iePlexus.com Premiers New Online Shopping Network buyPlexus.com

www.iePlexus.com announces launch of buyPlexus.com, a Web 2.0 online shopping network designed for users to easily connect and explore businesses, products and services.

Lynnwood, WA (PRESS RELEASE) August 18, 2008 — Social media marketing company iePlexus.com today announced the official launch of buyPlexus.com, a new Web 2.0 shopping network and online directory developed specifically to enable users to find detailed information on a variety of businesses, their products and services. The buyPlexus.com website allows both consumers and merchants the ability to post, search and discover business listings, classified advertisements, articles and coupons all in one location.

“buyPlexus.com is unique because it benefits both the shopper and business owner,” says Kris Themstrup, Director of Marketing at iePlexus. “Shoppers have a place to find the products or services they’re interested in, and merchants can utilize the site’s marketing tools to generate additional exposure in the search engines and social media networks. We’ve created a powerful shopping portal in buyPlexus.com that’s capable of rivaling some of the most popular online.” As an introductory offer to mark its launch, buyPlexus.com is offering top-level business listings, called ‘Showcase Listings’ for free to businesses for the first 30 days of membership. “The free business directory promotion is designed to allow more users to experience the benefits of the network and build a significant advertiser base – we’ve had a great response so far,” states Themstrup.

The shopping network fits well with the business services offered by iePlexus, a Web 2.0 marketing and social media advertising company in business since 2005. iePlexus provides online marketing services including business blog development and customization, press release creation and distribution, and social media integration for e-commerce websites. “Since buyPlexus.com was built with the new Web 2.0 marketing standards in mind, we were able to augment the listings with additional components like business blogs, RSS feeds, Google Maps, photo galleries, reviews, comments and social media functionality,” added Themstrup. “Our designers and developers knew savvy marketers would appreciate these extra features, and they did a great job integrating them into the site.”

Along with the myriad of features available to business owners, buyPlexus.com also caters to online consumers. Users can search classified advertisements, articles, or coupons in virtually every category of products and services, on a local or national level. The classified advertisements and articles can be posted by anyone and include the complete set of attributes available to each listing. Coupons can be added by product or service providers to help generate additional business and announce specials or promotions. “The goal with buyPlexus is to enable anyone to post and search products and services – not just business owners,” commented Jason Thurston, owner of iePlexus. “Many competitors simply don’t allow people to take advantage of a network’s popularity without paying high fees or having an established business, so we made sure buyPlexus was accessible to everyone and didn’t exclude those users.”

“We hope the launch of buyPlexus.com shows our continued commitment to being a resource for everyone, not just our clients,” says Thurston. “In terms of advertising a business, we know the best approach to marketing is a comprehensive one, so buyPlexus certainly meets that need by providing so many options.” To keep advertisers and visitors to the site informed, the buyPlexus Blog was launched in conjunction with the directory and will be regularly updated with new developments and website news.

For additional information on the launch of the buyPlexus.com shopping network and directory, visit iePlexus.com or buyPlexus.com.

About iePlexus:
iePlexus.com specializes in providing comprehensive Web 2.0 marketing strategies for online businesses. Services include professional business blogs, press releases, social media advertising and web content writing. iePlexus, Inc has been in business since 2005 and operates its corporate headquarters out of Lynnwood, Washington.

About buyPlexus:
buyPlexus.com is owned by iePlexus, Inc. and is an online-based Web 2.0 shopping network and business directory. Services include comprehensive business profiles, classified advertisements, article posting and coupons. buyPlexus is open to all users to search and post information and was officially launched in August, 2008.

Press Release Locations: buyPlexus on PRWeb | buyPlexus on Yahoo! News

Business Blogs Deserve Better than Blogspot.com

Let me preface this post by saying I’m a big fan of Google and their online applications. Even Blogger, their online blogging software has its benefits, to some extent. Also, although my company offers business blogs as a service, this post is not about my company or our services, it’s about making the right business decision when it comes to implementing a business blog. An online business deserves every opportunity to become as successful as possible, and Blogspot.com just doesn’t offer the kind of support, services and features that are necessary to get the most out of this marketing device. I’m also not stating these reasons because I have studied other people’s experiences. I myself blogged for over three years using the Blogger service starting back in 2003, before it was even popular. That’s before I found Wordpress and became a 100% advocate of their open-source platform and content management system. So when you’re reading these opinions, rest assured it’s from someone familiar with the complete Blogger experience. 

On another note, this post was inspired by Dharmesh Shah’s great post on the same topic over at HubSpot’s Internet Marketing Blog. I can definitely relate to the same kind of headaches he experienced when trying to work with clients who are on Blogger and Blogspot.com.

