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So Google rolls out Instant Search and there are screams and cries that SEO is Dead, but hello did anybody think about the impact on commercial side of search? The sponsored results or Google AdWords?
Being that paid results are taking up more and more of the space on Google’s results page, you need to start to think about how this might be changing people’s search behaviours, traffic patterns and potentially opening up new opportunities for your business via AdWords.


Plural Preferences?


There also seems to be an early preference for the use of plural version as the top suggested result but it doesn’t seem to be related to search volume as Google advises the Instant algorithm is built around. Compare the two keywords Hotels vs Hotel and you will see that even when the plural version has significantly less search volume.

Also looking at how the higher likely traffic impacts on Google Instant results show that the new algorithm gives preference to showing Hotels as the first suggested result. So if you are buying AdWords traffic on the exact phrase “Hotel” you might now be missing out on being showed as the users will likely pick the “Hotels” phrase as it is shown first.

SEO vs AdWords on Instant

It is likely that search optimisation projects will have to be having to spend a reasonable amount of time examining their existing projects and revising current link building plans as it can make or break the companies organic strategy depending on how they approach the idea of targeting the plural versus the singular version of their primary keyword.

You can see the impact of such a decision below to chose target Job rather than Jobs means that NY Job Source was showing #6 for the search term “Jobs” near the bottom of the page out of sight, looking for jobs just got easier for consumers but harder for business at least in organic results.

(Click to enlarge)

For AdWords campaign it might require just a few tweaks to split off a new campaign that seeks to target just the singular version or maybe start experimenting with broad match terms, no need to tweak or adjust backlink profile, so at a basic level AdWords will gain back its importance to a number of businesses now left out in the cold because of poor or little keyword research.

Google Instant Censorship?

There are early issues around self-censorship of Instant search terms that violate Google’s autocomplete policies where it shows a blank screen which requires the searchers to hit enter or click search to see the results. No big change from what they used to do, but it may change user’s behaviour to think they are getting no results so much be doing something wrong and should stop that train of thought.
I lost my focus during writing this post as a lot of people on Twitter & Facebook started calling the new platform a potential tool for censorship of particular industries not liked by Google. I wanted to see how this might affect well known darker verticals, so if you or your clients are into any industries like porn you don’t have to worry about optimising your organic or paid results for Google Instant results because you get the blank censored screen. But interesting if you operate in the following areas you need to rethink your strategies as Google Instant works for you with the suggestions in (brackets)

• Generic (Viagra, Yaz)
• Blackhat (seo, atm)
• Bit Torrent (for music, for movies, for books)
• People Smuggling (in mexico, into Australia)
• Anything illegal (illegal immigration, illegal drugs)
• Hacking Anything (hacking games, hacking Facebook, hacking Netflix)
• Selling Organs (for money, on the black market, on ebay)
• Payday loans (online, direct lender)
• Free (movies online, ringtones, credit report)
  
  

It seems that while Google has enabled Instant Search for a number of these verticals the difference between AdWords showing or not is based on how searches phrase the query by using or not using spacing. But if you are currently getting traffic around based around one or two key prases via AdWords you need to start to test what possible primary terms you should consider bidding on.


Google Instantly kills long tail traffic?


It seems that a number of sites that has typically benefited from either buying cheap long tail traffic or mistyped search queries via AdWords have the most to lose with the recent update. So example one of my sites based on information about medical problems that I had planned to focus around building quality content around long tail keywords now may likely struggle as Google refines how it suggests or filters out long tail keywords.

What happened to those Sponsored Links in suggestions?

Hopefully Google Instant will not see a return of Sponsored Links in the suggested results as this would be too much for anyone but the biggest advertisers to optimise and target effectively. It would likely also overwhelm the users who are already seeing too many ads in the search results. I’m glad to see that they have vanished from Google Instant but since the new platform is AJAX based they could be easily added back in the future.

Since Instant Search has less page views does that mean fewer ads shown?
I started this post by comparing AdWords campaign data from the 7th September vs. the 8th September for a US campaign. It seems that already there has been a noticeable impact on the AdWords campaign since the launch of Google Instant. We all know that one day is not enough data to start the filling the pantry with canned goods and bottled water but it does highlight that you need to be closely watching your AdWords campaigns and even organic traffic.

Instant Campaign Clicks


It seems that initially there is an impact on the clicks compared to the previous day (without Instant) with phrase match volume dropping to 62% and exact match volume dropping to 72%. It’s very interesting to see that broad match volume didn’t change with the Instant Search update which reinforces the benefits of using broad match terms. But overall there was a 16% drop in AdWords clicks since Instant Search was launched.

Instant Campaign Impressions

It seems that initially we see both positive and negative impacts on the impressions compared to the previous day (without Instant). There has been a drop in impressions for exact match terms down to 85% of the previous day’s volume which shows the new Instant Search feature is likely already changing people’s search behaviour.


An interesting side effect seems that impressions for phrase match & broad match keywords has actually risen by around 15% since Google Instant was launched which might be due to the progressive results or people doing more searches?

 source from:searchenginejournal.com

How to Engage Your Blog Readers with Cc:Everybody

A few weeks ago I wrote a review of a cool new service Cc:Everybody started by people behind Omgili (the service I have just mentioned recently in the post on choosing SEO hosting). Basically, the tool provides a way to take advantage of your useful email correspondence which would otherwise have got lost in your private inbox.


The best thing about the tool is that it’s a huge playground. You can think of new and new awesome ways to use it. What I decided to do is to use it for an email Q&A session.

First, what did I do?

Setting Up Your Public Email Inbox

Registration is quick and easy. I registered and got my public email inbox. Now, once I have some useful email correspondence I would like to share with the world, all I need to do is to CC my @cceverybody.com email address. The post will go live and shared publicly after I confirm the action (via email or online).
Note also that all further back-and-forth correspondence with the same person on the same topic, gets automatically published in your public inbox in the same thread.


The second thing I did was adding my Twitter account – this way…

• I can reply and publish any Tweeted questions as well (referencing my Twitter account)
• I can automatically share my public correspondence on Twitter.
  

Besides publishing your email correspondence online, you can:

• Comment on others’ threads;
• Receive comments from readers and moderate comments;
• Pin (or stick) any conversation for it to always appear on top (just like in a regular forum).

Playing Further

Then I started playing. I posted an update to my personal blog inviting everyone to send their SEO-related questions to my @cceverybody.com email address. I got quite a few questions but replied to only most interesting ones (and to those I knew what to answer).


I got great feedback from Twitter followers and blog readers:

Then, I also used this plugin to update my post of new answers I publish (Read: Blogify Your Static Website for Google):

To publish the RSS feed of your CC:Everybody mailbox updates, use this code to fetch and display your inbox atom:

http://cceverybody.com/username/atom,num_items:=100,random:=false,show_description:=true–>

For example, for me that was:

Note also, that not only my original post gets automatically updated of new answers in my public inbox. My Twitter followers get those updates also. And all I need to do is just forward my email to my @cceverybody.com email address.
In seconds my email Q&A session gets comments and retweets:

While I didn’t have too much time to play as much as I would like to, I liked how the experiment went through. Imagine if you put some time, effort and creativity, you can come up with the powerful Q&A content, for example!

My personal conclusion is that Cc:Everybody is a great tool and I’d love to hear your thoughts!

source from:searchenginejournal.com

Why Brand and Reputation Management SEO are the Way Forwards

If I were to sit in a meeting with a big client now and tell them to slash a little of their traditional SEO budget and instead spend more time optimising the top 30 SERP’s for variations of their brand names, they would literally laugh me out of the room.


People and big companies have only these last few years got their heads around SEO, they now know that in order to get more traffic, more sales and more revenue, you need to optimise your site and make its targeted keywords appear as high as possible in all the major search engines.


