aimClear

Neutered SEOs, PPC, Google Sheep, & Paid Links Gone UndergroundPPC and organic search alike serve classic functions in the marketing mix. However Google is effectually forcing many advertisers into buying more AdWords PPC by systematically setting out to neuter SEOs, who are increasingly going underground. We all know Google’s been eviscerating organic paid link-building tactics which historically have been a vital component of [...]
» 28 Jun 2008, 7:32 pm

aimClear Interview on Webmaster Radio “Webcology” This AfternoonCheck out WebmasterRadio.fm today at 2pm eastern for this week’s edition of Webcology, featuring an interview with aimClear. [podcast here] Join hosts Jim Hedger and Dave Davies as they explore the ecosystem of the Internet, interview high profile guests and weigh in on current issues in the Web Marketing world. Dave is also CEO of Beanstalk Search [...]
» 26 Jun 2008, 8:32 am

Introducing Miami Ad School to Our Search Marketing Community“SEO Jobs” is becoming an ever so popular query. Reciprocally challenges mount in recruiting and/or growing uber-sharp-as-as-tack search employees. We found a global pocket of next-gen craftsman quietly honing their skills at Miami Ad School. With creative academic outposts (some workspaces crafted of stainless steel and 100 year knotty timber) rock star teachers [...]
» 21 Jun 2008, 11:01 am

Accessibility, Usability, Findability & SEOSo, I decided to wrap up SES Toronto 2008 with a seminar on accessibility, usability and SEO. First up was Jane Matz Hayes, an Information Designer at Web Feat. Jane got us all started with the concept of “findability,” which she defined as the ease with which a particular item [...]
» 19 Jun 2008, 11:06 am

Searcher Moms & Their Golden TriangleWednesday was an all around Enlightening morning at Search Engine Strategies Toronto 2008, as Pavan Lee, Research Manager for Microsoft discussed Searcher Moms and their ever growing importance on the internet. Mothers (particularly mine) are not only wonderful, but lets face it they run the planet! Moms steer the majority of household buying decisions particularly [...]
» 19 Jun 2008, 3:15 am

Linkbait, PR, Outreach & Evolving Tactics“Linkbait” is becoming an integrated PR strategy and Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder of SEO- PR provided all with powerful real life examples of linkbait success stories this afternoon at SES Toronto, 2008. Greg began by pointing out that skeptics of linkbait claim that while it is possible to to fool people once, doing it twice [...]
» 18 Jun 2008, 6:13 am

Get Found! Practical Local Search @ SESAt SES Toronto Local Search, while all the rage, is a hard nut to crack. Local search has many practical business applications that will help interested searchers find you close to home. Ian White, CEO of Urban Mapping got the party started by explaining the search pie and it’s implications. 40% of all search queries are [...]
» 18 Jun 2008, 4:15 am

Twitter-Expert Tweople Teach SES CrowdTwitter is all the rage, sweeping communities and enthralling legions of online leader & follower “tweople.” Micro-bloggers tweet conferences, moms play-by-play bake chocolate cakes whilst making corporate connections and dads (like me) organize soccer teams. Brand defenders utilize the power of internal linking to monopolize the SERPs. This panel featured some of the world’s authority Twitter [...]
» 17 Jun 2008, 2:13 pm

SES Toronto: Essential Return To BasicsThe word on the street is that Search is all business all the time. Rapid change while good, underscores the need to get “Back to Basics”. While many recent developments in search are important to understand and harness both Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder of SEO-PR , and Kevin Ryan VP, Global Content Director of [...]
» 17 Jun 2008, 1:17 pm

SES Toronto 2008: State Of The Art SearchNext week search industry thought leaders from around the globe will converge for Canada’s premier annual SEM conference, Search Engine Strategies Toronto 2008. Show organizers Andrew Goodman and SES Global Content Director Kevin Ryan have put together a dandy 2 day, 3 track and specialized half day training sessions program which promises to be state [...]
» 14 Jun 2008, 4:37 am

Ask the SEO Guru

The World's Longest On-Going Circular DebateQuestion for the Week of June 28th, 2008 What don't you trust about SEO (search engine optimization)? ... and why? Someone at Linkedin asked this questions AGAIN! www.linkedin.com/answers/marketing-sales/advertising-promotion/internet-marketing/MAR_ADP_INM/257887-517478?split_page=2 For 11 years I've seen this single question and ensuing circular debate asked over and over and over and always with the exact same outcome. No winners on either side of the argument. Surely I can't be the only one who wonders why there is NEVER an answer if the same questions gets asked again and again. If  any of us truly longed for logic and the rule of reason to dictate the direction of our industry going forward as a profession, then doesn't it seem st
» 29 Jun 2008, 2:58 pm

Kudos to SEO-ScoopI meant to say something about this quite sometime back and it just slipped my mind but I believe a little cyber pat on the back is in order for Donna Fontenot and SEO-Scoop http://www.seo-scoop.com I guess i first realized that Donna was a notch above most SEO bloggers when i realized the effort she put in to publish the post Hundreds of SEO Interviews. http://www.seo-scoop.com/2006/08/25/75-seo-interviews/ That list was not scraped or borrowed. That was an original idea that she was willing to put her own elbow grease to and offered up a valuable resource to the online marketing community and the web in general. I've always believed she deserved a LOT more credit for that effort than she ever got and I feel remiss in not mentioning it
» 23 Jun 2008, 2:18 pm

SEO IS DEAD --- Or Is It?Question for the Week of June 15th, 2008 Hey guru, there is a lot of controversy over at sphinn about whether or not SEO is dead. What do you think? Is seo history? ***************************************** I assume you are referring to the sphinn post at http://sphinn.com/story/52207. I followed that to the article at Search Engine Journal http://www.searchenginejournal.com/false-prophecy-onsite-seo-will-be-history/7092/  and then that lead me to the post at Marketing Pilgrim by Asif Anwar named 13 Prophecies of Internet Marketing The first prophecy in the list of 13 was titled Prophecy #1: Onsite Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will be History. As to be expected this set off the heated round of posts at Sphinn. Persona
» 16 Jun 2008, 10:01 pm

What's the Point of Blogging Anyway?What's the Point of Blogging Anyway? I probably ask myself that question just about every time I sit down and get ready to write a post. Most of the time I'm so busy I feel like a one-eyed dog in a sausage factory and I don't know which way to turn. Most days it's very difficult to stop the whirlwind that is an SEO's life and focus on a single topic long enough to write something that I feel offers something useful, informative, educational or at least entertaining. From the first day I slid in an AOL disc that I got in the mail, (now those guys knew how to spam!), and found out what a chat room was, I knew that once you hit that enter button that you were no longer in control of your own words. I knew you couldn't take back anythin
» 2 Jun 2008, 8:50 am

What Are the Important Indicators to Watch Early On?Question for the Week of May 29th, 2008 I had a drive by comment on my last post today and I felt that it is a good enough question that it should be a topic and not just a reply. It is something that I feel doesn’t get discussed nearly enough in the seo community so this is my chance to do more than just complain about it. This comment was made in reference to my last post about an interview I gave last week.  Interview is here Eric Enge @ Stone Temple And the post is here Page Rank - where it's been and where it's going Here’s the question: >Execute the strategy and watch the numbers.< It occurs to me that at the heart of watching the numbers is the need to demonstrate to the client a positive return on investm
» 29 May 2008, 11:11 pm

Page Rank - where it's been and where it's goingI was honored this past week when I was asked for an interview by Eric Enge www.stonetemple.com/blog/.  I did my best to try add value to Eric’s site and good name as a token of my appreciation and I certainly wouldn’t want to do anything to steal his thunder. However I realize that his readers aren’t necessarily my readers and there was one question in particular that I wanted to make sure and share with my readers. So I hope I’m not breaking any kind of secret blogger’s code of etiquette by posting one out of the 10 questions I answered for Eric. If I am I do apologize. Question for the Week of May 20th, 2008  You have been doing online traffic development and link building for a long time guru.  How has this
» 20 May 2008, 7:03 pm

How Many Keywords Should Your SEO Be Targetting?Question for the Week of May 12th, 2008 Yesterday I had a question from a client asking how many keywords we will target for each project. It reminded me that out of all the questions I get that illustrate a need for better understanding of how an SEO process works, this is one of the top 5. I think of all the things I could discuss to the benefit of my readers, answering this question will do the most good for the most people with the least words spent. So, here is the question and my response in italics. ************************************* We would like to target at least 25 keywords for each client.  When I first spoke with you Guru, this is how I understood it and that is how we were doing it with our previous SEO comp
» 12 May 2008, 2:30 am

Back In The USAI’m back in the land of the free and the home of the brave. And I’m already missing Samosas and Chana Puri. It is a very strange thing living on two continents. After spending 7 months of the last 10 in India, and the fact that is where my business is now, my head seems a bit confused as to where home is and where I’m visiting.  Oddly enough, I feel as out-of-place in Oklahoma City now as I felt my first month in Ahmedabad. It doesn’t help that our business there is growing very fast and the excitement is taking hold and I want to be there to enjoy it. It also doesn’t help that I have now become addicted to chana puri and finding Punjabi food in Oklahoma is about as easy as finding a street address in India.  I’ll
» 11 May 2008, 6:14 am

What To Do When You Run Out of Link Building IdeasQuestion for the Week of April 25th, 2008 The question came up over at Web Pro World about what to do when you run out of link building ideas. Among the usual comments about writing articles and news release was this from Peter (IMC): "Link building is just a technical term that shouldn't be a real objective."                                                                                                                                    He goes on to say that people should concentrate on marketing and forget link building. That may be fine in the long run, but some sites can't wait that long. Is
» 27 Apr 2008, 5:35 am

