(CC) Randy Stewart, blog.stewtopia.com

Vanessa Fox works as Entrepreneur-in-residence with Ignition Partners but is especially well known in the Search Marketing world because of her past work as Google’s search engine strategy spokesperson and creator of Google Webmaster Central. I’ve interviewed Vanessa several times on video in the past here, here, here and podcast here but nothing as substantial as what you’re about to read.

Vanessa has a new book coming out called “Marketing in the Age of Google“, which I’ve had the opportunity to preview and it reminds me of how important it is to draw attention to her exceptional insight. My kudos for the book:

“Finally! A C-level book about smarter search engine marketing.  Marketing in the Age of Google by Vanessa Fox is undoubtedly, the search marketing bible for senior executives looking to maximize business growth through search engine marketing. This is a must read and if you don’t, your competition certainly will.”

In this interview you’ll discover the importance of SEO strategy, dealing with CEOs and social media, search personas, operationalizing Social Media and SEO, thoughts on upcoming search innovations and her favorite search engine (not what you think).

Let’s start off with an elevator bio: 50 words or less? (Not to be confused with the escalator bio, which is much shorter)

I’ve been involved in user experience, product development, and web development since the mid-90s. I was able to draw on all that background when I worked at Google and built Webmaster Central. We realized that we could provide a lot of key information to site owners (in ways such as diagnostic tools and education) to help them see better results from organic search acquisition. Now post-Google, I’m focused on that same goal.

Many companies are approaching social media tactically and making big mistakes. There’s a lot of encouragement for corporate social efforts to start with a strategy first. Do you think the same is true with SEO? Are companies approaching SEO tactically with little consideration of a search strategy?

Oh absolutely. True search strategy is integrated into overall product and business strategy, and too often whoever is responsible for SEO isn’t involved those parts of a company’s planning process. Unfortunately, that means that in some cases, those doing SEO focus on what they can accomplish tactically. Certainly, many tactical elements of SEO decoupled from strategy can improve search acquisition (particularly regarding architecture), but without a strategy, you can only go so far.

For instance, if you’re looking at search acquisition strategically, a large part of your assessment is around what your potential customer base is really looking for and how you can best meet their needs. Where that meeting first happens is often in the search results, but in order to have the potential to show up there, your site needs to provide what it takes to meet those needs, and that often lies beyond the SEO department.

Even with highly technical components, having a strategy can help ensure that you’re tackling the more impactful issues first and that you’re laying groundwork to ensure that any new infrastructure elements are search-friendly from the start. That prevents you from spending all of your time fixing issues that just pop right up again.

How can we get the C-Suite to overcome their fear of change when it comes to the importance search and social media within a marketing strategy?

I think the situation is already starting to change. Many marketing departments already realize that search and social media are important aspects of a comprehensive marketing strategy in today’s online world. The question becomes what to do with that knowledge. Traditionally, marketing has been able to operate well in silos. As long as everyone was working towards the same marketing message and vision, they could build their campaigns separately. But that’s no longer true. Truly effective search and social media strategies are integrated into larger marketing strategies and often that bridge needs to span beyond marketing and into web development as well.

In terms of implementation, it can significantly easier for a marketing department to have an agency build a microsite to support a campaign than to engage directly with the development team, but in terms of effectiveness, it’s more difficult to truly integrate search and social media.

“SEO isn’t voodoo or magic or spam.”

Some key things to consider are:

• The consumer experience – can the consumer easily engage with your brand if each social media site you are active on leads back to a different domain and has different goals? If the consumer is engaging on microsites named for particular campaigns, are they getting positive brand reinforcement or just a positive experience with that particular campaign? Do they have a clear path back to the brand or are you just adding confusion? What happens when the campaign ends? In some cases, building social media engagement via a particular campaign and building a microsite to support these efforts can absolutely be effective. But it’s important to make these decisions as part of a broader, more long-term plan and to understand the complexities.
• How search works – SEO isn’t voodoo or magic or spam. But it does require a firm understanding of both how search engines technically crawl and index pages and how searchers behave.  The company needs a search advocate who either understands it and can help ensure it’s taken into account during every step of the process, or needs to gain that expertise, whether it’s through hiring a consultant or firm an hiring someone in-house.
• Key metrics – Search in particular is very measurable, key is knowing what to measure and what the metrics mean. With web analytics and search data, you are overwhelmed with hundreds of data points. It’s easy to either dismiss them all or to fixate on certain ones that don’t seem to show progress. While some key pieces of data are important for any business, many of the important metrics tend to depend on your business goals and your customer base. Building an effective framework for measurement can alleviate the hesitation some may feel at expanding into these types of marketing efforts.  I still see a lot of powerpoint slides prepared for board meetings that showcase visits to the website as the key metric and that’s almost never the right primary measure.

