Chicago, IL–October 5, 2011 Meeting Professionals International, Chicago Area Chapter(MPI-CAC) – a professional association serving 1,100+ meetings industry professionals – and HeresChicago.com – an online resource for event managers -announced the creation of a strategic partnership that supports both organizations’ growth goals.

With today’s challenging business environment serving as motivation, the leaders of MPI-CACturned to their membership base in search of prospective win-win partnerships. HeresChicago.com’sCEO, Jim Grillo, was among the first to recognize the opportunity to forge a mutually beneficial arrangement with his professional association.  As the former president of MPI-CAC, an accomplished entrepreneur, and a Certified Meeting Professional (CMP), Grillo urged MPI-CAC leadership to“think outside the box” in the creation of a partnership designed to optimize respective resources and exposure.

The two-year partnership relies on the exchange of such strategic marketing activities as email campaigns, events and social media, thereby significantly expanding outreach and growth opportunities for both organizations.
MPI-CAC’s President, Char Shada, CMP, believes this partnership and partnerships like these can be a critical component to the association’s future growth, stating, “MPI-CAC is thrilled to partner with such an innovator in the meetings industry.  We look forward to working closely with HeresChicago.com toward mutual success.” She continued, “We’re hopeful that this partnership will become a long-term relationship that can serve as a positive model for other associations.”

Grillo shared his enthusiasm for the partnership, stating, “As a long-time member and past president of MPI-CAC, this partnership means a lot to me personally.  As an entrepreneur, this is a real opportunity to increase exposure while supporting my professional association.”

To learn more about MPI-CAC, visit mpicac.org or call 888-721-8908. For more information on HeresChicago.com or Jim Grillo, please visit www.HeresChicago.com or call 630.916.8000 ext. 3.

About Meeting Professionals International – and MPI-Chicago Area Chapter
Meeting Professionals International (MPI) is the meeting and event industry’s largest and most vibrant global community.  MPI global membership is comprised of more than 24,000 members belonging to 70 chapters and clubs worldwide.  It serves its members by providing human connections to knowledge and ideas, relationships, and marketplaces.  As the largest chapter within the 24,000+ member global Meeting Professionals International (MPI), the 1,100 member Chicago Area Chapter has connected its community of meeting and event professionals to comprehensive support, industry knowledge and business opportunities since its inception in 1976. For more information, visit mpicac.org or call 888-721-8908.

About HeresChicago.com
Launched in 2004, HeresChicago.com is Chicago’s preferred online resource for meeting and event planners seeking Chicago solutions for their meetings, events, client outings, corporate activities, ground transportation needs and meeting and event services. President and founder Jim Grillo, CMP (certified meeting professional) is an accomplished meetings industry leader.  Grillo served as President of Meeting Professionals International – Chicago Area Chapter, President of the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association of Illinois, and as a committee member for several industry organizations. Grillo is the recipient of the 2008 Emmy Award, Alternate Media/News; 2008 Supplier Hall of Fame Award, Illinois Meetings & Events; and 2009 individual Hall of Fame Award, Meeting Professionals International – Chicago Area Chapter. He is a frequent contributor to industry conferences and publications.  For more information, call 630.916.8000 ext. 3, or visit the website at www.hereschicago.com or our blogs at www.hereschicagoblog.com, www.blog.HeresChicago.com.
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MEDIA CONTACT
Gretchen Kihm Stegall | Trifecta Marketing Resources, LLC
Gretchen@TrifectaResources.com | 847.681.0506 | c 847.922.5931

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Two Key Ways to Optimize for Local Searches

“When you perform a search at Google or Bing, the results are significantly influenced by your physical location, even on queries where you don’t specify a location,” writes Ray Comstock at Search Engine Watch. “So if you’re in New York and you search for [pizza], or [hot tubs] or [DMV], your results will be very different than if you do the same searches in San Diego.”

To help businesses increase the chances they’ll show up in local searches, Comstock offers tips like these:

Create pages dedicated to localized content. Identify information that is relevant to certain geographical areas—whether at the state, city or community level. Examples include dealer locations, shipping rates and climate-based recommendations for your product.