Why SEO Ethical Standards Won't Work.Question for the Week of April 20th, 2008 There is a discussion over at WebProWorld about setting standards for SEO. http://www.webproworld.com/search-engine-optimization-forum/68100-do-we-need-search-engine-optimization-standards.html What are you views on this, O, Mighty Guru? (I think I know, but could you tell us anyway?) ******************************************** There can be no standards set for SEO anymore than there could be standards set for lawyers calling themselves, JO's, (judge optimizers), or mechanics calling themselves RO's (road optimizers), chefs calling themselves TO's (tableware optimizers), or carpenters calling themselves HO's, (hammer optimizers) or ------I could go on for a long time but I think
» 20 Apr 2008, 11:07 pm

BlogStorm

Mobile Search: Why link based algorithms are uselessPeople searching on the normal web version of Google are given a list of results matching their query. In a simple terms these results are ranked according to the number (and quality) of other websites that have voted for them using links.
» 4 Jul 2008, 3:52 am

How to make your website mobile friendlyMaking sure your website is mobile phone friendly should be a priority for any business that wants to be found on the mobile web.
» 4 Jul 2008, 3:21 am

Introduction to Mobile SEOMobile SEO is quite a confusing term. I've been around the SEO industry for years and am involved in mobile application development but still the term is confusing.
» 4 Jul 2008, 2:35 am

How to use the Digg Recommendation Engine to your advantageDigg is about to make some fundamental changes to the way stories are displayed in the time between submission and either being made popular or expiring.
» 1 Jul 2008, 2:14 am

Good news for SEOs, Flash is now indexableFlash sites are, in general, some of the worst performing sites on the web. They usually have a pitiful amount of search traffic and out of the visitors that do manage to find the site 50% of them will decide that they would rather leave again than bother to watch the intro and click though into the main site.
» 1 Jul 2008, 1:09 am

Primark in the virtual dockPrimark is this week’s corporate baddie after the BBC’s Panorama exposed its suppliers outsourcing clothes production to child workers in Indian refugee camps.
» 27 Jun 2008, 8:16 am

Why does The Times have a PageRank penaltyDavid Eaves has published an interesting post showing 5 really high authority sites that appear to have a PageRank "penalty".
» 26 Jun 2008, 1:32 pm

How to use Google Alerts to find out if your site gets hackedEvery month thousands of websites get hacked into and have hidden links inserted into the pages by people wanting their spam sites to rank highly in the search engines.
» 26 Jun 2008, 2:16 am

A look at the Digg “Story Deserves Freshness” algorithmGoogle uses an innovative algorithm called Query Deserves Freshness or QDF to make sure that new pages are given top rankings for queries that see a sudden spike in traffic.
» 25 Jun 2008, 9:22 am

SpyFu Launches in the UK get 50% offSpyFu the competitor analysis and keyword research tool has launched in the UK this week and Blogstorm readers can get 50% off.
» 24 Jun 2008, 9:17 am

Bruce Clay

SMX Advanced 2008: Give It Up[Looks around, makes sure it's safe to reveal secret squirrel SEO information.] Okay, kids, it's July 3rd. That means it has officially been a month since the Give It Up session that occurred at SMX Advanced 2008. The embargo has lifted and now I can speak about it. If only...
» 3 Jul 2008, 2:00 pm

It's Almost Friday RecapSince everyone's off tomorrow for the July 4th holiday, you get your Friday Recap a day early. Lucky you! [But seriously, how the heck did it become July already? Wasn't it February last week? Moving on.] Meet Tutu's Hawaiian Ice Cream Shack. They make giant snow cones here in Simi...
» 3 Jul 2008, 11:59 am

Flying Couch to Fly Again!Last year we asked for your assistance in helping Kent Couch find his amazing flying balloon chair and video camera and you did! His 2007 flight took him on an awesome nine hour, two hundred mile tour across Oregon before he had to touch back down. For most people that's...
» 2 Jul 2008, 6:36 pm

Search HeadlinesAsk.com Kills AskCity, Continues To Disappoint I has a story. My best friend from high school is a giant Google fanboy. I was once convinced that one of his favorite pastimes is to search for juicy Google news and then IM me the link surrounded by smiley faces and mocking...
» 2 Jul 2008, 1:05 pm

What Is Your Company Branded On?Over at ClickZ today, Dave Evans talks about Twitter and how they've used failing as a brand strategy. He comments that despite the massive downtime, their penchant for taking away our most loved site features (How do you get rid of replies? Srsly?), and as competitors arise around them (Plurk,...
» 2 Jul 2008, 11:45 am

Don't Build Your Web Site In FlashI'd like you to do me a favor. Please disregard everything you may have read this morning on Search Engine Land, Matt Cutts' blog and even on the Official Google Blog. Flash is still evil; please don't use it to design your entire Web site. No, really. Don't. I think...
» 1 Jul 2008, 11:51 am

Weekend UpdateSEO Newsletter Hitting Inboxes Today! It's the last day of the month which means two very important things: Payday and SEO Newsletter day. Huzzah! Today's edition of the SEO Newsletter features expanded commentary on two subjects we've previously written about as blog posts. First, Virginia Nussey will tell you everything...
» 30 Jun 2008, 5:51 pm

Bloglines Borked?Sigh. Oh, Bloglines, why must you fail me so? When I logged in to check my feeds, this is what you give me? That's one, TWO panes listing my feeds. All those times I've asked for more features, that's not what I was talking about. I meant features like "faster...
» 30 Jun 2008, 4:08 pm

Friday Recap: The Birthday EditionHuzzah, it's Friday! And more importantly, it's my Almost Birthday (tomorrow is the big day). Susan and Virginia have already spoiled me with bagels, coffee, balloons, lunch and a mystery present. Birthdays are delicious, aren't they? If you were wondering what to get me for my birthday, I want this....
» 27 Jun 2008, 3:52 pm

My Thoughts On Ask.com &amp; Core SearchOh my poor disgraced Ask.com bag. I wish I could rescue you from the back of my closet but I still can't bring myself to look at you. I didn't intend to blog about the recent phone call I had with Ask CEO Jim Safka and the PR guru...
» 26 Jun 2008, 12:57 pm

SEO HeadlinesSearch Engine Optimization Can't Be Rushed Birthday boy Lee Odden started a great conversation with his post about the importance of staying on top of your search engine optimization campaign and taking the time to do it right. We really can't stress this enough. SEO is not a one time...
» 25 Jun 2008, 4:05 pm

Dave Naylor

Would you buy a HTC Diamond ?let’s have a quick straw poll here, If you had decided that you are going to buy a sim free HTC diamond, and someone sends you two sites to buy from both are the same price, same offer really, but one site is covered in adsense and one isn’t. are You like me, does Adsense turn [...]
» 4 Jul 2008, 3:49 am

Into the Cloud I goThis is pretty damn Awesome, I have only been playing on it for a little while now but Live Mesh “I’m lovin it”, The syncing of Laptops, Work PC’s and Home Computers, is soooo easy, at present it’s just me and Dan that are playing with it in the office, but I can see [...]
» 2 Jul 2008, 2:05 am

Website Builds and MarketingDaveN and I were chatting yesterday about the fundamental aspects the should be incorporated with any website design. What prompted this discussion was the numerous web design companies out there that charge a premium for their design services and seem to purposefully overlook even basic Seo properties of the site with a view to adding [...]
» 1 Jul 2008, 3:34 am

How Google could catch you buying links  submit_url = "http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/how-google-could-catch-you-buying-links.html"; ok if I was Matt Cutts this is what I would do .. ok first things first we know Matt Cutts does not like people buying links we also now that Matt Cutts said they use cookies and Ip addresses to help them catch spam.. So what I would do  is run a search [...]
» 30 Jun 2008, 10:28 am

How to market a 15ft Lime Green Chesterfield SofaIf you can remember back in January I blogged about the design side of Bronco, launching a Chesterfield Sofa site, in that post I mentioned one on how to help them sell a 15ft Lime Green Chesterfield Sofa .. (which I can handle OK ) more on that later, but if you need a 15ft [...]
» 30 Jun 2008, 8:26 am

Youtube Bugupdate this is a YouTube bug pointed out by Barry at SEROUNDTABLE Google removes informational Videos on Google Privacy There used to be a Video on YouTube href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLgJYBRzUXY”>here, it was on the official Google channel and it was Maile Ohye, explaining how Google uses your browser cookie.. But what’s worse is it looks like Google have removed all videos [...]
» 30 Jun 2008, 3:24 am

Google Cookie no thankyouI have had a few emails about the what to do with the “Google Cookie” issues been used in logs, so here is a quick tip. Use firefox clear you cache : To clear your cache for Mozilla Firefox: Open Firefox. Clear your browser’s cache. For Firefox version 2.0: Click Tools > Options > Advanced. Click the Network tab. Click Clear Now [...]
» 29 Jun 2008, 1:13 pm

Google using Search Logs for Quailtysubmit_url = "http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/google-using-search-logs-for-quailty.html"; I’M trying to workout why Google have come forward with this, quote from Google : Data from search logs is one tool we use to fight webspam and return cleaner and more relevant results. Logs data such as IP address and cookie information make it possible to create and use metrics that measure the different [...]
» 28 Jun 2008, 7:13 am

SEO destroyed Google for SEO’swell I’m a SEO, so I should know and this is how the internet was destroyed. Quite a few years ago now before I became the SEO I am, I used to be like everyone else, I would go to a Search Engine, type in what I wanted clicked a few blue links and either bought [...]
» 28 Jun 2008, 6:31 am

