Foremost Media On Linked In

Did you know you can set up a company profile on LinkedIn and it shows up with a link to your website available to the public and search engines?

Here is our LinkedIn Public Profile:
http://www.linkedin.com/companies/foremost-media-inc.

Domain Name Register Request

About once a month I get an email from a client who received a message similar to the message below:

Dear Manager,


We are a professional Internet consultant organization in Asia, which mainly deal with the global companies’ domain name registration and internet intellectual property right protection. Currently, we have a pretty important issue needing to confirm with your company. On 2009-03-19, we received an application formally; one person named “Jacques Tits” wanted to apply for the Internet brand “yourdomainnamehere” and some domain names through our body. During our preliminary investigation, we found that these domain names’ keyword and internet brand is identical with your trademark. I wonder whether you consigned "Jacques Tits" to register these domain names through us or not? Or is "Jacques Tits" your business partner or distributor in Asia? Currently, we have postponed this application of this company temporarily already. In order to deal with this issue better, please let the principal make a confirmation with me by telephone or email ASAP.
In addition, I must state that we have time limited for one person or one company’s registration. It is just 15 days. If your company files doesn't resent within the time limited. We will unconditionally authorize the application of “Jacques Tits".

Thank you for your cooperate.

Best Regards,

Leo Chan
Registration Commissioner
Sponsoring Registrar:World Wide Network
Tel: +852 3115 2295
Fax: +852 3072 3223
Email:leo@worldwidedomain.asia

Let me tell you it's crap... These guys are trying to scare you into purchasing a domain with a .cn extension or some other extension to "protect your brand" The domain will cost you a bunch and most of the time is not necessary. This is a scam. DELETE!

Link Exchange Requests

About once per day I get a "automated" type of link exchange request asking me to exchange links on one of our clients sites. They Usually look something like this:

Hello,


We are an online based company, we run a network of blogs, and wondering if you would like to trade links with us?

we would give your site a prominent listing on our pages at:

http://www.sunglassesfashion.com/links.php

If you would be willing to exchange links we us, please use the following:


------------------------------------------------
Title: Designer sunglasses
URL: sunglassesfashion.com
Description: Authentic designer sunglasses for mens & womens including Bvlgari, Chanel, Christian Dior and much more.
------------------------------------------------


Please let us know where you added our links so we'll add yours on our pages as well.

Thank you


Joana


PLEASE NOTE:

This email is not spam, it was manually sent by us, our sole purpose being to introduce ourselves to you with no obligation on your part.

Your email address was found to be publicly available on your website and it has not been added to any list. We consider this to be a polite way to contact you and apologise sincerely if you have been inconvenienced in any way.

We are legally obliged to offer you an 'OPT-OUT' from future mailings from us; should you wish to exercise this right, please reply with "OPT-OUT" in the subject field.

Not a bad letter overall but totally unsolicited. The problem is I don't have any websites related to glasses, sunglasses etc.

If your considering link building don't waste your time just blasting out links to anyone and everyone. Make a targeted effort to find sites that compliment yours. If your site is about web development target a hosting company or some other type of business services company. The search engines not only look at incoming links but also were those links are from.

One great way to build incoming links is to write articles about a topic that relates to your business. Include a link to your business or service in the article as a plain text link. Don't sell in these articles inform. Everyone wins with this approach. You get a great link from some relevent content back to your site and the site publisher gets some good content for their site.

Until next time!

JB

Foremost Video Launches New Online Video Site

Foremost Media recently completed a online video learning site for taxidermists. The site features video playback and compression software as well as permission based viewing rights.

The site allows visitors to sign up pay a subscription fee and receive instant access to members only videos that teach the viewer taxidermy. In addition the user can upload their own videos to share with other site members.

Check it out at http://www.taxidermytube.com/ If you would like to build your own video sharing site contact us today!

Screen Resolutions and Website Design

On many of the self-updateable sites we build I often receive the following question:

The site isn't "wide"...it's not taking up my whole screen. Will it be wider? (Referring to our 800 x 600 resolution design layout)

Here is where we currently stand on the issue of website width.

