Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

Google Planning to Consolidate Account Management?

2006-10-26T14:37:00.000-04:00

MarketingVOX points to a DMNews rumor that Google may soon consolidate account management and move towards one account directory per account. One of our very credible reporters here at DM News had a chat with a certain Google person last week, which suggested that the company is about to set up an IBM-like structure. What this means is that there would be one global account director per account, that pulls in resources to sell as needed - PPC, Print, Radio, Video, Display, etc. Certainly makes sense. If you're planning a TV and print campaign, you would sure hope your account manager would know what to do with your AdWords campaign!

If You "google", You Must Be Spanked!

2006-10-26T10:26:00.000-04:00

Google's stepping-up its efforts to stop people from using "google" as a verb. They've posted a correct useage guide on the official Google blog, in an attempt to gently persuade people to not use Google incorrectly. Usage: 'Google' as verb referring to searching for information via any conduit other than Google. Example: "I googled him on Yahoo and he seems pretty interesting." Our lawyers say: Bad. Very, very bad. You can only "Google" on the Google search engine. If you absolutely must use one of our competitors, please feel free to "search" on Yahoo or any other search engine. I applaud the attempt, after all, Google must show that it is at least trying to police its trademark - important, if you want to keep it - but with hundreds of millions of users, it's unlikely they'll win this battle. Now, please excuse me while I go and google a story about some yahoo who went shopping after asking his webMD why he kept going (micro)soft. [groan]

Odeo Purchased Back by Founder

2006-10-26T10:14:00.000-04:00

The development, launch, growth and (minor) failure of Odeo, is a strange story. When the company, founded by Blogger co-founder Evan Williams, launched back in February of 2005, it raised $5 million in VC, but never really raised our attention. Evan has publicly spoken about why the company missed the mark and now a new chapter is beginning for the company. Evan and the other "Odeos" have created a new company called Obvious Corp and have bought back all of Odeo's assets. Evan explains the model for Obvious at his own blog. The Obvious model goes something like this: * Build things cheaply and rapidly by keeping teams small and self-organized. * Leverage technology, know-how, and infrastructure across products (but brand them separately, so they're focused and easy to understand) * Use the aggregate attention and user base of the network to gain traction for new services faster than they could gain awareness independently What started as a part-time project for Evan is now a full-time effort. He used his own money to buy back the company - which must be at least the $5m pumped into it - and so, I suspect we'll see a more concerted effort from Evan and the team this time around.

Yahoo Launches Search Marketing Blog

2006-10-26T10:03:00.000-04:00

It's finally here; Yahoo has indeed launched the Yahoo Search Marketing Blog. Here's the official word:- Today, we launched the Yahoo! Search Marketing blog to connect marketers to the people and products that can help them make sense of the ever-changing world of digital marketing and take advantage of everything that Yahoo! has to offer. With our new ad platform, aka “Panama” live, we knew it was just the time to jump feet-first into the blogosphere. The new Yahoo! blog will feature: Timely information about the New Sponsored Search In-depth features about the new products and services from the team members who built them Inside tips from our own experts Guest posts from industry insiders Reports and recaps from industry events Insightful research from Yahoo! Bookmark or subscribe to their RSS and never miss an important YSM announcement again!

Yahoo Updates Toolbar, Adds Bookmarks

2006-10-25T10:01:00.000-04:00

Yahoo's launched a new version of their toolbar today and adding some cool new bookmarking options. Chris Sherman has the full details. Yahoo has also made it easier to organize your bookmarks with this new version. "If you have a huge list of bookmarks, the new version of Yahoo bookmarks allows you to organize those in a very convenient fashion," said Tomi Poutanen, Yahoo's director of product management for social search. The bookmarking feature uses folders as an organizing scheme. You can save a bookmarked page directly into an existing folder, or create a new one on the fly as you're saving a bookmark. You can also manage your bookmarks later and create as many new folders as you like. Yahoo hopes to use the new bookmarking tools to introduce users to the hip new world of "tagging". The company has 20 million toolbar users who are not as comfortable sharing their bookmarks and certainly don't know much about tagging. It's a smart move to have 20m people helping you refine the content of the web!

Can Google Grow Larger than Microsoft

2006-10-25T09:48:00.000-04:00

The Boston Globe has a quick observation - Google could be larger than Microsoft by 2010. Meanwhile, SEO Black Hat looks at whether Google could up like Atari. Post is worth reading just for the last image..."moohoowahaaa". ;-)

Blogging Scholarship for Students

2006-10-25T09:44:00.000-04:00

Aaron points to a new blogging scholarship being offered to hard-up students that have a passion for blogging.

Yo Dog! Wanna Buy Digg?

2006-10-25T09:39:00.000-04:00

TechCrunch believes Digg is close to closing around $5m in second round financing soon, as the company has failed to find a buyer willing to pay their asking price. ...Digg has been in recent acquisition discussions with a number of companies, including News Corp., according to multiple sources close to the negotiations. However, the company was unable to land an offer in the price range they’re looking for - at least $150 million - and will likely close a Series B round of financing instead. If they get $150m, that would be a nice increase on the $30m Yahoo was rumored to be offering back in January.

Click Fraud Threatens...Yawn

2006-10-24T13:12:00.000-04:00

There's a reason I didn't blog the Washington Post article on click fraud, this past Sunday. There wasn't really anything new in the piece and it just felt like another opportunity to keep the "the search engine sky is falling" flame fanned. Anyway, it did occur to me that you - my dear, beloved reader - may not have seen it, so I'm posting it just in case you missed Business Week's take last month. Mark your calendar for November 22nd - which will likely be the date of the next big "expose". ;-)

Thanks to our Sponsors

2006-10-24T11:47:00.000-04:00

It's time to thank our sponsors for helping to keep Marketing Pilgrim ticking along. TextLinkBrokers - Looking to buy the best links available? TextLinkBrokers offers advanced link building solutions. Search Marketing Standard - If you're interested in search marketing, the Search Marketing Standard is the only print magazine you need to read! Go ahead and click thru to these guys, you'll be glad you did!

New Look for YPN Web Site

2006-10-24T08:43:00.000-04:00

Jennifer Slegg - who I had the pleasure of finally meeting last week, and is wonderfully pleasant - points out a new look for the Yahoo Publisher Network web site.

Customized Google Search Finally Here

2006-10-24T08:35:00.000-04:00

Remember all those times search marketers have warned that obsessing over a #1 ranking on Google would some day be obsolete, as everyone would have their own personalized Google results? That day is finally here. Google has rolled out a free Custom Search Engine that allows you to specify which websites are integrated in the results (similar to Rollyo). Here's what you get:

Specify the sites you want to include in searches.
Place a search box and search results on your website.
Customize the look and feel to match your website.
Invite your community to contribute to the search engine.
Make money from relevant ads in your search results.

Here are some real-life examples of how you can use it. Google engineer, Matt Cutts, weighs-in with his personal thoughts... This new offering lets you easily add hundreds (thousands?) of urls. You can search over ONLY the sites you choose, or (my favorite) you can apply a boost to the sites you choose, with regular websearch as a backfill. That’s really nice, because if your chosen urls talk about a subject, you’ll often get matches from those urls, but if the user types something completely unrelated, you’ll still get web results back. So it’s a true custom search engine, not just an engine restricted to showing matches from some domains. There's also the official Google announcement... "We want to make it easy for anyone to create a search engine about all of their favorite topics, without needing a Ph.D.," said Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience. "Everyone – businesses, organizations, moms, dads, teenagers, and teachers – can harness the power of Google technology to create a personalized search experience that reflects specific knowledge and interests." And the Google Blog is where you'll find a bunch of links to other sites covering the launch. Now excuse me while I go an tell my dachshund-obsessed wife that she can now have a search engine that won't make her blush when she searches for "wiener". ;-)

Danny Sullivan Extends SES Relationship Through End of 2007

2006-10-23T11:19:00.000-04:00

Danny Sullivan has just revealed he will be involved with Search Engine Strategies until the end of 2007. He also plans some things of his own... I'll be chairing the SES NY 2007 show, co-chairing the SES SJ 2007 event and participating in the SES Chicago 2007 conference. Aside from this, I also intend to continue writing about search via a new search blog of my own plus do some events on my own. More details on everything below. It looks like Chris Sherman will take over from Danny. Meanwhile, November 30th remains the last day Danny plans to contribute to Search Engine Watch, and he has other plans... I expect to continue writing about search as I always have via a new search blog. I should have more news on this in about three or four weeks. Similarly, I plan to do some search-related events of my own. Stay tuned, and I promise to bring more details when I can share them. Thanks to Brett.

JobsInSearch Celebrates 2nd Birthday

2006-10-23T10:44:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to Mike Taylor as JobsInSearch.com celebrates its second birthday this week, having launched two years ago as the first specialist international job site covering Search Engine Marketing related jobs and careers. In the two years we have been operating there has been phenomenal growth in the world of Search” commented Mike Taylor, founder of JobsInSearch.com. “For example, when we launched very few companies (outside of specialist SEO and Search Marketing firms) were employing SEO or Search Engine Marketing staff. Now it is common for a wide range of companies, across many different industry sectors, to employ their own in-house SEO and Search Engine Marketing related employees.”

No Google Space Flights Just Yet

2006-10-23T10:37:00.000-04:00

With Google's proposed Googlunaplex and Google Mars, it's understandable that Techcrunch got all excited over the weekend at rumors Google had purchased the private space ship SpaceShipOne. ...the word on the street is that Google has acquired SpaceShipOne and is putting it inside building 43 at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. No word on the purchase price, or if this was a donation, or why the ship is not staying at the Smithsonian It turns out Google actually purchased a replica of the ship. Thanks to readers, I now know the rumor is false. Google did not acquire SpaceShipOne. But they did acquire a full scale replica of the ship and have indeed installed it in building 43 at Google.

Google Tweaks Hiring Process

2006-10-23T10:30:00.000-04:00

The Wall Street Journal looks at Google's attempts to streamline its infamous lengthy hiring process. One initiative Google has already undertaken is reducing the number of interviews. Mr. Bock says each candidate offered a job by Google went through 5.1 in-person interviews on average in June, down from 6.2 at the beginning of the year. (A veteran tech recruiter says five to eight interviews is probably about average for Silicon Valley.) Google is also considering requiring staff members who interview candidates to submit their assessments within a week of the interview; right now, there's no strict deadline. Google is also surveying existing employees in hopes of gaining clues as to what makes a successful hire. In the survey Google conducted in June, current employees were questioned on about 300 variables, including their performance on standardized tests, the age at which they first used a computer, how many foreign languages they spoke, how many patents they had and whether they had ever been published. Mr. Bock's team mapped the answers against 30 or 40 job-performance factors for each survey-taker, identifying clusters of variables that Google might focus on more during the hiring process. Hat-tip to SEW.

Google Unveils Election Mapping Mashup

2006-10-23T10:21:00.000-04:00

CNET has details of a new mashup from Google that will see Google Earth combined with information about the U.S. congressional races coming up in two weeks. The Google Earth 2006 election resource tool indicates the country's 436 congressional districts with stars on the popular 3D map of the country. Clicking on a star pops open a bubble window that has information on the candidates in that race. The tool will also include links to news, images and search results on candidates, as well as a bunch of other stuff. The Google Earth Blog adds... The "Register to Vote" layer added a short while ago has been changed to the "2006 US Election Guide" and includes two sub-layers: "US Election Guide" (click on the placemarks for useful voting information), and "US Congressional Districts" (which shows the borders of those districts). These layers are NOT turned on by default, but the information is more useful.

New AdWords Tools

2006-10-23T10:15:00.000-04:00

The Adwords team sends word of new updates and tools, including: 'Last thirty days' date range for reports In addition to viewing data from the last month, you can now view performance data for the last thirty days. This date range is a new selection in the settings section of the create report page. Graphs for weekly and hourly reports Graphs are now available for weekly and hourly reports. To view the graphs, click 'View graphs only' or 'View data and graphs' from the View Report page.

Final Chance to Enter to Win the $6,000 SEM Scholarship!

2006-10-23T09:30:00.000-04:00

While you may have missed out on your chance to enter weeks 1, 2 and 3 of our Search Engine Marketing Scholarship contest, today marks the start of week 4. This is the final week for your entries. If you've been waiting for the last minute, this is the time to submit your great article and become our 4th finalist. Please be sure to read all the rules and you have until 6pm Saturday ET October 28th to get your entry in. Good luck!

SEM Scholarship Week 2 Winner Announced

2006-10-23T09:19:00.000-04:00

Week 2 of our SEM Scholarship contest has concluded and we have our second finalist. Congratulations to Ryan Bell who wins the second round with his entry - "Instant PPC Success for the Hometown Hero". Ryan's entry carried the most unique views of all our entries in week 2, with a total of 108 unique views to his page. The number of unique views, for entries, was down this week, which suggests the entrants didn't focus on spreading the word about their article - a tip for future entrants, perhaps. ;-) Ryan wins a copy of "Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day" and "Please Ring Bell for Service" and qualifies as one of four finalists, who will face our expert panel of judges, to determine who will win the $6,000 grand prize package. Week 3 entries are now published and we're accepting entries for Week 4 (the final week), so get your creative hats on and submit your article!

Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest Entries - October 23rd

2006-10-23T09:10:00.000-04:00

We've uploaded the third round of our SEM Scholarship Contest entries and after a slow start, you guys came through with a lot of great content. The following entries qualified for the week and we'll track the traffic to each article over the next week. The most popular post of the week will secure the author one of four finalist positions for our grand prize giveaway. Here's the full list of article entries: 10 Ideas to Smooth Out Even Rough SEO/SEM Projects SEM Seeks Compatible Organization For Long Term Relationship My Site ranks better than yours… Excuse my French: How to choose keywords for your regional market Most SEOs are Virgins SEO 2.0: Marketing, Analytics and the Evolution of the Industry ERROR 530: We’re Sorry. The Internet Is Fully Optimized. Please Find A New Occupation. Wednesday Morning Bowl-a-rama: How to teach internet marketing to your grandparents 5 Steps to Streamlining your SEO Process DaveN Goes White Hat 11 Steps to Becoming a Profitable, Self-Employed SEO SEO is Pointless (But You Don’t Have to Tell Your Clients) Click, read, forward, blog your favorite entry and help them advance to the final judging. Week four, for submissions, opens today! If you feel inspired to submit your own article, you have until 6pm Saturday October 28th. Remember, this is the final week for submitting your articles, so all you procrastinators should get a move on. ;-)

DaveN Goes White Hat

2006-10-23T09:00:00.011-04:00

By Ryan C. Madden If you listened to Strikepoint the other day, you may have heard Dave say, "Maybe I should just go white hat." Is it true? Could David Naylor possibly go white-hat? Of course not, but that's not the point. The point is that you clicked on this article. Linkbaiting. It works, and if you have a blog or post articles and are not using linkbaiting tactics now, you are missing out on potential readers, and more importantly, on permanent links. This article is about developing creative, engaging link-baiting articles that will provide an increase in deep links to your site, and ultimately, a jump in the SERPS. I'll even give away one of my own linkbaiting title ideas towards the end of this article. For some, creating great linkbaiting titles is second nature. It simply comes to them. For the rest of us, it takes a combination of discipline and creativity to provide something truly original. Let's take a look at how to develop good linkbaiting titles. Let's say you sell wool. First, step away from your world of wool. Don't think about your industry at all. In fact, print this article, step away from your desk, walk outside, and get some fresh air. Now, get into the heads of your potential readers or clients. Think about their lifestyle. What piques their interest? What do they like to read about online? Write down a list of topics if it helps. Depending on your customer profiles, your topics might include politics, gardening, reality TV shows, Linux, or Hollywood gossip. For your buyers of sheep's wool, perhaps their interests include the latest fashions, sewing machines, or labor laws. Or if your going after it purely for the linking benefit, you can target about any site that will generate links. Only after you have developed this list of topics are you ready to step back into your world of wool. Think of different ways you might be able to relate your world to their topics. This is where the discipline comes in. It's easy to spend 30 seconds on this and give up. That's what your competitors will do, but not you. Think. Think some more. Harder. Keep working at it until you find it. Using our example, that could be finding a forum on fashion trends and posting an article entitled, "Ten Sure Signs that Wool is Back", or "Paris Hilton Sporting a Wool Sweater". Focusing back on the link-building approach, look at Digg. As many of you know, most Digg users have an IT background. No problem -- simply cater to their interests. How about, "Three Easy Steps to Fixing Product Paging Issues using PHP", and use any example retail site with wool clothing. Of course, include your own links within the article with your desired anchor text. While we are focusing on titles here, this is not to say that the content of the article is unimportant. Despite the fact that some of today's popular social networking sites have too many users who ~~Digg~~ vote for articles based solely on the title, the content of the article must be relevant and useful. Too much linkbaiting without providing interesting or useful content will get old with your audience real quick, and the value of your linkbaiting tactics will quickly whither away. I'll give away one of my linkbaiting titles that I was going to use for an article I drafted recently. The title is "How to Launch RPGs from Your Cell Phone." Now, many people (not all) would recognize the term 'RPGs' as a rather unpleasant weapon often referred to in the news. The article actually talks about a different kind of Role-Playing Games available on mobile phones. There are certainly better examples out there, and it's not rocket science, but this stuff is sure to generate some link love from the social networking sites. Now that I've given away the title, I'd encourage anyone so inclined to go ahead and use it and let Andy and friends know how it does for you. Still need more ideas? If you have not listened to Michael Gray as the guest on SEO Rockstars the other day, go download it now. For other great examples, simply browse the titles on Shoemoney's or Rand's blogs. Suntdubl also provides some great tips on linkbaiting. Gleam some useful nuggets of wisdom from these and other experts, as they are sure to get those creative, linkbaiting juices flowing. If we can do it for wool, you can do it for your niche. [The above article is a submission for Marketing Pilgrim’s Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest. Each Monday in October, entries will be published and the most popular article of the week will qualify for the $5,000 grand prize. If you’d like to submit an entry, please view the contest entry-requirements and guidelines.]

5 Steps to Streamlining your SEO Process

2006-10-23T09:00:00.010-04:00

By Michael Jensen You have your own way of doing SEO, and that's how it should be. However, streamlining your SEO process will make your life much, much easier. Take it from the Zephyr. The Zephyr was one of the first "Streamliner" trains introduced in the 1930s, designed to be fast, efficient, and sleek. The Zephyr changed the rail industry, and brought it from hardship to profitability. Why streamline your SEO process? Because you and your clients benefit when you are faster, more efficient, and yes, even sleek.

