It seems that in just the last few years, some foreign-looking black and white squares have taken over posters in most aspects of consumer life, from corporate campaigns to property listings in local newspapers. They can be placed on nearly any surface that they can be painted, printed, or adhered to. Although these tiny squares may seem intimidating and ineffective, they’re rapidly becoming the next hot marketing tool in a world that’s rapidly going digital.

QR Codes, or Quick Response Codes, were created in 1994 as a more convenient and data dense solution for scanners. Here are the top five things you should know about them:

What are they?

QR Codes are nothing more than a more effective and efficient bar code. While most barcodes are one-dimensional and store data in one direction (horizontally), QR Codes are 2D and can be scanned either vertically or horizontally. QR Codes aren’t the only type of 2D barcode—DataMatrix, Microsoft Tag, and ScanLife EZcode join the ranks of this innovative advertising format. But much like the “Band-Aid” or “Kleenex”, it has become the name used to refer to all 2D barcodes. QR Codes (as well as DataMatrix codes) are also the most widely used, as Microsoft Tag and ScanLife EZcode can only be decoded by tools from those companies.

Technology Requirements

Unfortunately for many, QR Codes can only be scanned by owners of smart phones with a corresponding app (see the next point below). Luckily, a recent report by Nielsen Mobile Insights has found that, as of February 2012, 50% of all U.S. mobile phone owners have a smart phone—a 10% increase in the last year alone.

To make non-smart phone users a part of the experience (and to provide a back up if the code won’t scan), you should always include a hyperlink or an SMS service on promotions.

Software Requirements

The software to read as well as (most of) the software to create QR Codes is completely free. Which website and format you choose to generate a QR will quickly determine who your marketing target is, and even how successful your QR Code promotion will be.

QR Code Readers:

• RedLaser: reads QR, UPC/EAN
• Bee TaggReader: reads QR, DataMatrix, Bee Tagg
• AT&T Code Reader: reads QR, DataMatrix, UPC/EAN
• ScanLife: EZCode, QR, DataMatrix, UPC/EAN; no other apps can detect an EZCode
• Microsoft Tag: only reads Tag codes

QR Code Generators

• Kaywa: allows you to customize your design for free, codes can be created to link to phone numbers, a web page, SMS, or text. A paid version allows you to track a code’s success.
• Microsoft Tag: gives you the ability to have a colored QR code, free service, even a limited analysis of code metrics. An account is required to create the code, and the code you create can only be scanned by a phone with the Tag app.
• QRstuff.com: free to customize, codes can link to websites, Youtube videos, Google Maps, social media sites (i.e. Twitter and Facebook), iTunes, plain text, a Skype call, email, contact information, an event, Wifi login, and even a Paypal buy now link.

There are a myriad of different types of QR Code generating websites, but the site that you use is completely dependent upon the target market, the kind of data that you want to store, and the code format that you want to use.

Tips for a Successful Campaign

• Make sure that your barcode can be scanned easily and your content can be loaded quickly—most smart phones with a camera resolution less than four megapixels cannot scan a code that is less than an inch in size. QR Codes with more information stored in them require a larger size and often more complicated design, which can make scanning the codes a long and complicated process.
• If you’re unsure about what you’re doing, or how you can make a QR Code wok for your company, mobile barcode marketing professionals can get your promotion on the track toward success.
• Tools to track the progress of your 2D barcode campaign are relatively inexpensive, and some are even free. Some of these tools will report the geolocation, repeat scans, and the demographics, while other programs will simply report the number of scans. Popular management programs include ScanLife, Microsoft Tag, QReateBUZZ, BeQRious, Paperlinks, Tappin, and SPARQCode.

Good luck with your forays into this innovative and useful new marketing tool!

This blog entry was posted by Sarah Schwitters, Chief Marketing Strategist at lodestar marketing group. We hope that this article was able to clarify your questions about these smart little squares. If you’re still stumped by these matrix codes, we’re here for you. lodestar marketing group specializes in digital marketing, and we’d love to partner with your business to skyrocket your success. Contact us today at digitalmarketing@lodestarmg.com.

These SES Conferences will be going on during the summer and fall of this year, are a good way to network with professionals in your city while gaining the latest information about topics such as keyword search, SEO, social media, and other hot topics.

To find out more about these seminars, take a look at the links below.

