PV Media Group

Prime Visibility in Newsday

A great article featuring Prime Visibility CEO Andrew Hazen has been published in Newsday: http://www.newsday.com/columnists/other-columnists/growing-li-firm-focuses-on-search-engine-optimization-1.1568656

Interview with Andrew Hazen

WebmasterRadio interviews Prime Visibility CEO Andrew Hazen at the 2009 Search Engine Strategies conference in New York. Listen to the interview below:

Online opportunities for your offline network

Published on the Long Island Business News
By: Andrew Hazen

We’re all aware that strategic networking can significantly increase our business while allowing us to meet and help others. But it is shocking to realize this kind of networking really only exists offline, which leaves tremendous Internet and other electronic networking opportunities unexplored.

Traditional networking involves people getting together to discuss objectives, such as potential new customers, and searching for ways to help others attract business. Those that excel at networking are continuously seeking out new methods to assist others, such as asking existing clients if they are interested in the products or services of others in their network.

In addition to in-person events, marketers need to consider how Internet marketing can play an integral role in a successful networking campaign. Take the following case, for example: Dr. Greenberg, a very well-known cosmetic surgeon, is launching a new product line called Cosmetic Surgeon in a Jar. In searching for ways that Dr. Greenberg can effectively and efficiently promote the launch, here is how the strategic Internet networking component comes into play.

First, Dr. Greenberg must identify his target audience. Upon deciding that it is females ranging in age from 25 to 75, the best strategic path would be to provide the following key elements.

An introductory offer sent via e-mail

Such an e-mail enables the doctor to test offers such as discounts, free shipping and the ever-popular “buy one item and get another at a special price.” But first, he must determine who will receive the offers. Again, Internet networking comes into play. Given Dr. Greenberg’s target audience, he contacts New York-based LoveMyShoes.com because its customer base represents the perfect demographic for his product line’s introduction.

The company’s e-mail list contains nearly 200,000 names and addresses of women aged 20 to 45 who buy shoes on the Web. The bonus is that these women are already experienced in purchasing online, so they should be comfortable acquiring Dr. Greenberg’s product line at CosmeticSurgeonInaJar.com.

Dr. Greenberg can encourage LoveMyShoes.com to distribute his information for free by either cross-promoting the site’s products in his e-mail blasts or on his site, or by offering to compensate the company on a cost-per-acquisition basis. For example, for every order that Dr. Greenberg receives based on the e-mail blast, he might compensate LoveMyShoes.com to the tune of $15.

Many other online networking opportunities exist for Dr. Greenberg. Shawn Elliott Luxury Homes & Estates sells high-end homes with values exceeding $1 million. Thus, its e-mail list is a perfect fit for Dr. Greenberg. The same goes for Lucille Roberts’ gym e-mail list, which contains hundreds of thousands of names and addresses for fitness-minded women who want to look great too.

A display ad or promotion on a strategic partner’s Web site

In addition to introductory e-mails, acquiring real estate on networking contacts’ Web sites also works extremely well by putting businesses in front of their ideal audiences.

Take Metro Candy, for example. Prior to the Halloween season, it networked with HalloweenScene.com. The two Web sites promoted each other via display ads and promos. The partnership offers a prime example of Internet networking at its finest – both a trick and a treat that gives customers looking for Halloween costumes access to a huge stash of candy.

Networking affiliates

Does establishing networking affiliations entail paying other parties to be included in their e-mail blasts or on their Web sites?

Not if I can help it. I avoid the exchange of money in online networking relationships, preferring free, mutual cross-promotion instead (i.e. cross Internet networking) among related brands to achieve strong results.

The other acceptable alternative, mentioned earlier, is the cost-per-acquisition model.

When networking, it pays to take the extra step of exploring the many existing online opportunities within your circle. Think of it as profitable social networking for your business.

Tweeting helps business to fly

Andrew Hazen was interviewed by Jamie Herzlich for an article on newsday.com. Experts from the interview below:

Hawk.com and Twilert.com that scour Twitter and help you find keywords you want to track, explains Andrew Hazen, author of "Search Engine Optimization: Plain & Simple" (Angel Dough Media; $29.95) and chief executive of Prime Visibility, an Internet marketing firm in Melville. Hazen uses these tools to track conversations daily on Twitter that mention search engine optimization or Hazen and Prime Visibility.

