aimClear

Dear Google Fiber, Why We Covet Duluth-Part 1Google is planning to test ultra-high speed broadband networks and is considering Duluth as a trial location, among others across the country. Google Fiber, so you’re considering a move to Duluth…? Join the club. In 1982 I first came to visit. Then after a decade-long love affair with the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) to [...]
» 6 Mar 2010, 3:39 pm

Don’t Slap Rainbows: Diversity Marketing RealnessDear Marketer-folk: You’re missing serious demographic opportunities. The dual income gay & lesbian household, the force-of–nature purchasing power of latino consumers, teens, tweens & African Americans. You’ve probably read the NYT articles or some Adage infographics on these demographics, but if  these recent advertising efforts are any indication, the boat = still missed. Paid Search Bullseye [...]
» 4 Mar 2010, 8:46 pm

Event Hashtag Etiquette: Overheard @ #SMXWest<FACEPALM> In the past we’ve attended major industry conference-shindigs as one big live-blogging family. But dude, the aimClear team is expanding. Our 2010 conference agenda and travels to and fro might damn near pull us apart at the seams if we all went. In this quarter alone some of us will be returning from SXSW while others [...]
» 4 Mar 2010, 2:56 pm

Way Up Google’s Research Snoot with Peter NorvigPeter Norvig, you might have heard of him, or felt his presence on stormy mountain tops. Among several other accomplishments, he is the creator of Norvig’s Law, the world record holder for the longest palindrome, former head of computational sciences research at NASA,  ballet dancer, current director of research at Google, & a human being. SMX [...]
» 3 Mar 2010, 7:51 pm

Trends, ZombieBait &amp; Sideways Keyword ResearchSome people think keyword research consists of going to the Google Keyword tool, typing in four of their industry phrases & then just grabbing the keywords with the highest volume. But some people are ultra DumbPants month-punchers & need additional research guidance in order to find the highly targeted keyword permutations, relevant stemming topics & [...]
» 3 Mar 2010, 1:08 pm

Adwords Grows Up! Formats, Sitelinks &amp; UniversalThere’s an old adage – If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, unless you are carefully able to fix it in ways that helps all parties who use it & also it will make you more money, then you should think about trying to fix it, so good luck with this. Google essentially took this [...]
» 3 Mar 2010, 8:06 am

Steve Ballmer Unplugged: SMX West 2010 KeynoteWhen it was first announced that Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer would be keynoting this year’s SMX West, it was perceived as a nice surprise and unexpected legitimization of the search marketing industry from one of the big guys.  The announcement left many marketers existentially pondering their role in the somewhat dysfunctional search family. Did Ballmer, Microsoft, & Bing finally [...]
» 2 Mar 2010, 1:46 pm

Mining Subtle Query Intent For PPC ConversionThere has been much written surrounding classic query types. In review, conventional wisdom dictates that there are basically three kinds: Informational - suggests the searcher is on the broad quest for knowledge about a topic of interest (medical symptoms, film trivia, tips on housebreaking puppies, etc.). Navigational - indicates the searcher is on the hunt for a specific website, usually [...]
» 2 Mar 2010, 11:37 am

Why Steve Ballmer’s SMX Keynote Is So ImportantIt’s remarkable really. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will take the stage for a “Fireside Chat” with Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of SearchEngineLand.com and conference co-chair, to kick off SMX West on March 2, 2010 in Santa Clara.  In his inaugural address speaking directly to the inner-search marketing community, Mr. Ballmer will discuss Microsoft’s evolution in search [...]
» 25 Feb 2010, 6:28 pm

6 Superb First Social Media Tactics For BusinessesThough social media participation has exploded, we meet businesses nearly every day  that have barely, clumsily or not dipped their toes in the in the water.  They ask, “Should we have a Facebook page,“ “What about YouTube” or “Gee, should we be tweeting?” These entrepreneurs are usually full of life, energy, present a history of offline [...]
» 16 Feb 2010, 7:44 am

Ask the SEO Guru

The Single Best Kept Secret to Success With SEO – Have Something Worth Selling> Guruisms for the week of 15-03-09 I don’t mind telling you where I think the gold is but you gotta do your own digging! G We’ve all heard that when there is a gold rush on the real money is in selling shovels. I bet the guys selling maps didn’t do too bad either. G 'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt. Attributed to Abraham Lincoln. Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig. My Grandma Why Would I Stop Buying From Who I Used to Buy From and Start Buying From You? The single biggest thing about my lack of a life as an SEO that has always amazed me is when I ask a prospective client to tell me why I would want to
» 16 Mar 2009, 1:29 am

H.E. Mr. Kenneth Thompson, Irish Ambassador to IndiaWhat a St. Patty's day party this year turned out to be. I was lucky enough to get invited to a party at the Trident hotel in Mumbai hosted by the Irish embassy in India by my good friend David Lawrence. The ambassador was gracious enough to grant me one of the most memorable photo opps of my life. Thank you Mr. Thompson!! http://www.irelandinindia.com/home/index.aspx?id=52432 Looks like he's really happy to meet the ole guru huh? Getting my picture taken with a foreign dignitary AND free liquor. What a country! Peach Y'all G Techndu free web hosting. It doesn't get better than free.
» 16 Mar 2009, 1:02 am

Why Am I Not Converting or Why We All Think a 2% Conversion Rate is Pretty GoodGuruisms for the week of 02-03-09 > The extrovert in me loves online marketing because there are as many things to sell and ways to sell them as there are the sum total of human experience. The introvert part of me loves online marketing because there is no failure. There is only missing projections and not hitting your numbers. The only way to fail is to quit and that is not failing, that is quitting. G                                                                                Why Am I Not Converting? Well, the short answer is --- you are thinking about you and not about them. Or even worse, you’re not thinking at all. Do
» 4 Mar 2009, 4:03 am

How to Beat the 3 Second Back Button Boogie> Guruisms for the week of 23-02-09 Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. Aldous Huxley  07/26/1894 - 11/22/1963 English critic & novelist.  Author of Brave New World, one of my favorites. Sometimes we get so enthralled with the hype and hope of technology, we forget the present reality that technology has no value if it does not serve mankind for the better. It’s all about the sale and NOT the software.. Search Engines don’t buy shit!  But humans do.    Sex Sells --- to people looking to buy sex. The same principle applies to refrigerators. The Anti-seo SEO Guru  cynic and  unemployed politician    The True Cost of SEO While th
» 25 Feb 2009, 3:15 am

Search Engines Don’t Take People Where the Search Engine Wants Them To Go  We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible. Vince Lombardi      I was more impressed with the technology of search back in 1996 than I am today. When I first started playing around with Infoseek, Excite, Alta Vista, Hot Bot, Webcrawler,(well, Ok. Webcrawler and Open Text --- not so much), and the other now rotting carcasses of failed search based ad delivery systems, I was blown away. Millions of pieces of data organized in a somewhat logical framework. Pages were often indexed within minutes. Scalability seemed endless as each day they all grew by hundreds of thousands of documents. You could cross reference. You could research. You could locate data that could fill the
» 15 Feb 2009, 11:19 pm

Behavioral Metrics Analysis For the Worried SEOThis may seem simple, but you need to give customers what they want, not what you think they want. And, if you do this, people will keep coming back. John Ilhan       No wonder so many who call themselves SEO’s are worried about their future what with all the talk this past few months of personalized results, bounce rates and changing search parameters. There is no question the organic search results landscape is changing and behavioral metrics analysis is playing some part in that change. But, as online marketers, what does that really mean and what can we do about it? Understanding a concept such as behavioral metrics analysis isn’t too tough. Tracking and analyzing which people do what, when and how often to try
» 2 Feb 2009, 7:57 pm

The Good That Bad Customers Do> A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so. Mahatma Gandhi   I don’t believe the customer is always right. I believe as humans, we are all capable of being wrong at any time about anything. In an environment as ambiguous as the misnomer many refer to as SEO, the potential for mistakes is virtually boundless. BUT, I do believe you can win the battle and lose the war. You can convince a customer that you are right and he is wrong but
» 31 Jan 2009, 9:55 pm

How Small a Part SEO Plays In Getting a New Site to Dominate SERPs> I’d say one of the biggest problems SEOs struggle with is that it is all about rankings and traffic, rather than conversions. It’s easy to keep focusing on trying to work the extremes to bring in more visitors when the time might be better spent on ensuring you’re doing better to convert your existing visitors. Danny Sullivan  Internet Consulting firm Calafia An excerpt from http://sharkseo.com/whitehat/whats-the-biggest-seo-myth/   I can understand the world paying little attention  to my soapbox preaching about the need for conversions as the ONLY metric of value, BUT when someone in the search marketing industry of Danny Sullivan’s caliber says it, maybe it’s time the world realized the winds of change are blow
» 21 Jan 2009, 3:51 am

Even Internet Marketers Can Understand Latent Semantic Indexing>                                                                      If you think Education is expensive – you should try ignorance   As I promised a couple of weeks ago, I’m going to attempt pull back the shroud of mystery that is so often associated with highly complex mathematical concepts to a point that even marketers and Canadians can understand them. I learned long ago that sometimes simple concepts the human mind can conceive, turn into a VERY complicated programs when turning that concept into an actual working algorithm. If you are not a scientist involved with Information Retrieval, (IR), then reading the patents and white papers can leave you f
» 17 Jan 2009, 10:42 pm

The Anti-SEO SEO Guru Asks -- Can You Define SEO?                                                        Find the courage to embrace change and fear mediocrity Definitions of misnomer on the Web: an incorrect or unsuitable name wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn A misnomer is a term which suggests an interpretation that is known to be untrue. Such incorrect terms sometimes derived their names because of the form, action, or origin of the subject—becoming named popularly or widely referenced—long before their true natures were known. ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misnomer A use of a term asserted to be misleading; A term asserted to be widely used incorrectly; A term whose sense in common usage conflicts with a
» 7 Jan 2009, 1:19 am

Ask the Anti-SEO SEO Guru> Guru  -- India A teacher or a wise man. www.britishempire.co.uk/glossary/g.htm A guru is a person who is regarded as having great knowledge, wisdom and authority in a given area, and uses it to guide others. ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru   As the term “Guru” relates to teaching, in that context then I must be a guru. I have certainly done my share of teaching,(training is probably a more accurate term), over my last 12 years in the online promotion business. As it relates to wisdom ----- ahhhh, not so much.   My New Year’s Resolution for ‘09 To stop arguing over the use of SEO, the world’s most egregious misnomer, but to try even harder to de-mystify the process the term universally applies to for the peo
» 2 Jan 2009, 5:04 am

Bruce Clay

Attention Students &amp; Parents! Search Contests &amp; Programs that Pay OffIn the Internet marketing industry, we’re all constantly pushing ourselves to learn more and grow what we know. It’s not unlike what you want for your own children — education and opportunities that build a foundation for future success. Turns out the search community is interested in sharing just such opportunities with students, a.k.a. the future of the world. Right now Google, Bing and the White House are all running contests and programs for children and young adults that promote learning and education in fun and creative ways. If you think your child might be interested in taking pictures, developing software or code, or hearing the President deliver the high school commencement address, check out the following opportunities.
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3 Takeaways from SMX West 2010SMX West was a rollercoaster of highs, lows, twists and turns. The highs of adrenaline-fueled excitement, the lows of getting the lowdown from the search reps, and the twists and turns of going with the flow during such an activity-filled week. I was on that ripping ride of a rollercoaster for three days, and while it was a blast and a half, I’m glad to be back on the ground where I can process everything that just happened. While reviewing my liveblog coverage of SMX West I was struck by three major points worth highlighting. Read more of 3 Takeaways from SMX West 2010.3 Takeaways from SMX West 2010 was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO tools provider.
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Social Media, Search &amp; Reputation ManagementModerator: Vanessa Fox, Contributing Editor, Search Engine Land Speakers: Tarla Cummings, SEO/Social Media Manager, Location3 Media Rhea Drysdale, COO, Outspoken Media Conrad Saam, Marketing, Avvo Matt Tuens, CEO, AcuVox, Inc. Last session of the conference. Rhea takes the podium first. Read more from Social Media, Search & Reputation ManagementSocial Media, Search & Reputation Management was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO tools provider.
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Analytics Action Plans For PPC &amp; SEOModerator: Christine Churchill, President, KeyRelevance.com Speakers: Rich Devine, Director of Search, ZAAZ Dennis Hart, Vice President, SE Jones, LLC Ryan Lash, Vice President, Search, ymarketing Ian Lurie, CEO, Portent Interactive My last lunch of SMX West hit the spot. This session is sure to do the same. Dennis is up first. Read more from Analytics Action Plans For PPC & SEOAnalytics Action Plans For PPC & SEO was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO tools provider.
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Measuring How Search Ads Drive Offline ConversionsThe room is pretty sparse because Ask the Search Engines is happening in the large hall. I know there's great coverage of that happening so I decided to give readers an alternative with the Analytics & Conversion Track. Moderator: Misty Locke, President, Range Online Media & Chief Strategy Officer, iProspect, Range Online Media / iProspect Speakers: Nadir Hussain, COO, Media Flint, Inc. Leigh McMillan, SVP, Marchex Voicestar, Marchex Wister Walcott, co-founder and VP of Products, Marin Software Vivian Yang, Senior Manager, Global Direct to Consumer Marketing, Electronic Arts, Inc. Read more from Measuring How Search Ads Drive Offline ConversionsMeasuring How Search Ads Drive Offline Conversions was originally published on Bru
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Microsoft + Yahoo: What’s It All Mean?Moderator: Jeffrey K. Rohrs, Vice President, Marketing, ExactTarget Speakers: Sean Carlos, CEO, Antezeta Web Marketing Justin Merickel, VP, Marketing and New Product Development, Efficient Frontier Read more from Microsoft + Yahoo: What’s It All Mean?Microsoft + Yahoo: What’s It All Mean? was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO tools provider.
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Keynote – The State Of The Search UnionHi everyone! It's the final day of the SMX West conference and I'm leaving it all here. Blog 'til you drop, baby! There's a good-sized crowd for today's keynote, a roundtable convo between some heavy hitters of search. Chris welcomes everyone. When they've done panels like this in the past, he's usually saying Google, Google, Google. But in the past year we've seen more radical change than he's observed in the last 15 years since he's covered the search engines. It's really exciting, and that's why they've assembled this stellar panel. Read more from Keynote – The State Of The Search UnionKeynote – The State Of The Search Union was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO tools provider.
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SMX West 2010 Liveblog CoverageRead all of Bruce Clay's Liveblogging Coverage of SMX West 2010 here. Session names will take you to the coverage. Session descriptions link you to the SMX conference site. Enjoy! SMX West Liveblog CoverageSMX West 2010 Liveblog Coverage was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO tools provider.
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The Need For Speed: Google Says It MattersModerator: Vanessa Fox, Contributing Editor, Search Engine Land Speakers: Patrick Bennett, Co-Founder, BLVD Status Maile Ohye, Senior Developer Programs Engineer, Google Inc. Ralf Schwoebel, CEO, Tradebit, Inc. Brian Ussery, Director of SEO Technology, Search Discovery Inc. Keep reading The Need For Speed: Google Says It MattersThe Need For Speed: Google Says It Matters was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO tools provider.
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Facebook Ad Tactics For Search MarketersModerator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land Speakers: Brian Boland, Manager, Direct Response Solutions, Facebook Addie Conner, Director of Search Marketing, Course Advisor Inc. Michael Kahn, SVP, Marketing, Performics Will Scott, President, Search Influence Facebook's Brian is starting the session. He's going to give an overview of how Facebook ads work. About half the audience is using Facebook ads now. Read more from Facebook Ad Tactics For Search MarketersFacebook Ad Tactics For Search Marketers was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO tools provider.
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Dave Naylor