A lot has changed in search technology and how search results are displayed over the past year or so. Since we’re in the new year, any predications on major changes in the nest 6-12 months?

This is difficult to answer, as we’ve seen a lot of experimentation in the last year and many of the changes will likely be based on the searcher data that results. We’re still watching to see what’s going to happen with Microsoft and Yahoo. If that deal indeed goes through, it’s not clear exactly how that will change things, so a lot is in flux.

For instance, will Yahoo still offer BOSS, which currently powers a number of smaller search engines? I’m not sure that they can without a crawling infrastructure and index of their own.

But certainly we’ll see continued evolution beyond text-based search results. The major search engines have to balance richness against complexity. I find the ability to view search results just from the last week or just from forums, for instance, really helpful, but if those options were front and center, they’d likely confuse many searchers who just want to type into the box and get back an answer.

Of course, the solution Google is skewing towards is personalization. Google will ask for less interaction, but will show you more variety in results based on your online behavior. Microsoft seems to be taking a different tack – they’re also providing more variety (for instance, with categorized search) but are also providing more ways to interact directly within the search results (such as with the Farecast integration).

Please explain the notion of search personas and why they’re important.

Searcher personas and search acquisition workflows are integral to the way I approach search strategy. Before you can start attracting visitors to your web site, you need to know who you are attracting and why.  I always start with asking what the goals of the business and the goals of the web site are. From there, we can work backwards to who the company wants to attract to help them meet those goals, and then dive into the goals of that audience.

With that information, we can build searcher personas, which are similar to typical personas, except that they start with understanding what the audience wants to accomplish and what they are searching for. This leads to a user workflow that starts at least two steps before the user accesses the website. And of course, with search and social media, every page of the site is the home page, so the user workflow assessment evaluates each page to determine if it meets the searcher goal and if it draws the visitor deeper into the site to meet the business goal.

Without this framework, it’s difficult to fully realize the potential of search.

“If a company is serious about building search and social media into their organizations, they need to make a real commitment to building that expertise”

Advice given in some Social Media/SEO sessions at conferences can be quite varied from recommendations to automate duplicate content on bookmarking sites to the importance of listening and engagement. What is it that marketers should be paying attention to when it comes to Social Media and SEO?

That’s a broad topic but one thing marketers should think about is how search and social media can work together. When you’re working on a viral campaign, make sure links are designed in a way to provide SEO benefit (via their structure and anchor text). Realize that with search, social media efforts can have long lasting impact beyond the engagement. If you help someone solve a problem, that discussion may later surface in search results for someone else looking to solve that same issue. I’ve seen companies build pages that expire after 90 days.

Any tips on operationalizing SEO or Social Media in organizations? How can companies move from where they are to making SEO part of processes?

This happens as search and social media become a regular part of the business (product development, marketing, customer support, etc.) and not a separate silo. But if a company is serious about building search and social media into their organizations, they need to make a real commitment to building that expertise (through hiring a consultant, training, hiring someone in-house, or some other way of gaining expertise). I’ve seen so many organizations who felt search was important but implemented it ad hoc based on random advice different people would read online (like this interview! ) So, while it was great that everyone in the company was empowered to drive SEO, one programmer who decide to add nofollow tags on all the footers, and someone in marketing would change all the title tags to be a certain number of characters, and without a comprehensive strategy, and without any barometer of what was a valuable use of time, the company can feel like SEO was a failure for them.

Let’s say someone reads your new book, Marketing in the Age of Google, and they “get it”. What should they do next to take that appreciation for a strategic perspective and start improving their marketing?

In the book, I provide a number of suggestions for getting started. If the company already has an in-house SEO or consultant, then involve them in high-level strategy discussions. How can search data help influence product strategy? How can the technical team build search best practices into their development process? How can marketing better integrate search acquisition?

If search is new to the organization, it’s probably worthwhile to hire someone to help build a strategy that works for the organization: benchmark where things are, flag any big issues, help build in search best practices at the key points of the organization, develop searcher personas and workflows that can be used as templates for future development.

Once search is built into existing processes, ongoing search strategy is much easier and companies can see much better results.

If you were a search engine, which would you be?

It would be the Urban Spoon iPhone app: always traveling and surrounded by delicious food.

Thank you Vanessa!

