Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing Service

Sam and Samantha

Methodical and Humanistic couple

Looking to qualify for a mortgage.

Sam and Samantha live in an apartment and have 2 kids. 1 kid is 7 months and another one is 4 year years old. Both kids share the same room which is getting small for both of them. Sam and Samantha want to buy their own house so they can give their kids separate rooms, and have more space themselves, since it’s getting pretty crowded.

Samantha controls Sam for the most part and will make him come to an agreement with her. Though both will input in the mortgage, she’ll make sure it goes her way first, which in her eyes is the always the best way for both of them and the family. Sam usually agrees and lets her be in control, also due to the way he was raised, with dominant mother and idea of dating where women are praised and satisfied with every wish. They will both take part in research, but convincing Samantha over Sam will go a long way.

Goal: Their goal is to qualify for a mortgage that is big enough to buy the house they want. Their bank rejected them and they look at brokerage firms as a solution. Their credit is OK and they will accept most terms as long as they get the amount they want. The important part is getting the money.

Carry – Spontaneous

Age: 31

Spontaneous

Mortgage renewal

Single.

Education: Went to Alberta College of Art and Design for architect, 3 year program. Finished 2 years and decided to pursue her passion for extreme arts.

Financial: $39,000 and around $20,000 on the side selling her art.

Car: Mini Cooper

Credit: average.

Work: After dropping from college, Carry started painting and sculpting her own compositions, which became popular and were featured in modern arts galleries around the world. She continues to paint and get income from her work. To have stable income she took a job as a teacher of modern arts in a college and now teaches students.

Family: Her family is from Poland and lives in Toronto. She dates, but doesn’t want to get married.

Objective: Carry’s needs to renew her mortgage and wants to pay less every month. She knows it is possible through a mortgage broker and wants to save at least a $100 on her monthly payment. She doesn’t want to spent too much income on the mortgage and thinks she can get a better deal than those offered to her by the banks. She’s aware that her credit score is not perfect, but confident she can get a better rate from brokers. This is the reason she is researching brokerage online.

She will need a knowledgeable, “people’s” professionals, who won’t keep her in the dark, but won’t overload with details as well. Showing understanding and providing personal touch with options will do a better job at convincing. Short experience stories will persuade her a lot. Offer her completely customizable mortgage options and describe that she can personalize her mortgage till it has her face on it. Right after that mention that she will get professional friendly, unbiased assistance, since she doesn’t want to learn what all the options mean and which are the best ones for her. Tell her we’ll explain the options and she’ll do the customization. Discuss short term benefits and how it will affect her long term. Tell that she will start saving first month after the renewal. Also show her through example how she will save with renewal through us.

Betty - Humanistic Betty

Age: 26

Education: Betty went to the arts college and got a degree.

Work: Unemployed

Financial: no income

Car: VW Beetle

Credit: Good

Debt: College debt

Family: From Quebec and live in Quebec.

Nature: Betty has soft personality and is slow to make decisions. She greatly values opinions of others and cares for others more than herself. She got married because she fell in love and now can’t wait to have the kid. She relies on her husband and doesn’t mind having some parts of life decided for her.

Goal: Betty will be the one doing mortgage research, since her husband is busy. She will value input from others (testimonials, reviews) and will look for personal history of each broker / company she looks at, as a way to decide is the company is right. She will compile several options and pass them to her husband for review. Very personal, “about founders” page, goals and values will do a good job of convincing Betty. The goal is to be high on her list of recommendations for the mortgage and to be passed to her husband, where he makes quick decision. She knows nothing of mortgages and will appreciate a lot of information about mortgages, as a way to learn and possibly help with the final decision / spot something her husband missed.

Strong testimonials and customer success stories will go a long way to her. A personal, warm touch in call to action and offer to ask any questions should set us apart in the crowds. Also strong personal pages, including personal details will have an impact, such as our favourite music and so on. It communicates openness to her. Tell her how she will feel working with us and why she will love working with us. Let her picture herself happy and satisfied, knowing that she will be taken care of. Show by example that she can trust us, not by “you can trust us”, but actually lead her into the decision herself.

Connar – Competitive

Competitive.

Age: 35

Education: Police academy. He used to be a cop for 5 years, but decided to go into car wholesale business.

Work: He transfers and distributes cars to and from the wholesale car auctions to dealerships across Canada. He is constantly on the move, often away from his wife. He’s also very busy and relies on his close associates to make some decisions for him, which he doesn’t have time for.

Financial: He makes around 120,000K per year after the expenses.

Car: BMW6

Credit: Excellent

Debt: 0 debts. Academy loan paid off.

Family: His family is Irish and lives in Alberta.