How to Introduce a New Cat to your Old catOk for all of those that are thinking that this is just a referral to my popular “shaven pussy” post it can’t be further from the truth. 9 days ago me and Becky adopted a little black cat, from a friend of Rory (my hardware engineer). We already have a 13 – 14 year old cat [...]
» 26 Jun 2008, 3:31 pm

Google Inside

Wordpress.com Shifts into High GearAutomattic’s Matt Mullenweg made the announcement today that Wordpress.com now has the ability to offer Google Gears integration, making the Wordpress.com experience notably better. Here is a short excerpt from Matt’s post about the new integration. On WordPress.com it is used to store all images and other web page components from the admin area to the user’s [...]
» 3 Jul 2008, 11:50 am

Google, Old School StyleGoogle launched a blog yesterday that will be dedicated to all of the traditional media that Google lets advertisers manage and advertise through. The part I find odd is why Google is still pushing this traditional media so much still. With projections of online ad spending of being upwards of $50Bn by 2012, old fashion [...]
» 2 Jul 2008, 4:48 am

Google News: Tips for Successful CrawlingThis article is coming directly from Google’s Help for Publishers: Tips for Successful Crawling, but I’m adding some emphasis on the points I think people often overlook. Tips for Successful Crawling Below are listed common crawling issues related to the article body that Googlebot extracts from the HTML page. You can also find some tips on to [...]
» 1 Jul 2008, 7:15 am

Subject: We are Retiring AdSense ReferralsEarlier tonight, I received an email from Google notifying publishers that AdSense Referrals will no longer be served through AdSense. Well that pretty much sucks. I mean, great, yeah, hopefully with the new platform you will be able to use direct links instead of being forced to use the javascript. But the downside to all of this is [...]
» 30 Jun 2008, 9:42 pm

Who is Going to Leave Google Next?Throughout the past twelve months, we have seen quite a few executives and non-executives leave the company. The trend started when George Reyes announced that he would be retiring as the CFO of Google. At that time, August 2007, Google stock was priced at $506.40 and it presently sits at ~$530.00. Just three months later, [...]
» 30 Jun 2008, 11:49 am

Funny Ads Friday: Don’t be a Dummy, Upgrade!Welcome back to another week of Funny Ads Friday! Today, we bring you this funny ad that caught our eye high up in the sky. Obviously, if you’re not a dummy, you’re flying first, right? Well, almost. Pretty funny that they even begin to make that comparison or association that dumb people fly coach. So because [...]
» 27 Jun 2008, 6:24 am

Google Trifecta WebinarGoogle is going to be putting on a webinar/seminar that includes the Google Trifecta. Google Analytics, Google Website Optimizer, and Google Webmaster Tools. The Google Webmaster team is putting on The Google Trifecta, including Webmaster Tools, Analytics, and Website Optimizer. Click here TITLE: The Google Trifecta: Webmaster Tools, Analytics, Website Optimizer DATE: Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 TIME: 9:00 [...]
» 26 Jun 2008, 9:45 am

Patrick Pichette to Join Google Executive TeamStraight from the GooglePress printers outbox, MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (June 25, 2008) – Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced that Patrick Pichette will be named Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Most recently, Mr. Pichette served as President of Operations at Bell Canada, a leading global communications company. Image courtesy of www.bce.ce Mr. Pichette brings nearly 20 [...]
» 25 Jun 2008, 1:14 pm

Google APIsGoogle offers a lot of APIs to developers. So what are some of the APIs available to developers right now? Google Apps APIs Google Base Data API Blogger Data API Google Calendar Data API Google Code Search Data API Google Contacts Data API Google Health Data API Google Notebook Data API Google Spreadsheets Data API Picasa Web Albums Data API Google Documents List Data API Webmaster [...]
» 25 Jun 2008, 8:17 am

AdSense Optimization TipsThe Australian AdSense team published this video about how to optimize AdSense ads, but it’s still missing something. There are a lot of optimization tools which us, as publishers, really need. Such as, which ads are actually getting clicked on? Which colors are performing better? How many ads were displayed when an ad [...]
» 24 Jun 2008, 12:25 pm

John Battelle - Searchblog

CM Summit NYC VideosIn case you missed the CM Summit in NYC and want to see what happened, there were some great moments, and they are up on the site now. Don't miss Rich Silverstein, or Beth Comstock, or all the other goodness.......
» 3 Jul 2008, 4:38 pm

Open SearchI am thinking hard about the impact of open search - the idea that a major search index becomes totally open to developers, an open API, etc. that allows search to become a true platform that people can develop on top of. I'd love your thoughts on this....writing this...
» 3 Jul 2008, 12:04 am

Twitter v. BlogSomehow, this felt fine on Twitter: My Mac FAILED. After downloading a new OS (560 MBS!!!!) Rummaged around and found a four year old OSX disc...and MAGIC. It worked! But wrong on this site. The magic was truly ... magic. I booted off the CD I found, it checked...
» 2 Jul 2008, 11:47 pm

More Fun for Yahoo, DOJ Moves InThe DOJ is reviewing the Google/Yahoo deal. Expected, to be sure, but still, not a lot of fun for a place that has not had tons of fun lately....
» 2 Jul 2008, 9:40 am

The Passing of a LegendClay Felker, a legend in magazines and journalism, died today. I had to honor to work with Clay Felker for a few years, making magazines and websites as part of my time at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He was in poor health for much of the...
» 1 Jul 2008, 1:45 pm

Powerset Goes to MSFTMore here......
» 1 Jul 2008, 12:36 pm

Flash Is SearchableThis is a Big Deal. Now, I want to know: how will Flash files be ranked? Any ideas? Adobe is a major competitor to Microsoft in this front. How will Microsoft make Silverlight searchable? And will Google index all both equally? (My take: Oh yes it will. If it...
» 30 Jun 2008, 10:18 pm

Google's Affiliate Network: This Is A Product Launch? No, It Is Not.Google rebranded its Performics affiliate network, which it acquired as part of Doubleclick, as "Google Affiliate Network," apparently sometime over the past few days. I say "apparently" because I can't find any actual Google press release on the subject. It was blogounced, apparenty: Announced on Performics' blog, and possibly...
» 30 Jun 2008, 9:38 pm

It's All In The QuestionKevin Kelly makes the point, riffing on Chris's ideas about the "end of theory."...
» 30 Jun 2008, 11:59 am

Second Day Story on Ad PlannerMediaWeek reports: After taking several days to digest the news, the digital media world has reached the conclusion that the launch of Google’s new media planning product isn’t likely to bring upheaval to the Web metrics business. And it probably doesn’t represent the feared first step towards total advertising—and...
» 30 Jun 2008, 9:26 am

Sergey Leaves Google (OK, not THAT Sergey...)From Dare's blog, a posit that folks are leaving Google for Microsoft, driven by his anecdotal observations and blog post from a guy named Sergey Solyanik: So why did I leave? There are many things about Google that are not great, and merit improvement. There are plenty of silly...
» 29 Jun 2008, 10:37 pm

Joost de Valk - SEO Blog

Annoyances and weird stuffSo somebody copied virtually all the code from my robots meta plugin, put it in a "Platinum SEO" plugin, and conveniently forgot to attribute the code to me... The GPL isn't that hard to deal with, but somehow, people manage to fuck even that up. I've emailed them and posted a formal complaint to the [...]
» 27 Jun 2008, 1:52 pm

How to destroy your reputation with 1 postGino Goossens is teaching those who can read Dutch just how to do that... Ok, I should explain that a bit more for those who can't read Dutch: Gino did a post on how to make RFP's for web analytics. In itself it wasn't bad, but he felt he had to comment about just about [...]
» 25 Jun 2008, 2:16 pm

Danny Sullivan speaks at SES San Jose!I'm in Hamburg for SES, which is btw, a great show, with about 350 people attending. We had a great night yesterday starting with the launch party of Timo Aden and Lennart Paulsen's new company Trakken GMBH! During that party we did a show of Webmasters on the Roof. Kevin Ryan of SES was in that show, and [...]
» 24 Jun 2008, 4:08 am

Crawl Rate TrackerMy friend Patrick Altoft and I were talking about his crawl rate tracker plugin yesterday, discussing some possible new features. He mentioned that it didn't work on 2.5, more specifically, that the install failed on 2.5. Luckily, Mezza had e-mailed him a fix, I tested it for him and it proved to work. Next [...]
» 20 Jun 2008, 5:06 am

Winners!First of all, I want to congratulate Idealizer with winning the free ticket to SES Hamburg. He understand best what these conferences are about for Marcus, Matt and me ;). I will contact you for the details! Thx to everyone who participated, hope to see you there! There's a few other things I wanted to mention. [...]
» 19 Jun 2008, 12:42 pm

B2B SEO: Marketing strategy for specific nichesThis is a guest post by my Onetomarket colleague Erik-Jan Bulthuis. You'll be seeing more guest posts from him and other people in the future! Business to business marketing is a strange thing. In some ways, it cannot be compared to business to consumer marketing: The market is much smaller The products and services are more complex Sales take [...]
» 19 Jun 2008, 12:05 pm

Reminder: win a Ticket for SES HamburgWe're deciding tonight, so if you still want to enter, leave your three reasons to go to SES Hamburg here! Text Verified by WhiteSmoke Software. This is a post from Joost de Valk’s SEO Blog. If you want to track how applying Joost's tips is increasing your rankings, consider rank tracker, it's the best rank tracker out [...]
» 18 Jun 2008, 1:45 am