But moving forwards more and more independent SEO’s are going to be jumping onto the scene, as well as this more and more SEO companies opening up shop. So with even more SEO’s and more companies competing for the same term(s) every sector is going to be a battle field, but there are a few options:

1. Optimise for long tail terms and drive traffic through with ranking for quantity terms rather than the quality ones. (Again this will start receiving huge amounts of competition).
2. Optimise for local terms and then slowly optimise for all the locations that you cover, you will have a lot less competition, but will the search volume and customers be there?
3. Finally and this is what I see expanding rapidly in the next few years, especially for mid sized companies and large companies that are already advertising by other means and already get a lot of direct traffic.
   
   

If you look at some of your client’s analytics data you will see that, some of the terms that actually bring the most visitors are their brand terms. As an example, do you know how many people actually go to Google and type in Facebook rather than just typing it in the browser?…….  1,680,000,000 that’s how many!
Now that is not even including mis spellings, so now imagine your client getting a fraction of brand searches, or for the rich and famous reputation searches. Currently there are not many SEO’s concentrating on this factor, but let’s just think about what happens if you do not own the rest of the sites, in the Top 5 or the Top 10? You are basically going to be losing traffic that you could have easily grabbed and converted.  But what is even worse is imagine that Top 10 for your branded term had 3-4 bad experiences or false negatives about your clients company or image, you could potentially be missing out on lots of click throughs even though you are number one for your brand term, because people are seeing the negatives about you.





Brand and reputation searches are on the increase, just take a look at the above graph, this is persistent with most brand terms.


Over the next few years Brand management SEO and reputation management SEO will literally have to be offered as a separate service to clients, because although you may be number 1 for your brand. Is that really enough? What do you think?

source from:searchenginejournal.com

Social Media Marketing – NOT for Everyone?

After 10 years of preaching the merits of search engine optimization to sceptical business owners, I’ve found there’s a new challenge in online marketing and it’s a funny one.


Nearly all business owners I meet think they should use social media marketing to promote their businesses, but a good number have a real aversion to using social networking channels.


I am finding many people are afraid that if they don’t start using social media they’ll end up behind their competition – or even that they are just going to be missing out on this ‘next big thing’. I’ll be called in for a consultation on using social media for a business, and after discussing the ins and outs of a successful social media campaign, I see there’s something not quite clicking — but as averse to using social media the client may be, he still feels that he must use it.


Do you convince such people that they need to push on, as social media marketing is a necessity these days, or is social media just not for everyone?


Whilst we’ve all heard the benefits of using social media to promote businesses, the dilemma is that using social media as an effective marketing tool also requires:

• some technical ability (albeit pretty basic);
• time, when you may already have issues with time management;
• putting yourself ‘out there’, the social aspect of social media is intimidating to many;
• creative writing skills;
• buy-in from management that may be concerned about dealing with unfriendly comments, time and money spent, etc.;
• a budget to hire a professional to get started or run your campaign, if you just cannot manage it internally.
  

Even after discussing the ways of managing all of these issues – sometimes over and over again – I still get resistance in many cases.


“I can’t see myself telling the world what I’m having for breakfast.”
“I just don’t get Facebook.”
“It’s just not ME!”

So I’ve become a Social Media Marketing Evangelist, and I’ve been able to convert nearly all of those ‘with little faith’ through:

• inspiring with case studies of related businesses that have shown real results through social media marketing;
• brain storming content ideas related to the areas of the business that the client is most passionate about;
• using channels that are most suited to the clients skills and interests – videos for YouTube may really excite a person less inclined to write blog posts;
• working out a time management plan that fits with the clients’ other responsibilities;
• identifying others that may assist the client (at no or low cost) – teenage children are a good resource for sole traders, while using a variety of staff members works in larger organisations;
• looking at the higher cost of alternative ‘traditional’ offline or PPC advertising;
• showing how to set a realistic budget for social media marketing in case professional assistance is needed on a regular basis;
• setting up tools for integrating accounts and automated posting;
• discussing the other benefits of using social media – communicating with and retaining existing customers, networking, keeping tabs on competitors, etc.;
• meeting the sceptical parties in an organisation to get their buy-in and discuss setting up a social media marketing plan and policy.
  
  

Usually at some point along this path I see the client become more comfortable with using social media.  Most become full converts after signing on new clients and making more sales through their social media efforts, for example:

• a small business owner, who barely used email a year ago, is now happily chatting with prospective clients on Twitter on a daily basis;
• a sole trader that couldn’t see himself ‘rattling on about my daily habits online’, has a popular YouTube channel showing off his services;
• a marketing assistant that had to struggle with the business owner for the okay set up a social media campaign, now amazes him with the number of sales they get through their Facebook page and Twitter.
  
  

There are still those who just don’t get it and may never get it.  They may have heartedly set up a Facebook Pages that is only posted to once a month, or Twitter accounts that have just the very first post from a training session. They are not going to see much result from such efforts and this will probably confirm their fears that Social Media Marketing is NOT for them or doesn’t work altogether.


Perhaps the super sceptics will have to take their chances using more traditional marketing methods, but as there has been such a shift in marketing practices toward using social media, they may very well fall behind their competitors and will have to come to terms with it sooner or later. In this case they are probably best off hiring a professional social media consultant to run their campaigns for them.


Social Media Marketing may not suit everyone initially, but it’s definitely something that business owners, marketing and sales staff do need to come to terms with to be competitive in the business world today.

source from:searchenginejournal.com

Latest SEO Tips and Updates

6 Ultimate On-Page Search Engine Optimization Tips

These on-page search engine optimization tips will assist you in setting up your pages with the appropriate title and meta tags, headers, text elements and alt attributes.

1. Title Tag

The Title tag is used to define the title of a web page, with the Title tag placed between the and tags in the html of the page. Search engines will recognize the Title tag as the title of the page. Each page should have its own distinct Title tag.
Fundamentals:

• The Title will be displayed within the browser at the top of the browser window or tab.
• When a user searches for a specific word or phrase, Google will return a link to the website, and the Title tag will be displayed as the anchor text for the website link.
• The text in the Title tag is one of the most important relevancy factors influencing search engine ranking algorithms.
• Using your most important keywords or keyphrases in the Title tag will have a dramatic effect upon your page’s ranking for those keywords.

Take Aways: It is recommended that you keep your Title short, preferably between 10 and 64 characters, 70, at most. Over 70 will not contribute any weight as part of the document.
Use of irrelevant words (not found on the page) in your Title will dilute the impact on your targeted keywords. Use of irrelevant words can also trigger the spam filters of the search engines. Place your most targeted keyword phrases as early as possible in the Title. Try to minimize the use of stop words, such as a, an, of, on, etc., as they consume character count and offer no value.

2. Description Meta Tag

Used to provide a brief description of a Web page, the Description meta tag should clearly describe the purpose of the page, for both the user and the search engines.

• The importance of the Description tag as an element of the ranking algorithm has decreased significantly over recent years, but some search engines may still support this tag.
• The search engines will often display the Description along with the Title in the SERPS (search engine results pages).

The maximum length of a displayed description varies between search engines, so wherever possible, try to place your most important keywords early in your Description tag, in case the search engine truncates the results.
Keep your Description between 50 and 149 characters, including spaces, whenever possible. Google will display 154 characters, but other search engines display less. Longer descriptions are of little value, as most search engines place little to no importance on this tag.

In extreme circumstances, the Description can be as long as 200 characters (including spaces), but understand that there is a high probability of truncation. As is the case with the Title, the use of irrelevant words can trigger the search engines’ spam filters. Avoid adding text that is not found within the visible text of the page.

Description Meta tags are not intended for the search engines, they exist for human users. Therefore, the text should be written to attract the user and convert them to a buyer, achieving the best ROI for your SEO efforts.

