Online Marketing Blog

A bit of a short week this week and I’ve come across a nice collection of search marketing blogs as well as one very good journalist blog. Enjoy!

Optimize and Prophesize - SEM goodness from Jonathan Mendez. I bet as many times as I’ve greeted Jonathan with “hey man” and “what’s up guy?”, he probably thought I didn’t know his name.

SEO Theory - Michael Martinez. How in the world did it take me this long to find Michael’s blog? Michael (used to write) for SEOmoz, but there’s plenty of good SEO advice here too.

Loren Baker over at Search Engine Journal has published the final lists of nominees for the 2006 Search Blog Awards. You can preview the lists at Search Engine Journal and you can vote here. (Hopefully for TopRank!)
Categories include:

SEO Blog of the Year
Search News Blog
Best Search Marketing / Contextual Ad Blog
Best Link Building Blog
Best Search Agency Resource Blog
Best Search Engine Blogger of 2006
Best Social Media Optimization Blog
Best Black Hat SEO Blogs
Best Local Search Blog
Best Affiliate Marketing Blog
Best Web 2.0 Blog

More aggressive SMO marketers often talk about being careful not to get user accounts banned on digg. But what about the domain name? Banning user accounts has to do with the actions of the user. That is, behaviors and actions the user can control.

However, a domain name brings into other considerations. For example, whether or not influential members of the digg community like or don’t like a certain site or topic, regardless of what the mass of digg users respond to in the form of story submissions and votes. The site or blog owner has little control over whether other people submit stories and/or vote on them, bury them or report them as spam. Even if they’re not.

When you create a new site design, you should always remember a few key points. If you don’t, not only is it bad for search engines, but also visitors.

1. Consider keeping the same file naming structure so that it will be easier for spiders to re-crawl the new site and peoples bookmarks don’t return 404 error pages.
2. 301 Redirect all old or changed URLs to the new corresponding page.
3. Create 404 error pages so that when errors occur, visitors get a nice message with the site’s look and feel.

Photo thanks to webmoxy
Internet marketing guru Jake Baillie has announced that he will be leaving TrueLocal to start a new internet fund and small business incubator:

I’m both pleased and saddened to announce my departure from TrueLocal to you. Last week the opportunity to do something that I’ve always wanted to do was presented to me - manage a small internet fund that incubates and provides funding to seed-stage new media and technology companies.

On January 1, myself and several employees from TrueLocal will be forming STN Labs, which will do exactly that.

Front door view

I am very happy to say that thanks to the hard work of my partner, Susan Misukanis, TopRank now has a new address on beautiful Lake Minnetonka, just west of Minneapolis. We’ve been looking for a new office space for nearly a year to accommodate our growth and unique style and finally found it on Shoreline Drive in Spring Park.

Lake view from inside

Speaking of growth, I’d like to welcome William Arnovich, public relations specialist and Mike Yanke, assistant account manager to the Misukanis Odden - TopRank team!

Under construction

In yesterday’s interview with Andy Beal, I made reference to comments in a DM News article that cited SEO as on the way out and that SEO is “simple”, positioning PPC as “better” etc. Andy’s response, which I think was not entirely without a sense of humor, invited an interesting response from Richard Ball.

You don’t have to look far to find commentary about PPC vs SEO, some good humor and lively debate.

Spotlight on Search: Interview with Andy Beal

I’ve known Andy Beal via blogging and search marketing conferences for a while now and had the privilege of speaking with him on a SEO Blogger and Reporter panel at the last WebmasterWorld Pubcon in Las Vegas.

While I had great respect for Andy’s accomplishments at building search marketing companies and developing top notch blogs, his performance during the panel was genuinely impressive. His grasp of the big picture and business aspects of search marketing were/are very insightful. My public relations firm has even hired Andy for some consulting on reputation management and I am happy to recommend him.

Spotlight on Search: Interview with John Slade of Yahoo!

There has been quite a bit of buzz on the paid search marketing front with the launch of the new Yahoo! Search Advertising platform aka “Panama”. At the WebmasterWorld Pubcon conference in Las Vegas, Yahoo! announced the launch during a sponsored lunch. Dan Zarrella did a good a review of that session here.

You may have noticed some tagging going on around the blogosphere today. Not the SMO kind of tagging but the “tag you’re it” kind of tagging. Marshall Sponder over at Web Metrics Guru got me yesterday, but I just noticed this afternoon.

Jeff Pulver started things off with this Holiday version of Blog Tag and this is the way it works: Once you’re tagged by another blogger, you write five things most people don’t know about you and then “tag” five other bloggers.

Here is this week’s batch of new blogs I’ve added to my SEO and social media blog list. Enjoy!

Joe’s SEM Blog - Joe Williams from the UK shares his wisdom on paid search and search marekting in general.

Search Marketing Standard Blog - So that’s where Garret French is hanging out! SMS also offers one of the few print publications on search marketing.

Chris Hooley ThinkBait - The guy behind DrinkBait has other interesting thoughts and a little drama too. He’s also going to Elite Retreat!

When you size up the search marketing industry, you really have to marvel at all the different information sources, many of them conflicting, and how search marketers are able to stay on top of what’s current and relevant compared to noise and malarkey.

In the course of talking to prospective clients, prospective business partners, attending conferences and events, reading blogs, books, discussion threads, forums, newsletters and industry publications, you can get exposure to an amazing variety of observations about SEO. Many of them are spot-on. Some of them are tales of a mythical nature. A few are just plain bunk.