Online Marketing Blog

One of the key components of the presentation I gave this morning at the Las Vegas Pubcon conference presented the idea of press release optimization and social media news releases in the context of push and pull. But before that, it’s important to understand the market opportunity with news search.

According to a report released by comScore, half of all internet users visited news sites in June 2006. Of the most popular news web sites, Yahoo News is #1 surpassing CNN, MSNBC and AOL News.

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Wow, what a party! Yahoo had a very private, invite-only party last night at the Palms Towers in the Playboy suite.

Thank you to Yahoo PR for letting me bring Karen and Jolina from the TopRank team. This was their first conference and Karen’s fist time in Las Vegas. There were only 100 or so people invited to this party from a conference of several thousand, so it made quite an impression.

The Playboy Suite was quite a place. Here are a few photos:

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One vendor you’re sure to see at virtually every SES and Pubcon conference is web analytics company, ClickTracks. I had the pleasure of speaking at a few DMA conferences at the same time as ClickTracks founder John Marshall and found him to be one of the most enthusiastic evangelists for web analytics in the industry. On top of that he’s really a very good guy.

John and his VP of Marketing, Michael Stebbins took out a few ClickTracks’ freinds for dinner on Tuesday night and it proved to be some of the best conversation. I cannot emphasize enough, the importance of networking after the daytime sessions are over.

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I was very torn between attending this session and Big SEO, but I got a bit of both. Here’s the official session description:

“Today’s search landscape is more diverse than ever. There are hundreds of new social bookmarking, community tagging, feed search and news search sites and systems emerging. This panel has representatives from some of the top social and feed search engines on the web today. These expert panelists will look at the top issues they are currently facing, as well as new options they can offer webmasters who are looking to get their sites listed.”

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The WebmasterWorld Pubcon conference kicked off today with a short introduction to the conference by Brett Tabke and an opening keynote by Guy Kawasaki.

Apparently Guy really wants links as he sandwiched his very thoughtful and humorous presentation with requests for links so he can boost his Technorati ranking. Apparently he’s been hovering at around 46 and wants to hit the top ten.
He started off describing his backround working with Apple and Steve Jobs and very enthusiastic slant towards all things Mac. HIs recent book, Art of the Start is a best seller and serves as an interesting lead-in to his presentation, “The art of innovation”.

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After what seemed like a very long flight from Minneapolis to Las Vegas, Jolina, Karen and I have finally settled in.

I bumped into Jeremy Schoemaker when getting off the plane - I had not met him in person before and he seemed like a nice fellow.  On the way to the ground transport and not paying attention to where I was going exactly, we ended up in the limo area seeing Jeremy again. A towncar seemed like a pretty good idea considering the notoriously long waits for taxis here in Vegas.

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Our public relations firm consistently uses the PRWeb Podcast service for our clients, but I’ve not taken advantage of the service very often for our own PR efforts with TopRank.

Yesterday for the second time ever, I personally used PRWeb’s Podcast service that’s available when you select a $200 or higher option for press release distribution. As with the first time, I was totally impressed.

The process is pretty simple. You order a press release to be distributed and pick the $200 level. As you go through the process of enabling or activating the various options for the release, you’ll have the option of scheduling a PRWeb Podcast. Pick a date and time that works for you and you’ll get an email with the phone number and access code.

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Next week is the biggest, baddest WebmasterWorld Pubcon ever and I am really looking forward to it. This time around I will be speaking on two panels and will be bringing two of our account managers, Karen Sams and Jolina Pettice. This will be the first Pubcon, or search marketing conference for that matter, for both of them.

I am really interested in meeting people that work in the search marketing field whether they are SEOs, webmasters or search engine employees. I’ve removed my photo from the header in this blog but you can see what I look like below. Feel free to say hello!

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Spotlight on Search - Interview with Google’s Adam Lasnik

One of the fun things about being involved with the search marketing industry is getting to meet really bright and interesting people. Whether they are long time SEO gurus, CEO’s of fast growing corporations or employees of the major search engines, this industry rarely disappoints with its variety of perspectives.

With the majority of search market share, most webmasters pay a significant amount of attention to Google. Google has done an increasingly good job of interacting with the webmaster community through the efforts of Matt Cutts and Vanessa Fox as well as Adam Lasnik. After having the chance to talk to Adam, I thought he and his job sounded pretty interesting and he agreed to do a short interview.

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Last week was quite a whirlwind with 3 presentations at DMA06 in San Francisco and then immediatley to Boston for 2 presentations to speak at a private conference being held by a client. We are doing a LOT more of that kind of speaking/consulting. Next up:

Nov 2nd: Visi Data Center 2.0, St. Paul
“The Truth about Search Engine Optimization” - Visi, the largest ISP in Minnesota, is holding an event to launch their new data center with St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman attending. During this event there will be presentations of interest to business and web site owners including my presentation on SEO.

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WebmasterRadio.FM man of many talents, Daron Babin, gave a little video interview at DMA 06.

Be sure to check out WebmasterRadio.FM for live interviews and the best Internet radio shows on search marketing.

I believe their next stop will be WebmasterWorld’s Pubcon conference in Las Vegas Nov 14-17, which will be one hell of an event. There will be four keynote presentations including John Battelle, Danny Sullivan, Guy Kawasaki and Jon S. von Tetzchner, the fellow behind the Opera browser.

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Andy Beal notes the announcement that Danny Sullivan will be doing a keynote presentation at Pubcon in Vegas. That makes 4 keynote presentations:  Guy Kawasaki, Jon S. von Tetzchner of Opera, John Battelle and Danny. Wow, that will be some conference!

Here’s Brett’s interview with Danny posted today.

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