SEO Blog

Danny Sullivan used to program the Search Engine Strategies conferences, but he’s been less involved recently–his only shows in this year’s lineup were the New York and the upcoming San Jose events. Maybe that’s because he’s busy this year with his new conference series: the Search Marketing Expo.

The Search Marketing Expo is powered by Third Door Media. This company owns Search Engine Land, where Danny is currently editor-in-chief. Danny’s move from the SES series to the SMX series makes sense, since he recently left Search Engine Watch and has been saying he’s planning to stop working on the SES conferences for some time.

SMX is running three shows this year:

SMX Advanced: Seattle, June 4-5

SMX Advanced is geared toward experienced search marketers. It’s got two tracks; one for SEO’s and the other for paid search advertising. The topics covered are as follows:

On the organic search track:

Duplicate Content Summit
SEO, Meet SMM
Personalized Search: Fear or Not?
Penalty Box Summit
Better Ways to Do the Boring Stuff
Give it Up!

On the paid search track:

Paid Search Roundtable
Paid Search & Tricky Issues
Inside the Auction Black Box
Pump Up Your Paid Search!
Paid Search: The Giant Focus Group
Beyond the Majors

SMX Local and Mobile: Denver, Oct. 1-2, 2007

Their agenda isn’t up yet, but this conference is geared toward local search issues and mobile search. These are upcoming frontiers in search, and this conference is designed to help you prepare for what’s coming.

SMX Social Media: New York, October 16-17, 2007

Again, no agenda so far–but we do know that this conference will cover how social media sites are affecting search; how their audience shares information, how search engines are using human response to modify search results; and what tools measure response on social media sites.

The SMX Advanced show is $100 off if you register by May 8: $1,195 instead of $1,295. Danny Sullivan will be there, of course. You’ll also see Vanessa Fox, Frederick Vallaeys, Rand Fishkin, Matt Cutts, Bruce Clay, Todd Friesen, Shari Thurow, Jill Whalen, Christine Churchill, and Greg Boser, among others.

There have been a lot of “Why I Blog” posts in the blogosphere lately. Many people have personal reasons why they do or don’t blog regularly. Those reasons might keep you going, but there are also some compelling business reasons why you should maintain a current blog. Here are my top seven reasons why a blog is one of the best medias to present your site content on.

1. People come back for the fresh content.

If there’s something new to see every day, people have a reason to return to your site. If you can keep people coming back, that does a lot of good things for your business: they’ll see you as more of an expert; they’re more likely to buy from a trusted source; they’ll link to your site and help your rankings.

2. People can post comments and feel involved.

People are more interested in things they feel they have a hand in. When people post comments on your blog, they have a small amount of ownership. A good blog is like a conversation between yourself and your readers. They’ll keep coming back to add their thoughts on your post, respond to others’ comments, and see others’ responses to theirs.

3. Build in social bookmarking icons on each post.

Social networking is a powerful advertising tool and there are lots of blog plugins that place one icon links at the bottom of your blog posts that people can use to promote your blog. If people like your blog they add it to social sites like Digg, del.icio.us, Linkroll, reddit, StumbleUpon, and Furl. This will bring your site exposure to many different people who may never have found it otherwise. It can generate click-through traffic, attention, and hopefully new clients and customers.

4. Submit to blog directories and get click though traffic, ranking juice, & Pagerank vote.

You can submit your blog to blog directories such as Blogarama, All-Blogs.net, BoingBoing, FeedsFarm, Diarist, and more. These give you the same benefits you’d get from submitting your site URL to a conventional directory: ranking juice, and a boost in PageRank. But they’re also more heavily searched by users, and you may get some click-through traffic as well. There are hundreds of blog directories out there; Lee Odden has a Blog List going at his Online Marketing Blog.

5. Placing inbound RSS feeds on your blog produces content.

You can use RSS feeds to place content from other sites on your web site. This is a great way to show your readers news and related info from all over the web, plus generate more content for the search engines to crawl. Remember content (that wins your lots of links) is king.

6. Syndicated RSS feeds will get you inbound links from the sites they are placed on.

Blog software creates RSS feeds for you blog and categories. You can submit your RSS feed URL to RSS directories and syndicators. When other people place your RSS feed on their sites, you get links on their sites pointing back to yours for every post in the RSS feed. It’s a great way to enhance your link-building campaign.