“By doing so,” he says, “you not only increase your propensity to show up in organic search queries in those places, but you also potentially improve your conversion rate by creating a more custom experience for … users [that] speaks specifically to their needs.”

Create link connectivity with websites relevant to each region. Pursue reciprocity with local business directories and bloggers. “If you want to make Google believe that your site is a great resource for people in New York,” he notes, “they expect to see sites that are relevant to New York linking to you.”

Avoid the appearance of spam by selecting link partners that provide your visitors with relevant, valuable content. “They should become a seamless part of the user experience of your site for the best results,” he explains.

The Po!nt: Think global, link local. When properly constructed, a local search strategy will create value for customers and search engines.

Source: Search Engine Watch.

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Here are some important things you should know about the “Alexa Ranking”.   

1. The Alexa traffic data is based on toolbars that users download onto their desktops.  Not many people have these toolbars on their desktops, do you?

2. The following sentence is directly from the Alexa website “Alexa data, which may not be a representative sample of the global Internet population is only a small population of users that have an Alexa Toolbar installed on their website.

3. Alexa's data come from a sample of Alexa Toolbar users ONLY; this is not large enough to accurately determine the rankings of sites.

4. Generally, Traffic Rankings of 100,000+ should be regarded as not reliable because the amount of data Alexa receives is not statistically significant.

So, next time any internet advertising company shows you their Alexa Ranking, let them know it is a very small few people that have participated in installing a tool bar on their desktops to count toward the Alexa Traffic Ranking.  And, it is a very small sample of the internet population to make a decision on value for your advertising dollar. 

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With the overwhelming amount of internet usage up, you should know the lingo.  The following will help you with internet marketing lingo/terms/abbreviations and definitions.  You should keep this list close to your side as a reference guide when discussing anything to do with the internet or internet marketing.

Internet Marketing Acronyms / Abbreviations / Initialisms

AJ – Ask Jeeves

AOL – America Online

ASP – Application Service Provider

AV – AltaVista

B2B – Business to Business

B2C – Business to Consumer

CPA – Cost Per Action

CPC – Cost Per Click

CPS – Cost Per Sale

CTR – Click-Through Rate

DH – Direct Hit

FFA – Free-For-All Link List

HB – HotBot

IM – Instant Messaging

INK – Inktomi

LS – LookSmart

MSN – Microsoft Network

NL – Northert Light

NSI – Network Solutions

PFI – Pay For Inclusion

PFP – Pay For Performance

PPC – Pay Per Click

PPCSE – Pay Per Click Search Engine

PPL – Pay Per Lead

PPS – Pay Per Sale

PV – Page View

RON – Run Of Network

ROS – Run Of Site

SEO – Search Engine Optimization

SEP – Search Engine Positioning

UV – Unique Visitor

WWW

– World Wide Web

Y! – Yahoo!

Internet Marketing Definitions

Click through – the process of clicking through an online advertisement to the advertiser's destination.

Click through rate (CTR) – The average number of click-throughs per hundred ad impressions, expressed as a percentage.

Conversion Rate – the percentage of visitors who take a desired action.

Cost Per Action (CPR) – online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely on qualifying actions such as sales or registrations.

Cost Per Click (CPC) – the cost or cost-equivalent paid per click-through.

CPM – cost per thousand impressions.

Customer Acquisition Cost – the cost associated with acquiring a new customer.

Hit- request of a file from a Web server.

Hybrid Model – a combination of two or more online marketing payment models.

Impression- a single instance of an online advertisement being displayed.*

Page View – request to load a single HTML page.

PayPer Click (PPC) – online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely on qualifying click-throughs.

Pay Per Lead (PPL)- online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely based on qualifying leads.

Pay Per Sale (PPS) – online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely based on qualifying sales.

Site Stickiness – the amount of time spent at a site over a given time period.

Unique Visitors- individuals who have visited a Web site (or network) at least once in a fixed time frame, typically a 30 day period.

Web Site Traffic – the amount of visitors and visits a Web site receives.

Advertising Specifications Definitions

Banner Ad – a graphical web advertising unit, typically measuring 468 pixels wide and 60 pixels tall (i.e. 468×60).

