/#When:16:41:37Z The Evasi0n untethered jailbreak for iOS 6 / iOS 6.1 is tantalizingly close now, and with Sunday’s almost certain release date fast approaching, the Evasi0n website has been updated once more. Touting the process of preparing the jailbreak tools for public consumption as 75% complete, the Evad3ers team has now begun rolling the Windows and Mac tools to a private pool of beta testers.Although we tend to find ourselves gripped in the run-up to any major jailbreak release, the Evad3rs team – comprised mainly of experienced jailbreak devs – have turned the release of the 6.1 untether into something of a pantomime. This tactic has successfully heightened general interest, and with 75% of the pre-release formalities out of the way, the as-assumed Super Bowl Sunday release looks a certainty:"75%: Linux version is still on the works. Private beta testing has started for OS X and Windows. Come back soon! Next step: extended beta testing"Pod2g also took to his Twitter account to confirm that the team is now really close to release:      "Pod2g: Planetbeing latests posts on reddit regarding that subject. They are really interesting. We’re close to the release! Stay tuned!" The jailbreak is compatible with all versions of iOS 6 released hitherto, and supports every device on which the latest release of Apple’s firmware can run. So, once the tool is ready and released to the anxious public, every iPhone from the 3GS upwards, every iPad from the iPad 2, and the fourth and fifth-gen iPod touch will all be jailbreakable – provided they are running some variety of iOS 6.There are a couple of reasons why this jailbreak has generated quite a bit more hype than other recent jailbreaks, notably the fact that it has taken quite a while following the September release of iOS 6. For a while, it was looking as though we may never see a jailbreak for iOS 6, but credit to the veterans of the jailbreak scene – they have come through and delivered the goods once more.The untethered nature of the jailbreak means one will not have to connect to a computer every time a device is rebooted or turned off, which makes this jailbreak all the more appealing.As time has progressed, the tools released for purpose of jailbreaking have become more elegant and user-friendly, and although we anticipate more of the same this time around, we’ll have a relevant guide on hand to help you along the way.We will also be sure to keep you updated should we hear any further updates with regards to the state of this jailbreak, so stay tuned to the coverage here at Redmond Pie!  Mobile Applications, The Vast Universe 2013-02-01T16:41:37+00:00 /blog/article/digital_marketing_2.0_seminar_-_january_10_16_2012/ /blog/article/digital_marketing_2.0_seminar_-_january_10_16_2012/#When:17:04:49Z You're Invited To Omaha Media Group's Digital Marketing 2.0 Seminar  Two Dates To Choose From!Thursday January 10, 2013 10am - 2pmWednesday January 16, 2013 10am - 2pmSeminar Topics Cover:Social MediaFacebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, & InstagramWebsite Best PracticesEmail MarketingBloggingSearch Engines and SEM vs. SEODisplay/Banner Advertising OnlineOnline DirectoriesInbound LinksOptimized Press ReleasesLocal ListingsQR CodesMobile Mediaand more!!Seminar Cost:If your company is an Omaha Media Group existing client "Monster Family Member" then this seminar is FREE for one employee. Additional employees from an Omaha Media Group client are $250 per attendee. If your company is not an existing Omaha Media Group client the cost to attend this seminar is $400.Spaces are VERY limited so do not wait!Please contact steviee@omahamediagroup.com to reserve your spot. E-Mail Marketing, Website Design, Webiste Development, Mobile Applications, SEO and Online Marketing, The Vast Universe, Social Network Marketing 2013-01-10T17:04:49+00:00 /blog/article/monster_movie_night/ /blog/article/monster_movie_night/#When:17:44:31Z There are a whole slew of awesome blockbusters right around the corner- You know the ones. Up until you started reading this blog, though, you simply assumed you'd have to pay for it. So did your friends. Well, if you put your creative skills to use you won't have to worry about that. Monster Movie Night is as simple as contests get: 1. Take our logo (The Monster) and insert him into an image you've taken of one of your favorite places. 2. Submit it to us. 3. If your entry is selected, congrats! You've just won yourself some tickets to a movie of your choice! The Vast Universe 2012-03-14T17:44:31+00:00 /blog/article/civil_dispatch_-_it_just_makes_sense/ /blog/article/civil_dispatch_-_it_just_makes_sense/#When:19:01:48Z Civil Dispatch is the newest and greatest of emergency dispatching systems on the market these days.  Being a company that give you, the consumer, the power of enterprise alerting without the enterprise cost is amazing.When it comes down to it, for me, it's about protecting my family, first and foremost …protecting my friends…protecting those around me that matter.  Over the course of the last few weeks, we've had more tornadoes in the midwest in March than we have in quite some time.  On Friday, March 2nd alone, there had been over one hundred reported tornadoes, resulting in one of the deadliest March days since 1994!This being said, I'm reminded of growing up in a rural area surrounded by corn fields, grain bins, gravel dust, and "close neighbors" being a mile away.  When severe weather would come, our preparation routine would begin…my sister and I finding the flashlights and candles, my father making sure all the vehicles were pulled into any garage or shed they'd fit into, and my mother storing water in the bathtub knowing we'd more than likely be without power for a few days (and this was the 90's!).  From there, we'd watch the weather on the news until the power went out.  When the power went out, we'd head to the basement and wait until it looked like the "coast was clear".  Living where we did, weather sirens were never heard.  It was a guessing game.Now, 20 years later, I'm living in a rural area of my own, finding the same scenario happening.  Severe weather comes, we gather the flashlights, park the vehicles, store water, and watch the news until the power goes out.  The only difference now, is that if we need "to take cover" I can get an email alert and a SMS text message powered by Civil Dispatch, from my other family members in different areas if the severe weather is coming our way.  I don't need to wait for the news anymore, especially if I'm without power.  We can also communicate in one shot, via Civil Dispatch, knowing that once the storm has passed, that everyone is ok…or if someone needs help, the plan of action or a central meeting place. The possibilities are endless with this emergency dispatching system.  Not only can we notify the ones we love with it and our community, but we can actually track and see that people received our messages, when, and where.  It's just one more thing added to my families preparation plan.  It's one of those systems where you're thankful that you don't have to use it…and thankful you have it when you do.Check it out for yourselve: http://www.civildispatch.com 2012-03-09T19:01:48+00:00 /blog/article/internet_the_great_invention/ /blog/article/internet_the_great_invention/#When:18:27:28Z In this blog I am going to make a statement which, to many, will be quite controversial and provocative. Ready? Here we go: The Internet is quite possibly the greatest invention by man. 

  “How can anyone make such a statement?” One might be thinking to himself. Surely other inventions must top the list- Like the printing press, or electricity, or the computer. Indeed, these are all inventions which have helped make our lives easier and to spread knowledge. In light of these and other robust inventions I should probably go on to qualify my statement- in regards to the spreading of information, of enhancing cross cultural and global communication, and increasing knowledge and transparency of once opaque  social machinations (read: governments, businesses, institutions, etc) the Internet is a crown accomplishment. 

 Never before has it been so easy to converse or share information with people literally the half the world away. Individuals who may not even speak the same language as you, who may enjoy a massive disparity in culture. While true that there will always be differences among men, there are concepts and emotions all people understand and feel. Love, joy, fear, anger. We all have aspirations and ambitions, harboring private thoughts. In our own ways we all seek to advance above our current station, to make progress. A free flow of information can suddenly provide us with the contrast or knowledge we needed; putting things into perspective and giving us a reference point to compare ourselves, others, surroundings or other ideas with. Knowledge is as it has always been: power. 

