Online Marketing Blog

When I shared the design under development for Online Marketing Blog with Todd Malicoat, one suggestion he made was to add a list of the best posts. Todd posted about making a list of “best posts” over on his excellent blog, Stuntdubl as well. Deciding what the best posts are is pretty subjective, so I am going to make a list of the 10 most popular posts based on traffic:

After threatening many, many times to get a new face on Online Marketing Blog, we’ve finally done it. Thanks to Thomas aka TwisterMC for putting up with my many revisions and for developing the cool subscription and bookmarking tools.

Also thank you to those people that I kept bugging for feedback and provided it!  We may not have implemented many of the suggestions received, but all of them were appreciated.

New plug-ins and “social media optimization” features include:

• Smart Search - suggest search results as you type
• Slick foldout RSS subscription options in the right column

Best of the Web, the web’s oldest directory, has launched a new program for volunteer editors in conjunction with their Blog Directory. With other volunteer directories, there is often a problem with over-enthusiastic SEOs trying to stuff their client listings in. Greg Hartnett of BOTW has a response to that:

“Please don‚Äôt see this as an opportunity to stuff your blogs into the directory. First of all, you don‚Äôt have to become an editor to get your blog listed. Just submit it. It‚Äôs free, so you don‚Äôt need to feel compelled to put on some big charade to get your blog listed. Secondly, editors don‚Äôt get special priviliges to stick any blog they want in.”

If you’re on the Marketing Sherpa mailing list, then today you would have received notice of the 3rd Annual Benchmark Search Marketing Survey. Each year Marketing Sherpa conducts the survey to capture insights from search marketers around the globe.

Last year’s survey involved over 3,000 participants, making it likely the largest search marketing survey of its kind, offering spicy tidbits such as: Agency optimized campaigns experienced a 110% increase in traffic compared to in-house optimization campaigns at 38%.

Stefan Tornquist, Director of Research for Marketing Sherpa was able to answer a few questions about this and last year’s survey:

There is an exceptionally interesting meme developing around the idea of social media optimization. It started with Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy Public Relations and his 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO) and this insight:

“The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.”

With contributions by Jeremiah Owyang, “Rules of Social Media Optimization and Cameron Olthuis, “Introduction to Social Media Optimization” who offers this take on SMO:

On Wed night of Search Engine Strategies last week I had the privilege of attending a dinner hosted by Gary Price of Ask.com. Organized by their PR department, Ask was making a specific effort to reach out to bloggers in the search marketing space. Other Ask staff were in attendance as well including Paul Vallez the Director of Ask search advertising, a representative from Bloglines as well as Paul Loeffler and Patrick Crisp from their public relations department.

Bloggers in attendance included: Matt Bailey, Rand Fishkin and his mom Gillian, Chris Pirillo, Andy Beal, Loren Baker, Lee Odden, Jennifer Laycock and our favorite party crasher, Jim Hedger. (links are to photos from the dinner)

Google Analytics is now open to all according to the Google Analytics Blog.

The main Google blog announced that they will be offering free WiFi in Mountain View, CA where Google has its HQ.

And lastly, Google is now offering coupons in a partnership with ValPak to attract more local search activity.

Aaron Wall and Andy Hagans have put up a nice piece of work on the topic of link building. 101 linking tips to be exact.

I was looking for something else on Technorati and noticed a post on SEOMoz ranking 50 blogs in the search space. This was a personal opinion ranking and not something methodical or based on specific criteria. I agree with the blogs listed, just not the order many of them are listed. And that’s fine because Rand and I are different people and have different opinions.

It’s a clever post though, listing popular blogs like that. How many of those bloggers are going to link back to Rand’s post? Most of them I bet. Just like I did above. Rand has his link building through content tactics “down pat”.

If you’ve been in the Internet marketing biz for a while, you’ll recognize the name Larry Chase and his Web Digest for Marketers. I’ve been a subscriber for a very long time and always salivated at being one of the companies/websites profiled in his highly subscribed to email newsletter.

Well guess what? Today Online Marketing Blog was listed in Larry’s “Top 12 Sites for Marketing to Marketers”. Here’s the what he said:

PRWeb is best known for being in the news distribution business. With the acquisition by public relations software firm Vocus last week, PRWeb has bumped up it’s own presence in the news. During the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose last week, I had the opportunity to talk to PRWeb CEO, David McInnis about the Vocus acquisition and what lies ahead for PRWeb.
What prompted the acquisition?

Fortune Magazine posted an interview with Yahoo CEO, Terry Semel today with questions about Yahoo’s mater plan, and Yahoo vs Google: “…just being really good at one thing may not be enough.”

It’s tempting for mainstream media to compare Yahoo and Google but I don’t think most people do. At least not head to head. When I want to search, I do think of Google first. But when I want to use maps, or web based email, or instant messaging I use Yahoo. I also use Flickr a lot, but I don’t necessarily associate it with the Yahoo brand. Yahoo is getting some traction with Answers, but it’s delay with Panama isn’t doing the stock any favors.
Full article.