My redesign: the homepageQuite a few people have been e-mailing me how I managed to get my homepage design done in WordPress, especially with the different featured blocks. So, since this site is all about sharing, let me show you! This is all done in the index.php file of my theme. The first block, the intro, is just hard [...]
» 17 Jun 2008, 2:17 pm

WordPress GoodiesA small update to say I've fixed one plugin and added another resource for WordPress fanatics. First of all, I used to think that with the release of WordPress 2.3 and 2.5, the need for my Permalink Redirect plugin had gone away. However, I noticed that some friends of mine had loads of indexed URL's [...]
» 16 Jun 2008, 1:50 pm

TwitterCounter chicklet!Fellow Dutchman Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten has created a new service called TwitterCounter, a nice little service to show you your followers over time and, more importantly in my opinion: it gives you a nice little chicklet, FeedBurner style, to show off your followers, check out mine: I'd say go get one for yourself, and show [...]
» 13 Jun 2008, 3:39 am

Learning SEO Basics

FireFox Sets Guinness World Record!Woohoo! Just got this in the mail. Gotta love FireFox! We did it! We set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloads in 24 hours. With your help we reached 8,002,530 downloads.
» 2 Jul 2008, 7:28 pm

We Optimize What?I stopped by my buds place (SEOpsCentre) today. Found this so I thought I’d share. From “I’m Not An SEO (Can I be an SRO instead?)” - “I don’t Optimize Search Engines.  That’s what Matt Cutts and the rest of the algorithm-tweakers in the Googleplex do.  If anyone deserves to be called Search Engine Optimizers, it’s them [...]
» 2 Jul 2008, 4:47 pm

iHateClick on either image to get full view. (from my Live journal blog)
» 2 Jul 2008, 3:00 pm

Ethical Marketing - Myth or Reality?This is a blockquoted article that further details my agitation with those that use ethics as a marketable manipulation tool. This clarifies how wide spread lack of ethics is, especially with those that love to ‘talk’ about ethics (from both sides of their mouth) definition of blockquote: A large quote in a document is usually inserted as a [...]
» 2 Jul 2008, 8:05 am

Consumers Union - Non Profit Publisher of Consumer ReportsWhat is The Consumers Union and what can it do for you? “Consumers Union (CU) is an expert, independent, nonprofit organization, [...]
» 1 Jul 2008, 6:59 am

On Page SEO“Is your On Page SEO strong enough? Honing your on page factors, sculpting page rank, funneling link weight and consolidating anchor text is only one facet of content optimization. Search engines assess your pages first to determine your sites relevance and how your pages measure up to existing pages in the search index on the topic.” Read [...]
» 30 Jun 2008, 10:00 am

Michael Moore&#8217;s Activism Against HMO&#8217;s - SickoIf you think I’M opinionated, you ought to hear Michael Moore and his antics. I watched one of his documentaries over the weekend, “Sicko“, and it inspired me to buy every one of his films. He’s witty, he’s opinionated, and determined to uncover injustices. “Sicko” explains the foul play behind HMO’s and the detriment to [...]
» 30 Jun 2008, 6:50 am

The Two Faces of the Ethical CoinIs Li Evans talking out of both sides of her mouth? Is she discussing ethics vigor because she uses it as a means of gain? Do loyal readers and followers equal job security for her? When I think of her and many others, the first thing that comes to mind is “Greenwashing“. “attempting to preserve and expand their markets [...]
» 27 Jun 2008, 7:59 pm

Website Evaluation Tool - SEOgroupI noticed an avatar in this sites MyBlogLog widget that I am not used to seeing, so I visited their profile. It led me to the MyBlogLog profile for SEO group. I then visited their main site, seogroup, and the seogroup blog. I dropped a comment on one of their previous posts, “Search Marketing & SEO in [...]
» 27 Jun 2008, 1:38 pm

Ways For Nonprofits to Communicate OnlineRachel Fisher submitted this story to our FriendFeed nptech Room (non profit tech). “Online communication changes quickly. It’s hard to keep up and to know what will really help your NPO. Here is our list of the current top ten ways your NPO can communicate using the internet. We hope to post How-To articles on each of [...]
» 27 Jun 2008, 12:06 pm

Uh..trying to fly [Flickr]SpostareDuro posted a photo: Maybe I ought to keep my feet on the ground? Nah...
» 28 Apr 2008, 1:58 pm

Marketing Pilgrim

Speaking in Charlotte, NC Next WeekDon’t forget to catch me at the SEO Meetup next Thursday, 7pm in Charlotte, NC. For just $35 you’ll learn Online Reputation Management in Seven Steps, as well as get to network with Charlotte’s talented search marketers. If you’re still on the fence about attending my one day Online Reputation Management Workshop in Raleigh (August 7th), the [...]
» 3 Jul 2008, 2:06 pm

Linky Extra Goodness, July 3All right, let’s face it: it’s the afternoon before a three-day weekend and your brain is already on vacation. And that’s why we’re here at linky extra goodness—a round up of the marketing news you’ll want to know come Monday. Oh nm, my bad: Googler JohnMu retracts his previous statements (mentioned yesterday) about [...]
» 3 Jul 2008, 12:43 pm

New Survey: 55% of Companies Not Prepared for Online Reputation CrisisPaul Dunay has finished his Reputation Management for New Media Survey and you can now download the report–for free! Finding useful stats on for online reputation management can be a chore, so I’m excited to get some insight into how companies are preparing, or not preparing. Some highlights include: 53% of companies are making reputation monitoring a strategic [...]
» 3 Jul 2008, 7:51 am

Pilgrim’s Picks for July 3Lots of Picks today, so let’s dive right in! Don’t get too excited when you see that Google Talk is now available for your iPhone. It’s browser-based, which means your conversation dies if you switch from Safari. In case you were wondering, Firefox did earn the world record for most downloads in a single day. Google signed an [...]
» 3 Jul 2008, 7:13 am

The Internet DIDN’T Kill the Radio Star (In Fact, It Made Him Wealthier)By Frank Reed. Here’s a quick trivia question for you. What was the first video run on MTV back in the early 80’s? It was “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles (I didn’t need to look that up and two of the Buggles, Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes, went on [...]
» 3 Jul 2008, 7:06 am

Court Orders Google to Hand Over Your YouTube Personal DataJust yesterday, I had a conversation, agreeing that the only thing that could topple Google, would be privacy. The same day, a judge presiding over the Google/Viacom case issued a court order requiring Google to turn over your personal data. The EFF reports the order requires Google to hand over YouTube’s Logging database. What’s in YouTube’s [...]
» 3 Jul 2008, 6:35 am

Last Chance for Discounted Registration to My Reputation Management WorkshopYou have only until the end of day tomorrow to register for my Online Reputation Management Workshop and get the heavily discounted rate of just $797. After July 3rd, the rate goes up! Whether you work for an online marketing/PR firm, or handle the branding for your employer, you’ll want to attend the workshop. Heck, if you’re [...]
» 2 Jul 2008, 1:48 pm

Is the Long Tail Short on Proof?By Frank Reed. An article in today’s Wall Street Journal by Lee Gomes the Long Tail theory popularized by Chris Anderson’s book “The Long Tail” in 2006 there is now a pretty prominent player saying “Wait a minute now…..is this for real?” The Harvard Business Review has published a study that questions [...]
» 2 Jul 2008, 1:37 pm

Linky Goodness, July 2It’s the first linky goodness of a new month. Hurray! More not-so-good news for Yahoo: the DOJ will reviewing the Yahoo-Google ad deal and plans to consult Y&G’s rivals. Yet another reason for MSFT to celebrate today, I guess. Webmaster Central Blog gives a little checklist of things to do before and during a reconsideration [...]
» 2 Jul 2008, 1:32 pm

Microsoft Planning Another Yahoo RunSometimes we just can’t let dead horses lie. That’s okay, neither can Microsoft. After months of more drama than a daytime soap (ahem) with the attempted merger/acquisition of Yahoo, Microsoft pulled their offer back in May. And now they’re saying, “Whoopsiedoodle. On second thought . . . we will be coming back fighting.” [...]
» 2 Jul 2008, 1:26 pm

RIP, Ask CityFirst IAC took itself apart, now Ask is slowly dismantling its cool features, too. Chris Pendleton, a Virtual Earth evangelist, has posted that Ask has dropped its own mapping features—Ask Maps, AskCity and map results integrated into their SERPs—in favor of Live Virtual Earth (Microsoft’s maps product). In some regions, the change is even more [...]
» 2 Jul 2008, 1:00 pm

Matt Cutts

How to stop junk mailI’ve been learning how to stop receiving junk mail, and I thought I’d share what I’ve learned. Reducing Junk Mail There are several services that will help you reduce your junk mail: - GreenDimes offers a free basic service, but I decided to do their $20 one-time fee because it offered a few extra things I wanted. GreenDimes [...]
» 2 Jul 2008, 10:40 am

Protect yourself: get a free credit reportI wanted to write down 3-4 easy steps to protect yourself from identity theft and help you check your free annual credit reports. Credit check options - If you haven’t checked your credit in the last year, visit the official site that lets you get a free credit report from each of the three major credit bureaus. [...]
» 1 Jul 2008, 9:05 am

Suggest what webspam should work on nextToday is July 1st, which is a special day because it marks the beginning of the second half of the year. Just in the last day or so there have been a couple pieces of good news: better indexing of Flash, and we re-wrote our “What is an SEO?” guide to improve the [...]
» 1 Jul 2008, 8:16 am

Google gets better at Flash with Adobe’s helpIf you haven’t seen the official posts, Adobe has been working to make Flash more index-able by search engines. Google has recently rolled out better code for Flash, e.g. you’re now more likely to see useful snippets on Flash pages in Google’s search results. I’m a fan of this change, and I’m a fan of Adobe [...]
» 30 Jun 2008, 11:14 pm