SEO Rank ProA while ago there was a severe lack of SEO based tools for any Android based mobile phones. Since I use a HTC Hero it was a manual job for checking keywords if I only had my mobile to hand. I’ve had a quick look on the Android market today and there are about four tools [...]SEO Rank Pro is a post from: Dave Naylor's SEO Blog.Related posts:AdsenseT-Mobile dumps Google for YahooSEO Rank No1 in Google
» 9 Mar 2010, 8:52 am

SEO Pricing and how we workI have wanted for quite some time to write this post but just never got around to it so here we go. Side note before we start I don’t handle the pricing in my company (Becky does), in fact I don’t really know how much a client pays, I don’t need to. I do this [...]SEO Pricing and how we work is a post from: Dave Naylor's SEO Blog.Related posts:seomoz – seo pricingJeremy Luebke isn’t Stalking meWhat happens when 3.1 million TV viewers see your url
» 9 Mar 2010, 3:54 am

Why is mi.o2.ie Duplicating Our Content?Like most things that happen here in the Bronco office, it all started with a SERP: What’s going on there then? A quick investigation of mi.o2.ie shows some badly formatted HTML and an error message about O2’s mobile internet service. Predictably, the domain is listed as belonging to O2 Ireland. So why have they got a [...]Why is mi.o2.ie Duplicating Our Content? is a post from: Dave Naylor's SEO Blog.Related posts:A quick and dirty proxy that (nearly) anyone can doLink Building FearsSee a webpage like a SEO
» 8 Mar 2010, 8:49 am

My Sky News ExperienceWow .. No WOW what a day in my life! I don’t tend to get nervous these days as I have spoken at so many conferences now it’s almost like going to the pub, you know that some place comfortable but you don’t quite know who you’re going to meet or how the nights going [...]My Sky News Experience is a post from: Dave Naylor's SEO Blog.Related posts:Google News gets image upgradeGoogle News Targets ChattersLiz Taylor Murdered
» 5 Mar 2010, 4:48 pm

Speaking at Search Engine Strategies – SES New YorkIn a couple of weeks I will be heading out to New York with Becky to attend and speak at SES New York. New York is one of my favourite SES conferences to attend and this year promised to be another great show. The Search Engine Strategies conference runs from Tuesday 23rd March to Thursday 25th [...]Speaking at Search Engine Strategies – SES New York is a post from: Dave Naylor's SEO Blog.Related posts:SES New York 27th Feb – 2nd MarchSearch Engine Strategies – LondonSpeaking at Budapest Affiliate Conference (BAC)
» 5 Mar 2010, 7:41 am

Bing: Left hand, Right hand get your shit togetherYes you heard right: it’s an anti Bing Title. This stuff annoys the hell out of me… Bing are at one of the trickiest stages when it comes to building a brand. There is awareness about the brand and people are trying it out, but there’s no massive emotional attachment to it like there is to [...]Bing: Left hand, Right hand get your shit together is a post from: Dave Naylor's SEO Blog.Related posts:Google Still Cant Deal with Meta Refresh (or they are shit?)Leeds sacks McAllisterBing with Bling
» 4 Mar 2010, 3:43 am

Google vs The World – well just the EU at the momentBecause you are the best doesn’t mean that you deserve top rankings in the best search engine in the world, and this is similar to any industry. Take the BetaMax video recorder back in the 80’s, they died off as it was VHS that did the deals and won out, even though BetaMax had the [...]Google vs The World – well just the EU at the moment is a post from: Dave Naylor's SEO Blog.Related posts:Google to Kill World Time market ?“comparison sites” the new espotting ?Google World Search Powers Ahead
» 3 Mar 2010, 1:56 pm

Why We Switched to Partial FeedsJust before Christmas Carps did an excellent post on the Content Pyramid, it went viral and picked up loads of traffic and views:Which is great, until you check out the number of views and the number of clicks:So through our Google Reader subscribers it got 46,705 views, but only 260 clicked through to our website.  [...]Why We Switched to Partial Feeds is a post from: Dave Naylor's SEO Blog.Related posts:Full Feeds Petition,. I’m with DannyYahoo Mail and RSS feedsNew click quality reports in adCenter
» 26 Feb 2010, 8:01 am

John Battelle - Searchblog

Weds. Signal: Get Me a Mobile Strategy or You're Fired!(Cross Posted to the FM Blog, where Signal will have a permanent home soon) Mobile. It's on everyone's lips, but no one knows what the hell to do about it. At least, that's what I hear from every single marketer I talk to, and I've made it a point to...
» 9 Mar 2010, 5:51 pm

Quick Hit: Mobile Report From WeiselJust got this report in my mail and wanted to share it. Seems worth a read: Inte030810-231050.pdf...
» 9 Mar 2010, 5:33 pm

Tuesday Signal: The Internet Is A Human Right (And Spending Is Up. Yippee!)Well, it's Monday night, but I'm in NYC, and I am pretty sure Tuesday is going to be a blur. So here are the links I read on the plane out here (love that Wifi). Expect news from me soon on the themes and lineup for FM's annual CM Summit...
» 8 Mar 2010, 6:05 pm

Database of Intentions Chart - Version 2, Updated for CommerceThere are many, many signals in the Database of Intentions, as my readers have pointed out, but the one I feel compelled to add to the chart I created Friday is the Commerce signal. This signal emerged before search, really, and has remained a constant, though honestly it has yet...
» 7 Mar 2010, 10:05 pm

Monday Signal: Block Those Ads!Monday's Signal round up is light. The news was a bit boring over the weekend, and I'm OK with that. We all watched the Oscars and enjoyed the suspense of disbelief. I tweeted that it feels like, as a culture, we're closing in on One Big Mass Media Event each...
» 7 Mar 2010, 9:32 pm

The Database of Intentions Is Far Larger Than I ThoughtWay back in November of 2003, when I was a much younger man and the world had yet to fall head over heels in love with Google, I wrote a post called The Database of Intentions. It was an attempt to explain a one-off reference in an earlier post -...
» 5 Mar 2010, 11:22 am

Friday Signal: Google Google Google!(image) Today I'm not going to write a piece and then append links. You've been giving me a lot of feedback, and you miss my in depth stuff. Honestly, I'm doing a lot more of it - both recently and in the intentional near future. Much of it has been...
» 4 Mar 2010, 9:04 pm

Thursday Signal: Google's AdSense Cookie - The Untold StoryToday in Signal we take a walk down memory lane, of sorts, because sometimes such a journey helps us prepare for what lies in the path ahead.   Early last week I ran into Susan Wojcicki, VP of Product Management for Google. Now, Susan is more than just another Google VP,...
» 4 Mar 2010, 10:21 am

3.3.10 - Weds. SignalToday will be light, I'm preparing for a talk at the Omniture Summit. Outside my window are majestic peaks capped in snow, it's hard to be here and not even have time to go outside, much less hit the slopes. But time is precious, so let's get to the news...
» 3 Mar 2010, 10:19 am

3.02.10 Tuesday SignalOff to Salt Lake later today for the Omniture Summit. I've been spending a fair amount of time studying marketing platforms of one kind or another, and will be spending a lot more time on it in the future. I've got a few theories as to where they're headed, and...
» 2 Mar 2010, 8:36 am

3.1.10 - The SignalConsider this the *early* Monday Signal, as I'm already deep in writing this morning, then off to staff meetings the rest of the day. So these are notes from my weekend readings, for the most part. Besides a rant on the iPad that I wrote in something of a hurry...
» 1 Mar 2010, 6:59 am

Joost de Valk - SEO Blog

WordPress Podcast: BuddyPress Social NetworkingThis weeks guest was Andy Peatling of the BuddyPress.org Project. BuddyPress is a social networking plugin for WordPress which ads many of the features found on sites like Facebook to WordPress blogs in as few as 10 minutes. We discussed how BuddyPress came about, some of the ways its used, some tips on getting started, customizing it and most importantly the features it provides.
» 9 Mar 2010, 4:12 pm

Yoast: WordCamp Ireland: having a blast!So I'm in Kilkenny, Ireland for WordCamp Ireland, and I'm having a complete blast, thanks in large part to the great organization done by Sabrina Dent and Katherine Nolan. The tech track is absolutely blowing my mind: it's really techy! The people here are great: I met a lot of awesome people, basically to be separated [...]WordCamp Ireland: having a blast! is a post from Joost de Valk's Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!
» 7 Mar 2010, 3:54 am

WordPress Podcast: GPL-ishThis week Joost is joined by Jeff Chandler of the WordPress Tavern and Grant Griffiths of the Headway theme. They discussed all of the implications of themes and plugins being GPL or not, and why people would and in Joost's opinion should choose to be GPL. Also some discussion came up about how theme and plugin authors should be credited.
» 2 Mar 2010, 4:19 pm

Yoast: The Yoast.com Reader Survey: help us improve!We blog about optimizing your website all the time here at Yoast, and we usually give you tips and tricks you can implement straight away on how to do that. Now it's time that we improve what we do, here at Yoast.com. So it's time for a short survey, I'd be very grateful if you [...]The Yoast.com Reader Survey: help us improve! is a post from Joost de Valk's Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!
» 2 Mar 2010, 3:12 pm

Yoast: Optimizing for Rich &quot;Jump To&quot; SnippetsBack in September last year Google announced a new form of rich snippets: those with jump to links in them. They themselves used the example for this trans fat search result:Now I hadn't paid too much attention to this new feature until we started testing a new search traffic monitoring tool we've built at OrangeValley, [...]Optimizing for Rich "Jump To" Snippets is a post from Joost de Valk's Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!
» 1 Mar 2010, 6:00 am

Yoast: Implementing hreview in your WordPress themeIn his previous post here on Yoast, Frederick explained why you should use Microformats to increase the CTR from Google. In the comments of that post, people were asking if there are plugins to easily implement this in your theme. While those are probably a bit hard to do, I though it would be good [...]Implementing hreview in your WordPress theme is a post from Joost de Valk's Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!
» 28 Feb 2010, 6:00 am

WordPress Podcast: Fireside Chat with Dougal Campbell, An Early WordPress DeveloperJoost and Frederick talk to Dougal Campbell, one of the original WordPress developers. They discuss various topics: from differences between WordPress and Drupal, and how they handle automatic testing and custom data types (for which WordPress has the upcoming custom post types and the pods plugin), to donations (or lack thereof) for plugins. They go in-depth about microformats and RDFa and how you could use the custom field functionality in WordPress (which Dougal wrote) to make use of those. Last but not least, WordPress 3 comes around the corner a couple of times, discussing all the cool new features in it (like author specific templates and background support) and what should and should not be in core, like multi site and multi domain s
» 23 Feb 2010, 3:29 pm

Yoast: Google &amp; Microformats: Drive More TrafficConversion rate optimization is now more of an exact science thanks to Google's adoption of microformats. Maximize the effectiveness of your snippets on search engine result pages.Google & Microformats: Drive More Traffic is a post from Joost de Valk's Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!
» 18 Feb 2010, 8:28 am

Yoast: Backing up your WordPress blog with easeI love the fact how the WordPress community is growing, and how people are starting to see the business models they can roll out around the product. And yes, all of this while still maintaining the GPL. We've of course seen Gravity Forms, which for me has replaced entirely my own WordPress contact form and [...]Backing up your WordPress blog with ease is a post from Joost de Valk's Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!
» 17 Feb 2010, 12:46 pm

WordPress Podcast: Web Analytics with Dennis MortensenFrederick and Joost talk to Dennis Mortensen, Director of Data Insights at Yahoo! and responsible for Yahoo! Web Analytics. They discuss what YWA offers and how people can and could use all the cool new data that's becoming available in all the better web analytics solutions out there. From geeky stuff like using microformats to extend web analytics tagging (which Dennis did a post on) to how you can see gender and age demographics for your blogs visitors and how to use all that info to improve your site.
» 16 Feb 2010, 5:26 pm

Marketing Pilgrim

New MSN Homepage Goes Live…Really!Unlike last time, there’ll be no snafu about whether the time is right to reveal the new MSN Homepage–it’s now officially live for all. New features include: TrendWatch – Highlights the day’s top trends and movers on Twitter Hyper-local Tweets – Uses the power of Bing to highlight tweets from your location, available on the new Local Edition My [...]
» 9 Mar 2010, 12:25 pm

IRS to Track Online Merchants—Will You Be Affected?Flying under the radar with your affiliate income is about to get a lot harder for US tax payers. Starting next year, the IRS will be tracking all online payments made through credit, debit and electronic payment processing like PayPal. The new 1099-K form will be provided by any bank or payment settlement company operating [...]
» 9 Mar 2010, 12:05 pm

Will Facebook and Eventbrite Hook Up for Big Bucks?Facebook and Eventbrite already have a relationship—Facebook tapped the event site to sell tickets to its f8 developer conference, as confirmed by TechCrunch last week. A TechCrunch reader then noticed that facebook.eventbrite.com was up and working: So, TechCrunch speculates, might Eventbrite and Facebook be partnering to make Facebook (and Eventbrite, of course) money on the 3.5M [...]
» 9 Mar 2010, 10:19 am

Watch Out America! Here Come the European Social Media Marketers!According to a new study being published this week by Unica, European marketers trail their American cousins, when it comes to the adoption of social media marketing. While, 58% of marketers in North America are already engaged in social media marketing, only 34% of Europeans can say the same. That’s likely to change in the next 12 [...]
» 9 Mar 2010, 6:53 am

Colorado: Another State of ConfusionBeing a resident of North Carolina I have had the experience of watching the state government take away an income stream for people in a time when income streams can be little more like a trickle. It did this through imposing a tax on Amazon affiliate sales in the state and Amazon essentially said “No [...]
» 9 Mar 2010, 6:46 am

Google Testing New TV Search Service?I will let you in on my new system for posts. If the post title has a question mark there is good reason to suspect that it will fall in the realm of rumor. In this case, the source of the information, The Wall Street Journal, tends to report on things that are as “real” [...]
» 9 Mar 2010, 6:15 am

Andy Beal Brings His Reputation Management Workshop to Auckland &amp; Sydney in May!I absolutely love doing my online reputation management workshops. An entire day of me sharing just about everything I know about reputation management. Not only do I enjoy them, but the feedback has been amazing–just about everyone that attends walks away a reputation management expert! So, I’m going international and bringing my workshop to Australia and [...]
» 8 Mar 2010, 3:32 pm

Chinese Government May or May Not be Talking with GoogleGoogle’s big talk on pulling out of China appears to be in “perpetual beta,” as AllThingsD’s John Paczkowski jokes. According to his report, the Chinese government both confirms and denies that they are currently in talks with Google over Internet control/censorship. China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) Vice Minister Miao Wei of [...]
» 8 Mar 2010, 11:35 am

Did Google Ignore an Italian Takedown Notice?The verdict on the Italian YouTube court case verdict seemed pretty clear: sentencing Google execs to jail time for an invasion of privacy in a video posted (by someone else) on the UGC site was, well, “absurd,” as we said two weeks ago. But some new evidence is coming out that may just justify at least [...]
» 8 Mar 2010, 9:07 am