SES Toronto , June 11-13

SES San Francisco, August 13-17

SES Hong Kong, September 10-12

SES Chicago, November 12-16

SES Singapore, November 19-21

This blog entry was posted by Sarah Schwitters, Chief Marketing Strategist at lodestar marketing group. If one of these conferences isn’t making its way to you, don’t worry. At lodestar marketing group, we stay up to date on all the latest news in internet marketing. If you are interested in boosting your organic search rankings or want help with your digital marketing, contact us at digitalmarketing@lodestarmg.com.

Google alters algorithm to make results more fresh

Google altered its search algorithm today to bring in more timely topics, a move that affects about 35 percent of all searches.

The Web giant said it’s trying to surface the most relevant results to users, and with more and more real-time data popping up on the Net, Google changed its algorithm to find it.

“Given the incredibly fast pace at which information moves in today’s world, the most recent information can be from the last week, day or even minute, and depending on the search terms, the algorithm needs to be able to figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent, or if a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old,” Google Fellow Amit Singhal wrote in a blog post.

In June, Google completed its Caffeine Web indexing system that provided “50 percent fresher results,” the company said then. With that tool, Google altered the algorithm to better determine when to deliver those more up-to-date results.

So now, when users search, for example, “Occupy Oakland protests,” Google returns results that are news heavy, surfacing links to articles from newspapers that may be only minutes old. When it comes to recurring events, such as presidential elections or corporate earnings results, the new algorithm produces results that are most recent unless the search specifies otherwise.

“Different searches have different freshness needs,” Singhal wrote. “This algorithmic improvement is designed to better understand how to differentiate between these kinds of searches and the level of freshness you need, and make sure you get the most up to the minute answers.”

This post was provided by Sarah Schwitters, Chief Marketing Strategist at lodestar marketing group.  If you would like to improve your search rankings or need help understanding Google’s recent changes, contact digitalmarketing@lodestarmg.com.

“We are happy to support such as great cause,” said Sarah Schwitters, lodestar’s chief marketing officer.  “The opening of the Middle School Pavilion will allow NCA to expand both its elementary and middle school programs and meet the needs of more families who have been on waiting lists for years.”

NCA has programs from birth through 8^th grade.  For more information on NCA, visit them online at www.northshorechristianschools.org. To learn more about lodestar marketing group, visit www.lodestarmg.com.

That’s why lodestar marketing group employs proven and legitimate SEO practices.  We don’t take short cuts.  We don’t break the rules.  We work to provide the search engines what they need to understand the content on the web site while still providing a web site that suppports your brand.  Yes, it takes longer for the results.  Yes, it is more work to do it right.  But it is never worth the risk to cheat the system as you’ll see from the fate of JC Penney and Overstock.com.

If you want help with your search engine optimization and want to ensure you are doing it ethically while still getting great results, we want to hear from you.  Contact us at digitalmarketing@lodestarmg.com.

The dark world of search engine manipulation

McClatchy Newspapers

Published Tuesday, Mar. 01, 2011

The change was done in a continued effort to weed out sites known as content farms which produce articles and content that is not particularly useful to a searcher.  They hope to help legitimate, high quality web sites regain their organic rankings which have been on the decline due to these content farms.

We hope you find this article useful.  If you would like help navigating the ever-changing search engine landscape, and improving your organic search rankings, please contact lodestar at digitalmarketing@lodestarmg.com.

Seeking to Weed Out Drivel, Google Adjusts Search Engine

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

Published: February 25, 2011

In a tacit admission that Web publishers are flooding its search engine with low-quality pages, Google has revised its methods to improve the usefulness of its results.

Google said the change would raise the rankings of high-quality Web sites and reduce those of lesser sites, affecting 12 percent of search queries.

Sites known as content farms, which churn out sometimes mindless articles based on what people are searching for, have recently worked their way to the top of search results, frustrating some Google users. High rankings in search results are crucial because they allow Web sites to get more traffic and bring in more business, either through sales of goods and services or through advertising.

“I haven’t seen as much negative attention on Google’s results as I have in the last month or two — it’s been fairly unprecedented,” said Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Land and an industry expert.

Persuading users that it has the best results is crucial for Google, whose reputation and status as the front door to the Web depend on them. Though there were many search engines before Google, it became the dominant player because its technology produced better results for users. If people begin to doubt the quality of its results, Google risks losing them to competitors.

While so-called content farms can provide useful information, many of their articles are of questionable value but achieve high rankings in searches. For example, an eHow articleon making friends in college includes tips like “consider joining a sorority or fraternity” and “remember to have a good time, smile and laugh.”