  We are witnessing this right now across the globe. The Internet has provided people with a means by which to draw the conclusion that their respective governments may not be acting in their best interests. Egypt is just one example of this, and Iran is so worried that revolution will spread that it is attempting to create a national firewall that will block the outside world from its networks. Just like China has already done. 

  But not just in lands unfamiliar and foreign to westerners, oh no. It happens here at home in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, France, Spain- Everywhere. Take the groups Anonymous, Wikileaks, and Lulzsec. An interesting gathering of like minded people who have no ties to one another, generally speaking there exists no knowledge of names or occupations between members. Described as ‘cyber terrorists’ and ‘hackers on steroids’ these groups tend to cause no small amount of chaos for various private and government bodies around the globe. Boundaries between these groups can often blur, as the member base often bleeds over and all routinely collaborate with each other.  It’s a kind of society that could not ever have existed before- a virtual one where a faceless body of individuals have complete agency and freedom to information. Like any society there are deviants and wrong doers, even by their own (admittedly laxer) standards. So don’t draw the conclusion that I’m glorifying all they do, as if they had the touch of Midas. But their existence is fascinating, and their type a first. 

  By the same token though, I won’t pretend to be an impartial observer in this. I support the existence of such groups although I certainly do not always agree with their actions. Still, I believe they serve as a counter balance to the increasingly overbearing and desperate old guard of the corporate/government machine. Need I remind anybody of the thinly veiled assault on civil liberties that was SOPA? Penned by corporate lobbyist lawyers and thrust upon Congress?  The Internet has created near limitless new opportunities for entrepreneurs and opened up whole different kinds of revenue streams. It can hardly be argued that it has been anything but good for business as a whole.  Those who were once on top in certain dominating industries (Entertainment for instance) now stand to be toppled by their archaic business model and tedious grip on technological advances. To put it bluntly they stifle innovation and cripple creativity for their own benefit. It is no wonder they sink millions into the politicians to help stem the tide. 

  Pictured: Corporate/Government concept of how to 'eliminate piracy'Selfish impulse is what fuels ambition, the desire for success and the will to survive. So these actions should not be unexpected, why would they be? Successful men are only human after all (and can often afford to indulge in a greater range of vices) and actions of this kind anticipated. 

   We must also safeguard ourselves from the modern tech giants who actively support and nurture the Internet, who stand in opposition this old class of businessmen- again, they’re private businesses. Allies of convenience. Where do we draw the line between incredible and free services and the harvesting of our personal data and the selling of it to the highest bidder? To governments? Google knows more about the common man and his habits in the US than our government could ever hope to legally learn. This is a debate which rages on right now, where should the line be drawn? We all have our personal rubicon to be sure, it is merely a matter of rallying together to best define it as a group. 

   Why does all this matter, you may ask? The answer is this: It is the future. More specifically, our future. We have in our possession a marvelous tool for the development of our race if we use it wisely, practicing restraint and moderation. Pushing forward, the Internet should remain as free as possible. Always.. But not at the dire expense of our humanity, of what helped to create it in the first place. Humans must be free too. 

   The future is happening all around us ladies and gentlemen. Believe what you want about the present economy and your own (self imposed?) limitations- but we enjoy a litany of advantages that no other generation has.  The Internet is, in my humble estimation, the greatest among these. Access to nearly unlimited information, the raw potential here is unimaginable- Though a bit vague for the unimaginative. I cannot stress enough at how grand the opportunities are out there for those who will only recognize them.Here at Omaha Media Group this is what we help do. We act as the catalyst for great innovation, the harbinger of technological progress. OMG: Where Man and Machine Meet Monsters. Have thoughts or opinions on this? Agree or disagree? Please comment below. The Vast Universe 2012-03-08T18:27:28+00:00 /blog/article/new_staff_member_-_mckenzie_hildreth_ring/ /blog/article/new_staff_member_-_mckenzie_hildreth_ring/#When:20:58:02Z Recently we have been asked several times how we continue to be so innovative, the answer is simple, we hire GREAT people. Without further ado a monstorous welcome goes out to our staff member McKenzie Hildreth Ring. McKenzie has recently joined the OMG family and in 3 short months has raised the bar to a new standard of excellence. McKenzie brings a vast suite of knowledge and professional grace to our creative team, if you thought we were exciting before, just watch us now. E-Mail Marketing, Website Design, Mobile Applications, The Vast Universe, Graphic Design 2012-02-06T20:58:02+00:00 /blog/article/stop_sopa/ /blog/article/stop_sopa/#When:19:27:30Z We are finally jumping on the public SCREW SOPA bandwagon. Corporate supporters of HR3261 (SOPA) and S968 (PIPA) demand the ability to take down any web site that affects their profits -- without due process or judicial oversight -- in the name of combating "online piracy." Hoping you won't notice or care, quite a few of our Public Servants want to give them that right. SOPA/PIPA authors and supporters insist they're only after foreign piracy sites, but Internet Engineers understand this is an attempt to impose "Big Brother" control over our Internet, complete with DNS hijacking and censoring search results.  <RANT>What could be more anti-American than jack-booted thugs throttling our free speech, poisoning that greatest of American inventions, the Internet, while devastating perhaps our most successful and competitive industry? There's got to be a better way to sell more stereo cables.</RANT> ★ ☆ ★ Tell Congress you OPPOSE H.R. 3261 "Stop Online Piracy Act" (SOPA) and S. 968 "Protect IP Act" (PIPA) ★ ☆ ★  Reverse Robocall ALL pro-SOPA MOC + Key Lobbyists (Genius! More info on Ars Technica)Phone your Member of Congress via nifty Progressive Change appContact Senators who are refusing to meet with constituents about SOPA/PIPA.EFF Congressional Emailer - Oppose Internet Blacklisting (SOPA & PIPA)ECA Congressional Emailer - Don't Censor Our Internet!OpenCongress Congressional Emailer - Oppose SOPAGeneric Congressional Emailer (You'll need your Zip+4)Petition Congress - Protect Innovation, Dump SOPA (Progressive Change )Outside the US? Sign Petition Opposing US Censorship of Global Sites (EFF) Supporters of SOPA: RIAA, MPAA, News Corp, TimeWarner, Walmart, Nike, Tiffany, Chanel, Rolex, Sony, Juicy Couture, Ralph Lauren, VISA, Mastercard, Comcast, ABC, Dow Chemical, Monster Cable, Teamsters, Rupert Murdoch, Lamar Smith (R-TX), John Conyers (D-MI) Opponents of SOPA: Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, craigslist, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, eBay, AOL, Mozilla, Reddit, Tumblr, Etsy, Zynga, EFF, ACLU, Human Rights Watch, Darrell Issa (R-CA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Ron Paul (R-TX) Where does your Member of Congress stand on SOPA? (Project SOPA Opera) SOPA and PIPA Are Too Dangerous To Revise, They Must Be Killed Entirely  Congress needs to hear from you, or these dangerous bills will pass - they have tremendous lobbying dollars behind them, from corporations experts say are attempting to prop up outdated, anti-consumer business models at the expense of the very fabric of the Internet -- recklessly unleashing a tsunami of take-down notices and litigation, and a Pandora's jar of "chilling effects" and other unintended (or perhaps intended?) consequences. There is still time to be heard. Congress is starting to backpedal on this job-killing, anti-American nonsense, and the Obama administration has weighed in against these bills as drafted, but SOPA/PIPA cannot be fixed or revised -- they must be killed altogether. Sen Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Rep Ron Wyden (D-OR) are championing an alternative to SOPA/PIPA called Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN) that addresses foreign sites dedicated to piracy, without disrupting basic Internet protocols, or threatening mainstream US sites like craigslist. Tim O'Reilly, a publisher who is himself subject to piracy, asks whether piracy is even a problem, and whether there is even a legitimate need for any of these bills.  