Bing Hopes 3-Month UK Ad Campaign Can Wipe Away 10 Years of Sucking WindI don’t remember what Microsoft’s search engine share was, when I left the UK in the summer of 2000, but I’m pretty sure it was a lot better than the current anemic 3%. According to the Guardian, Microsoft would love for Bing to recapture those glory days and is willing to spend the rest of its [...]
» 8 Mar 2010, 7:05 am

Twitter and Politics: Friends or Foes?If you can believe it, we are rapidly approaching the 1 ½ year “anniversary” of the election of Barack Obama as the President of the United States. This event was historic and monumental on many different levels and not the least of which is how candidate Obama utilized social media to get into office. Now, before [...]
» 8 Mar 2010, 6:38 am

Matt Cutts

Start an embedded YouTube video at a certain timestampIn a previous post I covered how to link to a specific timestamp in a YouTube video. The short version looks like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjDw3azfZWI#t=31m08s The “#t=31m08s” takes you to 31 minutes and 8 seconds in a video. I just found out that you can also start embedded videos at a certain timestamp. To do it on an embedded [...]
» 3 Mar 2010, 11:31 am

Calling for link spam reportsGoogle has been working on some new algorithms and tools to tackle linkspam and we’d like to ask for linkspam reports from you. If you’d like to tell us about web sites that appear to be using spammy links (e.g. paid links that pass PageRank, blog spammers, guestbook spammers, etc.), here’s how to send us [...]
» 3 Mar 2010, 11:12 am

Leaving the iPhoneI’m three weeks into a new 30 day challenge: no iPhone. When I got a Nexus One in December, I spent a few weeks carrying both phones around in the pockets of my jeans. It took a little while to adapt to Android, but I’m very happy with my Nexus One and I don’t plan [...]
» 22 Feb 2010, 9:42 am

My speaking plans for 2010Last year I tried to limit my travel but still ended up making about ten (!) trips in 2009. This year I’ve resolved to travel less for work. Right now, here’s my current speaking/travel plans for 2010: March 2-4, 2010: SMX West, Santa Clara, CA. I’m doing a “Ask the Search Engines” panel. May 19-20, 2010: Google [...]
» 17 Feb 2010, 9:25 am

Finding the best cell phone carrierOkay, someone tell me if this device exists (or build it!). I want a device where I can pay $10-15 to get a gadget in the mail. The gadget would sit in my pocket for a week wherever I go. The device would record cell phone signal strength for each of the four major U.S. [...]
» 16 Feb 2010, 7:20 am

Blog to Book?I recently went looking for some software to make a blog into a book. Here’s what I found: - Lulu will take PDF files for a book. Blogbooker.com will try to create a PDF from a blog. Unfortunately, my blog made BlogBooker choke (I have 991 posts from my blog) — even when I excluded comments. - [...]
» 15 Feb 2010, 3:23 pm

Chrome support for GreasemonkeyBack in December, I happened to click on a Greasemonkey script in Chrome and was shocked that it just worked. At the time, I wrote a note within Google that said Whoa. I just clicked on a Greasemonkey script in the latest dev version of Chrome (4.0.266.0 on Linux). Chrome offered to install the GM script, [...]
» 8 Feb 2010, 9:30 pm

Improving Arabic searches and talking more about rankingMoustafa Hammad and Mohamed Elhawary, a couple engineers in our search quality group, just did a nice post about improving Arabic language searches: Our algorithm employs rules of Arabic spelling and grammar along with signals from historical search data to decide when to leave out spaces between words or when to remove unnecessarily repeated letters. Now, [...]
» 2 Feb 2010, 12:55 pm

Installing Android development environment on Ubuntu 9.04I wanted to play with writing Android apps on my home Linux computer, which is currently running Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope). These are mostly notes for myself, so don’t feel guilty if you skip this post. - Make sure your system is up-to-date: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade - Install Java sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk - [...]
» 30 Jan 2010, 6:18 pm

Keep an eye on changing pagesGoogle just launched a nice feature on Google Reader: the ability to keep an eye on pages for changes. This works even if the page doesn’t have its own RSS feed. This sort of thing is very handy. You could use it to spot new things on a privacy policy page or watch for changes [...]
» 25 Jan 2010, 6:58 pm

Natural SEO Blog

Are you an SEO Superhero?I was tickled to see these SEO Superhero t-shirts that Covario was giving away to attendees of the SMX West conference in Santa Clara this week: Naturally, I got my t-shirt sporting the SEO Superman-esque logo! I don’t wear t-shirts a whole lot, but this is one I’ll definitely wear sometimes. It felt odd not to see [...] Related posts:Are you an SEO Superhero?Guerilla Marketing & Google MapsExciting News — Netconcepts Acquired by CovarioIncreasing The Scope Of Existing PPC Campaigns EffectivelyLinkedIn, But NoFollow Link LoveRelationship Between Link Growth And IndexationInbound Deep Links Benefit Page Rank Distribution SitewideNew Tool to Annualize Google Keyword DataHow To Breathe Life Into A Lacklustre PPC CampaignGood Practices
» 5 Mar 2010, 3:34 pm

Guerilla Marketing &amp; Google MapsMy article on “Six Odd Tactics For Getting Ads Into Google Maps” posted today on Search Engine Land, and I believe many of my regular readers should find it moderately entertaining. The piece covers how some elements of guerrilla marketing have found their way into some Google Maps advertising patents, and also how some others [...] Related posts:Are you an SEO Superhero?Guerilla Marketing & Google MapsExciting News — Netconcepts Acquired by CovarioIncreasing The Scope Of Existing PPC Campaigns EffectivelyLinkedIn, But NoFollow Link LoveRelationship Between Link Growth And IndexationInbound Deep Links Benefit Page Rank Distribution SitewideNew Tool to Annualize Google Keyword DataHow To Breathe Life Into A Lacklustre PPC CampaignGoo
» 1 Feb 2010, 2:51 pm

Exciting News — Netconcepts Acquired by CovarioHappy New Year Natural Search Geeks! As some of you know, for the past five years I’ve worked with Stephan Spencer building up the Netconcepts‘ search marketing and SEO technology business. Today it gives me great pleasure to announce a very special event: Netconcepts is merging, through acquisition, with the leading search marketing software company – [...] Related posts:Are you an SEO Superhero?Guerilla Marketing & Google MapsExciting News — Netconcepts Acquired by CovarioIncreasing The Scope Of Existing PPC Campaigns EffectivelyLinkedIn, But NoFollow Link LoveRelationship Between Link Growth And IndexationInbound Deep Links Benefit Page Rank Distribution SitewideNew Tool to Annualize Google Keyword DataHow To Breathe Life Into
» 12 Jan 2010, 11:12 am

Increasing The Scope Of Existing PPC Campaigns EffectivelyThe complexity of Google Adwords is always on the rise and it takes time, skill and effort to achieve good results with PPC campaigns in terms of finding the sweet medium of increased conversions and reduced costs. If you have an existing PPC campaign and it is performing decently, you can still increase its scope [...] Related posts:Are you an SEO Superhero?Guerilla Marketing & Google MapsExciting News — Netconcepts Acquired by CovarioIncreasing The Scope Of Existing PPC Campaigns EffectivelyLinkedIn, But NoFollow Link LoveRelationship Between Link Growth And IndexationInbound Deep Links Benefit Page Rank Distribution SitewideNew Tool to Annualize Google Keyword DataHow To Breathe Life Into A Lacklustre PPC CampaignGood Practices SEO
» 13 Dec 2009, 1:13 pm

LinkedIn, But NoFollow Link LoveWe all knew it was only a matter of time, but still secretly hoped that the honeymoon would last forever. It does appear that LinkedIn has started nofollowing public profile links…but with a strange twist. I’ve been so heads down in client audits that I didn’t discover this until, ironically, doing another audit for another client. [...] Related posts:Are you an SEO Superhero?Guerilla Marketing & Google MapsExciting News — Netconcepts Acquired by CovarioIncreasing The Scope Of Existing PPC Campaigns EffectivelyLinkedIn, But NoFollow Link LoveRelationship Between Link Growth And IndexationInbound Deep Links Benefit Page Rank Distribution SitewideNew Tool to Annualize Google Keyword DataHow To Breathe Life Into A Lacklustre PPC Camp
» 8 Dec 2009, 7:46 am

Relationship Between Link Growth And IndexationWith every passing day, the number of websites and hence the number of web pages are growing at an explosive rate on the internet. This can cause a major headache to the search engines as they gear up to meet the challenge of crawling and subsequently indexing the new sites popping up everywhere in the [...] Related posts:Are you an SEO Superhero?Guerilla Marketing & Google MapsExciting News — Netconcepts Acquired by CovarioIncreasing The Scope Of Existing PPC Campaigns EffectivelyLinkedIn, But NoFollow Link LoveRelationship Between Link Growth And IndexationInbound Deep Links Benefit Page Rank Distribution SitewideNew Tool to Annualize Google Keyword DataHow To Breathe Life Into A Lacklustre PPC CampaignGood Practices SEO With A Tinge
» 29 Nov 2009, 2:32 pm

Inbound Deep Links Benefit Page Rank Distribution SitewideMany a time, you would have come across sites (especially the large ones) where the deeper you dig into the site hierarchy, you can see the Pagerank toolbar grayed out or having a value 0. In general, the home page is the starting point for a website and it accrues the maximum Page rank. The entire [...] Related posts:Are you an SEO Superhero?Guerilla Marketing & Google MapsExciting News — Netconcepts Acquired by CovarioIncreasing The Scope Of Existing PPC Campaigns EffectivelyLinkedIn, But NoFollow Link LoveRelationship Between Link Growth And IndexationInbound Deep Links Benefit Page Rank Distribution SitewideNew Tool to Annualize Google Keyword DataHow To Breathe Life Into A Lacklustre PPC CampaignGood Practices SEO With A Tinge Of C
» 15 Nov 2009, 1:20 pm

New Tool to Annualize Google Keyword DataDo you use Google’s AdWord Keyword Tool for your keyword research? If not, you might be missing out. Like all keyword research tools, it may not be the end all be all, and it isn’t without its own little quirks, but it is still rich keyword data whether you use it on its own or [...] Related posts:Are you an SEO Superhero?Guerilla Marketing & Google MapsExciting News — Netconcepts Acquired by CovarioIncreasing The Scope Of Existing PPC Campaigns EffectivelyLinkedIn, But NoFollow Link LoveRelationship Between Link Growth And IndexationInbound Deep Links Benefit Page Rank Distribution SitewideNew Tool to Annualize Google Keyword DataHow To Breathe Life Into A Lacklustre PPC CampaignGood Practices SEO With A Tinge Of Creativity
» 13 Nov 2009, 6:33 am

How To Breathe Life Into A Lacklustre PPC CampaignPPC or Pay Per Click campaigns are a sure fire way of attracting traffic to your website almost instantaneously without the rigors of an SEO campaign that is required to bring your site on top of the SERPs. The most important thing to be aware of when it comes to a PPC campaign is understanding [...] Related posts:Are you an SEO Superhero?Guerilla Marketing & Google MapsExciting News — Netconcepts Acquired by CovarioIncreasing The Scope Of Existing PPC Campaigns EffectivelyLinkedIn, But NoFollow Link LoveRelationship Between Link Growth And IndexationInbound Deep Links Benefit Page Rank Distribution SitewideNew Tool to Annualize Google Keyword DataHow To Breathe Life Into A Lacklustre PPC CampaignGood Practices SEO With A Tinge Of Creat
» 8 Nov 2009, 1:09 pm

Good Practices SEO With A Tinge Of CreativitySearch engine marketing is increasingly becoming popular with people from all walks of life and businesses of all hues adopting the web in a big way. The global recesssion has clearly thrust SEM into the spotlight as a great way to drive targeted traffic that is measurable and also making a huge difference to the [...] Related posts:Are you an SEO Superhero?Guerilla Marketing & Google MapsExciting News — Netconcepts Acquired by CovarioIncreasing The Scope Of Existing PPC Campaigns EffectivelyLinkedIn, But NoFollow Link LoveRelationship Between Link Growth And IndexationInbound Deep Links Benefit Page Rank Distribution SitewideNew Tool to Annualize Google Keyword DataHow To Breathe Life Into A Lacklustre PPC CampaignGood Practices SEO Wi
» 1 Nov 2009, 1:45 pm

Online Marketing Blog

Ford’s Focus on Social Media: Scott Monty InterviewWhen you think of successful consumer brands in the social media space, names like Dell, Zappos and Pepsi come to mind. Another is Ford. Last year the Ford Fiesta movement generated tremendous amount of awareness (and pre-orders) for a vehicle that wasn’t available to the public yet. (Great summary on Jeff Bullas’s blog) At [...]
» 9 Mar 2010, 8:04 am

Poll: Best Royalty Free Stock Photo Sites for BloggersAs with many bloggers, we’ve been using royalty free images for many years.  Many bloggers make use of images from Flickr and we have too but you can’t always find the right image there. I’ve even made a point to take more photos of people, places and things while traveling for later use in blog [...]
» 8 Mar 2010, 5:54 am

5 Ways to Weave LinkedIn Into Your Marketing MixFrom Facebook to Twitter to You Tube, there’s no limit to the number of social networking sites that can be leveraged to interact with customers and prospects, and build positive brand awareness. LinkedIn, however, stands apart from the crowd. The roots of popular sites like YouTube and Facebook are founded on the entertainment side of things. [...]
» 5 Mar 2010, 4:30 am

My Top iPhone Apps for Social Media MarketingIt’s a little ironic that I’m writing this post about iPhone apps using WordPress on a Motorola Droid (Devour actually), but it allows me a chance to experience how hard it is to blog, using a tiny tiny tactile keyboard and also finally get this post started. Ah, back to a full sized Logitech keyboard and [...]
» 2 Mar 2010, 4:54 pm

Customer &amp; Influencer Research in Social Media“If you don’t eat your meat you can’t have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat!” Pink Floyd, The Wall. That quote from Another Brick in the Wall reminds me of the cart horse situation with social media marketing:  If you don’t know your customers you can’t engage them. [...]
» 2 Mar 2010, 4:05 am

5 Sure Fire Tactics to Promote a Business BlogRelevant, Consistently Updated Content + Flawless Technical Functionality & User Experience = Perfect Blog Launch What’s missing from the equation above? You guessed it: blog promotion. Creating a glitch-free blog with informative content means next to nothing without attracting readers. Start promoting your blog today with these five effective tips: 1. Involve influential industry bloggers. By linking to [...]
» 26 Feb 2010, 4:00 am

OMS10 B2B Marketing Case Study: MarketoOur agency TopRank Marketing has been working with Marketo providing SEO, content and blog marketing consulting services for about 2 years. I finally had the opportunity to meet Marketing VP Jon Miller in person today prior to his presentation at Online Marketing Summit: Marketo’s Secret Sauce for Demand Generation. Marketo is one of the fastest growing software [...]
» 24 Feb 2010, 4:08 pm

How Journalists Use Search &amp; Social MediaTopRank ran a survey of journalists, reporters and editors on their use of search and social media in 2008. We found 91% use search engines like Google to do their job. 64% use social networks.  Published in Jan 2010, a George Washington University and Cision survey of journalists reports 89% use blogs and 65% use social [...]
» 24 Feb 2010, 8:22 am

