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SEO is a Brick not a House

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 14:50:26 +0000

This post is in reference to SEO services as a business model, however many of the ideas can be juxtaposed to businesses and their utilization of the method for marketing So much gets said about SEO and its relevance or even legitamacy. Most of this is purely linkbait, and the SEO crowd is all to quick to fall into the trap. The arguements fall into three basic camps. 1.The SEO are scumbags camp, of which Derek Powazek became a member and then quickly left. 2.The SEO is bullshit camp, of which Jason Calacanis is probably the most visible member, but you can find tons of the linkbait here . 3. The SEO is a “dying business” concept, of which Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker is one of the main figure heads, and now Robert Scoble has joined the mix. None of these are 100% right, or for that matter wrong. 1. Some SEOs, like some circus clowns and some grocery baggers are indeed scum bags. But then there are people like, Neil Patel who have gotten rave reviews from savvy web people due to his aid of their web properties. From Quicksprout.com : “Neil has advised TechCrunch for more than two years and been an important part of the growth of the TechCrunch Network by helping us implement SEO best practices. Search engines have grown to be responsible for 1/3 of all TechCrunch traffic, so Neil’s ongoing support is critical to our business.” – Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch 2. Some SEOs offer services that are nothing more than bullshit, every SEO has had to clean up a mess by these types of unscrupulous business people. But there are a ton of proffesionals out their helping people transition to the online space, and thus save their livelihood. 3. Some SEOs have thriving businesses based on there insane prowess, like my bud Dave Naylor , others are feeling the economic crunch. For me, long term, I look at my business ventures and I side with Shoemoney on several points. SEO as a stand alone service offering is a tough long term business plan to feel solid about. The engines are changing too fast to allow anyone doing the service to feel confident about their business over the next 10 years, and everyone should be looking at the current changes in terms of personalization and taking it as a cue to diversify what they do. SEO is a block in the creation of a solid online marketing strategy, it isn’t the entire house. Good SEOs know this. Every site clinic I have ever seen with SEO rockstars like Greg Boser, Todd Freisen, Dave Naylor, Mikkel deMib Svendsen, and countless others always circles back to them spending as much time exploring conversion, usability, and social media as they do the standard SEO practices. To definitively say SEO as a practice or service based business model has lost its legs is a bit premature to say the least. Traditional media is dying quickly, and more businesses are turning to the web to make a new revenue stream. Search is the most logical place to begin for these companies. Also, the top 5% of SEOs out there will be making money as long search engines exist. Again though, search, paid or organic, can only be a piece of the online marketing puzzle. As we look at 2010 we are seeing that brands have cemented their position on the web, building a solid brand, via a mixture of online marketing streams is the only route towards continual prosperity online. Mobile adveritisng, due to the growth of app based mobile OSs, will likely grow from 2009s relatively small $416 million in spend, and acquiring the tools to make this a part of your offering as a service provider will soon become a necessity. Social media has become profitably, and now is a must have for CMOs. And so we start to get this view of online marketing like a machine, one distinct entity, but with sum parts that have little use on their own. What good is 100,000,000 search based visitors if you are only getting .02% conversion, and negative ROI on the money to achieve the paid and organic rankings? How real is a 90% conversion rate if you are only bringing in 2 natural visitors a month? Smart professionals in the space, like my friend Todd Malicoat , are using their talents to offer companies online business consulting services, and utilizing the revenue generated from these services to fund their long term goals. This has been the premise behind Search & Social from Day 1. Why make everyone else money? Utilize the skills and team you have built to build revenue streams beyond services. This site is the most public proof of this concept for us. We are looking at an evolution online, and not a death. The direction the online world is moving favors diversified marketing campaigns, more directly branding based marketing, and savvy service providers will make note and transition. Others will die off. This is the cycle of business in any sector, and not a fact reserved to SEO alone. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . SEO is a Brick not a

7 Overlooked Sources of Keyword Data

admin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:22:50 +0000

Keyword Research is an obvious first step in researching a niche for yourself or for a client. Keywords, and their results, make up the terrain of search marketing – and knowing the terrain (and who else is playing in it) helps us navigate up the mountain (and determine when the mountain is maybe too crowded to climb). Google’s AdWords Keywords tool isn’t a bad place to start, but if you’re operating in a competitive niche there isn’t much of an advantage there – even my grandma uses it (not really, my grandma still has a rotary phone, but you get the idea). Your real advantage comes from looking in places where your competitors aren’t to identify “under the radar” keywords. Here are 10 sources of keyword data that are often overlooked in the course of everyday keyword research. 1) Misspelling