3. Keywords Meta Tag

This tag lists the words or phrases that are descriptive of, and found within the contents of the page. This tag provides some additional text for crawler-based search engines. However because of frequent attempts to abuse their systems, most search engines now ignore this tag.

Note: Of all the major crawler-based search engines, only Inktomi currently supports the Keywords Meta tag.

Similar to the Meta Description tag, there is a limit to the number of captured characters within the Keywords Meta tag. Keep the tag to between 4 and 8 keywords or keyphrases, separated by commas.
Syntax: Keyword1,Keyword2,Keyword3,Keyword4

All keywords listed in the Keywords Meta Tag should appear at least once in your content (body), or they may be considered to be irrelevant spam. You should also avoid repetitions, to prevent penalization by the search engines for keyword “stuffing”. The most important keywords should be listed first, to increase their prominence for the search engines that still consider this tag in their determination of your pages’ rankings.
Side Note: Approximately a year ago, Yahoo was still considering the keywords meta tag. While that may have changed, it will do no harm to use this tag, provided you don’t abuse it.

Attention! If you are utilizing XHTML+RDFa (which is recommended), you should not use the keywords meta tag. Opt instead, for the implementation of “Common Tags”.

Yahoo! Announces the “Common Tag” and why is it better: Like The Meta Keywords Tag, But Even Better.

4. Heading Tags (H1-H6)

Syntax:

Keyword1 in the Heading

,

Keyword2 in the Heading

, etc.
The “Header tag” is nothing more than a headline of the page, so it should be kept short. 45 characters, including spaces, is a good target.

Each page should have a clearly defined

header tag, to identify the primary subject of the page to both the user and the search engine. Be sure to use the primary search phrase you are targeting within this tag. Note: It is important that the primary keyword is located in the first heading tag on the page, regardless of its type. Placing the keyword early in the header tag will increase its prominence.
Standard rules apply for the structure of HTML pages. Written in a document-like fashion, they should include:

• Title
• Major heading, describing the main purpose of the section.
• Subheadings, highlighting the key points of each subsection.

Many search engines rank the words found in headings higher than the words found in the body text of the document. Some search engines will also incorporate keywords by looking at all the heading tags on a page.
Don’t try to stuff your heading tag with too many keywords, or words that are not relevant to the content in the body. Having multiple

tags on the same page may cause you to be subjected to a penalty by the search engines, as it may be seen in the same light as “keyword stuffing“. It is certainly appropriate to have multiple headlines appearing on a page, like

,

, etc., provided they follow a hierarchical order. The

should be the first heading tag, followed by the

, then the

, and so on.

5. Phrase Elements

Use the semantical tags and tags for targeted keywords within the visible content of your pages, but sparingly. Those tags are alternatives to the and tags, which can also be used, but are for visual presentation purposes only.

6. Alt Attributes

Resist the temptation to stuff your alt. attributes with keywords. Keyword density is no longer as important as it once was, and doing so could subject you to penalties.

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The 4 Hardest Things About Conversion Optimization For Local Search

As I was perusing through some updates on twitter the other day I came across an Alan Bleiweiss article entitled CONVERSION OPTIMIZATION IS THE NEW BLACK. Now, not only did the article have an extremely catchy and trend-a-rific title, but Alan really hit the nail on head by explaining (and I paraphrase and twist) that in the early days of SEO it was all rankings, click-through’s, and bounce rates. But, as SEO’s continue down the path of perfection the industry benchmark is becoming Conversion Optimization and everything else gets to stand on the 2nd place platform.

I ended up having a great comment section conversation with Alan about some issues with Conversion Optimization in the local search sphere and realized that the dialogue needs to be opened to the search community as a whole for discussion.

The list below contains the 4 hardest things about tracking and optimizing conversions for local search. I would love feedback in order to come up with some of the best possible solutions, and hear any more struggles people are having with this process.

1. Most Sales Take Place Off Line and away from any Javascript Code.

How many final sales for restaurants, doctors, or hardware stores take place online? Of course there are tracking phone numbers (we will talk about this later), contact forms that can be “goaled”, etc. But ultimately, they don’t track a sale, the amount each sale is worth, exactly when it the sale took place, or various other forms of information those in the e-commerce industry can figure with a nice snippet of code.

One of the “a-ha” experiences in Internet Marketing I had was in college when I had to track an online sale from keyword to purchase. I remember thinking, “I know what you typed, I know what you looked at, I know what you spent, and I know what I need to do to get more of you suckers to buy my product!” It was a very satisfying feeling and one I wanted to enjoy over and over again.

Well, that feeling isn’t always the case with local search. Continue on to find out why.

2. “How did you hear about us” only comes true in Fairy Tales.

The most popular form of advertising tracking in America today (according to a recent no-brainer from Mike Ramsey) is simply to ask your customers where they found you. The problem is that most organizations have tons of different people that might answer phones, and the way that a possible customer is asked the question largely determines the answer given. For instance, a question started with “Where did you see us?” will result in more people talking about driving by, or seeing it on TV. “Where did you hear about us?” will result in more people saying on the radio or from a friend. Wording is important to ensure total accuracy, and wording is a hard thing for people to get right. Some more issues are that employees might forget to ask the question, they might write the data and lose it, or various other “dog ate my conversion” type happenings.

I do think that if Local SEO’s can stress “pen and pad” customer sales tracking to a company enough, they might make a spreadsheet and implement an exact wording, and exact form for tracking leads + sales and amounts. But, you still don’t see the search terms that the customer typed, or have a clue what they did on the page. Also, my experience with trying to get companies to do their own call tracking goes like this…

1. Train Client
2. Implement System for them to follow
3. Test
4. Leave them to it
5. Find that the system has been tampered with, changed, and is broken
6. Bang head on wall and start at “a”

That is when I change a familiar quote to the following…

“If you give a man a fish you can feed him for a day….If you teach a man to fish then he will just sit on the bank and drink beer unless you are there to keep holding his hand.”

You can come up with the perfect system, but adding people to it somehow ruins the entire process.

3. Call Tracking Numbers + Local Map Optimization = A great idea…just like the Titanic.

The best idea (in theory) to getting a solid idea of how your online campaigns are producing leads+sales is call tracking implemented with web analytics. The data is not dependant on a secretary remembering to ask the “golden question”. You can listen in on phone calls and find out how well the sales team is doing. You can even track individual campaigns with a specific phone number to drill down. Call tracking seems to be the best solution for offline businesses. The only problem is trying to use call tracking with a Google Places listing is like aiming a big boat at the tip of an iceberg without realizing that a big old mamma is under water waiting to sink you. Rankings in maps are built around the quality and quantity of places that a business’s name, address, and phone number are found across the web.

Let me say that again in all caps incased you missed it….

Rankings in maps are built around the quality and quantity of places that a business’s name, address, and phone number are found across the web.

This information needs to match up on every directory, page, and place that search engine spiders visit in order to ensure all the data gets linked to your business profile. Since call tracking numbers are different than the true business phone number, here are the possibilities of what could happen.

1. Using an image based call tracking number like My Next Customer ‘s system on a website would ensure that no search bots found the number and ended up with confused phone call data. But, many people call the numbers found right on the map listing in search results so you wouldn’t truly be tracking all your local search calls.

Description: Picture 4.png

The number on your listing has to be same number distributed throughout the web. If not, then you might end up with duplicate listings as the search engine might think that the phone number represents a totally different business.

2. Switching all numbers you publish online (IYPs, Directories, and Websites) to a single local call tracking number is another option. If you do this, then you might avoid duplicate listings for a while. But all of your internet funnels would fall under one number limiting the amount of specific tracking you can do. Also, offline YellowPage’s that have a different phone number listed in the book might re-add that phone number to their online site and bam, duplicate listing issues.