Learn more about SOPA, Protect IP (PIPA), and Internet Blacklisting: Growing Chorus of Opposition to SOPAOpen Letter against SOPA from 83 Prominent Internet EngineersWhy SOPA and Protect IP (PIPA) are Bad, Bad Ideas (Techdirt)Piracy not a problem, SOPA/PIPA unnecessary (Tim O'Reilly on GigaOM)SOPA News (Google News)SOPA Wikipedia entrySOPA FAQ (CNET)Thank you to our friends at craigslist for putting this information together and allowing us to share it with our own networks! The Vast Universe 2012-01-17T19:27:30+00:00 /blog/article/email_marketing_-_timing_is_everything/ /blog/article/email_marketing_-_timing_is_everything/#When:20:46:46Z When is the best time to send your email? Great question. In fact the time you decide to launch your campaign can have an impact on the overall results of your email campaign. This detail may not be as important as the audience you select, the subject line, or the list you are using, but it is a factor. But if you are working to get the maximum results and put everything in your favor then these are commonly accepted as the BEST times to launch your campaign.The best days (in no particular order):Tuesdays, Wednesdays, ThursdaysWhat’s wrong with the rest of the days?For business email, your audience is generally out of the office on Saturday and Sunday.On Monday, your recipients are recovering from the weekend and will not be in business mode yet. They may have a number of things to do on this day and are not quite interested in offers or solicitations.On Friday, they are interested in wrapping things up. If someone starts something on a Friday, it may be forgotten over the weekend.So we are left with Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday as the best days.You will want to avoid holidays or any major vacation times.Does Time of Day Matter?You want your message to reach your audience at a time when they are going to be most receptive. Deeper research has given me feedback from advertisers and list companies who say that even the time of day can play a role.Many see it as important for your message to pop up, while the audience is at their computer. That polite “bing” elicits a Pavlovian response in most of us to quickly see what new and interesting mail has arrived. Perhaps it’s an order? Maybe it’s a note from a coworker. We are receptive and immediately ready to see who’s trying to contact us. This timing is ideal.The majority of marketers try to ensure their email is not just sitting stagnate in the recipient’s inbox first thing in the morning, especially after a holiday. The reason is simple. People tend to have a morning ritual of “cleaning” their inbox from any spam that arrived overnight. You don’t want them to see your message when they are in a deleting frenzy, trying to find anything they can “clean up.”Rather, you want your message to pop up while they are in the middle of a workday. This increases the chances that the recipient will stop and take a moment to read it.What Are the Best Times to Send Email?10:00 – 10:30 a.m.and1:00 – 1:30 p.m.I urge you not to place too much emphasis on this area. It’s often very difficult to ensure the precise time your message goes out. And even if the message is launched at precisely 10 a.m. in one time zone, there are other time zones to consider.It is good to have an idea of the general behavior of your audience before sending a message at an inappropriate time.Does Time of Year Matter?According to list brokers and publishers I’ve spoken with, the time of year does matter. You don’t want to catch someone just after a vacation when they have 200 waiting messages and are looking for stuff they can delete quickly. Most people seem to vacation during the summer months, especially July and August. Try to avoid that time.Putting it in Perspective…Don’t wait for the perfect time or you will never launch your email campaign. As you’ve probably experienced there are times during the week, month or year when you are extremely busy and not as receptive to offers or messages. Do your best to pick a time when your clients will be most likely to act, but don’t obsess about the launch time.Need help with your online email marketing strategies? We've been in the email marketing business for over 7 years and would LOVE to assist. Call or email us today!Omaha Media Group LLC MONSTER Creative Management PO BOX 390640 Omaha, Nebraska 68137 402.218.4423 E-Mail Marketing, SEO and Online Marketing 2011-11-30T20:46:46+00:00 /blog/article/search_engine_inclusion_-_proper_meta_tags_use/ /blog/article/search_engine_inclusion_-_proper_meta_tags_use/#When:23:10:14Z Being the bonafide Google Developers we are we are often asked about how we go about conducting our search engine optimization and marketing strategies. These questions usually revolve around the proper use of keywords, site maps and robot texts, so to help those of you whom have been tasked with your own search engine optimization and marketing for your own websites we thought we'd write a quick article to help you on your way. Search Engine Marketing a Rocket Science? Thankfully Search Engine Marketing isn't rocket science, or is it? Yes, like painting a room in your house, servicing your car, anyone with the right initiative can perform their own search engine marketing with little ease using basic knowledge.  In fact with just a little bit of search engine inclusion understanding, the right tools, and a lot of time you yourself can learn to become a search engine guru. The question is, do you have the time it takes to maintain your results? Probably not, which is why like the rest of our other search engine marketing customers you come to us to manage your search engine strategies for you. But for those of you who want to try and perform your search engine marketing we put this article together to help you understand search engine optimization basics to get you started on your way to search engine wizardry. Search Engine Optimization - Meta Data / Meta Tags Simply put Metadata is information about data. Meta <meta> tag provides metadata about the HTML document to the search engine crawler and is never displayed on the page but remains machine parsable and is read by the search engine.  Meta Tag elements are typically used to specify page description, keywords, author of the document, last modified, and other metadata. This metadata can be used by browsers (how to display content or reload page), search engines (keywords), or other web services used during the inclusion process. There are dozens and dozens of metas tags all which can be used to deliver information to the search engine, the most typically used tags are: <title> <keyword> <description> <author> <robots> Although the above meta tags are typical, as we already mentioned in our "Google Farmer/Panda Update Killed The Ranking Star" earlier this year the <keyword> and <description> tags are no longer essential to retrieving a good inclusion / rank within most search engines. In fact, Google would rather you NOT include and depending on the type of search engine strategy you are executing can even hurt your inclusion / rank. We will expalin in more detail below, read on... So what are the essential keywords for obtaining a good organic inclusion for your website? We're glad you asked, they are: <google-site-verification> The first most important meta tag would be your site verification tag, issued by Google exclusively for your website during manual inclusion. This tag singly handedly tells Google that you are in fact a real website with valid content and there is a physical person maintaining the content of this website.  There are of course a whole slew of other benefits to having a verifiec website but we'll let you read about them from Google's website. <title> The title tag is just that, the TITLE of your website.  This tag's metadata is delivered to the browser's header and is by far the second most important tag you can use to be indexed correctly.  The title tag is where we place the Keywords that we would have normally entered into the outdated <keyword> meta tag referenced above.  Since it is our goal to make the crawler's life easier when crawling our website and Google specially tells us they don't want us to tell them what our website is about / that Google specifically wants to be able to decipher the page content themselves via your website's content we will trust Google to do it's job. This is a job that since February of this year Google does VERY WELL. Let us say that again: Google DOSE NOT want you to tell them what your page is about via meta tags.  