Paul Walker – A Scam or a Genuine Web Marketing Guru?

cgseo — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 14:46:48 +0000

Now, a hardcore web marketer, Paul walker started his online marketing journey about 3-4 years ago in 2005. Before he commenced Internet marketing, he was literally drowned in huge debts with very little income for his living. He strived hard every single day for nearly 12-14 hours a day in an attempt to establish his

How to Quickly Check Tweets Related to Any Web Page

admin — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 14:43:36 +0000

The idea of giving the opportunity to leave off-site comments to any page has been hot for a long time: that’s how many social bookmarking / sharing sites work (like StumbleUpon where people “review” and tag pages within the system), that’s what Google Sidewiki concept is based on and that’s how Tweeting any page works… Why it has been popular is quite clear: people are saved from the trouble to log in or filling the comment form and are given the opportunity to use their favorite web environment and instantly share their comments with their online friends. The question is how we, bloggers and Internet marketers, can keep track of those comments and utilize that off-site conversations around our web pages. This post looks at one part of the question: possible ways to keep track of Twitter conversations related to any web page : Type Instant notifications Additional tracking tools Kutano Browser addon Yes No BackTweets Browser bookmarklet No RSS feed, email alerts AddATweet Browser addon Yes No Kutano Kutano works as a browser addons (supported browsers: FireFox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome) that hides behind a handy sidebar and notifies you of recent Tweets around any page you are landing on. In short, it works as follows: Install the addon (and restart your browser). Kutano sidebar should appear; Navigate to any web page and notice a number that appears right on the sidebar (when it is closed). This number indicates how many Tweets have been found for the current page): Click on it and see the actual Tweets in the opened sidebar: Best features: Instantly see Twitter comments on any page you are currently viewing (the sidebar is open); See Tweets to the page or to the site; See “Discussions” – i.e. recent web updates that do not link to the page directly but use a related hashtag or keyword (useful for tools, brand names, etc): BackTweets BackTweets is a popular tool that tracks and aggregates tweets linking to a particular page. It supports a number of URL-shorteners which makes the tool one of the most complete. It can be added to your browser with help of a bookmarklet which allows to quickly find Tweets linking to the current page. Best features: Create an email alert for new Tweets linking to any page; Grab an RSS feed to follow Tweets commenting on any page. AddATweet AddATweet is more about commenting using your Twitter identity than aggregating all Twitter buzz around one specific page – that is you won’t see all the Tweets related to any specific page but you will be able to track comments left using the tool. Best features: Instantly see if the page has comments by the color of the addon button; Easily leave your own comments using the tool and your Twitter identity. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . How to Quickly Check Tweets Related to Any Web

How to Measure Branding PPC Campaigns

cgseo — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:01:25 +0000

Rule #1 in every paid search campaign (PPC) is Identify and Track a Measurable Conversion . For 95% of campaigns this is a must, but there is a new breed of paid search campaign: the branding campaign. These are based on traffic to a site only and intentionally do not rely on traditional tracked metrics (sales, forms) for results. Before I get into the new breed let me make one thing very clear , paid campaigns are almost impossible to optimize if there is no trackable conversion to measure. Paid search managers rely on the conversion to determine where they are losing the searcher. The funnel of paid search starts with the impression, or the search query. The click happens when you get the searcher’s attention with your 3 lines of poetic, intent-based perfection. The click through rate lets your manager know if the keyword and ad are targeted. After the click, conversion metrics based on ad and keywords are imperative. They allow managers to tell if the website followed through with the promise of the ad. If the searcher does not perform the intended action, there is something to fix or optimize. The new breed of branding-focused PPC is missing the conversion metric. The intent of these ads is to inform the customer of the brand, send them to the site, and grow trust. They are looking to convert the searcher in the long term, which is not directly measurable. You cringing yet? This goes against everything that is online marketing. We have seen a rise in budget levels over the past 10 years because executives can SEE the return on this advertising model. The selling point is in the ROI, and traditional advertising mediums have been losing ad dollar share because of that. Another change is coming to the online marketing space. Trust is still a big part of the consumer’s decision-making process and with all of the scams online, it makes sense that a return to some form of branding was going to happen. How do we make this work though? As much as branding campaigns cannot be tied directly to specific sales, every paid search campaign needs to have metrics and benchmarks. If you are tasked with a paid search campaign with no conversion metrics and a focus on traffic, dig deeper for what they are looking for from the traffic. Most branding campaigns should be measurable through a marked increase in overall traffic (given), but here are a few more metrics you might want to track: Click Through Rate – CTR is still very necessary to determine relevance to the end user. If you stop looking at this, you are not getting the best traffic for the cost. Time on Page – This metric will allow you to see how long people are spending on the initial page. This is one of the metrics to determine landing page relevance to keyword and ad. In most cases, the higher the better. Bounce Rate – Are your visitors leaving quickly? You might be on the wrong keywords, need a page redesign, or new ad copy if the traffic from your paid campaign has a high bounce rate. The main goal though is to get your branding campaign to drop your bounce rate over the entire site. An increase in return visitors will have an affect across the board if the branding campaign if effective. Return Visits – This is the key to any branding campaign. Are they coming back? A branding campaign should work with all other advertising to bring new people in and give them a reason to come back. If you are not growing your percentage of return visitors for the site overall, something isn’t working. Total Time on Site – If your intent is to drive traffic and get more people interested in your brand, then the entire site needs to be targeted to them. If the total time on site goes up (be sure you are not tracking yourself), this trust and branding goal is being met. Remember that the online marketing world changes everyday. Roll with it and use your analytical brain to tie old media with new metrics. Everything is trackable and measurable online. Find benchmarks from prior years and forge a new path. The guest post is by Kate Morris . You can find her on her blog or on twitter @katemorris . Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . How to Measure Branding PPC