Nature: Connar grew up tough with deep appreciation for challenge and a feel for justice. He only accepts winning in all his takings. He took a cop job as a way to serve people and deliver justice where needed, but after few years of giving out speed tickets, he decided he wants to have more in life. With passion for cars he naturally went into the car business and currently runs a successful car wholesale business. He is focused, looks for competence in people and despises bullshit. His view of the world is that he has to be efficient and everything around him has to efficient, running 100% of power. Being competitive, Connar is dominant, concise and swift in his decisions. He is used to the best, to respect from others and to success.

Goal:

His mortgage decision is going to be fast and he is going to look for the best people in the field. He will select mortgage brokers as a way to pay less per month, since he is the only one paying for the mortgage, but will pay more if it means working with the best. He will require “mortgage for self employed” and will look for the terms that hint it. He will trust his wife with research, but will have the final say and have a look at some sites himself. Strong advantage over other companies will set us apart, along with some guarantees and possibilities not offered with other companies. Being competitively different and being top, is key to getting business. He needs a company that he can trust to make the best choice for him, by describing his situation and having minimum input in the process(himself), with company doing the rest and giving best there is for him.

Provide summaries of the process so he can know of everything. Make bold statements, and support them with facts and guarantees. Testimonials from authorities are quite effective. Endorsement by authoritative sources is also very effective, since it shows acknowledgement of an important, which passes status directly to the company .

Doing an project for mortgage we developed Personas to better market the product. Each persona reflects potential clients. Since we dont need those personas any longer, you can use them for your own purposes. This is a 4 part article.

Competitive and HumanisticWant to get a home mortgage.

Connar and Betty are married for 2 years and have a kid coming in 6 months. They want to have it in their new home. They currently live in a condo and already have their sights on a house, which they want to buy. Betty went to the arts college and got a degree. She worked in an museum as a part time job while in college, and got a job as a designer right after college. Connar convinced her to quit the job and prepare everything for their upcoming baby. He knows he can pay the mortgage.

Connar runs his own business and can provide for both, but wants to make sure he can qualify for the house of their choosing. He wants the best his money can buy. Connar is the main decision maker in the family, but let’s Betty manage family related matters. Betty respects Connar and trusts him completely. Though he can provide for the family, they are both looking for a way to pay less on the mortgage. Connar also pays for Betty’s student loan and car loan.

Connar bought a condo when he was a cop for $150,000 and paid out $70,000 to date, which will go towards new home downpayment.

Their joint goal is to find a mortgage that will be financially friendly. Low rates and illustrated payment benefits of lower rates can be persuasive. Since Connor is busy, Betty will be doing research, before passing to husband for final word.

Yahoo has updated its contextual advertising solution, Content Match. They say you won’t notice cosmetic changes, but what you will notice is that “It just works better.”

Yahoo has been long dissed about poor performance of their contextual advertising platform and it seems now taking first steps towards fixing it.

I think this is also a move to milk more money from their content network which is tiny in comparison to big G. Yahoo’s stock is lowest in history and they are taking the steps to fix it up by providing better services.

Content network brings money only when it works for 2 parties - the advertiser and site on which advertisements are put. Advertisers are concerned with sales, which content networks are bad at delivering and sites are concerned with money. Yahoo got to make 2 sides happy to make money money from this.

Directories under attack by Google?

In the post Are Directories Still Worth Your SEO Budget? SEO roundtable raises questions whether directories still have SEO effects as they used to in the past.

We all know about Google’s latest change to the webmaster guidelines, where they removed directories as a good source of links. Having seen that, SEOs and webmasters ask themselves, if seeking links from directories is worth it anymore.

Is it? Many SEOs rely on links from directories for rankings. If Google removes directories from the “recommenced” list they will hurt a lot of businesses.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

This Was Coming

Aaron wall stated for ages that this will be coming. We now see this one step closer. I think directories still count, but not as much as they used it. It will take some time before directories are thrown out of the equation and that day is moving closer.

Search Engine Rap Battle

LOL This is fun as hell. You can find the videos here.

MSN vs GOOGLE - Search Engine Rap Battle

MSN vs YAHOO - Search Engine Rap Battle

GOOGLE vs YAHOO - Search Engine Rap Battle

Google could be acquiring Valve which also owns Steam - one of the best content distributions, according to the Inquirer. Valve is also a game developer with titles like Half Life and has a game search engine, Source.

At first glance, Google acquiring Valve seems a little unorthodox. But considering Steam is the best game distribution platform on the market, maybe Google is trying to solidify its position in that space and branch out from its comfort zone. - Washington Post

Valve is an entertainment software and technology company founded in 1996 and based in Bellevue, Washington. The company’s debut title, Half-Life®, has won over 50 Game of the Year Awards and was named “Best PC Game Ever” in the November 1999, October 2001, and April 2005 issues of PC Gamer, the world’s best-selling PC games magazine. Valve’s portfolio of entertainment titles also includes Half-Life® 2, Counter-Strike®, Day of Defeat®, Team Fortress®, and Portal™. This portfolio of titles accounts for over 20 million retail units sold worldwide, and Valve games account for over 80% of the PC online action market. - Valve

Google Will Own Counter Strike

Counter Strike is the Papa of all online action gaming. It is the destroyer of young lives and the cause of failed grades. Half shaved kids, with red eyes and headset over their hairy heads kill time with the goal of becoming best they can be in the virtual battleground.