Google wants to figure that out themselves via your page's content. This is one of the many reasons which drove them to create and release Panda/Farmer in the first place. This is by far one of the most misunderstood search engine optimization tactics by most web companies out there who claim to be SEO/SEM experts. Most failing to realize that the use of the <keyword> and <description> tags can essentially can hurt your inclusion, especially once the page's content has changed over the span of time. It's this easy, Google is Google, who are you to tell Google what and who you are? Forget about it.. Eliminating Unnecessary Meta Tags To summarize the above brain spewage: Meta tags are an integral part of every webpage within every website and "most of the time" it is imperative that you take utilize necessary meta tags to best optimize your website for inclusion value/rank. However, since the release of Google Panda/Farmer earlier this year, there are some meta tags that in our experience, hamper or slow the process of Google and other search engines from crawling through your website. If these meta tags are no longer relevant, then why on earth would we want to waste Google's time crawling through a portion of a website that is irrelevant? This is exactly why we are going to tell Google to focus on your relevant content and to bypass the irrelevant tags, css, and javascript that would otherwise prevent Google's crawler from ever making it to the meat and potatoes of your website. Here are some tags that we definitely recommend you remove from your website: <meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache" /> This tag tells browsers to not store a website in cache so it loads quickly the next time it is visited. Most browsers already give users the option as to whether they want for it to check for newer versions of the pages when visiting a website so it is best to leave it up to the person viewing your website. Don't waste Google's time with this meta tag. <meta http-equiv="Expires" content="Date" /> This meta tag specifically tells the browser when a page expires and at that point in time, the browser will look for newer version of content upon every visit. Again, best to leave this functionality option to the user and don't waste the search engine crawler's time using this tag. <meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="false" /> This meta tag disables the old image toolbar that used by Microsoft Internet Explorer. Give your search engine's crawler a break, this is not essential so do not crowd this into your meta coding. <meta name="robots" content="nofollow"> This tag can be used to restrict the crawler on how it crawls your website. This has since been replaced with the use of robots.txt file. Summarizing the ConfusionWow, that seems like a lot to know about keeping your website optimized and/or search engine friendly isn't it? And those are basic principles too. Yikes you think to yourself…  Never fear where there is a will there is a way and with a little reading, practice, and more reading and practice you will soon find yourself a search engine guru and will still probably be confused as ever. Why? There is an endless array of knowledge when it comes to search engine strategy and because all of those crafty blogs and articles you are going to find will have everyone preaching different strategies and/or different approaches to how they conduct their search engine optimization and marketing. Are they wrong? That's a tough answer. Why? Because each company will have their own strategy and they just might be right with in the context of their strategy. When it comes to a good search engine strategy we know what works best through our own experience and analytical data, all of which comes to us directly from Google. Have you found yourself lost in search engine optimization and marketing land and would like some assistance getting your strategy on track? Call us, we manage SEO/SEM for small, medium and large companies just like yours and would LOVE to assist you too!Omaha Media Group LLC MONSTER Creative Management PO BOX 390640 Omaha, Nebraska 68137 402.218.4423 SEO and Online Marketing 2011-11-28T23:10:14+00:00 /blog/article/facebooks_new_page_insights_release/ /blog/article/facebooks_new_page_insights_release/#When:00:31:14Z Whether or not you're new to Facebook Pages or a seasoned vet like us you've probably noticed that your Page has received a little facelift this week. Facebook has yet again released a new version of Facebook Pages Insights. What's new you ask? We're glad you asked! Let's dive into the details.Facebook, probably know to Google as a "massive pain in the rear-end" and Google's closest analytical data-gathering competitor, has been working feverishly the past year to build the most robust and informative place to gather its member, a platform cleverly named Facebook Pages. History on Facebook PagesWhat is Facebook Pages you ask? Great question! Facebook Pages is just that, a special "page" that users just like you can create for whatever purpose you deem fit. Business, Places, Communities, Organizations, Institutions, Brands, Products, Artist, Banks, Public Figures, Entertainment, Causes no matter what you are Facebook Pages welcomes you with open arms and wants you to tell the world about yourself via your Page.  So you're thinking to yourself… Self, okay, Pages sound pretty cool, I'm in, but what are the benefits to having a page? Well self, it's pretty simple.. Facebook, being the very friendly and giving people they are has provided everyone some really cool Page features allowing us to customize and offer our Page followers page information. The information on the page of course is provided by you, the page owner.  Facebook has made creating a page simple with a few clicks of the mouse and a few short information forms to fill out. 1, 2, 3 and you're done. Oh, did we mention Facebook also have an endless amount of applications and social plugs too? That's right.. Think of it this way, Facebook is the sky and the sky is the limit, but when you've reach that limit just past the sky is this thing called SPACE, Space is what Facebook calls the Facebook Developers Network which has an endless supply of applications & plugins with new apps and plugins constantly being added by it's radical developers like us. WOW!!! That's INSANE!! You bet your little hiney it is.  What is even crazier is Facebook does this all for free. They even give you a special little utility called "INSIGHTS" which shows you some pretty amazing information about your page, it's users, it's interaction with it's users, potential areas of growth, and a whole lot more. I will say it again.. ALL FOR FREE!! Free you ask? Yes, free! Free in the sense that you aren't actualy paying for anything to use all of the features described above. Let's put "FREE" into perspective. In the long run by giving you all of the features above Facebook now knows more about your business than you probably do and they have an endless line of consumer marketing companies who will pay TOP DOLLAR to know that information. Bummer dude, nothing is free these days. Don't believe me? Just read the Facebook Terms of Use and Privacy Agreements.I could go on and on and on about the pros and cons of Pages but I will save that for another blog another day. Let's get back on track to why we came here in the first place. So… now that we've established a little relevance about Facebook Pages let's dive into this week's Pages update and cover some of the cool changes to Pages Insights. Metrics EnhancementsImportant MetricsMonitor these four metrics to assess the size of your audience and how they're engaging with your content. This gives your a quick snapshot of what is going on with your page. Total Likes and Friends of FansTotal Likes is the number of people who have liked your Page. Friends of Fans is the number of people you can potentially reach if everyone you are connected to talks about your Page to their friends. That is a pretty nice metric to have for those of you trying to calculate your potential reach. People Talking About This and Weekly Total ReachPeople Talking About This is the number of unique people who have created content about your Page on Facebook in the past week. The more people that talk about your Page, the more distribution it will get. The number of people who have seen your message is displayed in Weekly Total Reach.Overview EnhancementsPage OverviewThis graph shows how individual posts that you publish on your Page influence the number of people talking about you, and how this impacts your overall reach. Expand your reach by regularly posting engaging content. Social campaigns are the best method of increasing your 'likes' and growing your page. Your Posts EnhancementsUnderstanding Your PostsEach of your posts can be seen here, along with details about how well the post has performed. Optimizing the performance of your posts will increase your Page's total reach and expand awareness of your Page. You can view each of your posts in more detail by clicking on the blue text.ViralityWe didn't make the term up, we swear! Virality measures how likely a person is to share something about your posts with their friends. This is a great indicator of the kind of posts your audience responds to and helps you understand how clever you are, or aren't. Detailed Metrics EnhancementsMore Detailed MetricsThe Likes, Reach and Talking About This tabs give you a deeper understanding of your high-level metrics. They are all structured in the same way. Let's look at Talking About This.Your AudienceFrom here you'll be able to learn more about the people talking about you, which includes everyone who has created a story about your Page. You can also see demographics about the people who like your Page and the people you reach. Tailor your content to your audience to improve your results, like the good marketing guru you are. How People Talk About YouFrom here you can view how people are talking about your Page by story type. For example, you can see all the stories people have created by interacting with your Page posts. Understanding how your audience talks about your Page will help you identify the kind of content that will get the most engagement.Exporting Data and Help EnhancementsExport Data and Find HelpYou're ready to start using the new Insights for Pages. Export your data, or access resources under the action button from anywhere within Insights. This allows you to export your data to integrate it into another ERP, CRM, or other business development console to better understand and track your campaigns and marketing strategies.Like we said before, pretty amazing stuff isn't it?  