7. RSS subscription icons make it easy to subscribe to your blog.

You can put a set of subscription icons on your blog so that people can subscribe to your blog or a category of your blog with a single click. Wordpress has a Plugin feature that installs subscription icons for a wide variety of RSS aggregators. You can set up the icons in your sidebar automatically, move them manually to other spots on your blog, and turn off certain icons you don’t want. It makes it quick and easy for readers to subscribe to your blog.

A blog is a great way to attract return traffic, raise customer loyalty and brand awareness, promote yourself as an industry expert, get links, raise your PageRank, and improve your rankings in the SERPs. With all the reasons why you should blog, it’s tough to understand why there are only 175,000 new blogs a day : )

The SEW Live Columbus conference is coming up on May 9th. This is a half-day event that offers you the opportunity to meet SEW editorial staff, SES speakers and members of the SEW community. There is also a morning workshop which is limited to 30 people and cost $695.

The venue is the Hyatt Regency on North High Street in Columbus.

Agenda:

Social Media Workshop: The Good, The Bad and the Clueless — 8:00am – 12:00pm
Organic Optimization — 1:00pm – 2:15pm
Networking Break — 2:15pm – 2:45pm
Paid Search — 2:45pm – 4:00pm
Networking Break — 4:00pm – 4:30pm
Roundtable Discussion: Searchpourri — 4:30pm – 5:30pm

Who’s Who:

Elizabeth Osmeloski
Elizabeth is the event host, and the editor of Search Engine Watch. She’s an expert SEO consultant and web copywriter, and has a passion for vertical markets. She worked as the skiing editor for About.com for several years. She’s known for her expertise on marketing, SEO, and online copywriting, her insightful work for Search Engine Watch, and her talents as a speaker. She has been an SEO speaker at SES conferences, as well as a number of outdoor sports conferences.

Jennifer Laycock
Jennifer is Search Engine Guide’s Editor-in-Chief. She’s also an author; her books include “The Small Business Guide to Search Engine Marketing” and “Zero Dollars, a Little Talent and Thirty Days.” Known throughout forums as “thejenn,” Jennifer can also be found working as an administrator for JimWorld’s Search Engine Marketing and Small Business Ideas forums. She’s been published in many online SEO publications including About.com, JimWorld, and Search Engine Watch. She’s known for her ability to explain even the most technical SEO details in terms anyone can understand. She’s a veteran conference speaker, with appearances in many Search Engine Strategies conferences.

Matt Bailey
Matt is the president of SiteLogic, an online consulting firm with a specialty in usability, analytics, accessibility, and viral marketing. Matt is known for his clear and engaging teaching style. He has been presenting and teaching on SEO for many years, starting with Bed and Breakfast seminars in the late 90’s and continuing at Search Engine Strategies, DMA conferences, Jill Whalen’s High Rankings seminars, and more.

James Golden
James is the Vice President of development at he Karcher Group, an all-inclusive SEO company that offers PPC, SEO, web design and usability, and more. His specialty is web development. He’s an expert in information architecture, semantics, accessibility, graphic design, and everything that defines a user’s experience on a website.

Jeff Rohrs
Jeff is president of Optiem, LLC. He’s one of SES’s top rated speakers. A former lawyer, Jeff speaks often about legal issues in the realm of online marketing, and has been quoted in Business Week, Wired.com, Marketing Sherpa, Advertising Age, and more. His company has handled interactive marketing campaigns for Sherwin-Williams, American Greetings, Calphalon, and other well-known brands.

David Szetela
David is the founder of ClixMarketing.com, a PPC marketing firm. His career includes successful tenures at Apple and as vice president of operations at MindCraft Inc, one of the world’s first publishers of PC-related magazines and books. He built Apple’s Evangelism department from the ground up, and managed their Developer University and conference series. He’s also active in SEMPO, and can be found teaching and speaking at prominent industry conferences such as SES in his spare time.

Laura Thieme
Laura’s company, Bizresearch, has been in business since 1997. It handles search marketing and ROI analysis for many well-known Fortune 500 companies. She’s a widely sought speaker who has made appearances at global conferences in the U.S., Europe, and Canada. She’s also prominent in the industry, and has had featured write-ups in TechNewsWorld, MarketWatch, Search Engine Watch, and more.