Google makes about 500 changes a year to the algorithm, or formula, that runs its search engine, most of them minor. Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow who worked on the latest change, said in an interview that users were likely to quickly notice this one, which was announced late Thursday.

“We haven’t done a change where we have impacted low-quality sites at this level in years,” Mr. Singhal said. “It’s a clear evolution of the algorithm as the Web is evolving, the content on the Web is evolving, the user expectation is evolving.”

Google still dominates the Web search market, with a 66 percent share in the United States and a larger one in many other countries, according to comScore, a Web analytics company. But it faces ambitious competitors, most notably Microsoft’s Bing.

Hitwise, an analytics firm, measures how happy users are with their searches by looking at how many are successful, meaning the user stays at the first site they click on. At Bing, 82 percent of searches are deemed successful. At Google, the figure is 66 percent.

“This change is about more than just cleaning up content farms,” said Chris Copeland, chief executive of GroupM Search, a search marketing firm that is part of the advertising company WPP Group. “Google has a relevancy problem, and they are trying to do something about it.”

Google made the change after technology bloggers, industry analysts and everyday users complained that its search results had useless pages. The response may help Google’s reputation, Mr. Sullivan said.

“The change may not necessarily improve the results — hopefully it will — but it will definitely improve the perception of Google,” he said.

The new algorithm change does not address the full scope of techniques that sites use to manipulate Google. It is a constant cat-and-mouse game — as soon as Google makes a change, Web developers figure out a way around it.

When Google’s search engine was first introduced, in 1998, its primary advantage was that it considered the number of times other sites linked to a certain page, weighing those links as though they were endorsements. But as people quickly learned how to manipulate those links, Google’s search began focusing more heavily on other factors, too. Google haspunished e-commerce sites, including J. C. Penney, for inflating its rankings by paying for links from unrelated sites.

“Our algorithm clearly gets attacked by these techniques every day,” Mr. Singhal said. “However, with the amount of information that we have, we are pretty far ahead in the game.”

Though Google’s announcement did not explicitly mention content farms, and the company declined to say which sites were appearing lower in results, Matt Cutts, who leads Google’s spam-fighting team, has spoken in recent weeks about content farms and said Google was working on ways to deal with them.

“There are some content farms that I think it would be fair to call spam, in the sense that the quality is so low-quality that people complain,” Mr. Cutts said in a recent interview.

Sites that are frequently given the “content farm” label include Yahoo’s Associated Content, AOL’s Seed and Demand Media’s eHow and Answerbag. Demand Media, for example, uses software to track what people are searching for on Google and other sites, generates headlines based on those searches and pays small amounts to freelancers to write the articles.

Criticism of these sites has been on Google’s radar, and the company said it had worked on addressing these problems for more than a year. This winter, Demand Media went public, and its shares jumped 33 percent on its first day of trading; it is now worth $1.9 billion. Around that time, technology bloggers began writing posts like one that complained that a Google search for new dishwashers had produced useless results.

Of course, the quality of a particular site is subjective. To determine quality, Google does things like track “boomerang” searches, when people click on a link and promptly click back to the results, and ask people to compare search results.

Demand Media, which relies on traffic from Google for its livelihood, said in a blog post on Friday that it applauded the changes and that it was too early to determine the long-term effect on Demand’s sites. This week, Richard Rosenblatt, Demand’s chief executive, said it was working to bring in readers from sites other than Google, and introduced a site that discusses Demand’s quality controls. The company’s stock opened sharply lower Friday but closed 1.6 percent higher at $22.96.

Some consultants who help Web sites to improve their search rankings said sites like Demand’s might not feel the brunt of the change. They said Google’s real target was the hundreds of no-profile companies that post duplicate copies of the same text on hundreds of Web sites.

And many of the sites will figure out a new way to climb back up Google’s rankings, said Mr. Copeland of GroupM Search.

“This is a group of people who will analyze this change, come back with a new strategy on Tuesday and be ranking by Thursday,” he said. “It’s kind of like what happens when drug dealers get busted. They don’t find new jobs. They switch corners.”

David Segal contributed reporting.

This blog was posted by Sarah Schwitters, Chief Marketing Strategist at lodestar marketing group.  If you would like help with your search engine optimization or search engine marketing programs, please contact us at digitalmarketing@lodestarmg.com.

1.  Try to avoid changing URLs.  If you must, such as if you are switching to a different content management system, then try to redirect the old URLs to the matching ones on the new site.  If this seems like too big of a task, then you should at least focus on the top pages, such as the homepage, top entry pages, and most popular pages.  Make this a priority.  You want to make sure the redirects are in place before the search engine spiders revisit your site.

