Internet Marketing Blog by Noon-an-Night

Chances are, you already know of at least one URL shortening service. However, I recently came across a URL shortening service that stands out from the rest of the crowd…

So, what exactly makes DecentURL better than all of its competitors?

In short (no pun intended), DecentURL not only shortens long, hard to type URLs, but it actually makes URLs that are useful.

As you can see from the example in the screenshot above, based on the location of the original URL and the title that you enter, DecentURL will create a URL that is not only short, but also descriptive.

Not only does it make it easier to remember a URL, but it also guarantees that you know where you’ll be going (unlike redirection services like TinyURL, which can be used to send unsuspecting visitors to web sites that don’t actually want to visit).

As you know from my previous post, I think PageRank is given much more attention than it deserves. Unfortunately, I can spend weeks ranting about the insignificance of PageRank, but as long as Google is still displaying the little green bar, bloggers and webmasters are still going to obsess over their PageRank. Therefore, I thought I would pass on the following advice…

The main purpose of the latest PageRank update was to punish naughty bloggers and webmasters that sold text links by knocking a notch or two off of their little green bar. However, there were multiple individuals that got slapped on the wrist even though they had never sold text links. The most notable examples were ProBlogger and CopyBlogger (6 to 4). However, after b5 Media told Google that neither web site had ever sold text links, ProBlogger’s PageRank was restored and CopyBlogger’s PageRank increased to 7.

So, if you find yourself in the same situation (or even if you WERE a Google Sinner in the past but have since changed your ways), you can repent to the Google Gods by logging into Google Webmaster Tools and filling out a re-inclusion request.

Although having your own landing page is always the best option in the long-run, there are times when you may want to setup a campaign that directly links to a merchant’s landing page.

If you need to do this, Tim Schroeder from eMonetized has compiled a step-by-step guide about Cloaking with Google AdWords.

His guide covers five simple steps that will allow you to create a page for a PPC campaign that will directly link to a merchant’s landing page.

With the continual growth of Facebook, building applications for it has become a great way to reach a large audience. Unfortunately, the majority of the talented developers creating these applications do not have any experience in marketing, so they are unsure about how to fully monetize their applications.

The two videos below are from the Facebook Developer convention in Vancouver and give concrete examples of ways to monetize Facebook applications:

If you haven’t done so already, you need to check out the web clinic section the Marketing Experiments Journal.

The web clinic is full of podcasts that can help you greatly improve your PPC campaigns.

Here’s a list of some of the free lessons that are available:

Landing Page Optimization: Improving Conversion 50-60% by Applying Continuity and Congruence
Marketing Experiments Webinar: A Clinical Assessment of Your Landing Pages
Lead Generation: Is Your Sign-Up Process Costing You Leads and Conversions, or Maximizing Them?
Landing Page Optimization: How Businesses Achieve Breakthrough Conversion by Synchronizing Value Proposition and Page Design
Landing Page Conversion: Getting Significant Improvements Even When You Can’t Complete Your Tests
Optimization Testing Tested: Validity Threats – Beyond Sample Size
PPC Advertising Tested: The Relevance of Relevance
Creating Effective Incentives
Big Conversion Gains From a Little Scissors & Grease?
How does having more than one objective to a page affect its performance?
How To Create a “Sticky” Landing Page

Believe me, I’m sick of hearing about PageRank drops, so this is not another list of web sites which have lost PR.

However, after reading some terribly misinformed articles (some of which appeared in the Google News results), I felt it necessary to address one PR related topic:

PageRank DOES NOT Equal Traffic

Although it doesn’t look on all web sites, adding a “Last Updated On” line with today’s date can increase user’s trust when they visit your PPC landing page. The reason that this features works well for PPC landing pages is that it reassures the visitor that the information they are reading isn’t out of date.

Since you don’t want to have to update your page manually everyday, here’s how to do it automatically with PHP:

Wordpress isn’t displaying the PHP properly. So the first and last tags are [ and ], in your code you’re going to want to replace them with < and > and it will work.

Above the html tags at the very very top of your index file, paste the following code :

[?php
$yesterday = date(’m/d/Y’, mktime(0, 0, 0, date(”m”) , date(”d”) - 1, date(”Y”)));
?]

Add the following code where you want the “Last Updated On: XX/XX/XXXX” to appear:

Last Updated On : [?php echo $yesterday ?]

Source

Recently, I noticed that there are quite a few web sites which are offering domain leasing services. Why would you want to lease a domain? Here are a few of the explanations I found across several different domain leasing web sites:

Leasing a domain name can give you access to using a generic brandable domain name that would otherwise be unavailable.

By leasing a domain name you can take advantage of it’s existing traffic and any search engine rankings, why have one website when you can have more and further establish your market share. A sharp mind and good business acumen will lead many to realise that having more than one website is a great investment for both branding and profits.

What are the benefits of leasing a domain?

There are tons of great benefits:

* Instant access to the world?s leading domain brands and their visitors
* Exclusive advertising and branding rights for the duration of the lease
* Full, real-time URL control of the template segment
* An unforgettable domain name for short term marketing and advertising campaigns
* Instant credibility with potential customers
* Fixed monthly costs for advertising

Although I’m not sure if domain leasing is something that I would take part in (either as an advertiser or publisher), I still think that it is an interesting concept. If anyone has any experience with domain leasing, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comment area.

With the Skin Tags plug-in, you can transform your category tags from a standard columnized list to a more attractive cloud tag.

To implement the plug-in, simply download the plug-in and upload it to your WordPress plug-ins folder.

If you are looking for an easy way to create a web site with a layout that is search engine friendly, this is the web site for you.

This web site offers twenty-four different free layouts, all of which use search engine friendly CSS and XHTML.