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:

1. Google Dance V Photos
2. Yahoo CEO Terry Semel interview
3. Matt Cutts on toolbar data
4. Lowdown on press release optimization
5. Gmail for business
6. How to create Google and Yahoo site maps easily
7. Just say no to discount SEO
8. RSS feed button tool
9. Interview with Eric Ward of URLWire
10. Ten creative traffic building ideas

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
• The social bookmark dropdown option after each post

There are a number of finishing touches that are still being worked on, such as adding more static pages of resources, vidoe and tools, but for now this is it.

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.”

The guys behind BOTW are as standup as they come – in any industry. Interested and qualified individuals can sign up online.

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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:

What are some of the most significant insights that came out of last year’s survey?

That’s potentially a very long answer, but for me, there were two things come to mind:

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.

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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.

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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?

Lee, I will probably blog about this more in depth this week on the PRWeb blog. We have been talking with Vocus for well over a year now. The timing was not right until recently for a few reasons. First, I felt that I had a lot left to accomplish (read try) with PRWeb before I handed the reigns over to someone else. I wanted to do these things on my own to see if I could execute a few new enhancements on my own dime and vision. In the last year alone we have really changed the practice of PR.

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.

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