Wil Schroder
Wil is a serial enterpreneur and the owner of the GoBIG Network, an online community for startups and entrepreneurs to link to job seekers, ask for expert advice, and find investors. He founded his first company, Blue Diesel, at the age of 19. Blue Diesel was an interactive marketing company that landed clients such as Eli Lily, BMW, and Best Buy. Since then, he’s also founded and sold several companies. He took over Swapalease.com, raising it from humble roots to the world’s largest lease-swapping marketplace. He won the U.S. Small Business Association’s Entrepreneur of the Year award in 1999, and is a nationally syndicated columnist.

Collyn Floyd
Collyn is an online PR expert working for the Karcher Group. She’s a professional online writer, handling her company’s web copy, press releases, and other business communications. She is also a talented speaker, with appearances at the Karcher Group’s series of seminars under her belt. Collyn incorporates link-building into her public relations expertise, and frequently works with her company’s clients on link-building campaigns.

Sage Lewis
Sage Lewis is the founder of SageRock, an SEO firm that handles paid search, social networking campaigns, conversion analysis, and market research. His company is one of the most successful in the industry, with an average growth rate of 30% per year and recognition from MarketingSherpa as one of the top ten SEO firms in the industry. He’s a press resource for his industry and has been featured as an expert speaker on NPR. He also teaches an SEO class at Cleveland State University.

When Google recently bought DoubleClick, it also bought Performics–Doubleclick’s SEO and affiliate marketing subsidiary. There’s been plenty of speculation about what Google will do with Performics–from selling it off to running it as the purest white-hat SEO company ever.

In its FAQ on the DoubleClick deal, Google originally said that it had no plans to drop Performics. Now the tune has changed. If you check out the FAQ now, you’ll find that Google is saying it will “evaluate all strategic alternatives for this business” and assures customers that “we are committed to continuing to meet the needs of Performics clients, and we expect no interruption in service during this transition.”

So, essentially, it’s considering its options and Performics’ existing customers shouldn’t worry; they won’t feel any turbulence. It looks like Google may be moving closer toward announcing plans to let Performics go.

Performics, however, doesn’t want anyone to think it’s in an unstable position. Kris Jones made a recent post discussing the possibility of Google dissolving Performics. The president of Performics, Stuart Frankel, responded with an email emphasizing that “it is business as usual” at his company.

It still doesn’t make sense that Google will continue to own Performics–there are too many conflicts of interest involved in that scenario. In a postscript to Barry Schwartz’s report in Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan states that the situation seems “like an afterthought…the conflicts have simply not been carefully thought out, and I feel it is almost a certainty that Performics will significantly change or be sold off.”

Some believe that Google’s off-hand treatment of Performics indicates that it’s not particularly interested in the company–and there’s a good chance it will get sold or spun off. The new addition to the FAQ makes it seem as though Google is moving in that direction. It makes sense that the president of Performics would try to control the rumors until it’s ready to make an official announcement.

So will you be able to hire Google to do your SEO? I don’t believe so. But the DoubleClick deal isn’t quite finalized yet–even that could take an unexpected turn. Performics is doing what any smart company would do: keeping up a strong front while its fate is uncertain. Who knows? It just may land on its feet.

Bryan Azorsky from Search Engine Radio interviews Michael Stebbins the VP of Marketing of ClickTracks and they discuss Statistics, Analytics and Click Fraud.

I posted a number of Web Analytics Training Videos done by John Marshall from ClickTracks on my blog last week. So when I found these interviews Bryan did with Michael I thought it was a good excuse for me to give more links to ClickTracks.

Here are the interviews (requires Windows Media Player):

• Website Statistics Part 1 — 12:59
• Website Statistics Part 2 — 13:59
• 7 Web Analytic Sins — 14:58
• Click Fraud — 12:01

SEO company has been looking into Web Analytics for its own site and also to offer to its clients. ClickTracks Pro is a very attractive product and I have been considering the Agencies Program that provides companies with a license for 20 web sites for $3495 with a yearly support contact of $699.

While ClickTracks has a number of Flash Tutorials, Online Manuals that can be accessed any place any time, Live Webinars, and also provides two free hours of consulting included with the Agencies Program, the ClickTrack Analytics Certified Professional program looks very attractive. The Analytics Certified program provides you with 8 hours of one on one training and a certification exam for $1995.