There's an abundance of Twitter tools on the Internet, notes Hazen, who has compiled a list of them at PrimeVisibility.com/twitter.

He uses Twitter to position himself as an expert source by posting helpful URLs and tips daily, as well as to drive traffic to his news aggregator site, BreakingNews.com, by posting headlines of the day on Twitter and providing a link back to the BreakingNews site.

...read the entire article on newsday.com

Prime Invincibility

How a Long Island lawyer with little technology skill built a successful Internet company

Originally published by The New York Enterprise Report

The former president of NBC Universal doesn’t come knocking on everyone’s door, offering to buy their company. But that is just what Steve Rosenberg did for Prime Visibility, an Internet marketing services firm specializing in search engine optimization (SEO ), website on-page optimization, and pay-per-click management. The company’s 2007 revenue was nearly $5 million and was ranked on Inc.’s 5000 Fastest Growing Private Companies in America in 2007 and 2008. Their clients include Fox News, Brother Printers, Norwegian Cruise Line, and Nielsen. Prime Visibility CEO and founder Andrew Hazen has come a long way from his days as a lawyer doing mortgage foreclosures.

After failing out of SUNY Oswego twice (a result of excessive partying) Hazen graduated in 1995 and went on to attend Thomas M. Cooley Law School from 1996 to 1998. During his studies, he took a class in cyber law. It was in that class that Hazen created his first website; it was a simple site that helped law students. He linked to different case laws and old exams to help students prepare for class. Soon after launching the class project site, an attorney in Texas found the website and wanted to hire him to do case law research. He figured if an attorney was willing to pay him for research, there must be a huge market of lazy students who would pay him, too. In 1996, he registered Lazystudents.com and launched an online business while still a full-time law student. The website offered two services: a subscription-based database of useful links for students in all subjects and a custom research service. “Google didn’t even exist yet,” says Hazen. “What I was doing was almost like a mini Yahoo. But I’m not a techie or a programmer. The funny part was I charged everybody a $9.95 fee, but I gave every person the same password, which was, ‘lazy link,’ because I couldn’t figure out how to create multiple passwords.”

The Start of SEO

Hazen wanted to market his site online, but with his student loans piling up he couldn’t afford to advertise with services such as Collegeclub.com and Student Advantage. Instead, Hazen set the goal of getting his website to appear on the first page of Yahoo results for the search “term papers.” He began reading online forums and getting ideas. Through a lot of trial and error, he got his website to appear third in a list of 8.8 million results.

In addition to running his online business, Hazen graduated a three-year law program in two years. He passed the bar, returned to Long Island, and began practicing law. “I was doing mortgage foreclosures,” says Hazen. “I was going to court and throwing people out of their houses and feeling terribly guilty about it. Then I had this idea to put all the Long Island businesses on the Internet and get them found.” In 1998, without discussing his plan with his wife, he went into the office of the owner of his law firm to resign. “I told him I’m going to follow my dream and start an Internet company,” says Hazen. “That conversation turned into the owner offering to back me, give me seed money, and be my partner.” The law firm moved a couple of administrative assistants out of a corner, put up drywall, and that was the first Prime Visibility office.

Growing the Company

According to Hazen there were two major catalysts for the growth of his business from two slabs of drywall to millions in revenue. In 2000, Tourneau and Lauren Hutton signed on as clients, giving the company a higher level of credibility. The second catalyst was a 2003 documentary called “The Google Boys” that appeared on A&E’s Biography channel. It was a one hour special about Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Google, and the producers interviewed Hazen about SEO. He appeared in the documentary for only three minutes and fifty-two seconds, but the publicity was priceless. “If you go to YouTube right now and type in ‘search engine marketing,’ that video is number one,” says Hazen. “So now, people actually think that Google’s recommending me because they see me on a special with Larry and Sergey—not in the same screen, but one minute they’re looking at Larry and Sergey, the next it’s this guy from Prime Visibility.”