When last I checked, statistically, 30% of the screens out there are still the old 800x600 format. (This is changing fast) We can go to the next size up but that means that 30% of your audience will have to scroll left to right. We do not recommend this at this time.

The second option would be to create a site that fills the entire screen. Since most of our sites have the capability to be updated by the customer an expandable site can create some issues with text formatting. In other words, the page may look full on some screen resolutions but on others my have large empty spaces or weird spacing.

The choice is ultimately the customers but at this point we recommend building to the lowest common denominator.

MSN.com is still designed at 800 x 600:

Lumpy EmailWant to get your email marketing message opened? Make it lumpy!

A few years ago I was at a marketing meeting and had the privilege of listening to a promotional marketing guru discuss how to get your direct mail piece opened. The basic point of his whole presentation was that if your mailing piece looks like junk mail people will just throw it away. His number one suggestion was to put something in the envelope that makes it "lumpy". A pen or something like that stuffed in your direct piece has been proven to get your direct mail piece opened. When I think about this in my own office we throw away allot of mail but i always open the mail that feels like it has something in it. Since you can't put lumps in your actual email how do you make your email lumpy?

1. The From Address

• Always send your email marketing message from a personal email address- If your email marketing piece comes from an address like sales@yourcompanyname.com it looks like junk. When sent from yourname@yourcomapnyname.com it has much better odds of getting opened.
  

2. Subject Line Basics-

• Keep It Short - Short and to the point subject lines have been proven to have better open rates then long subject lines and most email clients wont display subject lines longer than 50 characters.


• Write a Very Specific Subject Line - Let them know exactly what the email is about. Don't waste valuable real estate on vague subject lines


• Make It Personal - Talk directly to the recipient. "You can save money on your next toner purchase"


• Write Like A Real Person - Avoid subject lines with all caps, exclamation points, and words like "free" and "sale.
  

For more information on email marketing services from Foremost Media please visit our email marketing services page

Get Listed in 48 hours Guaranteed

So today I got another one of those spam emails from a company called wpromote (email address seo@seo-news.com). It was a nice looking email and they are claiming that they can get my site listed on Google, Yahoo, AOL and Ask Jeeves in 48 hours all for the bargain price of only $99.95.

Not only that but they will re-submit every 30 days there after, then I get a detailed report on which search engines they submitted my site to. WOW! All that for only $99?????

So What's The Catch? First of all, if you read the fine print they are using PPC marketing to get your site listed on the search engines. Anyone can do this. Just go to the search engine you want to run PPC adds on and set up your account for free. Save your $99 for running add words and you will be much further ahead.

Next- "resubmit every 30 days" What a waste of time. Every quality SEO professional will tell you that it is not necessary to resubmit your site to the search engines on a regular basis. Think about it, search engines like Google and yahoo have a huge interest in serving up the freshest content and best results for their surfers. How long would you continue to use Google if every time you did a search the results it served up linked to pages that have been removed or updated and the content didn't match the search results any longer.

The top search engines will revisit your site on their own on a regular basis once your site has been indexed. Don't waste your time or money having a company resubmit your site every 30 days.

The last point I wanted to bring up is the Testimonials on this email marketing piece. Like this one "I just wanted to tell you how happy I am with the service." Bradley, Utopian Universe" Let's do a Google search for Utopian Universe and see what comes up- I don't see anything even closely related to Utopian Universe pop up.

So right now you are thinking does Jon think pay per click is bad? and Do I need to resubmit my site every 30 days? The answer is no and no. Pay per click is a great form of advertising. I guess what I would say in response to this company's ad is, "What are they doing for me for the $99." Pay Per Click accounts are free to set up and can be running in less then 48 hours. Point 2, why pay to resubmit my site every 30 days when the search engines do that automatically. I guess the whole offer just seems a bit shady to me. I'll take your $99 if you are just going to throw it away any way. I could even give you an hour of search engine marketing consulting for that $99.

By the way, Here is the ad:

Until next time!