Free search engine optimization tips for beginnersJefferson Graham didn’t just write an article of free SEO tips — he also brought his video camera along. The result is a five minute video interview with more easy, free search engine optimization tips. Again, this is targeted at beginner SEO and small business SEO instead of advanced marketers. You can watch the video [...]
» 29 Jun 2008, 8:23 pm

Crap. My Ubuntu machine won’t bootThis sucks. On some very rare occasions, when I connect an SD card reader to my Ubuntu machine, it freezes. Normally I just reboot and everything is fine. But this time my Ubuntu machine won’t boot, and it shows a message like Starting up … Loading, please wait… kinit: name_to_dev_t(/dev/disk/by-uuid/bd656dcd-04b4-412f-a880-62a6553bd8b) = sda5(8,5) kinit: trying to resume from /dev/disk/by-uuid/bd656dcd-04b4-412f-a880-62a6553bd8b kinit: No [...]
» 26 Jun 2008, 9:30 am

Review: Kitt-In Box(In the webmaster chat last week, someone asked about my cats, so I thought I’d throw out a cat post.) A little while ago someone mentioned the Kitt-In Box. It’s like an inbox for your desk, except that it holds cats. My cat Emmy likes to hang out in box-like objects, e.g. So I decided to [...]
» 24 Jun 2008, 8:02 am

Short article of free SEO tipsJefferson Graham of USA Today stopped by the Googleplex a little while ago and we talked about SEO tips for business owners that want to run their business, not live and breathe search 24 hours a day. The result is an article of search engine optimization (SEO) advice that you could hand to any friend [...]
» 22 Jun 2008, 10:34 pm

Google webmaster chat: tons of fun!By the way, we had our second webmaster live chat yesterday. I think almost everyone had a good time. It was free for anyone to dial in, and hundreds of people showed up. Thanks to the Google presenters and everyone that asked questions or talked in the chat. I got a chance to answer lots [...]
» 20 Jun 2008, 11:37 am

Google Trends for WebsitesIf you’re a site owner, webmaster, SEO, or otherwise have an interest in website metrics, I think you’re going to like Google Trends for Websites. It’s almost as addictive to me as Google Maps is for, you know, normal people. You’re probably familiar with regular Google Trends, which lets you see trends in how [...]
» 20 Jun 2008, 11:20 am

Michael Gray - SEO Blog

Why Fast Company Won’t Exist Long Before 2016So Fast Company posted an article entitled Six Jobs That Won’t Exist in 2016. Hey Fast Company Staff get your heads out of your collective asses and stop with the paginated articles … especially when you don’t need them … if you don’t people will stop reading you and you won’t be around to see [...]
» 3 Jul 2008, 7:09 pm

Hey Robert Scoble and Seth Godin Did You Forget SomethingSo Seth Godin and Robert Scoble talk about a video by Fred. When you look at all the views of his videos he has over 45 million youtube views Scoble and Seth go on to say how the traffic numbers aren’t important and it’s the quality of the viewers. Umm hey did you guys miss that [...]
» 3 Jul 2008, 2:04 pm

Google Knows Where I LiveLast night I was using Google Maps to get directions and noticed a new feature, a camera icon located next to each of the steps on Google Maps. When I clicked on the icon I saw a picture of my house! That’s my house, the blue one on the right. That’s my gold Toyota Highlander parked [...]
» 2 Jul 2008, 12:27 am

What’s Wrong With A Universal Google IconWhen Google switched to a single universal icon a few weeks back they created problems, the icons on my bookmarks toolbar are now … (wait for it) … IDENTICAL. The last two on the right are Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Central, so I have no idea which is which. Compare that to the Google [...]
» 21 Jun 2008, 10:15 am

Google’s Two Tiered Internet World Sinks to a New LowToday Google released an new feature that gives away traffic stats and keywords for most websites on the internet. However what everyone failed to notice is that Google laid everyone else bare, naked and exposed but kept their own stats locked up and private. Here you can see the stats and keywords for my website, while [...]
» 20 Jun 2008, 5:51 pm

Hey Matt Cutts Be Fair if You Are Going After Paid LinksReally I wasn’t going to post this but since Matt Cutt’s asked people to snitch on paid links again I thought I’d bring up another case of Google’s double standard and two tiered justice. CASE A A public relations person starts working for a Bed & Breakfast in New England. The person comes up with the idea [...]
» 20 Jun 2008, 6:56 am

Michael Gray for PresidentSince Ron Paul failed to galvanize the interwebs I’m going to have to step up to the plate Sponsor:: Need help with your blog? Check out my SEO Services for information about site optimization, and content production. Related PostsMichael GrayWell some search engines seem to be having a hard time with the whole date/trust thing so let's [...]
» 10 Jun 2008, 1:54 pm

Dupe Content Google Thinks They Have It LickedSo according to the google blog they think they have the duplicate content problem under control, I remain less than convinced. Here’s my original post, but as of right now google is giving everyone but me credit (screen shot below) lets see what happens: Sponsor:: Interested in seeing your message here, contact me to find out [...]
» 9 Jun 2008, 5:02 pm

SMX Advanced 2008 RecapNow that I’m back from SMX advanced and have had a few days to catch up I’ll share my thoughts. I had some client meeting to take care of, and some interviews and videos to shoot, so I didn’t get to as many sessions as I’d like to but I’ll talk about what I did see. Microsoft [...]
» 9 Jun 2008, 1:02 am

Really Facebook You Still Don’t Get it Do YouC’mon Facebook I really thought we had moved past this It’s not that I care that you are telling everyone I bought tickets to Kung Fu Panda, it’s that you assume that I want you to by default. These programs should be opt in not opt out out. Yes I know almost nobody would do that [...]
» 8 Jun 2008, 7:45 pm

Natural SEO Blog

The Long Tail A Myth? Study Calls It Into QuestionA Wall Street Journal Article today cites a study by Anita Elberse, a marketing professor at Harvard’s business school, entitled, “Should You Invest in the Long Tail?“, which finds evidence that in the online world, consumers gravitate towards the most-popular items just as in the offline world. The Long Tail, if you don’t already know, refers [...]
» 2 Jul 2008, 10:11 am

Google Photos To Compete With Flickr?The Google Operating System blog reports that Google is likely changing the name of their Picasa photo sharing service to “Google Photos”. A few other features are due to rollout as well, including licensing options, email photo uploads, and tagging of people in pics.
» 1 Jul 2008, 9:00 am

Yellow Pages Guerilla Ad CampaignI was speaking at the Search Engine Strategies (”SES”) Conference in Toronto a couple of weeks ago, and was impressed by the YellowPages.ca booth in the exhibit hall: I’ve seen other, equally-large booths for online yellow pages companies, but this one seemed particularly attention-getting and inviting. The glowing yellow desk and the simple design made the [...]
» 30 Jun 2008, 9:27 am

Local Search Behemoth InfoSpace Cashed OutLast year when InfoSpace decided to sell off Switchboard, other directories, and their mobile services, I wondered if they were just cashing out. Yesterday’s New York Times article, “Once an Internet Giant, InfoSpace Dismantles Itself“, would appear to verify that they did indeed cash out.
» 24 Jun 2008, 8:58 am

Privacy Policy Could Be Site Quality SignalSearch engines have increasingly gotten involved in protecting endusers from hostile and intrusive elements on the internet, and they’ve also become more active in internet privacy issues as consumers are getting more educated about issues surrounding data privacy. Ask.com has tried to differentiate themselves by being progressive about communicating their data retention policy and by [...]
» 23 Jun 2008, 1:58 pm

Google Maps Introduces User Review Snippets in ListingsThe Google Lat Long Blog announced today that they’ve introduced little snippets of a user review with each business listing for which they have reviews data: (click to enlarge) To me, this seems like a bit of an experimental feature, since I tend to want to see a sampling of multiple reviews to try to get a [...]
» 10 Jun 2008, 10:49 am

Whitepages.com Acquiring Snapvine, Focuses On Community DevelopmentWhitePages.com is acquiring Snapvine, a service that allows people to associate audio files with various resources like social networks, photos, text, and blogs. Snapvine enables facilitates voice blogs, similar to podcasting, but perhaps with a little greater ease. WhitePages states on their blog that they’ll use Snapvine’s technology to provide their users with free, private voicemail [...]
» 5 Jun 2008, 12:55 pm

SMX Advanced Keynote AddressesWe’re at the SMX Advanced conference here in Seattle this week. It’s been very interesting, fun and educational. The two keynote interviews were mentionable. First on Tuesday morning, Danny Sullivan interviewed Kevin Johnson, the President of the Platform & Services Division at Microsoft: Johnson spoke about their new Live Search Cashback program (this offers rewards back to consumers [...]
» 4 Jun 2008, 11:34 am

Should Businesses Rename Themselves For Better Search Traffic?Mike Blumenthal has a great article this week, going over some aspects surrounding how businesses may opt to rename themselves for purposes of local search engine optimization within Google Maps. As he mentioned, I’d previously listed this idea in my somewhat tongue-in-cheek post on “Extreme Local Search Optimization Tactics” some time back. While my Tactics were intended [...]
» 4 Jun 2008, 11:34 am

Amazon’s Secret to Dominating SERP ResultsMany e-tailers have looked with envy at Amazon.com’s sheer omnipresence within the search results on Google. Search for any product ranging from new book titles, to new music releases, to home improvement products, to even products from their new grocery line, and you’ll find Amazon links garnering page 1 or 2 rankings on Google and [...]
» 3 Jun 2008, 1:07 am

