Commenting on blogs that are relevant to your industry is a great way to build links to your website. Link building services are a very important aspect of your internet marketing strategy, but making sure you’re not being annoying is just as important.

Are you a reflector or forgetter? With 2013 coming to a close do you find yourself reflecting on the past year or just wanting to forget it and move on to whatever is in store for 2014? I’m a reflector. I love looking back on the year to see what’s been learned, achieved, overcome and enjoyed – both personally, professionally, and socially in the world. It’s been a year since we’ve started blogging about internet marketing here at Half a Bubble Out, so it’s only appropriate I take the time to also reflect on our past blogs and recap the most popular internet marketing tips we wrote about in 2013.

I unapologetically love Christmas.  The sights, smells, sounds. Time with friends and family. Giving gifts carefully chosen. Parties and celebrations. Good food. A momentary reprieve from the pressures of work that almost everyone honors, even clients in other countries. Less email!  A reminder to pause and consider the gifts in my own life. Near the top of the list of the many things I love about Christmas is the music. Everywhere you go songs that range from the fun loving songs of Santa and his reindeer, to the deep wonder of O Holy Night, the sounds of the season are a source of both joy and peace for me.

Throughout 2013, as part of our Inbound Marketing strategy, we have been blogging and creating downloadable content in ebooks, not just for our clients, but for our own agency. You can find out how blogging has affected us this year here at the Bubble by reading our blog, but here is a little snapshot into our world through the eyes of our faithful office dog, Backup. Backup really does think we all are here to work for her, to open the door so she can come in or out, as well as throw her toys or chase her around the office. So, with that in mind, I wrote an Inbound Marketing version of the traditional poem The Night Before Christmas. Enjoy!

Twitter is a great social networking site to be on as a business, especially when it comes to finding leads and building relationships. This blog will highlight five lead generation techniques that can be used on Twitter to help enhance your business.

Santa’s busiest day of the year is almost upon us, but what do you think Santa is doing with the other 364 days of the year? He has elves for making the toys and gifts, and Mrs. Claus takes care of the meal preparation so Santa is all about learning the rest of the year. He is looking for valuable information that he can pass on to his friends and neighbors. Recently a small business owner asked Santa the question “why blog” and he had to research a good answer. Since then he has signed up for our blog and he is deeply interested in internet marketing.

People are always asking us what makes a good website? But what they should be asking is what are the recent changes made by Google and how will they affect us in 2014?

As tears welled up in my eyes after watching Apple’s latest television commercial, I realized just how powerful advertising can be. Not only was its spot well filmed and paired with heart-warming music, it touched on a very current topic in society: Does cell phone use cause teens to become introverted and unattached from reality? Apple shows with this tear jerker that its products actually bring families closer together. 

It occurs to me that understanding how to add keywords to a webiste as part of your internet marketing strategy is similar to Christmas stockings. 

Christmas was a very important holiday in my house, and although I grew up in a low income family, my mom put a lot of thought and energy into making sure Christmas was special. Each of us kids hung up our stockings and on Christmas morning, our stockings were stuffed full. Stockings were a big deal and we could always unload them before mom and dad were up. Presents had to wait for the whole family so we would take our time going through our stockings until the whole family was awake.

I'm not sure who writes marketing content for JetBlue but I want to meet them! I am regularly impressed by their ability to be creative and weave in meaningful content while doing so.

Below is an email I got from them today built on "Twas the Night Before Christmas" and while I know many will rework this for their marketing, I think JetBlue has done it well. Note the links in this email that each highlight one of the benefits of traveling with JetBlue. It's a great example of what can be done. You can bet this took a bit more time than the average email, but it serves to delight and inform. You can't ask for more in marketing than that!

Without further ado, JetBlue's Christmas email:

You better watch out

You better not cry

You better not pout I’m telling you why

Google bots are crawling around

It’s making a list and checking it twice

Gonna find out who’s naughty or nice

Google bots are crawling around

It sees you when you’re blogging

It knows you want to rank

It knows if links are bad or good

So be good for goodness sake!

Happy Monday to everyone.  I wanted to pass along this blog from Search Engine Land that talks about all the changes in SEO especially around link building.  I want you to understand and be kept up to date with all the changes.  If you have been talking with me at all in the last 6 months you have probably heard me talk about link building and how it has changed.  Many of the people who come to us looking for help have heard or even invested a lot of time and money in link building strategies because they helped people rank better in Google.  

