SEO is search engine optimization. From Wikipedia: “Search engine optimization is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s “natural” or un-paid (“organic”) search.

An SEO is the person whose job has evolved to EVERYTHING that drives/invites/delivers traffic to the website.

SEO (search engine optimization) used to “just” be the manner in which websites achieved rankings on Excite, Yahoo, Netscape, MSN,  AOL search, Google, and many other search engines.  This was done through all manner of techniques, many of which are considered “spammy” today.  There was white text on white backgrounds, flooding text with as many keywords as possible, stuffing meta keywords, and all types of behaviors that would influence the search “bots” (robots) into thinking your website was talking about one particular topic.

Slowly, this behavior evolved to more logical practices, like writing relevant content, and the SEO evolved with it.  The SEO became more than that person who knew how search engine bots viewed and evaluated websites; they became the person who could design a website for a person AND for a robot.  SEOs looked at the architecture of the website, the URL structures, debated the benefits of subfolders versus subdomains,  the content on each page, and evaluated the user experience; they have grown to gauge how other websites linking to their website would influence how search engines valued the website.  Any sites that linked to the SEO’s primary site had to be evaluated for quality.  Inbound links were no longer the power players, now they were a liability.

Then it started getting complicated, there were Panda’s, Penguins, and Skunks penalizing websites and creating chaos.  Search engines started looking at social signals to-and-from the website, they evaluated user experience and compelled more intuitive navigation pathways.  Now SEOs had to become behavioral experts, and not just for robots, but for people too.  Content had to be scheduled and generated on a daily or multi-daily basis.  Anchor text became a more valuable subnavigation that had to be kept updated and relevant; URL structure had to be shortened, made more keyword rich and descriptive; and the nurturing funnel for conversions had to be optimized for bots as well as people.

Every on-page aspect of the website started falling under the SEO’s purview, and because of the influence of social media, the offpage content began influencing the SEO’s analytics and impact.

Social content became part of the publishing calendar that SEO’s were now running.  The social engagement had to be search friendly, carry consistent messaging, have trackable URL’s.  The social programs could no longer be run by interns, now there had to be a structure, a plan to engage users, and drive them back to the website, push them through the nurturing funnel.  Conversion metrics and ROI analysis for social media engagement now falls into the SEO’s kingdom.

As SEO continued evolving from being just the on-page content and site architecture to encompassing all content that went online, and on mobile, there has been a realization that a shift in what an SEO was called, needed to occur.  That shift is just beginning.  Many SEOs now call themselves “Digital Marketing” or “Inbound Marketing” because what they do is not just about search “ranking,” they are not just creating “organic keyword lists” to stuff into content or drive sales crazy with their jargon.  They are developing strategy, they are pushing for consistent positioning and messaging, they are helping SEM/PPC campaigns evolve and develop more concise and compelling messaging that match up with the on-page content and social strategy.  They are writing email copy that has the capacity to be used as a blog post that can also be used for social updating and drive in sales leads.

The landscape of the SEO has always been complex; it has always been challenging to keep up with all of the requirements of search engines, users, employees, and boards of directors.  The SEO has always had to fight daily to prove their content creation had a positive return and was increasing the value of the website, the spend of the user, decreasing the bounce rate, and increasing general engagement.

Now the SEO has to continue evangelizing for their industry and their job, they have to, tactfully, educate employers, peers, and customers on what it is they can accomplish, and they have do this while rebranding their industry, and themselves.  They are in the unique position to create and execute strategy in multiple channels, on multiple platforms, and to multi-segmented customer campaigns.  Due to these ever growing and evolving skills, the accomplished SEO is more valuable and necessary than ever.

This article in Forbes (February 25, 2013) “How Marketing Impacts Sales Performance,” by Scott Gillum of gyro, does a nice job of presenting the sales–marketing dynamic and the impact marketing has on sales.

“Once again, we’ve extended our offering,” said Shariq Mansoor, founder and CTO of FusionOps. “Our Big Data platform enables literally any customer to perform rapid, interactive analysis on their supply chain data regardless of data volume. For example, searching and reporting on tens of millions of rows of data requires less than a few seconds. Combined with the new AFS and FSCM support, the power of interactive analytics is now available to the apparel, retail and consumer products markets. Valuable supply chain information concerning customer shipments, accounts receivable, and other areas, that used to take months or years to develop, is now available immediately, without any upfront cost. We think our customers will be very pleased.”