15 Social Media Answers From OMS10Online Marketing Summit 2010 in San Diego is host to a smorgasboard of internet marketing topics and this afternoon I am priveledged to participate on a panel about Social Media. Panelists include: Chris Baggott, CEO, Compendium Blogware Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Online Marketing Michael Senger, CEO & Founder, StoneMass Caitlin McCabe, Founder, WhiteLabel Marketing Ben Hanna, VP Marketing, Business.com That’s a [...]
» 23 Feb 2010, 12:55 pm

Small Business Tips For Reporting Web Metrics[Last week, we shared some web analytics basics for small businesses or web site owners new to tracking website visitor data. Building on that, this post explores what you should do next to report that data.] It’s an exciting time to be a small business owner or communications professional. Why? We’ve never had [...]
» 23 Feb 2010, 4:00 am

Brandividualism: Dilemma or Opportunity?Many business owners and managers are perplexed by the social web. The effect of customer participation with social media on brands is undeniable. The effect of employee participation with social media can be a bit of a quandary.  The range of acceptance for social web activity runs the gamut from IT blocking all internet connections to [...]
» 22 Feb 2010, 6:07 am

Past High Rankings

SEO Recommendations Don't Implement Themselves!I've had the opportunity to work with a variety of businesses through the years from tiny one-person small businesses to huge international companies. While there are many similarities in working with different sized companies, there are also important differences.
» 24 Feb 2010, 9:45 am

Twitter Question of the WeekIf you had an extra 20 hours a week, what would you do with them?
» 24 Feb 2010, 12:56 pm

Stuff You Might LikeNew Affordable SEO Small-Business Package.
» 24 Feb 2010, 8:42 am

Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the WeekDo image links have the same weighting engines as text links?
» 24 Feb 2010, 8:42 am

Advisor Wrap-up 275This week I'm heading out to Arizona to do some in-house SEO training for a company there and will be visiting some more universities, but this time with my daughter Corie, who's looking into a couple of law schools there.
» 24 Feb 2010, 8:42 am

Why We Do What We Do in SEOOne thing that can help you figure out how to SEO your site is to learn the whys behind the specific techniques you always hear about. But to understand the whys, you first need to get the gist of how search engines work.
» 24 Feb 2010, 9:48 am

Twitter Question of the WeekDo you build links for the traffic or for rankings?
» 10 Feb 2010, 8:28 am

Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the WeekHave Big Companies Taken Over the Internet?
» 10 Feb 2010, 8:28 am

HRA Wrap-up 274Curious about my absence last week? I was in California recording my SEO training course!
» 10 Feb 2010, 8:28 am

SEO Copywriting TomfooleryDo you have any info on the issue of spamdexing specifically the practice of adding keywords into text unnaturally and then emphasizing just the keywords (for example, boldfacing and/or italicizing them)?
» 16 Feb 2010, 10:53 am

Performancing

Why eBay Partner Network Makes 22 Times More Money Than AdSense On My BlogUpdated on March 5, 2009: I noticed a huge discrepancy with my Google Analytics pageviews versus the impressions being reported by eBay Partner Network. I did some digging and found that eBay counts link impressions not page impressions. For example, one of my posts has 22 links to eBay. This means a pageview is [...]
» 4 Mar 2010, 10:48 am

Your Product Doesn’t Have to Contain 100% Unique ContentMany bloggers seem to find the task of creating a product daunting. I know I did. I knew creating a product could greatly increase my income, but coming up with content to fill up an ebook, video, membership program, or any other product seemed like an overwhelming project. However, after listening to this interview with Pay Flynn [...]
» 24 Feb 2010, 10:55 pm

The Best Way to Differentiate Your BlogOne of the blogging tips that I hear a lot is be different. Be unique. Stand out from the crowd. This is a great advice for typical businesses and it’s also helpful for probloggers especially with all the competitors on the internet. But how can you apply it practically to your blog? I’ve been thinking about this [...]
» 17 Feb 2010, 8:39 pm

A-List Blogs Are Not Good Examples to FollowPhoto by Kriss Szkurlatowski When I first learned about problogging, I definitely looked up to the A-List blogs. You know, the TechCrunches, the Gizmodos, the TMZs, the Daily Koses, the Mashables. These were the blogs that had made it. They were the most high profile blogs. They had the most traffic. And more traffic meant more [...]
» 10 Feb 2010, 7:40 pm

How to Find Guest Post Opportunities For Your BlogGuest posting is a great way to increase traffic, network with other bloggers, and build links. But how do you know which blogs are good guest post opportunities? In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of guest posting for various blogs so I thought I’d share what I learned from my experience. Check [...]
» 3 Feb 2010, 5:41 pm

3 Reasons Bloggers Should Read BooksReading a book seems very low tech in this current digital age. But don’t underestimate the words on a physical page. While many bloggers do their reading online, you can gain an advantage by shutting off the computer and reading a book offline. Here are three reasons to head over to your local bookstore. 1. To Improve [...]
» 27 Jan 2010, 9:11 pm

2010 Reminder: Test the Monetization of Your BlogMonetization can get lost in all the blogging activities we have to juggle. Let’s face it, there’s a lot that goes into blogging. Content, marketing, and building relationships take up a lot of our time and it can be easy to forget about monetization. But if you want to make money with your blog, you [...]
» 20 Jan 2010, 7:30 pm

How to Stop Being Boring (and Why You Probably Are)I’m boring and you’re probably boring too. I just listened to this interview with Seth Godin. He gives really good advice about how to successfully run a business. You should definitely listen to the whole thing if you want to make more money with your blog. One of the things Seth said that struck me is found [...]
» 13 Jan 2010, 3:41 pm

4 Reasons Why I’m Loving iStockphoto.comIn last 30 days, I’ve been using the images from the stock photography site iStockphoto and it’s been a great experience. It all started with a client who need content for a new site. I created a bunch of text pages for them, but then they said they wanted images on each of the pages. I [...]
» 6 Jan 2010, 4:40 pm

Why I’m Striving to Increase My Referral Traffic in 2010I have a problem. I’m addicted to search engine traffic. You probably wouldn’t be too surprised since my day job is an SEO specialist. I’m just doing what I’m skilled at for generating traffic. However, in 2010, I want to focus more on generating referral traffic, or traffic that comes from sites other than search [...]
» 30 Dec 2009, 9:22 pm

Scatterings

We've Been Acquired!I'm very pleased to announce that the company that I founded way back in 1995, Netconcepts, has been acquired by Covario Inc., the leader in search advertising software and services. It's exciting to think about what the future holds with the merged company. Netconcepts' GravityStream technology combined with Covario's Organic Search Insight promises an end-to-end SEO solution like never before seen. Together we'll enable the SEO practitioner to scale SEO across large dynamic websites by automating aspects of keyword research, on-page analysis, link building, web content management, and more. Our mantra at Netconcepts has for a long time been "data-driven decision-making". Turns out that's been Covario's mantra too! Another bonus... wi
» 12 Jan 2010, 9:08 pm

The Convergence of Nanotech, Biotech, Infotech, Cognitive ScienceOnce in a while, I attend a conference that I am not speaking at. It’s a rare occasion, but it is a welcomed one when it happens because I don’t have to be "on" in my presentation mode. I can just sit back, relax and take in the sessions, network and go to the parties-- just be myself. One such conference I got to enjoy like this was Convergence. It's hard to believe it was over year ago now (wow time flies). This conference had nothing to do with search engine marketing, ecommerce or online marketing. It was named Convergence because it was a conference about the converging of technologies -- namely nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive technology. You know... doubling the human life span, autonomo
» 6 Jan 2010, 8:22 pm

Got Time?As you dream up your New Year's Resolutions for 2010, take a moment to think about where you spend your time. You define your life by where you decide to spend your time. Here are some stats that you may find interesting: 80% of employees do not want to go to work on Monday morning. By Friday, the rate only drops to 60%. The average person uses 13 different methods to control and manage their time. The average person gets 1 interruption every 8 minutes, or approximately 7 an hour, or 50-60 per day. On an average day, there are 17 million meetings in America. The average worker sends and receives 190 messages per day. Over one billion people around the world survive on less than $1 per day. One species becomes extinct every 15 minutes
» 1 Jan 2010, 7:10 pm

VIDEO: Teen AdSense EntrepreneurYes, teenagers can make passive income from Internet marketing. Here's living proof: Isn't she amazing?!? Yes I'm a little biased, since she is my offspring. But still, you have to admit it's impressive when a kid can start an online business and make it onto the speaking circuit by the age of 16, and have such composure in front of the camera. I remember when I was a teenager trying out Junior Achievement, going to a couple of meetings, and thinking how incredibly lame it was. The meetings were more like Arts & Crafts class than anything resembling real entrepreneurship and business. I wish I had had the opportunities that Chloe had when I was her age. Our school systems still don't adequately prepare kids to be entrepreneurs and bu
» 21 Nov 2009, 12:44 am

An Interesting Blog SEO TechniqueBummer that I missed PubCon this week but I have just been traveling way too much lately. Speaking of traveling, I was in Indianapolis last week visiting the offices of Compendium Blogware. I got a demo of their hosted blog platform -- including a look under the hood -- and it's pretty slick. There were features and functionality I had never seen before in blog software. One of the key differentiators, and the reason for the company's name, is the "compending" capability that their solution does. A compended blog is comprised of a collection of posts from other blogs, but all from within the same company. A company can have many employees blogging -- customer service reps, salespeople, product developers etc. If a manufacturer, then deale
» 14 Nov 2009, 1:13 am

VIDEO: Learn from Shoemoney, my daughter, Duane and Steve (oh, and me too!) how to monetize your blogI'm in NYC for SMX East which starts tomorrow and I'm really looking forward it. But I'm also gearing up for Blog World Expo in a couple weeks. That's because my daughter Chloe Spencer, the Neopets blogger, is going to be speaking there on a panel called "Are You Getting The Most Money Out Of Your Blog As You Can?" along with heavy hitters Dave Taylor, Tim Jones, and Chris Pirillo. The session is scheduled for Friday, October 16 at 11:30am. Thinking about this panel reminded me of another panel that Chloe was a part of, also on the same topic, last year at DMA08. The session was called "Blog Monetization: From Soup to Nuts" and the heavy hitters that time were: Jeremy Schoemaker, Duane Forrester, Steve Spangler, and me. And thinking about
» 4 Oct 2009, 7:42 am

Creating a Buzz-worthy Blog Contest in 7 Easy StepsOne way to bait for links is a blog contest. If you do the contest right, even the most un-sexy of products (like stationery) can become sexy, creating a buzz that can drive a torrent of search traffic to your virtual doorstep. Consider for example the contest we (Netconcepts) dreamed up for the overnight printer of stationery and business cards OvernightPrints.com that I mentioned a few posts back ("Hiring a Link Builder"). The contest was to design Internet celebrity and Technorati Top 100 blogger Jeremy Schoemaker's business card and you could potentially win business cards for life. Here's the winner, which is an awesome business card IMO: Let's take a closer look at what made this blog contest a successful link building strategy:
» 17 Sep 2009, 9:59 pm

EXCLUSIVE: Interview with David Allenhttp://www.marketingspeak.com/audio/david-allen-interview.mp3I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing David Allen a little while back. David's the author of the best-selling book Getting Things Done, and he's the creator of the stress-free productivity methodology known as "GTD". I'm a big fan of David's, and of GTD. I've written a few articles on GTD and productivity: Clearing the Clutter Hop Off the Time Management Treadmill Outsourcing and Delegating And presented on the topic at a previous SMX conference: Productivity Tips for the Busy Search Marketer (PPT) In this interview with David, I focused on some of the areas I struggle with the most. David offered sage advice on: eliminating time-stealing distractions, how avoidance af
» 12 Sep 2009, 5:01 pm

Search Engine Guide

&quot;I don't have time for Facebook and Twitter&quot;by Mike Moran Social media is free, but what's the catch? Time. We only have so much time to spend putting our message out there, but we don't want to limit how many people can hear what we have to say. This problem comes up in many ways, but the simplest is the dichotomy between Facebook and Twitter. Many folks decide to spend the bulk of their social time on one or the other, with relatively few people using both. If Google Buzz catches fire, this fragmentation might only increase. What's a marketer to do? Image by luc legay via Flickr Let's face it. There's no real difference between "friends" and "followers," nor between ""status updates" and "tweets." And why would you decide to spend all your precious social media time updating
» 8 Mar 2010, 2:10 pm

Google Adds Sidewiki Control to Google Webmaster Toolsby Sage Lewis Search Engine Roundtable has reported on a new feature in Google Webmaster Tools. You can now update your Sidewiki profile in your tools section. Learn what Sidewiki is and how you can use it to your benefit. Be sure and visit our small business news site.
» 8 Mar 2010, 11:04 am

B2B Marketers Making Huge Increases in Social Media Spendby Sage Lewis Marketing Pilgrim reports that B2B Marketers will see a 490% Increase in Social Media Spend by 2014. But there are other really interesting stats to be found in this report as well. Be sure and visit our small business news site.
» 8 Mar 2010, 10:59 am

Matt Cutts Calling for Link Spam Reportsby Sage Lewis Matt Cutts has recently put out a post calling for us all to turn in link spam. Learn what he and Google are up to. This has interesting implications for you to consider. Be sure and visit our small business news site.
» 8 Mar 2010, 10:16 am

The Fallacy of Search Engine Marketing Onlyby Scott Buresh Allow me to offer a pre-emptive caveat - I own a successful search engine marketing company. Like most businesses, we are constantly trying to expand our client base - primarily through using the same search engine and internet marketing methods that we deliver to our clients. A quick search on terms such as "search engine optimization company" or "internet marketing company" on Google will demonstrate that we practice what we preach. As I write this, on a "clean machine" (one with all browser settings reset and cookies removed), my search engine marketing company ranks number 1 on Google for both of these phrases and the plural forms of the phrases. Based upon your past search tendencies, your specific location, and wh
» 4 Mar 2010, 6:37 pm

What To Do When Reviewers Lie About Youby Mike Moran When my friend called me, there was a little panic in his voice. He owned a successful, customer-friendly small business, and was generally an easygoing person. But he didn't know what to do. A long-time and loyal customer alerted him to a savage review of his business on an Internet Yellow Pages site. And so now he was turning to me to find out what he could do about it. I asked him for the details and he ruefully related the story. When he read the review, he immediately knew who the unhappy client was, recognizing some details in the story. He told me that this client had been impossible, constantly changing her mind about what she wanted with no notice, and although he did his best to satisfy her, at the end he had t
» 2 Mar 2010, 9:48 am

126 Million Blogs on the Internetby Manoj Jasra JESS3, a creative agency specializing in data visualization, has put together an amazing video which shows the current state of the Internet. We have highlighted some of the data below, but please also watch the video for yourself (it rivals the Social Media Revolution).   1.73 Billion Internet users worldwide 90 Trillion Emails Sent in 2009 81% of Emails were Spam 126 Million Blogs on the Internet 27.3 Million Tweets Per Day Faceboook serves 6 million pages per minute 4 Billion photos hosted by Flickr 182 Videos watched on average per month (per user) JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo. Be sure and visit our small business news site.
» 28 Feb 2010, 7:23 pm

SEO 101 - Part 10: Everything You Need to Know About Keyword Qualifiersby Stoney deGeyter The following series is pulled from a presentation I gave to a group of beauty bloggers hosted by L'Oreal in New York. Most of the presentation is geared toward how to make a blog more search engine and user-friendly, however I will expand many of the concepts here to include tips and strategies for sites selling products or services across all industries. Core Term Qualifiers Optimizing your website for core terms is only part of the optimization process. The vast majority of searches are performed using longer, more specific phrases. When it comes to keyword research, these phrases are really nothing more than your core terms with key qualifiers added to them. Using your keyword research tools you can find doz
» 25 Feb 2010, 10:48 am

