Online Marketing Blog

Sometimes a Monday blog post deserves a good collection of links:

• The Fox on viral link building and listening to your audience
• Smackdown on Matt Cutts re: spanking SEO blogs
• Jeff Jarvis @TheGuardian and the social whirl driving the development of search
• eMarketer says B2B’s are buzzing over Marketing 2.0
• Vox on Video: Measuring engagement of user generated video
• SEO Lowdown on the LED: “You’re doing the SEM industry a dis-service by characterizing the level or complexity of SEO work according to the size of a company.”

One of the (if not THE) fastest growing conferences over the past year has been Search Marketing Expo. A real world compliment to the successful Search Engine Land blog, the Sphinn community and Search Marketing Now webinars, the SMX shows have brought both a familiar (Danny and crew) and unique flavor to the search marketing conference circuit.

SMX West is coming up fast on February 26-28, 2008 in Santa Clara, CA and offers:

• 50 different sessions
• 13 different tracks
• 3 different ways to attend (All Access, Networking or Exhibits-Only)

Matt McGee recently reached out to a number of industry bloggers to be involved with a blog content award he’s calling “The SEMMYs“. Even though the SEJ SEM Blog Awards just happened, I thought I could at least be a judge - Matt being a good guy and all. If you read Small Business SEM, you’ll know that Matt picks the best blog posts of the week or so on a regular basis. He’s taken all of those posts from 2007 and categorized them to be voted on. This includes a few good posts from OMB like”Evaluating Client Search Marketing Readiness” in the SEO category.

Updated! See Below:

Search Engine Journal began announcing the winners of it’s 3rd Annual Search Engine Marketing Blog Awards today. Voting covered 19 different categories ranging from best conference coverage to best SEO blog. With that many categories, I’d be surprised if Loren posted them all in one day. It’s great link bait with this post as a testament. TopRank Blog was nominated in 4 categories which have yet to be announced.

It’s Friday and the end of the Holiday bump that seems to make things move slowly. There’s lots to look forward to in 2008 and while getting an early start today checking rmail, feeds, Twitter, Facebook, etc the following links stood out:

Success with social media is very much centered on building profiles and one online marketing channel where profiles have been important long before social media became the latest online marketing poster child is forums. Danielle Winfield brings a nicely illustrated post on this topic, Ins ands Outs of Forum Marketing.

The Internet Marketing Ninjas instructional program including videos and tools conceived by Jim Boykin of We Build Pages, has officially launched. I think a lot of people in the search marketing industry will be wowed by the sheer volume of quality information that’s available. Currently there are a series of 12 videos from the likes of Aaron Wall, Shoemoney, Neil Patel and Jim himself. Plus, most of the famous We Build Pages SEO and link building tools have been taken offline and included in the program along with many of the private WBP tools.

The opportunities in the search marketing industry are as good now as they’ve ever been. With a new year many people working for agencies, just getting out of college or the military will be looking for careers and training that fits their need for a technical yet creative job that also doesn’t stagnate.

To help fulfill the growing demand for training and education in the search marketing industry, SEMPO Insitute has been created to provide structured, peer reviewed educational opportunities. The Institute is led by dean, Terry Plank and Online Marketing Blog is pleased to provide readers with this interview about how SEMPO Institute was created as well as the challenges and opportunities facing the search marketing industry.

Loren Baker’s Search Engine Journal has recently taken nominations for best search marketing blogs in a variety of categories. I am happy to say TopRank’s blog, aka “Online Marketing Blog” has been nominated in 4 of the 19 categories.

Thank you to friends and readers of Online Marketing Blog for nominating us! You can now vote for TopRank’s blog (5 for best!) in the following categories:

At the SIS conference last week there were a number of DoubleClick employees in attendance. In fact, I sat next to Cam Blazer during dinner one night and any speculation or questions about Google and the acquisition approval from the FTC had to be answered with a “We’ll have to see” sort of answer.

Well, now the Google DoubleClick deal is official and the news is lighting up the web.

I for one, would love to get a few questions answered, like “How does it work for a search engine to own an agency that provides PPC and SEO services like DoubleClick Performics?”

With increasing demands in opportunity, budget and training with search marketing, the benefits of networking and advocacy have correspondingly increased. Informal networks are prevalent within the SEO business connected by IM, email, private forums etc.

However, as more formal SEM budgets and cost centers are created within organizations looking to expand their search marketing effectiveness, the platform for harvesting collective wisdom and resources often comes in the form of an Association.

SEMPO and IAB are great examples of national organizations (U.S. based) that have had a significant impact. The eMarketing Association has also been around quite a while.

This announcement might be a bit early, but I think the last Marketing Sherpa Email Summit sold out pretty quickly. This is an event (in Miami February 24th-26th) that’s near and dear to TopRank’s marketing consulting services which are made up of: search, PR and email marketing. Out of those three “legs”, email marketing is by far the most productive in terms of ROI and conversion rates.

A whirlwind conference schedule winds up this year with Mediapost’s Search Insider Summit being held in Park City Utah at the Stein Eriksen Lodge Dec 12-15, 2007.  As part of our media sponsorship duties, I caught up with conference chair, David Berkowitz from 360i and the host/MC, Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro for a quick interview:

Please tell us a little about yourself - a mini bio if you will.