Find more about Vanessa’s work online at:

• ninebyblue.com – Online marketing strategy
• janeandrobot.com – Search friendly design patterns for web development
• SearchEngineLand.com – Contributing Editor
• Office Hours – Weekly podcast
• @vanessafox – Twitter

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Marketing in the Age of Google: Vanessa Fox Interview | 7 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

In this interview, John talks about getting started, branding, blogging, SEO, outsourcing marketing and tips, getting referrals, specialization and a few of his favorite tools and technologies.

You’re well known, heck you’re famous, for many things related to small business marketing. Tell us about yourself. How did you get started blogging and where did the idea for Duct Tape Marketing begin?

I’ve owned my small business for over 20 years and have always been into marketing, but about six years ago discovered I loved working with small business, but man was it hard to make a living doing it the traditional way. So, I decided to turn marketing into a product and call it Duct Tape Marketing because it seemed like the perfect metaphor for the small business reality.

There are a significant number of small businesses started each month, meaning a tremendous marketing opportunity both for and to those new businesses. What advice do you have for small businesses thinking about outsourcing their marketing?

It’s a great idea to delegate but don’t abdicate. You’re got to know more about your ideal customer and more about what makes what you have to offer valuable than anyone ever will – your job is to help a marketing coach or consultant understand what makes your business tick and let them leverage that.

We are no doubt experiencing some uncertain economic times and marketing is often the first to go when budgets get cut. What advice do you have for marketing agencies that want to reach small business marketplace in this kind of environment?

Buy more market share now but narrowing your focus. Get really good, right now, at serving the narrowest possible market like nobody ever dreamed of.

You’ve written a lot about the importance of referrals within business, a tactic that I think, is often overlooked by many online marketers. Can you offer a few of your best tips for getting referrals from clients?

Ask. I know, brilliant, but the fact is nobody does it systematically. The best thing you can do is build the expectation of a referral into your lead conversion process. In other words, tell a  prospect that you know they are going to be so thrilled with what you have promised to do that, if in fact, they are thrilled, they agree to introduce you to two other who need this type of solution – sounds too simple, but works every time.

Search engine optimization can play such a huge role in a small businesses marketing plan, but it’s not right for every business. What are your thoughts on small businesses relying on SEO?  Any tips on outsourcing SEO or keeping it in-house?

SEO for the small business is properly formatted HTML, good updated content and relevant links back – a lot of SEO folks can help you do that, but a lot of small business owners can do that part DIY. I think the trick is to understand your objectives – what role does your web presence play?  Are you in highly competitive turf where it’s cut throat to get search traffic? If you outsource anything learn enough about it to be a good buyer.

Over the past year or two there’s been a lot of buzz over Social Media as a marketing channel. Yet most businesses still don’t really know what it means for reaching new and existing customers. What’s your advice for companies just starting to make sense of social media? What are the best social networks, media sharing sites and web 2.0 sites for small business?

I always say start with a blog because I think it’s the front door to social media and can do a lot of really positive things for most small businesses. After that I would say get involved in the local and social search sites that are indexing businesses and allow user to rate and recommend local businesses. I think that’s a hot space and will get bigger.

You’ve done an amazing job of branding yourself and Duct Tape Marketing. How important is branding to a small business. Are small business branding efforts wasted in lieu of direct marketing and sales?

All businesses have a brand. A brand is simply the collective impression of your business by folks who have heard of you. So, the question is, was the brand built intentionally or accidentally. I like to say marketing is getting someone who has a need to know, like and trust you – branding for the small business is the act of becoming knowable, likable and trustable. It may not make the phone ring, but it sure attracts the right customer when done right.

It’s highly likely you’ve posted this on your blog, but what are 3-5 John Jantsch marketing tips that every business needs to consider?

• Differentiate – find a way to define your value as different in a way that matters to your market – even if you have to make it up.

• Partner – every single day spend some time developing strategic partners – the right one can inject 500 customers into your business tomorrow.

• Harness the Internet – start with a blog, learn how to tap RSS technology, use email marketing

What are some emerging marketing opportunities for businesses marketing online that you’re seeing? Mobile, social, new forms of advertising?

(iPhone applications – today anyway) – mobile has promise but it’s still learning. I think maybe the emerging marketing opportunity that I find most useful for small business is offline/online integration Remember, most of us still sell to real people

You’re pretty much everywhere on the web and clearly a very busy guy. How do you stay current with marketing news, strategy and tactics? What are your favorite online resources?

I am a huge fan of RSS technology. I stay current because I am curious and because technology makes it easy for me to filter and aggregate. I think it also helps that I actually do everything I write about and I am my target market – what a killer combo that is.

