South Florida Web Marketing Blog

First, do not open the attachment! It has a virus.

It appears the bad guys are going after the MySpace User community. Looks like another attempt to release a virus into your computer. This innocent looking e-mail is a bomb about to go off if you open the attachment.  I suspect this virus is designed to go after passwords and may have other devious things to do.

From Symantec
Packed.Generic.261 Heuristic Virus
Systems Affected: Windows 98, Windows 95, Windows XP, Windows Me, Windows Vista, Windows NT, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000
Packed.Generic.261 is a heuristic detection for files that may have been obfuscated or encrypted in order to conceal them from antivirus software.

Be very careful not to ever reset your password because of an e-mail

Watch out for the bogus e-mail from facebook – service@facebook.com – it is a fake! The e-mail actually comes from Return-path: <baikalk12@electricsheepcompany.com>. The attached document is a zip file that will unleash a virus. Be careful out there folks

Website recreates Apollo 11 mission in real time

By Melissa Trujillo, Associated Press
BOSTON — Families crowded around black-and-white television sets in 1969 to watch Neil Armstrong take man’s first steps on the moon.

Now, they’ll be able to watch the Apollo 11 mission recreated in real time on the Web, follow Twitter feeds of transmissions between Mission Control and the spacecraft, and even get an e-mail alert when the lunar module touches down. Those features are part of a new website from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum commemorating the moon mission and Kennedy’s push to land Americans there first.

The complete story…

note: This site may be getting some heavy traffic causing the site to run really slow…

The website for the Apollo 11 Mission – it is one heck of a Flash development:

http://www.wechoosethemoon.org/

I talk with clients all the time about how to market their websites and what they need to think about and expectations.

1. The fastest way to get traffic is to use pay per click marketing with Google and or Yahoo
   - You pay a small amount of money every time someone clicks on your ad – no guarantee that the person will purchase
   - This can result in traffic within one day
   - This can have a higher cost, but measurable. Let’s say you have a marketing budget of $10.00 per day and each click costs .50 – so you can get 20 visitors per day. Out of those 20 visitors you may get 1 person to purchase. Then you measure the cost of the sale versus the cost of the pay per click advertising – essentially measuring ROI to determine if this way of marketing is cost effective.
   - Most of the time it works out in favor of the website owner, but there are times that we discover issues. Sometimes the visitors may not like what they see or how the sale process works. The ads may need to be tested to find the right combination of phrases. The keywords need to be expanded to find the right quality of keywords that results in traffic and conversions. We also need to determine negative keywords so your ad does not appear for things your marketing should not be displayed for.  The good news if one thing does not work, we can test other keywords, ads, landing pages, correct shopping cart issues, etc.  to find the problems to correct – that will work.
2. The second way to market is the natural method – Optimization and Link Building, this is a much longer process to get traffic.
   - This method can take 3-9 months (or longer depending on competition) before any traffic is seen. Many times I suggest more of a refined or small market to target – like South Florida. As the site is built up in one market and sales are resulting from that work, we begin another market, North Florida, then Georgia, etc. This is a very long process, but it will eliminate the cost per click avenue.
   - Optimization is preparing each web page for a particular keyword phrase (or phrases). The search engine will view this web page and decide that that keyword phrase will be the one you may be found for. Depending on the competition, plus other Search Engine factors, this will dictate your Search Engine ranking placement (SERP).
   - Now to help your SERP, you must help those ranking results by increasing the number of incoming links from other websites – this is the Link Building side of the equation.
3. The third and most popular way to market is to do both Pay Per Click and Natural. This is the most expensive, but it will result in a solid marketing process. The pay per click marketing is used for immediate sales and should last for about 3-9 months covering the time it takes to get the natural link building process in place. As the Natural Marketing Method takes hold and top rankings become evident, you can then ease off the pay per click marketing.

This is the short answer for marketing a website.

There are other marketing tools that can fit well into this marketing like Press Releases, YouTube Videos, Blogging – writing articles that will pull your products into each article,  plus other web marketing opportunities.

Good luck in your marketing, you know where to call if you need help.

We have received multiple reports that a new, convincing and dangerous worm and phishing scam is making the rounds on Twitter. Hacked accounts are sending DMs to users and stealing their login information. In fact, one of our own has received one of these direct messages:
http://www.sunbeltsecuritynews.com/WC9CO5/090930-Twitter-Worm