Online Marketing Blog

Should Companies Hire Multiple Search Marketing Firms?On occasion TopRank will get calls from prospective clients that ask about hiring multiple SEO agencies in an effort to get the “best of both worlds” in terms of best practices and performance through competition. On the surface, I suppose I could see how someone might think this might make sense but in practice, it [...]
» 1 Jul 2008, 6:54 am

Rushing Your SEO Doesn’t Mean Quicker ResultsCompanies that take their search engine visibility for granted or that ride the technical SEO loophole/manipulation train often get a hard smack back to reality when their online sales disappear. Orders start to slip or fall off the map altogether and the IT team red alert phone rings off the hook with calls from [...]
» 24 Jun 2008, 1:57 pm

BIGLIST SEO Blogs Update 06/20/08Today on this fine Friday ladies and gentlemen, we have a BIGLIST SEO blogs update for you slanting a bit toward agencies but not without some flavor from Germany and the Jungle. Read on: AdCenter Community -  This is Microsoft’s official support blog for AdCenter advertisers. Mediadonis - Germany based Marcus Tandler writes about his search engine [...]
» 20 Jun 2008, 2:12 pm

SES Toronto: Web 2.0 and Search EnginesWith so many “Web 2.0″ technologies coming in to play with web design and online application development, the effect on the search engines’ ability to find, crawl and index content becomes an issue. As such, this session moderated by Kevin Ryan included deep dive advice from Chris “Silver” Smith, Lead Strategist from Netconcepts and [...]
» 20 Jun 2008, 11:57 am

SES Toronto: SEO Don’ts, Myths and ScamsIf you’ve been in the search marketing industry for any length of time, you’ve undoubtedly encountered a wide variety of conflicting or outdated advice. Since “how to” information in so many other industries is often presented as an absolute, many people look for the same kinds of static and perpetual rules with search engine [...]
» 20 Jun 2008, 10:14 am

SES Toronto: Favorite Photos PostMy first time in Toronto did not disappoint. It was brief but very busy with plenty of sessions to choose from during the day. Here is a collection of my favorite photos taken during SES Toronto this week: Matt McGowan, Joe Dolson and Todd Malicoat enjoying some pre-conference conversation Kevin Ryan getting the most out of Google’s [...]
» 19 Jun 2008, 10:45 am

SES Toronto: Deep Dive into TwitterI’m back from SES Toronto and wanted to share the presentation on Twitter with readers that weren’t at the show. Fellow presenters @davesnyder and @chriswinfield did a great job and the audience received a deep drill down into many aspects of Twitter. In the end, Twitter on it’s own and with it’s uptime issues isn’t anywhere [...]
» 19 Jun 2008, 9:06 am

PRSA Digital Impact: Tracking Social Media TrendsLast week at the PRSA Digital Impact conference I met Steve Rubel, SVP Director of Insights from Edelman Digital and famous (sometimes infamous) PR blogger at Micropersuasion. He presented “2008 Digital Trends: Open Files” which talks about the framework Edelman uses (Faint Signals, Watch List and Hallucinations for tracking digital/social media trends. Read my live blogging [...]
» 16 Jun 2008, 4:13 am

PRSA Digital Impact: Not All Blogs Are Created EqualThis panel at the PRSA Digital Impact Conference includes Heidi Sullivan and Jay Krall of Cision and Jason Falls of Doe Anderson and who writes Social Media Explorer. Heidi starts out a with a poll: How many comments for media relations? and How many have created a social profile for a client? A small number of [...]
» 10 Jun 2008, 8:50 am

Online Marketing Tips from TopRankThe TopRank team works really well together, bringing to each team meeting various areas of expertise and interest, which makes for a well-rounded environment here in our Lake Minnetonka office. We know how to play off of everyone’s strengths and ensure our clients are fully serviced based on their needs and objectives by those [...]
» 9 Jun 2008, 4:32 pm

BIGLIST SEO Blogs Update 060608I guess you could call this the “International Edition” of the BIGLIST Update of search marketing blogs as we have multiple countries represented including SEOs and PR professionals from the UK, New Zealand, Netherlands and USA. There’s plenty of flavorful writing, advice and tips so read on: Searchwritten - Netherlands based Ramon Eijkemans started this new [...]
» 6 Jun 2008, 6:05 am

Pandia Search Engine News

Clip, save and search text and images with EvernoteEvernote is a cool tool that allows you to capture information in any environment using whatever device you prefer, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere. Here's an intro to some of the features and my verdict. Evernote is a lot of fun and has potential to make the everyday lives of a lot of busy and often confused web heads a lot easier.
» 4 Jul 2008, 4:57 am

100 useful niche search enginesLaura Milligan has put up a useful list of niche search engines over at College@Home. She points out that though the general Google site is often touted as the number one search engine online, college students sometimes need more specific tools to help them uncover quality information on the Web that they can use for class [...]
» 25 Jun 2008, 4:39 am

More social search from SprooseNext week, Sproose will launch apps for Facebook and Twitter that will let you benefit from the collective knowledge of your network of friends. The Sproose home page will be re-designed too. Sproose is a user powered search engine that allows you to contribute to the ranking of web pages by voting for pages you find useful. Sproose also lets you browse pages that have been voted for by other users. This way you can discover new and interesting pages in a social network environment.
» 25 Jun 2008, 4:14 am

What’s up with Yahoo and del.icio.us?On June 19, Joshua Schachter, the founder of del.icio.us, decided to resign from Yahoo. Why did he leave and what does it mean for del.icio.us? Del.icio.us was among the first social bookmarking services to see the light of day. At the time it was acquired by Yahoo, it was a very exciting product. It was the leading social bookmarking tool with a large and active community and lots of cool tools to save and exchange bookmarks. Since del.icio.us was acquired by Yahoo in 2005, this world class product has wilted on the vine.
» 23 Jun 2008, 5:55 am

Yahoo! in trouble (Pandia Weekend Wrap-up June 22 2008)We apologize for the missing wrap-ups. As some of you might know, the Pandia editors are both busy people having full time jobs besides Pandia. Susanne has given a presentation on Web 2.0 and elearning i Lisbon, while Per has been in Sofia, taking part in an EU review on the Bulgarian innovation system. Believe [...]
» 22 Jun 2008, 4:39 am

Microsoft to put up European search centerMicrosoft has announced that it will establish a new European search technology center, but Norway is not listed as one of the options. Yahoo! is not the only company stumbling around as a confused and dazed kid in the search engine store. Microsoft is doing its best to catch up with Google in the search engine [...]
» 22 Jun 2008, 4:08 am

Microsoft believes Google is a one hit wonderSteve Ballmer of Mircrosoft talks about the fight with Google and lays out the company's plans for the future of search.
» 22 Jun 2008, 3:07 am

Search Twitter in real timeSummize is a search engine that searches Twitter in real time. There are plenty of buzz options here for anyone interested in anything: Politics, music, sports... And when there's breaking news, this will be a great way to stay on top of it.
» 19 Jun 2008, 8:44 am

Be greener with Google TransitGoogle Transit is a tool based on Google Maps, which lets you plan trips using public transport. Now it's even easier to do your part to prevent global warming: Google Transit is part of the latest upgrade of Google Maps for Mobile. If you already use Google Maps for Mobile, you know that this little app makes it easy to find directions on the go. If you don't have Google Maps on your mobile but want to try it out, head over to the Google Maps for Mobile home page. It's quick and easy to download and install. I was up and searching for directions in a couple of minutes.
» 10 Jun 2008, 5:55 am

Google News adds related searchesYou may have seen this already, but Google News has added a nice little feature that adds alternative search queries to your own. You will find them near the bottom of the search result page. A search for Norway, for instance, brings up the following relevant queries: Searches related to: norway norwegian oslo north sea bergen oslo stock exchange nobel peace prize A search for [...]
» 9 Jun 2008, 3:51 pm

Past High Rankings

SEO PlagiarismOver the past few weeks, I've had a few run-ins with plagiarism in various forms and thought I'd take the opportunity to have a little rant about it. My hope is that by discussing it, people will become more educated about the issue and perhaps it will become a little less rampant online.
» 2 Jul 2008, 12:06 pm

2008-09 B-to-B Lead Generation HandbookMarketingSherpa has recently come out with an amazing handbook for B2B marketers. While they call it a 'handbook' that's really not a good description of it, as it's basically too huge to hold in your hands for very long!nbsp;
» 2 Jul 2008, 9:12 pm

I Google, Therefore I Am Losing the Ability to Think - Forum Thread of the WeekHigh Rankings forum members discuss a Guardian article by John Naughton (who was writing about a Nicholas Carr article in The Atlantic), which talks about how we seem to be losing our ability to concentrate for long periods of time. And apparently, the Internet is to blame!
» 2 Jul 2008, 12:06 pm

HRA Wrap-up 234There are still a few seats for our SEO Lunch and Learn on July 18th. If you're in the Boston/Framingham area, please join us, we'd love to meet you.
» 2 Jul 2008, 12:06 pm

Getting and Keeping Clients and CustomersToday's article is a bit off-topic as it talks about how the little things you do can make a big difference in obtaining and keeping your search marketing clients.
» 11 Jun 2008, 9:10 am

Improved Google SEO DocumentationGoogle's Matt Cutts has informed us that they've improved many things in their SEO documentation, including what they've written about robots.txt, IP delivery/geolocation vs. cloaking, the nofollow attribute, doorway pages and more.
» 11 Jun 2008, 9:10 am

Should You Change Your Copy When Rankings Fall?Karon Thackston has a great article on her blog that I highly recommend.
» 11 Jun 2008, 9:10 am