I love Jott

Thanks John!  Get more John Jantsch insights on the Duct Tape Marketing Blog.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Interview with John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing | 5 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

One of the fun things we get to do on Online Marketing Blog is interview interesting people we meet and get to know by being involved with the industry. This interview is with Rebecca Lieb, Editorial Consultant to ClickZ and former Editor for the past 7 years. In addition to previously offering sage advice on getting more out of marketing conferences here on OMB, Rebecca works as a consultant, is writing a book on search marketing and is often retained as a speaker for industry events.

In this interview Rebecca shares tips on selecting interactive marketing vendors, shares her insights into upcoming marketing strategies and talks briefly about her upcoming book on search marketing as well as the MIMA Summit here in Minneapolis where she’s the keynote speaker.

Your journalism and editorial background has taken you many places topically and geographically. What are some of your favorites?

I was a Variety bureau chief based in Berlin right after the Wall fell, which was as fantastic as it was dissonant. One week I’d be at the Cannes Film Festival, a few days later I’d be attending the first film festival open to Westerners in Romania or Minsk. Often it’s not just the “where,” it’s the “when,” too. Interactive marketing has taken me many new parts of the world to speak, most notably my first trips to South America. But personally, my passion of the past few years has been Southeast Asia. I’ve been to Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and most recently, Burma. As you can probably tell from this list, adventure takes precedence over thread count every single time!

You were so nice to meet with Dominic and I this hot summer. What do you like most about living in New York? It can’t be the heat! In an increasing digital world, do you think there are additional opportunities for someone working in the Interactive Marketing field to physically live in a large city vs. working remotely elsewhere?

I have a good friend who’s currently making a great living in this industry from his home in idyllic and remote rural Vermont. It’s all red barns, cows and covered bridges — but he’s got satellite wi-fi in his sugar shack! You can be anywhere nowadays, and I’m often tempted to pick up stakes and move elsewhere (who isn’t?). And who knows? One day I may. But there’s still a whole lot of value on at least thee occasional F2F meeting, not to mention conferences, seminars, and in-office meetings. Of course, that whole metaphor can be applied to physical workspace as well. For years at ClickZ, I went into an office or sometimes, worked from home. Regardless, the majority of business these days is done via emil or IM these days — often with the person at the next desk! Physical location and proximity are a great social lubricant, which isn’t to be underestimated. But certainly Being There on a daily basis is no longer a prerequisite for success or indicator of ability.

You’re writing a book on SEO for Pearson’s Financial Times imprint. Please share your high level view of the book. It seems quite a challenge to put something in print that changes so often.

SEO changes almost daily on a tactical level, but that’s really not what my book’s about. (It comes out either late this year or in early 2009, btw). Its aim is to provide a bird’s eye view of SEO to a CEO, CMO, or small business owner who needs to get a grip on the overarching strategies, tactics, needs, and philosophies behind SEO. And that’s really necessary. I can’t tell you how many people out there aren’t even aware SEO exists as a marketing discipline. When I’ve told non-industry friends I’m writing a book on “search,” they’ve taken it to mean research, or even executive recruiting. It’s a seeing-the-forest-rather-than-the-trees issue – something people in interactive marketing, who live and breathe this stuff every day, often forget.

We’ve run online marketing tactics polls with the usual suspects popping up in the top ten: Blogging, Email marketing, Search engine optimization, Pay per click, Social networks, Affiliate marketing, Blogger relations, Viral marketing, Corporate web site, Online public relations.

Want to know what I think is big right now? Content strategy. Content as marketing, and marketing as content. Buinesses are finally realizing what’s long been true: if you have a web site, you are a publisher and you have to think like one. The same holds true for bloggers, of course, as well as in e-mail. This whole digital thing is about content. You can’t do SEO without fresh, original, frequently updated content. Since leaving ClickZ as a full-time gig, I’m working with all sorts or companies and organizations to get their content on track, both strategically and tactically. That’s what’s at the core of all things digital, as with any other form of media.

For businesses newly exploring interactive marketing, what advice or tips can you give for evaluating tactics and vendors?

Know what you’re shopping for. I spoke with someone today who knows he needs an ESP, but was unfamiliar with the term “deliverability,” perhaps the biggest concern in email right now. Yes, it’s time consuming, but as the local TV ads for the discount suit store have been saying for years, “an educated consumer is our best customer.” That works three ways, in fact. It’s good for the vendor, good for the buyer, and good for best practices. And don’t forget to vet. Talk to current and past clients and get their stories. Learn from experience.