Description: Picture 5.png

Of course with one add of a column Google Places could fix this faster than a tire change during the Daytona. The column would simply be… “Phone Number you would like to display on your listing”. Then they could still use the real number for data purposes but add the option to use a phone number to track a listing and get some real use from Google Voice. Will this happen? I sure hope as that day I will finally be out of tracking woes and I will do a happy dance for conversions.

4. If you ain’t got the money, honey. I ain’t got the time.

The biggest problem for most small business companies that use local search is they get what they pay for, and they don’t pay for much. If a company is going to hire a local search marketing expert and expect a sweet conversion optimization tracking system, then they are going to have to pay for it. In local search, there are not a ton of small businesses that can afford, or see the true value in rich tracking because it is something they have spent so little time with in their other advertising methods. This is not the case for every small business but seems to be for a vast majority.

I hope that local search will soon see a lot better Conversion Optimization methods come in to practice. But, I also see that “rankings” will still be extremely important and the focus for most small businesses. At this time I don’t think I would sacrifice rankings for the ability to use call tracking and fall off of the map. There are a lot of great platforms that have great conversion optimization abilities, I just look forward to the day we are able to see the same with maps. Until then, make sure you have your pen and pad handy.
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Google Places Removes Yelp Reviews From Search Results

As of right now, Google has removed all Yelp reviews from its Places feature. Even though the local reviews website’s snippets will no longer be appearing in the Google Places results, relevant results can be found in the “more about this place” section – which is the last section on the Places page.

Evelyn Rusli from Tech Crunch conducted an experiment to see whether or not Yelp snippets had really become a fond memory on Pages. She found that every once in awhile a Yelp snippet would appear, but when clicked on the page was there. It seems this is Google’s way of filtering out the content.

A few months ago Yelp was a little perturbed to find that Google was crawling its pages for content to bolster Pages’ results. The two companies have had a pretty rocky relationship since Yelp walked away from the relationship they had with Google, who was paying them for access to their user-created content. However, they are said to be in “talks” to come to some sort of agreement when it comes to Yelp content being used on Google Places.
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New Awesome Ways to Search within Current Site (Using Google)

I am sure you are familiar with (and using regularly) Google’s most useful search operator SITE: – that restricts search results to the domain you specify. I for one have covered multiple tips on:

• How to diagnose your site using Google’s operators (SITE: being the main one);
• How to tell a penalty from non-penalty (also using SITE: operator);
• etc

Obviously, the SITE: operator also turns really useful if you want to quickly find anything within the current domain (but you don’t want to figure how to find the site’s built-in search option). Google’s SITE: search operator makes you smarter, more productive and better equipped for search.
I have listed 3 tools that make Google’s SITE: operator easier to access including: Advanced Dork (not available in FireFox 3.6.8), Search Site (still valid and can be used) and Google site search (runs on Greasemonkey).
Today’s post shares 2 new tools that allow to search within the current domain with one click of a mouse:

1. CyberSearch: Search From URL / Address bar

CyberSearch is a multi-option search addon for FireFox that among other features allows to search within current site.
To do that just type:

>your search term

Right in the address (location) bar. It first suggests you the results from the current domain on the fly (which make it possible to search without SERPs).
After you click {Enter} – it takes you to Google’s search results restricted to the current domain and with >your search term as the search query.
For example, if you want to search for [firefox addons] when browsing SEJ, just type >firefox addon and you are done:

(1)

(2)

2. Milly’s Bookmarklet: Search for the Highlighted Term

The page as a variety of search bookmarklets taking advantage of Google’s search services and operators – one of them is based on SITE: search:
Google Site Search (just drag this link into your browser’s bookmark toolbar)
Compatible with: FireFox (latest version), Netscape, Internet Explorer (4 and above) and Opera
To use it, just highlight any term on a page and click the bookmarklet – you will be instantly taken to Google’s search restricted to the current domain with the term you highlighted:

Steal This Idea: Display Your Brand Name Mentions in Your Blog Sidebar

Are you launching a new viral campaign or link bait? Sharing your results by displaying your brand name recent web mentions will work like wonders. By doing that you can:

• Demonstrate to your visitors how much buzz your site, product or company generates;
• Display live third-party testimonials;
• Engage your visitors in your viral marketing campaign, etc.

1. MyBuzzMonitor

Customization
Sources customization	None
Relevancy

MyBuzzMonitor allows to create a customizable widget to embed at your site or blog. To create the widget, you just need to provide the search term (your brand name) and select the color palette:
Data Source: N/A
+ Bolds the search term in the widget.
- Links to the tool below the widget:

2. SocialMention Widget

The widget displays the latest realtime buzz about you, your blog, brand, product, or company.

Customization
Sources customization
Relevancy

Data Sources: Twitter, Digg, Facebook, Google Blog search, Delicious, Friendfeed, Flickr, Identica, etc.
+ Bolds the search term;
+ Displays the links to social media profiles
The widget allows to customize:

1. The search term (your brand name);
2. The widget title;
3. The widget sources;
4. The widget height
5. The widget look and feel (to display the profile images or not, items per page,

3. RSS Import WordPress Plugin

While there are many similar plugins, RSS Import seems the easiest to use and the most reliable of all.

Customization
Sources customization
Relevancy

With it, you can select the sources yourself, mash up RSS feeds (Twitter with Blog search, etc) and go as creative as you want. You can customize:

• The RSS feed itself;
• The widget title;
• To display the item content;
• To display the item author;
• To display the item date.

Data sources: Any (that has data feed)
+ You have full control of e the data sources.


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New Mobile Ad Format in Google Ad Words

As an Ad Words advertiser, you have the option to create ads that can be delivered on mobile devices. You can even target these ads to certain devices and select mobile carriers if you choose.
Earlier this year Google launched a click to call ad format in Beta that can be location targeted to mobile phones. This is now out of beta and will be available to everyone in the coming weeks. The ads will appear as a banner text ad with a business icon that expands to show your business location on an expandable map.
The ad will also display along with ad creative and a click to call phone number.

According to Google, this is a great value as you’re only charged when a user clicks to call your business or clicks to visit your website, but the prices for these calls were not made available in the press release. In order to participate, the following needs to be set up:

• Ensure your campaigns are opted into the Google Display Network
• Set up location extensions and add your business phone number and address
• Make sure you select the ‘iPhones and other mobile devices with full internet browsers’ setting.

This public release comes just a few months after Google’s announcement that their ‘Tag’ program for the map listings is available nationwide. For advertisers with physical locations, these two new options are at the very least worth testing out. More information on each can be found here and here.

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It’s Alive…ALIVE! How To Create Electrifying SEO Content

Those of us that undertake the daily task of writing for our blog, articles for our clients or newsworthy press releases can sometimes lose the will to live when ideas are sparse. Words are fused together within a weave of conjunctions and contractions that make up an ugly, SEO monster that would terrify even the most experienced reader.
Fortunately, there are ways to become a modern day Frankenstein and create content to make it every bit electrifying as your last creation.

The brains of any content; The Title

As important as a head on shoulders, the title is the brains, the intelligence and determines the success of any SEO content. An attractive title leads the rest of the content and generates exposure online amongst all the other articles, press releases and blog posts out there.

As well as grabbing a reader’s attention, a title spearheads the ideas that will create a piece of writing that will not only establish you as a writer but create exposure and authority for your business. Many writers devise the title last and just write to spill out ideas. Of course, even if it’s a concept, there is still the initial idea that is devised from using six or seven words.

Whether you are passionate about what you’re writing or understand little about a subject, an intriguing and interesting title can give you that burning desire to research and discover more about what you’re expressing to readers, rather than work your fingers to the bone for nothing in return.

