Join us for our Website Design and Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals Seminar Series.  We teach you the basics and show you the tools that industry professionals use daily.  We let you in behind the curtain!

We are breaking out this jam packed 3 hour seminar into several pieces:

3 Easy steps to increase conversions

• 3 Things Never to Do
• 3 Things you should Always Do

Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals:

• How do Search Engines work and how can I create a plan of attack to get exposure and drive up sales?
• 10 steps to a successful Search Engine Optimization campaign!

Social Media Use:

• Social Network opportunities, am I missing the boat or should I let it sail off?
• What’s really important in the Social Media world?
• 2 Fundamental steps to creating trust and driving revenue with Social Media

Who should come?

Business owners, Marketing Professionals, and Anyone who wants that extra bit of knowledge to put in their toolbelt to help get a business more exposure using the Internet.  More Business = More money!

Claim your seat NOW for the Website Design and SEO Fundamentals Seminar scheduled for Friday 9/11/2009 at 9am MST in Westminster, CO.

Seats are extremely limited!  Claim your seat now….  Website Design and SEO Fundamentals Seminar

This past evening Neon Rain Interactive was proud to support Alliance in Choice for Education (ACE) at a dinner event this past evening.

“ACE believes that every child – regardless of race, sex or family income – is of equal worth and is equally deserving of a quality education, and that providing every child with educational choice will promote an accountable and competitive education marketplace that fosters effective private and public schools.”

We heard from Former U.S. Congressman, the Reverend Dr. Floyd H. Flake and from students directly impacted by the scholarships provided through ACE.

We are grateful to have the ability to stand with supporters of Education to ensure that our country is prepared for the future.

Online video is becoming more and more prominent – mainly because it is getting much easier to do.  The technical barriers are being dropped and people are willing to put themselves out there.

Here are a few pros of using video to promote your business:

1. Your potential clients get a feel for you, how you talk, how you explain things, and who you are.

Are you witty? Boring? Arrogant? Kind? It’s hard to tell unless they can see your body language and hear your voice.

2. A 30 second quickie video testimonial holds more weight.

Leave it to human emotion but a video holds more weight and creates more credibility than a typed out, stick it in the bottom right corner of your web site type of customer quote.  Warranted?  Probably not, does it work?  Yes.

3. A picture is worth a 1,000 words, so video is worth 1,000,000?

Transferring knowledge, information, and emotion is easier done with video than typing out 10 pages on your blog.  People don’t have a lot of time, get them what they need and let them move on – they won’t read 20 pages – Unless you are a wicked writer or unless you want to be a writer.  Then go for it, you do what you need to do and people will appreciate it. At least some will.

4. Video can go viral much quickly than audio or text.

Just look at the DC Shoes YouTube video – as of this post, it has 5,721,716 views in 2 months.  It’s not easy to go viral…companies plan for it and do their best to create the right environment, but then someone shoots a video of their bridal party dancing in and they get 21,803,071 views in 1 month.

5. It’s easy to do now. You’ll be shocked how easy it is!

With a Flip UltraHD Pocket Camcorder and even the new iMovie 09 you can quickly shoot, edit, and upload into YouTube or your blog or web site within minutes.

A Bonus: Make some dough off your show!

Now you can even monetize your web site video if you get a lot of eyeballs.  Google is already betting that you’ll create some videos that will be shared millions of times, so they are going to keep watch and share the revenue with you.  How about that….

I know there are more reasons out there – why else would you like to see more video on web sites?

Some people love playing Golf….I’m doing my best to not lose a few clubs!

A while back I was asked to join a group called the Colorado Business Leaders - it’s essentially a group of Denver Metro Area Business Owners who are succeeding, gaining market share, doing a good job of running their businesses ethically and trying to give back to the community.  It’s a good group.

So, I joined the board and one of our intentions was to help a local charity.  We went through several and decided on NEWSED whose mission is:

“To promote and develop economic and community programs and projects that raise the income, educational and political levels of West Denver residents.”

And in order to help support this charity, we are playing some golf tomorrow (August 17th) at The Pinery!  With over 160 golfers, several donated prizes, a few celebrities, and some great sponsors, Neon Rain is going to represent Denver’s Web Development community as we play the greens and try to have some fun as I’m told, “The pinery beats all but the best!”

We are just doing our part to make life better in Denver for at least a few families.

Arif Gangji

Very nice video from Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com – No company starts off perfect and true perfection is never reached, but it’s the attempt and journey that sometimes brings more favor than you would expect.

A great article here on the OPEN American Express Blog by Duct Tape Marketing. Make a checklist for your Ad generation…When you are in the mix of it, sometimes we forget all the ingredients that go into making a good ad. After you’ve done it over and over again, you’ll remember all of the pieces but you wouldn’t start making a special family dish for the first time without a recipe would you? To get good results, follow the steps – over and over again.

The Never-Fail Recipe for Ads That Work Like Crazy >

Every small business has questions on how to market their business online as well as how much to spend and best practices on measuring ROI. MSNBC had a great clip on this very topic:

So, I had a meeting with a business partner the other day and he came in talking about how great Bing is – Bing is Microsoft’s new search engine (they call it a decision engine).  He was raving about how you can type in a type of food and your zip code and see local results!  I thought to myself, “Doesn’t Google already do that?”

