You’ve Heard of Web 2.0 But What About Web 3.0!? May 15, 2008
Posted by Virtual Assistant in Marketing, Productivity Coaching, Virtual Services, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Web Marketing, small business, web design.Tags: enth, future, innovations, internet, semantic, semantic search, twine, web, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, web design, Web Marketing, website magazine, zoominfo
add a comment
As a virtual professional providing web services I am constantly reading and learning about the web and how changes will be taking place in the near future. I have completely submersed myself in the Web 2.0 innovations and have recently learned about Web 3.0!
It is so important that you understand this future growth because these particular changes will change the way customers will search and reach your website and will require new ways to design and market your website!
Based on Website Magazine “…Web 3.0 or Semantic Web is about meaning — understanding the context of a word or concept to offer relevant resources, there by making it easier for people to find what they seek.”
As the internet grows it is so very hard to find what you are searching for so the next obvious growth will be to provide a smarter search. Right now the search engines give you results that match the words you type into their search. A “Semantic” search will be able to intelligently understand the context of your search phrase or word and provide results that correctly match. By providing smarter search intelligence in the search engines consumers will be able to ask for exactly what they are looking for. As a web designer we will need to incorporate this into the design. Right now websites are designed with top keywords and keyphrases within the website topic. Now websites will need to incorporate an even more tailored topic to insure inclusion in the most detailed search!
Website Magazine gives us five suggestions on how we can prepare:
“What can be done today and how do we prepare for tomorrow? Here are five suggestions:
1. Connect with the right people. Imagine your company has a product that takes advantage of mobile telephony for use in automobiles. And, one of your most promising conversations was with an executive at an automotive company who previously worked in the telecommunications industry. With technology like ZoomInfo, you might be able to build a list of executives who meet that profile. That hasn’t been possible before. Available Today.
2. Make industry data available for public inquiry. Using the power of ENTH or a similar technology enables people to find relationships in your data that you might not have otherwise found. The benefit is the association of your brand as the source of helpful information. Available Today.
3. Educate semantic search engines by defining your commercial space to ontology engines like WordNet from Princeton University (WordNet.Princeton.edu). As an example, Fender Guitar Company may want to teach the semantic search engines that Fender manufactures acoustic and electric guitars, and within the electric guitar category is the Stratocaster, Telecaster, etc. The idea is when somebody searches for “Best Electric Guitar,” the search engine might find a blog where a guitarist claims his Stratocaster is the best guitar ever made. A semantic search engine, like Powerset, would understand a reference to a Stratocaster as “best” is related to the search for “Best Electric Guitar.” It would know the Stratocaster is an electric guitar and a user says it’s the best. Available Today.
4. Create landing pages to welcome visitors who represent market segments most likely to visit your website. A common example is a competitive shopper – someone visiting the websites of your competitors and, more importantly, browsing specific categories, products or services. If you knew they were comparing your product or service to a specific competitor’s, how could you greet them to be more persuasive in the sales process? Detect visitors that match those specific market segments when they arrive and display the corresponding landing page. Available Today.
5. When Twine launches this spring, companies will be able to create “twines” around commercial topics. This puts them at the heart of conversations about their commercial space. It will also be important to establish a Semantic Graph for your company. I am seeing Semantic Graphs as a form of digital fingerprint. It might be the new way to express your brand. So people with certain attributes are attracted to companies that cater to those attributes. Available Summer 2008.”
-Website Magazine’s “The Semantic Web” Full Article
Here is a list of Semantic Search Engines as provided by Wikipedia:
Examples of semantic web search engines include:
- Semantic Web Search Engine (SWSE) Developed by DERI Ireland.
- Sindice Developed by DERI Ireland.
- Watson Developed by KMi, UK.
- Yahoo! Microsearch
- Falcons Developed by IWS China.
- Semantic Web Search Developed by Intellidimension Inc.
- Zitgist Search
- Swoogle Developed by the Ebiquity Group of UMBC, USA.
- Semantic Email Search Developed by IBM Research
Examples of health domain specific semantic search engines:
- Curbside.MD Developed by Praxeon
- Semantic Health Search Developed by CureHunter Inc., entity extraction and relationship network
Get the Word Out! 10 Free or Low Cost Ways to Market your Website! December 7, 2007
Posted by Virtual Assistant in Digital Coaching, Interent Marketing, Marketing, Productivity Coaching, Virtual Admin, Virtual Services, Web 2.0, Web Marketing, eNewsletters, eZine, entrepreneur, small business, social networking, solo professional, solopreneur, virtual assistance, virtual assistant, web design.Tags: article submission, autoresponders, blogs, eBooks, email marketing, eNewsletters, html, link submission, Marketing, SEO, web design, Web Marketing, websites
1 comment so far
There are hundreds of ways to market your website and they do not have to break the bank. As a Business Owner I know how hard it is to stay ahead of the Marketing Game! I know what you are saying, “who has the time or money to start another marketing strategies?” Well, guess what it doesn’t have to be time consuming or bank breaking!