It’s like heroin. Anyone who tried Counter Strike knows it’s addictive power. From the second version which became a world wide hit, it set standards for entire gaming industry. It was like Google, but in action PC gaming. Now Google will own it, along with other hit titles like Half Life and Portal.

In Game Ads?

Google purchased Ad Scape in 2007, an in game advertising platform. So far it had little success with it and Valve purchase will open many doors through Steam.

Steam gives you full access to the way you’ve always wanted to play games. Buy and download full retail games, from new releases to classics. Check out demos and trailers of upcoming games. And make yourself at home in a community built by gamers, for gamers. It’s free to join and easy to use.

Most games available through steam are multiplayer based, so Google is likely aiming to incorporate Ad Scape to some of the games.

Here we list general search engines and their descriptions, along with logos and links.

Google

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

As a first step to fulfilling that mission, Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed a new approach to online search that took root in a Stanford University dorm room and quickly spread to information seekers around the globe. Google is now widely recognized as the world’s largest search engine — an easy-to-use free service that usually returns relevant results in a fraction of a second.

Yahoo

Founded in 1994 by Stanford Ph.D. students David Filo and Jerry Yang, Yahoo! began as a hobby and has evolved into a leading global brand that has changed the way people communicate with each other, conduct transactions and access, share, and create information. Today, led by an executive team that includes CEO and Chief Yahoo Jerry Yang, President Susan Decker, Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen, and Co-Founder/Chief Yahoo David Filo, Yahoo! Inc. has become the world’s largest global online network of integrated services with more than 500 million users worldwide. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with a presence in more than 20 markets and regions around the globe.

Live Search

At Microsoft, we’re motivated and inspired every day by how our customers use our software to find creative solutions to business problems, develop breakthrough ideas, and stay connected to what’s most important to them.

We run our business in much the same way, and believe our three core business divisions offer the greatest potential to serve our customers. They are:

• Platform Products and Services Division: Includes the Client Group, the Server & Tools Group, and the Online Services Group
• Business Division: Includes the Information Worker Group, the Microsoft Business Solutions Group, and the Unified Communications Group
• Entertainment and Devices Division: Includes the Home & Entertainment Group and the Mobile & Embedded Devices Group

Ask Search

Ask.com is a leading search engine on the Web. Millions of people turn to Ask.com to get what they are looking for online everyday.
Founded as Ask Jeeves in 1996 and renamed Ask.com in February 2005, Ask.com is recognized for innovation in search technology and search interface design.

Ask.com sites include Ask.com U.S. (www.Ask.com), Ask.com Deutschland, Ask.com Espana, Ask.com France, Ask.com Italia, Ask.com Japan, Ask.com Nederland and Ask.com UK. Ask.com brands also include Ask.com Mobile, Ask for Kids (www.askforkids.com) and Bloglines (www.bloglines.com.).

Wikia Search

A search engine from wikipedia

Sogou

Chinese search engine

Exalead

A general search engine.

Cuil

The Internet has grown exponentially in the last fifteen years but search engines have not kept up—until now. Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

Then we offer you helpful choices and suggestions until you find the page you want and that you know is out there. We believe that analyzing the Web rather than our users is a more useful approach, so we don’t collect data about you and your habits, lest we are tempted to peek. With Cuil, your search history is always private.

Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge. For knowledge, ask Cuil.

Baidu

Many people have asked about the meaning of our name. “Baidu” was inspired by a poem written more than 800 years ago during the Song Dynasty. The poem compares the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one’s dream while confronted by life’s many obstacles. “…hundreds and thousands of times, for her I searched in chaos, suddenly, I turned by chance, to where the lights were waning, and there she stood.” Baidu, whose literal meaning is hundreds of times, represents persistent search for the ideal.

Alexa

Founded in April 1996, Alexa Internet grew out of a vision of Web navigation that is intelligent and constantly improving with the participation of its users. Along the way Alexa has developed an installed based of millions of toolbars, one of the largest Web crawls and an infrastructure to process and serve massive amounts of data. For users of Alexa’s Toolbar and web site this has resulted in products that have revolutionized Web navigation and intelligence. For developers this has resulted in a set of tools unprecedented in scope allowing whole new services to be created on the Alexa data and platform.

AOL

AOL is a leading global advertising-supported Web company, with the most comprehensive display advertising network in the U.S., a substantial worldwide audience, and a suite of popular Web brands and products.

The company’s strategy focuses on increasing the scale and sophistication of its advertising platform and growing the size and engagement of its global online audience through leading products and programming.