You’re keynoting at the MIMA Summit in October as is Ze Frank. Can you share an overview of what you’ll talk about and have you researched Minneapolis/St Paul yet? FYI, that doesn’t mean watching Fargo.

Hey! Yo! I’m a midwestern girl – born ‘n’ raised – so don’t start! But admittedly, I haven’t been to MN since I was about 10 years old, so I’m counting on local industry friends to show me around. One’s Gayle Tesky, and maybe you’re another one, Lee?

Definitely.

As for what I’ll be talking about: content is marketing, and marketing is content. I want to explore the effect this trend is having on different sectors in the digital space, as well as how it’s affecting media. Take the Bill Gates/Jerry Seinfeld spots that CPB just launched. They’re pure content and entertainment. And the media is roll your own. So what’s this going to mean for media buying when all these destination sites pop up? By extension, what will that mean for agencies? I think the landscape is in for another interesting shift, and that’s what I hope to get people at MIMA thinking about.

With your deep and long time editorial background, I am hoping you can share some advice on what we could do to make Online Marketing Blog more effective at reaching client side internet marketers? BIG BONUS points for answering this one!

Be a mirror. How about industry-specific case studies and profiles of top client side marketers, again, in a variety of verticals. My experience has shown time and time again that people need to be led to information they can identify with. You can write about email marketing best practices until the cows come home, but until you apply it to financial services, or travel and hospitality, you just aren’t going to get those folks to read it, no way, no how. Why do you think we’re seeing such an explosion or hyper-vertical and hyper-local online content? That’s why!

What are some of the online resources you rely on for staying current with the interactive and internet marketing industries? Ex: blogs, forums, web sites, newsletters or social media sites. I see you’re on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Are those the social media sites you use most often or are there others?

Bloglines is my homepage. I subscribee to over 200 RSS feeds, and have feed-ized many of my email subscriptions so they land there, rather than in my already cluttered inbox. Also, many of my feeds are searches for keywords and hrases that appear in news and blog posts, so I can keep on top of subjects I’m tracking. What to see what I read there? My user name is rebeccal. I’m pretty sure you can search for feeds by user on Bloglines, right?

On the social front, I am signed up for more than the three services you name above, but more for research reasons than any real sort of functionality need.

You’re now an editorial advisor for ClickZ after serving as Editor for over 7 years, writing a book, speaking and consulting. What’s next?

Um, stay tuned? I’m doing a ton of speaking and content strategy consulting. But I’m also in late-stage talks with a couple of companies about full-time gigs. By the time this is published, I may have decided to remain a free agent…or not. The suspense is killing me, but life remains, as always, interesting. I may need you to run a reader poll on which choice I should make!

What is one question that I really should be asking you? (and the answer of course).

Boxers or briefs? Nah – I’m a chick. OK, what’s the single thing I absolutely, positively have to do or see in Minneapolis? And YOU have to answer that one, Lee!

Unfortunately the Minnesota State Fair with its cornucopia of deep fried foods on a stick has already passed, so we’d have to be sure to either do a boat tour of Lake Minnetonka or check out the new Guthrie Theatre.

Thanks Rebecca!

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Spotlight on Search: Interview with Rebecca Lieb | 5 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Video: Interview with Adam Lasnik of Google | 26 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

The Search Engine Strategies conference in New York undoubtedly one of my favorites and the next SES NYC show is coming up fast, March 17-20, 2008. Since SES has changed its format starting with the New York show, I pinged Incisive Media’s Marketing VP Matt McGowan with a few questions on format, speakers, Yahoo/Microsoft, recession and his 5 top reasons for attending a SEM conference in the Big Apple.

Matt, this is our first time interviewing you. Can you share a bit about your background and how exactly you became the “007 VP of Marketing” for Incisive Media and what you do? (Make it good because we’ll do our best to make sure this interview ranks well on Google )

The only thing James Bond and I have in common is that we spend a lot of time on the road… that said I do appreciate the comparison.

In brief, I have been working in the online/digital space officially since 1998 but unofficially since 1995 when I bought my first domain. I have worked for Charles Schwab, Pearson Plc and most recently PropertyRoom.com (where I still have an interest, hence the link J). Throughout this time I have been an avid reader of both ClickZ and Search Engine Watch and when the opportunity to come on board and head up the Marketing team was presented to me, I couldn’t resist.

My skills lie on the Marketing and Business Development side of the business and luckily enough for Incisive that’s where they put me.