Hiring for an Emerging Industry

Since Prime Visibility was a pioneer in the SEO industry, finding qualified employees was a major challenge for Hazen. “There wasn’t a real career for search engine optimization,” he says. “So, I hired web designers that I could teach to do optimization. Unfortunately, we went through a period when people would come to us for a year or two, get paid about $30,000 or $40,000 and learn optimization. Then, they’d take what we taught them, and go get a job in Manhattan and make $70,000. I used to call it Prime Visibility University.” Prime Visibility now combats turnover with employee stock options. The benefit has increased employee retention and employee commitment to the success of the business.

Selling the Business

Hazen’s partners from the law firm did not interfere with the running of the business nor did they take any money out of the company. However, the company was making millions in revenue and Hazen wanted to buy them out. After years of working on a deal, he bought out his partners in 2006. “I finally closed a deal where I bought out my original partners from the law firm,” says Hazen. “In theory, nothing changed with the operations, but I just felt good that I owned a hundred percent of the company.”

Three months later, in November 2006, Hazen was introduced to Steve Rosenberg, the former president of NBC Television. When Rosenberg left NBC in 2004, he noticed a seismic shift in advertising dollars going from television to digital and decided to invest in Internet companies. After being introduced to Hazen, Rosenberg decided to examine the idea of acquiring Prime Visibility “Steve basically went out, raised money, and acquired my company,” says Hazen, who closed on the sale December 28, 2007; he now owns a stake and also serves as CEO.

Hazen captured the trials and tribulations of the selling process with a reality show called “STARTUP.” He co-produced and starred in the program, which appeared on hdonlinecinema.com. The show featured Hazen stressing out about his company “showing really good numbers” to the investors. “I had to run the company lean and mean. It got to the point when my wife called me to tell me that my seven year old went to go get a haircut and the credit card was declined because I owed American Express $185,000.”

Hazen says he’s a workaholic, and he means that in a good way. “I know that whether you’re Donald Trump or Andrew Hazen or Guy Kawasaki, there are twenty-four hours in a day and what you decide to do with them will make or break your future.”

Quick Query: Prime Visibility CEO on Domain-Name Marketing

Published by Practical eCommerce

The use of additional domain names can help an ecommerce firm expand its reach. We asked Andrew Hazen to explain how this can work. Hazen is a web marketing pioneer and the founder and CEO of Prime Visibility, a Long Island, New York-based Internet marketing firm that specializes in search engine optimization, pay per click advertising management, and return on investment analysis. He's recently launched Internetideas.net, a portal for Internet-based businesses.

PeC: Why should merchants consider buying additional domain names?

Hazen: There are many reasons. By having additional domain names that are optimized, you get the benefit of having more real estate on the search engine results page. Another reason might be the domain name chosen originally may not be search engine friendly. If a URL doesn't really say much about your business and isn't ranking well on the search engines, getting an additional domain name is a way to gain that visibility.

PeC: With the purchase of an additional domain name, should merchants build an additional site, or simply point to an existing site?

Hazen: They should actually build out an additional site. You wouldn't want to have a duplicate of content, because that's not a good thing within the search engines. You would build another site to have additional real estate, so to speak. A simple redirect won't get it to rank organically.

PeC: Do you recommend that ecommerce merchants purchase domains in different languages?

Hazen: That would be great if there's enough search volume for it and it might bear what we call typed in traffic with domain names, which is when someone goes right to a browser and directly types in the URL [because the name is very intuitive]. So, if it were something that might get direct typed in traffic, I would highly recommend getting the keyword URL in a different language.

PeC: Should U.S. merchants consider a foreign domain even though the site itself is in English?

Hazen: Yes, depending on the target or country and what language is spoken by the population there. It's a great optimization technique where you take a site and then you have Español or something indicating that if you click a button or a flag on the site, it converts to the Spanish language, but that would be something that should be done through trial and error.

PeC: How can a merchant determine the value of a domain name?

Hazen: I look at it as the three C's, almost like exploring a diamond quality. First, there is "characters." How many characters are there, knowing that the fewer the better for memory and branding purposes? Then there's "commerce." Does the name sound commerce-enabled? The third "C" is ".com." The .com is the predominantly desired URL. When it comes to valuing the price, I think you can get a good domain in the $500 range if it's already been taken. I can clearly support spending $2,000 or $3,000 if the domain name is your subject matter. Ask the person that owns the URL how much traffic does it currently get. Does it have any rankings? Those are some of the various factors that determine what the price should be.