So, here are five steps you can start doing right now to streamline your SEO process.

1) Define your Services

Create a list of all services that you can offer, including those you subcontract out. Consider services relating to keyword research, content writing and optimization, link building, and site optimization, and categorize your services into these (or other) areas. Services that complement SEO such as marketing, advertising, and website design may also be on your list. Review your website content, marketing material, and advertising campaigns and make sure they reflect your list of services.

2) Create standard Checklists

You've gathered quite a list of SEO do's and don'ts and now it's time to materialize this knowledge into checklists. The advantage of checklists is having a structured, consistent, and thorough review of each project to ensure that you remember even the small points of SEO.

Each area of your services (keywords, content, link building, etc.) should have its own checklist of items to look for when doing a project review. Each of your services (from step 1) should be represented by at least one item in a checklist, and most services will have multiple items.

Items in a checklist can be in the form of questions, points to check for, or tasks to complete. As an example, here are a few items from two of my checklists:

Keyword Checklist

Does each keyword have its own respective landing page?
Run topical keyword analysis tool for top keywords
What keywords are your competitors using for pay-per-click ads?

Content Checklist

Landing pages have main keyword in title, header, and body
Client has an active blog and allows comments
Data or pages primarily behind search forms are accessible with text links

Each checklist serves as a starting point for new projects. With each new project, walk through your checklists and mark those items that have been completed. Each item left unchecked then becomes a task on your to-do list.

3) Create a set of Reports

When you first meet with a client, provide at least one report, such as a competitive report or a site analysis report. Reports benefit customers by informing them of what you have found and what you will be doing to address the issues at hand. Attractive, informative, and periodic reports can go a long way in building and maintaining trust with clients. Having an automated report from your website may be a great way to catch the attention of potential clients.

Not only are reports for your clients important, but you should have internal reports to gauge your progress (some examples). Internal reports are more technical and advanced than client reports, as they are meant for you. In addition to tracking progress for your projects, internal reports may point out ways in which you may be underperforming or excelling.

4) Find or develop a set of Tools

SEO Tools allow you to not only perform a function, but to do it faster. You can find better keywords, optimize your content, identify pages needing more backlinks, check rankings, and so much more.

Your first step is to try out all the tools you can. Keep a log of the tools that you try out (include the tool's name and URL). Mark the tools you really like and find informative or useful. As I try out tools, I like to save a screenshot of the tool's results so I can quickly be reminded of what each tool provides.

As you try out various tools, you may find yourself thinking, "They should have added this, then it would be really powerful!" Suggest your idea to the author of the tool, or redesign the tool yourself. Brainstorm ideas for new tools that would complete your "suite" of SEO tools, then build them yourself or partner with someone who can. By establishing a set of tools you use, you can dig deeper into each project while saving time.

5) Create your team of Specialists

If you're like me you're not a master of all things SEO. You might prefer using a specialist for link building or for writing unique content. Start by finding a specialist for each service that you offer but do not do on your own. These specialists become your "team", your set of specialists that you source out work to. If you're not sure where to start in finding specialists, try recommendations from fellow SEOs (like here and here).

In working with your team of specialists, establish a standard communication workflow for each project, from start to finish. Agree beforehand with the provider on a cost and time frame for their services. If the services are based on factors that vary from project to project, try to work out a set cost and time frame for a range of possibilities.

[The above article is a submission for Marketing Pilgrim’s Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest. Each Monday in October, entries will be published and the most popular article of the week will qualify for the $5,000 grand prize. If you’d like to submit an entry, please view the contest entry-requirements and guidelines.]

Photo copyright Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, www.msichicago.org

Wednesday Morning Bowl-a-rama: How to teach internet marketing to your grandparents

2006-10-23T09:00:00.009-04:00

By Eric Hebert The first Wednesday of every month, our local business committee gets together at the bowling alley to discuss the happenings around town and how it affects the local business. Their main function is to promote the city and its businesses. They accomplish this by holding fun events several times a year in hopes of attracting outsiders to come in and experience what the city has to offer, which is rich in culture. Like my grandparents, they have no clue how to use the internet properly, especially when it comes to advertising these events. They primarily advertise through newspaper ads, billboards, flyers, and other means of communication via 1974. Nevertheless, they do experience moderate success with their events using their rather small marketing budgets. Did I mention that the city is also a college town with 20,000+ students with their eyes glued to a computer screen all day? Then came a new idea for the fall, right around the time I started attending these meetings. Mind you I am fairly young (24, with most of the committee being 45+ and have years of business experience). The idea was to promote the committee’s website, which does feature descriptions and links to most of the businesses’ websites. Fantastic! How were they going to do this? Spend a $1,000 on t-shirts with different URL’s printed on them that would redirect to the committee’s website. They would then hand the shirts out to the business owners for their employees to wear. Not a bad idea, considering many people shop and walk the street everyday. That is of course if everybody actually wears the shirts (By the way, it’s been a month and I’ve seen one t-shirt-one!). Another means of promotion made more sense, which was to reimburse any merchant who included their URL in their print advertising. So why was this doomed for failure? Why did I feel smarter than this committee of esteemed business owners? I began to introduce to them the idea of maybe using some internet marketing techniques to help bring traffic to their site. One of the first things I noticed was their inability to recognize the importance of Search Engine Marketing. When asked about ranking high for specific keyword phrases, they responded with “We already are number one on Google for the name of our city”. Mind you this was not done through any outside SEO, but ranked high because it’s the official city website. This is where I suggested ranking high for the name of the college that resided in the town. How many more people are searching for that word? How many of these people are probably interested I what the town surrounding the college has to offer? Probably all of them! Step one in opening their eyes was not only explaining the importance of traffic to their site, but the quality of traffic and where that traffic comes from. Online marketing is about eyeballs, but more importantly about eyeballs that are looking for what you have to offer. Step two was introducing Pay-Per-Click. Most of these people are used to a CPM or “number of subscriber” model of buying media, you know, 20th century style. When introducing PPC to this mindset, it can be hard for them to understand. I asked them what they think is more important: 1000 random people coming to their website or 100 people who are very interested in what that site has to offer? The smart ones in the room chose option number two. Stressing the importance of qualified leads and their importance helped them understand why PPC is so powerful. After we were on the same page, I told them that they could be number one in just a few days, that is if the keywords were affordable and the budgeting made sense. The instant gratification of PPC can save lots of time in trying to decide if a marketing campaign is proving successful. The final point I addressed, and the most important to any campaign, was the website’s landing page. The page itself was rather horrible. The site did not feature any of the print advertising branding, navigation was difficult to understand, and colors scheme gave a dark, cold feeling. Let’s just say any visitors would probably not spend too much time looking around. I addressed just some basic points that many didn’t realize: Navigation has to be designed for the visitor in mind. Correct contact, about, and site map pages need to be available wherever the visitor may be. Colors and fonts should match print advertising so the visitor feels they have found the right place. Navigation should point to pages which feature descriptions and contact information for local businesses, which is the objective of the entire campaign. These rather simple aspects of design were an afterthought to the committee, as if they thought their visitors already knew where everything on the site was and could immediately find what hey were looking for. There are many misconceptions about online marketing in today’s business world, whether it is in large corporate environment or in small-town business committee. As an internet marketing consultant, one of my biggest challenges is getting people to “unlearn what they learned” about marketing and advertising and think outside the box for a change. Knowing how to speak with those who are unfamiliar with these concepts is kind of like talking with your grandparents; dumb it down a little bit, don’t use industry gibberish, and have some respect for them at the same time. Don’t make them feel small or stupid; focus on the benefits of each technique and why it will continue to benefit them in the future. The more they begin to understand, the more they’ll come to trust you in the future. And trust, my friends, in this industry, goes along way in building your success. [The above article is a submission for Marketing Pilgrim’s Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest. Each Monday in October, entries will be published and the most popular article of the week will qualify for the $5,000 grand prize. If you’d like to submit an entry, please view the contest entry-requirements and guidelines.]

ERROR 530: We’re Sorry. The Internet Is Fully Optimized. Please Find A New Occupation.

2006-10-23T09:00:00.008-04:00

By Nuno Andrade The death of search engine optimization as we know it is inevitable. As more SEO “experts” crowd the industry, the less value each one can provide to companies in search of their expertise. Only a few years ago, it was not uncommon for an SEO specialist to receive six figures for work that, although simple in nature, would bring their client twenty times that amount. Then, the “secret” to ranking well was as simple as making modifications to HTML title and heading tags or copying the code of a competitor site that, by pure happenstance, already ranked well. Today, although these methods have evolved with the help of tools such as Keyword Discovery and WebPosition, they are of far lesser significance. As more and more companies become aware of the importance of search engine rankings, the value of these modifications diminishes. The savvier CEOs become, the more they will demand that their webmasters design their websites to be search engine friendly from initial launch. If you’re still earning six figures for performing on-page tweaks, take a look around, you’re a member of a dying breed. The search engine optimization of today is much different from that of even five years ago. Then, the industry was shrouded in mystery, as its members did all they could to keep their tactics secret. Alas, as with any “black box” industry where the methods and techniques are kept hidden, the reason is likely that those methods are easily replicable. Today, the most recognizable names in the industry are likely those that share their knowledge, thereby building their “expert” status while at the same time adding valuable content to their websites. Moreover, search engine optimization has become more than just about on-page factors. With the advent of PageRank and the subsequent importance of inbound links, the term “search engine optimization” itself no longer truly describes the job of an “SEO Specialist.” With the current emphasis on “link bait,” the practice by which SEOs build viral content for the explicit purpose of garnering links, the SEO industry has begun to adopt more traditional marketing strategies. This should come as welcome news for both SEOs and the traditional marketing agencies that have at once feared and downplayed the emergence of search engine optimization. For SEOs, the simple question is the one hinted at in the title of this essay: If every website was properly optimized, what would separate one from another? The obvious answer may be “content,” but that is only partly true. More often, it is about the packaging of that content and what others say about that packaging. As Wade Roush recently stated in his Technology Review blog , users of Digg -- the object of many an SEO’s link bait campaign -- often never get past the packaging (the story’s headline) before “digging” the story or commenting on it. Fortunately for traditional marketing agencies, there is very little today’s SEO experts can say about the importance of headlines that Claude Hopkins, David Ogilvy and John Caples haven’t already taught us. Does this mean that traditional agencies have the upper hand? Are all SEOs doomed to return to their previous day jobs as newspaper editors, copywriters and webmasters? Not in the least. Those who specialize in SEO are in the unique position of understanding the web in a way that no traditional marketing agency can hope to. Those SEO specialists willing to accept the current limits of their industry have the most to benefit from the potential windfall of the synthesis of online and offline marketing. Lest it be forgotten, the Internet is still a medium in its infancy, and it is constantly changing and evolving. The strength of today’s SEO specialists lies in their adaptability and willingness to learn new techniques. Nevertheless, this very strength also qualifies as the industry’s greatest weakness. Whereas traditional marketing depends on tested and proven approaches based on years of painstaking market research and analysis, the very medium in which SEO specialists operate by nature demands a much speedier approach. On the Internet, by the time market research is concluded, the market may have already moved on. The future of Internet marketing will be built by thinkers and innovators rather than by traditional coders or marketers. It will not look like the search engine optimization or traditional marketing of today, but a combination of the adaptability of the former and the proven strategies of the latter. [The above article is a submission for Marketing Pilgrim’s Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest. Each Monday in October, entries will be published and the most popular article of the week will qualify for the $5,000 grand prize. If you’d like to submit an entry, please view the contest entry-requirements and guidelines.]

SEO 2.0: Marketing, Analytics and the Evolution of the Industry

2006-10-23T09:00:00.007-04:00

By Scott Woodard In the beginning there were rankings - and rankings were good. Later, there was revenue - and revenue was better. Over the last few years search engine optimization (SEO) has undergone a dramatic, yet subtle change. A change not just in the tactical details of how it’s performed, but more importantly, a change in the overall industry. Rather than a singular event, the shift of the industry has been a gradual series of events and changes whose overall impact is rarely noticed. Despite the overuse of the 2.0 moniker, SEO has reached a point where it is justified – the industry, the strategies and the tools have evolved to a point where I believe we can draw a line in the sand and say, “that is where we were, but this is where we are.” When I think of the early days, for me around the time of the Florida update, and the work that many talented firms and consultants now offer, one of the most significant changes has been the increased integration of traditional marketing. What evolved from the technical changes a webmaster would implement to improve rankings has now become a highly-scrutinized marketing channel. Rankings and traffic, while still obviously important, have become secondary to revenue growth. Many of the same companies who used to only care about being number one on Google for their top keyword now understand how to leverage the long tail. Organic keyword referrals are often tracked just as closely as paid search campaigns, with companies now focusing on each keyword’s revenue value and not just referral count. The methods of on-page optimization have evolved to where they now support and enhance conversion and click-through rates, rather than looking out of place or keyword heavy. Overall, marketing has begun to drive the traditionally technical field of SEO. While many of the industry’s best have been including a heavy dose of marketing for some time, the degree and extent has radically shifted over the past three years. Instead of rankings and traffic, conversations now start with discussions of leads, sales, and conversions. The second real differentiating factor of this newer incarnation of SEO, and one of the changes that has facilitated the advent of traditional marketing, is the advancement and availability of analytics packages. While many larger companies have had access to advanced data for a long time, the introduction of Google Analytics has directly lead to broad adoption of more advanced metrics. Three years ago anyone who couldn’t afford a tool like Coremetrics had to rely on in-house programming, or often even Excel, to correlate various metrics. The cost or legwork required was often too much for many and they relied simply on rough estimates or infrequent analysis. Today Google Analytics allows even the most modest website owner access to great marketing data and analytics. As more and more people have gained access to better data, more and more are also contributing to the industry through forums and blogs. More importantly, the level and tone of the overall conversation has changed as the number of new SEO’s with good data, and the occasional insight derived from it, has grown. The adoption of improved analytics packages, and Google Analytics in particular, has lead to a broad base of well-informed SEO’s and a fundamental change in the quantity and quality of contributions to the industry’s communal knowledge. Ultimately the increased importance of marketing and the explosion of analytics are contributing factors to the real change in the industry. What’s truly different now is the community that has evolved around the industry. Three years ago few successful SEO’s were willing to share their insight and the search engines were far less transparent in their operations. Folks like Rand Fishkin and Jeremy Schoemaker would have never released their traffic stats. And what about Matt Cutt’s videos? I remember how excited I used to get from just a little confirmation of a theory by GoogleGuy in WebmasterWorld. Countless great tools that once would have been highly guarded secrets are now flooding the web as link bait. Search engines now recognize the importance of transparency – Google, Yahoo and MSN each now offer some great tools for SEO’s. There are now scores of outstanding SEO conversations going on everyday and the community continues to foster and promote knowledge growth. Quite simply we are all helping each other become better at our jobs. SEO 2.0, just like Web 2.0, draws its strength from the contributions of many. It’s a change in approach that focuses on actual revenue growth and detailed analytics and a shift in the way the industry shares lessons and experiences. While it would be impossible to say exactly when it happened, the cumulative effects of marketing, analytics and the growth of the SEO community have lead to a point where SEO can be correctly labeled 2.0. What a long strange trip it’s been. [The above article is a submission for Marketing Pilgrim’s Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest. Each Monday in October, entries will be published and the most popular article of the week will qualify for the $5,000 grand prize. If you’d like to submit an entry, please view the contest entry-requirements and guidelines.]

Most SEOs are Virgins

2006-10-23T09:00:00.006-04:00

by Jeremy Luebke

I can hear the email programs firing up now "...just because I'm up till 5am link building and editing title tags in my underwear does not mean I'm a virgin..." Slow down, you can close your email client, you have it all wrong. A virgin SEO is one that has never had a site banned by a search engine. And like in real life, if you're a virgin, you don't know what your missing.

Method to My Madness

The first time I had a site banned, I was shocked and devastated. The second time, I was ecstatic like a kid on Christmas morning. No I'm not bipolar, I'm obsessive. I had to know why the site was banned, and the theories I received from my fellow SEOs were not good enough. I needed cold hard facts. I got them by creating a new site and methodically testing each theory until the second site was banned. It was like being back at elementary school and picking on the girl I had a crush on until she stomped on my foot.

Now I'm not suggesting you go out and dirty up your white hat, just buy a few different hats to wear when the time is right. The best system admins I know can hack a server any day of the week, and the fact they have that knowledge makes them 100 times more effective at securing their own servers. Search Engine Optimization Specialists are much the same way. To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy (Sun Tzu).

What's in it for you?

In a single word, knowledge. John Andrews' competitive webmastering philosophy sums it up best. Researching and analyzing all aspects of this art called Search Engine Optimization is what sets apart the good SEOs from the great SEOs. There are so many brilliant people in our industry that just blow me away with their knowledge (Rand, Todd, Greg, Michael, etc...). I am a very competitive person, and the idea that someone knows more than I about my passion and chosen profession leaves me sleepless at night. I am not saying I know everything there is to know or that I ever will, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop trying.

Where to Start

There are so many ways to approach a research project such as this. Some goals may be long term and others short term. The first item on your action list should be to head over to Syndk8 and join the forums. I've also heard good things about the forums at SeoBlackHat, but it's a subscription only service and I haven't signed up myself. I'm seriously considering it though.

After spending some time there you should have a good idea about the basics of black hat SEO. Now get out there and test, then test, and then test some more. You can't learn to be a painter from a book and you won't learn how black hat truly works from a forum. Make sure to create a new persona before you venture into the dark alley. The last thing you want is to host a shady website on your server with your other white hat domains. With how cheap domains and hosting are these days, it's just not worth it. You don't even need a new domain or host to embark on this journey. The ability to leach off an established domain by using a free blog service is something many black hats use. Mix it up a little and try out all your options.

Do not lie, cheat or steal!

There is a difference between black hat techniques and criminal activities. To me black hat is about competing with the search engines while white hat is about competing with your fellow webmasters. SEOmoz has an interesting debate on white vs black. If you are scraping someones copyrighted content, you are not learning the dark arts or doing research. You are stealing. With so many free content sites on the Internet these days, there is zero reason to scrape someones website. So don't do it! Don't let your little information gathering experiment turn into a lawsuit.