Thanks Facebook!! Or should we be leary about just how awesome you are?Nah....Need help with your page's social life? We're social butterflies and would love nothing more than to help you and your business. Call us (402) 218-4423 or email us (support@omahamediagroup.com) today. We want to hear from you!Omaha Media Group LLCMonster Creative ManagementPO BOX 390640 Omaha, Nebraska 68137(402) 218-4423 SEO and Online Marketing, The Vast Universe, Social Network Marketing 2011-11-23T00:31:14+00:00 /blog/article/omg_mobile_application_-_now_avaiable/ /blog/article/omg_mobile_application_-_now_avaiable/#When:19:43:33Z Yes, it has been a while since we have written a promotional blog for our own company but today we have a very fitting reason. I am happy to announce that our Omaha Media Group LLC application is now available for download from the Apple App Store for free.Click the link to download the application now:http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/omaha-media-group-llc/id457218801?ls=1&mt=8A Mobiel App? Why?Why did we feel the need for an iPhone application? It is pretty simple, for the first time smartphones surpassed PC sales in the last quarter of 2010 and continue to dominate the consumer PC markets. Right now outside of great search inclusion and social networking strategies there is really no better way to keep our customers engaged in our products, services, and in touch with our company. But lets be honest, we would be lying if we didn't admin to a little vanity behind our application's development. I mean come on, who doesn't want their own iPhone application? Other reasons include project demonstrations, usage monitoring and tracking to help us better understand our customers, and to display our elite mobile application development skills. The list goes on and on.No iPhone?Don't have an iPhone? No sweat, our application is currently under review on both Android and Windows Mobile platforms and should be available in the very near future. We will send out another newsletter when they are available for you to go download.Your Own Mobile App?Is your company interested in a similar application but don't have the first clue on how to go about getting one? Are you positive that your company doesn't have the budget for a mobile or the development support for your own company application? Let us know, you would be surprised how affordable mobile development is. Call us for more details, we would love to hear from you.Please feel free to pass this along to your friends, associates, and family. Omaha Media Group, LLCMonster Creative Managementhttp://www.omahamediagroup.com402.218.4423 office Mobile Applications 2011-08-18T19:43:33+00:00 /blog/article/promotions_the_most_powerful_way_to_grow_fans/ /blog/article/promotions_the_most_powerful_way_to_grow_fans/#When:14:30:26Z One of the many questions we receive every week is "how can I attract more people to my Facebook profile?". Like most social butterflies who have decided to use social media to increase their business exposure you have been burning the might night oil trying to figure out how to increase your Facebook's fanbase with little or no success. Have no fear young social padawan, the simple fact that you're trying means that you have made the first step in creating that perfect social attraction for your business. So how do you go about building the social attention? The simple answer is for you to try and run a business promotion. Businesses marketing on facebook are building massive fanbases by running promotions.Online consumers love contests and sweepstakes!According to Jupiter Research, over 80% of all Internet users have participated in an online sweepstakes or contest in the past year, while another 50% enter them once a month. Creating an online sweepstakes is tantamount to taking advantage of human nature’s enchantment with the game of chance. Societies all over the world have a large chunk of their cultures bent on taking chances with whatever form.Those who enter are more aware of the brandAccording to a Razorfish study, of the 70% of consumers who they found participated in a brand-sponsored contest or sweepstakes, a staggering 96% are more aware of the brand; 96% are more likely to consider that brand when in the market for a product or service. Really? Yeah, no doubt.Women click on promotions ads!According to new research from rich-media solutions provider Unicast, among the ads that women will encounter online, this summer [2010], the most likely to resonate include those related to sale and discount codes, with 46% of women respondents said they would be keeping an eye out for such ads. They also found that 31% of the respondents said ads that involve creating/submitting an entry to win a prize would get their attention; 24% noted those ads that provide customized local information; and 22% said they'd likely respond well to ads that offer interactive surveys/quizzes. And be sure to keep this in-mind when you seed your promotion with advertising.Build prospect listsSweepstakes offer an excellent way to build prospect lists for email marketing. Make sure you ask for a person's email address not only as a means to contact the winner, but also as a means to build your prospect lists for remarketing. You certainly do not want to be flagged for blind email spamming which is frowned upon in every portion of the globe. Shame on you, you pesky spammers.Expose your brandContests offer an effective way to expose your brand to lots of people on facebook. Essay contests will get you the most entries, if that is your goal. Photos also offer an immersive experience for users. And video, though will bring in the least amount of entries of the three, will provide a higher quality experience for users, and content if the goal is to use it for other marketing purposes.Let us help you start and manage your business promotion, call us today!Omaha Media Group LLC6414 S. 118th StreetOmaha, Nebraska 68137402.218.4423support@omahamediagroup.com Social Network Marketing 2011-08-13T14:30:26+00:00 /blog/article/osx_lion_app_store_downloads_problems/ /blog/article/osx_lion_app_store_downloads_problems/#When:13:53:48Z If you weren't able to get your download in yesterday then you probably awoke this morning to figure out that OSx was released and probably have been trying to download OSx Lion all morning and keep getting the dreaded “This action cannot be completed at this time.” error message. Want to know why? Because instead of using Apple's new $1Billion dollar datacenter (which to be fair to Apple isn't even online yet) they decided to farm it's OSx Lion downloads over to Akamai who has proven once again that it oversells it's services and completely under delivers.ZDnet's Jason Perlow did a GREAT job explaining why.."I had wondered how Apple was going to handle large downloads from their App Store infrastructure on launch day. Were they going to do it centralized, all from their new billion-dollar datacenter in North Carolina, or would they use a content distribution network? And if they did use a CDN, were they going to build their own, or outsource it? Well, I found out pretty quickly. They outsourced it, to Akamai. The header graphic in this article is the proof in the pudding. Once the transaction was able to be kicked off, the download itself from Akamai happened pretty quickly. From my Optimum Online Ultra connection here in Northern NJ, I was able to download the DMG file/installer in about half an hour."Read the full article here. So what does this mean for you?  Don't plan on being able to download Lion anytime in the near future unless you plan on sitting at your desk and constantly clicking the download button until you finally are lucky enough to get a download spot.If you absolutely HAVE TO HAVE OSx Lion do yourself a favor and drive over to the nearest Apple Store and pick up a copy of the DVD installation disk. You will be happy you did. The Vast Universe 2011-07-21T13:53:48+00:00 /blog/article/how_google_panda_changed_seo_forever_panda_v2.2/ /blog/article/how_google_panda_changed_seo_forever_panda_v2.2/#When:20:05:48Z Just as expected and right on time Google has released Panda v2.2. This time around Google has improved their ability to detect those pesky scraper websites and remove and ban them from SERPs. Naturally Panda updates are changes made to Google's algorithm and are not manual reviews of websites within their index - so expect some error for those of you unlucky website owners. So what all has changed? A lot! So you better have a good strategy or you will be lost in translation or even worse off, removed from the index.In a wondrous video that should be watched by EVERYONE wanting to streamline the threshold of SEM wizardry SEO Guru Rand Fishkin takes us through some simple Panda 2.2 SEM strategy.Video Transcript"Howdy, SEOmoz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week, we're talking about the very exciting, very interesting, very controversial Google Panda update. Panda, also known as Farmer, was this update that Google came out with in March of this year, of 2011, that