If you opt for the Agency Bundle you get the Agencies Program product ($3495 and yearly $699), the training and certification ($1995) and the Bronze JumpStart ($995) for $5995 which is a saving of $1189. Quite a bit of coin but I am seriously considering going for it.

Google announced on the 14th of April that it has acquired ad software giant DoubleClick for $3.1 billion cash. Google claims that this merger will benefit both advertisers and users. The search community, however, isn’t so sure.

One interesting development is that DoubleClick owns a subsidiary SEO/SEM firm, Performics. Performics does affilliate, SEO, and natural search engine marketing. Now that Google owns it, it’ll be one of the most “natural” SEO’s out there.

It’s not clear what it will do with Performics at this point, but Google says it’s keeping it. Andy Beal suggests it’s a bid to take over the SEO industry. Danny Sullivan says in his comments to this Search Engine Journal article that he thinks Google will have to sell. Google’s ownership of Performics raises too many unfair competition issues.

It’s true the interests of the user, as defined by Google, can sometimes conflict with the interests of the client. The merger raises lots of questions: how would Google balance these two competing interests? Will Performics become the only Google-affiliated SEO firm? And how will that affect the industry?

But Performics isn’t the only issue here. There are also some antitrust and privacy concerns.

Among the first to object to the deal were Microsoft and AT&T, both of which have been anti-trust targets in the past. Both companies are concerned that Google already controls the paid search and contextual ad market, and that the DoubleClick merger will put the competition at a serious disadvantage in the display advertising arena as well.

Time Warner, which owns AOL and Yahoo, are joining Microsoft in calling for closer scrutiny of this deal by antitrust regulators.

Privacy advocates are also raising concerns about the deal. DoubleClick sells DART, software that tracks users’ Internet surfing behavior. Companies use that information to target their ad campaigns. It also offers an ad exchange that connects advertisers with publishers.

Google claims that DoubleClick’s powerful tracking software will help it make its own advertising more relevant and less obtrusive to users, and says it will protect consumer privacy. But the scary thing isn’t what Google says it will do, but what it’s capable of doing.

DoubleClick’s software patents give it the ability to closely track data about where individual users go online, and use that data to target the online ads the users see. Google already collects information every time someone uses the search engine, including the search query and the user’s IP address. DoubleClick’s software will make it extremely easy for Google to keep profiles on individual users’ interests and search habits without their knowledge.

So far, the deal between Google and DoubleClick isn’t 100% solid. Competitors may still file formal objections on antitrust grounds, and it’s likely that regulators will need to take a closer look. It’ll be interesting to see how this works out in the next few weeks.

Matt Cutts created a firestorm recently by announcing in his blog that there’s now a way people can report websites that seem to be using paid links.

You can do this using either an authenticated or an unauthenticated form through Google’s webmaster console. You need to log in to access the authenticated form, but Matt says they are given more weight.

Link buying is pretty common. The list of places to buy links is endless: from text link ads and brokers like TextLinkBrokers or Text Link Ads to link auctions on Ebay and LinkAdage, to sites like ReviewMe, PayPerPost and Blogsvertise, where you can buy links on blog posts. Link buying is easy and widespread — and it looks like Google is planning on building the devaluing of bought links into the ranking algorithm.

This particular blog entry of Matt’s attracted almost five hundred responses. Chief among webmasters’ concerns was how to define a “paid” link. If you do a friend a favor by linking to their site, is that the same as a link to a client or an all-out link sell? How can third-party observers who might be considering reporting you to the link police tell the difference?

Another big concern is dishonest link reporting. People are worried that their competitors might follow their links back to a site with a higher PR ranking than theirs, assume they paid for the link, and make a report to hurt their business.
Shady competitors might also try to buy Text Link Ads for their competition and then denounce them to Google.

The bottom line? The most direct benefit to anyone pointing out a paid link to Google is to hurt a competitor’s business. Chances are, many people who take the time to do this won’t have pure motives.

Andy Beal raises a good point: What business does Google have in forcing webmasters to disclose their business relationships in a certain way?

And does “full disclosure” really benefit the user that much? Eric Ward brought up a good point in the comments on Matt’s blog “I can envision scenarios where the searcher’s experience was in fact better because of some type of ‘compensated’ link strategy performed by the sites appearing in the results.” As long as a link is useful, do users care whether they’re paid?