Getting Started on Twitter with a Realistic Timelineby Jennifer Laycock While millions of people and tens of thousands of businesses have flocked to Twitter over the past few years, many companies are still standing in the doorway wondering if they should step inside. Their biggest concern? How much time will they spend and how much benefit will they reap. After all, if you talk to anyone who has invested heavily in Twitter, they'll tell you just how much time it can take. It's easy to get sucked into the conversation and it's not uncommon to log in, then glance at the clock a few moments later only to learn hours have passed. With that in mind, it's important to establish a realistic timeline for yourself to make sure you're only spending the time you need. If you're just getting st
» 23 Feb 2010, 8:28 pm

Google Giving Small Businesses a Cheap Advertising Optionby Sage Lewis Google is doing a test in the Houston market that is allowing small businesses to affordably stand out from their competition. Watch this video to learn how you could benefit from this. Be sure and visit our small business news site.
» 23 Feb 2010, 8:14 pm

Fortune 500 Can't Do Search Engine Optimizationby Sage Lewis Marketing Pilgrim reported on a Conductor study that basically said that most Fortune 500 companies are not ranking in the natural search results. I talk about why that is and why this is a huge opportunity for you. Be sure and visit our small business news site.
» 23 Feb 2010, 8:00 pm

Search Engine Land

Twitter Gets Its Own URL Shortener To Stop Scams; Good Marketers Need Not FearTwitter has just announced that to protect people from scams, links in direct messages and sent via email will be shortened using its own URL shortener. It’s a welcome move. Still, I was curious about any impacts this might have for good marketers who are not trying to scam people. Good news, on [...] *** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above or, in Facebook, by clicking on the "View Original Post" link below. ***
» 9 Mar 2010, 5:21 pm

71 Technical Factors For Backlink Analysis (From 30 Link Building Experts) – Part 2Welcome to part 2 of our 3-part group interview series on backlink profile analysis. Part 1 covered backlink analysis for link building campaign design. Part 2 covers the more technical aspects of analysis, and what elements that link building experts look at to gauge the overall strength of a backlink profile. 14 URL factors in backlink [...] *** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above or, in Facebook, by clicking on the "View Original Post" link below. ***
» 9 Mar 2010, 3:39 pm

My Dream International Content Management SystemChoosing a content management system which helps you make progress internationally - rather than blocking every move - is a good plank to have in your strategy. Even if you're not planning that international expansion just yet. Reason? Retro-fitting a new content management system to an existing project can bring a heap of extra pressure - just when you need it to be helping! *** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above or, in Facebook, by clicking on the "View Original Post" link below. ***
» 9 Mar 2010, 12:49 pm

Social Engagement: Making Content InteractiveLast year, I wrote an article, Using Infographics in Social Media to Promote Content and Visualize Data; it discussed taking data and visualizing it in an aesthetic manner to attract more votes, bookmarks, and links from the social media sphere. This year, I want to discuss taking it a step further. “Engagement objects“, as defined by Bruce [...] *** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above or, in Facebook, by clicking on the "View Original Post" link below. ***
» 9 Mar 2010, 11:37 am

Math Engines: For Multiplying Mixed Fractions, It’s Wolfram Alpha Over Google &amp; BingAh, math. It’s why I became an English major. But now math is spinning back around and haunting me in the form of my fifth grader. Last night, I found myself dealing with how to multiply fractions as part of helping with his homework assignment. Um, yeah, I think I remember how. But to be [...] *** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above or, in Facebook, by clicking on the "View Original Post" link below. ***
» 9 Mar 2010, 10:04 am

New MSN Out Of Beta, Driving Nearly 50 Percent Of Bing QueriesMicrosoft is formally launching its much improved MSN portal today. I wrote about the preview version and the wide range of improvements when it first came out in November. There are lots of  interesting elements to the site, including the “local edition,” which is basically a collection of persistent Bing search queries presented in a [...] *** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above or, in Facebook, by clicking on the "View Original Post" link below. ***
» 9 Mar 2010, 9:00 am

SMX Advanced Seattle Registration Open – Best Rate Available Through March 20Ready to exchange ideas, influence the industry and build your network? Join the most accomplished search marketers in the world for Search Marketing Expo – SMX Advanced Seattle. The conference will be held June 8-9 at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center in Seattle, WA. Register before March 21 and you’ll receive the best rate [...] *** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above or, in Facebook, by clicking on the "View Original Post" link below. ***
» 9 Mar 2010, 8:17 am

SPONSOR MESSAGE: Drive more traffic with BingWant to improve traffic to your site? It’s easy! The BingTM Toolbox provides everything you need to get started to optimize your site for increased traffic and an improved user experience. The all-inclusive set of tools makes it easy to get started. Learn more in the Bing Toolbox. *** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above or, in Facebook, by clicking on the "View Original Post" link below. ***
» 8 Mar 2010, 5:04 pm

The Pitfalls Of A/B Ad Split Testing, Part 1Most search advertisers have no question that testing ads is a good thing, and can lead to much higher performing campaigns. But is it possible to over-test and over-optimize, actually leading to worse results? The answer may surprise you. *** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above or, in Facebook, by clicking on the "View Original Post" link below. ***
» 8 Mar 2010, 1:36 pm

Why Most Attribution Analysis Is Fatally FlawedAt SMX West last week the halls were echoing with passionate cries about attribution analysis. It seemed as if all topics (other than the Yahoo-Microsoft search deal) had taken a back seat for a moment, and suddenly the most important thing to consider was attribution analysis, specifically whether or not you are giving too much credit to SEM and not enough to other media. *** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above or, in Facebook, by clicking on the "View Original Post" link below. ***
» 8 Mar 2010, 1:34 pm

Search Engine Roundtable

Daily Search Forum Recap: March 9, 2010Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web....
» 9 Mar 2010, 5:29 pm

Microsoft Aims To Capture UK Search Market Share with AdsThere are reports that Microsoft is going to do a huge ad push in the UK in an effort to capture market share there. Currently, Microsoft's Bing has a 3% share of search, whereas Google holds about a 90% share....
» 9 Mar 2010, 4:55 am

Google Public Data Explorer, Private Data Soon?Google announced a new feature named Google Public Data Explorer. What it does is allow you to mash up data from the public sectors into neat charts and graphs. Google explains: With the Data Explorer, you can mash up data...
» 9 Mar 2010, 4:52 am

Do You Use Search Operators To Find Link Opportunities?A WebmasterWorld thread started by forum administrator, engine, wrote: A webmaster I spoke to today was after a simple way to find new link opportunities. I mentioned something to him, which was to try using Google's related: feature It worked...
» 9 Mar 2010, 4:23 am

Google's International Women's Day Logo at Google Russia Only?I was browsing the various Google forums and spotted several complaints in the Google Web Search Help forums and Google Webmaster Help about there being no International Women's Day Doodle on March 8th, yesterday. There are literally dozens of complaints,...
» 8 Mar 2010, 9:34 pm

Daily Search Forum Recap: March 8, 2010Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web....
» 8 Mar 2010, 1:00 pm

Have Google Index Your AJAX, Here Is HowIn October 2009, Google proposed a way to index AJAX. Back then, all it was, was a proposal, but it was not implemented. However, last week, Vanessa Fox reported that the AJAX feature for Google is now live and well....
» 8 Mar 2010, 4:56 am

Bing: We Know About Your Images &amp; Choose Not To Show ThemWe rarely ever talk about Bing's outstanding image search, but I spotted a thread today in the Bing Community forums on that topic. In short, one webmaster complained that Bing had about 50% of the images from his site, when...
» 8 Mar 2010, 4:46 am

Google Help Forums To Change Member Ranking SystemThe Google Web Search Help, Google News Help & Google Merchant Center Help forums all are announcing new changes coming to how forum members are ranked in these forums. Currently, the member titles or levels are from Level 1 to...
» 8 Mar 2010, 4:03 am

Yahoo Releases Search Marketing Desktop Just In Time To Kill ItYahoo announced they have removed the BETA from the Yahoo Search Marketing Desktop client. Yahoo Pete, Yahoo's search ad representative, said in both a WebmasterWorld & Search Engine Watch Forums thread: Just wanted to make you aware that our desktop...
» 8 Mar 2010, 3:34 am

SMX's SphinnCon Israel 2010 RecapYesterday was the second ever SphinnCon event, a small Search Marketing Expo, ever. The first one took place about two years ago in Israel and the second took place yesterday in Israel. The second event was a bit larger than...
» 8 Mar 2010, 2:49 am

Search Engine World

Google Reports Spam Levels Rose 25 Percent In 2008Google has reported a 156 percent increase in the amount of unwanted e-mail spam targeting users of its Postini enterprise system between November 2008 and data from earlier this month, a rapid increase from the 25 percent annual 2008 rise the Internet giant announced Monday.
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Yahoo Earnings Report Reveals $303 Million Loss And Weak OutlookAt the close of the market Tuesday Yahoo released its first quarterly earnings results under recently hired chief executive Carol Bartz, with fourth quarter results showing revenues down 1 percent to $1.80 billion from the same quarter one year earlier.
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Google Launches Measurement Lab Internet Traffic Analysis EffortGoogle has launched an effort called Measurement Lab that is aimed at making it easier to measure how ISPs manipulate subscriber Internet connections, Google chief evangelist Vint Cerf, co-inventor of the TCP/IP protocol that underlies the Internet, announced Wednesday.
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AOL Laying Off 700 Employees Citing Weak Online Advertising MarketTime Warner Inc. will cut 10 percent of its workforce, or as many as 700 jobs, from its Internet services group AOL, in order to help curtail losses brought about by a weakened online advertising market, AOL chief executive Randy Falco wrote in an internal memo Wednesday.
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Microsoft Woos Users Of Rival Browser Firefox With Live Search Plug-inMicrosoft, the maker of the popular Web browser Internet Explorer, has released a free tool for users of Mozilla Corp.'s open source rival browser Firefox that provides search engine suggestions for Live Search, the Redmond, Washington-based software maker's search service.
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Google Reveals Ocean Imaging In Vast Google Earth 5.0 UpgradeGoogle has updated its virtual world mapping software, Google Earth, to include vast amounts of new imagery of the earth's underwater regions along with new features to observe changes in satellite imagery over time and additional images of the planet Mars, the Internet giant announced Monday.
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Fewer Ask.com Searches Drive IAC Interactive To Fall Short Of Earnings ForecastsInternet media firm IAC/InteractiveCorp. released fourth quarter earnings Tuesday that showed a profit slightly short of forecasts and cited a drop in the number of Web searches at its Ask.com and other online properties as a factor in revenue that fell by 19 percent during the quarter.
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Google Seeks An Escape From Its Investment In AOLGoogle has asked Time Warner Inc. to either buy back the 5 percent stake in Time Warner's AOL that Google bought for $1 billion in 2006, or to spin off the ailing property and take it public, Time Warner executives said Wednesday.
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Russia's Search Leader Yandex Revenue Rose More Than 80 Percent During 2008Russia's leading Internet search engine company Yandex experienced a revenue increase of more than $300 million during 2008, a rise topping 80 percent over 2007 year end figures, the company announced Thursday.
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Google Sync Service Automates Smartphone Calendar And Contact UpdatesGoogle has launched a free service to synchronize calendar and e-mail contact information between its popular online applications and Apple iPhone and Microsoft Windows Mobile-equipped smartphones automatically by using cellphone signals, with the Monday announcement of its new Google Sync offering.
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Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone Sees Business Account Fees AheadSan Francisco-based Twitter Inc. envisions a future day when its popular free micro-blogging service will begin imposing usage fees for commercial businesses, according to company co-founder Biz Stone.
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Search Insider

How SEO Can Save The Environmental MovementEnvironmentally minded SEO geeks, here is your mission: make it easier to find the answers to complex queries like "What is the best response to climate change?"
» 9 Mar 2010, 10:30 am

Automation ModerationIn our business, there are a variety of organizations driving a flurry of data innovation right now. But can these new and/or enhanced platforms really usher in a new era of SEM and analytics?
» 8 Mar 2010, 7:45 am

Steve Ballmer And The Future Of Search RevenuesSearch as it exists today proved to be the perfect crystallization of a revenue model, a beautifully simple evolution that had all the right pieces falling into place at just the right time. It was a rare occurrence in the messy and organic online world, one that Google capitalized on to the tune of several billion dollars. But it's unrealistic to think that this crystallization of revenue opportunity can survive for long or morph into something equally universal, simple and effective.
» 4 Mar 2010, 7:17 am

Hot SEO Trend for 2010:Getting Back To BasicsFor all of the amazing changes that are going on right now in search marketing, there is a certain aspect of each new innovation that calls back to the basics of search engine marketing, and marketing itself. So with this in mind, here are a few of the big topics that have changed SEM, along with why sustainable search practices will be the best course for navigating the new world of real-time, personalized, Caffeine, and socially-influenced search.
» 3 Mar 2010, 12:31 pm

Why An Integrated Strategy Will Always OutperformThe more holistic you can make your marketing efforts -- obviously, without spreading them too thin -- the better off you'll be. Even with word of mouth, we often have to hear a message from multiple sources before we decide to try or buy. But with each successive exposure, our interest grows, until finally even the most hard-core laggard among us will give in and create a Twitter account or virtual farm.
» 2 Mar 2010, 7:31 am

Freedoms, Borders And GoogleGoogle's having a tough time in Europe. Last week, an Italian judge found three of the company's local executives guilty in a privacy violation case because they allowed a teenage user of YouTube to post a video in which an autistic boy was bullied by other youngsters. Separately, Google received a letter last month from a unit of the European Union warning the company that it is likely breaking EU privacy laws. Such are the challenges of indexing the world's information and unshackling individual expression. Both issues highlight the differences between the United States, where Google was born, and much of the rest of the world.
» 1 Mar 2010, 7:30 am

Google's Italian Legal Woes: Good For YouTube?Whatever the result of the legal proceedings against four Google employees in Italy, the trial will be a watershed moment for video search. For all the legal discussion, this is ultimately a search problem -- specifically, a problem for video search.
» 26 Feb 2010, 8:30 am

Search And DecisivenessMy last two columns explored decisiveness within a very defined scope: college students picking courses. I did that by analyzing an interesting study conducted by Wesleyan University, which used eye tracking to show how decisive and indecisive people differed in their processing of information. The research reminded me of a study we did 7 years ago tracking different ways people use search results.
» 25 Feb 2010, 12:15 pm

What Paul Gunning and John Battelle Learned From GoogleThis is the fourth in a series of columns I'm publishing in MediaPost featuring interviews I've conducted while writing my book, "Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned From Google." Today is a 2-for-1 special with Paul Gunning and John Battelle. Gunning is CEO at Tribal DDB Worldwide. Battelle is CEO of Federated Media (FM) Publishing, and author of "The Search," a book that stands the test of time as the defining narrative on the rise of Google and the importance of search. So, what did these captains of industry learn from Google? Read on...
» 24 Feb 2010, 7:15 am

AdWords Vs. Social Media, Round IA client recently presented us with the ultimate challenge: over a short time frame (one month), show us what social media can do in comparison to AdWords. If you have any dealings at all with social media, you'll know this is nearly an impossible task....
» 23 Feb 2010, 7:00 am

