A few days ago Firefox 3.5 became officially available for download. The web browser world is constantly changing to it is important that you constantly check your business website to make sure that it is up-to-date and compatible with the latest web browsers.

That can be very difficult to do since there are so many different operating systems and each operating system has its own browser version. You may have a PC, but that means you are not able to test your browser on a Mac OSX Safari browser.

Well there is a great way to test your website’s compatibility using a free webtool called Browsershots.

Browsershots.org – Check browser compatibility accross multiple browsers from different OS’s.

Here’s two other websites that can help you test your website to make sure it is up-to-date.

Web Page Analyzer – Free website performance tool and web page speed analysis.

CSS Validation Service – Check your CSS and HTML documents with style sheets

If you haven’t downloaded Firefox 3.5 yet, we highly encourage you to do so. It’s a great browser and it will make your web surfing experience much better. Download Firefox here.

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The other day I watched over the shoulder of my wife as she was searching for a local shoe retailer. She opened up Firefox and up popped Google.com as her homepage. The surprise came when she typed the name of the retailer into the Google search bar rather than just typing the URL (which she actually knew for memory).

I didn’t really think much more about it until I ran across a blog post on MarketingProfs that stated a company’s corporate homepage is Google.com.

People are starting to view the Google search bar as their URL entry box. Instead of typing “www.zappos.com” people are simply typing the world “Zappos” into a search form.

This is a key point to remember for businesses engaged in internet marketing.

1. Do you rank first for your company name?
2. Are there any negative comments that show up for your company name?
3. Are your competitors advertising using your company name as a keyword?

If you are not seeing the results you want when you search your own business name you can

1. Advertise on Google using your company’s name
2. Launch a social networking campaign focused on branding and reputation management
3. Optimize your website for search engine ranking

These methods are proven to work and you can often see results within days of launch. But you don’t have to take our word for it. Take a look at some other points made in the article.

A brands biggest concern…should be the negative pages that show up in the results organically. Those are the listings that are much less in Google’s control and more in the hands of consumers/brands.

Just because there are people who are writing about your product on Yelp and GetSatisfaction, doesn’t mean you have to sit back and watch your search results get contaminated. No one is barred from producing content on the web. A brand has just as much right to talk about their great qualities and respond to those who disagree.

Creating great content around your product in pivotal to your organic search success. A big part of Google’s secret formula for organic search is traffic. If you build it (something great), they will come. The better something is, the more traffic it gets, the closer it will rest to your ideal search results.

Creating a small 2 to 3 page microsite is not enough. Engaging your industry through social media and social networking is how brands succeed at reputation management and internet marketing.

Marketing Profs – ‘A company’s corporate homepage is Google.com’

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Blogs are important. That’s a statement anyone would agree with. All the major cable news channels rebroadcast their content through blogs and all the major corporations are likely to have not only one, but several blogs. However, knowing that something is important is much different than knowing why it is important.

I was reading through my RSS feeds this morning and I found a very logical argument that gives 4 very real reasons to have a blog. They are as follows:

1. A platform to be the expert – This is your industry, you have the opportunity to set the bar high. With a little research on places like Twitter, Yahoo Answers and other questions and answer websites, you can figure out what questions people are asking about your industry and provide them with (your) industry standard answers and insights. This is one of the best ways to add much needed content to your site, provide value, and become an expert online in your field. By the way, creating blog posts with this kind of information is one of the best ways to start blogging for those of you who are afraid to get your feet wet.
2. Give your company a personality – Be yourself. If you can come across as an individual who cares, rather then a corporation pushing a product or service it will serve you much better! Let potential customers get to know the person behind the company and trust will follow.
3. Search Engine Optimization – Think about how awesome it would be if you could create a piece of content, and have it indexed and ranking on Google (or other search engines) on the same day. If your website is providing enough value, and has enough trust, this is exactly what can happen. Having a blog gives you more of an opportunity to be found for additional keywords that you normally may not be going after. It is much easier to link to good content inside of blogs too, and we know how important people linking to us is. Blogs have many built in capabilities for sharing content too, which helps with the link building.
4. Help with staying relevant – Don’t just have a blog to have a blog because everyone else is doing it. The goal of your blog should be to help you company be more relevant from an information standpoint. Because, that is what people are looking for these days – news and information from individuals, companies, etc. Your blog is also one of the best facilitators for interacting with and embracing social networks, which in turn allow people to share your content. If you are using blogging platforms like Wordpress for example, there are many plugins that make sharing your content and information with others easy. That alone helps you stay relevant, people who use these platforms to find information understand that your blog is an up to date relevant source of information.

These reasons come from Mat Siltala over at Dream Systems Media. You can read his entire blog post on their own internet marketing blog.

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Hi! Welcome to The Next Level blog. This is our very first post, so we’ll go ahead and introduce ourselves and explain why we are here.

Who We Are – LEVELTWO is a marketing agency in Dallas, Texas. Find out more about us at http://www.ltwo.com.

What’s The Blog About – We will be discussing why it is important for your company to use social media marketing and interactive marketing like PPC, SEM, SEO, and SMM. What is the difference between search engine marketing and search engine optimization? Why is it important to use medical lead generation? How can internet marketing bring my company new business? We’ll do our best to answer those questions, but to make this blog successful we want you to be involved!

How to Get Involved – Whether you agree or disagree with our marketing advice, we encourage comments from our readers. You can also follow us on Twitter @leveltwo, join our Facebook page & MySpace, or send us an email to social@ltwo.com.

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