I have not tested this yet but if its true it will mean great things for all of our customers. According to a blog post by Andy, that was sent to me by one of our founders, Google may be incorporating blog search results in its main search results. You can Check out his post here. Really its only logical. Most of Google’s Results have in the past months been full of irrelevant and just plain bad results, incorporating blog search results will only improve the quality of those results. Time will tell if this actually proves to be true. In the mean time keep watching.

A 10 item list of guidelines for marketing utilizing blogs and blog marketing has been issued by the WOMMA. (word of mouth marketing association) There have been a few stories lately of fake blogs and fake viral videos that everyone finds out were really just being done by Wal-Mart or some other corporation. These are sometimes called a “flog” or a corporation fronting blog or “fake” blog. Which is different from splogs which are all spam generate content.

If you think about it “fake” blogs or fake blog posts that someone is paid to do or blog that a company has out there that is not acknowledged is just as deceptive as pay per click search ads would be if they were not labeled. The FTC came in and regulated Pay Per Click ads to make sure that the consumer knew they were ads. If we follow that logic should they also step in and require the same sort of labeling on commercial blogs in order to ensure that consumers are not tricked?

The principle is the same. In search results people were trusting the engines to deliver relevant results when some ads weren’t clearly labeled the FTC said no you have to make sure people can tell the difference. Here is an article about the FTC recommendations from 2002…by Danny Sullivan.
Here is a quote from the article “Commercial Alert filed its complaint last July, claiming that a lack of disclosure about paid content integrated into search results constituted “deceptive advertising,” something the FTC regulates against.” Are some of these blogs deceptive? Will Ralph Nader target them? Stay tuned..

You can check out the Blog Marketing Code of Ethics here.

Check out this list from Google. Apparently this is where the most searches are being done for “real estate marketing”

The First one did not surprise at all. But some of the others you might find surprising. I wonder what our people over at Real Estate Blog Marketing think of this data.

This is a list in order of where according to Google searches for Real estate marketing originate.

All agents in Las Vegas, Dallas, Tampa, Littleton, Atlanta, Chandler, Phoenix, Charlotte, San Diego, and Miami… A real estate blog would be an excellent idea with very high return on investment.

A couple of days ago many organizations reported on the findings of how much of an increase there was in online revenue in 2006 over the same period in 2005. Now yesterday I ran across yet another article talking about how bad click fraud is.
If you are spending a lot of money on Pay Per Click right now, you not want to read this article…

“The spreading scourge poses the single biggest threat to the Internet’s advertising gold mine and is the most nettlesome question facing Google and Yahoo” Paid to Read rings around the world are also apparently becoming very popular.

“Paid to read” rings with hundreds or thousands of members each, all of them pressing PC mice over and over in living rooms and dens around the world. ”

Reportedly some of these people are making thousands of dollars simply by clicking on pay per click ads.

For small companies this should just another reason to be very careful when using PPC advertising. PPC and Search Engine Marketing can generate return but.. just as with blog marketing or a corporate blog program and most most other forms of online marketing, get some expert help, getting expert help early on may save you thousands or even millions depending on your budget over time.
Blog marketing offers an alternative to PPC advertising that gains market share, increases traffic, helps in Search Engine Optimization if done right, and none of the risks losing money that Pay Per Click advertising might. Companies spending money on PPC and Google Adwords Campaigns come and start a small blog marketing campaign, you may not have the instant gratification of seeing your add in the engines right away ..but you will, within a short time see results and return on investment and shrinking cost per sale or cost per lead that only gets better as your campaign and your corporate blogs grows.

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