Search Marketing Standard Magazine

The BuyerSphere Project (Online Buying Behavior) PDF Now Available FreeIn our Winter 2009/2010 issue, the cover story was titled “Risky Business: A Tour Through The BuyerSphere Project,” a presentation of Enquiro’s BuyerSphere Project, an ongoing study in online behavior and buying trends, by its president and popular conference speaker…For more search marketing insights, visit Search Marketing Standard.The BuyerSphere Project (Online Buying Behavior) PDF Now Available Free
» 9 Mar 2010, 2:14 pm

Google’s Got A Need For SpeedSpeed will likely soon not only matter to users expecting real-time information, but to webmasters and SEOs alike that wish to rank well in the search results. In November last year, Google guru Matt Cutts revealed that page loading time…For more search marketing insights, visit Search Marketing Standard.Google’s Got A Need For Speed
» 8 Mar 2010, 8:38 am

ad:tech New YorkTitle: ad:tech New York Location: New York City, NY Visit Conference: Click here Description: “Brands, agencies, publishers and service providers come together to share, network, learn and do business.” Start Date: 2010-11-02 End Date: 2010-11-04 For more search marketing insights, visit Search Marketing Standard.ad:tech New York …For more search marketing insights, visit Search Marketing Standard.ad:tech New York
» 7 Mar 2010, 4:12 pm

ad:tech LondonTitle: ad:tech London Location: London, UK Visit Conference: Click here Description: “With over 170 interactive media, advertising and e-Business suppliers and 120+ educational sessions, ad:tech London remains the only place to quickly source robust solutions, learn best practicies and get expert advice on…For more search marketing insights, visit Search Marketing Standard.ad:tech London
» 7 Mar 2010, 4:10 pm

Search Engine Strategies (SES) San FranciscoTitle: Search Engine Strategies (SES) San Francisco Location: San Francisco, CA Visit Conference: Click here Description: “Marketers, corporate decision makers, webmasters and search engine marketers (SEMs), including pay-per-click (PPC) advertisers and search engine optimization (SEO) professionals have been attending SES in California for…For more search marketing insights, visit Search Marketing Standard.Search Engine Strategies (SES) San Francisco
» 7 Mar 2010, 4:06 pm

Affiliate Summit East 2010Title: Affiliate Summit East 2010 Location: New York City, NY Visit Conference: Click here Description: “This three day conference includes an exhibit hall with affiliate merchants, vendors, and networks, as well as multiple tracks of educational sessions covering the latest trends and information…For more search marketing insights, visit Search Marketing Standard.Affiliate Summit East 2010
» 7 Mar 2010, 4:04 pm

An Event Apart For People Who Make WebsitesTitle: An Event Apart For People Who Make Websites Location: Minneapolis, MN Visit Conference: Click here Description: “An Event Apart Minneapolis features 12 great speakers and 12 sessions. Tickets are now on sale; the schedule will be posted in May 2010. Follow us…For more search marketing insights, visit Search Marketing Standard.An Event Apart For People Who Make Websites
» 7 Mar 2010, 4:03 pm

HostingConTitle: HostingCon Location: Austin, TX Visit Conference: Click here Description: “Join us at HostingCon 2010, the premier conference and trade show for the hosted services industry. The best and brightest from the industry will be in attendance to learn about the latest news,…For more search marketing insights, visit Search Marketing Standard.HostingCon
» 7 Mar 2010, 4:01 pm

OMMA SocialTitle: OMMA Social Location: New York City, NY Visit Conference: Click here Description: “If 2009 was the year in which Twitter and Facebook steamrolled much of their competition and kept expanding both in users and uses, 2010 looks to be a year in…For more search marketing insights, visit Search Marketing Standard.OMMA Social
» 7 Mar 2010, 4:00 pm

Social Networking ConferenceTitle: Social Networking Conference Location: Los Angeles, CA Visit Conference: Click here Description: “The annual Enterprise Social Networking and Mobile event will take place in Beverly Hills on Thursday and Friday, June 17 – 18, 2010. It is for social networking executives that…For more search marketing insights, visit Search Marketing Standard.Social Networking Conference
» 7 Mar 2010, 3:59 pm

Search Views

Top 5 Cross-Channel Lessons Learned from the Super Bowl» 11 Feb 2010, 7:05 pm

Social Media: Is Google Buzz More Than Just Hype?» 11 Feb 2010, 9:53 am

Which Brands Scored an Integrated Touchdown at Super Bowl 44?» 8 Feb 2010, 12:59 pm

Google Product Extensions: Providing More Information and Relevancy» 25 Jan 2010, 8:21 am

Personalized Results and Paid Search Are Not A Match» 19 Jan 2010, 8:16 pm

China v Google Not About Free Speech» 15 Jan 2010, 8:40 am

Search and Social Media: Mom Power Drives Marketing Results» 7 Dec 2009, 1:36 pm

Mobile: What Marketers Need to Know About Google’s AdMob Deal» 11 Nov 2009, 10:32 am

Search and Social Media: Your Guide to Bing and Google on The Road to Social Media» 29 Oct 2009, 2:11 pm

Search and Social: Will the Twitter Firehose Become a Sewage-Filled Spam Hose?» 22 Oct 2009, 7:32 am

SEO Blog - David Harry

Was Shakespeare In Love With SEO?Historians in Britain have recently made an amazing discovery indicating that Shakespeare not only knew about SEO, he embraced it in his works. This little-known draft of a passage from MacBeth leaves little doubt about his penchant for the search sciences.  With apologies to the Bard... "Henceforth be nerds, the first that ever Googled In such an honour named.  What’s more to search, Which would be displayed newly with results, As calling home our topranked site declare That fled the snares of watchful formula; Producing forth the ideal arrangement Of this our phrases and our keywords found, Who, as ‘tis thought, by links and virulent clicks Build up our fa
» 23 Feb 2010, 8:22 am

Talking real time personalized searchAn interview with SurfCanyon That title is a doozy, but it does exist! I recently had the extreme pleasure of meeting the gang at SurfCanyon, one VERY personal search engine (and FF add on). I was first turned onto this groovy tool more than a year ago and it was a thrill to hear from them. When it comes to personalization (and social search even) these folks really do take it to a new level. If you haven't already, be sure to give it a try (search engine here and FireFox add on here) The following is an interview that sprang from those chats. (more on SurfCanyon at the end). Enjoy!
» 22 Feb 2010, 5:31 am

SEO Dojo YouTube ChannelYour source for SEO and IR videos! Hey gang… I just wanted to give a quick head’s up on a little project we’ve been working on the last few weeks. As you may or may not know I have an SEO Video Library over in the dojo which are the best of the best from the video section of the newsletter. Which was fine for me really. But some folks suggested we create a dedicated YouTube channel to house them for the folks at are at YT a lot. Ask and ye shall receive!! Yup, we have a YouTube channel!! We now have them sorted there into what we hope is a logical structure for your viewing pleasure. And no, this isn’t going to be about Dojo videos.. (which are coming) but it is more of a collection of some goodies we find in our travels
» 9 Feb 2010, 7:48 am

Should SEOs care about Real Time Social Search?Are we there yet? I thought we could spend a few moments looking at the value, potential and implications for the world of (real time and) social search. I prefer to think of them as; Social search – using explicit elements (voting, annotating) in conjunction with standard search functionality. Real Time Search – searching the fire-hose of the social world (Twitter, FaceBook, FriendFeed and so on) But for the sake of this post, we’ll just go with RTSS (real time social search) to make things easier. While I personally believe there is a need for distinction, it would make things messy for this simple journey. For starters, a few examples…. Explicit data; Social Search The Fire-hose; Real time search While people ten
» 8 Feb 2010, 5:10 am

SEO myths and crap; the results are in!Just for fun and because well, there are some many things that piss my off any given week, we ran a poll recently on the myths and crap out there. More tongue in cheek than meant as a serious study, it is fun to see what the SEO community feels about the whole thing. Actually, we had more suggestions for myths to include (culled via Twitter) than we could fit in the poll. I shall certainly be putting a post together to wrap ‘em all up neatly for ye in the near future. For now, have some fun with the results (after 91 votes) Which SEO myth/crap makes you laugh/scream the most? 18.7% Submitting to search engines 18.7% SEO is dead 14.3% Keyword density X% 13.2% PPC affects organic 11%  Get indexed in a 24hrs! 9.9
» 3 Feb 2010, 9:46 am

Link Building Gems from User Behavior Patterns(the following is a guest post from Jennifer Van Iderstyne) Depending on who you talk to, people are either highly predictable, or completely unpredictable.  Delving into the topic, will only get you entrenched in a centuries old debate of scientists, philosophers, religions and bar room drunks. No matter which side of the predictability of man argument you stand on, no one can deny the role of probability and predictability on internet marketing and the evolution of the web. I mean after all, as we watch the growing predilection of search engines toward customized and personalized SERPS, what are those results based on if not, predictability? The tendency of internet users to be predictable in their likes dislikes and habits, is
» 1 Feb 2010, 8:41 am

Last call for SEMMY votingTomorrow is the last day for SEMMY voting... if you haven't already voted, may I submit these great SEO Training Dojo peeps that made the finals;Lee's (Odden) is here; 5 Tips on Hiring and Getting the Most Value from SEO ConsultantsTom (Demers) is here; Discovering Keywords On the CheapGarrett (French) is here; 10 Goals For Link Building Campaigns: Moving Beyond “Get More Links”Vertical Measures is here: Be Proactive With Your Reputation ManagementAnd Mine is here; The SEO geeks guide to information retrievalCongrats once more to ALL the Dojo Nominees and finalists... I am proud to have ye!
» 28 Jan 2010, 1:48 pm

SEO being trademarked, AGAIN!?!Circle the wagons? Or 'Who gives a shit?' One of my SEO Dojo peeps came to me this morning asking if I knew about the guy that was trying to Trademark the term; SEO. I said, “Sure, that Jason Gambert Guy right?” – Oh no… apparently he has some competition. One Clinton Cimring… huh, news to me… Apparently he; “…was one of the first published search engine optimizers (SEOs) and search engine optimization consultants[1] and currently holds the only trademark on the term, S.E.O.” They go on to say; “…he has had a trademark pending on the term since 1996 and it seems to be between he and a Jason Gambert.”Aparently he is "well known in the search engine optimization[5] arena for introducing new techniques or approach
» 21 Jan 2010, 6:56 am

Google re-ranking and personalized search studyOnce upon a time me and a few cohorts wondered about just what levels of flux there were in the Google SERPs. Has personalized search really changed the consistency of rankings? It’s an issue that has been spoken about many times in the search world. We set out to see what was up. After two rounds of research we noticed that this was unlikely to be the case. You can learn more in the post; The SEO guide to Google personalized search It seemed only sensible, given Google’s Psearch expansion, to have another look. And so last December we started a third round. Has anything changed? How much flux is out there? Well, read on and find out what we’re seeing so far… Now, first things first; the goal wasn’t really to establish
» 18 Jan 2010, 9:24 am

Dojo members hit the SEMMYs 2010!Hello my geeks… it is a proud day in my happy little hideaway (SEO Dojo) as the 2k10 version of the SEMMYs was announced yesterday. I was looking through the nominations and noticing how many of them were peeps that have helped my the community what it is today. And so…. I wanted to list them off and show some love!! If you haven’t checked out the nominees, (all of them) I would certainly suggest it. Upon looking through the lists I noticed many great posts I’d not seen from 09…. Be sure to drop by and check it out; great reading all around.  
» 14 Jan 2010, 7:58 am

SEO Book

Learning SEO: It Can Get NoisyThere is obviously no shortage of information on SEO. But thanks for turning up here :) The sheer avalanche of SEO information can be overwhelming, for beginners and experts alike. Who do you know who to listen to? What information do you need to know, and what information is filler? Why should you even listen to SEOBook? 1. Most Information Published On SEO Is Filler You can learn 80% of what you need to know about SEO pretty quickly. You don't need the additional 20% in order to achieve, unless you're a masochist - otherwise known as an SEO professional :) Most of the information you'll come across on the topic of SEO is written by, and for, a professional/enthusiast crowd. There is a massive echo chamber of opinion, constantly replen
» 4 Mar 2010, 7:14 pm

SEO Consulting: How To Construct Great ProposalsLike in any consulting field, SEO is rife with competition. There is only one way to win in such an environment, and that is to set yourself apart from the crowd. Not in a bad way, of course :) Here are some ideas on how to construct winning proposals. Size Isn't Everything, But It Does Count Large proposals take a long time to do. On the upside, large proposals can look impressive, simply by virtue of their size. Clients often like to see large proposals, but they don't tend to read them. Proposals can be a tricky balance to get right. No matter how brilliant your solution, most clients will think twice about you if you present it on a single sheet, especially if they have no prior connection with you, or aren't meeting you face-to-face
» 28 Feb 2010, 11:58 pm

Beating the Logic &amp; Creativity Out of YouI remember in 2nd grade when our teacher was teaching us how to do math I raced ahead and was doing lessons for today, tomorrow, and next week. The teacher rewarded my efforts by yelling at me and ripping up the pages from the book and giving me a 0 on that homework. In fourth grade we would play around the world with math flash cards where you raced to say the answers, and I would literally go all the way around the classroom without losing. I won so much that the other kids would boo when I won and cheer if I lost. In 5th grade I scored well on some state examination test that they had me take a college level entry exam. I beat most college-bound high school students in math before I entered junior high school. Between 7th and 8th grade
» 28 Feb 2010, 4:27 pm

Spam Free Search?Just for fun. But if things get much worse it might be good for utility as well ;)
» 24 Feb 2010, 4:21 am

3 Steps for Optimizing Content for Long Tail KeywordsThe following is a guest post from Tom Demers. One of the most pivotal aspects of driving large volumes of search traffic in most verticals is effectively targeting long tail keywords. While ranking for competitive phrases and developing link authority are certainly crucial aspects of SEO, much of ranking on long tail keywords is properly targeting and optimizing for them. A while ago Aaron made the following image as a conceptual example of how the relevancy algorithms may differ for different types of keywords: This article will outline a three step process for targeting long tail keywords. Step 1: Build a Basket The first (and possibly most important) consideration is determining which keywords to target. For this I think a three-step p
» 22 Feb 2010, 12:47 pm

Which Multivariate Testing Software is Best?My buddies from Conversion Rate Experts have put together a review site for multivariate software called Which Multivariate. Surprisingly old school in the modern affiliate link filled web, they have made the site vendor neutral and are not planning on ever taking affiliate commissions in an attempt to gather honest reviews. Check it out. Its worth a look!
» 22 Feb 2010, 10:08 am

Spam vs Mahalo: Matt Cutts Explains the DifferenceWhen the internal Google remote quality rater guidelines leaked online there was a core quote inside it that defined the essence of spam: Final Notes on Spam When trying to decide if a page is Spam, it is helpful to ask yourself this question: if I remove the scraped (copied) content, the ads, and the links to other pages, is there anything of value left? if the answer is no, the page is probably Spam. With the above quote in mind please review the typical Mahalo page Adding a bit more context, the following 25 minute video from 2008 starts off with Matt Cutts talking about how he penalized a website for using deceptive marketing. Later into the video (~ 21 minutes in) the topic of search results within search results and then Mahalo come
» 22 Feb 2010, 9:59 am

