Recently by Thomas M. Schmitz

These days more and more companies are using social media to build influence on the web. It’s challenging. Many fail or give-up because social media sites possess a formidable barrier to entry, one designed to keep hawkish salespeople at bay. Web 2.0 or community sites reward genuineness just as they toss commercial behavior into the spam bin. So how can a business build a successful non-commercial "commercial" presence in social media? By being active, genuine, creative and, most of all, keeping the business angles on the back-burner. As an example of this, here is my Facebook strategy for businesses just …

It’s Monday, only a day before the election and time to predict the outcome of the 2008 Presidential race based on search engine rankings. The results are interesting indeed. Based on What Google AdWords tells us are each candidate’s popular keywords The keywords’ Google rankings The monthly search traffic for those terms based on the 2006 AOL data traffic ratios John McCain [Keyword Chart] receives 456,862 monthly visits while Barack Obama [Keyword Chart] receives 375,168. Obviously both candidates receive far more visits than this each month from sources like links, direct traffic and long tail keywords. But if we assume …

As promised, here are the keywords and rankings for John McCain. If you are wondering about the methodology you can visit Barack Obama’s keyword chart. On Monday I will compare the rankings and traffic estimates and use them to predict the 2008 Presidential Election. KeywordsAvg. Search VolumePositionMonthly Organic Traffic Est.Web page [Exact Match]Broad Match[Exact Match]Broad Match john8230001346483http://www.johnmccain.com346483 john macain240011010.4http://www.johnmccain.com1010.4 john maccain19001799.9http://www.johnmccain.com799.9 john mcain1210015094.1http://www.johnmccain.com5094.1 john mccain campaign10001421http://www.johnmccain.com421 mccain110000146310http://www.johnmccain.com46310 mccain 200816001673.6http://www.johnmccain.com673.6 mccain campaign16001673.6http://www.johnmccain.com673.6 mccaine19001799.9http://www.johnmccain.com799.9 sen john mccain10001421http://www.johnmccain.com421 senator john mccain440011852.4http://www.johnmccain.com1852.4 cindy mccain4950025890.5http://www.johnmccain.com5890.5 john mccain301000235819http://www.johnmccain.com35819 john mccain issues16002190.4http://www.johnmccain.com190.4 mccain speech16002190.4http://www.johnmccain.com190.4 health care13500048235http://www.johnmccain.com8235 john mccain bio24005117.6http://www.johnmccain.com117.6 senator mccain29005142.1http://www.johnmccain.com142.1 campaign3310061357.1http://www.johnmccain.com1357.1 health care plan2900798.6http://www.johnmccain.com98.6 john cain1600754.4http://www.johnmccain.com54.4 …

I was about to run this morning’s keyword chart on John McCain when I noticed that Google is outbidding Barack Obama for his own name in AdWords. The advertisement is for Google Maps Election ‘08 Map Gallery and goes to a timeline of Barack Obama’s life. BTW, if you are ever in this neighborhood be sure to stop by Zippy’s and get a bucket of chili. Oddly, Google does not give John McCain equal treatment. Yes, there is a John McCain’s Journey in Google Maps and the ‘08 Election Map Gallery features it, but at the time of this writing …

With the 2008 Presidential Election only a few days away it’s time for a little end of campaign fun. Today I present you with Barack Obama’s keyword chart and Google ranking report. Tomorrow I will present John McCain’s keyword Chart and Google ranking report. On Monday I will run both ranking reports then compare them and predict the results of the 2008 Presidential Election. Before you review Senator Obama’s keyword chart let me explain the methodology. Get a list of internal links from http://www.barackobama.com/index.php. Run the first 50 pages through the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. Remove duplicates and keywords with …

Becoming active in social communities and on blogs is an important element of social media marketing. One way to do this is to read blogs by others in your sector and in your target market’s sector, then subscribe to the leaders. Select a handful of bloggers with whom to build relationships. Comment regularly on their articles, plus, write and publish your own response articles. Who are the market leaders? I use four metrics to evaluate blogs: Recency - When was the last post made?If a blog is not active, it has left the conversation. Blogs come and blogs go, even …

Editors Note: Today Portent Interactive welcomes guest blogger Joseph Kerschbaum, Senior Search Marketing Consultant with Hanapin Marketing and one of the funtastic writers of the PPC Hero blog. For Portent Interactive, sharing effective methods and best practices is a passion. Joe shares that passion, so we are thrilled to have him share a little of his knowledge and experience with you. - Tom If you are managing a pay-per-click account, by now you’ve realized that we are living in a Quality Score world. And if you haven’t come to this realization yet, you should very soon (like right now would …

You spent thousands of dollars on a print advertisement. You included a special URL to help you track visitors. Then you showed them your home page? * * * F A I L * * * Advertising is all about the ROI or return on investment. You know the adage, “You got to spend money to make money.” Genius photography costs money. Compelling copy costs money. Eye-catching design costs money. Placing your ad in the perfect magazine costs money and getting onto the good pages costs lots of money. If you are willing to invest all of that time, …

Two fundamentals of building authority in search engine optimization are adding content and earning links. A terrific way to do both is to add link-worthy and vote-worthy articles. Votes come from social media web sites like StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, Reddit and Digg. The more votes an article receives the more prominently it gets displayed on those sites. Prominence drives visitors and links. As a business, you probably want to appeal to your core audience or prospects. After all, that's where the revenue comes from. Unfortunately it is likely that most of your prospects will never publish content about your company or …

Every month, TopSEOs ranks internet marketing agencies in the United States. This month, Portent is the #8 agency for both Pay Per Click Marketing and SEO. I’m not much of a bragger, but this seemed worth passing along. You can see the rankings at: http://www.topseos.com/CompRank/index/. Full disclosure: Portent Interactive is a paying advertiser on TopSEOs. However, so are about 2,500 other firms. So I’m still pretty flattered to break into the top 10 rankings. …