By now you're probably presuming I'm a hard core black hat SEO when the complete opposite is the truth. My websites are white as driven snow. I have my own personal research projects but that is not what I do for a living or where I make my money. There is too much money to be made in the long run to risk a ban. I'll also let you in on a little secret. Black hat SEO is a lot of work. It is not the easy path to riches as many would lead you to believe. The same 80/20 rule applies to the dark arts as to everything else in life. 20% of the webmasters will earn 80% of the money.

Knowledge is power. Now go get you some!

Excuse my French: How to choose keywords for your regional market

2006-10-23T09:00:00.005-04:00

By Anne-Marie Castonguay As the Spanish-speaking market grows online in the US, as the borders in Europe disappear, as China is on the verge of becoming the biggest world market, we are confronted more and more with particular challenges concerning our target’s real language. It gets even more difficult in smaller geographic regions such as the very distinct French-speaking Quebec in

Canada

. While we, SEO specialists, know the door to traffic heaven is using the right words, tools available are less than useful for regional markets, and they can downright lead you on the wrong path.

Forget the costly services that will give you an “unbiased” trend of keywords demand; due to their gathering methods, they will most likely under-represent your market. You are stuck looking through a database of keywords that might never have been used by your potential clients, even though it’s the right “language”. If you choose those words, you can end up with irrelevant keywords in the heart of your SEO efforts.

Keyword Suggestion Tools such as those offered by YSM (Overture) and Google Adwords allows for regional settings. However, these are based on settings with flaws that could make you miss targeting the right visitors.

Here are some of the problems with current regional keyword suggestion tools:

· Local settings in many Keyword Suggestion Tools are based on user segmentation by IP address, or the regional/linguistic version of the Search Engine accessed. Some Internet Service Providers (such as AOL) are located in other countries, thus changing the results based on IP addresses.

· Language is set by the country/language version you are accessing when using most Search Engines. If I’m using Google in English, but I type in French queries, where is it recorded?

· Overture gives me a French Canada specific tool, but over there, less than 20% of people use Yahoo (according to Mediametrix). How accurate can it be?

For example, a search for “ordinateur” (the French word meaning computer) in Overture Canada will give 831 demands last month. The same search in Overture US will give 1035 searches. How is it possible that a US database contains more queries for a widely used French term? It’s possible because the Market is under-represented in Overture. With Google Adwords, the estimated traffic for “ordinateur” in the US alone is almost 2 times the estimate for Canada alone, even though Google is widely used in Quebec and Canada.

I came upon this issue specifically with sites targeting Quebec visitors (Canada), where the majority of the population speaks French (in their very own way). The methods used to choose the right keywords in Quebec would apply to any smaller regionally and linguistically different market.

But, even if it requires more work, nothing stops you from creating a great SEO job in your regional market.

Here are the steps to choose your regional keywords:

1. Start with your own keyword list and their synonyms.

2. Search your subject and filter for country specific results. Take note of the way keywords are used.

3. Read blogs from people in your market. Take note of the way keywords are used.

4. Read local forums or review sites. Subjects that bring along passion (sports, cars, politics, etc.) will have tons of people commenting on them using a very personal language. The keywords used are most likely what they will look for in Searches.

5. Take this new list of keywords and go back to your keyword traffic prevision tools. Start with the local version, whether it’s Google Adwords, Overture or another regional service. Start building your list from there, with the same “caution” you would use for any language.

6. Go to the other tools (KeywordDiscovery, Wordtracker, etc.) and compare the prevision. Your market is presently under-represented using those tools, so don’t be discouraged by what seems to be a low demand. However, if the demand is suddenly significantly higher, it might be because another market is tapping in to the results (ex: France results would show up while you are looking for keywords used in Quebec).

7. Check Google Trends to see if your country / surrounding cities are represented when researching your keywords.

8. Check the relevancy factor for your keywords (Thank you Dan Thies http://www.seoresearchlabs.com/keywords.zip).

9. If the prevision numbers are very low, it could also mean your subject is “referred to” differently from person to person, with a wide range of variations in the keywords. Be inventive in your copywriting and use the variations and synonyms.

10. Always use the most “semantically inclusive” keywords as your title tag and link building hypertext strategy, unless you are sure there is absolutely no demand on those words.

At the end of the day, you might never get the set of high traffic keywords you were looking for in your regional market. However, with a wider semantic optimization, you will end up with traffic from 30 related terms generating 200 visits each (6 000 visits), rather than one main keyword generating 1000 visits.

Et voilà !

My Site ranks better than yours…

2006-10-23T09:00:00.004-04:00

By Julien Raby The early days… Do you remember when you first got into SEO? Personally, I was studying general Web Design when I first heard about it. My teacher was trying to explain us the value of a link and why Search Engines gives so much importance to it. He used the “courtyard metaphor”. “In high School, there is the “Alpha Beta” gang (Revenge of the nerds copyrights) and the nerds itself. Typically, the guys in the football team get more advantages and attention than nerds. But, if one of the big guys starts hanging with a nerd, it won’t go unnoticed. The nerd will suddenly become more popular. That’s the same thing with Websites and links. If you get a connection with the established ones, your popularity will grow”. Although it was a questionable choice of metaphor to use in front of a bunch of apprentice programmers, we did understand well the value of a link. Since this class, I think I haven’t spent a single day without thinking about SEO. In the first few months I spent several hours a day trying to decipher the truth. I was religiously reading all the content of Search Engine Watch and a bunch of other ones. I was making statements to myself; “The title must be 140 characters long with my best keyword at the beginning, repeat keyword if possible. Keywords should also be included in meta-description and meta-keywords. My pages should not have more than 500 words with a keyword density of 5%, etc.” Then I realised the sad truth: I could not be 100% sure of my statements because of all the conflicting opinions. My early research conducted me to the evidence: SEO is not and will never be an exact science. But at the same time, I had to deliver because I felt confident enough to go after my first clients. Stress, anguish. Who should I trust? Some advocate that SEO is all about links and PageRank while some believe that we should “turn off the green bar aspect of our toolbar and move on with our life” [http://www.highrankings.com/issue158.htm]. Some say that directory submissions are still worth it when others state that it can hurt a Website. Nobody seems to agree on anything… Result? My first client cost me money. And not only because I failed to make his site rank for any significant keywords. But I also had to rewrite all his content because I first did the job in an excessive and shameful keyword stuffing way. Growing up I have been doing SEO for 18 months now. Fortunately, I’m more successful now. And since this contest is about sharing tips, I’ll tell you how I manage to achieve good results: I stopped listening to people. Now, that’s obviously a little drastic, as I should say something like “I stopped listening to every(no)body”. There are undisputable resources on the Web. But as you gain experience you might have to disagree even with the same people you used to listen blindly. Really, one of my best moves was to stop worrying about what others think and start figuring out by myself. What an inexperienced SEO should do Get your hands dirty. Start from scratch. Choose a subject you know well (SEO’s an easy one, but it’s getting a little crowded these days. You may want to try a less competitive area). Buy a domain name, create your content and design, start a link campaign. Now give your site a couple months. While you are waiting, improve your design, work hard on your content and choose carefully which site to target for a link request. Your new site should now be ready for its real purpose: tests. You hear someone preaching keywords density? Test it for yourself. Is internal linking can really help to improve your ranking? Give it a shot. And so on. I’m sure there is many SEO approaches you are taking for granted. I can assure you that you will feel much more confident in front of the client if you actually tried the techniques you are advising. And, of course, stay tuned with the authority sites and never hesitate to reconsider what you thought was a case close... [The above article is a submission for Marketing Pilgrim’s Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest. Each Monday in October, entries will be published and the most popular article of the week will qualify for the $5,000 grand prize. If you’d like to submit an entry, please view the contest entry-requirements and guidelines.]

SEM Seeks Compatible Organization For Long Term Relationship

2006-10-23T09:00:00.003-04:00

By Todd Mintz

“…I Know There Just Gotta Be A Better World Somewhere.” _{B.B. King}

Over the last several months, I’ve read multiple threads that noted the explosion in the number of SEO job listings. In these postings, people speculated whether this meant Corporate America was finally recognizing that Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has become an essential core competency that needed to be brought “in-house”. I’ve also read a very funny article about the SEO hiring process from the employer’s perspective. However, I have yet to see any experienced SEO/SEM veteran write openly about their experiences looking for a new position. So, I figure that I have an opportunity to write one of the few SEO articles that has yet to be written:.)

My former company embarked on a new strategic direction and I made the decision not to continue with them. I had talked to others in my “mostly local” search engine marketing network in Portland and did not see the right opportunity working with any of these folks. So, like any other person looking for something better, I updated my resume and started my job search.

My Background & Job Search Strategy

I have six years experience in SEO/SEM. I spent two years doing internet marketing in a corporate setting and two years in an agency setting. In addition, I have four years experience in affiliate marketing: 2 years full-time and 2 years as a “side gig” to my agency position. Also, I am a frequent contributor to Search Engine Guide.

I relied upon Indeed.com as my meta-job search engine. I set up the following search: http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=search+engine+optimization+jobs&l=&radius

I sent my materials to any and all “advanced” SEO positions no matter where they were located. Each day, I received newly posted positions in my inbox and applied to those that met my criteria.

I had no intention of relocating from my Beaverton, Oregon home, but I figured that SEO/SEM could easily be performed from my home office and that forward-thinking employers would get that. I also created a “jazzy & memorable” email address just for my job search and used the following (hopefully catchy) subject line in each of my emails: Successful SEO Seeks Superior Situation. Every potential employer got the same cover letter & resume…I felt that if anyone didn’t obviously grasp what I could offer them as an employee, I shouldn’t be working there anyway.

The Results

I thought I wouldn’t have a problem getting prospective employers interested in my services. I did not foresee the utter onslaught of interest that my resume generated.

I got phone calls and emails:

From agencies, corporations & executive search firms.
From far away places like Cleveland, Memphis and Greensboro.
From much bigger locations like Washington DC, New York City and Los Angeles where one would think local SEM talent would be more readily available.
Many inquiries from Seattle, though very few from Portland.
At night and during the weekend. Even on Memorial Day, I received 3 employer contacts.

Unofficially, I was contacted by 20% of the people to whom I sent my resume and approximately 98% of my resumes were sent outside Portland. Roughly 20% of the non-local employers were open to a telecommuting arrangement.

Compensation

When people asked for my compensation requirements, I gave them an aggressive number. Almost nobody blinked.

What Can Be Learned From My Job Search Experience

If you are still a student: LEARN SEM!!! The demand for experienced SEM folks is incredibly intense. While the field is constantly evolving, anybody who can keep up and continually demonstrate tangible results will have guaranteed long-term employment. Plus, monetizing your own websites through affiliate marketing & contextual advertising can make your life as a student much more comfortable.

A business or law degree will take 6-7 years of education and could give you six figures of debt. 6-7 years of SEM experience could equate to six figure compensation. What makes more sense?

If you are a beginning to intermediate level search professional: LOSE YOUR ANONYMITY. My former boss gave me the suggestion that I should write SEM articles. I wrote one, submitted it several places, and got it picked up by Search Engine Guide which has continued to publish me. Writing articles (or blogging or forum posting) is an excellent way to establish your professional credibility. Last time I was in contact with Jennifer, she was looking for more writers…

If you run an agency that employs search professionals: It’s quite OK to offer entry level wages to search newbies. However, once your employees have proven their mettle, you must act proactively with their compensation. For any of your people willing to make a move, Corporate America will offer them enough money to leave your company.

If you are a corporation searching for a search professional: Be prepared to offer a non-standard employment arrangement. The SEM field attracts a lot of maverick personalities and many SEM’s would never consider “going corporate” because they learned search in an effort to escape a traditional working arrangement.

From talking to prospective corporate employers, I got the feeling that NOBODY answering their ads had my qualifications. So, I still was amazed that so many people were not open to a telecommuting arrangement (and I let everyone know that I was ready and willing to travel as needed).

If you are a corporate hiring manager, you should know that most experienced SEM’s will perceive your position to be unstable for many different reasons. Will the SEM suggestions be acted upon? Will important people in the organization “buy-in” to the internet marketing efforts? Will the company understand the SEM process and have the necessary patience and budget to implement an effective search strategy?

Therefore, you aren’t likely to get somebody to sell their house and move their family just to work for you…especially when any experienced candidate has many other opportunities to choose from. So, you really need to think non-traditionally in order to reel in an experienced employee.

If you are a well-networked search professional: Consider getting into SEM Executive Search Placement. A typical executive search fee is ¼ to 1/3 of the placed candidate’s first year compensation…even if you are making Shoe-like money in search, these are substantial checks.

An executive search professional that is also experienced in SEO/SEM has a massive competitive advantage in the marketplace because people without such insider knowledge aren’t really qualified to evaluate somebody’s SEO/SEM competency.

When I talked to recruiters, they tended to ask me reasonably superficial questions about search engine rankings and ROI. A “search pretender” with a little bit of knowledge and a lot of guile could have easily duped these folks.

However, if an upper echelon search professional such as Graywolf, Stuntdubl or Aaron Wall were to chat for 10 minutes with an SEM job candidate, they could evaluate the prospective employee’s search competency with a degree of precision that a non-search professional is incapable of doing. I believe that forward-thinking corporations would pay a premium for a SEO/SEM professional to find them a qualified employee. If this same person is also well-networked within the search community, they could make very large fees from just introducing someone from their SEM network to a prospective employer.

Conclusion

Where did I end up? With the company where I first learned SEO…a real estate development / residential & commercial construction executive search / recruiting firm headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia. I had many opportunities to choose from but the stability of the company and the ability to work with people I had known and liked from my home office outweighed all the other opportunities I received. I also thank God that I am part of an industry that is exciting, dynamic and allows me to support my family quite well.

10 Ideas to Smooth Out Even Rough SEO/SEM Projects

2006-10-23T09:00:00.002-04:00

By Scott Clark

Many of us have converged on Search Marketing from other disciplines, be it media marketing, advertising, web development or programming. This diversity is one of the reasons it’s so much fun to mingle compared to any one discipline.

But moving into SEM from other disciplines is not always easy. With web design and programming, the results are usually visible – there are phases of release and visible outcomes. The client nods approval while looking at a screen or printout and everyone moves down the project path. The ads run on the selected media property at the selected time. The ad proof is approved by the client before hitting the magazine. The client can be lazy in their review – they feel they’ve covered the bases by seeing something on the screen or in print. But you can’t “demo” SEM results – there is no way to “beta” a Google rank.

Outcomes are often dependent on product and presentation factors over which we have no control. So I’ve struggled, like you, with each unique, impatient and demanding client while learning things each time that make the next time a little easier. Here are a few that might help you.

1. Help the client understand how results will be measured. Unfortunately, some clients will begin asking you why they are not ranking a week or so after signing a contract. Even if you’ve carefully screened your clients, someone you’ve never met before, such as the CFO, will come “out of the woodwork” and start to scrutinize your efforts in an unpredictable fashion. Be ready to re-explain.

2. Talk with clients about “frames of reference”. Many times the client will use a different language from their customers, and therefore in their assessment of an SEM effort. Educated surfers use better-constructed queries than others with less experience. You can use search data and a lot of careful listening to help clarify the vocabulary of the searcher and understand the disparities.

3. Help the client think about real-world searching. I think businesses often think about their customers as sitting at a quiet, clean desk, lots of time, a super-fast computer, a big 24” monitor and a T1 line all to themselves. This is rarely the case, of course, so it’s good to dirty-up the lens a bit and see what customers are seeing. Take them down the hallway to a PC, and ask them to look something up. Interrupt them a few times, call their cell phone, and generally make yourself annoying.

4. Introduce the client to the concept of split testing. Almost every client I say “split testing” to nods, but few understand the concept. A hand out and 5 minutes makes it clear how keyphrases, ads, landing pages, and navigation flows can be tested and retested to improve site performance. A urst of confidence in my experience and the technique usually follow. You just showed that you’re not trying stuff at random.

5. Show the client how the customer is, really, the best designer. Even when hurting from writing a large check to a web designer for their current site, you must explain how split testing and other findings are to be folded into the site once proven effective, and why. Sometimes it's good to show them the numbers so they can make the call.

6. Introduce your client to the eye-tracking concept and landing page design. Even if you don’t hire eyetracking reports, talk through some of the recent data. Let them get the feel for how people truly look at sites. The concept of the golden triangle, inverted pyramid and F-Shaped scanning are not black-magic, and clients find it both fascinating and comforting to know real-world testing has been done. This kind of a-ha moment relaxes the relationship even more.

7. Keep the client thinking about what’s going on. SEO can be a lonely road. Sometimes it’s like riding fences. Often we need to wait for data accumulation or for time to pass before executing a new phase in a link building campaign. But during these delays, we must still communicate. A quick email seems to do nicely. I have some automated systems that crank out some very, very simple PDF reports weekly.

8. Help your client keep true goals in mind. We often get absorbed with bringing people to the landing page and spend too little schedule and budget optimizing call to action and conversion goals. A 95% exit rate is a very bad thing indeed, especially if you’re paying for clicks, yet many forget it's happening. It's better to have fewer, better converting visitors in many cases, but some clients are initially obsessed with the visitor count. Sometimes introducing a simple grading system can take the focus away from "hits" and let you discuss quality of visitor more frequently.

9. Talk about the multi-visit sale. It’s amazing to me, but almost every client I speak with thinks of SEM in terms of the one-visit, one-sale mindset. Few consider the proven fact that many items require multiple visits to convert and your analytics and SEM success factors must take this into account. Not only must measurements allow for it, but the entire design process needs to consider this "fourth dimension." People coming back to the site have a very different mindset than initial visitors. Help your client think in these terms too.

10. Set expectations - SEM is not easy. I've found that some of the best clients are those who've tried other methods first. If they're not banned from these efforts, they have an appreciation for how hard SEM is. These folks are usually in a listening mood. But for some, who've been inundated with SPAM about $99 SEO from overseas, the 4-6 months' effort to build strong organic rank can be too much to take. There is no one way to explain this process to clients except to say that it is going to take a while to accomplish and consider what works for different personalities. If they have great difficulty with this, have a PPC package available. You know the drill.