I am an avid user of LinkedIn and other online networks, both personally and professionally – if you come across my profile please do connect. Just please tread lightly with the Super Pokes, though recommendations are just fine!

The upcoming Search Engine Strategies conference in New York has an impressive lineup of speakers including John Battelle, Nick Carr and the infamous (at least in SEO circles) Jason Calcanis. Who are you looking forward most to hearing? How about the least? (Hey, you can’t blame me for trying) Q/A with Calcanis can be entertaining to say the least.

SES NY has a fantastic line up and it is therefore hard for me to play favorites. That said John Battelle, Andrew Tomkins and Gordon McLeod are definitely at the top of my list. John, because he has been someone who the series has been after for a long time and I heard that he turned down a $100 million offer to sell Federated; Andrew, because I really like what Yahoo! is doing in the Search space and to say they are a hot topic now is an understatement; Gordon, because he will speak about how (and why) the Wall St Journal had to change everything to compete in this Search-driven world.

As for Nick, we just did a well received webcast with him and he will be speaking at our SES London event next week – he is an amazing speaker and has a lot of valuable information to deliver.

Jason, I have heard him speak twice now at SES Conferences and I am definitely looking forward to this one – going to grab a front row seat. Would you like to join me?

Let’s not forget the other 200+ speakers who will be leading the presentations and discussions in the seminar rooms – there will be tons of tactical information disseminated… definitely not to be missed.

The new format being introduced with SES New York starts out with high level strategy content on day one and keynote speakers plus the “Orion Panel” idea of having industry thought leaders set things up for a tactical ride through the rest of the conference. You’re also having less speakers and emphasizing more case studies. Can you share where the idea to reformat came from and what your expectations are?

The one constructive critique we heard over the year’s about the Search Engine Strategy Series was that we delivered an immense amount of tactical content to our delegates but that we could increase the amount of strategy discussed. Over the last year, under the leadership of Kevin Ryan we have addressed this concern with the addition of the Orion Panels, designed specifically to give our attendees access to the industry’s thought leaders and drive discussions on the hottest topics we face today in Search.

On the other side of the coin, we were told that sessions needed more time for Q&A – expect to see moderators keeping presentations from running on so that this can happen as well.

Case study driven education is an important part of the learning process. It is how some of society’s best minds have been educated for years. Law Schools, Business Schools and alike all use the case study system. Understanding the successes and failures of the past can only help SEM’s to avoid them in the future.

I encourage all SEM’s who have a good story to tell to apply today for speaking opportunities at one of our various events globally – the procedures and guidelines are posted for all to read.

Microsoft dropped quite a bomb recently with its offer for Yahoo. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think a Microhoo as a real Google threat is possible? What do you think their biggest challenges will be?

I am excited, it is big news and something we have been predicting on SEW for a long time. We have covered the potential acquisition extensively both on the SEW blog and in our columns, most recently Kevin Newcomb wrote a 3 part article – 1, 2, 3 – on it. In fact, SEW was the only source that I could find that covered the Google reaction last Sunday.

It has some serious implications for the industry that said I do not think it poses an immediate threat to Google in the Search space. The way I look at it is combining YHOO’s web traffic with MSFT’s resources (aka $$$)… the possibilities are endless in search, display, gaming and all the other facets the two are involved in.

All that said, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Yahoo! will likely reject the $31/share bid by MSFT – will MSFT up the ante? According to SES Advisory Board member, Sandeep Aggarwal of Oppenheimer, discussions of a $40+/share offer between the two companies were in the works just last year (is Yahoo! really worth that much less today?) Will another potential suitor jump in the game? AOL? Private Equity? Will regulators approve if a deal is ever made? Only time will tell – I am sure there will be a few more surprises and announcements in the coming days, weeks and months.

With all the buzz about an impending recession many companies are already tightening their purse strings. As you know, marketing is often the first to feel such belt tightening. If we do go into recession, what impact do you think there will be in the search marketing industry? Do you think there will be any changes with in-house and agency side marketers and their conference attendance?

It’s an issue we discuss regularly here and anyone not concerned is likely a bit full of themselves. On the positive side, those companies who see the value in their campaigns and optimization programs, which likely also means the ones that have Search Marketers who communicated the ROI of their work to their executive teams, will be better off than those who lack that communication. It is easy to forget that budgetary decision makers may still not be aware of the effectiveness of Search and I implore all those employed in Search to increase communication/reporting. Most should not be hiding as they likely have a strong story to tell.

The conference series continues to receive support from the community and registrations and sponsorships continue to climb year on year. That said, we are exploring other ways to reach our customers – ways that don’t require them incur large travel expenses… online training, local events in our customers back yards and alike.

