Online Marketing Blog

Karen Sams over at our PR firm, Misukanis & Odden does a nice job explaining the value and benefits of incorporating search engine optimization with public relations in a short PR and SEO video case study.

You hear a lot of buzz about PR and SEO in articles, on forums, conferences, etc with few practical examples. Of the examples that are shown, they are often repeats of the same example. For some variety and insight, Our team put together a short video with information on one particular client campaign involving search engine optmization and public relations with impressive results.

Last night a PR manager from the New Yorker emailed me about the Terry Semel interview, so I watched it and put up a link to the actual video. I emailed a few SEO related bloggers about it and thought nothing more. (other than the interview being great insight into Yahoo).

While the bloggers I emailed did not mention the video, a few other sites did link to the blog post I put up about it including Digg.com (front page right now) and the Financial Times.

New Yorker writer Ken Auletta interviewed Terry Semel, the chairman and C.E.O. of Yahoo! today, at a breakfast sponsored by the Newhouse School and The New Yorker. Semel covers everything from how Yahoo got into search to what’s in store for the future of search.

More coverage on this over at mediabistro, BuzzMachine and of course, Barry.

For some reason, when I get calls from companies with small SEO projects, I simply draw a blank when trying to think, who locally I should refer them to.

Of course several independant consultants come to mind, but the really good ones are always too busy. I don’t want to refer these projects into a situation where they can’t be helped. There are also a number of local agencies that “also do” SEO, but these projects are likely too small. Or the agencies aren’t very good at SEO.

Members of the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association and the local interactive community in the Twin Cities will be getting the lowdown on web analytics next week. Eric T. Peterson from the Visual Sciences division of web analytics firm, WebSideStory and author of several books on web measurement will be presenting, “Making Your Web Analytics Work. Hard”.

From the press release:

‚ÄúFew organizations fully realize the potential of their investment in web analytics technology,‚Äù said Peterson. ‚ÄúWeb analytics applications provide truly actionable data that can be used to positively impact an organization‚Äôs bottom-line but companies need to treat web analytics as a business process, not simply an ad hoc endeavor. My work at Visual Sciences, and my MIMA presentation, revolves around how companies can treat web analytics as a business process and dramatically improve the return on investment.”

Next week there will be a “must listen” SEO Rockstars and Daily SearchCast show on WebmasterRadio.fm. The show will start out with Todd Friesen (oilman) and Greg Boser (webguerilla) and then cut to a 45 min Danny Sullivan interview with Matt Cutts at the GooglePlex and back to Friesen and Boser. The show airs Tuesday, May 16, 2006 at 7:00 p.m. EST.
If you can’t wait and just need an audio fix of Mr. Cutts, then point your iPod over to Mike Grehan’s recently posted clip of a podcast interview he did with Matt Cutts at the GooglePlex last week. Of course there’s also this podcast interview with Matt Cutts that Chris Pirillo did at Search Engine Strategies NYC.
As long as I’m on the topic of SEO and podcasts, here’s a podcast of the fireside chat on organic seo session with Barbara Coll and Bruce Clay from ad:tech in San Francisco. (via iMediaConnection) I think they do a handy job of sizing up their audience and providing great overview information on organic SEO.

Customers of Trellian’s KeywordDiscovery service received an announcement today:

1. Increased Keyword Database from 26 Billion to 32 Billion
2. New Keyword Importer and Keyword Filter
3. New Thesaurus Search
4. Dutch Keyword Database Release

Additional features that will be included in version 2 beta of Keyword Discovery include:

- New user interface - easier navigation
- KeywordDiscovery v2 Beta (Faster, Bigger and Better)
- Increased speed and search response times
- Advanced import features
- Advanced competitor analysis
- New projects interface

The one session that I was able to blog at the ACCM show this week in Chicago was, “Top Three Search Marketing Opportunities for Merchants” which combined blogs and social media with paid inclusion and shopping search engines.

The session was moderated by Heather Lloyd-Martin, who opened up with: “There’s no secret sauce in search. But there are things that catalog marketers might no know about. There are things they can leverage.”

Heather asked the audience, “How many of you have B2B catalogs?” About a third of the audience raised their hands.

First up was Amanda Watlington of Searching for Profit.

I made it over to the monstrosity, McCormick Place yesterday am and navigated the labyrinth of halls to finally find the search marketing room for ACCM. It was nice to see some familiar faces. The FMI and 4 other food shows were occurring in the bigger part of the McCormick so people were everywhere. Cabs were not.

The 15 Sizzlin Hot Search Marketing Ideas session debuted to a standing room only crowd I’m happy to say. After I don’t know how many back to back sessions, Heather Lloyd-Martin bubbled with enthusiasm and insight as moderator. I don’t know how she does it really. There was literally zero time between sessions.

Spotlight on Search - Interview with David McInnis of PRWeb.

Undoubtedly one of the companies that has had a major impact on the convergence of public relations and search engine optimization is PRWeb. David McInnis and his talented team have created more innovations surrounding press release distribution than any other wire service.

Yahoo advertisers received an email recently announcing up and coming enhancements including instant ads & geotargeting to the program. I know a lot of complaints I hear from clients about Yahoo Search Marketing/Oveture has to do with the length of time it takes for the editorial process. This is a step in the right direction. The addition of geotargeting will also be a nice addition and help local search advertisers.

It looks like even more changes are in store:

I am happy to congratulate our very talented blogmaster and SEO designer, Thomas McMahon for being selected by the Web Marketing Association as a judge for the 2006 WebAwards competition! This is impressive as employees from companies ranging from Disney to Organic to Warner Brothers have participated as judges for this program over the past 10 years.

You can be sure Thomas will bring a very unique perspective to his judging with his deep web design, SEO and blog experience. In fact, there is a new category for blogs this year. Maybe next year they can add a category for search marketing web sites!