So, as he sat in my office, I opened up Firefox and went to www.bing.com and a new tab to www.google.com and a tab to www.yahoo.com - I figured, let’s give it a whirl!

In my search string, I typed in “pizza 80241″ where 80241 is a zip code nearby in beautiful Colorado where our Colorado Web Development company is located.

Here are my rather interesting findings – I was actually quite surprised in many ways:

Note: I only looked at anything that showed up above the fol.d  Just to be as fair as possible.

1. Google

Google actually had a good degree of variation based on smaller chains to larger chains and geographically dispersed.

All from Local Business Results – Google Local:
Capri Pizza, Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, Papa Murphys, Dominos, Pizza Hut, Anthonys, Abos, and Capri.

Then on the organic results from the SERP:
2 links to pizza pages on yellowpages and 2 links to pizza on merchant circle.

Either way, I’m sure I could find something useful and tasty just in the local results up top with the map.

Note: Now what was odd is that the points on the map were quite varried, there were some really close (5 – 10 mins) and some far (20 – 30 minutes away) – but a good distribution none the less.

2. Yahoo!

This one I didn’t get…there were 3 results up top next to the local results with a map.  3…just 3.  And #3 was over 30 minutes away from this zip code.

Here are the Yahoo! Local results:
Anthony’s II, Boardwalk Cafe, and Carl’s Pizza.

Note: No Dominoes, Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, or any of the big ones that I know are around that zip.

Organic results from the SERP:
Result #1 was to Yahoo Local, #2 to yellowpages, #3 to citysearch, and #4 to DexKnows.

This is very interesting, while Google linked directly to the web sites of the retail pizza locations – it could be the corporate site vs. the local shop – Yahoo! instead chose to link to several directories.  Good food for thought if you see what I see

3. Microsoft Bing

This one really cracked me up…the local results up top were actually pretty good.

In the Local listings at the top we had:
Capri, Abos, Papa Johns, Pizza Hut, Dominos, Pudge Bros, Anthonys.

Note: All good, all close, and a good mix of small chains and large chains. 8 listings in all showing.

But the key here is that all 8 were very close to the zip code entered!

So down below the local listings in the organic SERP…and I love this:

Capri Pizza, Autozone, Space Imaging, A Denver Directory, Yellow pages.

Did you catch #2 and #3??? Autozone and Space Imaging!

Okay, so that was the link title and the links went to yellowpages which did actually link to Autozone and Space imaging without any mention of pizza – oddly enough this decision engine gave some weight based on an ad that probably showed up on those pages…even though the pages were for Autozone, etc. If I were looking for something more important, like a Hospital and I got something like Autozone or a bakery pop up – I’d be pissed.

So, who won Round 1 of the Search Engine Faceoff?

Local listings at the top: I have to give it to Bing, the results were the most accurate and well rounded.

Organic results inline SERP: This one goes to Google, they linked to the actual web sites of the pizza places and showed me coupons, etc.

(Google: 1 Yahoo!: 0 Bing: 1)

If you haven’t heard yet, Google is now allowing users to setup their own profiles and will integrate Google Profile information on specific Google Search Engine Result Pages (SERP).

Here is what Google stated in their Google Friends Newsletter:

Profile information now in search results
To give you greater control over what people find when they search for your name, we now show Google profile results at the bottom of U.S. search pages. These results offer abbreviated information from the profiles you created, a well as a link to the full profiles. We’ve also added links so it’s easy to search for the same name on MySpace, Facebook, Classmates and LinkedIn. Your public profile page identifies you and serves as a hub for your content on the web.

You can click here to setup your Google Profile.

Okay, so Google doesn’t know my bank account numbers or what my K-1 shows or any other financial details – I think.  But they do know where I hang out online and probably in real life, how I search, what I read, and so much more. I guess personalized search results require some privacy to be relinquished.

Anyway – back to the point – if you hurry, you can get a set of FREE Google Profile Business cards.  iPrint.com is giving away 10,000 sets.

Just click here for your free Google Profile Business cards – if you are quick enough!

Google announced on their blog that they had optimized the product search pages to be easier viewed on mobile devices.  You can now easily sort by price, rating, brand, or even online stores where the product is available.  Here’s a link to the the Google Blog post.

Sounds like a good plan for consumers.  When you are out and about at the store and you want to purchase an item, that’s the point where you need knowledge of the product:

1. Is it a quality product?

2. Is it being sold at a fair price?

3. Does it have good user reviews?

By allowing mobile users (specifically on iphone and Android, but available on other mobile devices) to be able to research products through an interface designed for mobility at the purchase point, Google helps keep information at the fingertips of the user.

Now, the question that is begging to be asked…Does having more information create an opportunity for the brick and mortar store to lose a sale?  Will Google let online e-tailers advertise on these pages?  Will Google develop location awareness and offer alternate retailers nearby to purchase the same product?

What do you all think?