Online Marketing Blog

We are now back to our regular schedule of Friday updates to TopRank’s BIGLIST of SEO blogs. Not to be confused with qwerty’s “The Kind of Smallish List of Sort of Search Marketing Blogs“.

• Lorna Li Green 2.0 - Black is back in this blog design and I think it works. Lorna Li is a MBA grad with a passion for SEO, PPC and SMO as well as for environmental awareness and sustainability with blog posts reflecting both interest areas.
• Apple Pie & Custard - UK based Kelvin Newman, Eloi Casali and Damon Lightley from Site Visibility blog personal and professional insights into SEM, social media and PPC.

In the past I’ve written about blogger relations offering tips on how marketers or PR professionals ought to present their story ideas to bloggers. Pitching bloggers and print journalists are somewhat similar, but in the end, they can be very different things.

Here are a few “what you should not do” tips based on the 3-5 pitches per day we get at Online Marketing Blog:

• It should go without saying not to pitch irrelevant stories, but all those PR interns out there hacking away make it so. Please don’t.

Demand for talented search marketers is high and the number of educational opportunities has increased proportionately. We have a reader poll this week to get an idea of our reader’s conference involvement. See below.

Some prefer a structured training program like SEMPO Institute, DMA SEM Certification or Bruce Clay’s training program. Others prefer to compliment those programs or augment on the job training with industry seminars such as Search Engine Strategies and ClickZ Events, WebmasterWorld Pubcon, SMX, Search Insider Summit and the variety of vertical, regional and industry specific conferences that are now including search marketing in their programming.

After a jam packed week at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose last week, there was still time to discover a few new blogs for the BIGLIST of SEO blogs.

• Kelsey Group Blog - For all things related to local search marketing and online yellow pages, this blog is an excellent resource on industry news and observations from the team at Kelsey Group.
• Amplify Interactive Blog - Ben Lloyd, Christian Bullock and Kristin Wall write about fundamental search marketing tips, SEO, PPC as well as industry events.

I would have to say SES San Jose 2007 turned out to be a pretty good conference. With a HUGE thanks to the TopRank Blogging Team (LtoR: Dana Larson, Melinda Cayetano, Thomas McMahon and Mike Yanke), we were able to cover 26 sessions, publish nearly 500 photos and 7 video interviews.

Besides coverage of the conference sessions, there were also the after conference “networking” events, ie parties including: SES Dinner at Hanoke Gardens, Google Dance, Women in Search Luncheon, Yahoo Book Party and of course, the infamous Search Bash.
Conferences are a great way to make new friends, continue existing friendships and further your knowledge in a fast paced, ever-changing industry. It’s those personal connections that can speed up knowledge transfer and the acquisition of truly productive insight.

Even though she’s moved on from Google to Zillow, Vanessa Fox still carries quite a bit of passion for her creation, Google Webmaster Tools which was renamed from Google sitemaps about a year ago. She was even spotted at the Google Dance giving advice to SES attendees at the Google Webmaster Tools product demo table.

Many webmasters and beginning search marketers could benefit a great deal from the features offered by Google Webmaster Tools so I asked Vanessa if she’d do a short video with me to provide a few tips.

For more info on Google Webmaster Central visit the blog.

Another great day is how I’d characterize day three of the San Jose Search Engine Strategies conference. There were several announcements by search engines this week and I think one that was particularly interesting was Yahoo’s updates to Site Explorer with “Dynamic URL rewriting” and also the new Executive Editor assignment over at Search Engine Watch.

Here are the posts from the TopRank Blogging team on day three of SES San Jose:

• Search Bash 2007
• Yahoo Book Party - Mona Elesseily
• Search Engine QA On Links
• The SEO Reputation Problem
• In House Big SEO

WebmasterRadio.FM and their sponsors did not disappoint with the right of passage for new SES San Jose attendees known as “Search Bash“. Hula hoops, Jersey Girls, Marilyn Monroe, Sammy Davis, Dean Martin, Sumo wrestling, go go girls and an open bar all night. Tell me that’s not a formula for an evening you’ll likely not remember but really wish you could!

And now for a few photos:

Brandy and Daron Babin

Vivid Nightclub

Chris and Danielle Winfield

Ken Jurina and Mike McDonald

Sumo Search Bash Style

Dave Naylor and David Brown

After a long day of sessions on day three of Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, some attendees mosied on over to the Yahoo Panama Book party for Mona Elesseily of Page Zero. It was great to see the support for her new report, “Mastering Panama - A special report on Yahoo!’s new search marketing platform”.

While I haven’t had a chance to do a full review of the book since last night, I have paged through it and it appears to be pretty comprehensive and very easy to read with plenty of ordered lists, “Action Items” and “Helpful Hints”. You can get your copy here.

Day 3 at SES San Jose found me assigned to cover the session “Link Baiting & Viral Search Success.”

Those who’ve read my previous posts should find it as no surprise that my level of excitement for this session superseded any residual aches and pains left over from last night’s “decadence based in relevance” superbash Google Dance.

(Personal Note: None of the stories you’ve heard regarding the TopRank team at this event are accurate. Except the one about how we met up with AC/DC’s tour bus afterwords and partied with them all night - that one’s true**)

In this session on Day 3 of SES San Jose 2007, there were no presentations. The floor was open to all questions anyone had on links and link building and how they affect PageRank and their importance in organic SEO. There were many questions asked, and even more great answers from the panel consisting of Mike Grehan (”My name is Mike Grehan, and I do links.”), Debra O’Neil-Mastaler (Link Building Chick), Jim Boykin and Greg Boser (”The White Hat Link Builder”), with Danny Sullivan moderating. Below, I thought I’d highlight the some of the questions and answers I thought were most interesting.

In our continuing coverage of the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, we’re shooting periodic video interviews both in the speaker ready room and a few on the exhibit floor.

In this interview Steven Marder of Eurekster talks about how their Swicki product works both for online publishers to attract and monetize traffic as well as serve as a useful web site marketing tool for SEO efforts.