Beyond the Banner- online advertising not involving standard GIF and JPEG banner ads.

Button Ad – a graphical advertising unit, smaller than a banner ad.

 HTML Banner – a banner ad using HTML elements, often including interactive forms, instead of (or in addition to) standard graphical elements.

Interstitial – an advertisement that loads between two content pages.

Pop-Up Ad – an ad that displays in a new browser window.

Pop-Under Ad – an ad that displays in a new browser window behind the current browser window.

Rectangle Ad- any one of the large, rectangular banner sizes suggested by the IAB.

Rich Media – new media that offers an enhanced experience relative to older, mainstream formats.

Skyscraper Ad – an online ad significantly taller than the 120×240 vertical banner.

Text Ad – advertisement using text-based hyperlinks.

Surround Session – advertising sequence in which a visitor receives ads from one advertiser throughout an entire site visit.

Vertical Banner- a banner ad measuring 120 pixels wide and 240 pixels tall.

Content and Community Definitions

Blog – A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links.

Forum – an online community where visitors may read and post topics of common interest.

Moderator – at a forum, someone entrusted by the administrator to help discussions stay productive and within the guidelines.

Netiquette – short for network etiquette, the code of conduct regarding acceptable online behavior.

Email Marketing Definitions

Email – the transmission of computer-based messages over telecommunication technology.

Email Marketing – the promotion of products or services via email.

Ezine – an electronic magazine, whether delivered via a Web site or an email newsletter.

Ezine Directory – directory of electronic magazines, typically of the email variety.

HTML email – email that is formatted using Hypertext Markup Language, as opposed to plain text email.

Opt-in Email – email that is explicitly requested by the recipient.

Pass-Along Rate – the percentage of people who pass on a message or file.

Permission Marketing – marketing centered around obtaining customer consent to receive information from a company.

Sig File – a short block of text at the end of a message identifying the sender and providing additional information about them.

Viral Marketing – marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message.

Linking Strategy Definitions

Link Checker – tool used to check for broken hyperlinks.

Deep Linking – linking to a web page other than a site's home page.

Inbound link – a link from a site outside of your site.

Outbound link – a link to a site outside of your site.

Reciprocal links – links between two sites, often based on an agreement by the site owners to exchange links.

Search Engine Marketing Definitions

Description Tag – an HTML tag used by Web page authors to provide a description for search engine listings.

Doorway Domain – a domain used specifically to rank well in search engines for particular keywords, serving as an entry point through which visitors pass to the main domain.

Doorway Page – a page made specifically to rank well in search engines for particular keywords, serving as an entry point through which visitors pass to the main content.

Invisible Web – the portion of the Web not accessible through Web search engines.

Keyword – a word used in a performing a search.

Keyword Density – keywords as a percentage of indexable text words.

Keyword Rresearch – the search for keywords related to your Web site, and the analysis of which ones yield the highest return on investment (ROI).

Keywords Tag – META tag used to help define the primary keywords of a Web page.

Link Popularity – a measure of the quantity and quality of sites that link to your site.

Link Text – the text contained in (and sometimes near) a hyperlink.

Log File – file that records the activity on a Web server.

Manual Submission – adding a URL to the search engines individually by hand.

Meta Tag Generator – tool that will output META tags based on input page information.

Meta Tags – tags to describe various aspects about a Web page.

Pay Per Click Search Engine – search engine where results are ranked according to the bid amount, and advertisers are charged when a searcher clicks on the search listing.

Search Engine Optimization – the process of choosing targeted keyword phrases related to a site, and ensuring that the site places well when those keyword phrases are part of a Web search.

Search Engine Submission – the act of supplying a URL to a search engine in an attempt to make a search engine aware of a site or page.

Search Spy – a perpetually refreshing page that provides a real-time view of actual Web searches.

Title Tag – HTML tag used to define the text in the top line of a Web browser, also used by many search engines as the title of search listings.

Top 10 – the top ten search engine results for a particular search term.

URL – location of a resource on the Internet.

Volunteer Directory – a Web directory staffed primarily by unpaid volunteer editors.

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