Get More from Search - Trends in Search & Social Media

Life will be interesting and diverse for the next generation of kids as they grow up in our connected, global society – that is, if a balance between technology agility and life skills can be achieved. After all, what will life be like for a generation where more children know how to play a computer game rather than know how to ride a bike?

A recent study uncovers some disturbing trends about increasing tech competencies compared to the simplicities and perhaps necessities, of certain life skills. For instance, the study showed that 58% of 2 – 5 year olds can play a basic computer game while 52% can ride a bike. The Digital Diaries study from AVG surveyed 2,200 online moms of kids aged two – five years in the U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the EU nations of U.K., France, Italy, Germany and Spain.

Riding a bike is a seriously fun life skill. My twin brothers were all of 2 1/2 when I decided it was time to get rid of their speed-inhibiting training wheels. I was so over their slowness and needed them to become real competitors in the daily race down the long driveway! So one day, my 7-year-old self gathered up the little tikes into the garage while I snagged a screwdriver from my dad’s wall-of-tools. I proceeded to unscrew those kill-joy training wheels once and for all. I helped them on their bikes and one at a time, gave them a good push from behind while they deftly exited the garage into the light of day, wobbling into the big world at first, then confidently balancing themselves down the driveway. Neither of them suffered harm during this experiment, mind you: they were biking naturals! Their toddler mindset removed any fear and gave them the I-can-be-big-too confidence they needed to master the balancing act of bikedom. I couldn’t be more proud of them in that moment. Soon after, my parents emerged from the house with collective gasps as they witnessed my toddler brothers riding on two wheels, but they quickly recovered when they saw their sons’ enthusiasm and newfound skill.

Now back to the numbers.  Only 20% of the children in the study can swim without help, 11% can tie their shoelaces unaided and 20% know how to make an emergency phone call. Yet, 63% know how to power up a computer and turn it off and 69% can use a mouse. More computer skills stats include the fact that 19% can operate a smartphone or tablet, 25% know how to operate a web browser, 16% can browse between web sites and 15% know at least one web address.

Thankfully, 37% can write their first and last names. But isn’t that a little telling? Twice as many children can operate a mouse than can write their names? What’s happening at home that brings these statistics to life? Children merely imitate the behavior they see. The connected lives of parents – namely mostly Gen X parents in this study – are having an impact on the skill sets that children will develop.

85% of a child’s core brain structure is formed by age three so what happens in the earliest years of life form a person’s belief structure, habits, relational capabilities for the rest of their life. While this is just one study and we have yet to see how quickly these children will catch up the analog skills of life, it does illuminate trends that we all should be aware of when dealing with children.

Teaching children life-hacking skills are times that can be savored for decades to come. There is plenty of time to teach tech-savviness but the skills learned in the early years about life and human relationships will become programmed into their psyches the rest of their lives.

Vortaloptics custom search engines include revenue components that empower its clients to maximize the return on investment from their engines. Since the engine is completely controllable by the client, they can improve the relevancy of the search results and also place key partners and affiliates into their engines.

Vortaloptics never recommends listing irrelevant content just to profit from clicks, but rather consults our clients to focus on the most relevant content that users are seeking and match advertising, affiliates and partners to the search results pages to those search phrases to build a better user experience.

Because the content on our client results pages is hyper-relevant to the search terms and those results pages provide contextual ad and partner content, the ROI from clickthroughs is typically much higher for our clients than from traditional ads placed on blogs, for instance.  Search results page ads typically outperform regular page advertisements anyway, but because our clients can control the content of their results pages the ROI is on average, 10 times greater.

Affiliate marketing—using one website to drive traffic to another—is a form of online marketing, which is frequently overlooked by advertisers. While search engines, e-mail, and website syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers’ marketing strategies.

With clients being able to hone in top performing ads, they can now focus on the search phrases and clickthroughs that pay the most. Optimizing your website revenue is particularly important in a tough economy. One way to do this is to seek out the top affiliate programs and add as organic search content and banner listings.

As an example, Speedy Cash is launching a new affiliate program with one of the highest commissions per lead in the financial payday loans industry. Vortaloptics’ local search clients could signup for the Speedy Cash affiliate program and insert banners, text links and search results into their search engine for this payday loans affiliate program. When users search for or click on the financial services subcategory, the Speedy Cash program can receive prominent placement.

Being able to maximize revenue efforts by focusing on the top paying affiliate, partner and advertising initiatives makes good business sense. A well placed $85/lead link is worth the effort over a $1/lead program. Vortaloptics provides the technology to help administrators quickly focus their efforts on the top ROI programs and provide better value to their users.

Post by David Gosse.

Vortaloptics Inc. has obtained a patent for its vertical search engine software. premise of the search invention is a Net-native administrative interface that gives users instant control over search results, enabling specific keywords to be associated with specific URLs within a search database.

David Gosse, CEO of Vortaloptics and co-author of the patent, assigned the patent rights over to Vortaloptics shortly after it being officially awarded on October 21, 2008 by the U.S. Patent Office. He explains how a genuine need for controllable search software prompted him to invent the software: “I wanted to create search engine software that could be controlled. The search engine that I wanted to embed into my websites and client websites needed a way to administer the results and change them so that they were more relevant for the site. So I co-invented a controllable search algorithm.”

The unique control mechanism provides flexibility to customize each URL in a search database and thus, every keyword assigned to that website.

Search results returned to users are prioritized based on relevancy (keyword match) and the total relative score of the search terms used to conduct the query. Additional relevancy and priority controls are provided via the administrative interface.

