The conference was a great opportunity to see and learn about the strategies and techniques being used in the SEO industry nowadays and to get some fresh ideas. Although the quality of the speakers was great, I think the advanced sessions could have been more technical.

Social Networking and Social Media are hot topics that were discussed during many of the sessions. A lot of Internet marketers use this to drive traffic to theirs sites. How do you determine if the campaign was successful? Orion panel: “Measuring Success in a 2.0 World” was an attempt to answer this question. Some parameters are easy to track, like unique visitors and profit. However not all traffic is equal. The main idea was that you need to setup your metrics and measure your success according to your business plan and business strategy. Apparently there is not a universal solution yet.

Topics such as search user behaviour, universal and blended search, getting found on maps and local searches, and tracking social media success, caught a lot of attention. Gordon Hotchkiss talked about the evolution of the “golden triangle” and could not refrain from mentioning how Rogers forgot to buy paid search traffic to support their iPhone announcement in Canada.

SEM Canada is the next big industry event this year. I hope more Canadian businesses will recognize the importance of Internet Marketing and as a result we will see more recognition and more events like SES Toronto in Canada.

It’s simply not enough to request a website design without providing any direction. The critical information that defines your company is in your hands. It is crucial to provide this information to the web design company before they start on any creative design. For favourable results that save time and money and for a website design that is sure to earn you praise, we recommend that you assemble the following details.

1. List your business goals and objectives. List the goals and objectives for your website. Do your business and website goals and objectives align with each other? They should. Have they changed since your last web design? Does your current website fulfill your goals and objectives? If not, why?
2. Who is your target market? Has this changed?
3. List your competitive advantages. Have they changed? Does your current website play up these advantages? If not, why?
4. Has your brand changed? Would you like to change your brand?
5. What’s the feedback on your existing website? What is working, what needs reworking?
6. Examine your top competitors. What are they up too? Are they doing anything that you would like to try yourself?

Considering your goals and organizing your information will instigate a more strategic decision making process. Details of this nature are extremely helpful in determining which changes to your current website will be most effective. Based on the details provided by you, the web design company you’ve partnered with will be in a much better position to suggestion solutions you may not have considered. It may even turn out that a complete website re-design will not be necessary.

The right website can improve your company’s efficiency, profitability, and provide you with a leading advantage over your competitors. More than just a clever image with a means for business contact, a website is the first opportunity a company has to make a lasting impression. Take your time and take it seriously.

Currently anyone can locate the owner of a domain name through a WHOIS search, which displays the person, organization or institution name, address, telephone, fax, and email address. Information of this nature can serve a range of purposes, including unwanted advertising efforts.

On June 10, 2008, CIRA’s new WHOIS policy will protect the personal information of new dot-ca domain registrations. Anyone wishing to contact a domain owner will be able to do so through an online contact form. Domains registered before June 10 will not be affected by the policy.

We have yet to see how CIRA will manage the contact form and communication process. If it’s anything like most registrars’ WHOIS privacy feature, the registrar will send an email or mail to the domain name owner with the third-party request. The domain owner will then decide if they wish to respond.

Dot-com domains have a similar WHOIS privacy feature, but it’s dictated by the registrars themselves and not ICANN (equivalent of CIRA that operates dot-com and other top-level domain names). To protect your information for your dot-com, simple enable WHOIS privacy with your registrar.

Next time you register your Canadian domain name, your personal information will not be disclosed to the public.

Total internet sales hit an estimated C$62.7 billion in 2007. That’s a 26% increase from 2006, mostly from the B2C market.

eMarketers’ latest article, Canada E-Commerce Growing Quickly, reports that ecommerce is still only 2% of total operating revenue in Canada and only 8% of Canadian companies sell items online.

We have updated our Online Canadian Statistics, eh! article with these new numbers.

As a website solutions firm, we are pleased to report an increase in requests for Canadian eCommerce website development.  The typical attitude of small to mid-sized organizations, up to the first quarter of 2007, was apprehensive.  Clients didn’t feel ready for ecommerce and didn’t think it would work.  The sentiment is much different now.

Some of the most popular social bookmarking tools you might enjoy include, Stumbleupon, del.icio.us, ma.gnolia, and Furl.

Province and city level extensions were once commonly used to identify the location of a registration. For instance, if you had an Ontario provincially registered business your domain extension was - name.on.ca, or if you were a sole proprietor in Toronto, it would be - name.toronto.on.ca. This format was later removed and dot-ca was opened for registration by anyone/anything “Canadian”, proof of Canadian citizenship not required.

If Quebec were allowed its own extension (.qc), without the dot-ca, how would the rest of Canada respond? Most likely, on principle alone, other provinces would want their own extensions as well. And that could very well lead to the end of Canada’s internet nationalism - our proud-to-be-Canadian, dot-ca.

No doubt, for the benefit of a province’s revenue, having its own extension may be advantageous. Many smaller countries have released their own extension in an effort to profit and form a clearer identity. And most have succeeded. Even the previously held dot-tv used to be owned by one of the Polynesian island nations, Tuvalu.