rejiggered a bunch of search results and pushed a lot of websites down in the rankings, pushed some websites up in the rankings, and people have been concerned about it ever since. It has actually had several updates and new versions of that implementation and algorithm come out. A lot of people have all these questions like, "Ah, what's going on around Panda?" There have been some great blog posts on SEOmoz talking about some of the technical aspects. But I want to discuss in this Whiteboard Friday some of the philosophical and theoretical aspects and how Google Panda really changes the way a lot of us need to approach SEO. So let's start with a little bit of Panda history. Google employs an engineer named Navneet Panda. The guy has done some awesome work. In fact, he was part of a patent application that Bill Slawski looked into where he found a great way to scale some machine learning algorithms. Now, machine learning algorithms, as you might be aware, are very computationally expensive and they take a long time to run, particularly if you have extremely large data sets, both of inputs and of outputs. If you want, you can research machine learning. It is an interesting fun tactic that computer scientists use and programmers use to find solutions to problems. But basically before Panda, machine learning scalability at Google was at level X, and after it was at the much higher level Y. So that was quite nice. Thanks to Navneet, right now they can scale up this machine learning. What Google can do based on that is take a bunch of sites that people like more and a bunch of sites that people like less, and when I say like, what I mean is essentially what the quality raters, Google's quality raters, tell them this site is very enjoyable. This is a good site. I'd like to see this high in the search results. Versus things where the quality raters say, "I don't like to see this." Google can say, "Hey, you know what? We can take the intelligence of this quality rating panel and scale it using this machine learning process." Here's how it works. Basically, the idea is that the quality raters tell Googlers what they like. They answer all these questions, and you can see Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts were interviewed by Wired Magazine. They talked about some of the things that were asked of these quality raters, like, "Would you trust this site with your credit card? Would you trust the medical information that this site gives you with your children? Do you think the design of this site is good?" All sorts of questions around the site's trustworthiness, credibility, quality, how much they would like to see it in the search results. Then they compare the difference. The sites that people like more, they put in one group. The sites that people like less, they put in another group. Then they look at tons of metrics. All these different metrics, numbers, signals, all sorts of search signals that many SEOs suspect come from user and usage data metrics, which Google has not historically used as heavily. But they think that they use those in a machine learning process to essentially separate the wheat from the chaff. Find the ones that people like more and the ones that people like less. Downgrade the ones they like less. Upgrade the ones they like more. Bingo, you have the Panda update. So, Panda kind of means something new and different for SEO. As SEOs, for a long time you've been doing the same kind of classic things. You've been building good content, making it accessible to search engines, doing good keyword research, putting those keywords in there, and then trying to get some links to it. But you have not, as SEOs, we never really had to think as much or as broadly about, "What is the experience of this website? Is it creating a brand that people are going to love and share and reward and trust?" Now we kind of have to think about that. It is almost like the job of SEO has been upgraded from SEO to web strategist. Virtually everything you do on the Internet with your website can impact SEO today. That is especially true following Panda. The things that they are measuring is not, oh, these sites have better links than these sites. Some of these sites, in fact, have much better links than these sites. Some of these sites have what you and I might regard, as SEOs, as better content, more unique, robust, quality content, and yet, people, quality raters in particular, like them less or the things, the signals that predict that quality raters like those sites less are present in those types of sites. Let's talk about a few of the specific things that we can be doing as SEOs to help with this new sort of SEO, this broader web content/web strategy portion of SEO. First off, design and user experience. I know, good SEOs have been preaching design user experience for years because it tends to generate more links, people contribute more content to it, it gets more social signal shares and tweets and all this other sort of good second order effect. Now, it has a first order effect impact, a primary impact. If you can make your design absolutely beautiful, versus something like this where content is buffeted by advertising and you have to click next, next, next a lot. The content isn't all in one page. You cannot view it in that single page format. Boy, the content blocks themselves aren't that fun to read, even if it is not advertising that's surrounding them, even if it is just internal messaging or the graphics don't look very good. The site design feels like it was way back in the 1990s. All that stuff will impact the ability of this page, this site to perform. And don't forget, Google has actually said publicly that even if you have a great site, if you have a bunch of pages that are low quality on that site, they can drag down the rankings of the rest of the site. So you should try and block those for us or take them down. Wow. Crazy, right? That's what a machine learning algorithm, like Panda, will do. It will predicatively say, "Hey, you know what? We're seeing these features here, these elements, push this guy down." Content quality matters a lot. So a lot of time, in the SEO world, people will say, "Well, you have to have good, unique, useful content." Not enough. Sorry. It's just not enough. There are too many people making too much amazing stuff on the Internet for good and unique and grammatically correct and spelled properly and describes the topic adequately to be enough when it comes to content. If you say, "Oh, I have 50,000 pages about 50,000 different motorcycle parts and I am just going to go to Mechanical Turk or I am going to go outsource, and I want a 100 word, two paragraphs about each one of them, just describe what this part is." You think to yourself, "Hey, I have good unique content." No, you have content that is going to be penalized by Panda. That is exactly what Panda is designed to do. It is designed to say this is content that someone wrote for SEO purposes just to have good unique content on the page, not content that makes everyone who sees it want to share it and say wow. Right? If I get to a page about a motorcycle part and I am like, "God, not only is this well written, it's kind of funny. It's humorous. It includes some anecdotes. It's got some history of this part. It has great photos. Man, I don't care at all about motorcycle parts, and yet, this is just a darn good page. What a great page. If I were interested, I'd be tweeting about this, I'd share it. I'd send it to my uncle who buys motorcycles. I would love this page." That's what you have to optimize for. It is a totally different thing than optimizing for did I use the keyword at least three times? Did I put it in the title tag? Is it included in there? Is the rest of the content relevant to the keywords? Panda changes this. Changes it quite a bit. Finally, you are going to be optimizing around user and usage metrics. Things like, when people come to your site, generally speaking compared to other sites in your niche or ranking for your keywords, do they spend a good amount of time on your site, or do they go away immediately? Do they spend a good amount of time? Are they bouncing or are they browsing? If you have a good browse rate, people are browsing 2, 3, 4 pages on average on a content site, that's decent. That's pretty good. If they're browsing 1.5 pages on some sites, like maybe specific kinds of news sites, that might actually be pretty good. That might be better than average. But if they are browsing like 1.001 pages, like virtually no one clicks on a second page, that might be weird. That might hurt you. Your click-through rate from the search results. When people see your title and your snippet and your domain name, and they go, "Ew, I don't know if I want to get myself involved in that. They've got like three hyphens in their domain name, and it looks totally spammy. I'm not going to get involved." Then that click-through rate is probably going to suffer and so are your rankings. They are going to be looking at things like the diversity and quantity of traffic that comes to your site. Do lots of people from all around the world or all around your local region, your country, visit your website directly? They can measure this through Chrome. They can measure it through Android. They can measure it through the Google toolbar. They have all this user and usage