Of course, in terms of SEO, the title holds many keys to success. With a clever, key word rich title, the appearance of said text will therefore appear within a search, exposing your business for all it’s worth.
So when creating your content remember, brains over brawn. A snappy, short, intriguing title will turn your writing into something to be admired, not avoided.

Add meat to the bones; the main body

Regardless of how you devise content, writing all starts with a skeleton (idea) that needs padding out with fleshy sentences and muscular description. When it comes to creating the bulk of your article it is better to break down into bite-size chunks rather than sieve through dense ideas.

Neck and torso;

Similar to the head (title), the neck and torso (introduction) hold all of the other ideas together. Whatever is written after this will be a reflection of what was initiated at this stage. How you develop these ideas is up to you, but remember; A limp frame will not be able to support anything that is added on to it causing it to crumble under the weight of under developed ideas. A strong, sturdy start will make for a strong and sturdy article.

SEO is all about gaining exposure making you the best at what you do. Without proving this in everything you do, not only will people not take you seriously, but the search engines aren’t likely to either.

Limbs;

Developing your ideas from what you have set out to discuss in your introduction will make your content far easier to write. If you don’t know where you’re going with your ideas, neither will your readers; resulting in people fleeing in horror.

Keep to the point that you set out to make within the title and introduction. Everything attached to your initial idea should follow through and not leave readers disappointed.

Organs:

Your heart should be in what you are writing. People can tell the difference between content that has been written out of choice and a piece that has been forced. Make all your work, work for you and you will reap the rewards in views, comments and tweets.

Your lungs should breathe fresh air into a topic not create a stale atmosphere with rewritten text. Make sure if content has already being covered that your make it your own and take on an angle that makes you piece stand out against other works.

Skin:

Wrap up your monstrous ideas within your conclusion, making it complete and ready to be sprung into life. The conclusion of any writing project should a pull everything together, completing the final piece and showing it in all its glory. All the bits and pieces used to create something new and interesting should all be finalised, anything left hanging around will not only frustrate your readers, but cause the whole piece to fall apart and seem disjointed.

Bringing Your Article To Life: Switch on the power.

Writing an article that is SEO friendly is all well and good, but sitting on your desktop will do nothing for your listings. It’s time to plug in and switch on and get that creation out there moving across the web. Submitting it to industry specific blogs, categories and exposing it on all forms of social media will make all the work worthwhile.

Don’t forget to link back to your website or blog and let readers know the inventor. If you’ve produced exciting and intriguing content, it will only spur you to keep creating and bringing words on a page to life.

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8 Ways Excel Can Help in Search Marketing (SEO & PPC)

Most of us who are into the search marketing industry have our own set of favorite tools that we cannot do without.  While I have never been a big fan of most of those so called SEO tools, there is one tool that I can never get enough of – you guessed it right, MS Excel.
This is probably the only tool that is equally relevant for SEO as well as PPC campaigns and is used in almost all the phases of the campaign. In this article I am trying to list some of the ways Excel can be used for SEO as well as PPC campaigns.
Use of Excel in SEO

1. Keyword Research:  The first step in any SEO campaign is keyword research and the use of  Excel starts right from there. It’s a fantastic tool to list all your keywords, classify them in smaller groups, note their stats ( competition, traffic etc ) and if you would like to calculate KEI (keyword Effectiveness Index) for your keywords, Excel does that too for you.
2. Keyword Mapping: While some SEOs might differ, I find this as an extremely crucial step where we basically plan out the entire campaign in respect to the different pages of the website and each keyword that are targeted to them. Again Excel is a great tool in creating an easy and clear map of the various keywords and the respective pages on website that they will be targeted at.
3. Link Building – No SEO campaign is complete without link building and Excel is probably the best way to build a database of your prospective link opportunities as well as to maintain a systematic list of all the links your site gets. A database of link prospects would probably have information like Website/Page URL, Niche, Page Rank, Outbound Links, Inbound Links, Type ( Directory, Article Directory, Review site, Blogs, Paid etc), Contact information. How detailed you want to make your database would depend entire on you. If you are a professional SEO like me, it is advisable that you maintain these databases with you even after your project gets over because you never know when you land up another project from the same/ related industry. You can then just use a simple Filter on your Excel File and pull out all the links that you have in any particular niche.
   When you are using Excel to keep an inventory of your links, besides the above points, you must include Anchor Text used for link, The URL to which the link goes. Putting them all together in an Excel allows you to check at any point how many links do you actually have for each keyword and to which page they point to.
4. Reporting – For most SEO projects clients insist on a ranking chart for their keywords and Excel here again is your friend. If you have some minimal understanding of Excel you can cook up some really nice charts showing the various keywords and their rankings and this can be further enhanced by retaining the historical data over the period of the campaign and plotting them on a graph. For those of you who are into a more advanced and holistic form of SEO, you would probably like to show some traffic data as well to your clients. Now that Google and most analytics tools offer an “Export to Excel” option, you can use that with some customization to create your own dashboards.

Use of Excel in PPC

1. Keyword Research : Though kind of similar to SEO, there are some major difference in keyword research for a PPC campaign compared to SEO, the first one being volume. PPC campaigns would typically have many more keywords than a SEO campaign and in this case Excel does not only help you to effectively list all the keywords and their statistics, so you can choose the most appropriate ones, but it does an awesome job in helping you segregate the keywords in relevant Campaigns and Ad groups, thereby helping you to plan your campaign structure. Hint: Filter by common seed words.
2. Creating Your Ad Copies: Most search engines have their own formats and character limitations for Ad Copies. While writing an ad copy is an absolutely creative job, it might become a little tedious to keep track of the character count of each and every line of your ad copies, specifically when you are working on bigger accounts with hundreds of ad copies. Use the LEN formula to make Excel count the characters in your ad copy. Also, you can actually use Conditional Formatting in Excel to ensure all ad copies that goes beyond your stipulated character limits gets marked in Red/ or color of your choice.
3. Upload Set up –For those of us managing big paid search accounts it often becomes too difficult to set up an account manually and in most cases you would end up using some tool like Adwords Editor ( For Google). All these tools allow you to create Excel files in specified formats and bulk upload to the search engine through their interface.
4. Performance Reports – Search marketing and particularly PPC provides very detailed information on the campaign performance and these data actually work as the foundation of improving and optimizing your campaigns. While most of these reports can be exported in Excel format for viewing there is much more that you can do with Excel on these. Particularly, Excel can work as a very handy tool when you are trying to combine data from multiple sources (Multiple search engines, DART or other ad serving systems etc ). Pivot tables are also a great help in crunching these data and creating other useful reports as per requirement. To learn more on this you can read my article about how Pivot tables can be used for SEM campaign. It is also often helpful and makes you look more impressive and professional when you serve your client reports with some fancy charts that you can create in Excel in a jiffy.

The points that I wrote above are just the tip of the iceberg, there is no limit to what you can do with Excel. In case some of you are already doing something cool with Excel to help your search marketing campaign, feel free to share with us in the comments. And if you have not yet started using Excel extensively for your campaigns, it is high time, you start using this wonderful search marketing tool.

 

source from:searchenginejournal.com

Latest SEO News and Tips

Internet Marketing Interviews Galore

Some of the best tips, tricks, strategies, and tactics on the Web come from experts giving away great information in interviews. It is far more likely that an Internet marketing expert is going to give up some of their coveted information in an interview rather than a written blog post.

If you’ve ever been to an Internet marketing conference before then you’ll know that the most knowledge you’ll obtain is talking with and listening to the industry leaders over hearing their rudimentary 10-minute panel presentation.

With that said, I’d like to provide resources to some of the best interviews in the Internet marketing industry in relation to SEO, social media, conversion rate optimization, PR, and more.

Books

Online Marketing Heroes is a great book with interviews from 25 of some of the best Internet marketing experts in the industry.