PeC: Would you also advise merchants to buy other top level domains, such as .net, .biz, and .org?

Hazen: That would depend on how competitive and how fierce the industry is. As an example, my company got Usedautomotiveparts.com for just under $1,000, and we were able to buy the .net and a .org version for $59 each. So, in the grand scheme of things, what's another $60 to take away that real estate? I bought .net, .org and .info because I'm spending money on building this brand. It can stop someone else from buying up your real estate and then riding the coattails of your marketing efforts. It's almost like an insurance policy, if you will.

PeC: You have recently launched another site called Internetideas.net to help merchants and ecommerce entrepreneurs understand domains better. Please tell us a little bit about it.

Hazen: Being active in the domainers community, I see people with portfolios of 75,000 domain names or 100,000 domain names, and they are charging ridiculous amounts of money. So, I launched Internetideas.net. In addition to offering the domain names, I'm also offering ideas to the businesses. Basically, I'm trying to bridge the gap at Internetideas.net by offering premium .coms at realistic prices with a business idea as well.

5 Creative Ways to Avoid Mistakes with Paid Search

New Rules for Paid Search

Published on The New York Enterprise Report

By: Andrew Hazen

The key to paid search is relevance. Try to match what your website is offering to the needs of the searcher at the exact moment they ask for it. However, once a searcher clicks on your site, you will most likely have one chance to impress that visitor. Your website has to represent your business, and your paid search has to represent your website. If you think the success of your online marketing effort relies solely on the paid search campaigns, then paid search can and will compromise your online marketing initiatives.

Paid search sponsored ads are textual advertisements that appear above or to the right of search engine results. Advertisers bid on a cost per click (CPC) model, which can range from $.10 to $100 depending on how competitive your keywords are. The ads consist of a limited number of characters, so you must be crafty in writing them. To set up an account you only need to have a credit card and then you can literally appear on the first page of Google, Yahoo, and so on, within a day or less.

Before you start paying for traffic to come to your site, consider the following: If there are many advertisers selling the same product or service, what would set you apart from your competition? Why should someone buy a product from you as opposed to your competitor? Think of how you compare with respect to these qualities - price, return policy, customer service, and shipping charges. If you are a service provider, again, what differentiates you from your competition? Think about testimonials, trial periods, and pricing. For all types of businesses, is your site easy to navigate? Is it clear what action you want your visitors to take? Are the steps involved in this action clearly identified? These considerations will enable you to create strong copy for your paid search ads that will encourage searchers to click. You can and should prevent unqualified visitors from entering your site by creating ad copy that pre-qualifies them. For example, if your services start at $5,000 per month, then say so in your ad so that people looking for services that start at around $500 a month will look elsewhere. This way, you don’t pay for clicks that will never result in customers.

Optimized paid search campaigns drive relevant traffic to websites by using ad text relevant to the search query. If your website doesn’t offer what the ad leads the reader to believe it will, then that person is most likely to leave without converting. A conversion is the completion of a desired event, such as when a visitor downloads a form or places an order. You might end up paying for a search that doesn’t convert visitors to customers and the visitors will most likely never visit your site again.

Keep in mind that not all offline businesses can translate successfully to the online world. Online marketing can drive a larger share of the existing audience to your site, but if the interest in your type of business is not there, paid search alone will not be successful.

One more thing to consider is whether or not your chosen keywords have excessive search volume. The keywords might be so competitive and expensive that your profit margin just won’t support the cost to bid on them. Every advertiser must consider their own unique business model and make advertising decisions based upon individual circumstances. For example, if you only make $10 profit on the sale of your product or service then it would not make sense to bid $20 per click. Test everything and then only promote products and services that are profitable. While the Internet levels the playing field so that all businesses, big and small, can compete in the same arena, the strategies need to be tailored to what works for you. Keep in mind the following tips to ensure that your paid search campaign is truly enhancing your online marketing.

Creative Tip #1: Before you start the paid search campaign, optimize your website for organic search listings as well as for paid search listings and check your website for usability. Being listed based on both paid and organic search results increases your visibility and ability to convert users. Do not start the paid search campaign until the website has been optimized and checked for usability.