2.  Be careful with content changes.  If your old website was already optimized for SEO, changing the content drastically may decrease rankings on your important keywords.  However, if you did not have SEO in place in your old website, now is the perfect time to get SEO best practices into place and ensure your website will draw in more targeted traffic.

3.  Create and submit an XML sitemap.  It can take a few months for search engines to follow a redirect to a new webpage and rank it.  To speed up this process, you should create an XML sitemap and then submit it to search engines to be indexed.  You want to make sure your new site is indexed as quickly as possible so that visitors will be able to find it.

These are just a few tips to keep in mind when undergoing a website design.  It may seem overwhelming to get all the important SEO best practices in place, but the effort will be worth it.  Let lodestar help you with your website redesign and guarantee that every aspect of your new site has SEO in place.

This article was posted by Carolyn Berger, Director of Marketing and Operations at lodestar marketing group.  If you need help with your search engine marketing, please contact lodestar at sarah@lodestarmg.com.

Imagine that you’ve taken the giant leap to start a blog to bring more brand awareness and exposure to your small business.

You’ve taken all the necessary steps to build your blog platform and now comes the day when you make your very first blog post. You spend hours crafting a post that is educational, inspirational and positions you as an expert in your field. You are as proud of this post as if it truly were your own flesh and blood. And, most of all you can’t wait to share it with the world.

So, you hit “publish” and wait for your readers to react to your nuggets of wisdom. However, the waiting is an endless ordeal.

Why aren’t you generating any comments? Why aren’t people emailing you thrilled that you have shared your expertise with them?

It’s called “lack of traffic” and if there’s no traffic to your blog, no one will ever see it.

So, how can you begin enticing readers to visit your blog? Here are twelve quick ways to generate a flow of non-stop blog traffic:

1. Create Great Content

Obviously, this goes without saying. But, your content needs to educate, entertain, inspire or offer a solution to your readers’ problems. You want to try to accomplish at least one of these tasks with every blog post.

2. Keep Your Posts Short

We are living in an age where short attention spans are the norm. Keep your posts under 500 words so that you don’t lose your ADD readers.

3. Get Your Blog Indexed in Technorati

This is the big daddy of all blog catalogs. Make sure that you go through the very simple process of submitting your blog RSS feed to Technorati.

4. Submit Your Blog Feed to Other Top Blog Catalogs

Blog catalogs and RSS feed catalogs are where readers go to find blogs to read. You want to make sure that your blog is there. To make the process even easier, you can use a service such as SubmitINMe to manually post to the catalogs for you.

5. Entice Your Readers to Subscribe to Your Blog

Offer your readers a free goodie (such as a downloadable ebook, whitepaper, audio class, etc.) if they subscribe to your blog.

6. Let Your Social Networks Know About New Posts

Whenever you post to your blog, Tweet it out to your followers, update your LinkedIn status and let your Facebook friends and fans know about it. If it’s a good post, they will pass it on to their community as well.

7. Get Involved in the Blog Community

Blogging is a social activity. Read other blogs, comment on other blogs and refer to other blogs within your own blog posts.

8. Comment Back

When your readers make comments on your blog, make sure that you comment back to them. You want to encourage a natural back and forth dialogue between you and your readers.

9. Participate in a Blog Carnival

A blog carnival is a blog event that it is dedicated to a particular topic and is published either weekly or monthly. Each edition of a blog carnival is in the form of an article that contains links to other blog posts on that particular topic. Blog carnivals can be a wonderful way to produce awareness around your blog. Read the rules and regulations of the blog carnival and get involved.

10. Offer to Write a Blog Post for a High-Traffic Blog

Research various blogs within your particular industry. Read the blogs, comment on the blogs and interact with the blogger. Once you’ve established a relationship, send them an email politely letting them know that you would be willing to be a guest blogger for them at any time in the future. Include a link to your own blog so that they can check out the quality of your work.

11. Use Your Blog Posts in Your Ezine

Instead of writing a brand new article for your weekly ezine, send out the first few paragraphs of one of your past blog posts. Then include a link for the reader to continue reading the post on your blog.

12. Include Your Blog URL in Your Email Signature

Develop an email signature that you use whenever you send an email. Of course, your email signature should include a link to your blog.

Once you implement these twelve strategies, you’ll certainly notice a spike in traffic and begin generating comments and interaction from hundreds (even thousands) of readers in your particular industry.