Nothing against the beautiful province of Quebec, but I hope this form of separation doesn’t become a reality, as the all-Canadian dot-ca could start to loose the global presence it’s steadily acquiring. Read Canada’s One Million Domain Names.

So where does that place Canada in comparison to other country-level domain extensions? Here’s where dot-ca ranked in the fifteenth spot back in February 2008, according to “Global Domain Name Statistics“.

And these are some generic extensions.

We decided to run an analysis using these statistics. We wanted to know the percentage of domains specific to each country based on its population. Here’s what we got.

*population numbers form the CIA World Factbook 2008

Out of 25 countries Canada ranked in 13th place in our analysis. Countries like Netherlands, Denmark and Germany rated highest. Does this mean that we are less willing to appeal to our fellow Canadian consumers? Does a dot-ca registration or any other country level extension make you more patriotic?

One could say that the Internet savvyness of a country may affect the number of domains registered. However, country-specific domain registration in many ways could also reflect the effort made by a country to target its particular market and populace. A dot-ca domain name for instance, directly targets local markets, sending the message that a website is proudly Canadian.

It’s true, English speaking countries have a larger competitive market to contend with and have more domain extensions to choose from. There may be less incentive to differentiate Canadian targeting with a dot-ca, when you can opt for the better known dot-com. A dot-com domain name may widen the demographic scope of a website, but more times than not, a focused demographic tends to fare better.

According to CIRA, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, 75% of Canadians prefer to shop on a dot-ca website. Privacy and security issues often deter Canadians from online shopping across the border, along with extra costs associated with shipping and duties. CIRA reports that in 2005 Canadians ordered $5 billion worth of goods online and 63% of these purchases were with Canadian vendors. For some small businesses, a visible dot-ca website could be the deciding factor for sustenance.

If your Canadian website is an established dot-com, why not register your dot-ca domain and at the very least, direct it to your dot-com.

For more information on choosing a domain name extension, read Dot-Com or Dot-CA?

Researched & written by Marta LeClair

Assuming you already have a campaign that is producing good return-on-investment, two alternative marketing strategies for growth include “penetrating current markets more aggressively” and/or “entering new markets with existing products”.

Penetrating your current market more aggressively, involves looking at your current market and increasing the intensity of your campaign. Essentially it’s about doing more of the same. SEO tactics may include looking for keyphrase variations, longer-tail search terms that add more content to your website in relation to the keyphrases, and publishing articles or press releases on the same sites you have used in the past. Introducing images, videos, and audio files within your content will also help place your website within different sections of the search results - reference Universal Search. With SEM, your tactic may include varying keyphrases and/or changing match type, testing different offers with title, description and landing page variations, and last but not least, increasing your daily ad spending to capitalize on impressions. Consider also, sending newsletters or reminders via email to inform or up-sell by displaying new offers to your existing clients, or find other email newsletters you can advertise in. Ultimately, make the effort to put your message and brand in front of your clients and prospects more often.

The strategy of entering new markets with existing products, suggests expanding your reach outside your typical audience. This may include adding new keyphrases and new content to your site with a focus on different topics in consideration of SEO alternatives. Similarly for SEM, consider using new keyphrases and expanding your geo-targeting, network reach, or demographic settings (if available). Don’t forget about the other web properties. If you are currently using Google Adwords, look to others like Yahoo Search Marketing or MSN AdCenter. There are often stronger returns on niche or lower traffic properties that have less competing ads. Look at placing ads in other business niches or industries that you might not have considered before.

Though by no means an exhaustive list of strategies or tactics, this should be a good starting point to further your internet marketing ideas and initiatives. Remember the key to success is to continually monitor and test, then monitor and test, and test again.

1. Domain name:

• Have the name of the company with whom you registered, your website address, including your domain name(s), username, and password for accessing the domain name manager.
• Ensure the administrative, billing, and technical contact information is correct in WHOIS.  Note that the registrant / administrative contact is the official owner of the domain name.  If you have WHOIS Privacy enabled, this will hide the official information to stop unsolicited advertising.  In this case you would need to contact your registrar or log in to your domain name manager to see the contact information.
• If you own a dot-ca, you should also have CIRA’s (the governing body of this extension) account number and password.

2. Website hosting:

• Know who your hosting company is, their contact information, including support related contacts.  If you are hosting your website internally, include who is responsible for maintaining it.
• Determine if the same contact controls both website and email.
• Get FTP username and password, including hostname. You will need these to access the website files on your server.
• If your website is using a database, document the database type, name, hostname, username, and password.

3. Website files:

• If another company designed your website, they may provide you with the creative source files.  Your website may have been designed in Photoshop, for example.
• Get a hold of the FLA files of any flash work done. These are the source flash files used to make changes.
• Obtain any original video or audio files.
• Depending on the programming language used to program your website, you will have access to most of the code from FTP. Otherwise, in all but the rarest situations, the uncompiled source will be enough for projects coded in dot-NET for example.

Don’t wait till the last minute to get this information.  For many of our clients, their website is their advantage for business success.  Keep track of all your records in the event of an emergency, or when you may need to move the site, hire a new web solutions firm, or replace an employee. If you’re organized and prepared, this information will be a website saver.