Top 5 Reasons Why Blogspot.com Won’t Work for Your Business Blog:

1. Image is Everything: Users are as savvy as they come these days, and they aren’t impressed by a free blog on a sub-domain. The design and customization features of the hosted version of Blogger are for lack of a better word, limited. Not to say with some heavy tweaking and redirection it isn’t possible to get a professional, polished looking blog, but why not just start with the right software to begin with? Also, as far as consumers are concerned, a business isn’t taking itself very seriously if they aren’t going to take the few extra steps and set up an external, hosted blog. Blogspot.com blogs are really a soundboard for the personal bloggers, the diarists and individual voices. Businesses need to look elsewhere if they don’t want to be lost in a sea of soccer moms and emo teens with bad haircuts. 
2. SEO Suicide: When you setup a blog on Blogspot, you’re basically throwing your SEO out the window. Because it’s a sub-domain (yourbusiness.blogspot.com), all those incoming links you build to your blog are benefiting Google, and let’s face it, they don’t need the help ranking in their own search engine. I’m not even going to bring up the fact that Google won’t allow a 301 redirect to be placed on the blog so you can properly forward the SEO love to your company website, essentially locking your domain up and forcing you to start over when you eventually figure out Blogspot wasn’t the best choice.
3. Naughty Neighbors: Think the Blogspot.com community can do no wrong? The neighborhood is worse than you thought. Search Engine Land recently highlighted an article from News.com that stated Blogspot.com hosts 2% of all malware on the net, the single most abundant source online. And because Blogspot accounts can easily comment on each other’s blogs without the filters of other services, it’s very common to have a malicious link injected into your blog without your knowledge. A recent case of this found a blogger’s entire website and blog removed from the Google index because of this feature, simply because the link led to a malware and spam site. Guilt by association has never been so ironic.
4. Poor Integration & Features: The hosted Blogger is essentially a bubble-gum blog service. The feature set is extremely limited, with no support for article tagging, comment subscriptions and integration into blog tracking services like Technorati. The whole point of putting together a blog is to participate in the blog community, and having a blog on Blogspot.com really limits that interaction outside of Blogspot.com. It’s certainly something to consider when trying to start conversations about your market and build a reputation in the industry, let alone driving traffic to your site through those blog directories.
5. Data Transfer Nightmares: Google is known for easy migration of information, but it’s important to remember that Blogger was not developed originally by Google, it was purchased and developed from previously existing software. This is the only explanation for the hardships I endured when attempting to export my data once I was ready to make the switch. Comments wouldn’t transfer and I was only able to process a few articles at a time. Having blogged for over three years, it’s an understatement to say that it took forever. I had well over 500 posts and had to backup all the data to ensure it wasn’t lost or deleted during the migration. You’d think this would be a priority with Blogger since it’s very often the place blogs are born and not made, but it seems that stranglehold on your data isn’t getting loosened any time soon.

To summarize, I don’t want to completely write off Blogger as a valuable tool; it might be just what the millions of main-stream bloggers need; a bare-bones service that makes blogging extremely easy. But Blogspot.com, the hosted version of Blogger is not really worth the work that needs to go into it. Like everything free, it comes with a catch, and in this case it’s the deal-breaker when it comes to professional business blogs. At the very least, if you’re on Blogspot.com right now, purchase your own domain and hosting. Make the transfer before it gets any more difficult and you’re locked into something you can’t get out of. I fully recommend Wordpress for every aspect of blogging and have tried pretty much every platform on the market. If you need help with a transfer, let us know. Even if you don’t work with us, we can point you in the right direction.

“Thank you iePlexus for all your help.”

Hi iePlexus,

Just wanted to let you know how excited I am, not only in the amount of traffic to my site, but also the sales this past month. I never thought I would be getting customers at this point in time. What a great beginning.

Thank you iePlexus for all your help.

Carol
www.mygogreenclothing.com
www.mygogreenclothingblog.com

Hi iePlexus, how’s it going? I just wanted to tell you that I’m so excited to have the opportunity to work with you. I spoke with your references the other day and all they had to say were great things about you and how proud you both were of what you were able to accomplish together. So, I was pretty impressed to say the least. I would like you to take a look at our site again and tell me what you think, because I changed it up a bit. I need some feedback from someone who knows what they are talking about.

Thanks,

Creations Lighting
www.creationslighting.com
www.creationslightingdock.com

Every Day Social Media

Traditional media’s days as the main source of information are numbered. Giants like newspapers, television and radio are taking a back seat to the onset of social media as the most popular way we interact and discuss the subjects that are important to us. Web 2.0 and the read/write web has made it easy for everyone to share and discuss opinions, find new information and discover those with similar ideas and interests. Without adapting and evolving, old media will find themselves playing catch-up or worse, branded insignificant and out of date. Of course the progressive outlets are embracing this shift in the fundamentals and using it to their advantage. Major newspapers, radio stations and television networks now have significant online presences and encourage the interaction that is driving our daily lives. But they find themselves in competition like never before. As social media grows, more options are available to users every day, forming a whole new basis for every aspect of how we get and share information.