Web 2.0 Heroes interviews thought leaders on the Web 2.0. With Web 2.0, organizations, marketers, application developers, and communicators must be ready to respond and to innovate or be left behind, and the experts featured in this book are leading the charge.

offers new insights by gathering the collected wisdom of the most influential marketing thinkers of our age, each of whom has given a structured interview. Covering a wide range of issues and illustrating concepts with cases of success and failure, these seminal dialogues offer a rare look at what made each master great – and a glimpse of the marketing future.

Videos

* Social Marketing Interviews – Brian Carter interviews leading social media marketing gurus.
* WebMarketingToday – Videos on Ecommerce and Internet Marketing
* Search Engine Strategies (SES) YouTube Channel – Interviews with SES speakers and experts.
* WebProNews – RSS feed of their interviews from speakers at every major Internet marketing conference.

Podcasts

* WebMasterRadio.FM – Podcast interviews with various Internet marketing industry leaders and topics.
* YourSEOMentor – Monday interviews. Garrett Pierson didn’t keep up with these every Monday but there’s still some oldies but goodies in there.

Articles

* Ruud Hein of Search Engine People – Ruud frequently questions gurus from around the Internet marketing sphere. With an advanced Google query you can find all of them here.
* AimClear – Marty Weintraub and his crew host their interviews here.
* Eric Enge – Some of the best interviews I’ve read have come from Eric Enge at Stone Temple. His most recent interview is here and you can click through all the other interviews on the right-hand sidebar.
* WordStream – Their interview series sheds light on multiple aspects of Internet marketing.
* Gab Goldenberg – Gab has his own category of interviews on his site, SEO ROI.
* SEOmoz – A site search on SEOmoz shows some of the most in-depth interviews around.
* Search Engine Land – Make no mistake that if there’s someone good to interview, SEL has the connections to get a good one from them.

Final Thoughts

These great tidbits usually come with weeding through a lot of fluff and small talk within the conversation though. I’d say it’s worth it to get at least one good takeaway from the conversation.
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Using Excel for SEO – the Grand Collection of Tips

You probably know that I am a big Excel fanatic (though not an expert). To me, Excel has always been the ultimate SEO and productivity tool.

I’ve been collecting Excel tutorials for years and this post lists the most useful (yet, the least geeky) of them: no matter which SEO task you have come across, chances are you’ll find one of the following tutorials handy:
1. Export Any Data to Excel

Any well-known keyword research or traffic analytics tool has the “Export-to-CSV” feature and a CSV file is easy to open in Excel – so converting your data into Excel shouldn’t be a problem.

If you still you need some examples, I did a post quite some time ago listing many ways to export your backlink data to Excel; for instance:

* With Yahoo! SiteExplorer you can export results to TSV file and open it as Excel;
* With Google Analytics you can save the report of referring domains (enhanced with plenty of browsing data per each linking domain: bounce rate, time spent on site; pages per visit, etc).
* You can export any search results that provide RSS feed to Google Spreadsheets using =ImportFeed(“feed URL”) formula and then save as Excel:


2. Excel for Keyword Research: a Pivot Table and a (Conditional) Formatting

1. Create a Pivot Table to easily Re-Arrange the Keywords

This post by Richard Baxter on creating a pivot table and a beautiful chart using Excel offers a step-by-step tutorial on how to re-organize your data to run various types of analysis. In short, the steps are as follows:

* Collect your data and create a Master table (more often than not, so to create your master table, you just need to export the required range of data from the tool you are using and open the file using Excel).
o If you are using several tools, you may want to combine the data in one table – this post on using VLOOKUP query will save your life!
* Create a Pivot Table on a new sheet: “Insert > PivotTable > PivotChart“ and choose your table to serve the basis of the Pivot table;
* Add axis fields, values, column labels and filters: The PivotTable Field List uses drag and drop functionality to enable you to populate those little white squares with values. As you add values, the table on the left begins to form.

A pivot table feature allows for plenty of data manipulation options that consequently offers a wide range of research types. Here’s another post giving a detailed tutorial on creating a pivot table and using it for keyword research – so if you still have any questions, refer to it to make things even clearer.

2. Use “Find and Replace” Feature to Visualize the Keyword Patterns

While a pivot table lets you re-arrange the data and create cool charts, conditional formatting allows you to visualize the data sets using different colors. I did a post once on finding your most frequent modifiers using Excel, and here are the steps:

* Use CTRL+F (“Find and Replace” feature);
* Click “Find and Replace” tab;
* Type the word you think may be frequently used with your core term,
* Click “Options” button;
* Choose to “replace with” format;
* Click “Patterns” tab;
* Choose the color you want to highlight the cell containing the word:
* Click OK and then “Replace All”;
* You should then see how many times the word was used, plus the cells containing it will be highlighted.


Read more: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/using-excel-for-seo-the-grand-collection-of-tips/23077/#ixzz0vkiz3eMA
A pivot table feature allows for plenty of data manipulation options that consequently offers a wide range of research types. Here’s another post giving a detailed tutorial on creating a pivot table and using it for keyword research – so if you still have any questions, refer to it to make things even clearer.

2. Use “Find and Replace” Feature to Visualize the Keyword Patterns

While a pivot table lets you re-arrange the data and create cool charts, conditional formatting allows you to visualize the data sets using different colors. I did a post once on finding your most frequent modifiers using Excel, and here are the steps:

* Use CTRL+F (“Find and Replace” feature);
* Click “Find and Replace” tab;
* Type the word you think may be frequently used with your core term,
* Click “Options” button;
* Choose to “replace with” format;
* Click “Patterns” tab;
* Choose the color you want to highlight the cell containing the word:
* Click OK and then “Replace All”;
* You should then see how many times the word was used, plus the cells containing it will be highlighted.


Conditional formatting works the similar way but it can be used to highlight the cells while you are creating the spreadsheet. For example, if you are using Excel to create and track your meta tags, conditional formatting can visualize meta tag character count. Simply use Red/Yellow/Green for good length and warning zones. This keeps you in a quick reference just out of the peripheral.

3. Use =VLOOKUP to compare and combine data exported from different sources:

This post on comparing Google Webmaster Tools Data with Google Analytics Data provides a detailed tutorial on how you can merge any type of statistics data: Keyword Rankings and Keyword Volume, Google Rankings data and Traffic data, Backlinks and Traffic Sources, etc:

3. Excel for Link Building: URL Manipulations

I use Excel for link building process tracking as well as for reporting. The basic “sorting” Excel feature (known by everyone, I guess) makes it much easier to re-arrange the data to find links on the same topic, with the same Google PR, etc.

This section looks at a bit more complex hacks: Excel formulas and tutorials for the URL manipulation.

1. Extract All URLs from the List of Linked Words

It happens very often that you have a list of linked words in Excel and you need to see the full address of each link. Extracting each address one by one is tedious. To automate the task, you will need to create a quick macro – don’t worry, here’s an instruction allowing even a very basic newbie to create one:

1. Open Visual Basic Editor (use ALT + F11 shortcut);
2. Navigate Insert -> Module to adds a module
3. Paste the code below
4. Close the Visual Basic Editor (use ALT + Q)

Sub ExtractHL()
Dim HL As Hyperlink
For Each HL In ActiveSheet.Hyperlinks
HL.Range.Offset(0, 1).Value = HL.Address
Next
End Sub

Now use the macro:

* Navigate Tools -> Macro -> Macros (or use ALT + F8 shortcut);
* Make sure “Extract HL” is chosen and click Run
* You are done! The macro will find each hyperlink in a worksheet, extract each one’s URL, and stick that URL in the cell directly to the right of the hyperlink.