Lastly, what are your top 5 reasons for attending a conference in New York?

1. Education – with over 200 industry veterans leading over 70 sessions and presentations on an equal if not greater number of topics, search and digital marketers who are not there risk being left behind, and I will continue to get ahead.
2. Networking – this is the largest attended Search event on the planet, with over 8,000 people in attendance last year, and pretty much the only time all year (other than SES San Jose in August) to meet and socialize with the industry as a whole. We are a growing industry and I enjoy meeting all the new faces and reconnecting with the regulars, there are some really amazing people in this space.
3. WebMasterRadio’s Search Bash – stay tuned for the announcement but this will be a party you will not want to miss and therefore deserved its own mention. Thanks Brandy!
4. Kevin Ryan – for all those who have not yet had the chance to watch this Search luminary on stage, you are missing out. He truly is one of the most dynamic, entertaining and knowledgeable speakers in the Industry.
5. Location – New York City, need I say more!

Not enough? How about 20,000 more!

If you made it this far then you deserve something in return – one of my favorite sites on the web is here. Enjoy!

Thanks Matt!

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Matt McGowan Interview: Lowdown on SES New York 2008 | 8 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

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.

I was fortunate to be included in the program and Jim was good enough to take some time and answer a few questions about Internet Marketing Ninjas during the launch to cover how/why it was started, how he was able to get some of the smartest search marketers to give up their secrets and what future enhancements are in store.

Anyone who has been in the search marketing biz knows WeBuildPages and Jim Boykin, but for those neophytes to SEO from other industries that read our blog, can you share a bit on your background ith SEO and being a Link Ninja Master?

First let me say “Thanks” again for helping this project by providing an excellent training program presentation. Well done Ninja Master Lee!

I started We Build Pages in 1999 with the slogan “Designing and marketing websites”. In 2003 we dropped designing and went with a focus of SEO…especially with link building. We played the link trade game, the Pagerank buying game, the Florida game, the sandbox game, TrustRank Game, Social Media Game, and will continue to see opportunities and monitor boundaries in search of the “perfect link” that will directly increase a site’s rankings…without pissing off a search engine.

We’ve built a team that has grown to about 30, and continues to grow. Most of our employees are “Link Ninjas”, working on getting links that help our clients to get more relevant traffic, and increase their rankings along the way.

We also work on many other sites which we own. Sometimes acquiring old trusted websites and we work to monezite them.

Our latest project is the Internet Marketing Ninjas program. We’ve collected 12 of the most influential Internet Marketing minds and created a training program covering tons of internet marketing related topics.

We’ve also taken most of the public SEO tools at We Build Pages and made them no longer public. I’ve decided to throw these tools, as well as several private tools we use at We Build Pages, and offer them for free to those who join Internet Marketing Ninjas.

You had approached several people on the new Internet Marketing Ninjas program about a year a go or so. I am curious where you got the idea?

I got tired of going to conferences and watching 10 minute powerpoints of a 101 overview of a Internet Marketing related topics. Some people know what they’re talking about, many don’t. Some people are also on the wrong panels.

I often thought if you could just grab the top people, and let them talk beyond 10 minutes, and get a bit in-depth on what that person specializes in, then I’d learn way more than listening to panels of presenters. With the help of some Ninja Master Friends, and a bit of elbow grease, I think we’ve created a product that can be better than the price of an internet marketing conference. You get the “gold”, the in depth thoughts on topics covered by the best minds in the business. With the We Build Pages tools thrown in, I think it’s a steal.

Can you explain what it is and how it works? How will it stay up to date?

You get online Internet Marketing video training by: Aaron Wall, Andy Beal, Bill Slawski, Jim Gilbert, Cameron Olthuis, Neil Patel, Shoemoney, Jill Whalen, Christine Churchill, Lee Odden, Stuntdubl, and myself.

We’ve already got plans for additional Ninja Masters and training videos for 2008 to be included. It’ll just grow and grow. I can’t even begin to list the topics covered, often it’s getting the dirt and the gold nuggets of knowledge. I know my Internet Marketing knowledge jumped greatly after watching these videos (I’ve seen them many times now). We’re offering preview videos for each person (about 5 minutes each) as well. There’s even some nuggets in the previews as well. Members can comment on the member video pages.  You also get access to formerly public We Build Pages Tools (most are no longer public), and some of our private tools as well.

You seem to have captured quite an impressive list of participants for the videos. I was surprised and honored to be asked and even more impressed when I saw the final list. How did you get them to do it?