Funny Dilbert SEO Comic Strip Cartoon by Scott AdamsAnd all this, only to find out there was a missing ingredient the whole time ;) Of course, if Dilbert had a text version of the cartoon and perhaps a more relevant alt tag in his embed code that would help too. Just saying ;)
» 20 Feb 2010, 3:39 am

Killer Google AdWords Guide for AffiliatesMy wife used to tell me that I would give too much away...and then she pens something like this AdWords affiliate guide. It doesn't seem fair ;)
» 16 Feb 2010, 1:59 pm

Comparing SEO Business ModelsOne of the great things about SEO is that it allows you to see many lenses on business that you can't normally see with most other professions (outside of perhaps something in high finance or management consulting anyhow). One day you are building a bootstrapped business from scratch wondering when it will make its first Dollar, and the next day your on the phone with McKinsey consultants or an executive from a fortune 500 company talking strategy. Zeta Interactive's Hugo Guzman is one of the the folks in the SEO industry who has a broad experience set which perhaps eclipses my own, as he has done virtually everything. And so I recently interviewed him... You run some of your own sites, have done some private SEO consulting, I believe you
» 16 Feb 2010, 1:56 pm

Grading Google's Marketing Practices Based On Google's Standards?The following is a guest post by Slaven Radic. The Google Buzz team has had quite a week. Their new product quickly lived up to its name, though mostly for the wrong reasons, generating buzz about its own privacy issues. Calling the original Google Buzz privacy settings lax would be a gross understatement. It created a storm of complaints, best put in perspective by Harriet Jacobs in her F*ck You, Google piece. In short, when you logged into your Gmail account Google simply took all of your frequent contacts and mashed them up into an active social network without much input from people they were connecting. If you exchanged a lot of emails with your editor and your under-cover sources from the same Gmail account, now they were connected
» 15 Feb 2010, 5:15 pm

SEO Fast Start

Free Webinar: The 3 Things Most SEOs Get WrongLeslie Rohde and I have been working together as StomperNet faculty members since, well, since we were asked to join as the first two members of the faculty, back in 2006. Read more on Free Webinar: The 3 Things Most SEOs Get Wrong… Free Webinar: The 3 Things Most SEOs Get Wrong is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today! Free Webinar: The 3 Things Most SEOs Get Wrong is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today!
» 14 Sep 2009, 9:19 am

Coming to my free webinar next week?In my last email to my newsletter subscribers, I mentioned that Andy Jenkins and I are starting up a new Mastermind training program for information marketers, called the "Guru Therapy Institute." Read more on Coming to my free webinar next week?… Coming to my free webinar next week? is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today! Coming to my free webinar next week? is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today!
» 3 Sep 2009, 11:48 am

I Just &quot;Lost&quot; My Job – Woot!Well, "lost" is probably not the right word, because I am not trying to find it again. I already sent something out to my newsletter subscribers about this, but thought it was worth a post too. Read more on I Just "Lost" My Job – Woot!… I Just "Lost" My Job – Woot! is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today! I Just "Lost" My Job – Woot! is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today!
» 1 Sep 2009, 2:55 pm

How The MS/Bing/Yahoo Deal Changes SEOHow The MS/Bing/Yahoo Deal Changes SEO: It doesn't. I mean, once they get it all done, there will be: One less spider crawling the web, reducing power and bandwidth needs of the web, and helping to combat global climate change. Not sure how much carbon the Yahoo bots were putting into the air, but it's probably more than all the gas-guzzling Hummers in service today. Read more on How The MS/Bing/Yahoo Deal Changes SEO… How The MS/Bing/Yahoo Deal Changes SEO is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today! How The MS/Bing/Yahoo Deal Changes SEO is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today!
» 29 Jul 2009, 9:18 am

SEO Fast Start – 2009 Edition Released!After many edits, re-edits, changes, un-changing the changes, well… you get the idea… I am happy to present the 2009 edition of SEO Fast Start – grab it from the download page! Read more on SEO Fast Start – 2009 Edition Released!… SEO Fast Start – 2009 Edition Released! is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today! SEO Fast Start – 2009 Edition Released! is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today!
» 29 Jun 2009, 3:54 pm

Google's &quot;Operation BENDOVER&quot; Exposed – Nofollow &amp; PageRank Sculpting"When you have ruled out the possible, whatever remains, however horrifying, will be more entertaining." Matt Cutts made some comments about PageRank sculpting in general, and Google's handling of the nofollow attribute on internal links, last week at SMX Advanced in Seattle. Here is my report on those events, and my conclusion about the shocking truth behind the "smoke and mirrors." Read more on Google's "Operation BENDOVER" Exposed – Nofollow & PageRank Sculpting… Google's "Operation BENDOVER" Exposed – Nofollow & PageRank Sculpting is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today! Google's "Operation BENDOVER" Exposed – Nofollow & PageRank Sculpting is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is
» 11 Jun 2009, 4:27 pm

My Link Building Course for 2009: &quot;Link Liberation&quot;Hello, dear readers… since the cat is out of the bag, I may as well post about this. If you recall, a few weeks back I asked for some input on my new link building course (thanks), and I haven't followed up with you since. Read more on My Link Building Course for 2009: "Link Liberation"… My Link Building Course for 2009: "Link Liberation" is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today! My Link Building Course for 2009: "Link Liberation" is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today!
» 10 Jun 2009, 12:04 pm

SMX: matt cutts, nofollow, 'pagerank sculpting' and hype from the waterfront…I'm sitting here on the waterfront in Seattle. SMX Advanced '09 is over. One of the best search marketing focused events I've ever attended. But the "news" from the event is mostly about some stuff Matt Cutts said during "Q&A" at the 'canonical tag' session. Read more on SMX: matt cutts, nofollow, 'pagerank sculpting' and hype from the waterfront…… SMX: matt cutts, nofollow, 'pagerank sculpting' and hype from the waterfront… is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today! SMX: matt cutts, nofollow, 'pagerank sculpting' and hype from the waterfront… is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today!
» 4 Jun 2009, 1:04 pm

Redoing My Link Building Course – Need Your HelpWhen I offered my first online link building course in 2005, I was expecting it to be pretty popular, but it turns out that I *badly* underestimated the demand. In fact, it was a runaway success. Read more on Redoing My Link Building Course – Need Your Help… Redoing My Link Building Course – Need Your Help is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today! Redoing My Link Building Course – Need Your Help is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today!
» 8 May 2009, 2:59 pm

Speaking @ SMX Advanced on June 3It's been a while since I've spoken at a search marketing conference. Like, a couple years I think. But I am coming out of the "shell" at SMX Advanced to talk about advanced pay-per-click strategies for the "Amazing PPC Tactics" session. Read more on Speaking @ SMX Advanced on June 3… Speaking @ SMX Advanced on June 3 is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today! Speaking @ SMX Advanced on June 3 is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today!
» 28 Apr 2009, 10:58 am

SEO ROI

Guest Post Links: The Difference Is RepeatabilityAt SphinnCon 2010 yesterday in Jerusalem, I presented on guest post based link building. The main advantage, in addition to the high quality of links it builds relative to other sorts, is repeatability. View the preso to see what I mean. Goldenberg Gab SphinnCon The Difference Is Repeatability View more presentations from guestf7474b. If you’ve been [...]Downloads: Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates. SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet. Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data Guest Post Links: The Difference Is Repeatability
» 8 Mar 2010, 7:38 am

Buying Text Links – Pre-Published vs. Post-PublishedThis is a guest post by Brandon Hopkins, a freelance Fresno website designer who blogs at Brandon-Hopkins.com The most common way to buy links is to find a site that shows up in Google’s index, then contact the owner asking them to add your link in exchange for monetary compensation. What is often not considered [...]Downloads: Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates. SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet. Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data Buying Text Links – Pre-Published vs. Post-Published
» 15 Feb 2010, 4:31 am

Update To The Popular Internal Link BuildingMy friend Marios Alexandrou, an advanced SEO who loves to test ranking factors, worked with my programmer to update the popular Wordpress plugin I had built, Internal Link Building. For those who don’t know, Internal Link Building automates your internal linking, so you can rank like Wikipedia without being Wikipedia. Ever notice how Wikipedia always [...]Downloads: Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates. SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet. Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data Update To The Popular Internal Link Building
» 8 Feb 2010, 4:30 am

How Facebook Built A Competitive Advantage While Blocking GoogleYesterday, I described what I saw as a trend towards content communities becoming commodified. We ended on the question – how do you build a competitive advantage in such a case? One idea that comes to mind courtesy of both Inc magazine’s article on Yelp, and from Kyle Lacy is to organize offline meetups. Make [...]Downloads: Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates. SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet. Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data How Facebook Built A Competitive Advantage While Blocking Google
» 1 Feb 2010, 4:04 am

Is The Trend Towards Content-Communities Commodifying Them?Ads are increasingly being bought to promote content, rather than to create brand awareness or sell directly. What’s interesting to me about this is that it’s a trend growing in parallel with a trend amongst large, SEO-driven sites towards building blog-focused communities. These content community sites typically follow this outline, with some variants: Generic brand name [...]Downloads: Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates. SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet. Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data Is The Trend Towards Content
» 31 Jan 2010, 4:33 am

6 Steps To More Engaging Copy That SellsGood copywriting does more than just explain the details of a website’s products or services. It needs to speak to a person on an emotional level, giving them hope while getting the point across fast. It also needs to compel a person to take action. The biggest weakness of the average website today is its copywriting. [...]Downloads: Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates. SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet. Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data 6 Steps To More Engaging Copy That Sells
» 27 Jan 2010, 5:44 am

5 Surprising Sources of Competitive IntelligenceCompetitive intelligence provides entertainment, an inside-track on industry trend-spotting, and the potential to develop tangential business opportunities before others, or at least catch up quickly. I gluttonously consume information, and thought I’d share some parts of my diet with other competitive intelligence collectors with hearty appetites. 1) Affiliate networks. Ever wonder what a competitor’s margins are like? What [...]Downloads: Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates. SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet. Backlink Analysis With Maj
» 19 Jan 2010, 4:32 am

How In-House SEOs Can Add Value Beyond SearchEcommerce SEO guru Everett Sizemore provides some tips on making yourself more valuable within your organization and to your SEO clients. Learn how SEOs can provide value beyond just the optimization of websites.Downloads: Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates. SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet. Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data How In-House SEOs Can Add Value Beyond Search
» 18 Jan 2010, 5:48 am

I’m Nominated For The 2010 SEMMY Awards !And I’m lucky to have been nominated in two categories! 1. My post, “The 4.5 Personas of My SEO Site,” is nominated in the SEO category! If I get into the Finalists round, I’d love for you to vote for me to win! The post has also made it as a reference for Full Sail’s [...]Downloads: Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates. SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet. Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data I’m Nominated For The 2010 SEMMY Awards !
» 13 Jan 2010, 1:03 pm

Guest Post On Training Your Web TeamCheck it out at Wolf Howl: 7 Tips To Make Training Your Web Team Merry Downloads: Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates. SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet. Backlink Analysis With [...]Downloads: Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates. SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet. Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data Guest Post On Training Your
» 4 Jan 2010, 7:26 pm

Two Highly Valuable WP Plugins For Testing LandersGet the scoop at Janet’s Search Marketing Sage: “Two Must Have Plugins for Landing Page Testing.” The second one you probably never heard of, but Janet makes a great case for ! Downloads: Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. [...]Downloads: Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building page. Update info: Check Marios' updates. SEO ROI Calculator spreadsheet. Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data Two Highly Valuable WP Plugins For Testing Landers
» 30 Dec 2009, 8:43 am

SEO Speedwagon

Schumacher Homes Selects Intrapromote, LLC as Search and Social Media Agency of RecordIntrapromote has been selected as search and social media agency of record by Schumacher Homes, one of the country's leading home builders.
» 4 Feb 2010, 9:36 am

Can Linkedin Be Used As A Social Media Marketing Tool?I firmly believe it can be used as an effective social media marketing tool if the correct strategy is implemented. I have been an avid user of Linkedin for the last 4 plus years and know that great things can happen when connecting properly with other users of this platform.
» 13 Jan 2010, 3:27 pm

eCommerce 2.0: Let Your Products Have a Voice Online Via Social Media MarketingIf you have an eCommerce business and you want to gain extra traction for your products you need to be utilizing a platform that enables users to spread the word about your products online. I am not talking about social sharing services like AddThis, but a service that lets users send your product information to their friends and family via a customized widget (TAF4Commerce).
» 12 Jan 2010, 9:10 am

Creative Ways to Utilize YouTube as a Marketing ChannelThere are a variety of ways to utilize YouTube as a marketing channel and I've seen some very creative videos take social media marketing to the next level. A great example is Blendtec, they have been promoting their products on YouTube for quite some time now. The most memorable instance I can recall was them placing an iPhone 3G into a blender and it taking about 8 seconds to be completely pulverized.
» 11 Jan 2010, 4:07 pm

Facebook Privacy SettingsWhen was the last time you checked your Facebook privacy settings? Do you know what your profile and activity look like to the rest of the world? Is Google indexing your personal information? Follow along as Social Media Strategist Jen...
» 30 Dec 2009, 11:02 am

Why Good Link Builders Fail: Reason ThreeTable of Contents Ten Reasons Why Good Link Builders Fail (Introduction) Reason One: Self-Doubt Reason Two: Not Learning Best Practices We've covered two really basic reasons why good link builders don't become great. Obviously self-doubt and the lack of best...
» 26 Dec 2009, 10:56 am

Why Good Link Builders Fail: Reason TwoTable of Contents Ten Reasons Why Good Link Builders Fail (Introduction) Reason One: Self-Doubt So, we've covered the biggest reason why good link builders fail. The second reason? They don't learn best practices. It seems counter-productive to want to do...
» 20 Dec 2009, 10:18 am

Why Good Link Builders Fail: Reason OneTable of Contents Ten Reasons Why Good Link Builders Fail (Introduction) Last time, I talked about the fact that over the years, I've seen so many people that could have been amazing link builders fall way too short. And through...
» 26 Nov 2009, 6:30 am

Google Indexes Its Own Toolbar Content(?)Is Google indexing its own Toolbar pages against its own wishes, or am I missing something?
» 23 Nov 2009, 2:22 pm

Ten Reasons Why Good Link Builders FailHaving worked in link building for nearly three years, I've seen a lot of people come and go. It's the nature of any business to be sure, but sometimes it's a little more heartbreaking than others. Without a doubt, I...
» 19 Nov 2009, 5:33 pm

Promises PromisesA good partnership between client and agency is stronger than any 'secret sauce' and will end up providing many years of solid returns for everyone involved.
» 13 Nov 2009, 10:58 am

SEOmoz

Targeting Multiple Keywords vs. Singular Keyword FocusPosted by randfishDespite being a seemingly simple topic, this one seems to stymie even experienced SEOs. There's a natural conflict that creates the issue - the more keywords you target on a single page, the less you need to link build and optimize (for both search engines and user experience/conversion rate) on many pages. To answer this question in a logical and truly optimal fashion, you need to start with the answer to two other important questions: How many of these keywords carry the same visitor intent? How competitive are the targeted terms/phrases? When you answer the first question, you'll be able to break up lists of keyword terms into buckets of "intent." Searches are almost always intended to discover information or
» 8 Mar 2010, 3:23 pm