11. Bonus Idea - Explain #1 is often impossible, often not required for incredible success. Don't go into a SEM project set up for client disappointment. #1 may not be possible, ever. Help clients understand that an across-the-board 5-position improvement for their 40 major keywords will quadruple their traffic, even if the improvement is further down on the SERPs. Focus on the business results, not the ego-driven Google-summit.

11 Steps to Becoming a Profitable, Self-Employed SEO

2006-10-23T09:00:00.001-04:00

By Jeff Carey

In my opinion, few events are more exciting than putting a client on page one of the search results. A year ago, when I was just getting started and knew next to nothing about search engines, I discovered how to create basic PPC campaigns that amazed my customers, and paid my rent. Equipped with a new marketing tool, one campaign quickly turned into ten. A few months later I was managing nearly 50 campaigns and I made the decision to put aside my web design business and focus entirely on search. These are the eleven steps I took to become a profitable, self-employed SEO.

1. An office and a suit. While it was convenient and affordable to work out of my home, it also felt less than professional. My first step was to look and dress the part of a successful marketer, so I leased a small office in a professional building, and I purchased a nice suit for my client meetings.

2. Faked it ‘til I made it. When I started learning about PPC and SEO, I soon realized that the rules were constantly changing. Rather than wait until I knew it all, I began attending networking events and introducing myself as a search engine marketing consultant. Each sale presented a new challenge that forced me to find a way to be successful.

3. Free Site Reviews. When business was slow, I spent my time looking for websites that should have, but didn’t rank well for local search terms. Then I sent brief emails to site owners to explain my findings and asked them for a meeting. This turned into several new projects.

4. Local media coverage. Aside from PPC, I never spent money on newspaper or radio advertising. Instead, I hired someone with a PR background to pitch my search marketing story to our main business publication. When the article hit – it created a lot of buzz and credibility…and it made my phone ring.

5. Working on my own website. In addition to running several PPC campaigns for my own business, I also spent time optimizing my site. My success in outranking my competition marked the real shift from focusing entirely on pay-per-click to the wonderful world of SEO.

6. Always be learning. I purchased every SEO book I could find and began reading several blogs and online articles. Rand, Aaron, Danny, Andy, Joe and so many others – thank you so much for sharing. Someday I hope to buy you each a drink and thank you in person.

7. Say goodbye to driving music. For less than $100, I purchased an Ipod Shuffle and a car adapter. To this day, my best kept secret is listening to search marketing podcasts nearly every minute I’m driving. I do miss the 80’s music though.

8. Think Big. I discovered that my fees were too low when a potential client asked me if the rate I had quoted him was my monthly charge. I told him with great pleasure that it was actually a one-time fee, and it cost me the sale. I highly recommend that you include a big ticket item in your proposals, and don’t be surprised when they buy it.

9. Target a niche. From an SEO standpoint, targeting a niche helps you become an expert and speak your clients’ language. I learned this from several books by Al Ries and Laura Ries. With their help, I have continued to narrow my focus and position my company.

10. Create Partnerships. Of all the web design firms in my area, only a handful claim to offer search marketing services, and even fewer really know what they are doing. By meeting with these firms and passing them some web design leads, I now get a nice stream of SEM referrals from them on a regular basis.

11. Attend Conferences. This is the next step for me, along with hiring someone who shares my passion for improving rankings. I registered for my first Pubcon convention today and can’t wait to meet the people who have helped me get to this point. If search is your thing, I hope to see you there!

SEO is Pointless (But You Don’t Have to Tell Your Clients)

2006-10-23T09:00:00.000-04:00

By Jordan McCollum

Sad, but true: our industry is pointless. But don’t go and trash your beautiful keyword research (or worse, kill this browser window!). Of course SEO has a purpose. Simply stated, the purpose of “pure” SEO is to generate more qualified traffic to a website. And that’s good—more is better. Right?

Not always. Sometimes, more is just more.

How can you tell if your SEO is pointless? Here’s an example: Jim Bob’s Weddings-and-Webdings contracted with an SEO company. Six months into the contract, Jim Bob is forwarded a disturbing article that claims “SEO is Pointless.” He calls his SEO for the conversion rate, as suggested in the article. After some prying, Jim Bob finally gets a breakdown:

Pre optimization:	335 unique visitors/month	5 conversions/month
Post optimization:	9500 unique visitors/month	50 conversions/month

Initially, these numbers look vaguely impressive. After all, Jim Bob is now getting ten times the conversions that he was before. But Jim Bob persists: what’s the conversion rate? Calculate out the percentages: Jim Bob’s gone from a low-but-okay conversion rate of 1.5% to a much-less-respectable 0.5%. Jim Bob terminates his contract. Jim Bob’s ex-SEO suffered from tunnel vision and focused on delivering more traffic instead of more value.

Some clients are satisfied with a lower conversion rate as long as they have more conversions. Don’t let those complacent clients lull you into thinking that SEO should end at a landing page. No amount of traffic can compensate for a website that won’t convert, losing visitors like water through a sieve. This is even more true in a PPC campaign, where you have to pay for each visitor. Eventually, the client will realize that they’re paying for something pointless and worthless, and you’ll lose them as a client.

SEO cannot just be about getting visitors to a site or even making the site nice for them to play on. There must be a goal that is larger than simply bringing more people to the site. Why do your clients want higher rankings and more traffic in the first place? To get more buyers, not more page views.

So what’s an SEO to do? Think about that statistic I mentioned earlier: conversion rate. With a little work, Jim Bob’s Weddings-and-Webdings could creep up to a 3.13% conversion rate. Before you point out that 3.13% is less than 3 percentage points better than the SEO’s original effort, fire up the calculator for a little more math.

Jim Bob’s SEO is proud of 9500 uniques/month. Now, instead of sitting back and waiting for the revenues to roll in (and getting fired), the SEO turns her attention to the Weddings-and-Webdings site itself and make a few adjustments to get up to the 3.13% conversion rate. The 50 conversions/month jump to almost 300 conversions/month. Want an even more impressive statistic to share with Jim Bob? That’s 600% lift—or 6000% lift over the pre-SEO+Conversion Rate Enhancement numbers.

How can you offer such amazing value to your SEO clients? The plan is three-fold: adjust client expectations, deliver and report.

Adjust client expectations. Why is this important? Chances are your SEO clients will be very well-educated about (and fixated on) the “search engine” part of SEO. They want rankings and the commensurate traffic. That’s good. That’s why they’ve hired you. But don’t lose sight of the ultimate goal of their website: sales, leads or whatever other conversions they track. If they find out in 6 months that their conversion rate has dropped significantly—or if their revenue hasn’t increased proportionately with their traffic—then they’ll realize that more is just more, and they don’t want to pay for “just more” anymore. If you can always keep the ultimate goal of not just more traffic but more conversions in sight, you can show your client the value your services provide.
Deliver. Great. Now your client expects you to improve their conversion rate. How do you do it? Here are a few tips to get you started:
- Examine exit pages and bounce rates. Look at the pages which turn people off, especially people who’ve just found your site. Are your landing pages turning people away? Your 55 question, 17 page order form? Reexamine the pages that drive your visitors away. Are they targeting the right audience? Are they too complex or too simple? Can the visitor see where to go next?
- Create clear paths. Show visitors what they should do next. Say they arrive on a landing page. They can learn more about your products, order now or see related products. Don’t make your visitors ponder long and hard about where to go from here. Put more calls to action in your text and graphics, placed prominently above the fold. Guide them down the “conversion funnel.”
- Simplify, simplify, simplify. This goes hand-in-hand with creating clear paths. Make your navigation standard throughout the site, easy to find, easy to understand, and easy to use. Eliminate any unnecessary fields and steps from your order form. If visitors use site navigation to abandon a shopping cart, eliminate it from the checkout process.
Report. Make sure you and your client track the conversions generated in your campaign so that you can show the value of your efforts.

These tips only scratch the surface of conversion rate enhancement techniques. SEO as an end unto itself may be pointless, but all your keyword research and content creation need not be in vain. Just keep the true goal of the website in sight and you’ll be on your way to providing your clients real, demonstrable value in no time. Stop your clients’ websites from losing potential customers like a sieve and start funneling them through the conversion process with conversion rate enhancement services.

Do You Blog with Honor?

2006-10-20T12:45:00.000-04:00

Blogging-buddy, Jim Kukral, sent me a link to an interesting initiative - an honor pledge for bloggers. With less and less transparency in the blogging community, it can be hard to know if your favorite blogger has "sold-out" or not. The Blog Honor Pledge, is designed to help bloggers make a statement, including: What does Blog Honor mean? It means I have chosen to pledge to you the following: 1. I will endeavor to continue to bring you the highest quality content that I am capable of 2. I promise to attempt to disclose or clearly mark any content or advertisements or other monetization attempts that help me keep my blog operating 3. I pledge to never write "fake" blog content solely for the purpose of trying to generate revenue without complete and clear disclosure. With exception, my blog may exist for business purposes, therefore I use it to talk about products & services that relate to my business, thus assisting me in generating leads & sales for me indirectly So, am I signing on? I would, if I could confirm I'd always bring you great content, without selling out. Maybe if Jim paid me some cash to join, I would - oh the irony. :-)

Social Network for Blog Readers

2006-10-20T10:31:00.000-04:00

Have you ever wondered if you're the only one who reads "John's Sea Shell Collection Blog"? - if that blog actually exists - don't admit to reading it. ;-) Thanks to MyBlogLog, blog readers can now build a profile and find others who share their same blogging interests. As TechCrunch reports... The service lets users associate themselves with their favorite blogs, build a profile page about themselves and send internal messages. By default MyBlogLog users join the community of a site using MyBlogLog after ten visits to that site, but you can increase that number or require manual joining. Blog publishers can show a badge on their site with pictures of the most recent MyBlogLog members to visit the site and can display the five most popular outbound links from their blog oithout CEO faculties?

Google Webmaster Tools Adds Crawl Rate Charts

2006-10-20T10:10:00.000-04:00

Google has just added a couple of new features to its Webmaster Tools. The first offers charts that show you the crawl rate for your site. Basically, Google shows you Googlebot's activity on your site including: * Number of pages crawled per day * Number of kb's downloaded per day * Time spent downloading a page There's also an option to tell Googlebot how fast to request pages. If you want to see how the charts look, head over to Aaron Shear's blog - he had the scoop. Also added is the option to opt-in to Google's "Enhanced Image Search". What the heck does that mean, I hear you ask? If you choose to enable enhanced image search, Google will use tools such as Google Image Labeler to associate the images included in your site with labels that will improve indexing and search quality of those images. Sounds good if you need to get your images better indexed, sounds like a bandwidth hog to the rest of us. ;-)

Google Announces Increased Profit and Revenue

2006-10-19T16:23:00.000-04:00

Reuters has details of Google's Q3 announcement... ...quarterly profit rose 92 percent as the company tightened its grip on the Web search market. Net income for the third quarter grew to $733.4 million, or $2.36 per diluted share, compared with the year-earlier quarter's $381.2 million, or $1.32 per share. Gross revenue rose 70 percent to $2.69. Excluding traffic acquisition costs of $825 million, the financial cut which affiliated Web sites receive for featuring Google advertising, revenue rose to $1.87 billion.

Free Online Polls from PollDaddy.com

2006-10-19T15:48:00.000-04:00

Who's your PollDaddy? I've just discovered a cool - FREE - poll service called PollDaddy. It allows you to create quick and easy polls for your site, complete with customized skins. Via Stumbleupon - yes, I'm getting addicted. ;-)

Google Employee Adds Personal Post to Official Blog

2006-10-19T15:06:00.000-04:00

I've lost track of the number of times I have posted to the wrong blog (my personal blog, instead of this one). It usually happens when using the "Blogger" button in the Google Toolbar - it defaults to the most recently updated blog, not the one you select as "default". Anyway, I'm glad to hear that even Google employees can make this mistake... A Google Inc. employee mistakenly posted information to an official Google blog that she had intended to publish in her personal blog...two postings about skull-shaped candies appeared on Blogger Buzz, the official blog of this Google blog publishing service. The postings were quickly removed from Google, but it shows that blogger is perhaps not robust enough to manager large-scale corporate blogs.

AdSense Leading Google's Growth?

2006-10-19T10:20:00.000-04:00

ClickZ takes a look at the contribution Google's contextual ad network, AdSense, is making to the growth of Google's revenues. A big part of what's driving that growth is the expansion of AdSense, Google's mammoth contextual ad network. While second quarter earnings pegged revenues on Google's own sites higher than on AdSense sites ($1.43 billion versus $997 million), AdSense has the larger reach, according to Kim Malone, director of AdSense online sales and operations. Having spent some time with the Yahoo Publisher Network team, I can tell you that they realize the huge potential of contextual networks too. They showed some very promising developments and plan for growing the YPN network. I'd reveal more, but I lost track of what was under NDA and what wasn't, and, not being partial to waking up with a horses-head laying next to me, it's best I err on the side of caution. ;-)

How Social Networks Can Make Money

2006-10-19T10:15:00.000-04:00

CNET looks at the complex task of actually making money from a vast social network site. Social networks attract plenty of visitors but have had a tougher time attracting advertisers who may be wary of associating their brands with inappropriate content....New technologies are being developed to help make social networks more attractive to advertisers. It's a long article, so grab the coffee first. ;-)

Amazon Launches Askville

2006-10-19T10:10:00.000-04:00

Amazon is apparently inviting select customers to join a new community it is calling Askville, according to overstated. As a valued Amazon customer, you’ve been specially picked to get an early look at a new website called Askville where you can ask any question on any topic and get real answers from real people. It’s new, and best of all, it’s free! While Google Answers was the first, Yahoo Answers has grown the fastest, simply because, unlike Google, Yahoo doesn't make a charge for each question. Amazon takes the "free" format a step further, by actually offering rewards to those who ask and answer questions. These "answer" services are clearly all about community participation; the more a user feels a part of the site, the more likely they are to return. Google bet on the wrong horse - deciding to monetize the Q&A system - and has so far failed to capture the momentum Yahoo has. Could Amazon's rewarded Q&A service trump Yahoo?

Google Integrates Dodgeball

2006-10-19T10:04:00.000-04:00

Back in May of last year, Google acquired mobile social network, dodgeball.com. The service allows users to find nearby friends using their cell phones. TechCrunch has noticed that dodgeball has now been integrated with Google Accounts, as the company steps-up its efforts to attack mobile search. I wonder if it will take Google as long to integrate YouTube with Google Accounts.

Where's Your SEM Scholarship Article Entry?

2006-10-18T12:10:00.000-04:00

I know it's been a busy news week, with Yahoo and Google both announcing upgrades to the paid search products, but where the heck are the scholarship entries? If you're considering entering the contest, this is the week to do it as we have NO ENTRIES this week. None, nada, zip! I guess a $5,000 scholarship prize that includes a full pass to the next Search Engine Strategies show, is not enough of an incentive for ya? We're upping the ante even more, with the addition of 1 year of AdWatcher service (ad tracking and click fraud monitoring) and 1 year of AdScientist service (bid management), courtesy of the guys behind the Search Marketing Standard magazine. The prize package is now worth more than $6,000, so what in the world are you waiting for? :-)

Why Those in Glass Blog Houses, Shouldn't Throw Stones

2006-10-18T12:00:00.000-04:00

There's a reason why A-list bloggers shouldn't try and set standards for blogging or criticize other's blogging attempts. Edelman's recent blow-up with their handling of the Wal-Mart blog demonstrates how karma can come back and bite you in the butt.

Citysearch Adds Mobile Search

2006-10-18T11:52:00.000-04:00

Greg Sterling reports Citysearch has launched a text-based mobile local search service. Results I received were also "sponsored." Rather than a relevant advertiser link at the top of results, there was an advertiser-sponsor referenced at the bottom. The advertiser had nothing to do with my particular search for hotels but I would expect over time that will change.

Google Harnessing the Sun

2006-10-18T11:47:00.000-04:00

Google plans to take advantage of the sun, with the installation of solar panels to deliver 30% of its power consumption. Soon we plan to begin installation of 1.6 megawatts of solar photovoltaic panels at our Mountain View campus. This project will be the largest solar installation on any corporate campus in the U.S., and we think it's one of the largest on any corporate site in the world. This should put to rest the rumor that the sun shines out of Google's @ss - if it did, they wouldn't need the panels! (sorry, couldn't resist). ;-)

Throw Your External Metrics Data Out the Window

2006-10-18T10:50:00.000-04:00

Rand Fishkin has put together a whole bunch of analytical data from some of the top search bloggers. He asked a couple dozen SEM bloggers to share their visitor data and then compared it with external services such as Alexa and Hitwise. The conclusion? Based on the evidence we've gathered here, it's safe to say that no external metric, traffic prediction service or ranking system available on the web today provides any accuracy when compared with real numbers. If you want to learn more about where the top search bloggers get their traffic, check out the study. PS. I had to turn down the offer to participate as when I left FI, I had to start a new Google Analytics account and didn't have enough data. :-(

Google Announces Website Optimizer for Landing-Page Testing

2006-10-18T10:26:00.000-04:00

Right about now, Google's Brett Crosby is revealing a new tool at the Emetrics Summit in Washington, D.C. Called Website Optimizer, it is designed to help AdWords advertisers test different landing pages in order to determine which one drives the highest number of conversions. Multi-variable testing for landing pages is something that has become more popular over the last couple of years, as advertisers look to tweak different aspects of their campaigns - looking for that edge. According to Google... The beta launch of Website Optimizer is a limited release that is offered to AdWords advertisers on a sign-up and acceptance basis. Website Optimizer is fully integrated with Google AdWords and is free to AdWords advertisers...It is a self-service tool that enables non-technical users to set-up and run multivariate landing page experiments. Website Optimizer uses Google Analytics technology for tracking and reporting which landing page variation had the highest conversions. It's interesting that Google has decided to partner with companies that specialize in landing page design, EpikOne and Optimost, as an option for AdWords users looking for a hand with their ad testing. Both Yahoo and Google are starting to offer services and tools that agencies have been specializing in. By partnering, Google gets the approval of third-partner agencies, who might otherwise feel they are being squeezed out. It will be interesting to test Website Optimizer and see how it compares to third-party offerings. Timthoy Seward has more details of how Website Optimizer will work.