metrics. They know where people are going on the Internet, where they spend time, how much time they spend, and what they do on those pages. They know about what happens from the search results too. Do people click from a result and then go right back to the search results and perform another search? Clearly, they were unhappy with that. They can take all these metrics and put them into the machine learning algorithm and then have Panda essentially recalculate. This why you see essentially Google doesn't issue updates every day or every week. It is about every 30 or 40 days that a new Panda update will come out because they are rejiggering all this stuff. One of the things that people who get hit by Panda come up to me and say, "God, how are we ever going to get out of Panda? We've made all these changes. We haven't gotten out yet." I'm like, "Well, first off, you're not going to get out of it until they rejigger the results, and then there is no way that you are going to get out of it unless you change the metrics around your site." So if you go into your Analytics and you see that people are not spending longer on your pages, they are not enjoying them more, they are not sharing them more, they are not naturally linking to them more, your branded search traffic is not up, your direct type in traffic is not up, you see that none of these metrics are going up and yet you think you have somehow fixed the problems that Panda tries to solve for, you probably haven't. I know this is frustrating. I know it's a tough issue. In fact, I think that there are sites that have been really unfairly hit. That sucks and they shouldn't be and Google needs to work on this. But I also know that I don't think Google is going to be making many changes. I think they are very happy with the way that Panda has gone from a search quality perspective and from a user happiness perspective. Their searchers are happier, and they are not seeing as much junk in the results. Google likes the way this is going. I think we are going to see more and more of this over time. It could even get more aggressive. I would urge you to work on this stuff, to optimize around these things, and to be ready for this new form of SEO."Are you in need of some SEO/SEM strategy? Call us today!Omaha Media Group LLCMonster Creative Management6414 S. 118th StreetOmaha, Nebraska 68137402.218.4423 - Officehttp://www.omahamediagroup.com SEO and Online Marketing 2011-07-05T20:05:48+00:00 /blog/article/google_farmer_panda_update_killed_the_ranking_star/ /blog/article/google_farmer_panda_update_killed_the_ranking_star/#When:16:01:44Z Welcome to the wonderful world of Google Search Engine Marketing. We are Omaha Media Group "Monster Creative Management" and are your host for today's blog covering the Google Algorithm release known in our nerd world as "Farmer" or "Panda". By now you may have noticed that your search engine traffic has dropped significantly but may have no clue as to why. Or, you are a naughty marketing guru and have no idea or any clue that anything has changed. Shame on you! If you're like a lot of our *NEW* clients you maybe thinking, so wait a minute, what happened to all of my search engine traffic this month? You were most like struck by Google Farmer/Panda. On February 24th, the Google Farmer/Panda update was implemented and changed 12% of Google's search results. What?!?! That's right, nearly 12% of all of those tireless hours you spent optimizing your website against your competitors was probably just thrown out the window, that is if you were doing your optimization and marketing strategies incorrectly. Okay, wait.. what? Seriously, what just happened to my search engine rank? Well, let's check in with our development partners over at Google to hear what they have to say. Google’s words: "Our recent update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites, so the key thing for webmasters to do is make sure their sites are the highest quality possible. We looked at a variety of signals to detect low quality sites. Bear in mind that people searching on Google typically don’t want to see shallow or poorly written content, content that’s copied from other websites, or information that are just not that useful. In addition, it’s important for webmasters to know that low quality content on part of a site can impact a site’s ranking as a whole. For this reason, if you believe you’ve been impacted by this change you should evaluate all the content on your site and do your best to improve the overall quality of the pages on your domain. Removing low quality pages or moving them to a different domain could help your rankings for the higher quality content." Great, thank you Google, I will break that down for the rest of you: This algorithm specifically targets sites (not necessarily content farms) that are low quality in a number of ways, such as: 1) Shallow content (not enough content to be useful) 2) Poorly written content 3) Content copied from other sites 4) Content that’s not useful So who did Farmer/Panda impact overall? Well, nearly 98% of the Google indexed population. Or, the ones that we like to call "the people that either have no clue what they're doing, or are doing their search marketing improperly". Let's face it, there is an unlimited amount of quote "SEO/SEM Professionals" out there who will quote "Get your website to the top of the search rankings" so be careful who you choose to get your online business included correctly. If you hear the words "Keyword(s)" do yourself a favor and run! What can we learn as "good" search engine marketing gurus? A lot really. Let's summarize it for you: - Substantial low quality on a site can cause the rankings for the entire site to decline (even for the high quality pages) - Evaluate your web site for poor quality pages (not useful, poorly written, non-unique, or thin) and remove them - Overall user experience is likely important: design and usability, ad-to-content ratio, brand perception - Look at both content and page templates (do the templates overwhelm the pages with ads? Provide a poor user interface?) - After ensuring all content on the site is high quality, focus on engagement and awareness (through social media and other channels) Did you hear me? Social Media MATTERS!! - Diversify into other channels and even within search, look beyond web search at Google News and “one box” style results such as blogs, images, and videos - We can potentially learn from content farms, particularly in how they pinpoint what audiences are interested in and what problems they are trying to solve as well as how they harness crowd sourcing. So now what? I've lost all of my traffic and now I'm showing up on page 20 of my search phrases. We are very glad you asked that question. The simple answer is to call us. We would be happy to sit down with you to discuss a more proper search engine strategy as well as provide you a practical on-going maintenance plan and road map for proper tracking REO. Would you hire an auto mechanic to fix the hole in your roof or worse yet try to repair it yourself? More importantly we will help you decipher those pesky and hard to understand elements such as Brand Perception, Quality Content Ratios, Factors of Impact, Associated Content / Associated References, and Building Content for Searcher Needs (Duh!!). We are Search Engine Professionals and would LOVE to assist you! Call us today for your free consultation and a free tour of our production studios. Omaha Media Group LLC "Monster Creative Management" www.omahamediagroup.com 6414 S. 118th St Omaha, NE 68137 402.218.4423 support@omahamediagroup.com SEO and Online Marketing 2011-04-08T16:01:44+00:00 /blog/article/tap_53_million_facebook_users_for_free/ /blog/article/tap_53_million_facebook_users_for_free/#When:03:21:16Z First off, if you have not yet heard of Facebook, thank you for exiting your cave. We would like to now welcome you to the Internet, we think you'll like it here. Okay, now let's get serious. Here are some quick stats on Facebook which should be of interest to any business: 1. More than 53 million active users. Wow! 2. An average of 250,000 new users join every day. Double Wow! 3. About 34% of users work as professionals, sales, executives, educators or are in technical careers. Triple Wow! 4. The fastest growing demographic on Facebook consists of users 25 and older. Yeah, that makes sense doesn't it? It is common knowledge that Facebook started in the student demographic but did you know that it is now quickly growing out of it? Our guess is that if you have a product or service offering, chances are that at least a few of those 53 million active users (which spend about 20 minutes a day on the site) are prospective customers of your business. The question is, what do you do about it? No seriously, what are you going to do about it? Until recently, only big businesses with big marketing budgets could setup a Facebook account for their companies and/or brands. Examples included Verizon, Walmart, Victoria's Secret and other well known companies. For these brands, Facebook users could become "fans" by adding the brand as a friend (much like they would add a person as a friend). This was pretty cool, but pretty expensive for those companies that wanted to tap into this feature. Not anymore. Now, any business can create a Facebook profile, or business page, which any Facebook user can become a "fan" of. You no longer have to be a Fortune 500 company to afford this. It's free. Yeah, NO KIDDING! But that sounds so difficult, you could never accomplish that, right? Wrong! It is EASY! Here's how to do it: Creating A Facebook Business Page 1. Visit this URL: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php 2. Decide what the best category is for your business. (Spend a couple of minutes on this as you can't change it later easily). 