Facebook Beats Google as the Most Visited Site on Christmas Day

cgseo — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:36:52 +0000

In what could be a preview of an impending battle between Facebook and Google in the coming days, Facebook has beaten Google as the most visited website on both Christmas Even and Christmas Day, says a tweet from Hitwise’s Twitter account. It was the first time that Facebook become the number one site during Christmas Day. Last year it was Google as the most visited site with Facebook closely following behind. But come to think of it, it is not surprising for Facebook to be visited more both during Christmas Eve and Christmas Day since majority of people are spending their online time during those days probably greeting their Facebook contacts, sending Christmas wishes and greetings to their loved ones, friends and family who are not with them on those days. Facebook after all is more of a communication tool than Google. What made the event surprising was due to the fact that Facebook has been lagging behind both Google and Yahoo! Mail all through out the year in terms of site visits. It only goes to show that email is a thing of the past during these days, as Facebook and perhaps other social sites like Twitter are the more preferred ways of communicating online especially during special occasions. Most importantly it is also quite surprising that online users still visited Facebook despite the slew of privacy issues that came out during the year. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Facebook Beats Google as the Most Visited Site on Christmas

How SEOs Win the War on Personalized & Real-Time Search

admin — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 14:36:29 +0000

Google’s announcement of personalized search for everyone has stirred a lot of mixed reactions from the search industry. Eric Schmidt’s interview on CNBC has even provoked various sentiments on privacy issues. I think Aaron Wall of SEOBook.Com has an excellent take on this one. Personally, I agree with Kalena Jordan’s conclusion on whether or not SEO can exist beyond personalization , in which she said: Personalization has been in place on Google for over 4 years. This isn’t a new algorithm, it’s simply a new delivery mechanism. It’s important to remember that a large number of Google users are logged in to a Google account of some kind when conducting searches anyway, so they won’t even notice the difference. The other thing to keep in mind is that personalization is all about relevance and usability. And then there’s the launch of Real-Time search results from Google (just a few days after the rollout of personalized search). So expect conversations your favorite social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to show up in your respective search results. However, I wasn’t surprise to see some questionable results in the early stages. But I won’t go on explaining what these two features mean for Search Engine Optimization. After a few weeks of reading experts’ views on the topic, by now you already know what it does for our users, what challenges it poses to us SEO’s, and what benefits Google gains out of these intriguing additions. Instead let me show you how we can still win the battle for search rankings with these new set of rules. Why don’t we explore our weapons in modern warfare? 1. Quality Content with Value – Ever since I started out as a SEO content writer 4 years ago, I’ve always been a believer in the “Content is King” school of thought. But SEO has evolved so much that great content may not be enough. Thus, you have the popular viral content and link baiting trends. I believe in today’s context, content should be beyond quality, relevancy and link worthiness. Let’s just say you’re a movie website and you want to drive visitors to your AVATAR page (oh Yes, It was phenomenal!). Typically, you’d be providing a brief synopsis of the film, movie ratings, and screening times. Will that be enough? Well you should throw in a video trailer, a listing of local cinemas in the area featuring the film, movie reviews from selected bodies like Rotten Tomatoes, tickets and seats reservation system, or maybe a list snack items your visitors might want to grab while watching (maybe that’s a bit too much, but hey it’s possible). You don’t have to be a one-stop shop website, but your site must be what your customers need and even more. Great content will not be merely something to read and understand. Great content will be something tangible, something that customers can act upon, something that entices emotion, something that is real and beyond just characters in a white space. 