Apparel and Footwear Industry Support (SAP AFS)
FusionOps now automatically extracts AFS data and incorporates it into its cross-functional supply chain data model for instant 360° supply chain visibility. With this new capability, users of the AFS solution can now leverage the FusionOps application to get immediate, best practice analytics in areas such as customer deliveries, sales orders and accounts receivable.

Financial Supply Chain Management (SAP FSCM)
FSCM support extends the FusionOps application by integrating financial supply chain data into its cross-functional data model. FusionOps’ application integrates FSCM with manufacturing supply chain data in the functional areas of: Purchasing, Production Planning, Order Fulfillment, Quality Analysis, Sales, Inventory Management, and MRP.

The FusionOps application removes data “silos” exposing all relevant data, regardless of origin, to provide business users with timely insights, quick identification of problem root causes, and hidden data relationships.

Microsoft Office Integration and Snapshots
Powerful new capabilities added to FusionOps include the ability to download tables into properly formatted Microsoft Excel® spreadsheets, and charts into Microsoft PowerPoint®. Another new feature, “snapshots,” enables end users to conveniently record KPIs directly from their dashboard for comparisons of supply chain performance over time. Perfect order performance, for example, can be compared over quarters, months, or days, with all data conveniently stored in FusionOps’ secure private cloud.

The new features and subject areas are available immediately from FusionOps. Starting at $2,000 per month, FusionOps is a SaaS solution that requires no new hardware or software license investment or long-term contract. For immediate assistance, or to sign up for a product demonstration, contact our sales team at sales@fusionops.com.

About FusionOps
FusionOps is the only application that combines supply chain and SAP expertise to deliver a single, integrated application with 360° supply chain visibility for business users, in just one day. With a portfolio of FusionOps “best practice” supply chain analytics reports, dashboards and analytics as the starting point, global manufacturing supply chain and sales managers have immediate access to real-time data across the supply chain. Founded by a team of SAP supply chain developers, FusionOps’ patented, cloud-based SaaS platform delivers immediate value. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA, FusionOps, a Certified SAP Software Partner and Gartner “Cool Vendor,” is privately held. For additional information, please visit: http://www.fusionops.com.

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Editorial Contact:
Frances Mann-Craik
Addison Marketing
frances@addisonmarketing.com
+1-408-868-9577

Cedexis Products

Cedexis Announces Fusion: Making Big Data Actionable To Improve Website And Content Delivery

Portland, Oregon — February 14, 2013 — Cedexis, the leading global SaaS platform for optimizing website and web application availability and performance, today announced the availability of Cedexis Fusion. Cedexis Fusion integrates data from third-party software, hardware, and network monitoring tools, in addition to CDN and Cloud usage data, to enable a wide range of performance, availability and costs-for-performance traffic shaping.

For the first time, enterprises can make their investments in reporting and monitoring solutions actionable to improve the performance of their websites and web applications in real time. Fusion integrates the third-party data into the Cedexis Openmix platform to load balance traffic to the most available, best performing or least costs-for-performance resources. Cedexis Fusion complements Cedexis Radar, Cedexis’ crowd-sourced real-end-user Cloud and CDN performance measurement data. The combination of Radar and Fusion provides comprehensive visibility into Big Data metrics on all the application, server, platform and network elements that can affect real-end-users web experiences.

A wide range of pre-built integrations are available immediately, including New Relic and AppDynamics application performance monitoring software; Akamai, Level3, Edgecast and ChinaCache CDNs; SoftLayer’s server management data, and many others.

“So many systems produce volumes of Big Data, but making that data real-time actionable has been difficult or impossible. Fusion allows customers to make their monitoring investments really pay off, accessing all of their Big Data metrics, and automating the process of reacting to the data to improve website performance,” explains Greg Unrein, VP of Product Management of Cedexis.

“Cedexis Fusion is more than a data aggregator. It is the point of convergence of all the real-time Big Data streams that feed our cloud-based global load balancer – Cedexis Openmix. With Openmix, Fusion customers have a single place to define how they wish to detect and avoid Internet congestion and service disruptions to achieve 100% service availability,” Unrein concluded.

