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Redbox Now Offering $1.50 Blu-ray Rentals
Coinstar's Redbox announced today that it is has started rolling out Blu-ray rentals. The company says titles will be available at 13,300 kiosks nationwide. "Offering Blu-ray rentals is an exciting opportunity for redbox to expand our product offerings and build on the relationships that we've established with millions of consumers nationwide," said Mitch Lowe, president, redbox.  "Redbox is a convenient, affordable home entertainment provider and we're delighted to offer consumers their favorite movies on the increasingly popular Blu-ray Disc format."  "According to a recent report by the Digital Entertainment Group, sales of Blu-ray players increased 103 percent in the first half of this year," the company noted in its announcement. "The sale of almost two million set-top players during this time has increased the total number of Blu-ray players sold to an estimated 19.4 million, resulting in more consumers entering the Blu-ray rental market." Redbox Blu-ray rentals will cost $1.50. Regular DVDs are only $1.00. Redbox recently made public intentions to use a web service to expand its library, which would make it a much bigger competitor to Netflix. That appeared to be mostly forward-looking, however. It's hard to say when that will happen, and what its offerings will be exactly.

Google Launches New Product Search Ad Format with Product Extensions
Google has announced a new advertising format for Google Merchant Center users. The format is based on the product extensions AdWords format that lets advertisers add specific product listings. There is a difference with this new format, however. The format, which runs on Google Product Search, will show users products and prices without them having to click on a "plusbox" to expand the ad.
"These ads are a great opportunity to market the breadth of your product catalog and highlight any promotional messages directly to conversion-ready shoppers on Google Product Search," says Google Product Search Product Manager Andrew Poon. Poon also notes that to take advantage of the new format, you should make sure your product extensions ad campaigns are being served on "search partner" sites. This isn't the only new ad format from Google. The company also announced a new location extensions format with map features today. More on that here.

Google Focusing On Check-In Services with Google Places API
Google is placing a great deal of emphasis on check-in services, with regards to Google Places. This could mean some interesting things for businesses. "We have been delighted with the enthusiasm we have seen for the Places API, and the innovative ways in which developers would like to use it," says Google Maps API Product Manager Thor Mitchell. "We have seen applications that offer check-in to places and need to identify an individual place at which a user is currently located, applications looking to show a user Places around them, and applications looking to offer a search and browse experience for Places similar to that offered on Google Maps." "We are going to focus initially on check-in applications," says Mitchell. "These are the applications that we feel the API currently caters to well, and we are excited to work with developers building these applications to understand their requirements, and ensure that we are offering them the best possible experience." Google says it has been reaching out to developers who have expressed interest in building check-in apps using the Places API. This includes developers working on client apps for the Buzz API. Check-in services are gaining a lot of attention, and are creating new and interesting opportunities for brick and mortar businesses that just weren't available before. Combine that with the power of Google Maps and Google's increasingly heavy push of Google Places, and this has the potential to be very powerful. With Google's APIs, the consumers are going to have many more access points, particularly from their mobile devices. It would also not be surprising if this was heavily tied to that "Google Me" project that has been speculated on so heavily in recent weeks. Earlier this week, Google updated its Maps for Mobile on Android devices, making a Places icon available. This essentially turns Places into its own app for all intents and purposes.  

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There are many facets to SEO and the search engines continually change their methods of indexing sites to help prevent the same sites from staying up in the ranks all the time. Here are some strategies we have personally used with our SEO Company:

1. Google AdWords. This is an excellent and cost effective method of getting good search results. You set the maximum daily amount you would like to spend on your key words and phrases. Within the first month we were getting more client contacts through using AdWords.

2. Overture Keywords. This is a lot like AdWords, but we found that their system did not really allow you to set a daily limit to how much you wanted to spend and it quickly got out of hand with some of the phrases we had chosen! Still, it was pretty cost effective in the grand scheme of things.

3. Yahoo Regional Directories. Once you are able to get your site indexed by the Yahoo Regional Directories, I think you stay in there for good! We've been in there for years now and continue to get clients who found us through this directory.

4. Keywords / Description / Alt Tags / Title Tags / Page Content. All the big SEO companies rely heavily on these 5 things - all of which are contained in the code of your web pages. However, with a little research, you could do these yourself. The main benefit to hiring a professional SEO company is that they work for you to constantly update your keywords, etc. and submit your URL to search engines. They know exactly how many of each keyword to use, etc. And this is often a service worth paying for if optimization is a real concern in your industry. A good SEO company will also stay up on what the search engines are doing and change their tactics accordingly. They will also never use an "illegal" tactics that could get you banned from the search engine. Be wary of companies that "guarantee top 10 placement".

5. Online Directories. Submitting your website URL to free online directories is a great avenue of promotion. One way you can find directories is to use Google or another search engine and type in online directories". Some that come up may ask for a small amount to list your site. If they do, you should always contact them and ask them for more information such as how many unique visits their directories get per month to see if the price is a good value.

6. Open Directory Project. The ODP is one of the main sources the the Googlebot uses to find new websites. This is a human-maintained directory - meaning that when you submit your URL, an actual person reviews your submission to decide if the site is appropriate, etc. It may take some time to get your site indexed by the ODP, but once it is, you should not have to keep sending your links.

7. Blog. Having a Blog on your website is a great way to attract visitors to your site with fresh content. And the search engines love content rich blog pages. There are free services out there that allow you to sign up for a free blog. Of course the best way to blog to have the blog "software" actually installed on your site. This is something your web designer/programmer could do for you. I highly recommend sBlog as a free php based Blog script (you will need php and a MySQL database installed with your web hosting service to run this).

8. Submit to Google and Yahoo. These two are the top dogs in the search engine world and both still accept FREE submissions. For Yahoo, you must go through the categories until you find the most appropriate one for your website. For Google, you can go to the following URL to submit your site: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

9. Print advertising. Many companies forget that print advertising is still a very valid way to get visitors to your website. Although this can get costly, even having your URL printed on your business cards, letterheads and envelopes is considered print advertising.

10. Be the best you can be. It sounds simple, but a lot of people get so wrapped up in SEO that they neglect the quality of their website. Remember that your website reflects your business and should offer a professional, high quality appearance and useful content. No matter what your business is, your visitors will be more inclined to stick around or make a purchase if your site is easy to navigation, has useful information, and looks professional.

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