There’s really nothing wrong with paid links from a ethical standpoint . Buying a link is no different than buying another type of advertising, like a banner ad or a television commercial. A lot of people feel that Google has no right to tell them where they can and can’t spend their advertising dollars.

While Google insists it’s all about keeping SEO’s from manipulating organic results to suit their own ends, the SEO’s are nervous that this is a sign of Google’s plan to dominate all advertising online.

A lot of people are accusing Google of being hypocritical because the more Google makes it difficult for webmasters to benefit from buying and selling other links, the more money they’ll spend on AdWords, right?

Most link buying is not for the click though traffic. By and large, they’re buying links for ranking juice or Pagerank — a system Google set up itself. And if Google’s really planning on cracking down on paid links, what about web directories. Just about all directories have degenerated into link sells, even if people tend not to admit it: you submit your site to a directory for the same reasons you’d buy a link, only they say you are paying for the review. What’s the difference?

The big question, of course, is what Google is planning on doing with the reported sites. Matt stated in his blog that the information people send will only be used to tweak the algorithms to better tell paid from nonpaid links. Google wants to build into the algorithm the ability to distinguish paid from nonpaid links so they can turn off the link juice from the paid link. They claim they don’t want the people with the money ranking better than people with good content.

There’s a chance that people are making a mountain out of a molehill. That may turn out to be true, but as I’ve said before: what’s making people nervous isn’t what Google says it will do; it’s what it’s capable of doing.

SES New York April 13 Agenda

Coverage for Friday’s sessions:

Linking Strategies
Bruce Clay Blog: Linking Strategies
SE Roundtable: Linking Strategies

Women of SEO Luncheon
WebProNews: SEO Women Lunch

Usability & SEO: Two Wins for the Price of One
SE Roundtable: Usability & SEO: Two Wins for the Price of One

Link Baiting & Viral Search Success
Bruce Clay Blog: Link Baiting & Viral Success
SE Roundtable: Link Baiting & Viral Search Success
Small Business SEM: Linkbaiting & Viral Success

SEM For Non-Profits & Charities
SE Roundtable: SEM For Non-Profits & Charities
DMNews: Nonprofits Can Gain From Search
New Media Age: Charities Must Think Niche for PPC Campaigns

CSS, AJAX, Web 2.0 & Search Engines
Bruce Clay Blog: CSS, AJAX, Web 2.0 & Search Engines
SE Roundtable: CSS, AJAX, Web 2.0 & Search Engines

SEM Agencies: Working With Ad Agencies
SE Roundtable: SEM Agencies: Working With Ad Agencies

John Marshall is the CEO of ClickTracks a Web analytics software that is almost a house hold name among highend marketers.

I have been looking at the Pro version of the software for this site. They have lots of good information over at their site. John has done a series of 10 information videos that are a good listen.

I was visiting the sites of some of ClickTracks Partners here in Canada and I found a blog post with a number of informative video interviews Ross Dunn did with John Marshall at the NY SES this week.

Lee Odden did a video interview of John Marshall at Pubcon 2006. It’s just a plug for Pubcon as Lee didn’t ask any pointed questions but I put it up any way.

Online Video Series: John Marshall — On ClickTracks.com

• Why Analyze? — 2:37
• Intro to Web Analytics — 2:30
• Data Collection — 3:21
• Data Accuracy — 2:58
• Affecting Change with Analytics — 2:43
• Segmentation — 2:29
• Cookies — 3:14
• Search Engine Optimization — 2:08
• Are Your Campaigns Effective? — 2:50
• A/B Splits — 3:43

Ross Dunn interviews John Marshall of ClickTracks — SES NY 2007

• What is it about ClickTracks that has made it so successful? — 1:50
• How does ClickTracks compare to Omniture and WebTrends? — 1:25
• At what threshold should a client consider a program like Omniture over ClickTracks? — 1:51
• Where do you think ClickTracks will be 5 years from now? — 2:00
• What is the software BidHero that ClickTracks offers and how can it help with PPC management? — 1:28
• What is ClickTracks working on for upcoming updates? — 2:12

Lee Odden interviews John Marshall of ClickTracks — Pubcon 2006

• John Marshall at Pubcon — 1:14