This article was posted by Carolyn Berger, Director of Marketing and Operations at lodestar marketing group.  If you need help with your search engine marketing, please contact lodestar at sarah@lodestarmg.com.

You know it’s important for your business’s website to show up in a search engine’s results, since that’s where your customers are looking for what you have to offer. But how do you make that happen? Well, search engine optimization (SEO) is essential for getting your business noticed by the right people on the Web.

 Whether you take on improving your SEO yourself or hire an agency, it’s easy to get caught up in misinformation. Here are some of the biggest SEO myths out there:

 Myth 1: SEO is spam and is ruining the Internet
Because some people think SEO is about “tricking” search engines and readers, many associate it with unsolicited e-mail for erectile dysfunction medicine, blog commenters who proclaim “Great blog!” and then link to their make-money-now.info site, or those annoying websites that scrape content from other sites and then fill the pages with ads. Even Fox News called SEO a job that would “leave you alone and friendless.”

In my book, “Marketing in the Age of Google,” I lament that SEO is often associated with BuyCheapViagraWhileYouPlayPokerOnlineandFileaMesotheliomaClassActionLawsuit.info rather than customer engagement, usability, product strategy and sales.

 In reality, SEO is understanding how to operate your business in an online environment. Think of search as a customer acquisition component.

 Myth 2: SEO is all about PageRank
PageRank was one of the early ways Google calculated what was valuable and important on the Web. (Bing has a different way of calculating link value, called static rank.) At a high level, links from one site to another are like votes that all search engines can use to learn what sites are the most popular and useful.

The Google Toolbar includes a PageRank number (1-10). This is a rough approximation of the actual number used internally to rank websites, but it’s not the actual number used and isn’t granular enough to provide meaningful data.

 In addition, the toolbar version is updated only every few months (the number used internally is updated continually). And as PageRank is only one of hundreds of signals, a site with a low PageRank will outrank a site with a high PageRank any time the content is more relevant for a particular search query.

Many site owners obsess over this number, rejoicing when it goes up and despairing when it goes down. It’s tempting to use a single number to monitor your SEO efforts, but a much better gauge is how much traffic your website receives over time from searches relevant to your business.

Myth 3: You must focus on keyword density
I came across an SEO report the other day that scored pages based on “keyword density.” The idea here is that if 12 percent of the text on a page is the word “duck,” it’s more likely to rank well for duck-related searches than if the word “duck” is only mentioned once. This is where “keyword stuffing” comes from, which is pages that repeat the same word over and over in every possible combination.

 The reality is that keyword density doesn’t really matter. Search engines do a lot of work to figure out what a page is about versus just noticing a word that is mentioned in passing. They look at such things as how other sites describe the page when linking to it and how the page is titled. It’s the same stuff readers use to figure out what a page is about. Use words that your readers would use.

Myth 4: Since links are important, trading links helps you rank better
You’ve probably seen the e-mails. People write to you and say they’ve added a link to your site from theirs — and won’t you provide a link back? It will help boost both sites in search engines! Only, it won’t. In fact, it could get your site banned. Search engines value links that are natural, not those that are intended to manipulate their algorithms. Build a site that people want to link to, make people aware of it, and let the links come naturally.

Myth 5: Ranking No. 1 is the goal of SEO
Focusing on ranking No. 1 can cause you to lose sight of why you’re trying to rank in the first place. You don’t want to miss the bigger picture:

 - Many site owners make the mistake of tracking rankings for what they think people are searching for, without doing the research to make sure those are really the words people are using. For example, are your customers searching “real estate” or “buying a house”? This will affect your SEO strategy.

 - What does your search result look like? Searchers evaluate results in clusters of three or four, not merely the first listing. If another listing in the cluster has a more compelling title and description, yours might be skipped over.

 - How do searchers behave once they reach your site? Do they abandon it right away or do they stay on the site and buy things?

Monitor your Web analytics to find out what queries bring searchers to your site, if those searches are boosting your Web traffic, and what searchers do after they reach your site. If your search-to-sale conversion rates are going up, then you’re doing things right.

This article was posted by Sarah Schwitters, Chief Marketing Officer at lodestar marketing group.  If you need help with your search engine marketing, please contact Sarah at sarah@lodestarmg.com.

This video explains SEO very simply and provides some useful tips for getting it right. 

Watch the 18 minute video now.

This video was posted by Sarah Schwitters, Chief Marketing Officer at lodestar marketing group.  If you need help with your SEO efforts, please contact lodestar marketing group at sarah@lodestarmg.com