2. Make the List of URLs Active

Another common case is: you export tons of data and end up with hundreds of unlinked URLs. You could go double-clicking on each to activate one by one but this will take too much time. Here’s a quick tutorial on how you can do that:

Repeat steps 1 to 4 from the above tip but use this code:

Sub MakeHyperlinks()
Dim cl As Range
For Each cl In Selection
cl.Hyperlinks.Add Anchor:=cl, Address:=cl.Text
Next cl
End Sub

Select the cells you want to turn into clickable links and Run the “MakeHyperlinks” macro (use the further tutorial from the above part).

Or just use this handy tool by SEOAtomatic: Activate Excel Links

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Don’t Put the Cart Before the SEO Horse

A lot of people like to dive into things without having a plan and strategy in place. SEO and Internet Marketing is no different. There are certain aspects of your web strategy that need to happen first before you can move forward with the other aspects. Depending on what it is, it can make or break your SEO and overall marketing efforts.
Start Spending Money/Resources on SEO Before Identifying Your Goals

Probably the most important and fundamental flaw you can have is to start optimizing your site without identifying your overall site/blog goals. You should be able to answer these questions before spending money and resources on your SEO strategy.

* Who are your primary readers/visitors?
* Where does your target audience live?
* What are your primary keywords?
* Who are the primary competitors?
* How will you delegate roles and responsibilities?
* How will you track your SEO efforts?

Focus on Content Creation Before Your Site is Indexable

Before you start spending lots of your time and resources creating awesome content, you need to make sure that content is properly getting indexed by the search engines. Regardless of how good your content is, if the search engines are not indexing it, you are significantly reducing the changes of your content being found.

* Use a search friendly navigation
* Inter-link your posts
* Submit a XML sitemap regularly
* Deep link your content

Building Links Before Creating Good Content

The foundation to building quality links is and always will be creating awesome content that people would want to link to. If you are trying to gain links to a site and the only thing people can find is “Buy Now”, why would someone link to you. Or if you are trying to build links by submitting to thousands of directories and dropping comments in forums, you are just build spammy and low-value links.

Advertisements Before Traffic

Without having traffic, there is no point in cluttering up your blog with lots of banners and advertisements that will just devalue your blog and its content. When your blog is first starting out, you should be focusing on doing everything you can to build credibility and authority. There is lots of debate about when is the appropriate time is to start adding advertisements to your site. Personally I think there will come a time during the life of your blog/site where people are reaching out to you for advice, asking about advertising opportunities, requesting that you guest blog on their site. Once those things start happening, you will have built the initial credibility with your audience and you can start bringing on advertisers.

Tell Success Stories Without Actually Doing Them First

Especially for SEO companies, if you are making up fake success stories and case studies to win business, your clients will quickly see the true colors of your company and fire you! If your product is suppose to fix a problem someone has, you will have nothing but a lot of angry people, if you don’t know for sure that it does what you say it does

Newsletter Sign-Up Before Creating Free Content

Of course you can also add a newsletter sign-up to your site, however why should someone sign-up? If you create a free piece of content like a Whitepaper or downloadable Webinar that you can offer in exchange for a newsletter sign-up, you will be able to build a list much faster.

Quit Your Day Job Before Your Blog is Making Money

Before you quit your day job to pursue your true passions, make sure you are making a steady income. You should have established some steady income from multiple revenue streams. The reason why I say multiple revenue streams is because what if you are gaining all of your sales from one organic phrase in Google? Then Google decides to pull the rug out from under you and you are nowhere to be found. There goes your main source of income! If you have various ways of making money from your blog, you won’t have to depend on just one revenue stream.

Latest SEO News

IM Charity Party at SES is Back!

A lot of things have changed in the search marketing industry over the last few years. With Search Engine Strategies leaving San Jose for San Francisco and the Google dance never coming back, you start to look for some stability a set place to party in August.

Well, IM Charity Party is back! Thanks to our amazing sponsors like Best of the Web, Salesforce CRM and We Build Pages, IM Charity Party will be hosting a rockstar event on August 18th from 8-11pm to benefit Charity Water, which provides potable water in developing regions. In case you aren’t already asking youreself “how can I go to this amazing event!” (which by the way, just donate here to do so) we are counting down the top 10 reasons to attend the event.

1. Networking with 300 of your closest friend is lot more fun than just stalking them on Twitter.
2. Not only does your $50 donation get you three hours of open bar and appetizers, but you are also providing 2 people with potable water for 20 years.
3. If you sign up for IM Charity Party before August 6th and register for SEMNE SF (Search Engine Marketers of San Francisco), you are entered to win a FREE pass to SES San Francisco.
4. You can listen to Greg Boser share battle stories from the early days of SEO and if you are lucky, he will even show you pictures of the cutest dog you’ve ever seen.
5. Learn the fastest way to build forms in WordPress from green marketing maven, Lorna Li.
6. Not only can you expense the donation, but with the largest congregation of search marketing experts speakers in one room, there is a pretty good chance you will learn something.
7. Debating privacy issues with Gray Wolf is more exciting than watching Real Housewives reruns in your hotel room.
8. Finally get to chat with Aaron Wall, Todd Malicoat and Todd Friesen.
9. Get the lowdown on the ultimate list of conversion optimization tools from Bryan Eisenberg and Tim Ash.
10. Did we mention it is one of the only open bar events at any search conference?

Event Details:

Where: Roe Restaurant and Lounge – 651 Howard Street(between 3rd and Hawthorne)

When: Wednesday August 18th from 8-11pm

Why: To raise money for Charity Water

How to get in: Donate $50 to Charity Water here!

Who: Anyone who wants to have a good time ,network and get a tax write off!
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What Makes a Good SEO Proposal?

I work as an in-house SEO for a company that has a good-sized website, just over 150,000 pages and growing. I’m one of few people in the company whose job it is to daily review our web stats, and suggest changes we need to implement. But with a site this big, it’s pretty daunting. After swallowing some pride, I was pleased to hear we had a company to consult with on larger projects so I could stay focused on other tasks.

Everything has been going okay so far, but I was curious as to how this particular company was selected. Luckily, in the process of moving offices, my boss stopped by my desk and dropped off a huge folder of files. As any employee would, I look up at him stunned and before I could say anything he said, “These are all the other consulting companies we considered previously. Take a a look at them and tell me what you think.” Eager to finally get a chance to look at how these were prepared, I agreed. After a few hours of sifting through thirty or so SEO Proposals (SEOPs) I was greatly surprised both in a good and bad way at the same time.

The format of the SEOPs was really similar to the request for proposals (RFPs) I would prepare for grants (I worked for a non-profit for a few years to help raise funds). The structure of your typical grant RFP followed the format below:

* Introduction
o Who are you and what’s your mission statement/purpose?
+ Brief company background info start-up to present.
o Why are you submitting this RFP?
* The Body
o What is your plan?
o How will you implement this?
o Who is involved?
o How will it be measured/evaluated?
* Recommendations
o Any client testimonials?
o Case studies?
o Supporting documents?
+ Research papers, etc.
* The Finances
o What does the budget look like?
o What costs are involved?
o Are there any unforeseen items that may affect these numbers?

There maybe a few sections here and there that differ and the order may vary, but surprisingly the two are similar. When I noticed this, I went back through a few of them again and started to separate the good proposals from the not-so-good ones. Here is what I found that tells a good SEOP from a bad one:
The Introduction

The Bad:

These SEOPs started off with explaining what SEO is and how it is useful to websites, which is fine if you’re talking to someone who has never heard of SEO. When it comes to sending a proposal to a company that has reached out to you about using your SEO services, they are already aware of what it is and its usefulness. There is no need to explain what it is to them.

The Good:

These SEOPs explained who the company is, stated their mission and explained their philosophy in regards to SEO. They did not explain SEO, they expressed their own opinions as to how it should be used and implemented. The philosophy of a company is huge to me. If I’m looking to hire a company to help me, our ideals on SEO should be similar. I’m not saying we will agree all the time, but knowing where a company stands on this is a big selling point. Sure, a company could lie just to get the client, but just like when a non-profit lies and the grant is taken away, consulting firms can be fired.
The Body

The Bad:

This is the trickiest part of the proposal for consulting firms. They’ve, hopefully, looked over the site and have some ideas on what to implement but they don’t want to give any “free advice” anyway. This is completely understandable. However, these proposals essentially transcribed a phone conversation. There needs to be some risk with this section. Not to say in detail what to do, but to say here is how your website is currently behaving. These sections were pretty vague, safe and lacked effort. Again I understand why not much detail is given, but if no risk is taken how will the potential client know you’re serious?

As a side note, I do think it is okay to reference articles that explain how certain processes work, i.e. domain changes. But when you do this I’d make sure you aren’t referencing an employee of your competition whose biography and place of employment is included in the article. Essentially you’ve just given a recommendation to a competitor.

The Good:

These companies. took. risk. They actually ran a few keyword ranking reports for terms we wanted to rank for, were ranking for and ones we needed to rank for that hadn’t been discussed. This showed a lot of work on their part and it also showed they were behaving in the manner that we were going to hire them anyway. I also got a sense of their work ethic from these good examples. Going above and beyond when no definitive contract had been signed conveyed they were serious about getting our business. Is it possible to get a client without taking this type of ”risk”? It absolutely is, but without risk the rewards are minimal at best.
Recommendations

The Bad:

If your only quotes from clients say, “They provided great service”, I’d either go look for more quotes or question how great your service really is. This is probably my own preference, but a quote like that is similar to that of a blog comment that says, “Great Post”. A statement like that doesn’t really make me want to call the company back and say “You’re hired!”. On top of that, the “case studies” are really nothing more than a one page document that states, “We did keyword research for client XYZ, analyzed their website and now their traffic has increased.”. Neither of these were really persuading me to want to hire or continue communication with this company.

The Good:

What I really liked wasn’t the fact that real names and companies were used (though that did help), but that the quotes were descriptive and you could tell thought had been put into it. These were quotes that were memorable and did not blend in with the rest. The case studies provided by these companies explained the condition of the site before hand and provided detail on how they went about analyzing the site. Lastly, rather than comment on the increased amount of traffic, a mention on the increase in conversions/sales was used.
Financials

The Bad:

The only way this section was messed up was when the companies gave no actual dollar amount and were very vague as to what the client would be paying for. Now, I’m not saying your prices should be listed like a menu from Burger King, but you should be able to let people know what they are getting for a rough estimate. If there are any extra services you provide that weren’t discussed list them here as well so everyone is aware. Nothing can taint the relationship like an unknown cost appearing out of nowhere.

The Good:

This section was kept simple and explained what the client was getting and what else was available for an estimated cost.
Overall

The Bad:

These SEOPs seemed pretty cut and paste. I’d imagine if you compared two proposals for different clients in different industries, they would read the same. So my question is, if no two websites are marketed the same why would the proposals be the same? During the initial call there should have been enough time to identify what the client’s concerns were and how they would be addressed.

The Good:

Unique, original and memorable are three words I’d use to describe these proposals. If these were cut and paste, then I was fooled, though I doubt it. To me it was pretty clear these companies took time to listen to the potential clients and tailored the SEOP to fit them. The impressive part was the company’s who not only listed the customer’s wants, but the ones that listed (in a polite manner) what the customer needs were.

There wasn’t a single company that hit every single area perfectly. What I believe it comes down to is the client. It’s about optimizing the SEOP to fit their needs and to persuade them to become a client. Think of it the same way your company optimizes websites. It isn’t about you, it’s about attracting them and getting the conversion.

I’d love to hear some thoughts on this from companies that send out SEOPs and those who have gotten them. What areas are more important to you and which are of least importance? Thanks for reading.
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AOL Overruled : Advertise.com vs. Advertising.com


Today a U.S. federal appeals court ruled that AOL Inc cannot stop Advertise.com Inc (known to many in the search industry as ABCSearch) from using a brand name similar to Advertising.com, an AOL property and decade old ad network.

This is a pretty interesting ruling, not only in the world of competitive advertising, as Advertise.com positions itself to be like Advertising.com, and the room for confusion is very wide. But also in the world of domaining and trademarks, as the ruling states that “Advertising.com” mark is generic enough not to warrant protection. Speaking from experience, it’s very tough to land a trademark ruling for a generic term (like “advertising” or “search engine journal”) as opposed to a unique name or brand (like “Ruffles” or “Google”).

More from Jonathan Stempel @ Reuters / Yahoo :

The term Advertising.com conveys “only the generic nature” of the services offered and that it is “certainly highly unlikely that consumer surveys or other evidence might ultimately demonstrate that AOL’s mark is valid and protectable.”

Have you ever gotten Advertising.com and Advertise.com mixed up?

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How to Win With Your SEM Agency

Hire an agency? Take it in-house? What’s the best way to ensure a successful approach to improve the online presence of your company? These decisions can be tough, and there isn’t just one right answer. Of course, coming from an agency myself, I would love to be able to say that agency relationships are always successful. Unfortunately they aren’t. Unsuccessful engagements can happen for a number of reasons, but a good agency understands that their success relies solely on your business and website’s success.

It goes without saying that there are tons of sketchy and inept SEO/SEM agencies out there. Some rely on black hat tactics that could result in penalties down the road, some try to intimidate their clients with technical jargon in order to avoid accountability, some don’t understand your business and some simply overcharge for their services. In addition, technology and binding contracts can keep clients feeling as if they’re being held hostage by their agency.

With that said, there are just as many competent and ethical agencies willing and able to help. But in order to provide top notch service and deliver results, there are a few things that can be done on the client side to ensure a successful relationship.

A Few Tips

1. Communicate Objectives: besides increasing traffic, what do you really need? Have you identified your key performance indicators (KPIs)? It sounds obvious, but more visits aren’t necessarily going to impact your bottom line. What are the specific actions (conversions) you want visitors to take once they get to your site? What are the conversions that are most profitable? What is your lifetime customer value? What are your goals in terms of cost per acquisition?
2. Understand Resource Limitations: realistically, what are the resource limitations you are likely to face in undergoing optimization efforts? It’s important to understand what you’re up against so expectations can be set internally. From my experience, higher-ups are always eager to know if SEO “really works” but if it’s not communicated that additional resources will need to be applied, you might face disappointment and frustration within your organization. These limitations typically fall into three categories
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1. Technical: will your CMS or ecommerce database impede the ability to implement SEO best practices?

2. Human: do you have people to write content, make site changes, champion results, etc?

3. Financial: do you have the financial resources to dedicate to paid search? To transition to a new CMS? To hire new folks?

3. Provide Data: I know you have it somewhere. SEO’s love data. Almost everything in the online world can be measured and tied to ROI, so provide all relevant revenue data. Even offering offline data to better understand if a dip in online revenue is due to a site performance issue or if this is a larger, company or industry wide problem or trend.

4. Personality Fit: make sure you like the people you’re going to work with. It’s critical to be on the same page with both the agency (think corporate values) but also with your account manager (communication style, for example). Furthermore, choosing an agency with that additional value add in terms of strategic partnerships and ability to connect with prospective customers, press coverage and speaking opportunities will help to further a successful engagement beyond the realm of SEO related progress.

5. Educate Yourself: don’t just take your agency’s word for it. Attend webinars and conferences, read industry blogs, and informational articles on sites such as SEOmoz, etc. Developing a deeper understanding of how specific practices will impact your business will take your efforts to the next level.

source from:searchenginejournal.com