Online advertising data offers some light in the current economic do. Third quarter figures reveal an 11 percent increase over 2007, coming in at $5.9 billion, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). The first nine months of revenues set a new record, climbing 14% over the same period last year. This data not only shows that Internet advertising has continuing to grow as predicted, it reveals that its becoming a haven for ad dollars in the downturn. Continually hailed as the most cost-effective and measurable method of reach customers, online shines while other ad outlets fade.

The social media hype continues and is enticing companies of every shape and size to dabble in creating new networks. To facilitate the craze, dozens of open source social networking platforms have launched. Jeremiah Owyyang’s blog lists over 60 brandable software platforms that can plug into your existing domain, allowing you to create your very own social network.  But should any company build a social network?

In a Deloitte study of 100 businesses with online communities, Ed Moran found that 35% of these communities have less than 100 members and less than 25% have 1000 members. 6% of the businesses studied spent over $1 million on their social networks. Sadly, all too many fail at their attempts to connect customers to their brand because instead of focusing on the community itself, businesses are focusing on the value that social community could provide for their business.

Despite the failures, there are definitely industries that DO have ready-made communities with well-established brand alliance, and have a greater chance of building successful online communities. These verticals might include: local television networks (daily news watchers), radio (listening audiences), niche local communities (apartment renters, child-safe search) and education (school districts, private schools, universities).

Clark County School District, the 5th largest school district in the nation with nearly 300,000 students, was a few years back, reportedly the largest user of bandwidth in the Las Vegas valley. Schools are instant communities – not just in the “will you be my friend” sense of students, but in the student to teacher, student to parent and teacher to parent and relationships. Because they already have distinguishable groups in these necessary and long-standing relationships, Clark County can foster those relationships through a community network, which they’ve begun to explore with the CCSD website.  Feedback mechanisms aren’t yet extant, but Homework Hotline, a public television program, gives students an outlet during the week to call in and ask teachers their tough homework assignment questions. Their content management system, my.CCSD.net reach the three main constituents in these ways: 1) teachers can create personalized websites to communicate with students and parents; 2) students can access to homework resources and assignments; 3) parents can locate their children’s classroom and assignment information online without involving the child or teachers. A cursory look at some teacher sites didn’t provide a lot in the way of content or personalization, but it is summer after all; the start of the school year should light this online community back up.

Another example where community exists is the multifamily industry. Most multifamily companies have a couple clear-cut missions in life (e.g. collecting rents and driving occupancy rates), and one of those is to establish and promote their brand for longer-term connection with an increasingly transient population.  Before signing a rental contract, an individual needs to identify with what that apartment provides. Thus, the rental market is now driven by amenities. “Lifestyle” is the buzzword for providing more than a roof over people’s heads at the right price and location. Now, apartment companies need to provide online services ranging from rent pay to pet sitting to VIP concierge services and customized local search while hosting real live social activities such as community pool parties, golf instruction classes and more. While it may sound exhausting (and it probably is), apartment companies are finally optimizing their built-in community of residents and finding creative ways to connect the residents together, along with meaningful lifestyle amenities that cement the value of their brand, while gaining loyalty in the minds of renters.

Riverstone Residential, the nation’s third largest apartment management company representing around 340,000 residents, offers a moving program, Riverstone-to-Riverstone. This amenity helps transfer residents to another Riverstone community within a metro or across the country, sans application process and deposit fees. Combined with their Living Made Easy features, including “Your Neighborhood Directory,” a local search engine launched in three metros, where users can find just-down-the-street local businesses via a true search results format (e.g. not just Yellow Page data), residents benefit from buying into the Riverstone community and the value it provides to their daily lives.

Morals of the story:

• If you don’t have a pre-existing community, don’t assume that you can create one (and don’t spend a lot of money trying to create one).
• If you do have a pre-existing community (and they already visit your website regularly), focus on the value that your social network will provide to your users.

Author: Mark MorrisSearch Engine Marketing, has frustrated even the most technically savvy marketers. A necessary part to the online marketing area, including affiliate programs, email marketing, online placement, and sponsorships, requires that a smart marketer not only understand business objectives but then applies them to the major components of Search Engine Marketing.

1. TRACKING YOUR R.O.I. SEM (Search Engine Marketing) can be tracked far better than some other forms of advertising. You track success of campaigns right down to the exact keyword or phrase a searcher typed in to find you. With the proper implementation of analytics software you can tweak your ROI more easily.

2. TESTING YOUR PERFORMANCE In general, testing online advertising is easier than offline. But in the case of SEM it’s even better. Test things on the fly and see what performed better.

3. PRE-QUALIFIED Most searchers have ALREADY MADE A BUYING DECISION. They are using search engines to research vendors and products. Prospects from search are usually more qualified.

4. CONTROL Because SEM is so flexibel you have more control over you message. YOu can create a more relevant message to each of your targets.

5. INFORMATION WEALTH Because there is such a big boom in SEM right now, there is a wealth of information to be found. SEM is not as mysterious as it used to be and much easier to jump in to.

About the author:

We cracked the code to making a fortune on the Internet, and we can teach anyone how to do this. Will it take work? Yes. Is there a small learning curve? Yes. But can you do it? YES!

www.CashWaveTraffic.com

Assuming you are already into an affiliate program, what would be the next thing you would want to do? Double, or even triple, your commissions, right? How do you do that?

www.Netprofits.PRomoBlackBox.com