With the advent of social networking and social bookmarking sites, users now have the unique ability to make connections with others they would have never had the opportunity to meet. They can share interests, recommendations, and pretty much anything else online or off. Almost seamlessly, social media has integrated into our everyday lives and continues to reshape our online experience. With that, advertising and marketing campaigns have had to adapt to encompass this popular medium. Take a look at some of these common online activities and see how often you use social media:

• Ever sent or received an email? That’s the earliest form of social media.
• Ever read reviews on a product from other consumers? Or written one yourself? That’s one of the most popular social media functions.
• Have a MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn or other networking profile? You’re participating in the largest social connection experiment ever.
• Ever shared a website, story, picture or video you found online with a someone else? That’s social bookmarking in it’s simplest form.
• Ever read an online newspaper or magazine? Major news, tv stations or opinion sites? Chances are these popular sites are in the form of blogs; frequently updated content in chronological order, with reader interaction.

There’s many more examples of how social media has taken a foothold in our daily lives, but these are some widely adopted instances. As a prime example of how social media can affect everyone and our culture, you only need to look as far as the current presidential race. The presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, has implemented a massive social media campaign online to mobilize his supporters and garner donations. This incorporated not only building profiles on almost every social networking site online and managing those connections, but also developing an integrated social media community on his website. This allows the candidate to openly communicate back and forth with his constituents, they can interact with each other, create blogs, start fundraising campaigns and more. This approach has yielded staggering results in both raising money for the campaign and connecting with more potential voters and organizers. Chris Hughes, a 24 year old co-founder of Facebook, helped develop this strategy for Obama, and more details of the campaign can be found at this Seattle Times article.

Social media is on its way to being the foundation for all online communication and collaboration. Traditional media has taken notice and is scrambling to keep up. Every day, our lives are connected more and more and we’ll continue to reach out to new people, information and applications. Social media advertising has also become a fundamental aspect to an effective online marketing campaign because of social media’s popularity, and will continue to grow. If we’ve come this far in just a few short years online, imagine where we’ll be after the next few.

Google Ranking Insights

Internet marketing wouldn’t be what it is today without Google. Higher visibility in such a popular tool has long been sought after by every online business as a vital component to success. With that desire to rank higher, the ins and outs of how ranking is determined proves to be an interesting debate. There are certainly standards that everyone, including Google themselves, will agree on, but beyond the official posted guidelines, the search engine leader has been pretty quiet.

To bring a little more transparency to their ranking philosophy and technology, Google has put together a series of posts on the Official Google Blog discussing different aspects of this mysterious algorithm and the reasoning behind it. Let’s take a look at some of the key points:

In the initial post, Udi Manber, VP of Engineering in Search Quality, put together an Introduction to Google Search Quality. He acknowledges the fact that very little is known about ranking at Google, and it’s their fault (by design). The two main reasons for this are competition and abuse. The secret recipe for ranking certainly shouldn’t be shared with competitors, and if the formula was too accessible, people would be more apt to “game the system” and manipulate the integrity of the algorithm (not that people haven’t already tried). PageRank, the most well-known part of the ranking algorithm is now referred to as part of a much larger system that includes language models, query models, time models and personalized models. The actual teams within Search Quality were also introduced, comprising of Core Ranking, International Search, User Interfaces, Evaluation, Webspam, and other teams. Udi provides a great introduction to how the Search Quality Team works and what they’re producing, but doesn’t dive to deeply into specifics on ranking, for obvious reasons.

In the second post, Amit Singhai, who’s in charge of the ranking team at Google, writes an Introduction to Google Ranking that covers the philosophy behind this system. Essentially, it consists of three main points: 1. Best locally relevant results served globally; 2. Keep it simple; 3. No manual intervention. Although these are pretty obvious in their context as part of the whole “Don’t Be Evil” mindset, Google also hints slightly at concepts brought up in the first post relating to how search results are delivered. We can assume localization is a big part of the ranking component and include that in the vague list we’ve already made, including language, query, time and personalization factors. 

Finally, Amit discloses some specifics when it comes to the Technologies Behind Google Ranking. Once again, Google is careful to discuss only the advances they’ve made in certain areas rather than what factors go into the result. To fulfill the expectations of their users and continue to innovate, Google has to grasp some very complicated groups. First, they have to understand the pages, meaning they have to consider what’s implied from a page rather than just what it says. Next, they must understand queries, meaning it’s necessary to figure out what their users are looking for “beyond just the few words in their query”.  The last piece of the puzzle is understanding users, or “what people really want, not just what they said in their query”. This part of the system starts in localization, goes through the personalization technology and ends up being coined “Universal Search”.

What does this all mean when marketers try and interpret these small insights from Google? First, this is nothing new. There’s no secrets spilled. As a reminder of best practices, Google refers back to the Webmaster Guidelines as default when it comes to how to perform better in search engine result pages. But we can infer that Google is moving away from a set list of criteria for rankings and including every aspect of the web in their algorithm. They stress the many filters, analysis and re-analysis search results are subjected to, depending on a variety of factors. As more people join Google and it’s many web applications, the less likely they’ll all see the same thing when performing a query.

It brings us back to when the web was originally conceived and the value of a page was determined by the community and not an algorithm. In simple terms, provide the right information, leave no marketing stone unturned, and (eventually) the rankings will follow.

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