Yahoo Launches Panama Interface

2006-10-17T17:45:00.000-04:00

As you read this, Yahoo is announcing the launch of their long-awaited Panama interface for search marketing, replacing the system that has been in place since the acquisition of Overture. The full roll-out of the Panama’s ranking algorithm will not launch until the first quarter of 2007, but Yahoo Search Marketing advertisers can choose to migrate to the new interface over the coming months, in anticipation of the full launch. Migration will be via invite, but advertisers can also request a faster switch. They’ll get a chance to preview the new interface before switching, but those deciding to switch will find the migration in not reversible. New YSM Interface - click to enlarge As I noted earlier this week, I have been at Yahoo’s Burbank offices for the past couple of days, joining a small group of marketers, selected to be the first outside users to test the new Panama interface. Here’s a rundown of what the new Panama interface will offer immediately: • A new dynamic design structure using an intuitive interface that includes Ajax and graphical interfaces. • A YSM dashboard view at login, showing alerts on the account, performance charts and campaign summaries. • Instant activation of keyword bids on most ads. No more waiting for editorial review, unless you plan on bidding on sensitive content such as trademarked or potentially illegal content. Most bids now go live within a few minutes, mimicking Google’s instant options. • Enhanced forecasting with interactive graphs for selecting keyword pricing. Move the slider and Yahoo will show you the potential audience reach based upon your campaign’s landscape. This feature allows forecasting on a keyword or ad group level. Pricing graphs - click to enlarge • Campaign “Assists” – Advertisers using YSM’s analytics tag will now be shown which keywords assisted in the final purchase. This is a potentially huge development and will allow marketers to identify keywords that helped drive a sale – important for anyone tracking the buy-cycle of their campaign. Yahoo hopes to expand the use of “Assists” so that, in the future, you can track how your sponsored listings impacted sales from other online channels. • Calculate impressions and clicks based upon newly offered daily spend limits. Identify missed impressions and clicks, based upon your imposed spend limit. • New keyword selection tools – provide Panama with a few keywords, and the destination URL, and the interface will help you refine your keyword list. • Watch list flags – single out your most important keywords or those you manage more often. • Ad creative optimization – select multiple ad creatives and either display them randomly or based on the highest click-thru rate. • Define both a short and long description for your ads with warnings if your creative is too long. The launch of the Panama interface was no small initiative. Teams from around the world worked to develop a virtually new platform for YSM, with very little of the original system being included in Panama. Yahoo also moved away from a single datacenter in California and now has “pods” all around the world, allowing for Yahoo to offer a faster and more reliable system for advertisers in different countries. The next step for Panama is the planned early-2007 launch of their “Marketplace Design” which will see the launch of the new ranking algorithm. The new ranking model will utilize what Yahoo calls its “Quality Index”, a 1-to-5 scale that calculates your ads ranking based upon ad quality and bid price (a similar model to the one that has helped Google rapidly increase its AdWords revenue and provider searchers with better ads). The Quality Index is a fluid scale that is relative to the competing ads for your selected keywords. The scale will be influenced by a number of factors and Yahoo intends to keep the exact algorithm a secret, but some factors we do know about, include: • Historical click-thru rate – Yahoo uses a rolling window to determine an ads click-thru rate. Those ads that start off with a high CTR will have to maintain that rate on a continual basis (so it will be difficult to game the system by inflating your CTR short-term). • Relation of keyword bid to the wording used in the ad copy, title and display URL. If your chosen keyword shows-up in your actual ad and URL, you’ll gain a little extra Quality Index juice. • Landing page quality will also be a “small” part of the Quality Index score, according to the Panama team. The launch of Panama is a massive undertaking and it’s understandable why Yahoo has decided to role out Panama in two stages and using a steady migration process. They fully expect advertisers to find bugs and areas for improvement, but Yahoo plans to act swiftly to make any changes needed – this was evidenced during our visit when the user-group noted a few minor design improvements, which the Panama team immediately added to their pipeline of changes. Yahoo also has many releases planned for Panama, so even this initial interface is destined to have more features added over the coming months. YSM advertisers should be excited about the roll-out of Panama, and Google should be somewhat concerned. Panama’s intuitive interface and graphical representations brings a new level of excitement to paid search. New advertisers will find it easier to get started, while experienced marketers will be able to get very granular with their campaigns. I found Panama to be very easy to use, make a lot more sense and help me to identify more areas of opportunity for campaigns. If Yahoo can implement the algorithm change as effectively as this interface roll-out, they could very quickly gain the approval of online advertisers and improve their market share.

Need Help with Blogger to Wordpress Import

2006-10-16T12:47:00.000-04:00

I don't normally ask you for help, but I figured you may be able to assist me with problem. I'm trying to transfer a blog from Blogger to Wordpress but I'm having problems with matching the truncation Blogger uses for the post page names. Blogger removes stop-words and also has a different character length to Wordpress. If anyone knows of a plugin or has written a script that can handle this, please contact me - consulting AT marketingpilgrim. Thanks!

SEM Scholarship Week 1 Winner Announced

2006-10-16T00:16:00.000-04:00

Week 1 of our SEM Scholarship contest has concluded and we have our first finalist. Congratulations to Nick Urbani who wins the first round with his entry - "The SEO Article You Shouldn't Read". Nick's entry carried the most unique views of all our entries in week 1, with a total of 385 unique views to his page (note: only unique views of the actual entry page counted towards this number). Nick wins a copy of "Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day" and "Please Ring Bell for Service" and qualifies as one of four finalists, who will face our expert panel of judges, to determine who will win the $5,000 grand prize package. Week 2 entries are now published and we're accepting entries for Week 3, so get your creative hats on and submit your article!

Submit Your Entry for Week 3 of the SEM Scholarship Contest

2006-10-16T00:06:00.001-04:00

While you may have missed out on your chance to enter week 2 of our Search Engine Marketing Scholarship contest, today marks the start of week 3. We expect week 3 to be a quiet week - with many procrastinators waiting until the final week (week 4) to submit their entry - so this could be a great opportunity for anyone looking to enter the $5,000 prize contest. Please be sure to read all the rules and you have until 6pm Saturday October 21st to get your entry in. Good luck!

Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest Entries - October 16th

2006-10-16T00:06:00.000-04:00

We've uploaded the second round of our SEM Scholarship Contest entries. The following entries qualified for the week and we'll track the traffic to each article over the next week. The most popular post of the week will secure the author one of four finalist positions for our grand prize giveaway. Here's the full list of article entries:

Estimating the Value of Search Engine Optimization

My Tips...

What Chocolate Covered Coffee Beans and SEO have in common?

Instant PPC Success for the Hometown Hero

The (Alleged) Miracle of Pay-Per-Click Marketing

Click, read, forward, blog your favorite entry and help them advance to the final judging. Week three, for submissions, opens today! If you feel inspired to submit your own article, you have until 6pm Saturday October 21st.

Heading to Yahoo...

2006-10-16T00:05:00.000-04:00

Light blogging until mid-week, as I'm spending a couple of days with Yahoo. SEM Scholarship week 1 finalist and week 2 entries will be posted Monday. Andy

Google Analytics Adds Google Checkout Tracking

2006-10-16T00:03:00.000-04:00

Another new sign of Google looking to better integrate its services. Google Analytics will now track sales via Google Checkout. ...you can now use Google Analytics with Google Checkout. Simply add a JavaScript call and a hidden field to each page that displays the Google Checkout button and you'll be able to see conversions and revenue metrics for your Checkout transactions. More details on using GA to track Checkout, can be found here.

The (Alleged) Miracle of Pay-Per-Click Marketing

2006-10-16T00:01:00.004-04:00

By Meredith Smith

Online store not selling so well? No problem! Just slap together a pay-per-click campaign and you'll be sure to sell out in no time!

Not getting as many online leads as you would like? PPC can fix that too!

Clients skipping out on their bill? PPC can fix ANYTHING!

At least, these are the sentiments that seem to be floating around the virtual water cooler. PPC marketing is often approached as a magic wand that can make all of your marketing woes disappear with a flick of the wrist and a theatrical "poof" of smoke.

Wouldn't that be great? No wonder people like to believe that all-too-tempting idea!

I've seen instances where pay-per-click campaigns really do seem to work magic for clients, but in every case these clients were willing to work at it. They were willing to build a really great PPC campaign and support it with other efforts.

And trust me, it was hard work.

Don't get me wrong – I'm all for PPC! In the end PPC is just another piece of the marketing puzzle, and when you hope against hope that a lone PPC campaign will prop up a failing business or product then it's bound to come crashing down like a flimsy house of cards.

So what steps can you take to make sure that your PPC campaign has the best chances for success?

#1. The first step is to know what is going on with your marketing efforts, offline and online. When I say "know what is going on", I mean having solid, factual data on what is going on behind the scenes – proof about what works and what doesn't.

For this, you need a web analytics package. There are a lot of solutions available in every price range. Of course, Google Analytics is a popular choice considering that it is free (always a great selling point!), easy to use, and powerful.

I work for ROI Revolution, which offers a pretty neat free 60-minute informational webinar on Google Analytics if it just so happens you are interested in exploring that web analytics solution.

Once you have web analytics up and running you will be gathering important information on what is going on with your marketing efforts. When you know what is going on, you're in control!

#2. The next step is to work like a dog and try everything your mind can feverishly conceive to get your marketing to work better. Doesn't sound like a day at the beach, does it?

Maybe not, but in the end it really pays off! When you use your PPC campaign with your web analytics to test, test, test different variables, options, and price points you will find things that you can prove work better than others. That's extremely satisfying, and it's the best way to claw your way to the top.

Thomas Jefferson said "I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it." With a little "luck" maybe you can turn that PPC campaign into a magic wand, after all.

Instant PPC Success for the Hometown Hero

2006-10-16T00:01:00.003-04:00

By Ryan Bell

Google AdWords is the heart of many marketing campaigns. Ebooks, legal advice, Amazon products, electronics and ringtones have all been tremendously influenced by AdWords advertising.

But what about Ma & Pa's Oak Furniture from Montreal? Or Joe investor's real estate company from Phoenix? Sure, they could benefit from national exposure, but homegrown clients are their bread and butter. Can they benefit from PPC exposure?

At a recent PPC conference in Chicago, I was shocked to discover that many folks would answer 'No' to this question. I was especially surprised when these answers came from the marketing directors of firms like Ma & Pa's, and Joe Investor's.

"Sure," they told me, "We could put an ad on AdWords and hope for some new business. But by the time we got one sale within our delivery (or rental) area, we've already paid for 500 other clicks from people in places we've never even heard of, let alone deliver to."

This is the part of the conversation where the resident "guru" jumps in with a bunch of noise about geo-targeting. It's a sad truth: most of the marketers in this situation didn't know much about it, and when they heard it was as easy as clicking a check box, they looked relieved.

But what I told them next resulted in a pile of business cards being pushed my way, at every round table and lunch session I attended...

The real trick to successful leveraging of local PPC is in the most obvious (yet overlooked place): your keyword list.

For example, let's say Joe Investor is selling houses in Phoenix. He comes up with some PPC ads to show for the keywords "homes for sale", "real estate" and "houses for sale". He sets up his account, and in 5 minutes his ads are up and running. Unfortunately, people in Maryland searching for real estate in D.C. are seeing his ads. They click through, see the desert landscape, and click back out.

Joe investor gets stuck with a huge bill, and no leads to show for it. So he does his homework, reads some "guru" articles on the internet, and learns all about geo-targeting. "Ah-ha," he thinks, "Now I can cut costs and get relevant leads!"

He runs the ads again, this time with geo-targeting on. A month later, he's spent next to nothing on clicks to his website. He's gotten one rotten lead, and traffic is down to nothing.

The real success comes not from relying on a third party search engine to generate traffic using a variable such as geo-targeting, but by avoiding the middle-man, and acquiring our targeted market using the market itself. Here's how to do it:

Open a new Excel workbook. In column A, starting at row 2, type out all of your keywords/phrases, one to a line. For Joe Investor, it looks like this:

In column B, row 1, put the name of your main city ('Phoenix' in this case). In column C, begin by adding the name of a suburb in your area (in my example, we'd put 'Scottsdale' or 'Mesa') and then put each suburb name in its own column, row 1. Now we have:

Continuing in the next column, begin putting in all the zip-codes in the area you service. That would look like:

Now in cell B2, input the following: =$B$1&" "&A2

This gives you the result:

Drag this formula all the way down to the last row of your original keywords. Do the same for each column in your sheet, replacing the 'B' in the equation with each column header (so for 'Scottsdale' the formula would be =$C$1&" "&A2)

In my small example above, I just created over 150 new, locally-targeted keywords from just 7 original keywords. They are all broken up by broad, exact, and phrase match. And it only took my 10 minutes to create them all using Excel.

Why does this work so well? Think about our original problem: using words like "real estate" shows our ads to everyone on earth searching for real estate. But when we turn on geo-targeting, we get very few leads. What I have effectively done, is created 162 individual keywords which target the geographic area we service, without restricting the searchers to just people within that area!

What does that mean? It means that someone looking for a house in Phoenix, isn't always searching from within Phoenix! So what I've done is made it possible for anyone looking for a house in Phoenix to find a house in Phoenix, no matter where they're searching from, or what word (or zip code) they use to refer to Phoenix.

How can I give away such a valuable secret? A truly talented SEO or SEM doesn't rely on one secret-method to carry his career. The true talent is creativity and adaptation. I am not afraid of giving this strategy away, because I can invent 15 others to build on it which would turn this great campaign into a huge success.

What Chocolate Covered Coffee Beans and SEO have in common?

2006-10-16T00:01:00.002-04:00

By Aaron Phillips When used separately they are good, when used together they are even better! This article is how to achieve success with Press Releases using a technique that I have been using for almost two years. The components include a well written press release + a special combination of keywords and Google Alerts (your new best friend). What is Google Alerts? What it does is allow you to enter in keywords and subscribe to those keywords for email updates as Google finds news related to them. Lot's of people use this service and I have a secret ingredient that will increase the exposure of your Press Releases. At the bottom of each one of my press release I include a statement such as - "My company currently competes with Competitor A, Competitor B, Competitor C, ect..." Carefully selected and in moderation it will expose your press release directly to customers of your competition! What happens next is amazing! Everyone that is currently subscribed to the keywords Competitor A, Competitor B, and so on receives my press release and a significant increase in traffic takes place. Google Alerts spreads my Press Release to the competitions customers with the end result being more traffic and more business! Like Chocolate Covered Coffee Beans you need to be careful with the quantity and know when enough is enough! The one thing I suggest is using a simple and true statement that simple states a true fact such as "I compete with Competitor A". The moral of the story: Utilizing "Chocolate Covered Coffee Beans" (Competitor Names as Keywords in your Press Releases) will result in additional exposure, but utilizing too many may keep you up at night! [The above article is a submission for Marketing Pilgrim’s Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest. Each Monday in October, entries will be published and the most popular article of the week will qualify for the $5,000 grand prize. If you’d like to submit an entry, please view the contest entry-requirements and guidelines.]

My Tips...

2006-10-16T00:01:00.001-04:00

By Paul Nagel As I feel anyone reading this probably has a basic understanding of SEO I'll skip the basics such as title tags, description tag (As it's sometimes used by the search engines for the description in their listings, sprinkling your keywords throughout the article without overdoing it etc… For me if you optimize for Google your not hurting yourself with the other two, MSN and Yahoo. For those that feel on page optimization is a factor worth spending time on, using CSS to move the content to the top of the html will move the content you want the spiders to see up to the top of the page code wise. For those that are confused as to what a spider actually is, think of it in terms of being a very simple browser. Whatever your browser can see, that's what it sees. It technically can't pick up anything else. It doesn't somehow stay connected to your web server. It simply queries it by following a link and takes what the server gives it. Same as the browser your using to read this. The google search engine in my opinion hasn't changed at all. It can still be optimized for using the same techniques that worked years ago. You simply identify what the page is about using the title tag and obtain incoming links. However consider that the web has grown substantially than it was a few years ago, hence the competition is much greater so there could be the apparency of things not working anymore. The things that have changed however are pre-filtering such as how old is a domain as well as people actually checking pages that are in the index to ensure a human element of quality. One way to get around this is to search the web and find obscure websites that have been around since about 2001. Email the owner and ask him if he'd be willing to sell the domain to you. Once you've reached an agreement, and this is important, have him transfer the domain without a change of ownership. You now have a domain that's been around for a while that you can link to your new ones giving them a trust factor. In other words getting past the pre filtering. If you have adsense on your page, having the medium rectangle, white background, no border on white web page, placed in the upper left corner, (first place people look when reading left to right) you'll raise your ctr sometimes to levels that will astonish you. The other factor and this is also important is to make sure that the words your visitors are using to reach your page reflect themselves in the ads. These two factors can make you a lot of money with the right listings. Don't go too overboard with "high paying keywords" I've personally found high traffic words that pay 20 to 30 cents make a lot, lot more. I think traffic is way more important and tweaking your ads to fit the traffic than going after some word that will pay you $5. That's just me though. As far as making money on the web, the most important factors are really simple. Whatever keywords people are using to visit your pages whether through pay per click or through SEO, make sure either your adsense ads or the affiliate program your promoting matches those keywords as close as possible. A good example would be having a listing for the keyword dog kennels. Doesn't matter whether it's pay per click or organic. Pay per click is just much easier to control. Make sure those ads are all about dog kennels, placed upper left corner and blended into the page as much as possible. They will stand out simply by their placement. You want the visitor to reach your page and in his mind go: "that's what I was looking for!" If you always just keep that last sentence in mind while constructing your site you really can't go wrong. Being no expert in Pay per click I have however found a few things that work for me. These are tips I've picked up simply trying to make adwords work. (Overture until they have the option to opt out of their partner listings will not get my recommendation). One way that works is to take the most obvious sets of words for the thing your going to promote. Let's say it's a shoe store affiliate program and you want to sell Nike tennis shoes. Let's say your lazy like me and just want to get something profitable and move on. Enter some basic keywords into adwords using broad match like, nike, nike tennis shoes, buy nike shoes, etc…. Make a list of words you don't want to pay for like: "nikes suck", "nike commercial", "tiger woods nike contract" etc....enter these into the negative keyword list so they won't show up and cost you money. We'll tackle how to get the ones you can't think of right away in a minute. In order to get on the front page and you really do kind of have to be there to get any clicks, you'll have to bid high starting out. You have to establish a click through history for each keyword and it needs to be pretty good say over 1% minimum. This should be your first focus, tweaking your ads until you have some nice ctr's. Bidding high to get a high placement is kind of necessary to get those high ctr's. Realize at this point it's an investment in the future, your not going to make money, probably, straight out of the gate with those words. Now you have a nice ctr, every two days lower the price by 10% until you reach a nice compromise of clicks to profits. You've been running your ads for a week or so now, look in your log files and see what people are actually typing in to get to your site. Start another adgroup and enter these as phrase and exact match, you should either get a higher listing for the same or even a cheaper price. Make a list of all the words from your logs that aren't related or helping you make any sales and add them to the negative keyword list. You don't want to pay for someone typing in "nike phone number" when your trying to sell shoes. Once your making a profit, rinse and repeat. Don't get stuck and too focused on one thing. If it goes south for whatever reason, and trust me it can and you probably won't see it coming, it's much, much better to have multiple sources of income than one great one by far! That's it, those are my tips. Hope you enjoyed them and find them usefull. [The above article is a submission for Marketing Pilgrim’s Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest. Each Monday in October, entries will be published and the most popular article of the week will qualify for the $5,000 grand prize. If you’d like to submit an entry, please view the contest entry-requirements and guidelines.]