Search Marketing Success StoriesPosted by RobOusbeySearch Engine Optimization covers a huge range of tactics - all of which can bring direct benefit to a website. In this post, I've shared examples of different tactics used at different websites, and the effects that have been seen. If you're considering an SEO campaign for your site, or are trying to persuade someone else to invest in internet marketing, I hope this post will help demonstrate the potential of internet marketing. The post includes real screen shots from Google Analytics (click any of them to enlarge) but the sites and data have been anonymized. Target Your Target Terms Remember that post about building a page with perfect keyword targeting? SEOmoz wasn't kidding around. A website that sells homewares ha
» 7 Mar 2010, 1:10 pm

Strategic Link Building: How to Productize Link Acquisition and Dominate Your NichePosted by randfishThis week, despite still being seriously under the weather (see this week's sad WB Friday), I flew down to SMX West to speak on the Link Building Strategies panel. Although I'd wanted to put more work in and deliver a better presentation, I received some very kind words afterward and requests from folks to share the deck via the blog. Before I embed the actual deck, though, I need to provide some context (as this isn't a wholly self-explanatory presentation). Link building has, classically, been a tactic slapped on to a marketing campaign or website post-launch. I believe that those companies/sites that treat link acquisition as an afterthought, rather than building it into the product, will always lose out to those who tr
» 5 Mar 2010, 3:32 am

Whiteboard Friday - Twitter as an SEO Research ToolPosted by great scott!Sure, you use Twitter as a social media tool, but have you ever considered it as an SEO research tool? No? Well watch and learn this week to find out how you can harness it in a whole new way. Now that social signals (particularly Twitter) are becoming more important in the engines, they can help you pinpoint when a keyword is going to trip the 'Query Deserves Freshness' switch. If you can figure that out, you can gain a big competitive advantage by publishing fresh content in a targeted, timely manner. Rand mentions a couple of tools for using Twitter to target and time your content. One is Trendistic, which helps you see trends in Twitter; another is our very own Blogscape Social Media Monitoring prototype
» 4 Mar 2010, 1:34 pm

Introducing New Features for Open Site ExplorerPosted by Danny Dover Today I am proud to announce the launch of the second version of Open Site Explorer. Since SEOmoz has officially moved out of consulting, we are now able to put our full resources into building fantastic SEO software. We want to thank all of you who provided feedback on the first version of the tool for your guidance and we look forward to hearing more from you in the future. Now enough with the chit chat, on to the new features! New Features: Top Pages on a Domain Target URL Comprehensive CSV Export Usability Enhancements (The end of page reloads when applying filters!) Improved Filtering Top Pages on a Domain With the new version of Open Site Explorer you can get a sorted listed of the to
» 4 Mar 2010, 1:14 am

Ballmer, Sitelinks &amp; Other Favorites from SMX West Day 1Posted by jennitaSMX West 2010 kicked off with quite a bang (or was that a yell?). Since Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer was the keynote, people arrived early to ensure good seats. The music playing before it started was amazing, it helped to create an excitement in the room that I really had never felt before a keynote before. I had attempted to save a seat for someone up front, but there was just too much demand and had to give it up. That's the sort of thing that happens at a great concert, not a conference keynote. There were quite a few live blogs of the event, but I had a few favorites from the interview that I wanted to call out. He made it very clear that Microsoft is focused on the big picture and not just immediate goals. He
» 3 Mar 2010, 4:56 am

One Dead Simple Tactic for Better Rankings in Google LocalPosted by randfishThis post is short and easy to follow, just like the tactic it recommends. Most everyone who optimizes for Google Local (aka Google Maps) is familar with David Mihm's excellent and oft-referenced Local Search Ranking Factors. In that document, and in many places where local results are analyzed, it's clear that getting your business/website into more listings, in a consistent fashion is a very good thing. Yet, somehow, this obvious tactic has gone missing from many GG Local optimization recommendations. Either that or it's so obvious that no one feels the need to mention it. Whatever the case, it's available now :-) Step 1: Do Lots of Searches Related to Your Business & Region Let's say you're working on local SEO for a
» 2 Mar 2010, 11:50 am

Pagination: Best Practices for SEO &amp; User ExperiencePosted by randfishWe've been getting a lot of questions in Q+A and on the road at events like last week's Miva Merchant conference, Online Marketing Summit and the YCombinator conference about how to properly paginate results for search engines. In this post, we'll cover the dangers, opportunities and optimization tactics that can best ensure success. The best part? These practices aren't just good for SEO, they're great for usability and user experience too! Why is Pagination an SEO Issue? Pagination, the practice of segmenting links to content on multiple pages, affects two critical elements of search engine accessibility. Crawl Depth: Best practices demand that the search engine spiders reach content-rich pages in as few "clicks"
» 1 Mar 2010, 3:26 pm

Managing SEO Campaigns in Declining IndustriesPosted by RobOusbeyThis is a graph of organic traffic for a theoretical site - they might be in an industry such as print advertising, construction equipment or VHS rental. The decline in traffic is pronounced and serious. A critical distinction when looking at a graph like this is whether the site's performance is increasingly worse than the competitors, or whether the whole industry is in decline. In this post I want to recommend some metrics that can be tracked to benchmark your site against competitors (independent of market behaviour) and to check the health of the industry. I'll then make suggestions for finding opportunities to slow or reverse the trend of dropping traffic. For the benefit of the time-poor, the post ends with a
» 28 Feb 2010, 5:20 pm

Stuntdubl

20 Things You Can Teach a HIPPO to Make Your Website Better.Note: This post is fairly self-serving, but I promise watching the videos will help you make your site better. You can skip all the reading and just watch the totally FREE FULL videos (part I, and part II), or skip to the next paragraph for the details of the awesome video that Avinash (aka [...]
» 8 Mar 2010, 10:58 am

SEMMY for Social Media» 1 Feb 2010, 5:56 pm

Cracking the Google Algorithm, and Understanding Search Patents with Ted “tedster” UlleTed Ulle aka "Tedster" surpassed a mind-blowing 26,000 posts at Webmasterworld where he has been an adminstrator for years as one of the unsung heros of SEO as a gracious contributor to one of the web’s most comprehensive and informative SEO forums. Tedster was credited with discovering the possible cause of the Google’s 950 [...]
» 28 Jan 2010, 2:48 pm

A Shift to Online Business Management Consulting - Thoughts on Rebranding in 2010I haven’t spent a lot of 2009 posting for my little marketing blog, and I miss taking the time to sit down and write about what I’m learning. 2009 has been a whirlwind of projects outside the scope of just SEO, and I’ve realized that talking isn’t doing.  It’s made me realize that over-simplifying [...]
» 30 Dec 2009, 9:17 am

Competitive Back Link and Off Page Optimization AnalysisIn seven plus years working as a seo consultant, I’ve learned that there’s only a few things that separate good consultants and agencies from great ones. One of the most important elements to greatness is being able to set realistic expectations and achieve them for satisfied customers over the longterm. In a marketplace [...]
» 13 Dec 2009, 2:03 pm

Miami Florida Real Estate Agent Needed ASAPI will just be renting for a while - but I could use a hand on the inside scoop on things. If you are a top notch real estate agent in the Miami area, I could use your help. In return, I’ll be happy to answer some SEO questions, because I’m sure your [...]
» 30 Oct 2009, 9:23 am

16 Things I’ve Learned About Business while Being an SEO Consultant1. Pay extra for premium domains (if you develop them) If you can’t find and buy a good aftermarket domain and get creative - you need some marketing classes 2. Don’t skimp on hosting Such a painful expensive lesson to learn. 3. Respect contractors, but don’t overpay Don’t ever talk down to anyone you work with, but don’t allow people [...]
» 4 Oct 2009, 10:33 pm

I Love Tools - and Bryan Eisenberg has 69 Awesome Ones for You!Market Motive faculty Bryan Eisenberg has a great list of 69 really killer tools for making your website better. Since I’m a big tool fan myself, we’re planning a future Market Motive panel to discuss our favorite tools for website. It should be truly awesome - if for some reason you don’t know [...]
» 30 Sep 2009, 2:50 pm

Affiliate Summit East and San Jose Search Engine Strategies and IMCharityParty.com3 Things to post here at Stuntdubl Land. 1. IM Charity Party - Please help by spreading the word. If you were there last year, you know, and can help spread the word. Should be a great time for a great cause. 2. Affiliate Summit Panel of social media for affiliates - [...]
» 5 Aug 2009, 4:07 am

Last Ticket to SEOktoberfest on EbaySince I am incredibly lazy - here are the details from the auction for the last SEOktoberfest golden ticket copy and pasted. I do agree with Greg’s assessment of why Rebecca should attend, and will add that I’m expecting it to be a lot like Bavarian Festival in Frankenmuth, Michigan, except 10,000% larger and [...]
» 29 Jul 2009, 2:43 pm

The Link Spiel

Link Spiel Has A New HomeAt long last the Link Spiel has a new home and new look:http://www.linkspiel.com/If you have this blog bookmarked or in your RSS, be sure to note the changes. :)Thanks!DebraVisit the new and improved Link Spiel at www.linkspiel.com
» 28 Apr 2009, 10:41 am

SEOAly Rhyme Time - IM Spring Break7 Reasons To Send SEOAly To IM Spring Breakby Debra MastalerSEOAly is a very nice galwith pretty blonde hair and lots of good palsShe's dying to meet in Tampa this Springto party and learn at this really great thingCalled IM Spring Break it's a conference you seeshe'll learn lots of stuff but the show isn't freeShe's part of a contest to help with her fareand hopes our community will help her get thereI would love to see SEOAly go to IM Spring Break'cuz I'm not sure how much more you can takeOf this terrible poem or the begging I'll doif this girl can't make Tampa to drink with the crewOur community is fine and takes care of it's ownSend Aly to Tampa so she's not alone.Thank you.Visit the new and improved Link Spiel at www.linkspiel.com
» 7 Feb 2009, 4:53 am

Jingle Links. Yeah Baby!It's time for our annual Jingle Links Sing-a-long! Dashing through the blogs, I came upon the posts, dishing about paid links that no one’s supposed to host.That Google it keeps saying, if you host these links, We’ll zap them all, give no love and watch your site sink - sink. Ohhhhhhh ....Jingle links, jingle links, jingle all the way. Oh what fun it used to be to buy paid links all day – hey!Jingle links, jingle links, jingle all the way....If Google could I know they would just wish us the hell away.From all of us at Alliance-Link and The Link Spiel - Happy Holidays!Visit the new and improved Link Spiel at www.linkspiel.com
» 17 Dec 2008, 11:24 am

Guilty (in a good way) By Link AssociationAn article in our local newspaper caught my eye today; it was a short piece on how the public relations folks in a neighboring County were going to offer a variety of new programming on their school and government cable channels. It also pointed out how the school system was using YouTube to host its video's and had plans to add more.My link spidey senses got all tingly as the ideas whirled in my head; I immediately started thinking about the opportunities I could take advantage of on local access cable. I headed over to the County site to see how and where to submit video content and found this on the Production Request page: All York County Government and York County School Division offices, departments, agencies, governing bodies, boards
» 17 Nov 2008, 12:30 am

Get In Touch With Your Inner Link SelfWe don't talk much about surveys when we discuss link building, probably because a lot of webmasters feel their keyword lists should suffice as research when they're trolling for links. But really - your keyword lists don't tell you about people's loyalties or personal preferences which is what you need to know before engaging in the more promotional link building.From my experience, people like to have packaged solutions, they want specific tactics and the sites to use them on. I think that's why directory submissions are so popular and the center of so many link discussions. People can wrap their heads around the whole process because it's a no-brainer.Find directory, qualify, pay for submission, submit. Bam, one-way link in place. Easy p
» 30 Oct 2008, 8:14 am

Friends And Photos From SMBUHere's a bunch of photos from the last Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference in Columbus Ohio. It was a great show and I enjoyed being part of it.This is Diane Aull (Torka) and I at the COSI charity dinner the night before the conference started.Rachel Phillips of Search Engine Guide and Diana Adams from Pole Position Marketing.Matt McGee and IChristine Churchill in one of her sessions talking about keywords.Rachel Phillips, Irma and David Wallace who all apparantely coordinated wardrobes. Robert Clough and Jennifer Laycock of Search Engine Guide. Along with Rachel and Vickie Evans (Jen's mom) they did a great job putting this conference together :)Michael Stebbins and Matt McGee. Mouths open and in awe of something witty I said. (c
» 3 Oct 2008, 9:02 pm

Who Knew Martha Stewart Was A Link Building Role Model?If you’re planning to attend Search Marketing Expo East 2008 in New York October 6-8th, stop by one of the linking sessions and say hello.I'll be on three panels; Link Building Bootcamp, External Linking Tactics and Tools Glorious Tools where I'll be doing what else... link tools!If you still need to register I’d be more than happy to share my SMX Speakers’ discount which is $150 off the all-access pass. Whoo hoo!! Just holler!That's right, a clear no link required freebie. No request for a link, no requirement for anchor text. Just a promo code for $150 bucks. Unlike our friends at Martha Stewart.com, we're not asking for a thing in order to get the freebie.Isn't that great? Yeah we know the freebie isn't coming out of our pockets bu
» 2 Oct 2008, 5:29 pm

Cover Your Link Ass etThere's been a couple of articles written on what to look for when hiring a link builder, one was done by my good friend Justilien Gaspard and the other by Sugarrae. Both give excellent practical advice to follow if you're hiring someone/firm to do your link work....The rest of this article has been moved to the new link building blog the Link Spiel. It can be found here http://www.linkspiel.com/2008/09/cover-your-link-ass-et/Visit the new and improved Link Spiel at www.linkspiel.com
» 25 Sep 2008, 9:08 am

Sir, Would You Like Fries With Those Links?Recently in several SEO forums I noticed a number of threads discussing ways to find and build "economical" links. The forum participants wanted to know how they could initiate "safe" reciprocal linking as well as "fast" submissions to free article directories. They reasoned these tactics were worth doing because both linking methods were "economical" and "easy" to use.I understand some linking techniques can be expensive, tedious to implement and extremely time consuming, but tying your online business success to linking tactics deemed "easy", "fast" and "cheap" seems counter-productive. If you limit your linking to low-cost tactics or look at the practice as "link building" instead of "marketing for links" you're almost guaranteed to fail
» 28 Aug 2008, 8:30 am

Using Tip Jars For LinksI read a Sphinn today titled "Seth Godin Wants to Cheat Advertisers With Fake Clicks" and thought - yikes! Suggesting people click on adsense as a reward is stupid for lots of reasons but especially stupid on a link building level.Clicking adsense might get the blogger a little money (or no money if he gets banned) but he/she will never know it's coming from YOU. But hitting a tip jar ensures the blogger knows exactly who the donation is coming from. If you're interested in guest blogging or having the blogger review your products, donating to his/her tip jar is a great way to get attention to your cause. Forget clicking the adsense, drop a tip. It might get you a link.Visit the new and improved Link Spiel at www.linkspiel.com
» 25 Aug 2008, 11:35 am

I'll Take Links And 11 Gold Medals PleaseI read about Morgan Freeman being involved in an auto accident last week and his subsequent surgery so I was pretty surprised to hear him congratulate Michael Phelps on his record number of gold medals in the commercial below. Did the man do the voice over from his hospital bed? Highly unlikely which means VISA taped this spot when Mr. Freeman did his other commercials knowing there was a very good chance Michael Phelps was going to blow everyone out of the water and make Olympic Gold History.This VISA spot will forever be branded as the commercial vehicle associated with Michael Phelp's Olympic accomplishment, it launched the congratulations heard around the world! There's no price tag for that. Smart smart Visa, thinking ahead pays off.D
» 13 Aug 2008, 1:02 pm