Online Marketing Blog

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.

I met Melanie Mitchell at last year’s Pubcon and was amazed at what a job being a Vice President of SEO/SEM at a company like AOL must be. The insights she shared in a keynote presentation at the WebGuild’s Searchnomics conference were impressive so I was fortnuate to get a few minutes of her time to do a short video interview on what she does for AOL and what some of her challenges and accomplishments have been.

Be sure to check out the TopRank SEO video channel on YouTube for interviews from Pubcon and many other search marketing event.

As the Global SEO Program Manager/Diva for one of the largest companies in the world, Tanya Vaughan from HP has a tremendous amount of responsibility and knowledge about enterprise SEO. We caught up with Tanya after the Enterprise Search Engine Optimization panel at Pubcon in Las Vegas to ask about her role at HP and to elaborate on a topic from the session, “progressive enhancement”, and what it means for SEO.

Be sure to check out the TopRank channel on YouTube for more SEO interviews.

Known by many as either “Mr. Social Media” or by friends as “Princess”, Neil Patel’s reputation for experimenting and developing new and cutting edge internet marketing tactics is known throughout the industry. At WebmasterWorl’s Pubcon conference in Las Vegas, we caught up with Neil to ask about what his company ACS does for clients as well as his latest social media manipulation - oops, I mean marketing tactics and experimenting.

Be sure to check out the TopRank channel on YouTube for more SEO Interview Videos.

With 10 years under its belt, LED Digest is famous with long time SEOs for providing an exceptionally productive platform for sharing ideas, tactics and insights about search marketing. The digest would not have it’s luster without the formidable moderating skills of Adam Audette and we had the chance to finally meet Adam in person at Pubcon in Las Vegas.

In this short video interview, Adam describes how LED Digest was started as well as a tidbit about Universal search.

Be sure to check out the TopRank channel on YouTube for more SEO interviews.

Spotlight on Search: Interview

What we have for you today is a double scoop, double feature and two times our regular interview spunk involving Kevin Ryan, Global Content Director for Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch and Kevin Heisler, Executive Editor of Search Engine Watch. I’ll have to say, there are a few gems in this one, so read on:

(Heisler photo credit, Christine Churchill)

Let’s cut to the chase on SES Chicago and Pubcon happening at the same time this year. I am not sure most people realize it was not intended to happen that way. Do you anticipate there being much of an effect on attendance? How different are the audiences these two events are attempting to attract?

According to ComScore, more than $9.3 billion has been spent online during the season-to-date, marking a 17-percent gain versus the corresponding days last year. Online retail spending was strong on both Thanksgiving Day (up 29 percent to $272 million) and “Black Friday” (up 22 percent to $531 million), outpacing the season-to-date growth rate.

With all that holiday spending online, ecommerce web sites had better make sure their landing pages are lean, mean converting machines. That’s why it may make sense to attend an upcoming teleseminar from Marketing Sherpa and Marketo (a M&O client) on  Wednesday, December 12, 2007, 2-3pm Eastern, 11-12pm Pacific “New Research: Practical Tips on How to Lift Conversion Response” on landing page best practices. The event is free and you can sign up here.

With our BIGLIST of 400+ SEO blogs, it’s a great resource, but can be a bit overwhelming. There’s simply too much to monitor. That’s why I tend to favor a small number of news aggregators and sites via RSS or on the web. Here are a few of those tools:

The Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago is coming up in just a little over a month and I was given the awesome opportunity to participate in a call with Seth Godin and Kevin Ryan of Incisive Media yesterday where Seth discussed in his new book, Meatball Sundae.

The hot potato in social media this week is the OpenSocial web standards initiative (see screenshots here) promoted by Google involving numerous social applications, platforms and partners including: Ning, LinkedIn, Friendster, Oracle, Plaxo, Orkut, Salesforce, iLike, and Slide. Reported first on TechCrunch, “OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks”. That information includes: profiles, friends and activities.

Spotlight on Search Interview with Danny Sullivan of Third Door Media and Neil Patel of Advantage Consulting Services

Next week the next of the Search Marketing Expo (SMX) conference series kicks off in New York: SMX Social Media. Developed by search engine industry legend Danny Sullivan and social media guru Neil Patel, the agenda for this event mixes strategic direction with plenty of practical advice sessions ranging from social news to social bookmarking to social networking with a double dose of Wikipedia on day two.