Online Marketing Blog

Our next installment of ongoing ad:tech Chicago 2006 coverage provided by Online Marketing Blog focuses on link building.

This SEO related session was two thirds full, which dispells my earlier suggestion that interest in SEO might be slipping here at ad:tech. What was to be a rounded topic of on-page and off-page optimization turned out to be focused on linking as one of the presenters was not able to attend.

It was good to see different speakers on SEO here at ad:tech, but SES or Pubcon veterans would have balked at some parts of Dan Perry’s presentation as being too basic or not entirely useful. However, this is ad:tech and many aspects of SEO are still a mystery to most attendees. As a result, the information presented by Dan may have been more palatable and provoking of questions as there was a good Q/A session afterwards.

Here is the next installment of Online Marketing Blog coverage of ad:tech Chicago 2006:

With a slight delay, this standing room only session started off with Moderator Henry Copeland of blogads.com introducing the speakers which included: Michael Moore of Nestle Purina Pet Care, Robert Claypoole “Consumer and Professional Relationship Marketing” for Johnson and Johnson Vision Care division, Heather Sefcik of Henkel Consumer Adhesives (Duck Tape) and Brian Bloom of Ligget Stashower, a marketing PR firm that works with the Duck Tape brand.

Heather and Brian Bloom did a tag team presentation with Heather starting things off by offering a quick Duck Tape 101 history. Starting in WWII, Duck Tape today is a household name with a cult like following. Duck Tape has “become cool”.

As part of the ongoing coverage of ad:tech Chicago 2006 Online Marketing Blog is doing for the ad:tech blog, here is the first installment on the sessions about SEO that I was able to attend. Above is a photo of (L to R) Dana Todd, Bruce Clay and Fionn Downhill. Bruce is actually wearing a tie!
While there was no fireplace, there certainly was a good share of chatting in this session on organic search engine optimization. Introductions were handled by Fionn Downhill of Elixir Systems (I love her accent) to a room that was surprisingly 1/2 full. Perhaps search marketing is losing some of its luster with the ad:tech crowd? The need for SEO certainly hasn’t abated as Dana Todd of¬†SiteLab and Bruce Clay of BruceClay.com were able to attest in this mostly Q and A formatted session.

Today marks Technorati’s 3rd birthday and they have come out with a bunch of new updates.

The first thing you’ll notice is an all new design. Less cluttered and much nicer. That was one thing that was really bothering me and I’m glad it’s been updated. Not only that, but you are able to personalize it.

Technorati also has more speedy and accurate results. A quick few searches and it appears to be true. Nice!

Check out the new Technorati and rejoice as you see and use an upgraded blog search engine.

[tags]Technorati[/tags]

Technorati has turned three says Dave Sifry and has rolled out a major update. Below is a screenshot and here’s the rundown from Sifry’s Alerts blog.

Well, here’s the first big announcement during ad:tech Chicago, Drew Ianni was appointed Chair, Programming.

ad:tech Executive Chair Susan Bratton, who oversaw the production of ad:tech Chicago comments: “Drew and I have been friends and colleagues for years, and I‚Äôm proud to announce him as my successor,” said Susan Bratton, CEO of Cendara, Inc. and new ad:tech advisory board Chair Emeritus. “I am excited to see him continue to grow ad:tech as a premium brand.”.

Ianni has a pretty extensive backround reaching back to 1995 with CKS and most recently with Sheridan Square Partners.

Hopefully I will get a chance to meet Drew and get his take on the future of ad:tech and interactive marketing in general.

I am sitting here in my hotel room in Chicago getting things lined up for the ad:tech conference which is to start tommorrow. As I walked through the lobby I waved hi to Bruce Clay who was chatting with Dana Todd, no doubt strategizing their session for tomorrow morning, “Organic SEO Fireside Chat with the Experts”. I am looking forward to the session and will be covering it for the ad:tech blog. Both Bruce and Dana know their stuff to say the least.

Steve Hall encouraged the bloggers covering the conference to take photos, so I brought my trusty, super slim camera for lots of candids. I haven’t used that word, “candids” since working on my high school yearbook. Hopefully the photos from ad:tech will be in focus. Sessions, crowds, tradeshow floor and maybe some after-conference photos are all in store.

• Ask.com just gets cooler and cooler: RSS Smart Answers – Example: Online Marketing Blog
• Matt Cutts on Google “Invalid Clicks” aka Click Fraud case.
• SEOmoz offers a breakdown on pricing for SEO: Basic – $30k. Full meal deal: $120k
• Searcher Behavior Research via Information Research
• Nielsen/Netratings: Google Domination Continues: 49.4% of all searches in June 2006.

Seth Godin takes a pass at flavoring search engine optimization as: passive vs active SEO. There’s nothing horribly bad about what he describes, it’s just not entirely spot-on accurate. There’s nothing really passive about SEO. It’s pretty active and ongoing. He compares passive (aka on-page optimization) with active (aka link building) and does make a good point about not having the same person do both.

In our SEO practice, on-page search engine optimization typically starts with keyword research, web site and competitor analysis and a content creation and optimization strategy. Title tags, meta, page text, anchor text links and overall site link structure as well as technical/code optimization fall into the “on-page” category as well.

The off-page tactics Seth mentions as “active” I think are right on actually:

Barry has posted the quadruple coverage for SES San Jose with Barry, Ben, Chris and I covering quite a few sessions of the conference for those that cannot attend. It’s also a good read if you’ve been to the conference and want to compare notes.

The sessions I’m covering include: Branding & Search, Blog & Feed Search SEO, News Search SEO, Big Site/ Big Brand SEM, Usability & SEO: Two Wins For The Price Of One. You can find more information on all of the sessions at the SES San Jose 2006 page. There’s a thread on the conference at Search Engine Watch forums and of course, the party info.

Award winning SEO blogger Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable and RustyBrick has started a new blog called the “Cartoon Barry Blog“. What will you find there?

• Summarized daily recaps
• Interactive Cartoon Barry, provided by SitePal, will also give short recaps virtually, click the play button here to see an example.
• Personal life things
• Business related things from RustyBrick
• Rants on anything, even search
• And more!

It’s a pretty cool blog especially with the animated SitePal feature that uses Barry’s voice. The design is very slick. In fact, seeing the cool design of the Cartoon Barry blog was the last straw for me in my procrastination over when to update the design of Online Marketing Blog. Thomas is working on putting the finishing touches and hopefully we’ll have it up and running early next week.

On one of my other blogs, I received an interesting email today. The offer was not to exchange links, but they offered to write posts for me, about their topic, and they’d link back to their website.

Now, have to say, it’s an interesting idea and, if it wasn’t so far off topic, I might consider it.

The Email:

I got interested in your blog (blog url) while reading it.

And I have a mutually convenient proposal to you.
Also a good team of talented content writers provide me with high quality unique content.

My offer to you is to write some unique watches and jewelry relate posts for your blog. In your turn you would post two text links to one of my sites posted with article.