Creative Tip #2: In order to generate additional buzz on the Internet, start an online viral campaign through social media (Blogs, YouTube, etc.). Participating in social media can increase the amount of traffic your site gets through search engines. Utilize Google’s offline products such as Google Audio, Google Print, and Google Television. By promoting your website through all of these mediums, you will ultimately increase search volume.

Creative Tip #3: It may seem that your broad search terms are not generating a lot of conversions or at least profitable conversions. Depending on your tracking software, you may be able to assign an “assist” value to the first keyword that started the keyword search resulting in a conversion. For example, a web surfer may click on a paid search ad for “high definition televisions” and then do a second search for a model such as “Samsung PN50A650”; it’s that second click that would “assist” the first keyword search. Broad searches may lead to bookmarked conversions, which is when a visitor bookmarks your site and then returns via the bookmark and converts, or a visitor finds your site through a search engine and then returns later and enters your URL directly. It may also lead to a phone call. Don’t discount the value of the broad search terms that may not be directly attributed to your website’s success.

Creative Tip #4: Bid on your company name and website name. You are the most relevant for your own name and therefore you will see top listings from very inexpensive clicks. Even if you have great natural rankings, you will see increased activity by having listings in both organic and paid results. Just remember, if you don’t bid on your own name, then your competitor might, and they could be stealing your traffic. On the other hand, bidding on your competitors’ name is a sticky situation. While it is good to offer searchers choices, bidding on a competitor’s name will result in a poor user experience because, unless your landing page content specifically references the competitor, your listing will be completely irrelevant. The search engines will penalize you by raising your cost per click. It is best to compete on the keywords focusing on what your website is offering and clearly distinguish yourself from your competitors.

Creative Tip #5: It is not necessary to target position 1. You may see better conversion results being in a lower position. Use analytics and bid management tools to give you as much information as possible regarding the behavior of your visitors. Paid search can compromise your overall online marketing if you expect it to perform miracles. All aspects of online marketing work together to create a user experience and if you only look at one piece of the puzzle, you may be disappointed in the results. Also, remember that even a highly optimized paid search campaign can generate poor results if your website is not optimized or your business model does not lend itself to being profitable online.

PV Media Launches BreakingNews.com

Hybrid online social net/aggregator caters to news junkies

(Posted on AdWeek -By Steve McClellan - Nov 20, 2008)

NEW YORK PV Media Group, parent of the AdOn Network, a contextual and behavioral targeting online ad net, has launched a hybrid online social network catering to news junkies and news aggregation Web site called BreakingNews.com.

The company has hired veteran newspaper journalist James McDonald to run the service as president and CEO. McDonald was part of the team that developed and launched The Washington Examiner in Washington D.C.

PV will use its search engine optimization firm, Prime Visibility, to enable BreakingNews to quickly capture paid search words for breaking stories, the company said, thereby insuring that the new site is prominently ranked in consumer searches.

Although, as PV CEO Steve Rosenberg noted, the term "breaking news" is one of the most searched terms on the Internet, "A highly trafficked domain name like this, encompassing a term that has become such a significant part of the global vernacular, holds tremendous value for advertisers seeking prime online real estate," he said.

In addition to news that runs the gamut from international, political, entertainment, business, health and science, the site will feature blogs, videos and podcasts, widgets and other commentary and discussion forums from a network of pre-screened contributors.

PV will promote the new site through its online ad networks AdOn and Premium Access Media, providing millions of additional impressions to create brand awareness and traffic, said Rosenberg, a former TV executive who ran the Universal Television Group before forming PV in January 2008.

Social Media Buzz about Obama Far Higher Than McCain

Prime Visibility’s New Proprietary Prime Buzz Metric Measuring Social Media Websites’ Popularity, Usage and Traffic Shows Lopsided Results for Democrat

Social media buzz about Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama far outpaces that of Republican John McCain and appears to be much more favorable, according to the findings of a Prime Buzz survey conducted by Prime Visibility (PrimeVisibility.com), a rapidly growing integrated online marketing company specializing in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC).

Prime Buzz, designed to help companies, political campaigns and brands better quantify how they are viewed across the social media spectrum, conducted the assessment examining a variety of social media elements related to the two political parties.

“These findings are extremely accurate,” says Prime Visibility CEO Andrew Hazen. “They have been calculated based on a variety of trends and variables, including submissions, views, subscribers, voting, bookmarks, ratings and other social media exposure that, combined, determine the buzz that can make or break a product or brand.” 