Jill's Interview on SEO Myths and ScamsIn preparation for next week's SES Toronto, I was interviewed by Manoj Jasra at Web Analytics World.
» 11 Jun 2008, 9:10 am

How to Determine ROI for Social Media - Forum Thread of the WeekForum member 'ramki' has a bunch of questions about social media marketing.
» 11 Jun 2008, 9:10 am

HRA Wrap-up 233Our June SEO training class is coming up this week, and we're looking forward to another great group of 6.
» 11 Jun 2008, 9:10 am

Performancing

What Is Social MediaSo what the heck IS social media? If you don't know the answer to that question, this SlideShare presentation will do a good job answering it for you. This presentation was created by Marta Kagan, a self acclaimed social media evangelist + online marketing pro. Special thanks to her for uploading this to SlideShare and allowing people to pass it along. I've gone through most of the presentation myself and although I already had a good idea as to what Social Media was all about, this presentation gives you a ton of numbers to think about and it just makes sense. Let me know what you learned from the slideshow in the comments. | View | Upload your own
» 4 Jul 2008, 2:32 am

Akismet Might Have Some Serious Competition on Their HandsAutomattic’s Akismet has been long known as the king of spam detection. It has been ported to multiple content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, MovableType, phpBB, Joomla, b2evolution, Geeklog, and many more. It is, hands down, one of the most popular solutions to handle all this spam, but now there is something else ready to take on the likes of Akismet. It, perhaps, might even be more effective than Akismet. Defensio, a comment spam detection system which claims 99.77% accuracy, is really striving to become serious competition to Akismet. Not only that, but the development team aims to pick up where Akismet has left off. The system improves upon what Akismet has built in many ways: the system ranks comments by "spaminess," it
» 3 Jul 2008, 10:59 pm

What Makes A Problogger?First, a little history. I've been blogging since 2006 back when a project called EFx2 was being developed. EFx2 was like the WordPress.com before I knew of WordPress. I used the blog as a way to share my thoughts, ideas and opinions on things that occurred in my personal life as well as what was going on in the world of technology and the web. Back in June of 2007, I decided to jump off the subdomain bandwagon and start blogging seriously on my own domain. Thus, jeffro2pt0.com was born. Since the launch of my own domain, I've written short posts, long posts, engaging posts, list posts, and all sorts of other posts. I blogged for one year as an experiment to see what would happen. As luck would have it, the way I wrote about WordPress topic
» 3 Jul 2008, 6:23 pm

Suggestions On When To Turn Off CommentsRonald Huereca of the Readers Appreciation Project brought up a point in which I haven't thought about before and that is when to turn off comments. In his post, Ronald mentions that it is probably a good idea to turn off comments when: You're on vacation You're done with blogging You'd rather concentrate on writing You don't ever respond You don't ever have time Legal Issues I'd like to add on to this list with a few of my own. Spam filter doesn't work Receiving hateful comments on a regular basis Personally, the way I have Akismet set up on my WordPress blog, I don't think I'll ever have to worry about a ton of spam getting through. However, I would much rather have the commenting system disabled on my blog rather than coming back fro
» 3 Jul 2008, 1:37 pm

FireFox 2.0.0.15 ReleasedFor those of you who have yet to step into the FireFox 3 arena, FireFox 2 is still being supported. FireFox version 2.0.0.15 has been released to the public. This release goes down as a security update. If you'd like to see what was fixed, check out the release notes. You can obtain this version of the 2.0 branch by manually using the Check For Updates feature located in FireFox under HELP - Check For Updates. For those that want the automatic upgrade, this process should occur the next time you start FireFox 2 today or tomorrow. To manually upgrade, follow this link. Are you still using version 2 or have you moved to version 3? I'm currently using version 2 on the desktop and 3 on the notebook.
» 2 Jul 2008, 2:45 pm

AdSense Referrals Bites The DustGoogle is making some big news today as they have announced that they will be retiring their AdSense referrals program at the end of August and will be substituting it for the Doubleclick Performics Affiliate Network. The Google Affiliate Network works in a similar fashion to the AdSense Referrals program in that, it enables publishers to apply for advertiser programs and get paid based on advertiser defined actions, instead of clicks or impressions. Also, if you have less than three AdSense content units on a page, you can replace the referral ad units with the standard AdSense for content ad units. Since the current program will be retiring at the end of August, Google is recommending you take the following steps: Remove the referral cod
» 2 Jul 2008, 1:26 pm

A Blogging Proclamation: Quality Content WinsIt has only been within this current year when I realized a serious difference in the way I was generating traffic for my blogs. I realized that it is no longer any use to me to simply link to great articles. It is an epic waste of time. I am no longer concerning myself with posting frequency on my own blogs; instead, I will be focusing on creating only quality content. It doesn't matter if it requires one day or one week, I will only publish original and quality content. There are reasons for this: Originality—original content is content that others talk about. When you look at news sites, social sites, etc., they are buzzing with original content. Original content generates interest by readers. We desire this originality, and we eat it
» 1 Jul 2008, 9:59 pm

Blogging Tactics: Tips for building reader participationWelcome to the first installment of a brand new series here on Performancing called Blogging Tactics. This series will tackle a number of different subjects related to blogging and will offer up tips, suggestions and tactics to accomplish a specific goal. Today's goal, building reader participation. When I started blogging, it took quite awhile before people would stop by to simply leave a comment. This seems to happen with every blogger. At the beginning, it's like yelling down an echo chamber. Getting people to comment can be a frustrating task as you can't control whether someone spends the time to do so or not. Outside of commenting, there are other ways in which you could encourage participation which we'll cover later in this article.
» 1 Jul 2008, 4:20 pm

Next Social Media Bootcamp: Wednesday July 16th, 11am EasternThe next social media bootcamp will be held on Wednesday, July 16th at 11am Eastern. So mark your calendars! What is social media bootcamp? It's an opportunity to learn and ask questions about promoting your blog or website. How do you participate? Become a member of the Performancing Hive community
» 1 Jul 2008, 3:57 am

Name That Blog CategoryAfter the defining a blog post was published, a commenter by the name of SierraK came up with an interesting idea. Actually I just came up with a completely random idea..Maybe there should be a different word for each kind of blog. Like tech blogs could have a word, self-help a different word, photography another, etc. so that rather than debate whether its a blog or a website we could discuss whether it is in the right category lol. The problem would be educating on what each of the different words stood for rather than what a general word "blog" stood for...and who would come up with the words? I've seen this in action already with technology blogs being called Techlogs while Photography blogs are called Photoblogs. I thought I would open
» 30 Jun 2008, 11:12 pm

Ramblings About SEO

Site Search Provides Powerful User IntelligenceSite search data can be a huge resource for web publishers. For a large number of site this is a greatly under-utilized resource. Many sites put a site search capability on their web site, and then forget about it. So much opportunity left on the table. The opportunity comes from looking at your [...]
» 29 Jun 2008, 6:07 pm

Latest Interview: Izea’s Ted MurphyThis week’s interview is with Izea’s Ted Murphy. Ted has been a successful entrepreneur sincew 1994, and is most notably known for founding Izea, the company which spawned PayPerPost. Ted and I discuss PayPerPost, and his latest venture, SocialSpark. If you would like to comment on it, please do so below.
» 29 Jun 2008, 5:58 pm

Latest Interview: Vanessa FoxVanessa Fox has remained a prominent industry figure after leaving Google, where she led the development of Google Webmaster Tools. Recently Vanessa and I found time to sit and talk about Holistic Online Marketing Feel free to ask questions or discuss it below.
» 23 Jun 2008, 11:51 am

Latest Interview: Matt CuttsDuring my recent trip to SMX Advanced, I sat down with Google’s Matt Cutts to discuss link building. In the discussion, we covered a wide variety of white hat link building techniques. What makes this interesting is the insight is provides on what Matt considers to be White Hat. Check it out, and then comment [...]
» 16 Jun 2008, 6:19 am

5 Reasons to Not Use Black Hat TacticsLisa Barone wrote an awesome post titled: SMX Advanced Goes to the Dark Side. With 60 comments (and counting), including several by Danny Sullivan, the discussion thread is fascinating as well. At the end of it all, it looks like the consensus is that the event was a bit more black hat than [...]
» 8 Jun 2008, 11:29 am

No Use for MediocrityI just finished reading a post from Half’s SEO Notebook titled Your Obsession to Rank Higher is the Final Nail in Your Coffin. The whole post is a rant against those who don’t see that they need to do something special with their web sites, and who are, well, obsessed only with ranking higher. As [...]
» 2 Jun 2008, 8:27 pm

Going to SMX AdvancedI am on the plane out to SMX Advanced in Seattle. This is Daany Sullivan’s second take at this show, which is targeted at more advanced SEOs and web marketers. As we all head out to Seattle, we all have the same thing in our mind - will the food be as good [...]
» 2 Jun 2008, 8:19 pm

Latest Interview: Marc Johnson of HitwiseThis week’s interview is with Marc Johnson. Marc joined Hitwise as its Chief Marketing Officer in March 2008. It’s an engaging discussion about the kinds of things you can do with competitive intelligence tools.
» 1 Jun 2008, 2:39 pm

Latest Interview: Bob MassaOur latest interview is with Bob Massa. What’s interesting about this one is that Bob has been involved in SEO and online marketing since 1997. That makes him a certified old timer, and it’s worth seeing what he things about the was search has changed and his ideas on link building.
» 26 May 2008, 2:37 pm