Customers wishing to further innovate may use Cedexis Fusion Custom to automate the ingestion of private data streams from any HTTP source. Cedexis customers have created a range of applications including: green energy sensitivity, least costs routing and incorporation of private measurements they take of their own systems. In all cases, Cedexis customers are finding ways to make real-time Big Data, real time actionable, and they are sharing these applications with the Cedexis community.

Fusion is immediately available to Cedexis customers through the Cedexis portal.

About Cedexis

Founded in 2009 by Marty Kagan and Julien Coulon, two veterans of the web hosting and content delivery markets, Cedexis optimizes web performance across data centers, content delivery networks (CDNs) and clouds for companies that want to ensure 100% availability and extend their reach to new global markets. With Cedexis, companies can comparatively assess worldwide cloud performance and availability data to make informed vendor selection and costs-and-performance trade offs. Cedexis also provides automation for dynamically optimizing traffic across clouds, datacenters and CDNs to dynamically match the best-performing resource with local demand. Since revenue conversions and brand experience are directly tied to online performance, media, retail and consumer brand companies rely on Cedexis to ensure 100% availability, fast page loads, downloads and transactions to drive traffic and revenue at lower cost and risk. Cedexis is headquartered in Portland, Oregon and Paris, France with offices in San Francisco, California and London, UK, and sales representatives in Germany, Japan, Israel and Brazil.
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The online universe is no longer a “field of dreams, build it and they will come” destination. It is a hyper competitive multiverse filled with regulations, shortcuts, competition, and aggressive brilliance. The impression your site gives will determine how people do, or do not do, business with you.

Your dominance in this space means thinking ten steps ahead and guiding your customers and prospects exactly where you want them to go. Having a beautiful, well designed website, with fantastic user experience and impactful, concise, messaging will determine how successful and scaleable your business is.

So before you fall in love with the complex sliderails, busy flash, and shiny java interfaces take a step back, determine your business goals and design for simplicity, sales and success.

Here are ten things to consider before you hire a webdesign firm:

1. Who uses your website? How do you want it to be used?
2. How do you want to be found?
3. How do your customers interact with your existing site? How do you WANT them to interact with your website?
4. How do your prospects interact with your existing site? How do you WANT them to interact with your website?
5. What are the goals of your website? (Is it for sales, corporate communication, regulatory requirements, all of the above?)
6. How will you be updating/maintaining your site?
7. Who will be responsible for content? How will they add new content?
8. What devices are your prospects/customers/employees viewing your website on? Is it compatible?
9. Have you determined your content: Is your value proposition clearly stated? Do you have concise navigation? Can your customers find what they are looking for?
10. What websites do you like/trust and do business with? What elements of their site would you like replicated in yours?

Having a clear concept of what you want and how you want to say it will save you time and money working with a design firm.

If you are doing a website redesign/relaunch consider retaining the services of an SEO specialist to make sure you aren’t putting anything together that search-bots can’t see/find. It’s always a tragedy to build a site that can’t be found organically in search.

Learn more about SEO and Marketing by following our blog!

‘‘In addition to celebrating our 11-year anniversary, we are excited about our services expansion to now include a dedicated Social/Sales/SEO practice, led by our new partner, Ali MacDonald. Ali is an industry expert in the social and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) world. In her last assignment for an online media company, Ali improved organic search traffic by 4X over six months from 250 million to 1 billion visitors per month. Ali also has experience working at other industry-leading tech marketing companies, such as SlingShot, BusinessWire and Trellian. She will be launching our B2C practice, while also helping our early-stage B2B tech clients in her areas of expertise. Please join me in welcoming Ali to the team!”

“I look forward to the opportunity of working with Frances and her team of seasoned professionals,” stated Ali MacDonald. “I know Frances is a consummate professional, who is very thorough, conscientious, dependable, and has a terrific work ethic. My observation is that Frances’ work is often ‘a labor of love.’ She is passionate about learning about new technologies and helping early-stage companies introduce and promote their products and services. There’s no ‘fluff’ in Frances’ go-to-market programs.”

