Marketing 450 Guest Lecture

Marketing 450Guest Speaker

Hi, I’m Nathan Smith. I work at

as a designer + front-end dev.

My knowledge ofInternet marketingis purely accidental

I code, design, and write

BA in Social SciencesWashington State University

Master of DivinityAsbury Theological Seminary

But not trained in web-dev, either

– Be culturally sensitive– Consider your audience

I did learn two things

Oriental > Asian American

Theodicy > Problem of evil

Use appropriate lingo

Be succinct.Users will make an assessment ofyour site in fractions of a second.

Give me locational hints to help me understand where I’ve teleported

Home page is rarelythe point of entry

example.com/news/local/city/man-bites-dog.html

Niche ads generate better click-through

SEO: Use Semantic HTML

<h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6>

<ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>

<table> <thead> <tbody> <th> <td> <a>

<title> <meta> <link> <strong> <em> <p>

(to name a few)

SEO: Meta + Link Tags

Tells search engines to crawl site:<meta name="robots" content="all" />— Also, make sure to have example.com/robots.txt

Displayed in search results, if unique:<meta name="description" content="..." />

Not as important, but use anyways:<meta name="keywords" content="..." />

Prevent duplicate content penalty:<link rel="canonical" href="..." />

Faces of Internet Marketing

– Niche entrepreneur– Social media expert– Design/Dev agency– SEO consultancy

MICHAEL MISTRETTA

site – FusionAds.net

Entrepreneur. Founded Fusion Ads, a niche advertising network. What makes his story even more inspiring is that he started this business while he was still in high school.

Niche Entrepreneur

GIOVANNI GALLUCCI

site – Gallucci.net

Self-described “carnival barker” for hire. Has spearheaded numerous online hype campaigns. He also offers social media marketing training for businesses.

Social Media Expert

#1 result on Google for social media expert

TOM MCCRACKEN

site – LevelTenDesign.com

Founded LevelTen Interactive, an agency focused on designing and developing sites for clients using the Drupal CMS. SEO is a byproduct of good content and code.

Design/Dev Agency

BEN FINKLEA

site – Volacci.com

Founded the SEO firm Volacci, with a specific focus on Drupal optimization. Notable clients include Acquia.com which raised $15 million venture capital funding.

SEO Consultant

Beware the backlash of gimmicks

See also – http://mashable.com/2009/06/10/iphone-squarespace/ | http://blogs.zdnet.com/feeds/?p=1283

Tale of two sites: Both page-rank 6www.sonspring.compage count: 300+age: 6 years

www.960.gspage count: 2age: 1 year

Research before buying domain name

Godbit means a small piece of something good in Norwegian, especially in reference to food. – Jørgen Arnor Gårdsø Lom

wordpress.org textpattern.com drupal.org

SIMPLE ROBUSTFLEXIBLE

Which CMS should I use?

Questions?Keep in touch:– http://twitter.com/nathansmith– http://slideshare.net/nathansmith– http://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan