June 25, 2009 by ian
I'm throwing this story out there to see if anyone else has had a similar experience. Google's made a lot of noise recently about their newfound ability to crawl javascript and links that are built into a javascript. Last week I saw a 500% increase in 'page not found' errors in one client's Google Webmaster Tools. The links all looked like this: At first, I didn't make the connection between that and Google's improved javascript prowess. After looking at the client's pages, though, the only place the guilty link appears is in a javascript: In this context, the forward slash…
Continue Reading Google Crawling the Wrong Javascript »
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June 17, 2009 by ian
This is (thank heavens) the last in a 5-article series about search engines' transition from indexes to aggregators. If you want to start at the beginning, go to part 1. So far we've established that: Search engines used to be indexes, where you go search, then toddle off to the site you want. Now, they're becoming aggregators, where you go search, then stick around to read more before they decide which site to visit. That's a bad thing, if you practice stereotypical, grab-high-rankings-and-damn-the-rest SEO. Which very few good SEOs do. It's a good thing if you can handle the idea…
Continue Reading Aggregation Aggravation, Part 5: What's next? »
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June 12, 2009 by ian
This is part 4 of my series on the new world of search, and how search engines are becoming aggregators rather than indexes. Check the links at the bottom of the page for previous posts. This post is blessedly short, after my last 3 epistles. Let's say you don't want that page preview (called a 'Document Preview' by Microsoft, by the way) to show up in the Bing results: Maybe you want to preserve the mystery of it all, or you have a lousy page preview. You can tell Bing not to create a preview two ways: By putting this…
Continue Reading Aggregation Aggravation, Part 4: Opting Out Of Bing Document Preview »
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June 10, 2009 by ian
This is part 3 of a 5-part series on the changing face of search. See the links at the bottom to read Parts 1 and 2 In a world of aggregators, you can still get visitors to your web site. It's all about clickability. But before I get to the details, I have to say... Told ya so! I've always said SEO and internet marketing are about marketing basics. And now these fundamentals are even more important: You need a good message and great copy just to get folks to click to your site. Mwahahahaha. My evil dreams of an…
Continue Reading Aggregation Aggravation, Part 3: Clickability »
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June 9, 2009 by ian
This is part 2 of my series on SEO in the world of aggregation. You can read part 1 here. In today's installment, I'll give you my best educated guess as to how search engines (particularly Bing) decide what appears where in the search results, and how to control what they publish. This matters a lot more than it used to. As search engines move from indexes to aggregators, clickability will be as important as rankings. What Goes Where in Bing Search Results Microsoft's new Bing is closest to becoming an aggregator, and therefore deserves the most attention. Yeah, their…
Continue Reading Aggregation Aggravation, Part 2: What Goes Where »
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June 8, 2009 by ian
I'm starting to warm up to Bing a bit. The marketing is awful, but the search engine has a certain quirky charm. Never mind that neither Google nor Bing show up in the top 10 in the Bing rankings for 'search engine'. If Microsoft can ever come up with an algorithm that works, Bing could be a useful tool. Just don't look at the code: Holy ugly code, Batman. This code makes Google's look good. It looks like this was created with Visual Studio or something. Oh, wait.…
Continue Reading Bing: Ugliest HTML on the planet? »
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June 5, 2009 by ian
This post started as a detailed roast of a couple of SEO firms here in Seattle. I use the term 'firms' very loosely. But I have my limits of meanness, and decided that they may simply not know any better. This post gives them a chance to withdraw any claim of search engine optimization expertise and retire from the field with dignity. But guys, if you keep trying to sell your 'expertise' to unsuspecting small business owners, all bets are off. If you're a small business owner, or even a big one, and you go looking for an SEO expert,…
Continue Reading 4 Signs an SEO Firm is a Fraud »
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June 2, 2009 by ian
Awwww, who's a cute widdle puddy tat. Yes you are. Yes you are you widdle cutie puddy tat... Slash. Bite. Garrrgghhhhhh... (insert death rattle here) This gratuitous cuteness, followed by horrific violence, is brought to you by Google. Virginia Nussey of Bruce Clay pointed out a statement by Matt Cutts at SMX Advanced today that shows even the cutest little search engines will eventually become meat eaters. According to Matt Cutts, Google's going to change their nofollow rules so that it soon becomes a less effective SEO tool. You can read the details in Virginia's post. This is a…
Continue Reading Google will still eat you when it grows up »
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May 29, 2009 by ian
So, Microsoft announces Bing. The world is about to change, the pundits say! This time our renamed technology will win, cries Ballmer! We're spending $80 billion to make this thing win, dammit! 24 hours later, let's take a look at the hottest terms on Twitter: Wha? How did this happen (in my best Elmer Fudd voice)? Bing is going bonk, and it's not even out of the stable yet. Why? Because: Microsoft still sells search like it sells Windows: In a box Microsoft is selling Bing the way they sell their operating system: Crank up massive PR machine. Create logo…
Continue Reading Bing Goes Bonk: Lessons in Marketing from the Search Wars »
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May 27, 2009 by ian
David Mihm has published his most excellent Local Search Ranking Factors survey again. I contributed, and hopefully added some useful advice to the mix...…
Continue Reading Local Search Ranking Factors, Volume 2 »
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May 22, 2009 by ian
Google Webmaster Tools is getting an interface upgrade. I did a quick video walkthru of the new interface: The New Google Webmaster Tools: An Overview from ian lurie on Vimeo.…
Continue Reading Google Webmaster Tools Gets A New Coat of Paint »
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May 7, 2009 by ian
I'm gonna get a lot of flame comments on this one. All I ask is that, before you start cursing me, you read the entire post. Keywords and branding do not mix. Let's say you own your own business. Or you're a marketing exec who works for someone who owns their own business. For years, you've invested time, energy and various internal organs getting folks to think of you as, say, an 'internet marketing agency'. Because dammit, that's what you are. When you're face-to-face with a potential client, the concept works. You say 'internet marketing agency' and they nod sagely…
Continue Reading In SEO, Keywords and Branding Don't Mix »
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May 6, 2009 by ian
This is a guest book review by Michael Weigand, a PPC guru at my company, Portent. Visual® Search Engine Optimization, penned by Pepperjam founder Kristopher Jones, is an awesome take-off point for anyone looking to make major site improvements for SEO. Anyone that can build an affiliate empire the way Jones has should have some insight, and it's obvious he does. Kristopher hammers home doing keyword research correctly. He offers up a bevy of useful research tools and suggests drilling down to the most targeted terms for your business. Always a prudent methodology for immediate impact. This book really shines…
Continue Reading Book Review: Visual Search Engine Optimization »
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April 19, 2009 by ian
Just a forewarning: I'm renaming my SEO Copywriting eBook this week to The Fat Free Guide to SEO Copywriting. As I launch new ebooks, they'll be called the Fat Free Guide, too. See, I'm branding! Clever, huh? Also, I'm now offering the ebook in cooperation with Mike Corso and Cool Site of the Day. Mike is an all-around great guy, and a far better salesman than I, as evidenced by the fact that he's sold more copies of the book in 2 weeks than I have since 2008. Sigh. So, from now on, you can buy the book from Cool…
Continue Reading I'm renaming the seo copywriting ebook »
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April 14, 2009 by ian
Yup, we're here. Part 5 of 5 in my link-building series. In spite of rain, sleet and lack of brain, I made it, and so did you. You now know why link building sucks, what tools to use, how to research competitors' links, and how to get the links once you find 'em. So here's the thing: All of the advice I gave you in the last 4 posts just catches you up to your competitors. It doesn't help you win. This post will give you the Magical Secret Formula to Link Domination. Get a piece of paper. And a…
Continue Reading Link-Building Finale: Out-Execute The Competition (link loopy, part 5) »
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April 10, 2009 by ian
This is part 4 of my 5-part series on link-building. Yesterday I talked about finding the opportunity gap - the links you need to get if you're going to catch up with your competition. Today I'll talk about actually going out and getting those links. If you're expecting a miraculous piece of software that automatically acquires Thousands of Links For You Overnight, you're going to be sorely disappointed, though. In today's post I'll show you how to get links, the good old-fashioned way: Find the choice links. Make your requests. Keep track of progress. Don't waste your time. Don't trust…
Continue Reading Link Loopy, Part 4: Get Those Links »
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April 8, 2009 by ian
This is part 3 of my 5-part series on link building. Yesterday, we talked about competitive link research. If you used any of the tools I listed then you now have a huge list of links from at least one of your competitors. Today, we'll take those tools, grab more links, then figure out which links you don't yet have. 1. Using Linkscape for link research I'm definitely partial to SEOMOZ's Linkscape as my primary research tool. So we'll use that for this example. Note, though, that you can use Yahoo! Site Explorer or any other tools that can tell…
Continue Reading Link Loopy, Part 3: Finding the Opportunity Gap »
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April 8, 2009 by ian
If you're treating search engines as attackers, you're probably in trouble.…
Continue Reading Sign #1 Your Site Isn't Optimized »
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April 7, 2009 by ian
Yesterday I talked about my passionate hatred of link-building. I also pointed out that I still do it, because it's important. In this, part 2 of my little 5-part series on link building, I'm going to outline the tools I use. It's important to keep yesterday's post in mind. I do not like link building. I do it to survive. So my tools list is not the most complete. Instead, I focus on the tools that make the task as painless as possible. If you want to read the writings of people who obsess about links the way I obsess…
Continue Reading Link Loopy, Part 2: 3 Competitive Link Research Tools »
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April 6, 2009 by ian
This is part of a 5-part series I'm writing about link building. I've not written much about it up to now. This first article gets to the heart of why I hate link building, but do it anyway. I hate building links. I mean I hate it. It's either: Begging for a link. Begging for attention. Tricking people. Paying people absurd amounts of money for 3 words on a page. Engaging in a criminal enterprise (to Google, anyway). Inevitably, after working hard on a link campaign for a day or two, I feel like I've been doing breaststroke in raw…
Continue Reading Link Loopy, Part 1: Why Link Building Sucks »
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April 6, 2009 by ian
At SEMPDX Searchfest last month I sat on the Hot Seat panel with Danny Sullivan, Vanessa Fox and Adam Audette. If you don't know, the Hot Seat allows site owners to get their web site reviewed by a panel of SEO and web geeks. One of the reviewees had follow up questions, which turned into a bit of an ongoing conversation between me and their CTO. It's a great peek at how these conversations often go. You can read it here: Searchfest Hot Seat Panel Review, Continued…
Continue Reading CTO-SEO Conversations: Be A Fly On The Wall »
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March 24, 2009 by ian
I just finished reading The Truth About Search Engine Optimization. In short, it rocks. I only have one bone to pick with Rebecca Lieb, the author, but I'll get to that in a second. The book is divided up into short, neat sections. Each section is a 'truth', such as: Wag the long tail. A reference to 'long tail' keywords. You don't have a homepage any more. Amen!!! SEO is not an afterthought. Amen, sister!!!!!! Rebecca's book is a fantastic introduction to SEO. It's great for total marketing beginners and novices, as well as savvy marketers who don't know SEO…
Continue Reading Book Review: The Truth About Search Engine Optimization »
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March 20, 2009 by ian
Selling stuff in another country? Surprise! Google, Yahoo! and Live don't just transfer your .com rankings worldwide. You might keep the same position abroad. But if you want to compete in the rankings on, say Google.ca or Google.de, you'll probably need to take some steps: Create a separate site. Oh my god you say. Ian, how can you ask us to make another site? The first one almost killed us! This one doesn't have to. First, if the new site is in another language, you can just translate what you've got. Second, if the new site is in the…
Continue Reading SEO Abroad: Ranking in other countries »
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March 16, 2009 by ian
I had a brief Tweeted conversation with Lisa Barone this morning about the state of the SEO industry. If you're in marketing and aren't following her, you need to. Lisa feels a lot of folks get ripped off by carpetbagger-like 'professionals' who offer Top Rankings In Days For Just $99.95. I agree. I'm on your side in this, all you clients out there. Nuthin' but love. And now, I'm going to get in your face. All ranty-like. I am sick - sick I tell you - of smart business people coming to me and saying their site is an…
Continue Reading I Am Not A Carpetbagger »
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March 5, 2009 by ian
Everyone loves it. Some people try to say they hate it. That just means they love it even more. Overindulging may cause a heart attack. It's more expensive than you might think. Some bacon comes from horrifically dirty muck-dwelling animals. SEO sometimes comes from the same place. Bacon fills your house with the delicious aroma of cooking pork. SEO fills your company with the delicious aroma of money. Really bad bacon sizzles but causes indigestion. Really bad SEO sounds great but does the same thing. Under-prepared bacon can give you worms. So can underprepared SEO. Cheap bacon can give…
Continue Reading 12 Ways SEO is Like Bacon »
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March 3, 2009 by ian
When I wrote my SEO Copywriting guide I released it under the Creative Commons and sold it for five bucks. Well, I've gone a bit mercenary and am going to try to actually make some decent money on the thing, so fair warning: Tomorrow night the price will go up to $7 (gasp!). More important, I'll be re-releasing it under a standard do-not-duplicate-or-I'll-hire-lawyers-to-harass-you-into-your-grave type of license. If this works, I'll use a similar system for future books: An early release at a low price and with open distribution, with a slightly higher price and more restrictive license. If it doesn't…
Continue Reading Notice: SEO Copywriting eBook Price Change in 24 Hours »
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February 12, 2009 by ian
I'm already getting questions about the new rel=canonical standard. And I have several of my own. I'm going to put them into a post here. If you have your own, leave 'em in the comment thread and I'll move them into the post: Shouldn't we just add link rel=canonical to every single page on our sites? Wikia, which Google cites in their example, appears to have done that. How much link authority will the canonical tag pass? 100%? 90%? Less? How will each search engine support the new standard? What differences will there be? What if rel=canonical conflicts with the…
Continue Reading Questions about rel=canonical »
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February 12, 2009 by ian
The major search engines just announced that they're going to start supporting a new link attribute: 'rel="canonical"'. The Google Webmaster Central blog has a fair amount of detail, so I won't explain it all here. A very brief lesson in canonicalization Marcelo rightly pointed out a quick refresher might be in order. Here's what a canonicalization problem is: Say you have a big web site with lots of pages. On most pages, you link to one critical article at: http://www.mysite.com/index.cfm?artid=123 But, on a few pages, you linked to the same page using a slightly different URL: http://www.mysite.com/index.cfm?artid=123&this=that That difference is…
Continue Reading 3 Reasons to use rel=canonical, and 4 reasons not to. »
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February 11, 2009 by ian
I spent part of today being puked on. Not the way you'd expect this blog post to start, I know, but I had to get that off my chest. For the last 3 days, I've had the flu. My son had it for 2 days, too. It was a bad cold for us. My daughter decided to break with tradition, though. So this post may occasionally include delirious ramblings as I'm still running a fever and feel like Wesley Snipes just did my taxes. If you work in Google Adwords or other pay-per-click engines, you've likely heard of dynamic…
Continue Reading Dynamic Keyword Insertion For Landing Pages »
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February 9, 2009 by ian
Corporate Eye has a post today about two French companies who are suing Google. The reason? Google has allowed competitors to bid on terms for which the two companies hold trademarks. I've ranted about this before, so I won't belabor it now. Instead, let's try a few hypotheticals: Let's say you're BMW and you want to, I dunno, compare your car to other makes and models. Does the use of their trademarked terms in your comparison mean you've violated trademark law? What if you have a TV commercial comparing your car to other makes and models? Is that a trademark…
Continue Reading Competitive Keyword Bidding: France Loses Its Mind »
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January 31, 2009 by ian
Early this morning, if you went to do a search on Google, every listing had a link that read "This site may harm your computer." Apparently, the entire internet was infected. Or, if you have a shred of common sense, like one of my clients who e-mailed me, you immediately realized there was a glitch in Google's Matrix. They fixed it a few minutes later. This has resulted in 3569 (well, 3570) blog posts on the subject. So far. In about 2 hours. People. It's Saturday morning. Get. A. Life.…
Continue Reading Google Errs: End Times Upon Us »
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January 20, 2009 by ian
This is part 5 of a series of articles on universal search. If you don't know what universal search is, read this article first. If you just want to catch up, read the previous posts about image and video search optimization, product feed optimization and news search optimization. Local search dominates the results on every major search engine. If you start any search with a city or region name, you'll see something like this: The top web search results are buried by three local search results. If you're a local business, and you want to get traffic, you'd better get…
Continue Reading Local Search Optimization »
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January 16, 2009 by ian
This is part 4 of a series of articles on universal search. If you don't know what universal search is, read this article first. If you just want to catch up, read the previous posts about image and video search optimization and product feed optimization. Google and Yahoo blend news search results into their universal search results the same way they handle images, video and products: If a news item is more relevant than the content around it in the rankings, it'll get worked into the results: So, news search represents yet another way to race past other sites in…
Continue Reading News Search Optimization: Great For a Select Few »
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January 15, 2009 by ian
This is part 3 of a series of articles on Universal Search. If you don't know what universal search is, read this article first: click here. If you just want to catch up, read yesterday's post about image and video search optimization, too. I hate spreadsheets. Especially endless ones with thousands of rows. So you know that product feeds must really work for me to go through a 30,000+ row Excel file and optimize, row-by-row, for different terms and phrases. It's kind of like going on one of those free timeshare weekends. You get a benefit, but somewhere along the…
Continue Reading Product Feed Optimization: It's painful. Suck it up. »
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January 14, 2009 by ian
This is part 2 of a series of articles on Universal Search. If you don't know what universal search is, or think blended search is a new kind of foo-foo drink, read the first article: click here. I am an authority on Snidely Whiplash. Betcha didn't know that. I didn't either, actually, until Google Image Search suddenly started sending traffic my way for the phrase 'Snidely Whiplash'. A little research quickly showed why. An image I'd used in an article was the top image result for that phrase. That immediately got me a top-4 position in Google's web search results…
Continue Reading Image and Video Search: How to optimize (as best you can) »
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January 13, 2009 by ian
I've decided to write a series of articles about how search results work. This may seem absurdly basic, so try this test: If I say "blended search", and the first thing you think of is a margarita, then you need to read this series. Search results pages (SERPs, to us geeks) have changed a lot in the last few years. Search results used to be pretty straightforward: Easy. The column on the left are your 'organic' or 'unpaid' or 'natural' results. You can't bribe Google into rejiggering those results to improve your ranking. The same is now mostly true of…
Continue Reading Universal Search, Lesson 1: Why You Care »
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December 30, 2008 by ian
OK, a few of you are gluttons for punishment. You asked me to give you some details as to how I researched and wrote my SEO 2009: Adapt or Die piece. Here are the basics. Read the Patents I subscribe to a Google blog search for "Google Patent", and scour the news that I read. I also go search the US Patent Office for Google-related patents. In this case, I saw a patent from 2005 some time ago regarding information retrieval based on historical data. It generated a lot of interest a while back because it showed that Google was…
Continue Reading Google 2009: The Painful Details »
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December 29, 2008 by ian
There's a meteor headed our way. Plug your ears, sing LALALALALALA all you want. It won't change a thing. Google's about to make search engine optimization (SEO) into marketing, for good. How? They've been slowly adding user behavior to their ranking algorithm. Bet on far bigger changes after January 1st. I won't go into the many painful technical details of how I've arrived at this conclusion. If you want to know, Twitter me and I'll cheerfully bore you to extinction. Here's what's you need to know: Organic Click-Thru Rate Will Matter. A Lot. The organic click-thru rate (CTR) is…
Continue Reading SEO 2009: Adapt or Die »
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December 22, 2008 by ian
"How much do I need to write if I want to be #1?" I hear that question a lot. The short answer is: "As much as gets you there. Not one word more." But I do have some basic rules of thumb. They're basic. Very basic. So I decided to write 'em down, and have some fun with Google Knol, at the same time: SEO Copywriting Frequency. The simple criteria I set out in the article has worked well for me over the years. But people still look at me like I'm a moron when I bring it up. So…
Continue Reading SEO Copywriting: How Much? And How Often? »
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December 16, 2008 by ian
Search engines are cool, but they aren't that bright. They don't know that you meant 'car' when you typed 'vehicle'. If you've just spent 3 hours digging through a thesaurus, finding every alternative for 'shoes', start over. Burn the thesaurus. Think about the words that people use to find you. Then, as a revolutionary new internet marketing strategy, actually write those words in your copy. You'll get more traffic. You'll get more sales/leads/whatever. You may need to find the right keywords, first. I wrote about keyword selection in this article, and did a how presentation about the subject here.…
Continue Reading SEO Copywriting 101: Search Engines Ain't That Smart »
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November 18, 2008 by ian
SEO still lives and dies based on good copywriting. If you're going to move up in the rankings and stay there, you have to know how to write customer- and search engine-friendly content. But you're a writer. You shouldn't have to learn about SEO, keyword mining, pagerank and the robots meta tag. You just want to write quality copy that search engines will like. That's why I wrote The Unscary, Real World Guide to SEO Copywriting. In it, you'll find: Plain language and understandable explanations about why and how search engines review your writing. The six rules for successful SEO…
Continue Reading SEO Copywriting E-Book: The Unscary, Real-World Guide »
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November 13, 2008 by ian
At least, take everything they say with a grain of salt. Today, they came out with their 'SEO Starter Guide'. I downloaded it and took a quick look. And I've finally lost patience. So here I go on a Graywolf-style rant: Inconsistencies in the SEO Guide: Dynamic URLs On page 6 they say "Improve the structure of your URLs". The authors point at URLs that have lots of dross like 'mysite.com/folder1/1089257/x1/0000002a.htm' and say that's not user friendly. They're right. What they don't say is that this URL is clearly dynamically generated. No sane human being would create a page address…
Continue Reading Don't Trust Google for SEO Advice »
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September 30, 2008 by ian
The description META tag won't do much to improve your rankings. But it's really important. If you write a good description tag, your search results will look something like this: Search engines pull the 'snippet' you see above from the description tag. If you don't write one, or write a lousy one, you might end up with something like this: That last search result is missing a few things. Always make sure your description tag has the following: A reason to click. Why should I visit Whirlpool's web site? Hmmm. Good question. Maybe they could say something about their newest,…
Continue Reading 3 Things Your Description Tag Must Contain »
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September 26, 2008 by ian
Evri doesn't bill itself as a search engine. Their motto is 'Search less, understand more'. It's a new entry into a field of advanced, semantically-driven knowledge discovery tool. I won't try to categorize it. I do see them as major acquisition bait, ala Powerset, because their technology could enhance search results. How It Works: Not Too Shabby If you visit their site at www.evri.com, you can type in a person, product or thing and it immediately aggregates information for you. Alas, it knew nothing about yours truly. But a search on Danny Sullivan showed me that he's a race car…
Continue Reading Test Drive: Evri Search and Discovery Tools »
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September 24, 2008 by ian
Don't No, really, don't. Are you listening? If you get them naturally, good for you. But otherwise, don't! K, for the last time, don't.…
Continue Reading 5 Tips for Generating 10,000 Links Overnight »
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September 23, 2008 by ian
You want keywords in the title tag. Your marketing VP wants the brand. You know he's wrong, because search engines are structured thinkers. He knows you're wrong, because the title tag shows up in the search snippet and branding matters: Now what? Here are 10 title tag formulas that balance SEO and marketing and hopefully avoid wrestling matches in the boardroom: [product name] - [company name]. If you're selling products and you know your customers search for the product names, put the product name first, then the company name. Unless the product name is 125 characters long, in which…
Continue Reading 10 SEO and Marketing-Friendly Title Tag Formulas »
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September 23, 2008 by ian
Sarah over at SEOMOZ outlined U-Haul's ridiculous case against someone who outranks them. I won't re-evaluate the case. Sarah undoubtedly got higher grades than I did in Intellectual Property, which was one of the law courses that made me become a marketer. Instead, I'll say this: U-Haul, fire your lawyer. Only a total moron or someone with severe oxygen narcosis would think, first of all, that you could defend a trademark on 'moving help' and 'moving helper'. And only a member of the Headless Hunt would think companies can't use trademarked terms of other companies in competitive marketing. Otherwise, 'Ford'…
Continue Reading U-Haul: Fire Your Lawyer (and Your Marketer) »
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September 22, 2008 by ian
I have a defense mechanism: When something makes me want to puke, I look at statistics, and I feel better. Last week's economic shenanigans were more than enough to make me ill, so I figured I'd have a glance at my blog's organic search engine traffic. Here's my analysis, with a little teaching blended in. You can do the same thing on your own site: Keyword Diversity First thing I noticed: My keyword diversity is way, way up over last year. I now receive traffic from 5,247 different key phrases, versus 2,100 or so this time last year. Keyword diversity…
Continue Reading 4 Metrics for Analyzing SEO Traffic (and one to ignore) »
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September 17, 2008 by ian
Google just published business listing quality guidelines for local search. Warning: The new guidelines mean a crackdown's a comin’. Whenever Google issues new guidelines, it’s their way of saying “quit screwing around”. So if you’re doing anything shady to gain a higher ranking in the local search results, this is a good time to mend your ways. A few tactics you’ll want to stop, right now: Review spam. If you’ve been getting every friend, relative and literate pet to write a review of your business and then cut-and-paste it to Yelp, Yahoo!, Google Maps and YellowPages.com, stop now. This…
Continue Reading Google Local Search: Crackdown is Coming »
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September 15, 2008 by ian
Hats off to whoever manages Barack Obama's pay-per-click advertising buy. On Lehman's bankruptcy announcement today, they immediately bought a super-relevant ad: Very smart. I'll bet that key phrase is both cheap and a great traffic generator at the moment. Keep this in mind: Reading the newspaper and watching the news is a great way to keep your PPC campaign current, and occasionally get a nice coup.…
Continue Reading Opportunistic PPC Buying: A Great Example »
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September 4, 2008 by ian
If you want to pick the right keywords, you need to start by knowing the questions your audience wants answered. Great tools are helpful, but if you don't Your customers don't walk around with keyphrases in their heads. They think "how do I plan my wedding?" and then translate that into "wedding planning" because search engines have trained them to do that. So great keyword selection starts with an understanding of your audience and their questions. I did a little presentation at Portent yesterday on just this subject. You can watch it here: Please link accordingly if you embed this…
Continue Reading Tutorial: Picking Great Keywords Starts with Great Questions »
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August 27, 2008 by ian
If you want to rank well in local search results, put your address on your web site. Proof: Last week, I asked my team to add our mailing address in the footer of our site. We already have a pretty address graphic on internal pages, but I wanted a text address. And lo, there was much caterwauling at how I was wrecking our design. Well, OK, there wasn't, because my team is very SEO-conscious, but if it was any other design team I would've been tarred and feathered. Nevertheless, I am the Almighty Signer of Paychecks. So they added our…
Continue Reading Local Search Optimization: Put Your Address On Your Site!!!! »
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August 6, 2008 by ian
I just realized we're in an SEO bubble. There's been an explosion of SEO consultants, companies, books, conferences, etc.. Everyone's cashing in. Then, of course, I did some checking and noticed I'm about 6 months behind other bloggers who pointed this out in late 2007. So, I thought I'd fast forward a bit, and ponder how this lovely, cash-filled bubble will eventually pop. I have three theories. Let me know what you think: The Slow Meltdown As more and more companies move their SEO practices in-house and SEO techniques become common knowledge (cough), SEO firms will find fewer large clients.…
Continue Reading How the SEO Bubble Will Pop »
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August 5, 2008 by ian
Companies jump for joy at the promise of a CMS: They can update their site without hiring a web developer! They can publish quickly and easily! The internet is theirs for the taking! A few months later they're stomping their feet with rage. What do you mean our new site is driving away search engines? Why can't I edit my title tags? The salesman said it was SEO-ready!!! Here are some selection criteria that'll help you pick a content management system that's ready for search engine optimization. A good CMS: 1: Leaves your code alone Any CMS you look at…
Continue Reading Choosing an SEO-ready Content Management System »
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July 10, 2008 by ian
I've had an epiphany: Most people want to hire really crappy SEO 'professionals'. It's the only possible reason for some of the asinine hiring decisions made by otherwise intelligent people. So, in the tradition of bloggers giving audiences what they want, here's my ten steps to hire an SEO firm that will bury you in the rankings and cost you money: Look for lousy writers: Search engine optimization involves a lot of words and stuff. So whatever you do, don't hire a consultant or firm who can actually string together a sentence. You want people who write things like "Your…
Continue Reading Hire A Crappy SEO Firm in Only 10 Steps »
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July 7, 2008 by ian
Yahoo! is in big, big trouble. I know Danny Sullivan wrote a great piece about how Yahoo! is not dead yet. But he also points out, in the same article, that it's sort of up to Yahoo! to make sure everyone knows they're not internet roadkill just yet. Most important (to me, anyway) is that they convince me, the internet marketer, that they're still alive. Alas. From where I sit, Yahoo! is lying in the middle of the pavement, yellow line drawn right over their butt, tongue hanging out in a pretty good imitation of the newly dead. Case in…
Continue Reading Yahoo! Is! In! Trouble! »
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July 1, 2008 by ian
Search Engine Land reports that Google will now index Flash. Woo hoo! Party! We can now design every web site on the internet in 100% Flash! Not so fast. While Google's announcement sounds exciting, there are still significant search engine optimization and more general internet marketing issues that they haven't addressed: Link Value Yes, Google will crawl all those links in your Flash animation. But will they accord them the same value as links in an HTML page? They're not saying. I've long suspected that Google and Yahoo! award less or no value to links in Acrobat PDF files. That…
Continue Reading Google Indexing Flash - Don't Party Just Yet »
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June 26, 2008 by ian
Blink. Apparently that fast. I just did a little test, took a random blog and bookmarked it using the ma.gnolia.com bookmarking service. I searched Google for the address of the bookmarked site 10 minutes later and there it was in the results: I've talked before about Google's incredibly fast blog search updates. This is a little different. Why it Matters in Internet Marketing If your client says "Oh, it's OK. Those busted pages won't get picked up by Google for a few weeks anyway." pick up a medium-weight book and drop it on their foot. Twice. I'm not saying Google…
Continue Reading Just How Fast IS Google? »
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June 24, 2008 by ian
Hey, internet marketing world: I don't give a flying poo about mobile search in North America. Yet. Why? Because: I have yet to see mobile search earn a real return on investment. A warm feeling that I'm doing Really New Stuff, yes. Dollars and cents, no. Using mobile search marketing tools is about as easy as drinking a glass of water while standing on your head. The average American or Canadian is more likely to use their cell phone to pick their nose than to browse the web, find a place to shop or otherwise search for stuff. The average…
Continue Reading Mobile Search. Yawn. »
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June 23, 2008 by ian
Google will buy Microsoft in the next 7 years. Don't believe me? Read why I think it'll happen by 2015: Anti-trust Won't Be An Issue By then, no one will worry about a Googleopoly. Google will face major competition in the growing mobile search space. The Powers That Be will have already forced Google to give up pre-installing Android as the only option on cell phones in exchange for the giant's purchase of Yahoo! Mobile. Their smaller market share in the two fastest-growing economies (China and India) will make them look (gasp) vulnerable to foreign competition. And the ongoing EU…
Continue Reading Google Buys Microsoft - It'll Happen by 2015 »
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June 18, 2008 by ian
If you've ever heard these quotes, you need to read this post: "The designers said we couldn't use this font and have it be text." "The designers said they couldn't format the page without tables." "It'll take us hours to change that now." "No, you can't edit the title tags on each page." "This is a big change. Why does it matter to SEO?" "We can get to these SEO changes in about a month." There's a right and wrong way to include SEO in your internet marketing mix. Throwing it in as an afterthought after your shiny new…
Continue Reading An SEO Workflow that Works »
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June 17, 2008 by ian
David Mihm kindly invited me to take part in his first ever Local Search Ranking Factors survey. You can read the results here. Don't read it because of my drips and drops of information, though. Look who else got involved. A veritable who's-who of SEO geekery: Mike Belasco SEOverflow Mike Blumenthal Blumenthals Local Search Blog Mary Bowling Blizzard Internet Marketing Tim Coleman Convert Offline Miriam Ellis Solas Web Design Steve Espinosa eLocal Listing Brad Geddes LocalLaunch Gab Goldenberg SEO ROI Search Marketing Services Michael Jensen SoloSEO David Klein PurposeInc.com Alex McArthur Orange Soda Matt McGee Small Business SEM David Mihm…
Continue Reading Local Search Ranking Factors »
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May 29, 2008 by ian
Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz fame just wrote How to Choose The Right SEO Vendor. It's solid, but I'm going to take advantage of my additional age experience and point out a few issues: "Start with your Goals" Absolutely. If you know what your goals are. If not, I suggest that this is a great opportunity to evaluate your potential SEO vendor. If they say something like 'get a high ranking' show them out. If they say 'increase sales' or 'improve visit quality' or 'increase non-branded search traffic', say 'hmmmm', furrow your brow, and put them on your short list. They're…
Continue Reading How to Choose the Right SEO Vendor: Responding to Rand »
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May 27, 2008 by ian
Dear Google, I ran over a squirrel on the way to work today. I tried to avoid it, but when I swerved it accelerated under my car, tail twitching, mouth agape. It made a little rattling sound as it flattened under my tires. That's not a squirrel, by the way - it's a prairie dog. I might have found it, though, when searching for it on Google Image Search. Which brings me to why I'm writing this letter. Nothing but love for ya. I'm actually a Google fan, even as an internet marketer. But sometimes I scratch my head: Please…
Continue Reading A Letter to Google: 9 Things I'd Love to Change »
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May 23, 2008 by ian
Microsoft's trying to stop the bleeding with their new 'Cashback' program. It's not going to work. The program gives you a rebate on products you buy from their cashback page. It has three huge problems: You have to wait 60 days for the rebate. They don't appear to have the lowest prices. It doesn't work. Important update: Cashback works if you start from search.live.com/cashback. It's only broken if you start from search.microsoft.com/cashback. Still counts as busted in my book... Yes, that's right folks, Microsoft is trying to lure you to Live search by giving you a $2 rebate on a…
Continue Reading Why Microsoft Cashback Will Fail: In Internet Marketing it's 3 Strikes, Yer Out »
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May 15, 2008 by ian
OK, guys, my post yesterday about Google going downhill was tongue-in-cheek, OK? So stop putting the hatesss on me! Since about noon today, almost any search I do from my innocent Macbook Pro gets me this page: I've checked carefully, and I'm pretty sure I'm not an automated program. Unless I'm living in a matrix designed to keep me happy while I provide power to a race of intelligent machines...…
Continue Reading Google, I Was Joking, OK?! »
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May 14, 2008 by ian
Google now controls the United States. I mean, we knew that already, right? But now it's official. Hitwise reports that Google received 67.9% of all US searches. So Sergey, can you do something about Iraq?... Now What? The Long, Slow Slide to Mediocrity The problem for Google at this point? They really have nowhere to go but down. Sure, they could gain control of 75% of the search market. But folks will just shrug. They complain because GOOG's share price is only $576, for heaven's sake. Steve Ballmer can sit back and laugh as Google goes through the same pains…
Continue Reading Google Gains 68% Search Marketshare, Could Go Bankrupt Any Day Now »
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May 9, 2008 by ian
The whole fuss around buying competitor's keywords in pay per click marketing campaigns is stupid. Moronic. Foolish. Wasteful. Did I mention bad? And stupid? There is nothing wrong with bidding on a competitor's brand name. Let me say it a different way: If you're Infiniti, it's perfectly OK to make sure your ad shows up if someone searches for 'Audi'. Why It's OK: It's Called Competition See, putting your ad next to someone else's ad is called competition. On TV, commercials say "Our product beat [competitor name here]'s product 3 out of 4 times!" Competitors buy space opposite each other,…
Continue Reading Bidding on Trademarked Keywords is Fine: It's Called Competition »
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May 8, 2008 by ian
Today, ShoeMoney and Marketing Pilgrim provided great insights into why they think search engine optimization has no future. I don't agree. Times infinity. Nyah nyah phbltbltbltblt. So there. Marketing Pilgrim says: "Take my industry of health supplements. Do you think Google wants to reward the SEO contortions of unknown companies and affiliates with lots of free business? Of course not–they want to send their visitors to the top supplement sites in the industry." Very true, but only where it applies to affiliate sites offering no additional value. Why should an affiliate site rank higher than the manufacturers it represents? It…
Continue Reading SEO Has A Future: Rebutting ShoeMoney and Marketing Pilgrim »
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May 1, 2008 by ian
'Link building', for those who don't know, is the practice of gaining links from other sites. Links are important. They deliver authority in the eyes of search engines, traffic if you're lucky, and a chance that someone else will link to you, too. You can't live without 'em. But there are no established best practices you can follow. Hopefully, if you hear what scares me, you'll learn a bit about what to avoid: The "Gain 600,000 links in just two weeks!" strategy. It's tempting to pay someone to build lots of links in one shot. But it's a bad idea.…
Continue Reading 6 Link Building Practices That Scare The Crap Out of Me »
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April 25, 2008 by ian
Eric Shonfeld at Techcrunch just posted Is Keyword Search About To Hit Its Breaking Point? So, are we headed for a search apocalypse? Better hope not. And I don't think so. Eric cites Nova Spivack's presentation. In it, Nova says that if the amount of content keeps growing keyword search will collapse, leaving the internet in a general state of higgledy piggeldy (We're talking flying monkeys here, people). Therefore, we need something better than keyword search. Um. Any chance all we need is better keyword search? I sure hope so, because the semantic web will never happen. Not in my…
Continue Reading Keyword Search Is Just Fine, Thank You »
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April 23, 2008 by ian
Santa Rosa Courthouse Square is a nice little site, with some basic SEO problems. Next in my oh-so-inconsistent series of site reviews, this site is elegant and reasonably easy to navigate: But under the pretty exterior lurks a few SEO gotchas that are definitely hurting it. Those turn into 7 pretty basic SEO tips that anyone should keep handy when they're launching a new site: Use a unique title tag on each page. Duplicating the same title tag again and again is a no-no (Ian waggles finger). It's OK for them to be similar (they should all include 'Santa Rosa',…
Continue Reading 7 Easy SEO Tips, and Faster Pageloads: Santa Rosa Courthouse Square, Reviewed »
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April 15, 2008 by ian
LinkAdage Auctions and the Pickering Institute have teamed up to offer blog space on a .edu domain, for rent. That's right folks! You can now publish your very own .edu blog, without all the bother of actually being a school!!! That's not OK. In the words of my favorite Pulp Fiction character, it's pretty @#$)(*! far from OK. It's like putting soda pop machines in grade schools, only more subtle. Anyone with a shred of common sense understands that this practice: Takes advantage of a vulnerable population... ...and search engine algorithms that expect educational information at .edu domains. Is in…
Continue Reading LinkAdage Selling .EDU Blog Space: It's Evil »
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April 11, 2008 by ian
Yes, a bad SEO got busted. No, that is not an intelligent argument for SEO standards. Kevin at Search Engine Watch immediately pounced on the ruling against Internet Advancement as an argument for SEO standards. They're wrong. The fact that there are fraudsters and con artists out there doesn't argue for SEO standards. It argues for enforcement of the law. And that's what happened here. If you want to argue for SEO standards, you need to tell me: Who will create them, and why I should trust them; How these standards will be fairly and consistently enforced; Why I, after…
Continue Reading Internet Advancement Busted: SEO Standards Still Don't Make Sense »
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April 11, 2008 by ian
Internet Advancement is going to have to pay about $450,000 in penalties and refunds after the Washington State Attorney busted them for: Deceptive advertising: They guaranteed top 25 rankings for their clients. Charging customer credit cards without authorization. Failing to respond to customer complaints etc. etc.. Internet Advancement charged folks between $1000 and $4000 'set up' and then $149/month for SEO. I'm not one to dance on anyone's grave, but Internet Advancement won't be going out of business, so: :)-/ :)-| :)-\ And so on. I am sick of having to compete with crooks and liars who have no business…
Continue Reading BAD SEO! Bad! Internet Advancement Gets Busted and What It Means »
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April 9, 2008 by ian
Why make my own content when I can steal from my employees instead? This is a great high-level view of search engine optimization. Plus I dance every time I hear that opening beat: Original Entry…
Continue Reading SEO Video Tutorial: The SEO Matrix Has You »
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April 4, 2008 by ian
It's somewhat official: Google's making another major algorithm update. You can read the geeky details on Search Engine Land. I have a few tips for surviving the experience: Turn off your computer and walk away for a week. Find those left over percocets and pop a few. Failing that, go to the Google server at 72.14.207.104. Search your target phrases there. If the result there is still different from the rest of the world, there's a chance Google's still updating, and whatever you're seeing that's causing ulcers is temporary. Google has many servers. They push these updates live from one…
Continue Reading Google's Dancing: Surviving the Dewey Update »
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March 25, 2008 by ian
Yesterday Michael Martinez wrote a post about Real Advice from Bad SEOs. It's a bit of a rant, and you know how I love internet marketing rants and SEO mythbusting, so I loved the sound of his new post. His overall point is great too: If the search engines start bouncing your site up and down like silly putty on a grill, RELAX. Don't start taking rash actions. Wait and see how things shake out. But I do have to differ with a few of his examples, 'cause if I don't, then I'm an "amateurish" and "ill-informed" SEO professional. I…
Continue Reading I'm the Snidely Whiplash of SEO?! »
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March 11, 2008 by ian
When you go to a conference and present, you have a responsibility to give accurate advice or admit you can't. That's called professional responsibility. Especially in a relatively new field like search engine optimization. I really enjoyed SEMPDX, and recommend it to everyone. All of the presentations were great. With one exception. What Went Wrong The day started with a one-hour 'SEO Crash Course'. The audience included total beginners as well as experts. Many folks were clearly hanging on the presenter's every word, writing and typing frantically as she spoke. With that attention comes responsibility: The presenter agreed, implicitly, that…
Continue Reading A 'Crash Course' on SEO Ethics and Responsibility »
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March 11, 2008 by ian
Here's the slides from my SEMPDX Presentation, 'Search Marketing Analytics', for those who needed them: | View | Upload your own What I Talked About It was a 10-minute presentation, with a few very basic points: Reports do not equal analytics. Analytics mean you did the work of analysis. At a minimum, you want to have the following data: Referring keywords; pageviews per visit, by keyword; time on site, by keyword; bounce rate, by keyword; if possible, conversion rate by keyword. Look at all of these statistics together. Looking just at pageviews or bounce rate can lead to snap judgments.…
Continue Reading Search Analytics: My SEMPDX Presentation »
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March 11, 2008 by ian
When I drove down to Portland to speak at SEMPDX's 'Searchfest 2008', I had low-ish expectations. Lots of great people running it and participating, of course, but it was a very small conference compared to SMX West. Next year I'll be more optimistic - it was a great, great conference. The one-day conference had great content (with one exception I'll be writing about later), top presenters and while it had some technical glitches was generally well organized. If you want a small, elegant serving of search engine optimization and marketing advice, definitely check it out next year.…
Continue Reading SEM Gourmet: SEMPDX Searchfest Reviewed »
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March 7, 2008 by ian
All 3 major search engines now have local search results, and they mix them right into the normal ranking pages. That's wreaked havoc with many businesses that previously had the top spot for something like 'seattle internet marketing' (ahem) but suddenly found themselves buried underneath a map and a list of local companies: In this example, my years of hard work getting Portent the top organic ranking for 'seattle internet marketing' just got pushed down the page by a map. Even worse, since my company is south of Seattle's downtown core (see the letter D all alone on that map?),…
Continue Reading Local Search Optimization 101: Get Found »
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March 5, 2008 by ian
If you're spending money on pay per click marketing, you must buy your brand name! Ignore those who say otherwise. Make damned sure you're bidding on the name, mispellings, and the like. Even if you rank #1 for your own name. Do it anyway. Here's why: It's cheap. PPC engines' quality scoring algorithms mean you're likely to get the best deal on your own company and product names. That translates to lower bids. It's insurance. If you slip from the organic rankings for a day or two, your paid ranking will maintain your presence. Chances are, someone else has your…
Continue Reading Defend Yourself: Bid On Your Brand Name in PPC »
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February 26, 2008 by ian
After the game was over, and the teams left the field, the SEM Allstars (myself and Todd Friesen) could only hang their heads in shame. This is what I'll be wearing tomorrow at the conference: Once I heard the first few questions, which were things like "In what year did Sergey Brin stop parting his hair on the left hand side?", I knew we were doomed. On the bright side: We ended up with a score higher than zero. For a while we were flirting with a score of -4, but we rallied. The beer was excellent. It was great…
Continue Reading SMX West Search Bowl Massacre of 2008 »
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February 26, 2008 by ian
(Update: I told you I couldn't multi-task. I switched them around. Vertical integration is the whole production chain. Horizontal is taking over your sector. Thanks everyone who let me know. Luckily I'm still right on the main point: "vertical" versus "horizontal" finds its root in the historical concept. So my factoids can still beat up your factiods. HAH!) I'm not a liveblogger. I can't multi-task that well. But I'm sitting listening to the keynote at SMX West and Danny said something that my History Major brain can't let lie. He said that the term vertical search came from the financial…
Continue Reading Vertical Search: Correcting Danny Sullivan »
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February 25, 2008 by ian
I'm off to SMX West today. I'm speaking on Tuesday at 1:15 on Search Marketing and Persona Models. That I can do. But I'm also apparently going to be in Search Bowl. I'm still not 100% sure what a Search Bowl IS. But I do know that I'm going to be in a trivia contest against search engineers from Google, Yahoo!, and apparently ASK and Live, too. So, my cry for help: Ask me questions about search. Random ones. Stuff like "On which side does Danny Sullivan part his hair?" and "What year did Matt Cutts join Google?" Or slip…
Continue Reading Off to SMX West: Desperate Cry for Help »
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February 12, 2008 by ian
Network Solutions lies like George Bush on an aircraft carrier. Or Bill Clinton about his sex life (just to be non-partisan about it). You can't pin any of them down, but you know damned well they're pulling a fast one. I got an e-mail from a client today asking: "Why should we pay you $5,000 a month for SEO when Network Solutions will guarantee us top 10 for $400?" Here's the e-mail they got: It looks great. It has glossy globes and stuff with 'www' on it. These guys must be experts! And they are! At ripping you off.…
Continue Reading Beware: Network Solutions SEO Fine Print »
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February 7, 2008 by ian
75% of all those online will use a search engine to find you. But they're not looking for keywords. They're looking for answers. You may be inclined to modify your entire site to get that top spot for 'mufflers'. It's a nice, juicy keyword. If you get the top ranking for it, your boss will smile and you'll be off the hook for a few weeks. Here's the problem: People don't search for 'mufflers'. They search for things like 'low cost mufflers' or 'muffler for 57 Chevy' or 'How do I know if I need a new muffler'. Your boss…
Continue Reading People Search for Answers, not Keywords »
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January 30, 2008 by ian
SEOMoz is holding voting to see who gets to go up against the search engines in SMX Search Bowl 2008. Right now, I'm in first place. If I win, I will be massacred by the likes of Matt Cutts. So please go here (Polldaddy Poll) and vote for someone else.…
Continue Reading Save Me: Vote For Someone Else »
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January 28, 2008 by ian
Sam's Club has thrown their hat into the SEO/PPC scam ring. In what's becoming a weekly tradition, I've volunteered to point out why you'd have to be brain damaged to hire them: 1. They Can't Market Themselves. Can They Market You?! In marketingspeak, Sam's Club's online marketing page is the south end of a northbound horse. It's awful. If they can't market themselves, they can't market you, either. You can see their page in all its glory here. Where to begin? First, their title tag. The title tag is important in search engine optimization (SEO). Sam's Club is selling SEO…
Continue Reading Warning: Do Not Hire Sam's Club for Search Marketing »
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January 17, 2008 by ian
K, I had a great day today, so I'm cheery. That means it's time to tear an internet marketing scam into a pile of tiny bits and pieces. Today's victim is SEO Confessions, a site that guarantees everything except the apparent author's hairstyle: I have no problem with the format. It's a landing page and a sales letter. Fine. But whatever you do, do not use this guy's recommendations. Buy the guy's book if you want. Use it to prop up uneven table legs, or give it to your dog as a chew toy. But his methods are a one-way…
Continue Reading SEO Confessions: I'm a Fraud »
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December 27, 2007 by ian
Be very, very careful when you read claims by bloggers and SEO 'professionals' that fresh content no longer matters. Content matters. A lot. Ignoring it will doom your efforts to get a high ranking, 99% of the time. I mean text content, by the way - text that you can cut-and-paste into a word processor. Search engines can't read images, they can't watch video, and they don't listen to podcasts. Darren over at Problogger wrote "frequently updated content isn’t quite as important a factor as other elements of SEO". While he may have been right about the one site discussed…
Continue Reading In SEO, Content DOES Matter »
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December 20, 2007 by ian
My staff are a bit of a sick bunch. That's why I like them. The PPC team has put together a PPC worst practices site: PPCVillain.com. There are plenty of best practices sites, after all. Here's the first of what we hope will be many instructional videos:…
Continue Reading PPC Villain: PPC Worst Practices Blog »
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December 13, 2007 by ian
Update: The quiz tool I was using didn't work quite as advertised, so I've just put the quiz right on the page. Correct answers are bracketed. Too often, web developers and designers say they're SEO experts, when they're not. As a client, you have to believe them - they're the experts. So it can be very, very frustrating when, six months later, I give you a 15-page report detailing SEO problems. How can you tell whether your web team knows SEO? Give them this quiz. If they get more than 2 wrong, they aren't qualified, and you should hire…
Continue Reading Test Your Web Team: The SEO Quiz »
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December 6, 2007 by ian
You don't know anything about search engine optimization or search marketing. You know it's a key part of your internet marketing strategy, but you're vaguely unhappy with your SEM agency. Are you justified? Here's a test. Answer each question with a 'yes' or a 'no': My agency lets me see the keyword list and ads they're using for paid search. They regularly provide reports showing ranking changes, money spent, and results. They answer the phone when I call, or call me back within 24 hours. I can talk to an expert if I arrange it. No tricky stuff: My agency…
Continue Reading Signs Your SEM Firm is Good or Bad »
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November 18, 2007 by ian
Every now and then I have to take a peek at the keywords report for Conversation Marketing. Well, OK, I obsessively check it every day. But sometimes you find some real zingers, and Vanessa Fox's recent post inspired me to share: - buy a wife - buy an internet wife - buy a wife online (I seem to have found a niche) - nike vs adidas - ways to commit - cal (huh?) - buy coke online (oh, c'mon now) - kinds of lettuce - poop - poop blog - barak dimenstein - go insane - dumb pooping -…
Continue Reading Sunday Search Terms Fun »
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November 14, 2007 by ian
Online publishers - newspapers, for example - depend on visits and pageviews for their livelihood. The biggest source of visits is still unpaid, 'organic' search results. So, why do so many publishers do such a poor job of optimizing their sites? Yes, I know, the pageview is dead. Yet everyone still charges and values everything based on pageviews. So, once all the folks calling time of death come up with a replacement, and the industry adopts it, I'll change my viewpoint. I don't know, either, but I've pulled together a list of easy tweaks and changes that can help…
Continue Reading 30 SEO Tips for Newspaper and Magazine Publishers »
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November 13, 2007 by ian
Why do some PPC ads rank well, and others fall no matter what you spend? There's more to your pay per click ad ranking than your bid and your clickthru. Read on to learn what we know matters, and how you can get a better paid search ranking. Nuthin But Love... The folks at MindValley Labs just did a nice post, Get a Great Ad Position in PPC Right from the Start, but oversimplified how Google sets PPC ad position. Now, I have to say that MindValley rocks!!! I read their blog daily. I'm just trying to shed a bit…
Continue Reading Get a Great Adwords Ranking: More than CTR x CPC »
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October 31, 2007 by ian
All of the sessions at SMX Stockholm have been great. I'm fascinated, though, by how many search marketers and search engines discussed integrated branding and search. Nate from Jupiter Research said it best: If you run television or print ad, even if you include your URL in the ad, folks are more likely to go to a search engine after seeing the ad. So search is very, very important, paid and otherwise, even if your primary focus is on offline media. Simple lesson: Don't ignore search. Even if it's not at the top of your marketing plan. At a…
Continue Reading Integrated Branding and Search »
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October 26, 2007 by ian
Brian over at Copyblogger has pointed out that depending on Google for your business model isn't such a hot idea. And there's a lot of hand-wringing right now about Google's recent pagerank update. But Google generates 75% of your traffic, right? So you can't exactly pooh-pooh them. As a compromise: Don't depend on a few keywords. Diversify. Make sure that your site is positioned to rank well for lots and lots of keywords. Here's how: Don't game the system: Stuffing your title tags with a single keyword at the expense of all others is a bad idea. You might…
Continue Reading SEO Tactics: Keyword Diversification = Happiness »
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October 25, 2007 by ian
Note: If you're a veteran SEO person, this article is probably too basic. Read if you like, but this is meant as an introduction to how search engines 'think'. With all the hysteria lately over Google's pagerank changes, I thought a refresher on basic search principles might be helpful. Search engines are hierarchical beasts. They see the internet as a series of structures, and while we can't say exactly what those structures are, there's a well-known method to the madness. The typical search engine algorithm looks first at the entire internet, then at your site, and then at each…
Continue Reading Search Engines Are Structured Thinkers »
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October 24, 2007 by ian
There's a veritable storm of blog posts going around right now regarding a sudden drop in Toolbar Pagerank for a bunch of sites. Marketing Pilgrim, Problogger, Center Networks, Blogstorm and even the normally thoughtful Copyblogger (sorry Brian - my bad) are all sounding a bit shrill. Let me clue you in to something: Toolbar pagerank doesn't matter. And: Smart SEO's don't care about it. Here's why: Toolbar pagerank is a modified, manipulated, out of date number. It's an attempt to take a point value ranging from 0 into the billions (trillions?) and assign it a number from 1-10. Forget…
Continue Reading Google Pagerank Made-Up Mayhem »
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October 24, 2007 by ian
I'm speaking in Stockholm next week at Search Marketing Expo. I'll be focusing on reducing waste in PPC campaigns - particularly PPC campaigns without clear conversion goals. If you're a publisher who counts on user engagement, rather than sales, leads or signups, this will be particularly relevant to you. Here's my blurb so far: “PPC Waste Management: Cost Reduction and Efficiency Paid search marketers spend a great deal of time focused on conversion: Minimizing cost per sale, maximizing conversion rates, etc.. But what do you do when your site doesn't have a clear conversion goal? Or if you're focused…
Continue Reading Speaking at SMX Stockholm »
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October 17, 2007 by ian
imnotadoctor asks: “If I place a press release on my website and then push it through PRweb.com for exposure and backlinks would I get flagged for duplicate content?†No one knows for certain. However, I've done a lot of testing over the years. PRWeb press releases don't seem to stay in Google's index for long, if they're duplicates of press releases on your own site. You won't actually get dinged for this, in my experience. Google simply won't count the link from one release or the other. For example, here's a press release that HotBanana did about us entering…
Continue Reading PRWeb and Duplicate Content: Stump Ian, Part 3 »
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October 8, 2007 by ian
The following are the three most common forms of SEO suicide: Excessive AJAX AJAX lets your web browser load new content into a page without loading a new page. It's a great way to add interactivity and speed to your site. Unfortunately, it also stops search engine spiders in their tracks. Spiders crawl your site like a really dumb web browser: They can't execute javascript. AJAX depends on javascript to make everything work. So, if you use AJAX as a navigation device, you're doomed in the search engines: A human says: Oooh, neat!... ...A search engine says: Doh! I…
Continue Reading 3 Ways to Commit SEO Suicide »
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October 5, 2007 by ian
Google Adwords and other major pay-per-click providers have a tool called dynamic keywords. It lets you place a variable in your ad, so that the search phrase entered shows up in the ad. Unfortunately it's become a tool for lazy PPC marketers, leading to ads like this: And this: Please, if you must use dynamic keywords in your ads, at least think it through first. I like my children just fine - I don't need to buy another one on Amazon or at Target. Honest. There's a serious side to this, too: It's trademark infringement to use a brand…
Continue Reading Buy A Wife At Target »
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October 4, 2007 by ian
SEO is no more a strategy than printing business cards. It's a tactic that forms a large and essential part of your internet marketing strategy. I had a phone call today that went like this: My client (who I respect extremely - hence Yoda, and not Boba) wanted to use SEO to build their online business. It can't do that. It can build traffic - hopefully relevant traffic. But it can't build business. SEO is important. It's the only online marketing tactic with near-infinite scalability. You don't pay by the click, so successful SEO lowers your cost per acquisition.…
Continue Reading SEO is a Tactic, Not a Strategy »
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September 18, 2007 by ian
I know the phrase 'Google Dance' is out of date. But Google is jiggling like crazy this morning. We've seen one client go from page 1 to page 4 and then to page 2. Another is bouncing up and down between #1 and #2 like a Spalding Hi-Bounce. So, if you see your rankings going berserk, I'd sit tight for a bit. Weeeee.... Technorati Tags: Google…
Continue Reading Google Dancing? »
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September 14, 2007 by ian
I just took the SEOMoz SEO Quiz, and I must protest. I mean, I could live with being ranked 'average', I guess. But a newbie?!!!! SEO for 8 years, and I'm a newbie. Argh!!! Seriously guys, what're you trying to do to me here? Somehow, on #1, I said that the title tag is the least important place to put keywords, leaving the keywords tag unchecked. That has to indicate either that my brain suffered a major meltdown, or that the internets are against me. I'm going to hope this score is based on the healthy doses of painkillers…
Continue Reading I'm A Newbie »
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September 9, 2007 by ian
Ramin asks three questions: “I just read this blog on wired: http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/09/google-discusse.html If this is actually true, what do you think this will do for the user experience when searching? Will it have a negative experience or will it enhance the search experience. Is this another step toward total convergence between TV and the web? Ultimately will this force all companies to jump behind video? Will we all have to have a video commercial to represent our brand or product that appears in the sponsored search results?†“If this is actually true, what do you think this will do…
Continue Reading Q&A: Google Video Ads in Search Results? »
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August 24, 2007 by ian
imnotadoctor tagged me today with the question: What career would I pick if I were not in the SEO industry? I'm in internet marketing, strictly speaking, but, in order of desirability, here's what I'd choose: Novelist. I love writing. Everyone tells me I should write a book. Sure! I'll be rich! Bicycle shop owner. This is actually my retirement plan, for fun, someday. Gaming shop owner (geeky games - my family would starve to death). Intelligence analyst. Seriously. Could I do any worse? Lawyer. I have a law degree, as yet unused. But I'd rather explain my errors to…
Continue Reading What I'd Do If I weren't in SEO »
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August 23, 2007 by ian
I submitted a landing page to the SEOmoz landing page contest. Mark wrote an entry on SEOmoz listing the competitors. Try and guess which one's mine... Inside Look at the SEOmoz Landing Pages Technorati Tags: landing pages…
Continue Reading SEOMoz Landing Page Contest »
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August 15, 2007 by ian
If you don't know what you're talking about, it's best not to talk. Ian's First Rule of Internet Marketing. SitePro News sent me this dandy article this morning: SEO and Page Rank - Which is More Important. With my BS monitor pegged in the red, I took a look. The article starts: “Whether you believe in SEO or Page Rank and wonder which is more important, your thinking is irrelevant. You are wasting your time in wondering what is the correct answer to that question, since even if you knew it, there is little you could do to use…
Continue Reading Mythbusting 101: Don't Talk If You Don't Know »
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August 11, 2007 by ian
Internet marketing is still driven by search engines. So here's a quick tip: Go through your web site. On the home page, make sure you have at least one level one heading tag - aka an H1 tag. Make sure that whatever keyphrase you're after is in the H1 tag. For example, if the heading on our home page is “Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpersâ€, you'll want to make sure that it's set to 'h1' in your content manager. If you're working in the HTML code itself, make sure it looks like this: <h1>Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers</h1> Now go through…
Continue Reading The Easiest SEO Booster - Heading Tags »
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August 8, 2007 by ian
Keywords can wreck a good search engine optimization campaign. That can be a tough lesson to learn. Fortunately, you have me to prove it to you. Years of internet marketing apparently numbed my brain. I wrote a beautifully optimized page for my company site - it focuses on our Google Analytics practice. Within a week, we had the #3 spot for 'Google Analytics Consulting'. Woo hoo! Four days later, I checked the Keywords report in Google Analytics. Alas: Of those 5 visits, 5 are probably me. Of course, if I'd bothered to use any keyword research tool (such as…
Continue Reading Keywords Ain't All Dat: An SEO Lesson »
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August 6, 2007 by ian
A sure sign you should run, screaming, from an SEO solicitation: What are the danger signs? They used the word “Sizzlin†in a search engine optimization advertisement. That should scare you right off. They imply a guarantee of first page placement on Google. No one can do that. Read Google's webmaster guidelines if you don't believe me. They also imply that there are lots of other search engines out there (“& More!â€). That's true. But really only 3-5 matter: Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask. They refer to Ask as 'AskJeeves', proving they likely wrote this e-mail 2 years ago. Oh,…
Continue Reading JUMP to the Top of the Search Engines (not) »
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July 25, 2007 by ian
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, remains critical to any internet marketing campaign. Search engines are the way folks find stuff they want. Here are 3 easy things you can do for fairly quick results: 1: Write useful title tags. The title tag is hidden in the source code of each web page. You can see it, though, at the top of your browser window. Here, my title tag is 'Internet Marketing Strategies : Conversation Marketing': Search engines give a lot of weight to the title tag. I've done no other optimization on my blog, yet I'm #14 out of…
Continue Reading 3 Easy SEO Tips »
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July 20, 2007 by ian
You need a good search tool on your site. Your visitors want one - without it they're about 30% more likely to leave after that first, 5-10 second review of your home page. Google has just released custom search engines for business. It's a fantastic way to put a top-notch search tool on your site. I did a quick video tutorial walking you through the setup process: Online Videos by Veoh.com Or watch it in Quicktime format. The only shortcoming I see is that Google Custom Search doesn't provide detailed reports regarding search phrases. I'll talk more about a…
Continue Reading Video Tutorial: Google Custom Search Engines »
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July 17, 2007 by ian
Grokdotcom posted an article yesterday titled “Are Some SEO's Becoming (*gasp*) Marketers?â€. No. Good SEOs have always been marketers. Granted, good SEOs are, and always have been, in short supply. And it may be that these days, bad SEOs are learning to parrot things some of us have said for 7+ years like: “SEO is about quality content.†“Don't sacrifice usability for SEO.†“Measure SEO results in terms of conversions, not rankings.†But implying that search engine optimization experts are just now becoming marketers sets my teeth on edge. Maybe if these other SEOs spent more time learning the…
Continue Reading Good SEOs Have Always Been Marketers »
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July 13, 2007 by ian
Yahoo has added a new search suggestion feature, further proving how totally unknown I am: I had to type all but the last two letters of my name to appear. Sniff. Technorati Tags: yahoo…
Continue Reading Yahoo's New Search Suggestion Feature »
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July 13, 2007 by ian
There's no connection we know of. Portent SEO specialist Tom Schmitz was on SEOMoz's Whiteboard Friday today, which is very cool. He and Rand talked about Yahoo Site Explorer's brief implosion yesterday. Tom and Rand also discussed Pythia Analytics, Portent's new tool. Here's the whole video: Personally, if Yahoo Site Explorer died, I'd get a team who does nothing but manual link: and site: searches on Yahoo and Google, and enter in the data... Technorati Tags: seoMoz, seo, yahoo…
Continue Reading Portent On SEOMoz.org, Yahoo Site Explorer explodes »
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July 11, 2007 by ian
For all you Adwords users out there: Google's released a new advanced adwords scheduling tool. It lets you increase or decrease your bids on a given day of the week. In this tutorial I review how to use it, and when to use it: How to Use It Log into your Adwords account. Check the box labeled 'ad scheduling': Click 'Edit Times and Bids'. Click 'switch to advanced mode': Click 'edit' next to the day you want to edit. In this example, I'm changing the bid on Wednesday to 22% higher than a normal day by entering 122% in…
Continue Reading Google Adwords Tutorial: Using Advanced Ad Scheduling »
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June 22, 2007 by ian
Public relations campaigns pay off in search. Proof: Veoh.com added 1500+ links in a single day. On June 20, Veoh announced release of their new product, Veoh TV. The media reception was strong. And that lead to explosive link growth: Next time you're tempted to trim that PR budget, don't. It pays off across the board. Disclaimer: Veoh is a Portent Interactive client. However, no ethics were harmed in the making of this blog post. Coy note: The graph above was generated using a new toolset we're developing at Portent. More info coming soon. If you'd like a preview,…
Continue Reading Case Study: PR Boosts Search Marketing Efforts »
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June 19, 2007 by ian
Do people still think stuff like this works? (Cut and paste this - I'm not creating a link and giving them the satisfaction). http://jaggy.net/blogs/ford-akron-ohio/32784/how-it-fits-into I'm 99% sure they're trying to gain ranking for 'ford akron ohio'. Hopefully the search engines are smarter than that these days... Technorati Tags: ethics, seo, spam…
Continue Reading Dumb SEO Spam »
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June 12, 2007 by ian
I am trying desperately to find a way to e-mail Yahoo PPC reports. Or get access to the API. Yahoo has no apparent way to find any of that information. Here's their super-helpful reports documentation: Really?! Use the reports page to generate reports?! Wow. I never would have thought of that. Please help. Before I go ins a n e Disclaimer: It's 8 AM. I may be missing something painfully obvious. But really, with 3 Yahoo-certified folks on staff you'd think we'd be able to figure this out...? Follow up: My staff helpfully pointed me to the Yahoo Help…
Continue Reading Yahoo PPC = Me Go Insane »
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June 11, 2007 by ian
Sorry, Bill. Just a mild poking of fun here. I did a search for 'pay per click advertising' on Google just now, and saw the following: Note that Microsoft is bidding for, and getting, the #1 position in Google's sponsored ads. That means they're outbidding everyone else. Including Google. Seems like a good idea, right? Beat the 800-pound gorilla at its own game, snag a few more clicks, get more customers. But there are three problems, and each one's a great lesson learned: Don't Let Ego Drive Your Bids. If I sell oranges, and you sell oranges, that little…
Continue Reading 3 Lessons in Pay Per Click, From Microsoft »
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June 6, 2007 by ian
The most common pay per click error I see is waste: Spending too much on keywords that don't perform, and too little on those that do. If you're a novice, and you have limited time to work on your pay per click campaigns, these 8 steps will help you start improving their efficiency: If you don't already have one, set up a Google Analytics Account. Don't be shy. It's easy. Figure out what your site's goal is. Then set up goal tracking in Google Analytics. Let your pay per click campaign run for a few days. In Google Analytics, go…
Continue Reading Improving Pay Per Click ROI in 8 Steps »
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June 5, 2007 by ian
They're not shacking up yet, but Google and Salesforce are now partnering. What does this mean for you? TechCrunch has a great overview here. This will certainly make it easier to integrate Google Analytics goal tracking with Salesforce lead collection. The first product to come from the partnership is Salesforce Group Edition. So, Google - any thoughts about giving some love to Highrise? Technorati Tags: Google, salesforce…
Continue Reading Google and Salesforce Get to First Base »
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June 4, 2007 by ian
Well, OK, a bit of an over dramatization. But I often work as an SEO consultant, and he says I'm your last option. In a way, he's right. He points out the futility of trying to game or trick the search engines into boosting your ranking in his synopsis of Inside The Black Box. I find that folks get into trouble when they approach SEO as a purely technical or number-crunching undertaking. The technical stuff is actually just one of many tools that drive a sound search marketing strategy. The job of any legitimate SEO consultant has three parts:…
Continue Reading Do not Hire Me: Seth Godin Says So »
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June 1, 2007 by ian
One of my clients is having his best year yet. He also just lost his #1 position for a really important keyphrase. How can he have the former in spite of the latter? Diversity. He's got top 5 rankings for dozens of phrases. While the Big Money phrase gets hundreds of searches per day, and slipping from #1 to #3 is depressing, he also has top-3 position for hundreds of phrases that get 1 or 2 searches per day. And those longer, better targeted phrases generate better conversion rates. That's why I prattle endlessly about making your site crawlable,…
Continue Reading Who Needs Sexy When You're Rich? SEO and Keyword Diversity »
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May 3, 2007 by ian
Wikipedia.com controls a lot of traffic. They dominate the Google rankings for just about every subject, and can have a profound effect on your search marketing efforts. So, a link from Wikipedia can really help out. Search Engine Land has a great article on the long-term strategy for positioning yourself on Wikipedia. I have a process that's worked for me in the shorter term, though. It's all about giving Wikipedia exactly what it wants - knowledge: Pick a researched aspect of your product, service or organization. When I say 'researched', I mean that folks try to learn about it…
Continue Reading Wikipedia love: How to get it »
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April 27, 2007 by ian
Looks like Google will be introducing YouTube ads in the next few months. The model will likely share revenue with the video creators. Assuming that's the case, what's the impact? If you're a content creator who uses YouTube, what can you do to capitalize? First, read up. The RedHerring article suggests Google will put very short ads before each video, with a longer one after. I'm sure more information will come out soon, too: Subscribe to a blogsearch on the topic and stay on the ball. Plan Commercial Breaks. Studies show that an ad before a video is a…
Continue Reading 3 Ways To Prepare for YouTube Video Ads »
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April 24, 2007 by ian
In marketing, it pays to start with your audience's ideas, even if they're wrong. Nowhere is that more true than search marketing: Pick the keywords they expect, and you'll have a shot at changing their minds. Demand that they understand, in advance, that the phrase they use to describe your product is wrong, and you'll fail. For example: You consider your product a three-wheeled transporter. Everyone else calls it a tricycle. You don't want to call it a tricycle because it's just so unique. It transcends tricycle-ness. It revolutionizes transportation. It may change the world! That's just fine with…
Continue Reading Correct in An Empty Room »
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April 10, 2007 by ian
I just posted a bit about Google Website Optimizer, and potential SEO issues. It appears I may be guilty of FUD* mongering. Lest I be tagged as such: Robert Gorell at FutureNowInc.com says it's very, very unlikely that use of the tool would lead to penalties from Google. I'm still less sure about Yahoo - look for follow-up info in the coming weeks. * Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt Technorati Tags: Google, Google Analytics, web analytics, website optimizer…
Continue Reading FUD Prevention: Google Website Optimizer »
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April 10, 2007 by ian
Google Website Optimizer lets you test various headlines, product shots and other page elements against each other. And it's free. Wouldn't you always want to use it? No - ironically, Google's Website Optimizer engages in a practice that some call 'cloaking'. That practice may lead to search ranking penalties from - you guessed it - Google. Google's own Matt Cutts has a great summary of the tactic here. Optimizer causes your web browser to replace parts of the page you're viewing, like so: In the above images, my browser replaced 'Your Child Deserves the Best' with 'Attend a Free…
Continue Reading Google Website Optimizer May Cause Search Penalties »
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March 6, 2007 by ian
Google is really pushing personalized search these days. That's going to have a profound effect on search marketing, because you won't be able to game web sites by over-focusing on a single phrase. Since Google Account holders' search results will be based, in part, on their search history, stuffing your site to bursting with a single keyphrase just won't work. Neither will collecting thousands of worthless links. So what to do? If everyone gets slightly different results, how will you stay on top? By being smart: Write a great title and a great description tag. Clicks are actually going…
Continue Reading 4 Ways to Prepare for Google Personalized Search »
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February 21, 2007 by ian
I've put together what I hope will be an easier way to handle 301 redirect setup. I'd like you to help me test it, if you don't mind. SEO folks know that a 301 redirect is the best way to repoint the search engines from an old web address to a new one. Usually, you can just call your web host and say “Please set up a 301 redirect from this address to that one.†Sometimes it ain't that easy. For example, TypePad doesn't support 301 redirects. GoDaddy doesn't either. So, I've build a 301 redirect tool. With it,…
Continue Reading Easy 301 Redirects »
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February 21, 2007 by ian
OK, I got caught in a rookie mistake. I did a quick SEO review of Jeremiah's blog. In it, I said “Change to a server-side 302 redirect instead of a client-side redirect.†Gaaaah. Sorry. It should be a 301 redirect, not a 302 redirect. The difference: A 301 redirect indicates that a site or page has permanently moved. That's what you want the search engines to know. So, sorry to all who I've led down the road to imminent SEO ruin. OK, I'm exaggerating. A little... 301 redirects. Not 302s... (Ian tiptoes offstage...) Technorati Tags: search engine optimization, seo…
Continue Reading Humble Pie, Eating Crow, Wiping Egg Off Face »
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February 20, 2007 by ian
You've been #1 for a month. Traffic and sales are rolling in. Then, one day, you check on your ranking on Google and it's happened: You're #2. Augh! Here's what you do: Don't Panic. Sometimes ranking changes are temporary. If you watch them every day you're bound to see a lot of wiggling. Check the Competition. Who's the upstart that took your spot? How'd they do it? There are a few simple things you can do to figure out how they did it. Go to Google and search for site:webaddress.com, where webaddress.com is your competitor's address. Then do it…
Continue Reading What to Do If Your Ranking Slips »
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February 14, 2007 by ian
Not sure if Google did this intentionally, but what's missing from this logo? Update: Well, apparently life with two kids in the suburbs has sucked all romance from me. The 'L' is missing on purpose: Here's what Google said. I still don't get it. If anyone wants to help save my sanity, please, explain. Of course, I'm obsessing about a logo. So maybe it's too late anyway... Technorati Tags: Google…
Continue Reading Google Typo? »
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February 13, 2007 by ian
Has Yahoo Panama really made a difference? Yahoo's new paid search ranking algorithm ranks ads based on ad quality and click through rate, as well as bid amount. I've been tracking 10 different ads for two different clients. Higher Impressions & Clicks All ads in the test are seeing higher impression counts since the 5th (Panama launch day). They're also seeing higher click counts. Cost Per Click It gets really interesting, though, when you start comparing cost per click to impressions and clicks. On one campaign, we boosted our bids slightly the day before Panama launched. We expected to…
Continue Reading Review of Yahoo's Panama: The First Week »
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February 9, 2007 by ian
<sarcasm> Feel like search engines are just a pest? Don't want any annoying customers on your web site? Then these tips are for you: Ignore title tags. Who needs 'em? Go 100% graphics. It's prettier, right? Why bother with actual text? Keep out of it. Don't ever blog, discuss, or otherwise mention your site in any medium. Use loooooong URLs. Why use www.mysite.com when www.mysite.com/en/us/?-this=1234091284as;dlfjkaeorwiuawe0948230498 will do the same thing? Copy like crazy. Plagiarize content from other, better-ranked sites to your heart's content. Sure, the search engines may ban you in response to a complaint, but who cares? </sarcasm>…
Continue Reading Five Great Ways to Remain Invisible »
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February 7, 2007 by ian
Muhammad at Pronet shows us a video as an indication as to why social sites, like Digg.com, hate search engine marketers. The video he shows is horrible. The guy in the video is recommending unethical, short-sighted strategies that achieve nothing, or worse. Add links to social bookmarking sites three times a week?! This strategy would never work, first because the bookmarking sites will ban you and take down your links, and second because the search engines will quickly begin reducing the importance of links from sites like Digg. But I have to differentiate between search engine marketers and simpletons…
Continue Reading Search Marketing Versus Simpletons »
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February 6, 2007 by ian
I'm tracking statistics for two clients, now, to see how Panama affects them. One client is in a very competitive education market. Since Panama launched, their clickthrough percentage has risen from .5% to 1%. Click rate is up about 30%, too, but so is our cost per click. Which is OK, though, because as of now our conversion rate from Yahoo is up by about 15%. The other client sells consumer goods online. Since Panama launched, their clickthru rate has actually dropped from 2.5 to 2%. However, the number of clicks are up by about 50%, and the cost…
Continue Reading Yahoo's Panama, Day 2 »
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February 5, 2007 by ian
Yahoo has released a new paid search ranking algorithm. The new one mimics Google Adwords, by ranking ads, not just according to bid amount, but also by: - Ad quality. - Click through rate. They still aren't ranking according to landing page quality, but I have high hopes for this new model. It'll shift the balance back towards folks who are taking the time to write and test great ad copy. It'll also slow bid inflation, which is a huge problem. But the proof is in the pudding. So, I tracked performance of 10 ads we're running for various…
Continue Reading Yahoo's Panama: Day One »
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February 2, 2007 by ian
John Battelle reports that Yahoo has gained a bit on Google in the world of search, by outpacing Google's growth. John suggests it might be because Yahoo's becoming more accurate. That's possible. But there's another possibility: I'm betting on Google backlash - you don't get as dominant as Google is now without making a lot of people unhappy. Plus there are always folks who look for alternatives to #1. Finally, Google is operating at such a high level it's hard to imagine how they can continue growing at this rate. Further bulletins as events warrant... Technorati Tags: internet marketing,…
Continue Reading Google Search Backlash? »
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February 1, 2007 by ian
Marketing Pilgrim points us to an article in the Rapid City Journal that claims 'For the most part, search engine optimizers are... crooks.' I won't comment on the article. I'm too angry. But I will say this: Claire Scholz, the author of this article, is president of her own 'Internet design and marketing company'. Check it out at Asiostudio.com and make your own decisions as to her level of expertise. And it includes multiple articles are search engine optimization. And she offers search engine optimization services!? Services she's not very good at: - Her code isn't CSS 2.0. -…
Continue Reading Ignorance, revealed »
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January 27, 2007 by ian
Veoh.com is a client of ours - they run an online video network. Don't think YouTube, think NBC. We've been working with them on search engine optimization, bragging modestly. They've made a huge collection of changes to their site infrastructure, started blogging, and worked hard on high quality content to which folks want to link. The results are just starting to come in: I am immensely proud of the result, and of their sticking with the ethical, long-term approach. You don't get these kinds of results by tricking the search engines. You get them by building great content and…
Continue Reading An SEO Case Study »
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January 26, 2007 by ian
Yahoo has announced they'll be changing the way they rank paid ads: Simply bidding the most won't get you the top spot for their pay per click ads any more. Google Adwords have been ranked this way for some time. What's it mean? The quality of your ad, and of your landing page, is now as important as the bid amount. A higher-quality ad will get a higher clickthru percentage and move up in the rankings, regardless of bid amount. So just 'throwing together a few PPC ads' won't do the trick any more. You need to Sound Smart,…
Continue Reading Yahoo Search Marketing: The Conversation Widens »
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January 26, 2007 by ian
Matt Cutts has a great post about someone he caught using unethical but 'undetectable' search engine optimization techniques. The short version: If your search marketing firm/consultant mentions using 'doorway pages' or something like that to help you move up in the rankings, run. If they won't tell you what they're doing, run faster. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/undetectable-spam/ Technorati Tags: Google, search engine optimization, seo…
Continue Reading Beware SEO Snake Oil »
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January 16, 2007 by ian
When I saw that SearchMe launched Wikiseek, their new search engine, I was pretty excited. But, as with all new things, it's a mixed bag: The Good It's a beautiful, clean interface. As you start to type in search terms, Wikiseek automatically shows you possible categories: And it restricts searches to content that's in wikipedia. The Bad When you start typing a search term, Wikiseek immediately removes your search results from any previous search from the page. You can click to return to a previous search, but for me at least it seems like a jumpy interface. At least…
Continue Reading WikiSeek Search Engine: First Impressions »
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January 12, 2007 by ian
Just a quick note for those of you whose palms sweat when your search ranking changes: Google is updating pagerank system-wide (I think) right now. They started earlier this week. So no, you're not going nuts if you think your ranking has yo-yoed a bit. Technorati Tags: Google…
Continue Reading Google PageRank Update »
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January 3, 2007 by ian
It's not as competitive as, say, 'Search Engine Optimization' or 'Viagra', but it counts: Technorati Tags: search engine optimization, seo…
Continue Reading Number 1 »
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December 28, 2006 by ian
I get a lot of e-mails like this one: I am the webmaster at blahblah.com and I think our sites are a great match. Would you like to trade links with me? The answer is no. As a search engine optimization device, link trading is worthless. So are so-called 'link triangles', where you link to someone who links to someone else who then links to you. At best, Google and other search engines will ignore you. At worst, they'll ban you for trying to trick them. Trust me. Link. Trades. Don't. Work. On the bright side, you can stop…
Continue Reading SEO Myth Smackdown: Link Trading »
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December 21, 2006 by ian
Search is great, but search and paid ads are even better. We've always assumed that was true. Now two separate studies seem to bear that out. Yahoo, Avenue A/Razorfish and comScore have worked together to research how display and search ads reinforce each other. The conclusion? A combination of paid and organic search, as well as display and search advertising, leads to more traffic and far higher conversion rates. So grabbing the #1 spot on Google for 'widgets' is great, but it doesn't mean you should shut down your paid search campaign just yet. You can read more about…
Continue Reading Search and Display Ads: Closing the Loop »
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December 2, 2006 by ian
Every few months a client comes to me and says “Now that I'm top 3 for Super Widgets in the unpaid rankings on Google, can we cancel my paid search listings?†Usually, no. Here's two reasons: 1. If you have a top-3 spot in the paid rankings, your competitors don't. You're denying them access to the audience. 2. If customers see your search result in two locations on the same page, they're far more likely to click on one of them. In our tests, an unpaid listing in the top 3 positions gets far more clicks if there's a…
Continue Reading Paid and Unpaid Search: Together, Forever »
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November 30, 2006 by ian
Google appears to be doing an update right now (what they call a 'data refresh'). It's not a full on Google Dance. I call it more of a Google Wiggle. So if you're one of those folks who watches your rankings obsessively, whimpering every time you slip a spot, the next day or two may be a bit exciting. Why this always happens right in the middle of the Christmas shopping season, I don't know. I just go buy some Tums, rent some funny videos and hold on tight... Technorati Tags: Google, search engine optimization, seo…
Continue Reading Google Wigglin »
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November 27, 2006 by ian
Gaping Void, best known for hilarious back-of-business-card cartoons, posted an SEO Manifesto. My favorite points: “2. It’s much easier to plan a website than to retrofit it. Understanding fundamentals makes it much more valuable when you hire a consultant or agency.†I can't tell you how many clients of mine have had to rebuild their sites because we weren't involved in initial site construction. Plan for SEO as you build your site. Don't tack it on to the site afterwards. “5. Any marketing decision impacts search engine rankings - and vice versa TV, radio, print and other ads can…
Continue Reading Stunt Train SEO Manifesto »
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November 20, 2006 by ian
Last night my family and I climbed into a Towncar for the ride from Newark Airport to the grandparents' house. About 15 minutes out, the car's engine started racing and the 'check transmission' light came on. A sure sign that the car's transmission was about to fall out. The driver, not wanting to lose the fare, kept driving. I finally turned to him and said 'are you going to call for another car or am I?' He didn't. As it turned out, I couldn't. We had a very, very long trip to our destination, and I'll never use that…
Continue Reading Knowing When To Stop »
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November 9, 2006 by ian
In case you're wondering: Google gets 44.1% of all searches right now. That's up 7% over last year. Yahoo gets 28.7%. Down 1%. MSN gets 12.5%, down 3%. AOL gets 5.6%. Ask.com gets another 5.5%. All other search engines on earth fight over the remaining 3.6% of available search traffic. So if anyone ever calls you telling you they'll 'register' you with '2,000 search engines', scream foul and run... (stats are from comScore qSearch) Technorati Tags: search engine optimization, seo…
Continue Reading Factoid: Search Engine Market Share »
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October 30, 2006 by ian
Imnotadoctor writes that Google still seems to reward link spammers. For those of you who aren't familiar with the concept, link spammers will build a site and then purchase or otherwise collect thousands of links from other, unrelated web sites, for the sole purpose of improving their search ranking. Google frowns (glowers, actually) on this practice, but it's not always easy to detect. If you find an instance of link spam, or any other attempt to fool the search engines, please report it using this form. Link spam is the toughest to stop - no guarantee Google will act…
Continue Reading Google, Link Spam and Good Citizenship »
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October 30, 2006 by ian
Just finished an experiment with a client. First, this was the situation: They wanted the #1 position for their biggest keyphrase. But they couldn't afford it - they received too many clicks in the course of the day. We reviewed their site and sales statistics, and noticed that most of their customers arrived at lunch time and just before the end of the workday. So, we only spent top dollar for the top positions on Google when they were likely to get customers. Instead of buying the #1 spot 24 hours/day, we bought it for 4 hours/day. The result:…
Continue Reading Pay Per Click: Time of Day Matters »
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October 13, 2006 by ian
For those who don't know, Coca-Cola has been accused of hiring paramilitary death squads to keep labor unions out of their Columbia bottling plants. The accusers have launched 'killercoke.org' and 'killercoke.com'. If you search for [killer coke] on Google, or 'coca cola columbia', or just about anything else, one of these two sites are in the top 3. Coca-Cola is nowhere to be seen, though, except for their standard 'Official Coca-Cola Store' ads. What should Coca-Cola do? Here's my list: First, build a small issue site explaining your side of the story, what you're doing to investigate, and what…
Continue Reading Killer Coke: Online Search PR Failures »
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October 4, 2006 by ian
I've tried for years to explain to clients why a Flash splash page is a bad idea. But SEOMOZ has the best comparison I've ever heard: “When we have clients who are thinking about Flash splash pages, we tell them to go to their local supermarket and bring a mime with them. Have the mime stand in front of the supermarket, and, as each customer tries to enter, do a little show that lasts two minutes, welcoming them to the supermarket and trying to explain the bread is on aisle six and milk is on sale today.†Don't mess…
Continue Reading Why Flash Home Pages Are Bad »
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August 30, 2006 by ian
I have a super-busy week this week, hence the lack of posts. But here's an interesting site to check out: Accoona.com is a search engine launched in 2004 that appears to be making some inroads. Most interesting is that they've blended pure keyword search with a 'SuperTarget' tool that lets you instantly narrow your search by geographic area, etc.. Have a look: Accoona.com Technorati Tags: search engine optimization, seo…
Continue Reading Accoona Search Engine »
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August 23, 2006 by ian
Google has added a 'preferred domain' tool to Google Webmaster Central. It lets you tell Google whether you'd like all links to your site to include 'www' or not. This may seem subtle, but it's a long-standing problem in search engine optimization. Search engines historically see www.mysite.com and mysite.com as two distinct pages, even though they're probably not. So if folks link to you using mysite.com when you usually use www.mysite.com, they likely don't help. Of course, when I clicked the 'submit' button I got 'service unavailable'. Hopefully it'll be back soon. More bulletins as events warrant... Technorati Tags:…
Continue Reading No more WWW woes? Google adds Preferred Domain Tool »
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August 23, 2006 by ian
Online plagiarism is rampant. Some folks just rip off your entire site look. Others just steal your content. What to do? First, there are ways to root out the thieves: Cut-and-paste a sentence from your web site into the search box on Google or Yahoo. I do that regularly with the first sentence of my corporate site, PortentInteractive.com. I did it this morning, and voila, the second listing is a rip off of my site: Here's the Google search result. Ekrupa? Who the heck is that? Well, whoever they are, I don't like it. So my next steps are:…
Continue Reading Plagiarism Online »
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August 19, 2006 by ian
Pay-per-click (PPC) is a great Conversation Marketing tool. You can control and measure what you spend, and know what your ROI is, with a minimum of work. Plus, you can adjust your campaigns very, very quickly. But there are some basics you should know. I've put together my PPC Marketing Checklist to help. It's free, no strings attached. Download it in Adobe Acrobat PDF here. I've been spending a lot of time on high-falutin' advertising talk lately, so this time I'm going back to basics... If you like this checklist, please digg it. Technorati Tags: Google, ppc marketing, search…
Continue Reading CM Basics: PPC Marketing Checklist »
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August 1, 2006 by ian
Matt Cutts, Google engineer and champion of white-hat SEO practitioners everywhere, has a collection of short search engine instructional videos he's recorded. In them, he answers lots of SEO questions, like 'who should I optimize for, the search engines, or my customers?', and 'What makes a web site “good†for SEO'. Some of his answers are pretty technical, but Matt does a great job of keeping things super-accessible. This is your chance to see it straight from a guy who works at Google. Remember, his opinions aren't officially those of Google. But his opinions also agree with mine, so…
Continue Reading Matt Cutts SEO Videos »
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July 26, 2006 by ian
Click Fraud hysteria is just that. So please stop stressing about it. Yes, there are fraudulent clicks. But they don't matter. OK? Here's proof: Google has integrated a nifty little click fraud analysis tool into their Adwords PPC system. I just used it to measure the number of fraudulent 'invalid clicks' for our biggest PPC client. This client spends over $50,000 on Adwords, every month. Total potential cost of fraudulent clicks? $2000. Or 4% of their budget. But Google refunded charges for those costs, automatically. So the cost is zero. Note: I verified Google's numbers with my own analysis…
Continue Reading Click Fraud: Enough, Already »
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June 22, 2006 by ian
Seth Godin has a post on his blog about active versus passive search engine optimization. In a nutshell, he says passive SEO is about tweaking your own web site for better rankings. Active SEO, he goes on, is about building other sites or build links, etc. to generate more traffic. I divide it up differently. SEO is comprised of: Creative: Editing or developing content and then leveraging that content for better rankings. You might do that by adding an article to your site, or by getting an article published on another site with a link back to you, or by…
Continue Reading Active vs. Passive SEO: Seth Godin »
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June 14, 2006 by ian
Ignore search marketing, and internet marketing, and your audience may walk away from you. Here's a few interesting stats from Understanding Searcher Behavior: Over half of search engine users now substitute internet search for the phone book. 43% of search engine users now use search engines to find local services. Local search is a growing force. So saying 'I only do business in my own town' probably isn't a good argument for ignoring the internet any more.…
Continue Reading SEO Stats: Local Search Grows »
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May 10, 2006 by ian
There's a great article on Search Engine Watch today titled "Curbing SEO's Who've Gone Wild". The main point? Too much SEO can get you penalized by search engines. And by your customers. If you're working to attain that #1 spot in Google's brain, make sure that you stay #1 in your customer's brain, too. The article.…
Continue Reading Too Much SEO »
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April 28, 2006 by ian
An article on Search Engine Watch notes that around 90% of American consumers now distrust advertising. That's a lot. It's also a fairly new development. How do you respond? One strategy is to focus on marketing venues that aren't perceived as advertising. Search engines are a great example. Online PR/Blog marketing is another. It's easy to ignore both because they take a long time to gather momentum. But the long-term payoff is huge.…
Continue Reading SEO, Trust and Other Issues »
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February 13, 2006 by ian
The Wall Street Journal posted an article about a search engine optimization company called Traffic Power. It's a great lesson in how not to hire an SEO firm. Traffic Power's tactics included 'doorway pages', which are pages invisible to users but crawlable by search engines. These pages are packed with keywords, in order to draw the search engines. They're also totally unethical, and a banning offense on any major search engine. So how can you learn from this? What can you do to make sure you avoid the Traffic Powers of the world?…
Continue Reading Search Engine Optimization Fraud »
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December 21, 2005 by ian
I received an e-mail offer today from 'Top Position'. It's a perfect example of why so many folks don't trust search engine optimization (aka SEO). It includes impossible promises, out and out fiction, and an opportunity to have your site completely banned without lifting a finger.…
Continue Reading Have They No Shame? »
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December 15, 2005 by ian
A couple months ago I started telling folks to watch AskJeeves, now that Barry Diller is at the helm. A quick update: Nielsen is reporting that AskJeeves has seen a 77% increase in search queries. They still only hold under 3% of the market, but at this rate they could theoretically surpass AOL in the next year. Oh, and Google still rules the world, of course, growing faster than the other big 3. Read the article here…
Continue Reading Watch AskJeeves »
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December 8, 2005 by ian
At Chicago's Search Engine Strategies expo (which I've never attended, by the way, but really want to someday), Yahoo's Tim Meyer gave the a great overview of smart search engine marketing: Tim: "We basically treat [your site] as plain text. Use common HTML if you want the search engines to know what is on your site ... but that needs to be consistent with CSS. A lot of it is about intent ... there isn't a black and white. If you are giving different signals to the search engines than the user then that is a problem. H1 Tags signal…
Continue Reading Yahoo and Me, We're Like That... »
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August 30, 2005 by ian
Yup, it's ranting time. Why are the biggest online players the worst online marketers? I don't know the 'why' but I can sure prove the 'what'. Here's a story of Yahoo and GoDaddy wasting pay-per-click dollars like they owned their own mint. It's also a great story of what not to do.…
Continue Reading Stupid Google Adwords Tricks »
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August 26, 2005 by ian
I'm sure you've all heard of click fraud by now. In case you haven't, here's a quick primer: Click fraud occurs when someone clicks repeatedly on a pay per click advertisement (say, a Google Adwords ad) for the sole purpose of spending the advertiser's money. Click fraud has become a cottage industry. Folks worldwide get paid to do nothing but sit at their computers and click on paid ads. But is this the fall of pay per click advertising? I don't think so.…
Continue Reading Click Fraud Hysteria »
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May 26, 2005 by ian
I think I've seen real proof of the Google Sandbox, at long last. One of our clients launched a site at a new URL last October. They achieved a top-4 ranking on MSN and Yahoo! within a few weeks, but Google left them in the depths of the rankings — around page 20, in fact. Their site is totally legit — clean CSS2, very good copy, with solid link popularity and such. After tearing at what little hair I have left, and chatting with some other marketers, I realized that this web site was likely a Sandbox victim. And it…
Continue Reading Google Sandbox: Proof? »
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March 9, 2005 by ian
A group of programmers have decided to start editing the content of web pages folks visit without telling them, thereby rerouting them around the Internet. Sounds like a bunch of hackers, right? Wrong. It's Google. Here's why it's bad, why it's not as bad as it sounds, and why I think it'll go away soon.…
Continue Reading Google Autolink »
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March 2, 2005 by ian
Yes, it's true. Overture is changing its name to better reflect its Yahoo! ownership. The implications, for me at least, is that MSN may be moving to their own pay-per-click marketing platform sooner than they're saying. Why else would Overture rebrand themselves in a way that will clearly ruffle feathers over at Microsoft? I'll keep track of this and keep everyone apprised... Overture Name Change FAQ…
Continue Reading Overture Renamed Yahoo Search Marketing Solutions »
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February 16, 2005 by ian
I participated in a panel discussion last night at the WSA's monthly dinner meeting. Also on the panel was Larry Sivitz of SearchWrite, Detlev Johnson from PositionTech, Heather Lloyd-Martin from WebSourced, Inc., and Gary McAvoy of GetToTheTop. It was a great discussion moderated by Bruce Alexander. Here are the highlights...…
Continue Reading WSA SEO Panel Discussion »
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February 8, 2005 by ian
Not sure how I feel about this, but Google is starting to mix photos into their text search results. Search for 'bicycle' and you'll see what I mean. Does this really add value? Or does it clutter up a previously clean interface? Personally I'm not that thrilled with the meaningful results being shoved even further down the page...…
Continue Reading Google Mixing Photos into Text Search »
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February 8, 2005 by ian
I'll be sitting on a panel at the Washington Software Association's February 15 dinner meeting, "Key Words, Key Strategies, Key Technologies". If you're interested in attending you can read up on the event here. There'll be some heavy hitters there talking about SEO, keyword research and how the world of search may change in the near future. I'll behave myself, I promise...…
Continue Reading WSA Panel Discussion »
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February 4, 2005 by ian
Wired Magazine has a great article, just posted, entitled Googling the Bottom Line. There are two themes in this article: One, the author's focus, is that a top-30 ranking is a must if you want to grow site traffic. Duh. The author's second point is what impressed me most: Unethical search engine optimization techniques wreak havoc with any attempt to gain a stable, high rank on Google.…
Continue Reading Internet Marketing, Google and SEO Karma »
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January 20, 2005 by ian
Is there really a Google Sandbox? Many search engine optimization pros feel that Google is applying some type of filtering to new sites with certain ratios of incoming links. I'm not sure if I buy that, but I do know that the rules for Google have changed, and that new web sites are languishing for 5-9 months after launch before moving into any kind of reasonable search ranking. Here's an article that backs me up a bit. In the end, it doesn't matter how Google's doing it - the new rule of the day is you've gotta play the blues…
Continue Reading Google's Sandbox »
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September 22, 2004 by ian
Matthew Henry just completed a great article about metrics in search engine optimization. His two metrics - Relative Position Index (RPI) and Click-Through Prediction (CTP) - have helped me prepare and target search marketing campaigns for years now. Some of the math is a little daunting for a marketing guy like me, but the message is a powerful one: You can guide your SEO campaign towards the terms and phrases that offer the best chance of traffic for your particular site, and reduce guesswork.…
Continue Reading Quantifying SEO »
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June 17, 2004 by ian
Here's a great article about the forgotten element of SEO: The searchers. I see lots of folks who dive into search engine optimization campaigns with enthusiasm, and end up with a site that reads like those papers we all wrote in high school where we just... had... to get... ten... more... words... I spend a lot of time counseling writers to not write for the search engines. Write quality content. Then optimize by making sure your HTML code is well-written and accessible and that your site structure makes sense. That way when folks do find you, they'll find value. Not…
Continue Reading Search Engine Optimization: Don't Forget the Audience »
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March 28, 2004 by ian
Last week, a colleague of mine told me her web site was banned from Yahoo!. Why? We don't know for sure, but it appears her site was banned because it's an affiliate site - she makes money by providing a well-organized, well-promoted site that drives traffic to other web sites. Apparently, Yahoo is beginning a universal crack down on these types of sites. That's foolish and short-sighted, and I'll tell you why.…
Continue Reading Yahoo: Mad with the Power of it All »
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March 22, 2004 by ian
With Yahoo's new search engine comes a new set of rules. In case you didn't know, Yahoo no longer uses Google to drive web search results. They're using their own search engine, and they've combined it with their anti-spam technology to really crack down on sites that use anything resembling questionable tactics. If you: 1. Duplicate the same content across multiple sites. 2. Use a lot of flamboyant language on your site (like 'Great deals here!'). 3. Use other tricks like hidden frames or content. Then you will likely run afoul of their new rules. Be especially aware of duplicate…
Continue Reading Yahoo's New Rules »
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February 15, 2004 by ian
Google's had a lot of shake-ups recently. The now-infamous Florida Update gave a lot of search engine optimization firms hives. IPO rumors (now confirmed) have folks wondering about Google's long-purported neutrality. And now Yahoo/Inktomi and Microsoft are lining up to compete. What does it all mean? Most likely, that Google will change the rules yet again to stay ahead of the pack. In fact, the search engine leader already has.…
Continue Reading Google Still Supreme? »
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