Through Oct. 17, Obama led on 20 sites, McCain on three and there was one tie. Obama, who has far out spent McCain on social media, led by significant margins on 19 sites and McCain on two.

But the two candidates tied on Yahoo!, which has the largest grasp of the social media community, with 1.1 billion comments each. Given its large database, Yahoo! is much more likely to contain duplicate content than smaller sites.

Google Blog Search had Obama with approximately 227.7 million comments versus 93.2 million for McCain, while Google produced 201 million for Obama and 141 million for McCain.

McCain’s biggest margin of victory came on MSN, where his name received 4.4 million comments compared to 360,000 for Obama. It was even larger on his campaign’s official website, which generated 61 millions MSN comments versus nearly 7.9 million for Obama.

While it is difficult to determine the validity of the statements made concerning each of the candidates, the overwhelming majority of those sampled by Prime Buzz indicated that Obama received generally positive comments while McCain’s were more negative.

Polls show that Obama attracts younger voters, who are most inclined to use social media sites, than McCain. To view a copy of all the results, click on the links below:

Download Obama McCain Buzz Metrics Report1 (pdf)

Download Obama McCain Buzz Metrics Report2 (pdf)

Prime Buzz utilizes a proprietary social media optimization technology that determines a website’s “Buzz Metric” by analyzing primary categories such as bookmarking (dig, del.icio.us), video (YouTube, MetaCafe), widgets, podcasts, image/photo-sharing services (Flickr, Photobucket), social networking (MySpace, Facebook), social knowledge (Yahoo Answers, Wikipedia), directory submissions (Google Directory, DMOZ) and online reputation management (ORM).

ORM addresses negative feedback that can damage a company’s brand, creates positive search listings to suppress negative press or customer comments, and takes control of a company’s online reputation.
The Prime Buzz service conducts a thorough monthly analysis of the Buzz Metric so that clients can recalculate the ongoing success of their social media campaigns based on how their brands are viewed.

McCain vs. Obama: E-Lection Results

by Andrew Hazen, founder and CEO, Prime Visibility -- Published on MediaPost's Online Media Daily

An increasingly large percentage of internet users -- mostly young, male, well-educated and tech-savvy -- have been turning to social media websites to get their news, tell their stories and debate their opinions.

If the Web was a war zone, the social media community would be the place for hand-to-hand combat. Web sites like Digg, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Del.icio.us catering to this prime selling demo are considered fair game for news, educated discussions and debates among influential potential voters.

The campaigns are well aware of this phenomenon. Still, they have to grapple with questions about whether they should intervene to compensate for a lack of positive social media information and discussion about them.

Which campaign is winning this war? We used our new social media measuring and monitoring tool Prime Buzz to find out how Barack Obama, John McCain and their official websites are faring on both popular and niche social media destinations. We also sought to gain insight into the users' opinions and campaigns' tactics.

To get a sense of social media community's direction, we went to the big names like Digg, Google Blog Search, YouTube and Yahoo Answers. Not surprisingly, we saw Obama's presence drastically outweighed that of McCain, both in terms of the politicians' official websites and individual name references in blog posts, story comments, etc.

YouTube users had posted 534,000 videos through Oct. 17 featuring Obama, nearly two times as the 297,000 for McCain. MySpace and Facebook produced similar results; MySpace alone turned up more than 2.5 million Obama references in user profiles versus less than 1 million for McCain.

There is no way to tell if any of these mentions are positive or negative, though we strongly suspect that Obama supporters are just more vocal amid the growing trend of posting one's political alliances on MySpace and Facebook profiles.

In all, Prime Visibility analyzed more than 25 popular, politically independent, social media websites and Obama tended to dominate the great majority of them.

Are average social media users more likely to vote for Obama or, by function of their age, speak their minds in cyberspace? Maybe it is just a matter of Obama's campaign simply doing a better job of promoting him within this new intellectual medium?

The answer is most likely all of the above, since we will never truly know the source of any of the content appearing on these user-generated content sites.

While the full impact of either campaign's efforts within the social media space may play a relatively small role in this election, it is clear that user-generated content has established itself as an increasingly significant medium to interact with, gauge and even shape voter's opinions.