Estimating the Value of Search Engine Optimization

2006-10-16T00:01:00.000-04:00

By Alex Cleanthous Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the holy grail of Internet marketing because of the allure of 'free' traffic. There’s no doubt… achieving a number one ranking in Google or Yahoo for high traffic volume keyword phrases can be extremely profitable for any business. Because of this, SEO may be the most competitive and difficult areas to achieve online success in. Think about it… there can really only be one website ranked number one in Google or Yahoo for each country! But how much is a top ranking actually worth? One way of estimating the value of a top ranking in Google or Yahoo is by calculating the cost of a top position for a particular keyword phrase in the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) engines. For example... Let's say you want to estimate the value of a #1 ranking in Yahoo for 'car insurance'. Here's one way of estimating the value of this ranking: 1. First we research the number of people searching for 'car insurance' on Yahoo Australia. We find that there were 26,210 searches last month for that phrase. 2. Next, we research how much the top position is costing the advertiser per click (CPC) for the keyword phrase 'car insurance'. We find that the top bid is $4.49 per click. 3. Next we take the average Click-Thru-Rate (CTR) of an advertiser in the PPC engines, which is 1%, and we calculate the estimated value of the #1 position. Here is the formula: (number of searches per month x CTR) x CPC = estimated value of #1 ranking or... (26,210 x 0.01) x $4.49 = $1,176.83 So, from this calculation, the estimated value of a #1 position in Yahoo for 'car insurance' is $1,176.83 per month. Now if you were able to get a 2% CTR (which is very possible if you know what you're doing), then the estimated value would double to $2,353.66 per month. And if you were able to get a 3% CTR (which is possible if you're very good), then the estimated value would triple to $3,530.49 per month. The reason we estimate a #1 ranking using this formula is because we can automatically get a #1 position for ANY KEYWORD PHRASE by bidding the highest amount. Importantly, getting a top ranking for any keyword results in 'free' traffic... but it does cost time and money to get that position. SEO is only viable when the estimated value of the #1 ranking is higher than the total cost of getting that position through PPC advertising. [The above article is a submission for Marketing Pilgrim’s Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest. Each Monday in October, entries will be published and the most popular article of the week will qualify for the $5,000 grand prize. If you’d like to submit an entry, please view the contest entry-requirements and guidelines.]

Video Advertising the Next Online Frontier?

2006-10-13T10:19:00.000-04:00

As a Marketing Pilgrim, I'm always interested in the next frontier of marketing. AlwaysOn takes an in-depth look at what all the fuss it about, over video advertising. There's a lot of money being pumped into video, with not much coming back - just 2% of all online ad spend will be on internet video ads this year. So do we have a bubble or a viable channel?

Google Launches Japanese Mobile Site

2006-10-13T10:13:00.000-04:00

Reuters reports Google has launched a free mobile news site in Japan. The service displays reports from about 30 media outlets - including the Asahi newspaper and state-run NHK - and aims to expand its line-up...the service shows a list of headlines and links to news sites that are also designed for mobile phones.

PRWeb Stopping Free Press Releases

2006-10-13T10:03:00.000-04:00

One of the biggest reasons for PRWeb's success was its free press release distribution. Lee Odden reports that option is about to go away. Big news from PRWeb’s David McInnis to all PRWeb account holders last night. Free press release distribution will cease as of Oct 23rd. I understand the economic reasons for the decision, but announcing it so soon after PRWeb's acquisition is a little bit of sell-out. Can you imagine if, 60 days after Google's announced acquisition of YouTube, they started adding ads to every video uploaded?

Time Warner Takes YouTube Issues to Google

2006-10-13T09:57:00.000-04:00

Reuters is reporting Time Warner will take its concerns of YouTube copyright violations to its new parent, Google. "You can assume we're in negotiations with YouTube and that those negotiations will be kicked up to the Google level in the hope that we can get to some acceptable position," Parsons told The Guardian. Considering Google acquired a 5% stake in Time Warner's AOL unit, I wouldn't expect to see any legal battles, anytime soon. I'm sure they'll come to an agreement. Time Warner's likely glad the new owner is a partner of theirs.

WebPosition 4 Added to List of SEM Scholarship Prizes

2006-10-12T22:44:00.000-04:00

As if the prize package for our Search Engine Marketing Scholarship contest wasn't enticing enough, we're delighted to announce another new prize. Linda Pyles of WebTrends had kindly donated a copy of WebPosition 4 Pro and 12 months of Page Critic Service to our contest. That's worth almost $500!!! Thanks to WebTrends. If you've not already submitted an entry for week 2, you have until 6pm on Saturday, so get scribbling.

ReviewMe Offers Swag for Review

2006-10-12T20:22:00.000-04:00

Andy Hagans and Aaron Wall always appear to be working on something together. Their latest venture is the intriguing ReviewMe. Here's Andy's no-hype explanation... Advertisers, you pay to get your stuff reviewed by bloggers. Bloggers, you get paid to review their stuff. Aaron has more details on his blog. Suffice to say, Marketing Pilgrim will now focus its posts on Porsche 911's - in case anyone is interested. ;-)

Which SEO Brain Do You Use?

2006-10-12T14:32:00.000-04:00

Robin Nobles has launched a new blog that helps those SEOs who are "right-brain" challenged, find their creative side. The new site is called The Idea Motivator, and this is how Robin describes it... The Idea Motivator is where creativity explodes into content and link popularity. It's using the right side of the brain to think of new content ideas...However, by nature, SEOs and techies are left-brain people. Because I'm a writer, I tend to think more with the right side of my brain. For those of you who are neither right- or left-brained, may I suggest a career change? ;-)

InfoSpace Restructures Mobile Business, 250 Layoffs

2006-10-12T11:19:00.000-04:00

Not all news in the mobile space is positive. ClickZ is reporting Infospace is having to layoff 250 employees after losing a large partnership deal. Beginning this week and continuing into next year, the company plans to eliminate 250 positions, mainly in its mobile content business. The company announced last month that Cingular, its largest ringtone distributor, would begin to enter licensing agreements directly with record labels instead of using InfoSpace as a middleman.

Ask.com Launches Mobile Optimized Search

2006-10-12T11:12:00.000-04:00

Ask.com has launched Ask Mobile Search, a web search service aimed at cell phone users, according to CNET. Ask Mobile Search features navigation shortcuts to minimize keystrokes and provides direct access to key search categories on the home page, like directions, image search, business listings, maps and weather. Yahoo, Google and MSN have all recently launched mobile search options. Ask.com plans to offer the service without ads - at least for the time-being.

Mobile Ads Continue to Grow

2006-10-12T11:08:00.000-04:00

ClickZ reports on the continued growth of mobile advertising. In particular... Citysearch: Available since last week, the newest mobile listings feature from Citysearch allows users to request listings by sending a keyword such as "plumber" and a zip code or geographical location via text message to short-code "CS411". In response, users receive up to four individual text messages, each featuring one business listing followed by an advertiser message from the current sponsor. Whitepages: In the future, WhitePages.com expects to serve ads from multiple advertisers at once. "We're in the preliminary stages," continued Netelenbos. "I suspect it ramps fairly quickly." Third Screen: According to Third Screen's COO Jeff Janer, the firm has signed deals with three other content providers and is in talks with six more...Third Screen enables its mobile service partners to offer banners and other display ad opportunities to their publisher clients.

Google Launches Docs & Spreadsheets

2006-10-11T07:32:00.000-04:00

TechCrunch has details of Google's rollout of Docs & Spreedsheets - the offspring of Google Spreadsheets and Writely. This is not a deep product integration, but it is another shot across the bow of Microsoft Office...The new site shows all of a user’s writely and spreadsheet documents in a single list, but integration goes no further for now.

Airport Awaits...

2006-10-10T15:39:00.000-04:00

Just a heads-up that blogging will be light Wednesday as I have a client trip to Tampa. Amuse yourselves while I'm gone. :-)

New Weekly Prize Added to SEM Scholarship Contest

2006-10-10T11:44:00.000-04:00

I'm delighted to announce the addition of a new weekly prize, as part of our Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest. Kim Krause Berg of The Usability Effect, has graciously offered to provide each of the four weekly finalists with a copy of "Please Ring Bell For Service", an 80-checkpoint guide to making your web site user-friendly. No search marketer is complete without the skills needed to help clients convert new visitors! The prize will be the perfect accompliment to the copy of "Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day" we're already giving away to the weekly winner. Submit your entries for this week's contest and you could be our next finalist for the $5,000 grand prize package. Send your entry to scholarship AT marketingpilgrim.com.

Blinkx.tv Launches New Look, Video Features

2006-10-10T09:58:00.000-04:00

blinkx.tv has announced a new web site with some cool new features for users. With the introduction of customizable Video Walls, automatically generated popular content Channels, and a My Playlist feature, blinkx gives users a fun way to interact with online video, customize their own channels, and have more control in how they explore rich media on the Web. The new Video Wall sounds very cool... Users can now click "wall it" after searching to create a customized Video Wall of results. The Video Wall is a large screen composed of 25 individual screens, each showing a preview of a different video clip. In this format, users can see many more results at a glance than in a text list, and can scroll over the clips to watch a preview, making it easy to choose the most interesting footage. Users can embed their customized Video Walls in other websites, like their blog or myspace page, so they can share interests with others. "People are much better at understanding information visually, so we redesigned blinkx.tv to display video in a way that's both efficient and compelling to the eye," said Suranga Chandratillake, founder and CTO, blinkx, in a statement.

Could Google Face YouTube Lawsuits?

2006-10-10T08:36:00.000-04:00

There's going to be a lot of Google/YouTube coverage floating around this week, so I don't plan on re-hashing every take on the deal. However, I will post any story that looks at the acquisition from a different angle. CNET does just that, with their look at whether YouTube may face a flurry of copyright infringement lawsuits, now that it has the financial backing of Google. Google's deep pockets "alone will cause a lot of lawsuits," Lerner said. "Whether or not those end up being successful and really hurting Google's implementation of YouTube remains to be seen, and whether they'll have any legs remains to be seen, but...many, many people think that YouTube hasn't been bought yet until now for that very reason."

Google Buys YouTube - Confirmed

2006-10-09T17:10:00.000-04:00

After earlier speculation, Google has announced the acquisition of video entertainment site YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. "The YouTube team has built an exciting and powerful media platform that complements Google's mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful,” said Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer in a statement. “Our companies share similar values; we both always put our users first and are committed to innovating to improve their experience. Together, we are natural partners to offer a compelling media entertainment service to users, content owners and advertisers.” According to the press release... When the acquisition is complete, YouTube will retain its distinct brand identity, strengthening and complementing Google’s own fast-growing video business. YouTube will continue to be based in San Bruno, CA, and all YouTube employees will remain with the company. With Google’s technology, advertiser relationships and global reach, YouTube will continue to build on its success as one of the world's most popular services for video entertainment. So, if YouTube is to retain its distinct brand identity, what does that mean for Google Video? It's certainly not set the world on fire and was a distant competitor to YouTube. Could we see Google transitioning the best parts of Google Video to YouTube, then shuttering Google Video? UPDATE: Nathan Weinberg has taken notes from today's conference call, including... JP Morgan asks why buy when they have Google Video, why stock not cash. Eric says Google Video is doing very well, integrating inside of Google, while YouTube was clearly winning the marketplace in social networking. Drummond says it is a stock transaction to be tax-free for YouTube shareholders, and somewhat cheaper for Google. He’s glad that YouTube shareholders want to be Google shareholders.

Ingenio to Provide Pay Per Call to Windows Mobile Search

2006-10-09T15:01:00.000-04:00

Search Engine Watch reports Ingenio has signed a deal to provide pay-per-call listings for Windows Live Search for mobile. Ingenio's advertisers are the only paid listings that will appear when users conduct a geotargeted search on Window Live for mobile. There will only be one advertiser shown for any given search and Ingenio's entire inventory will be funneled into Windows Live. When there are no relevant Ingenio advertisers, no sponsored listings will appear. (The company has existing mobile distribution through Jingle Networks' 1800-Free-411 and go2.)

Cingular Partners with Tellme for Enhanced 411

2006-10-09T14:55:00.000-04:00

The NYT reports Cingular has partnered with Tellme to enhance the network's 411 information service using Tellme's voice recognition technology. The new Cingular service will permit subscribers to ask questions for a broader set of queries than traditional directory lookup. For example, it will be possible to find movie times and locations and to purchase tickets and obtain driving directions. Information can be delivered as text-to-speech or as a simple text message delivered to the cellphone. Via SEW.

New Prizes Added to SEM Scholarship Contest

2006-10-09T11:25:00.000-04:00

I'm delighted to announce Search Engine College has offered to donate a valuable prize to our SEM Scholarship contest. Kalena Jordan is helping us to improve the Paid Search component of our prize package by providing her company's Pay-Per-Click "Starter" and "Advanced" courses. Thanks Kalena! Be sure to submit your entry for this week's round. If your article is the most popular of the week, you'll have a chance to win a $5,000 scholarship which includes a full pass to Search Engine Strategies!

Target Audience Should Define Your Marketing Channel

2006-10-09T10:22:00.000-04:00

Kevin Newcomb has details of Forrester Research's analysis of how marketers should use different channels depending on the age of their target audience. "To plan effective integrated campaigns, marketers must start with search and layer on site messaging in the media that resonate with target consumers: buzz, blogs, and banners for Gen Yers, deep search and word of mouth for Gen Xers, print and product packaging for Boomers, and the written word for Seniors," writes Charlene Li, principal analyst at Forrester.

Google and Warner Music Announce Video Ad Deal

2006-10-09T10:17:00.000-04:00

Warner Music Group and Google just announced a new pact that will see WMG's extensive music video collection available for free via Google Video. Starting this month, users in the U.S. can watch any of the thousands of music videos, artist interviews, "behind-the-scenes" footage and other artist-related content from WMG on Google Video. In the coming months, users can also access audio-visual content from WMG through Google's partner websites in its AdSense network. In addition, Google will develop technology that, when implemented, will enable users to include certain content from companies such as Warner Music Group in the videos they create and upload to Google Video. The free videos will, of course, be supported by Google Adwords ads. WMG will be able to monetize its music video content online by leveraging Google's extensive advertiser network of hundreds of thousands of advertisers. WMG's music video catalog will be sponsored by Google advertisers, making it free to all users. The resulting generated advertising revenue will be shared by WMG and Google. Besides providing ad-supported content on Google Video, select WMG's music videos will immediately be available for purchase as downloads on Google Video for $1.99. Google and WMG have big plans to ensure the videos are syndicated in as many places as possible. In the coming months, WMG will also work with Google to distribute its substantial video collection to websites around the world via Google's extensive AdSense publisher network, making it even easier for users to access free premium content while surfing the Web. UPDATE: I almost missed the fact that Google announced a similar deal with Sony at the same time.

GreedTube Offers Revenue Sharing Alternative to YouTube

2006-10-09T10:12:00.000-04:00

Sid has details of GreedTube which looks almost exactly like YouTube, except it offers those submitting videos the chance to share in AdSense revenue. The service is simple. It asks for your usual information like title and description, and also for your embed code for the video on YouTube and AdSense ID. Once you’ve submitted it, your video goes onto GreedTube — which does look awfully a lot like YouTube — and you get to share 50% of the revenue made on the AdSense clicks. Needless to say, it's attracting videos that are a little risque.

Blinkx Signs Video Search Deal with Microsoft

2006-10-09T10:00:00.000-04:00

When Blinkx first launched, it made a lot of headlines, then the company went a little quiet while it figured out its direction. The past 6 months have been great for the video search engine, with lots of press and positive buzz for their technology. By far the biggest shot in the arm for Blinkx comes with today's announcement that they've been selected by Microsoft to provide video search technology. It's an interesting deal for Blinkx which could result in "zero to millions of dollars," according to Suranga Chandratillake, Blinkx co-founder and chief technology officer. Instead of a cut of advertising revenue, Microsoft has agreed to pay Blinkx an outright licensing fee based on how much use visitors to Microsoft Web sites make of the Blinkx search system, Chandratillake said.

Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest Entries - October 9th

2006-10-09T09:10:00.000-04:00

We've uploaded the first of our SEM Scholarship Contest entries and we're excited with the level of talent out there. The following entries qualified for the week and we'll track the traffic to each article over the next week. The most popular post of the week will secure the author one of four finalist positions for our grand prize giveaway. Here's the full list of article entries:

The Definition of SEO...

Is Google Really Listening?

How Much Are We Worth?

Bob and Weave Click Fraud Thieves

What Studio 60 Can Teach Us About Blogging

Wishing upon a star: How the Internet is increasing the ability to make our dreams come true

Keeping your SEO Clients – How to NOT get your Contract Cancelled

The Psychology of SEO

The SEO Article You Shouldn't Read

Glossary of a new Paradigm

How to Weather Search Engine Algorithm Shifts well

Click, read, forward, blog your favorite entry and help them advance to the final judging. Week two, for submissions, opens today! If you feel inspired to submit your own article, you have until 6pm Saturday October 14th.