3. Enter your business/product/brand name and click "Create Page". 4. At a minimum, we suggest entering a short description of your business and a website address. This is in the "Add Information To This Page" area. We also advise uploading your logo as a photo/image. 5. Click on your business name in the top left corner (it's a hyperlink) and then click "publish this page" (until you do this, nobody but you will be able to see your new Facebook business profile). 6. Finally, and this is important, from your new profile page, click "Add to my products". This way, you become the first "fan" of your business. Now comes the fun part. Once you've become a "fan" of your business, your friends on Facebook (some of which are likely customers) will see a message in their home page. Something like "Miley Cyrus is a fan of Omaha Media Group LLC". Hopefully, some of your Facebook friends will befriend your business. Then, their friends will see a message, and so it goes… before you know it you're social networking your way free advertising. If you want to see a sample Facebook business page, you can check out Omaha Media Group, LLC on Facebook . In fact, you can even add Omaha Media Group, LLC as a friend (once you visit the page, click on the "Add Product" link in the right column. There are two benefits to becoming a friend of Omaha Media Group, LLC: One, you'll feel a positive glow of good karma. Two, you'll have our attention, and our gratitude. Oh, and if we like you or your business we just might blast you to our own network. Any questions? Just post them in the comments. SEO and Online Marketing, Social Network Marketing 2010-09-28T03:21:16+00:00 /blog/article/why_email_marketing_works/ /blog/article/why_email_marketing_works/#When:17:48:20Z Have you received an email marketing campaign lately? How about a SPAM campaign message? Did you read it or just skim the subject line and author and then tossed it in the trash? Does email marketing work? You bet it does! Whether or not you read that marketing blast you just proved it was an effective campaign just by acknowledging its existence. So why is email marketing so effective? Well, email marketing works for a variety of reasons... * It allows targeting * It is data driven * It drives direct sales * It builds relationships, loyalty and trust * It supports sales through other channels Companies like emailContactor.com use modern email marketing services and solutions that support database integration, segmentation and various other tricks and techniques for improving the targeting of outgoing messages. Advanced methods generate on-the-fly emails customized down to an individual recipient basis and then as if from the gods above give all of that data to you in an easy readable report. So with each message you're opening a doorway to new business possibilities and with every email campaign you send out generates a heap of actionable data you can use to refine your approach and messages. Email promotions and offers generate immediate action: sales, downloads, inquiries, registrations, etc. Informative email newsletters and other emails send people to offline stores and events, prepare the way for catalogs, build awareness, contribute to branding, strengthen relationships, encourage trust and cement loyalty. The real money is following the results... * A December 2009 survey of 300 email marketers by Silverpop found that their companies were feeling the effects of recession, but "four out of 10 marketers reported that their email budgets in 2010 would increase, and nearly half (47 percent) said their budgets would stay the same" (see press release). * A November 2009 survey of B2B marketers found that email marketing was likely to see more spending increase than any other form of online marketing bar website development (report). * A Q2 2009 survey of over 5,000 senior US executives revealed that email marketing was the channel most likely to see an increase in marketing budget (see press report). * 46% of North American small businesses surveyed in 2009 by Hurwitz & Associates use email marketing, with another 36% planning to do so in the coming year (press release). * Seven out of ten UK marketers surveyed by the DMA in 2009 expected expenditure on email marketing to increase over the next 12 months (press release). * In August, 2009, Veronis Suhler Stevenson's annual Communications Industry Forecast suggested total spend for email will grow from $11.9 billion in 2008 to $27.8 billion by 2013 (see press report). * An April 2009 survey of senior marketing executives by the European Interactive Advertising Association revealed that 46% of respondents plan to invest more in email (report). * In Datran Media's 2009 Annual Marketing & Media Survey, 58.5% of industry executives said they planned to increase investment in email. Only 5.7% planned to decrease it (reference). * Internet Retailer's April 2009 email marketing survey found that 51.6% planned to increase spending on email during the recession, and only 4.7% planned to decrease it (reference). * Shop.org's State of Retailing Online 2009 survey of retailers found that 88% of them list "e-mail as a high priority for the year" (reference). * A 2009 survey of US B2B marketers by MarketingProfs and Forrester Research found that 39% planned to increase email budgets, while 11% planned a decrease (reference). * The CMO Council's Marketing Outlook '09 Report reviewed the plans and opinions of 650 marketers. Email marketing was the top target area for investment in 2009 (press release). * A survey of B2B marketers in November, 2008 noted that 68.3% intended increasing spending on email marketing in 2009 (reference). * The DMA estimate spending on email marketing (in the USA) will increase from $600 million in 2008 to $700 million in 2009 (reference). So what do you need to do to get started? Our recommendation is to contact the folks over at emailContactor.com. They are an Omaha based company that specializes in email marketing at untouchable competitive pricing. They will sit down with you and learn about your business, develop requirements for you, customize your email campaigns to fit your business branding and needs, and will work with you side by side to get you going. emailCotnactor.com http://www.emailcontactor.com Or Contact us, we will be happy to work with you on your email marketing venture. Omaha Media Group LLC 6414 S. 118th St.Omaha, NE 68137 402.218.4423 E-Mail Marketing, SEO and Online Marketing 2010-08-09T17:48:20+00:00 /blog/article/first_thing_young_women_do_in_the_morning_check_facebook/ /blog/article/first_thing_young_women_do_in_the_morning_check_facebook/#When:18:56:32Z Like us, odds are good that you are a Facebook addict. Here's an awesome article we found very interesting and thought you might too. Especially if you're targeting this demographic. The First Thing Young Women Do in the Morning: Check FacebookYoung women are becoming more and more dependent on social media and checking on their social networks, according to a new study released earlier today by Oxygen Media and Lightspeed Research. In fact, as many as one-third of women aged 18-34 check Facebook when they first wake up, even before they get to the bathroom.The study sampled the habits of 1,605 adults using social media between May and June of this year in an attempt to break down their social media habits. While some of the results are in line with previous studies we’ve read, others simply shocked us (e.g. 42% of young women think posting photos of themselves “visibly intoxicated” is okay).While the study covers all of social media, it’s clear that women in the 18-34 range are focused on their Facebook accounts. More than half of young women (57%) say they talk to people online more than face-to-face. A full 39% of them proclaim themselves Facebook addicts, while 34% of young women make Facebook the first thing they do when they wake up, even before brushing their teeth or going to the bathroom.Here are some interesting stats regarding young women and Facebook: * 21% of women age 18-34 check Facebook in the middle of the night * 63% use Facebook as a networking tool * 42% think it’s okay to post photos of themselves intoxicated * 79% are fine with kissing in photos * 58% use Facebook to keep tabs on “frenemies” * 50% are fine with being Facebook friends with complete strangersWhat conclusions can we draw from this data? It’s not just that young women are using Facebook religiously: it’s that they’re very open with what they post and who they accept as friends. <1>What do you think of these stats? Do any of them surprise you? Let us know what you think in the comments.Please contact us for more information on how you can capture this specific target market for your business product or service.Omaha Media Group LLC4852 S. 133 ST Suite 101Omaha, Nebraska 68137402.218.4423 SEO and Online Marketing, Social Network Marketing 2010-07-28T18:56:32+00:00