Recently I met with a client regarding a website redesign we are doing for them. We are working on trying to streamline their content, make it more user friendly in the navigation, and be more client focused than it has been to date. The client, who happens to be the CEO of the company in this case, agrees in concept with all of these ideas, but the implementation of that in a way that he likes is not so simple. He wants “warmer,” he wants people to feel “drawn in” and he took us to a site he really likes and feels does that. As it turns out, that site had the opposite effect on me!

Twelve days before Christmas, John, a small business owner in Chico, CA wrote a letter to Santa. Why? Because his children knew he was struggling and needed help, and they knew Santa would answer their father’s Christmas wish. At first John brushed it off, but after much urging his children had him convinced. John started crafting his letter to Santa. He wanted to be as clear as possible to ensure his wish would come true.   

If you have been so busy with the hustle and bustle of the season that you have missed the Christmas Spirit of WestJet, a Canadian based airline, then check out this YouTube video:

So what’s all the fuss about Instagram’s secret that they are supposedly unveiling to the world in New York on Thursday?

Well, with the word of the year being “selfie” Instagram is kind of a big deal. Didn’t you know? Not impressed yet? How about this—Instagram’s 130 million users share roughly 55 million photos each day. (Mashable) Also, it’s owned by Facebook.

Instagram is a more user oriented photo sharing social media site, but it's also becoming popular with businesses, especially clothing brands and companies that have a lot of visual products or services to offer.

Are you having issues bringing traffic to your blog posts? Well there is most likely a reason why no one is reading your blog. Here are five things you're probably not doing, and should be to help answer the question why blog, even when it isn’t getting the love and attention you are hoping for.

At Half a Bubble Out we sometimes make up our own words – known as “seussing” (think Dr. Seuss). A couple of examples include: using the word “funner” in a tagline for a client; and combining the words “simple” and “uncomplicated” for another client to create “simplicate,” helping explain how their business helps people easily navigate the health insurance industry.

Internet marketing uses its own vocabulary too, and new terms are popping up constantly. So we decided to look up some of the terms we frequently heard in 2013 to understand exactly what they mean.

If you are at all familiar with link building services or in need of them, then the terms Google, page rank, link building, Penguin, Panda, and now Hummingbird are probably familiar to you as well (if they aren’t, keep reading!)

Christmas is 19 days away! That’s it! Then comes the New Year. Looking back on this year and your business, what have you done to improve your marketing and get new business? For some of us 2013 is a blur; you had no time and no resources to even think about marketing for your business, or changing any of your current marketing. This is why I am proposing a New Year's Resolution free of gym memberships and making promises to lose 10 lbs.

Landing pages are an extremely important part of your internet marketing strategy as a business. Having landing pages is how you bring in leads and eventually (well, hopefully) convert them down the funnel and turn them into customers. But, unfortunately there are some mistakes that can destroy even the best landing pages out there. Read on to find out what those mistakes are so you don’t make them!

Provide marketing people want. Be honest. Just try. It will make for a better world and a happier inbox.

I know that you probably get as many spam emails as I do in your business from anonymous folks who claim they have reviewed your website and can solve all your traffic problems in 30 days with their genius methods! I typically just delete them, but this one came on a day when I was feeling particularly snarky and I just can’t let it go. We’ve been working hard on our own marketing so I am sensitized to this, but I also know our clients get stuff like this all the time and it drives me nuts! Here was the meat of it:

You’ve heard the phrase “it’s better to give than to receive,” and while this may be true when it comes to the well-being of our souls, it may not be the case when it comes to content marketing. St. Francis of Assisi said, “For it is in giving that we receive” and the same can be said for giving away free content to consumers – because offering quality, custom content that they find relevant and helpful could help you get new business. Here are some internet marketing tips for why you should offer free content.

Engage on Social Media

If you are in business you probably hear the term SEO, or Search Engine Optimization quite a bit. While there are some technical pieces and parts to SEO services for small business, the fact is that anytime you do anything related to your website to try to help it rank better, you are engaging in SEO. Getting found by search engines is the single goal of any type of SEO work. Whether you are changing the title tag on your website home page so it ranks better, or you are writing blogs to create new content, you are engaging in SEO.

Small Businesses often fall prey to scammy SEO companies and people who are essentially hiding under a black hat when it comes to the way they offer SEO services for small business. In the last couple of years Google has cracked down on these black hat tactics like keywords stuffing, and will block your site if it looks like your SEO strategies are even in a grey area. It is important to note that Goggle doesn’t care if you hire someone and they do the black hat SEO strategies, you and your business will still be held responsible. Not to mention you will see your customers and sales drop drastically because you will likely be pushed well past the first page of search results.