2. Increase ClickThrough Rate – Personalized search will mean effectively manipulating influencing your users to click on your listing. Of course you can always conduct your own tests and come up with your own tactics to exploit personalized search . Here’s one simple tip: improve your page titles and your meta descriptions. These elements will reflect how you’ll appear on the SERP’s. Your description should inform your customers who you are and what you can deliver. If you can add a call to action line in less than 160 characters of your description, you’re off on a great start. If you can capture your customers in the first 3 lines of your search listing, you’re definitely a mile ahead of the competition. 3. Brand & Online Reputation Management – When we do research on certain topics, we tend to look for sources coming from brands even though they might be beyond page 1 of our searches. In the same way we try to avoid clicking through listings which come from dubious providers despite their top positions in the results pages. The reason being – TRUST. People trust brands. People trust businesses, individuals, and groups who have made the effort of developing their brands and delivering no less than the best to their customers. You may have won the battle for the top rankings but if you’re sitting beside the big fish in your niche market, they’ll definitely choose the neighboring giant. 4. Get Active on Social Media – This goes without saying. Even before rumors of real-time search came to life, marketing, PR, and online professionals have taken advantage of social media to its fullest potential. Well for those who haven’t, now is the time to get cracking on social media optimization (SMO). If not for real-time search, then you’ve got more reasons to embrace social media in 2010 . It would be naïve for us to think that we didn’t see this coming. Personalized and real-time search was definitely the next step for Google (and probably for the rest of the search engines). And we, as SEO’s, are expected to rise up to the occasion to do what we do best – to quickly adapt to the environment and to deliver the right results. Dave is currently working as an SEO Analyst for Nurture3 , and online marketing company based in Dubai, leading a team of junior SEO?s optimizing in-house web projects. He is also the author of Click-Dubai.Com , which talks about the basic functions of organic search engine optimization and its importance in the Middle East & GCC markets. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . How SEOs Win the War on Personalized & Real-Time

Track Santa Online with Norad Santa Tracker & More

admin — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 10:44:31 +0000

It’s Christmas Eve, or the Night Before Christmas, and the time has come again to track the route of Santa Claus as he travels the globe, bringing presents to the good boys and girls. Want to track Santa’s whereabouts on Christmas Eve? Here are the online tools you need. Official NORAD Santa Tracker NORAD continues it more than 50 years tradition of tracking Santa’s whereabouts especially on Christmas Even. Read more about why NORAD tracks Santa as well as spirit of voluntarism during this event. Google

YouTube, Google, Facebook, Sex Top Kids’ Searches

cgseo — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:23:12 +0000

Forget about the recent reports on most-searched terms and Twitter trending topics. As Symantec just released a more controversial top searches report for 2009 . And this time while YouTube, Google and Facebook are the most-searched topics among teens, and so is Sex. The report, top 100 favorite search terms was based on the search tracking done by Symantec’s OnlineFamily.Norton service. Respondents were children 18 years old and under. The study was part the groups’ assistance to parents in monitoring their children’s online searches. In both boys and girls category “sex” emerged on top of the list at no. 4 and no. 4 respectively. Among the top searches made by boys are related to social networking sites, shopping sites and porn. While for girls, searches were either music, TV shows, movies and celebrities. Going into specific age groupings further, the study found out that kids seven and under searched more about video games while older boys did music related searches. So, if your boys and girls are not frequenting Facebook and YouTube, they are either searching for other sites related to sex and porn. How comforting, NOT! Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . YouTube, Google, Facebook, Sex Top Kids’

James Francis – An Upcoming Internet Marketer

admin — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:16:32 +0000

James Francis, with nearly 6 years of Internet marketing expertise, is trying to invest his time, money, and knowledge in helping many online marketers who confront with common problems while performing their online marketing ventures. Along with creating and promoting online products, James also spend quite a lot of time in researching on the web

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James Francis – An Upcoming Internet Marketer