How to Weather Search Engine Algorithm Shifts well

2006-10-09T09:00:00.010-04:00

By Steve Petersen. Spiders are fickle; humans are not. Well, when it comes website preferences that is. Search engines frequently shift or tweak their algorithms in order to offer more relevant results for their clients -- human beings. While most of search engine optimization efforts cater to search engine spiders through attention to various types of links, site structure, IP address characteristics, and the like, focusing on their web surfers instead will allow any optimization effort to weather any shift or tweak well. Granted, human on-line preferences do evolve, but they always demand quality content, attractive and clean design, logical navigation, and a superb user experience. Besides search engines are moving towards tracking user behavior as an integral part of their ranking schemes; thus, fine tuning a site with more consideration to homo sapien tastes rather than to digital arachnid druthers makes sense in the long run. Here are ten tips, listed in no particular order, for human friendly site design: 1. Always have the end user in mind; make them come back. Site visitors may come, but they will not stay if they cannot find what they are looking for with ease. If site visitors are industry insiders, use industry jargon. When normal people visit the site, do not confuse them. 2. Ensure that each page is narrowly focused on a certain topic -- the title of the page. When a page focuses on avocadoes, talk about avocadoes, not healthy food. Specific pages rank high on relevance and seem logical to site users, and they show up individually on result pages no matter how large the site is. Also, when pages with high relevance ranking are used in pay per click campaigns, text ads linking to them are cheaper. 3. Judiciously use fancy features like Flash and AJAX. These features could take a long time to load in a browser, and no one wants to wait. Further, indexing spiders cannot read their content (well, at least for now, but text is much easier); what they cannot read is not indexed. 4. Structure the site with humans in mind. Homo sapien users are inherently lazy and expect a logical way to navigate a site. Use clear menus that are consistent throughout the site with in-text intra-site links when appropriate (see 3). If a site is sloppily organized, what does that say about the product or service the site touts? 5. Make indexing easy for spiders. What bots cannot traverse, they cannot index. Spiders only persist when they confront obstacles if their programming is flawed, and search engineers are paid to program well all the time. They are not paid to program spiders to decipher or guess how they must navigate a poorly structured site (see 3). Further, a text site map does not hurt and keep all pages on the site within three clicks from the homepage. 6. Use original quality content that is naturally created. Keywords are important, but search engines condemn unnatural use of them (see 1). Make sure that they are in the page title tag, at least once towards the beginning of the content, and in the anchor text of links when applicable. Use words that are related, like synonyms, to the keyword. While "keywords" acts as a keyword, "keywords" too close to "keywords" and other keywords is keyword stuffing. 7. Link only to relevant sites. Search engines use links to travel the Internet, and they keep track of who is linking to whom. If a site is for a realtor, it should not link to a toothbrush manufacturer's site. However, while linking to competitors is not advisable, a realtor's site could link to complementary businesses like a mortgage company or to a recreationally oriented company that specializes in the realtor's geographic area. What links would site visitors want and expect? 8. Design a visually appealing, not overwhelming, site. A professional design will reflect positively upon a company and its products or services and vice versa (see 1 and 3). 9. Update content logically. Search engines like up to date content, but refresh when it is logical. For instance, how often does a car change makes or models? Never. When does it change color? It can every so often. How long does it stay in a particular parking space at the dentist office? Hopefully, not very long. 10. Respond to visitor feedback and needs. Why would they come back to a site that does not meet their needs even if it was ranked highly? See 1. To best gauge this offer contact information and perhaps a survey from time to time.

Glossary of a new Paradigm

2006-10-09T09:00:00.009-04:00

By Aaron Pratt.

New terminology is making our online advertising metrics world a whole new kind of economy. This vibrant economy surely will result in progress on a global scale; exactly what the industrial revolution promised for the peasant economy nations of the 19^th and 20^th centuries:

click-through rate (CTR)

The expressed average in “percentage per hundred” for ad impressions that once clicked arrive at the destination site. The CTR does not measure people who failed to click yet arrived at the destination site later on as a result of seeing the ad. For this reason, many researchers tend to see this as a measure of the immediate response to an ad, rather than the overall response. In cases where no visual information is available from the ad itself however, CTR is then equal to the overall rate.

conversion rate

A percentage representation of how many visitors take a desired action that goes beyond simple browsing of the pages. Desired actions may include software downloads, newsletter subscriptions, membership registration, product sales or pretty much anything that goes beyond simple browsing. The largest influences on higher conversion rates are consumer interest, product attractiveness and ease of the process.

cost-per-action (CPA)

A payment model for online advertising; based entirely on actions that are considered qualifying. Any action that results in fulfilling conversion rates can be considered a CPA; the most common are sales and registration.

cost-per-click (CPC)

An online advertisement cost for every click made on a given backlink ad. As opposed to pay per click, this is the cost the advertiser has for every time her or his advertisement is clicked on for redirecting to their destination site. Neither arrival at the site, nor anything being bought on that site is calculated in this cost.

CPM (cost per thousand)

The base price for every 1,000 impressions of an ad banner that is seen or downloaded by a visitor. M is the Roman numeral for 1,000 and CPM is the base cost for every 1,000 of those impressions. For example, if the CPM is 10$ dollars and the request is for 500,000 impressions, the final ad will price at 10x500=5,000US$

customer acquisition cost

The final cost of acquiring new customers with current marketing strategies used by a site. This number is obtained by dividing the total amount of money spent on acquiring new customers by the actual number of new customers obtained. Rebates and discounts are usually not included however this can be debatable.

hit

Every time a file request is made to a Web server. This is a term that has been misleading in the past, instead of meaning “file requested from Web Server”, it was thought of as unique visitors, page browsing or visits to a site. Graphics can also be requested, therefore, a hit is merely the activity of requesting a file from the Web server, and every request is a hit.

hybrid model

Any combination of online models for marketing payment. When two or more different models of online marketing models are used for payment; the structure is known as hybrid as it mixes for example CPC and CPA or any other combination.

impression

A single instance of online advertisement displayed. The single act of displaying once, that is one impression on the navigator. Multiple displays are multiple impressions and so forth. One pop up, or one banner on the front page are each individual impressions.

page view

Every request made to load a single HTML page. Also known as a page impression, these may or may not be of help to given marketing structures unless they evolve a sale. If they do not evolve a sale, then they can even be considered an expense.

pay per click (PPC)

A more popular term for the receiving model of CPC. Any internet structure that uses a CPC agreement between the impression ad and the destination site is using the popular PPC model as well; the difference is usually that emphasis on how to revert traffic to the impression more easily is given priority rather than the destination site itself.

pay per lead (PPL)

A receiving model for gaining some kind of lead to potential clients. Any system that remunerates for contact information, such as name, address, e-mail, whatever will produce a list of potential clients. Normally, PPL is only profitable when visitors themselves input the correct information voluntarily, otherwise it is usually fraudulent.

pay per sale (PPS)

Online model for every sale made on a site due to the redirection of visitors. In the PPS structure, not only must a potential client visit the site, but they must also buy a product if the advertiser is to make any money. Usually a percentage of every sale is the final remuneration of any PPS.

site stickiness

Total time spent on a site throughout a given period of time. Stickiness is a measure of how often people spend visiting a site. This can usually be seen in average minutes per month, other times it is measured in pages viewed per month. Minutes per month is the best indication of how sticky a site is or is not. The biggest advantage to this is having people see the same impressions a repeated number of times.

unique visitors

This term refers to those individuals who visit a given site or network at least once in no more than a thirty-day time frame. Unique visitors are coming for the first time or after repeated times, but the average of this number is merely a way of calculating how many different IP addresses visit per month.

web site traffic

The amount of visits a site receives, usually per month. During the rise of the Internet Phenomenon, this was considered the most valuable tool for gauging a sites success or failure, but without conversion, results cannot be properly calculated. Thus web site traffic plus conversion equals results.

This paradigm will continue to grow as new ways of doing business online are created and along with new terms will come a better way to describe what it exactly is that we do as search engine marketers.

The Psychology of SEO

2006-10-09T09:00:00.008-04:00

By Rob Stevens.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is kind of a strange world. The entire practice is not much more than a series of web “best practices” and some old wives’ tales about how to increase your search ranking. It’s full of acronyms and colorful personalities, but what it’s not is a book of rules; partly because the search engines are constantly changing, but also because people are fickle, and what’s popular one day could be gone the next.

In recent discussions about the kind of education someone in the SEO field should have, amongst all the talk of MBAs and on-the-job education, not once did anyone ever mention the one area that would probably be the most useful to a marketer focused on search engine results: Psychology. I’m not saying that companies need to start hiring people with doctorates to run their website, but a couple of classes in basic psychology (or even some textbooks) should give valuable insight into what makes people tick.

Ultimately, the search engines are all about people. They’re trying to create results for any search term that are more like what actual people would be looking for in order of preference. It stands to reason, then, that someone who is an expert in how people think and what motivates them would be an ideal choice for creating a campaign to build search engine ranking.

An excellent example of this is the trend of link “baiting”, the process of getting other people and websites to link to you. There are lots of semi- or fully-automated directories that will put links up on sites designed to do nothing but link pages, but most search engine marketers (SEMs) will tell you that links on sites already placed highly in the search engines (for terms you want to improve your rank on) are far more valuable. How do you get those sites to link to you? A little dose of psychology: say something provocative, piss them off, butter them up, make them laugh … but the general rule is to get their attention with something that they would want to link to. Frequently, that requires a bit of investigation into the person’s personality and motivation, and that’s where your psychology expert would truly shine.

Similarly, the rise of social bookmarking sites (like Digg.com) are an area in which psychologists should do well. Many sites such as these have a “collective personality”, a byproduct of any strong community. Much like with link building, writing and submitting an article to a social bookmarking site designed to appeal to that specific community yields the best results and the most traffic.

Of course, the single most important reason is that at the end of the day, you’re building your website for people, not for Google. All of the tricks that most SEMs will teach you (descriptive title and anchor tags, interesting summary text, etc.) usually boil down to one critical concept … build a website that’s interesting and useful for the kinds of people you want to attract, which should be the goal for anyone running a website. Are we on the verge of companies paying to send their webmasters to classes in psychology? Perhaps not, but it certainly couldn’t hurt.

Keeping your SEO Clients – How to NOT get your Contract Cancelled

2006-10-09T09:00:00.007-04:00

By Taylor Pratt. You’ve just landed the big contract. You have been waiting over a month to get this client to sign their contract, and now that they have you can begin your traditional SEO process. You know what I’m talking about. Keyword research, competitor research, building new content, the list goes on and on. All of these are vital to a successful SEO campaign. So now you are 3 weeks into the project, and you are ready to send the client some recommendations. You start your e-mail off by telling the client everything they are going to need to change in order to achieve those desired high rankings. The java script menus, they have to go. We are going to have to do some URL rewriting, and what were you thinking using all of that flash? You get a response a couple days later saying that they would like to put all SEO work on hold. They are not sure if this is the right thing for them now. They were very happy with the way the site looked; they just wanted to get traffic there now. If you are like me, your jaw hits the floor. You’ve already invested three weeks into this project and you are ready to really get the show on the road, and they want to stop it?! What did I do wrong? Actually, it is not what you did do, it’s what you didn’t do. When you had met with this client, did you do anything more than find out what their business does and browse around a little on their website? You didn’t do any real work on it, because you weren’t getting paid to. Of course they are willing to do what it takes to market their site, they came to you didn’t they? The problem is that we assume that a customer will be willing to make changes to their site in order to achieve those high rankings. We make the same kind of mistake by assuming they will want to target those keywords that people are actually looking for, and not worry about branding. Well I don’t think I need to tell you what happens when you assume… So now that we have successfully lost a client, what are we going to learn from this? The answer is the creation of a wonderful evaluation, an SEO audit. At your first meeting with a prospective client, you should ask them one important question: Would you be willing to let us perform an SEO Audit of your website, for X amount of dollars? The point of the audit is to bring to their attention all of the unfriendly search engine practices they are using on their site, and to find out whether or not they are willing to change their ways. Stress the fact that it actually could be a cost savings process for them. Instead of paying you hourly or monthly to do all this work, only to find out that they have spent a ton of money on changes they don’t want to make, they can find out right away if SEO is for them for a much smaller cost. You still make out well because you were compensated for your time. By bringing these issues to the table at the very beginning, you will also establish a greater line of communication with the customer. They know what is going to be expected from them, and how much work they can expect from you. The business relationship will greatly benefit from a simple audit. The important issues to include in your audit are the changes the customer will have to make to their site and what kind of buy-in they will have to get (e.g. from their legal department, which is not always about a straight audit, but is about telling them what they need to know and not being afraid to walk away from the table.) Below is a list of architectural items to look at to help get your audit started. Technical Site Architecture Issues • Is the site being indexed by Google, Yahoo, and MSN? • Do they have a black or grey listed IP address? • Is the site in frames? • Does the site use Java Script? • Do they have a CMS system in place? • How does the site perform in Internet Explorer vs. Firefox vs. Safari? This is very important for not only you to have, but for the customer as well. Show them where they stand, and where they are lacking. Remind the customer why they need your help. They will be surprised how poor of a job they have done choosing keywords, and you will comfort them by telling them how you can help. The best part is, you will not have to worry about that horrible e-mail or phone call saying that SEO is not for them.

Wishing upon a star: How the Internet is increasing the ability to make our dreams come true

2006-10-09T09:00:00.006-04:00

By Eric Hebert. Growing up in a rather lower-middle class household, it seemed obvious after graduating high school where I was headed. Go to college, get a good “job” doing something mommy and daddy would be proud of, one that has nice benefits and such, and that’s about it. I wanted to produce and direct movies, but really, what were the chances of that happening? I knew right off the bat that after I got my film studies degree I’d probably jock some camera at the local ABC affiliate for a living, and that’s if I was lucky. My dream career seemed so out of reach. Not soon after did I drop out of school. I figured, the only way I’m gonna do what I want is if I have the money to pay for it, and that means starting my own business. Sales jobs followed, one after another, as well as my interest in anything business. Get-rich-quick schemes developed (I’m talking about you Don Lupre!) as I ran into walls left and right. I even went as far as receiving phone calls from some guy in Africa who owned a large oil corporation and wanted to transfer the funds-well, you know the rest of THAT story. Needless to say, I laid in bed sleepless every night, wondering how I could channel my creative juices into something that the world could at least NOTICE. Then maybe I could build that momentum into a business, and someday make my movies. Where was I to turn? It’s been three years since I went to that silly internet marketing seminar. Another get-rich-quick scheme it may have been, but something happened there, something magical: I realized the awesome power of the internet and how it was going to change the world: change business, change voices, governments, change us as people. “You mean I can advertise on Google and Yahoo for just a couple of dollars?” That was the first big eye-opener. Up until that point, if you wanted to advertise, whether it was on TV, radio, or in magazines, you had to have some money. Usually a nice chunk of money. I knew that with targeted paid adverting on Yahoo or Google I could market a product or service for just a few bucks, even if for only a small period of time. It was liberating to know that even the little guys could compete right there with the big boys. Along came search engine optimization. “You mean if I start a website about making movies, and produce enough content with researched keyword phrases that attracts links for other websites, that I can attract hundreds or thousands of viewers interested in reading my material?, with no significant cost” It was like a minefield in my head, bombs bursting with thought as I realized the potential. I knew that, if you built a solid website about a specific topic that got enough people to it, then you could build a business around it. And if you built a business around it, then you could build a brand. And after enough money was made, you could finance the movie, and sell it with the brand name. Eureka. As I dug deeper into internet marketing in early 2004, the industry was growing immensely, as did my ideas for how these technologies were opening the doors of opportunity for literally anybody who had an interest in anything. Affiliate marketing enables the fashion major to sell clothing, the rock band to showcase their favorite instruments, the budding director to sell his top 100 films. Optimization turned the heavy equipment operator making $25,000 a year into a heavy equipment journalist making twice that. The struggling artist who just wanted to get the word out all of a sudden became famous through the social net-o-sphere of My Space and Facebook. Mash-Ups, viral videos, blogging, open source, oh my! Every month a new technology made the world smaller and the opportunity to get a voice heard drew closer than ever before. If there is one thing I’ve learned in five years of business research, it’s that you need one of two things to start a business: time or money. If you don’t have one, you have plenty of the other. Years ago one without any money one had little chance of starting a business and realizing their dreams. With the technologies available today, we have the ability to showcase our talents to the world and discuss our passions with anybody who’s interested. We no longer need large sums of money to get the ball rolling, because we all have plenty of time to spend preaching our gospel. Once the world understands the opportunities the internet has placed in front of them, many things will change, and many will walk down a path that they may have never thought existed, a path to a dream that may finally come true.

What Studio 60 Can Teach Us About Blogging

2006-10-09T09:00:00.005-04:00

By Tom Schmitz.

Have you watched Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip? If you desire to be inspired with ideas about creating a great blog, watch this show. The lessons from Studio 60 are not about content, they are about management and production. Without great management and production you cannot create and maintain a great blog.

The Lessons:

1. Pick a Voice and Stick to It.

Part of the premise for Studio 60 is that the fictional comedic television show had lost its edgy voice. A new producer and writer, two people who would refuse to compromise quality, are brought on board to reclaim the show’s past glory.

Claim you blog’s voice and stick to it. Don’t treat everyone like your best friend one day and act like you are presenting to the Board of Regents the next. Choose a casual voice or a formal voice. Don’t try to split the middle. Too many corporate blogs read like they were overrun by Standards and Practices. Read each posts aloud, record it and listen to it. If it does not roll off your tongue or sound right it needs rewriting.

2. You Need Lots of Writers….Who Write Often

The above photo shows one side of a long table filled with writers. Cast members are standing, lining the wall. Everyone in this crowded room desperately wants the producers to select and broadcast their work. This reflects TV reality more than you may realize. (Have you ever seen how many writers Jeopardy has?)

Create a blog team, a core group of people who are officially responsible for creating content. You need a prolific blog, not an exhausted writer. Having more people create content offers you more content more often without sending any one individual over the bleeding edge. Having multiple writers also gives each contributor breathing space to focus on quality.

Like having good actors become celebrities, another benefit of having a team is that your best writers will become credible industry personalities that people can latch on to. That creates frequent readers. Why do you think newspapers have regular columns?