I have put together a list of low cost or free web marketing tools you can use right away to increase your web presence, get better search engine rankings and drive quality leads to your website.
1. Your email signature line: If you think about how many people you email-existing customers, vendors & new customers; you will be amazed at the marketing potential. You can add a simple link or if you’re using and HTML email editor, you can add a banner ad (a simple search engine search for “HTML coding” can give you free information on how to create the code).
2. Create your Own Blog: If you are avoiding this marketing strategy than you are loosing potential customers & website traffic. A simple paragraph a week with pertinent industry information and links to your website can turn a visitor into a hot lead. While you can outsource this task you can also easily maintain this task yourself. Here are some free blog hosts:
Blogger.com – Free to set up & customize.
WordPress.org – Free program to download & install on your web server.
Movable Type – Free & paid subscriptions available.
Live Journal – Free to set up & customize with an upgrade available.
My Space – Free to set up & customize (You should set this up in addition to a blog.)
3. Commenting on Other Blogs: A very simple way to market your website is to visit other blogs within your industry and submit comments to their blog entries. To bring traffic to your website you will need to leave intelligent comments that will draw in your potential clients and a link to your website or blog. For example: If the subject is low cost marketing, I would post… “I have put to use an Article Submission plan and it has brought me tons of business. I now offer my clients this service and you can find out more about it at www.mjondemand.com.” Just make sure you respect the blog you are commenting on. You want to give the editor and the audience good information and not annoying advertising copy.
4. Classified Ad Sites: Although some will argue that use of these websites (craigslist.com, backpage.com, etc.) will bring you some spam, it is worth it to increase your web presence for free. The ads on Craigslist.com come up in the top search engines when potential clients search for the keywords in the ad and drive free traffic to your website. Also because of the high traffic to these sites you will receive a great high quality back link to your site.
*Bonus Tip:To limit the spam you receive, do not put your email address; just put your website address. The spammers are less likely to go to your website to find your email address.
5. Article Submission: Another free way to increase your web presence and your search engine rankings is to submit articles to article submission sites or directories. Your articles are put out there for thousands of customers, publishers and editors to view and may be selected for media publishing and that is the most cost-effective marketing there is!
6. Link Submission: With the same premise as article submission this will increase your web presence and search engine ranking. But remember don’t buy in to those link blasts. Search engines only like back links that are created over a period of time.
7. eBooks: If you are a consultant with only services to sell this will allow you to get away from selling your time. Imagine sleeping and making money! If you have a proven method or information that can help your customer why not write it down and sell it. There are tons of free information on how to go about this process or you can enlist a company to help you manage the process.
8. Offer something for Free: Want to increase site traffic or your contact list, offer a free product. You can offer a mini eBook, a coupon or a list of free sites/links that will help your client. If you keep a list or free article or eBook on your site chances are customers will come back to it and will provide more traffic to your site and in turn increase your search engine rankings.
9. Newsletters/Auto Responders: Depending on the level of design and advertising copy you can maintain these services yourself with little to no cost. Constant Contact and iContact have made these tasks easier, although you must watch your spam count with these programs. When I create email newsletters for my clients there are many factors that go into the creation to assure a low spam grade. But the best thing to do is to watch your click-through and open rates closely.
If you do not have a list yet I would start by sending simple emails with tips and tricks of your industry and start building. Add a newsletter sign up page to your website and a link to your email signature. Once you have a large list, you can use a database manager with reporting features to send out your emails to a larger database. Outsourcing this task is a great idea, but make sure you start out small and build your list before you hire a separate company to maintain this task for you. Auto Responders can help you give e-courses, mini eBooks and other free information to your customers without having to send it each time an order is placed.
10. Market to Your Inactive Clients: You worked with John Doe six months ago and you haven’t heard from him since completion of your last project. Give John Doe a reason to use your services again. Offer them a “Gold Client Discount” or a “Customer Appreciation Sale” in an e-mail or even better with a friendly phone call. Set up a special web page for them to visit so your client feels like they are really getting the red carpet treatment.
*Bonus Tip: Do you have a product? Create a separate splash page that is dedicated to that product and market it separately. Each one of your products should have special attention and separate marketing plans. Yahoo!, Google & Microsoft have website building programs that will allow you to build a splash page for free!
All of these tips can be done & maintained by you or your staff. ON Demand Virtual Services has used all these tactics and more and can help you to implement them. Go to www.MJOnDemand.com today to learn more. If you need some guidance but are not ready to hire a virtual assistant yet you can get fabulous advice from the eZine Queen’s product “Online Success Blueprint Workshop.”
