Online Marketing Blog

Stacy Williams is a long time search marketer in Atlanta and I’ve known her and partner/husband Matt for about 3 years. Stacy is a long time Search Engine Strategies speaker and is equally adept in the SEO and SEM fields. At Search Engine Strategies Chicago, Stacy had a few very interesting things to say about search engines making modifications to campaign creative, match type and ad status without notifying the advertiser.

In this video interview, I asked Stacy to elaborate and she provided three specific examples. I hope someone from the search engines reads this and offers insight into why these things happen.

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I’ve casually known Laura Thieme of BizResearch for about 2 years but for some reason our paths crossed repeatedly at the recent Chicago Search Engine Strategies conference. First it was the in the speaker ready room, then the most excellent Vintage Tub and Bath SES Dinner (yeah Allan!) where I sat across the table from her team members Traci and Jessica, then again during the conference, then the ClickTracks party and finally on the last day of the conference when I asked her to do a short interview.

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I’ve had a standing request for an interview with Bruce Clay for about a year now and we finally decided to just do a short one on video, which works for me and I think it will work for you as well.

Bruce Clay is one of the best known brands in the world of search marketing and if you attend Search Engine Strategies, WebmasterWorld Pubcon or ad:tech conferences, you’re sure to see him and his team on the exhibit hall and/or presenting to attendees. Thousands of people have used his SEO tools and participated in his company’s SEO training programs.

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As a final session, this basically re-assured attendees what they should be doing and what they shouldn’t. Things like target the long tail keywords, not the popular terms to get conversions not just visitors. Leverage vertical communities, speciality communities and directories. Focus on titles and meta information if you don’t have a lot of time to work on optimizing your site. Use synonyms when creating newer content as you never know if someone is searching for used cars or used autos. Be original, don’t duplicate content. Link to authoritative sites. Be aware of your internal linking structure and how other browsers and users see your site. It was a good wrap-up session and great for those that are newer to the industry.

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This was an open discussion session where users submitted their sites to get the Google ad copy critiqued and the landing page looked over for quality and usability. Tips included:

• Keep important information towards the top of the landing page.
• Be detailed and don’t just assume your visitors know your services.
• Simpler the better.
• Put simple URLs in ads.
• Try sentence caps vs small caps.
• Image quality on landing page matters. Make it look good.
• Whitespace is good.
• Bullet points give a great way for users to scan information. Long blocks are bad.

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This session covered things from what a small business owner should be paying attention to, what you shouldn’t, and gave ideas, tips an information for the small business owner. All great tips to consider when trying to compete with the larger companies.

• Stop algorithm chasing and forget about magic formulas like % of keywords on the page.
• Link age is becoming more and more important.
• Click backs becoming more important. Example: If someone clicks on your listing in Google, then returns seconds later to the Google results, it tells the engine that that ranking wasn’t a good match for that person.

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All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Well, maybe that should be Neil and Cameron of Advantage Consulting Services, since they are not strangers to after conference festivities nor are they strangers to some of the most successful social media optimization campaigns being run in the SEO industry. Cameron covers the fun part and Neil talks about the SMO or social media optimization panel he spoke on regarding Wikipedia.

Cameron and Neil write an excellent blog at Pronet Advertising.

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Next up in our series of SEO videos from Search Engine Strategies here in windy and cold Chicago is Joshua Stylman and Peter Hershberg from Reprise Media. In this short interview they talk about the multiple sessions each of them are presenting as well as commentary on the search marketing industry.

Reprise Media also publishes a well-written blog called Search Views.

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Stephan Spencer from Netconcepts traveled to Chicago all the way from New Zealand and shares information about the blog SEO session here at Search Engine Strategies Chicago where he’s presenting on RSS feed optimization. He also talks about his daughter’s success with optimizing her Neopets blog and he offers tips for search engine conference attendees.

Stephan writes for several blogs, most notably, Stephan Spencer’s Scatterings.

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Checking out the expo hall, there are always a few great deals and lots of free iPods to sign up for. I skipped most of the iPods this year as I was a afraid of all the follow-up emails and/or sales calls.

However, here is some good swag that I did pick up.

Click the image for layover descriptions.

• Google color changing orb.
• Unica Keychane game.
• Lycos fish stress ball & document clip.
• Netconcepts climbing hook and compass.
• Yellowpages highlighter with built in Post-It flags
• Network Solutions multi-color lightup pen.

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In the tradition established this summer at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, there are more video interviews here in Chicago with interesting people that work in the search marketing industry. I’ve been shooting short videos with my trusty Sony Cybershot which you can see below.

First up is Gord Hotchkiss from Enquiro who discusses a few details of their most recent eyetracking report which compares Google, Yahoo and MSN search results. Online Marketing Blog did a short review of this report in November.

You can find out more about Enquiro here and Gord writes a handy blog over at Out of my Gord.

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At the end of the SES Chicago show WebmasterRadio.fm held a press conference announcing some jaw dropping information about data being analyzed regarding click fraud being used to fund terrorist organizations as well as organized crime.

I shot about 13 min of video with Daron Babin and Jim Hedger speaking most of the time along with Dave Naylor, Mikkel deMib Svendsen and Jeremy Shoemaker chiming in. As with the other videos I’ve shot, I will upload when I have a better internet connection.

These are very serious topics and statements being made and Daron mentioned that log data provided by AIT web hosting is still being analyzed.

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