Several of her customers had this to say about Frances’ results-based work for them:

“The results of our Vid.ly press launch, organized by Addison Marketing, far exceeded our expectations. We had 17 briefings with the top target publications and blogs, resulting in more than 20 original articles.” Jeff Malkin, President, Encoding.com — market leader in video encoding services.

“In the first month after our PR push, we realized a 25% increase in our website visits and have moved to #1 position on key search engine results,” Jake Janovetz, President, Opal Kelly — provider of USB and PCI Express FPGA modules.

About Addison Marketing
Addison Marketing, a team of seasoned technology marketing professionals, offers a range of marketing services for early-stage, high-tech companies. Services include marketing strategy, positioning and messages, communications platform development, SEO architecture and strategy, website and marketing content development, PR, channel development, and international expansion. The company prides itself on delivering quality results that far outweigh the affordable cost for their services. For more information about Addison Marketing visit our website or give us a call at 408-868-9577.

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High level info pulled from the report:

> Companies with 51 to 100 pages generate 48% more traffic than companies with 1 to 50 pages; companies with 101 to 200 pages generate 2.5X more leads than those with 50 or fewer pages.

> Companies see a 55% increase in leads by increasing landing pages from 10 to 15.

> Companies that Blog 15 or more times per month get 5X more traffic than companies that don’t blog (Small businesses 1-10 employees, see the biggest gains).

> Companies that increase blogging from 3-5/month to 6-8/month almost double their leads.

Yep – I need to do more blogging – and I bet you do too.

Contact Addison Marketing – info@addisonmarketing.com – for help with your content creation. Addison Marketing – Experts in Marketing for high-tech companies.

One of Addison Marketing’s senior clients has recently “graduated” making room for one new client.  Can we help someone you know?

Addison Marketing is a 10-year-old, Silicon Valley-based high-tech marketing agency that works with startups to help them develop their marketing strategies and deploy their essential first year marketing tactics.

We are comprised of a team of seasoned marketing professionals and offer a full range of marketing services, scaled for startup budgets and capacity, including: positioning and message development;contentwriting (data sheets, white papers, contributed articles, etc.), SEO, PR, website development, lead generation programs, and B2B social content.

Addison has had particular success in helping international clients, both Asian and European, expand into the US (including: CDNetworks — from Korea to the US; Vibrant Media — from the UK to the US; and a new stealth mode client extending to the US from China.)  Clients typically work with Addison Marketing for about three years before hiring in-house marketing teams and moving on to large, discipline specific agencies like PR firms, ad agencies, SEO specialists, etc.

Here’s what one of our clients has to say.  For more, please see our website at:  www.addisonmarketing.com

> CDNetworks (the 3rd largest CDN in the world): Addison Marketing introduced CDNetworks to the US market and helped build their reputation in the US. “Frances and Addison Marketing were instrumental in helping CDNetworks successfully launch our products and services into the US and European market.  She was a core partner to all aspects of our company’s positioning and marketing efforts from the outset and helped us go from a few customers to over $20 million in revenues in the US & EU market in just 2 years.  As a market leader in Asia, CDNetworks needed a true veteran with high integrity and skills to translate our leadership into the US & EU market, and it is exactly what we got with Frances.”  Steve Chung, Chief Strategy Officer, CDNetworks Worldwide

Interested?  Please contract Frances Mann-Craik; frances@addisonmarketing.com; 408-868-9577

Encoding.com’s president, Jeff Malkin, wowed the judges at ad:tech’s Startup Spotlight competition in San Francisco this week and took home the trophy recognizing Encoding.com as the most innovative, enterprising new company in video digital marketing. Way to GO Jeff!

In the presentation, Encoding.com showcased its work powering video campaigns for advertising agencies, including: Tribal DDB’s “Bud Light High-Five League” user-generated video (UGV) competition for Anheuser Busch; Firstborn’s “Try a New Look,” branded video mashup application for iPhones and iPads; and Creative Asylum’s Glee “Give a Note” campaign supporting music education programs for high schools around the country.

Addison Marketing is proud to have played a part in bringing Encoding.com in front of the judges, as part of the high-tech PR program. According to Jeff Malkin, president of Encoding.com “…ad:tech Innovation Awards have provided us with an excellent forum for reaching thousands of advertising industry executives. Now, with the judges’ stamp of approval, we hope to accelerate the growth of our roster of creative agencies we support.”