It’s OK to be a GeneralistOne of the things I enjoy about following Seth Godin’s blog is that he is always looking at the bigger picture of the world’s of marketing and business. It just helps you step back from the day to day detail that tends to make up ones business life. One of his recent posts was titled: [...]
» 25 May 2008, 4:04 pm

Scatterings

Getting Authoritative Online Mentions (SES Toronto)I'm here at SES Toronto. It's been a crazy last few weeks, with SMX Advanced, then Internet Retailer, and now SES Toronto. I came in late to the session "Beyond Linkbait: Getting Authoritative Online Mentions", so I only have notes from Jim Hedger's presentation. Here are Jim's main takeaways: The fastest path to prominence is to create something of value every day Get involved in conversationsThe internet is a conversational mediumCreate informative content (audio, video, text, whatever)Give insights about your industryOffer your own techniques, tactics and forecasts Review software or products your readers might find usefulGive others something to reference or link toGet involved in conversationsCreate informative contentParticipate in c
» 17 Jun 2008, 5:29 pm

Good SEO Client CommunicationsFollowing up the previous post about SEO reporting to clients, another major part of over-delivering to clients is how you communicate with them. Every time you send something to a client, you need to be crystal clear on the following two points... First, you need to tell them what you are sending them and why. This should go without saying, however, all too often someone new to the business of working with clients will send out a document to a client without being clear about what it is. If you are sending a keyword universe to show the client some early research and you are not clear about what this is, they will be confused. Confused clients are a bad thing; they get cranky quickly. Be clear; explain what you are sending and why yo
» 10 Jun 2008, 4:19 pm

Under Promise, Over DeliverProbably one of the best pieces of advice I can give for anyone selling in any field, especially SEO, is to always under promise and then over deliver. A very quick way to impress a client, ensure client retention, and promote referrals from them is to promise them a mule and give them a stallion. This isn't to say sell yourself short, however, when you are selling SEO, there are many variables that you cannot foresee. Make sure the client is well aware that ranking for their keywords might be difficult and take some time. If/when you start ranking and send a lot of traffic much more quickly than promised, the client will be thrilled. Don't just use this advice on the initial sell. Continue to set expectations below what you think
» 8 Jun 2008, 12:33 pm

Anatomy of an SEO CrisisOne of my duties at ACCM 2008 in Orlando was to host a table at "Lunch with the Experts". The table's stated topic was one Netconcepts specializes in -- SEO for large-scale ecommerce sites. Most of the table's discussion revolved around two representatives from a company in a true SEO crisis. Their product pages were invisible in search engines, and their ancient and outdated CMS was about as search-unfriendly as possible -- it even used frames! To add insult to injury, the people who understood that the website had problems were having a great deal of trouble convincing management to redesign the company site. So the first element of the crisis is the technology. The site in its present condition is unable to generate any natural search e
» 2 Jun 2008, 5:46 pm

ACCM 2008: Improving Conversion from SEM TrafficAnother great search marketing session at ACCM 2008 was "Conversion is your secret weapon," given by Wine Enthusiast's VP of marketing Glenn Edelman and The Rimm-Kaufman Group's Larry Becker. The first part of the session concentrated on in-depth ways of determining advertising ROI and effectiveness. The general advice that Web marketers get on this subject can be pretty lightweight, but these guys gave some really great advice: Track at both the keyword and the ad level Pay as close attention to your organic search results as you do to your PPC results Choose your tracking technology carefully; if possible, use multiple redundant solutions The second half of the session concentrated on both landing page design and general site design -
» 1 Jun 2008, 9:21 pm

ACCM 2008: Getting More out of PPCThe second search marketing intensive session at ACCM 2008 was all about how to maximize your PPC search engine marketing efforts. The speakers were Ryan Gibson of the Rimm-Kaufman Group and Glenn Edelman, VP of marketing at The Wine Enthusiast. Much of the initial advice covered the basics of keyword research and calculating ROI, but there was also a wealth of detail in the presentation that you don't usually hear in a typical PPC presentation. For instance, many people know that you have to track ad performance to determine the ROI sweet spot, but how far do you usually go with it? Do you track seasonality? Do you know the differences in ad performance according to day of the week? It's this kind of analysis that can lead you to greater
» 29 May 2008, 12:26 pm

ACCM 2008: Reputation Management in the SERPsIf you haven't had to deal with an online reputation management issue in the SERPs (search engine results pages) yourself, you probably know someone who has. Reputation management sounds like a vague marketing term, but it's a burgeoning new area of SEO that encompasses monitoring what people are saying about you on the Web, combating negative or inaccurate information, influencing the sites you have control and sway over, and affecting sites' search rankings to put your best foot forward in the SERPs. Maybe a few years ago you could have argued that the only companies that needed to deal with this issue are the ones that have a significant Web presence, but in this day and age, even mostly offline businesses have to deal with negative Inte
» 28 May 2008, 12:52 pm

Live Blogging ACCM: Increasing Web Sales on a Shoe String BudgetI'm here at ACCM in the session "Increasing Web Sales on a Shoe String Budget". Here's the session description: As the cost of doing business online continues to increase, small businesses must be strategic and creative in how they expend limited funds and resources. This session will discuss ways to maximize your conversion and average order size without breaking the bank on expensive bells and whistles. Using solid web design, studying metrics and trends, taking advantage of strategic cost effective marketing and using strategic catalog mailings are all part of the frugal marketer’s playbook. Mike Feiman of Pooldawg is up first. Pooldawg (a Netconcepts client, btw) was founded in 2003 and sells 2100+ pool cues. Pooldawg uses Google Ana
» 21 May 2008, 12:17 pm

Search Engine Guide

BBC Busts Out Top Level Domain Name Newsby Sage Lewis The BBC reports a complete internet overhaul with relaxed rules for the previously restricted .com's, .net's, .org's, etc. Google's Inside AdWords blog announces an Ad Planner to assist you with every aspect of your media campaigns, and Yahoo! kills a free keyword research tool offered through Overture. Sage also reports on increased local and global online advertising, with funds reaching $13.1 billion spent locally and estimated to exceed $106 billion globally by 2011. Want more from your web site?Search Influence can help! Targeted Traffic. Increased Revenue. Results Guaranteed. Customized Internet Marketing you can afford.
» 3 Jul 2008, 5:27 pm

Stop Wasting Your ALT Attributes and Make them Work for Youby Stoney deGeyter When providing SEO advice on the topic of website design, we often warn against placing important content into images. This is because search engines can't read images like a person can. To them, an image with text is just an image. They really have no idea what the image is or if, in fact, it says anything at all. So when optimizing sites, anytime we are dealing with keyword optimized content, we want to make sure it's standard HTML text. This includes headers, benefit lits, and even normal body copy. While the search engines can't read actual images, they can read what we say about the image. This information can be gleaned a few different ways: Image file name (image1234.jpg vs. mustang-gt.jpg) Text immediate
» 3 Jul 2008, 10:29 am

4 Tips to Making Your Proprietary CMS Search Friendlyby Manoj Jasra There are often cases where a business will choose to develop a custom content management system (CMS) rather than buying something off the shelf. I have some first hand experience building my own content management system and can testify that if it's implemented corrrectly it will rank as well as any commercial CMS powered website. The key to a developing a good CMS is to first understand the purpose of your website (requirements) and secondly to design the framework (database, business logic, GUI) to support it. There are also some fundamental SEO related guidelines you should build into your proprietary CMS if you hope to rank well in the search engines.   Unique Meta Tags: Each page on your website should allow f
» 2 Jul 2008, 11:34 pm

Grab Your Profile Link Before Some Jerk Doesby Debra Mastaler Online, reputation is everything. It drives you professionally, personally and algorithmically. Have a good one and you'll see positive returns. Develop a bad one and you'll have to work doubly hard to come back into your customers good graces. While it's impossible to monitor every venue showcasing public opinion and reviews, you can work to protect your reputation by registering your known brand/name with as many social media, forums, and discussion sites as you can, especially the popular ones in your niche. Why? Well anyone can register any name at a social media site and pass themselves off as you. Or just register the same name and tie it up so you can't. If you've worked hard at promoting your name (or a foru
» 2 Jul 2008, 8:05 pm

Puppy's Picks for 07/02/08by Jennifer Laycock A round up of what Jennifer read and found interesting today on the web. From new data on offline conversion rates to social media via newspapers, check out four posts Jen thought you need to read. Geoff Livingston points to a new report from e-Marketer that continues to show online traffic pushing offline sales. According to the report, the web influences $3.45 of store sales for every $1 in online sales. Further proof of the need for brick and mortar stores to mix online and offline promotions to increase overall sales. If you serve a local market instead of a national market with your small business, you need to check out Matt McGee's post on the trend of newspapers building out social communities on their w
» 2 Jul 2008, 7:38 pm

More People Share WOM Offline, But Does That Make Offline Stronger?by Jennifer Laycock Almost anytime I talk about viral marketing, the subject of offline word of mouth verses online word of mouth comes up. People ask questions like which is more powerful, which has more potential and which leads to higher conversions and purchases. The truth is, it depends on the campaign and the product. Still, two new sets of data have been released about word of mouth marketing that are worth looking at. Jackie Huba covers them over at Church of the Customer today in a thought provoking post on the difference between online and offline word of mouth. In it, she talks about the studies that examine the way people spread ideas and advice about products and services they've used. Here's the data: Active online
» 2 Jul 2008, 3:42 pm

Are You Ready to Outsource to a Search Engine Optimization Company?by Scott Buresh So, you are the marketing manager of your firm, and you've finally decided to pull the trigger and hire the search engine optimization company that you've been talking to for months. The budget has been cleared, the SEO firm is ready to start, and it should be just a matter of