On Studio 60 the writing is not limited to the writers. Every member of the cast practically crawls over each other to contribute. Open your blog to all of your employees and even to your business partners. While your blog team carries the formal responsibility, great ideas and writing can come from anywhere in your company. Not only will it benefit your blog, it will boost employee morale.

Invite your business partners to contribute. Like Studio 60’s guest hosts, outside voices can add credibility to your blog.

3. Plan Ahead

Take notice of two things in this photo. First is the countdown clock. Three days, seven hours, twenty-two minutes and forty seconds to show time. Second is the cork board. It displays everything that what will be on the next episode of the fictional Studio 60 TV comedy show. When the board if filled with 3x5 cards the show is complete.

Your blog should feature two types of posts: planned posts and posts of opportunity. Planned posts are those subjects that you know you want to write about. These can be product announcements, white paper notices, and subjects or ideas that your blog team wants to share. Hold regular brainstorming sessions to generate topics and assign them to writers.

Posts of opportunity are in response to anything that happens to come-up that you want to blog about. This could be unexpected company news, a breaking industry news story or recognition of something written on another blog. You never know where a good story will come from.

4. Keep the Content Rolling and Always Have a Backup

At Studio 60 the writers are always trying to create new sketches. It’s okay to have too much content but disastrous to have too little.

Stuff happens. Product launches get delayed. Mergers fall through. Employees move on. Any story you plan for your blog can get delayed or fall through. Readers do not care about that. They look for frequent content at regular intervals. One of the nice things about blogs is that, unlike a TV show, you are not limited by time and space. If you have an excess of quality content you can still publish it. Select your minimum content interval then always exceed it.

[An exception: A rare few can create a niche by publishing infrequently if most every post is dedicated to exceptional quality.]

5. Not Everything Gets Published

Remember those 3x5 cards at Studio 60? Studio 60 always has more cards than will fit on their board. If something does not meet your blog’s standard for quality or interest do not publish it. You might send something back for rewriting or additional work. You may decide that an article does not belong. You might even decide that an article has a bigger future somewhere else on your website, in your printed newsletter or in an industry publication.

On Studio 60 one person decides what will be on the show and what will not. The same should be true of your company blog. After all, you are running a business, not a democracy. This person is the gatekeeper and is ultimately responsible for the content and quality of you blog. Not everything gets aired at Studio 60, only the best sketches. This creates a sense of competition among the writers and cast to produce the best comedy possible. Create a sense of competition among your blog writers.

By approaching your company blog with the same planning, dedication and fervor that the staff of Studio 60 devotes to their (fictional) 90 minutes of television each week you will almost assuredly create a publication that grabs notice and respect. If you do not your blog will remain lost among the thousands of other lackluster blogs on the Internet and you might as well tell your website administrator to open-up the FTP client and hit the delete key.

Good luck!

Bob and Weave Click Fraud Thieves

2006-10-09T09:00:00.004-04:00

By Neal A . Rodriguez. I clicked the "Edit times and bids" link in the "Edit Campaign Settings" page in the Google Adwords interface to experiment with dayparting, as click fraud kept exhausting my client's PPC budget while leaving conversion results unchanged. Some days I opened Outlook and see only one to three inquiries that counted as conversions on my Adwords account; I would open up Adwords and find my campaign cost at or above the $100 daily budget. Mike Moran and Bill Hunt write about dayparting in Chapter 14 of their book, "Search Engine Marketing Inc." I never used it, and barely anyone writes content on it when you Google dayparting, so I figured it may be one of the new secret ingredients in a PPC guru's sauce that they don't want the competition to know about. I searched my inbox for inquiries that arrived for the past month, and I noticed there were time periods when people submitted inquiries most on the site every week. For instance, I noticed that the first inquiry would land in my inbox a little after midnight on Saturdays, and more inquiries would fill my inbox for a period of about four to eight hours thereafter. Thus I clicked the radio button next to my active campaign, and I clicked "Edit Campaign Settings." I clicked "Edit times and bids," and the Advanced Ad Scheduling page in my Google Adwords interface had a stack of green bars with checks in them. I clicked "Edit" next to the Saturday time bar and out came this drop down menu with each hour of the day listed. The first was set to "12:00 am (Midnight)," so I just changed the second one to "8:00 am," when my inquiry influx would stop for about four hours. I configured the next time period by clicking "Add," and out came the field with the drop down menu. I set the next time period to start at 2:00 pm and end at 5:00 pm, when I would get consecutive inquiries for the three hours. I set another time period up for the evening, and logged into Adwords later that evening. I received about 3 more inquiries than I typicaly would on a Saturday. On Sunday, I switched the Ad Scheduling page to Advanced Mode, and I dayparted everyday, so my ad could be shown during time periods where I generally received most inquiries. I even changed the percentage of my bid that should be used when showing it. I finished adding time periods for each day of the week, and the stack of green bars on the Advanced Ad Scheduling page looked like a crossword puzzle when I was done; the dark green checks in the green boxes turned into dark gray X's in light gray boxes, in between the shrunken green boxes that graphed the time periods when my ads were scheduled to show. I thought the advanced configuration would use a percentage of my budget I specified, not my cost per click, so I set the time periods to percentages to add up to 100% of what I thought was my budget; e.g. Midnight - 7:00 AM 40%; 11:00am - 1:00pm 20%; 7:00pm - Midnight 40%. I set my daily budget to $100, instead of setting the budget to $40-$70 in the beginning of the day and then to $100 at the end of the day like I usually did; I would start the day with a partial amount of the budget because cyber-leeches would execute invalid clicks on select time periods too. Cyber-leeches seemed to click ads for a set time period, and stop when ads stopped showing. I would stop my ads when I stopped receiving conversions, setting the daily budget low, and resumed my ads, increasing the daily budget, during the next high-conversion time period. I received 40 inquiries the first week I parted the day for a 42% increase of the 28 inquiries the week before. The next week I received 42 inquiries, and the week before Labor Day I received a 107% increase in inquiries - 58 - of the control week's 28 inquiries. I have been leveraging dayparting since, adjusting the bid percentages, time period lengths, and daily budgets each day maintaining a weekly inquiry count within the high forties and low fifties. At this time I don't account for any sample distortion effects that can deviate my results by working with low conversion volumes; nor did I split-test to compress the time between the presentation of my control strategy to have Adwords show my ads intermittently throughout a day's entirety and dayparting. I can say, nevertheless, that these inquiries have generated about $50K in revenue in a month's time as opposed to less than $5K a month before. And for a startup every revenue hike counts. [The above article is a submission for Marketing Pilgrim’s Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest. Each Monday in October, entries will be published and the most popular article of the week will qualify for the $5,000 grand prize. If you’d like to submit an entry, please view the contest entry-requirements and guidelines.]

How Much Are We Worth?

2006-10-09T09:00:00.003-04:00

By [removed at author's request]. I love the internet. I just celebrated my 22nd birthday last week, and I already make more money than I know what to do with. I’m not trying to win this contest, because I’ll be at SES regardless, I’ve already bought Aaron’s book, and I have plenty of great research tools. Besides that, there is shortage of good SEO’s in the industry and I would really like to see someone with great potential but little resources go on to benefit from this contest. I am writing this to the judges as more of a wake up call. You are all worth much more than you selling yourselves for. You have great brands, you are recognized, accomplished, and have a good track record. Fortune 1000 Companies, CEO’s, and decision makers all across the country have no idea how we do what we do, but they know that they need it. They need it bad. In my experience, most SEO’s come from a background in programming or web design, or something like that. That’s great, but they don’t know business. I went to school for business, sales, and marketing training, then I realized the huge demand for SEM. I work with a real estate company that recently signed a 2-year contract that pays me $55,000 per month, plus a 15% share in the upside. That is good money, and I don’t even have a valuable brand name like all of you have. You need to start charging more, you need to find people with a sales background to learn SEO inside and out, and we all need to stop discounting what we know. In a CEO’s eyes, it’s worth more than you think! On a completely random note, I think one of the best articles I have read on search engine optimization was on “Pull SEO” by Mike Grehan. When I first read that article back in January, I completely changed the way I was approaching seo, especially for new domains. Offline and online are beginning to mesh more and more. If you can create a strong buzz around a new site it will jump right over the sandbox for sure. Who needs PageRank when you have the weight of the world pushing your site to the top? Link baiting 2.0 is going to get exciting! I love talking about marketing and SEO. All I do is experiment and come up with new ideas that work. That is why people want me to help them, and my sales background is what makes them pay me so much to do so. Feel free to email me any feedback you have on anything I said whether it’s good or bad. Thanks!

Is Google Really Listening?

2006-10-09T09:00:00.002-04:00

By Al Scillitani.

A few months ago, I wrote an article about Google’s Adwords new features and tools giving me a headache. I wrote,

“My head hurts. Almost everytime I log into an adwords account something has changed. How is a single adwords account owner supposed to keep up with all your changes? It is hard enough for a full team of specialists nevermind the small business owner that is maintaining their own adwords account. Just when I think I am all caught up, more news comes out about another new feature, tool, format, etc...”

They responded by sending me headache medicine. This demonstrated to me that employees of Google 1. Have a sense of humor and 2. Were interested in their customers opinions. The problem is, it appears the Google employees knowledge is not making it up to the top executive team.

A recent article from the LA Times states Co-founder Sergey Brin is leading a company wide initiative called "Features, not products." Mr Brin and other Google executives realized that myriad product releases were confusing their users. They are now going to focus on product features. Well here we go again!

I can see it happening already. All current Google products are going to be changed, updated, “improved,” newly added features, tools added, expanded, integrated, merged, and upgraded on a weekly basis. Now instead of being confused with all their new products, we will be confused with all their current products.

Google needs to slow down. They need to take a look at each product one at a time, have a team of Googlers and customers look at the product, and get ideas for improvements. Some of the “improvements” I have seen so far with Adwords didn’t do anything but add an additional step to get to the area I want. They need to look at the big picture of each product with a team of actual users. Gather all the feedback all at once, eliminate which features or upgrades are not needed or too costly and then work on the new features to add. Do it all at once and test, test, test, again using actual users. Each update should include several features and should not be conducted more than once a quarter. Give us time to learn and use the new features.

Of course Google doesn’t have to listen to my recommendations. Maybe they will realize I am right when the executives ask why their acetaminophen costs have dramatically increased?

Google, please restock my supply in preparation of your upcoming changes. You know the address.

The Definition of SEO...

2006-10-09T09:00:00.001-04:00

or Make It For Person, Not The Search Engine. By Josh Garner. What does 'SEO' mean? Search Engine Optimization...Duh. No no. What does it mean? It means 'to optimize a site for the search engines.' I guess that's pretty close, but going with that thought alone can actually land you in a bit of trouble. We often talk on SEO and what the search are looking for, how they are acting, how to optimize a site, etc. But we often neglect a very important idea. Simply optimizing a site for the search engines isn't really the best idea. If we do that and that alone, then we won't likely find success in our business endeavor. We would then neglect our customer's needs and/or any help that we might provide to the online community. Optimizing a site for the sole benefit of the search engines could result in spam or content that sounds to repetitive, because we are trying to make sure our keywords are on the homepage a certain number of times to achieve 'density.' We may end up getting tons of links to and from areas that are less than acceptable because we keep thinking that 'Link Popularity' means 'get as many as we can.' We may end up in jail because every time we walk into Albertson's we keep hearing 'It's your store.' So, what should we be doing? Yes, SEO means 'to optimize a site for the search engines,' but we should be thinking of it as 'optimizing a site, so as to show the search engines what the site is about and how it can help the online community/consumer.' If you have relevant copy on your site, you will likely be using your desired search terms sufficiently anyway. And with the ever growing use of LSI, the search engines will pick your site out. If you have relevant and helpful text on your site, you will get quality inbound links from other sites simply on merit. If you just remember that it's just a jingle, your hands won't become idle and attempt the theft of your favorite candy bar. In closing, we shouldn't be making and optimizing sites for the search engines. Do it for your visitors. So what if Google doesn't give you the best ranking. Given proper content and quality, you will get the visitors. Yes, optimize the site for the crawlers. Make sure we aren't doing anything black hat. Correct the errors. Clean up the code. Make proper use of header tags and meta title. But do this for your visitors, not the search engines. The search engines will love you for it.

The SEO Article You Shouldn't Read

2006-10-09T09:00:00.000-04:00

By Nick Urbani. This may not be what you want to hear, but your tricks, tips, and techniques do not matter. Even if you all like to sport your white hats, your ace-in-the-hole top-secret tactic is useless. Lets be honest with each other--its ok no one’s listening. Your newly discovered SEO trick isn’t really earth shattering or even ground breaking. Is there anything really new to SEO? The long-term profitability of any individual SEO will always rely on the innovation of strategy. All of us could throw tactics and tricks at our clients, but a coherent, forward looking strategy is what it takes to win. To be the best you must have a strategy that avoids becoming obsolete by continuously creating the new. Very rare are the "aha" moments in life which seem to create new ideas out of thin air. An SEO cannot rely on these infrequent instances in life. How do you plan for continuous innovation in the dynamic environment of digital marketing? The irony of creating cutting edge strategies is that success depends on failure. This requires experimentation, learning from experimentation, and adapting quickly. In the science realm, scientists use the scientific method. However, not all business innovations can be tested using this method with complete clarity in a practical way. Changing search engine algorithms and user trends are the most difficult experimental environments to learn in. In order to open the door of learning and strategic innovation in Search Engine Optimization I apply 5 changes incorporated into Theory Focused Planning. 1. Minimize Detail Typical plans within current SEO strategy include breakdowns of link popularity, search engine ranking, keyword density, etc. This makes it easy to troubleshoot problems with the use of tactics. For example, our acme roadrunner trap landing page ranking has fallen on Yahoo! due to a competitor’s superior use of div tags and higher quality links. Again, I could fire tactics at you all day, but this troubleshooting method depends on the reliable predictability of search engine algorithms. Strategy should focus on solving critical unknowns that will make or break your campaign. How will search engines use bookmarking in their search algos? Does our target audience and environment call for the use of RSS feeds? 2. Predict Trends Typical clients ask for a prediction of the bottom line--search engine rankings. This would make sense if search engines interpreted the sites the same every quarter. However, we are subject to the extraordinarily dynamic function of algorithms. More important than the ranking over any time period is the underlying trend over that period. 3. Focus on theory, not rankings In most reporting documents sent to clients you will find endless numbers offering current rankings for each keyword for each search engine. But in our business, the theory used to achieve those numbers is far more important than the numbers themselves. Rankings, placement, and ROI have little utility in an ongoing SEO strategy. Rankings give little insight into SEO planning, especially in the early stages. Trends and performance related to the interdependent SEO operations: coding, copywriting, and linking will provide earlier signs that a strategy is either winning or losing. 4. Review Very Frequently The winning SEO will not be the first to start or the one with the best initial strategy, but the one that learns the quickest. As an example, an SEO that re-evaluates its plans monthly rather than yearly has the potential to learn 12x faster than a competitor. 5. Hold Yourself Accountable for Learning, Not Results. Clients, corporations, and SEOs themselves must understand that the plan is a hypothesis and the goal is to adapt as quickly as possible. In this type of environment SEOs will evaluate themselves on how quickly they learn and will be able to more effectively validate their thought process and utilize their ability to adapt in an experimental environment. Some may disagree with taking Theory Focused Planning and applying it to Search Engine Optimization. To some, theory does not equal practicality. However, the tactics and techniques you use are based on some theory of what will work and what will not work in the future. Your reputation, your services, and your profitability are a bet on this theory. Therefore, a practical approach is to continually test and adapt the theory on which you place your bet.

Official Google Blog Hacked, How Secure is Blogger?

2006-10-08T17:42:00.000-04:00

While you were enjoying your weekend, the Official Google Blog was hacked and fake post uploaded. A bug in Blogger enabled an unauthorized user to make a fake post on the Google Blog last night, claiming that we've discontinued our AdWords click-to-call test. The bug was fixed quickly and the post removed. As for the click-to-call test, it is progressing on schedule, and we're pleased with the results thus far. TechCrunch has a screenshot of the post. I'm happy for Google, that they caught the offending post and removed it, but where does that leave the rest of us? Has the security flaw now been fixed? Should other Blogger users be concerned that their blog could be hacked too? Google needs to post a more in-depth explanation and assure us that we won't be the next target! I've asked for comment.

Welcome Search Marketing Standard!

2006-10-06T15:46:00.000-04:00

I'd like to introduce the Search Marketing Standard magazine as the newest sponsor of Marketing Pilgrim. If you've not already signed-up for the industry's only dedicated print magazine, you should head over there and subscribe immediately! ;-)

SEM Scholarship Contest - Deadline Reminder

2006-10-06T13:07:00.000-04:00

If you've not already submitted your entry for this week's round of the SEM Scholarship Contest, you have until 6pm Saturday October 7th to get your article in. Qualifying entries will be posted this Monday. Please remember the contest is open to all, whether you're completely new to SEM or been "at it" for years, but please do remember to read the guidelines for entering. Thanks!

No More New Products from Google?

2006-10-06T12:26:00.000-04:00

The LA Times' Chris Gaither reveals Google's plans to pull-back from launching new products and instead focus on making the 35 it has, more usable. Co-founder Sergey Brin is leading a companywide initiative called "Features, not products." He said the campaign started this summer when Google executives realized that myriad product releases were confusing their users. "It's worse than that," said Brin, Google's president of technology. "It's that I was getting lost in the sheer volume of the products that we were releasing." Google also appears to have decided to actually start integrating products... The initiative's primary goal is to make Google products easier to use, especially by packaging disparate products. For example, said Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, Google plans to combine its spreadsheet, calendar and word-processing programs into one suite of Web-based applications. When asked about product integration recently, this is what Eric Schmidt told us... Schmidt said that he had suggested the same thing to Brin and Page a couple of years ago and they told him he was wrong. Their concept is to build the user-base first. “If you build an integrated solution, it doesn’t matter unless people use it,” said Schmidt. He added, “We want to release products quickly, we want to get them out there, we want to see if they work. I don’t mean work technically, but do they solve a real problem. If they solve a real problem, it’s relatively easy to build an integrated solution.” I guess they're finally at the point of realizing what's working - now it's time to make them more user-friendly.