I’ve been Lucky, I really have. I asked the best people I knew in several internet marketing categories to participate, and most said “Let’s do it!”. The others I’ll get to participate tomorrow

You decided to take the famous WeBuildPages SEO tools down and include them in the Internet Marketing Ninjas program as well as include some of your private tools. The free tools must have been good link magnets for you, why take them down?

Rand actually did a video on SEOmoz that covers the games you have to play with engines when you’re running tools. Basically the more people who use your tools, the more often the tools aren’t going to work, or the results will be skewed. Most of the public tools were being used thousands of times a day. I know that the tools will now be much more accurate, and we’ll have a lot less “hassle” if we limit the use of these tools. I gave these tools for free for years, but the time has come where I have to limit the use of the tools. I thought I’d just toss the use of these tools only to members of Internet Marketing Ninjas, as a “freebee” to them. I also threw in some tools that have never been public, actually some are the best we’ve built.

Can you describe some of the private tools that are now available to subscribers?

Jim: There’s several. Here’s a few I’m quite fond of: (Bullets added by Lee)

• The Amazing Interlinker Tool. With this tool you can interlink text in your web pages like Wikipedia does. It’s a pretty powerful on page optimization tool that has other SEO uses as well.
• Neighborhood Authority Finder that helps identify sites you should get links from
• Common Co-Citation tool
• Jim’s Link Value Tool

Some have described the price, just short of $3k, as steep. While I don’t personally agree since I’ve seen the videos, what do you say to people who are shy on price for the program?

These training and tools are not for everyone. There’s something to be said about having a “club” with only members serious enough to invest in this program. And I totally believe that those who invest in Ninjas will not be let down.

Outside of the videos and the tools, what else do you have planned for future enhancements? I suspect that after seeing the success of this program and all the exposure it will get, other search marketing experts will want to participate. Do you plan on rotating video participants, keeping the same group or going with an entirely new group next year?

We’ll just keep adding and updating to IM Ninjas. There’s already a handful of people that I’ve been talking with for 2008. We’ll just keep updating and adding Ninja Masters, as well as we’ll keep throwing in tools that we develop.

Not to give too much away, but what are some of the best tips you heard from the videos?

Oh man, hard to name so many….everyone handed out quality information filled with tips, suggestions, and theories.

Thanks Jim!

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Internet Marketing Ninja Interview with Jim Boykin | 12 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

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

David: I’m Director of Emerging Media and Client Strategy with 360i, the search-focused digital agency. I’ve been writing a weekly Search Insider column for MediaPost since it launched in mid-2004. For fun, I have my own blog at MarketersStudio.com, and I do a fair amount of speaking at industry events. It’s a great gig, especially with the clients I get to work with.

Gord: Search marketer, research fan, marketing pundit, columnist and Chair of SEMPO. And those are just my day jobs.

Search Insider Summit is a fairly new conference. How did you get involved and what is your current role?

David: This is the fourth conference in the past two years. I’ve been the program chair since it began, so I’ve had a hands-on role shaping the content and working with all the speakers, along with doing some speaking myself.

Gord: As a Search Insider columnist, I guess I’m amongst the “Usual Suspects” when it comes to being involved with the Summit. I hosted in the Spring in Florida, and I guess I’m back for a repeat performance in Park City. David tells me I’m also on the Advisory Board.

What will you be talking about at the upcoming event in Park City Utah? What’s top of mind for you right now when it comes to search?

David: I’ll be talking a lot less than usual, only appearing on one panel with the other Search Insider columnists, so it’ll be fun shutting up and learning something from the masters. What’s top of mind for me is how search and social media interact. I’m really excited for the sessions on Saturday, especially one on universal search, and I’m not just BSing you because you’re the moderator. With universal search, Google and the other engines are showing how social media optimization (SMO) becomes search engine optimization (SMO).

Gord: I wrote a column awhile back titled “Will Agencies ever Get Search? Don’t Hold Your Breath.” Rumor has it that I’ll be dragging that debate into a public forum on the opening day. I suspect there will be no quicker way to polarize the audience. I’m sure I’ll be touching on other topics as well during the show. Personally, I’m fascinated by how we use search as an extension of our own decision modeling.

Since were at the end of the year, can you make some predictions about search marketing in 2008? Is anything more notable that personalized and unified search in store for the way engines work (algorithmically)? What changes regarding paid search and social search do you see in store?

David: Unified or universal search is just getting warmed up, as is just about anything with social media optimization. With paid search, I don’t anticipate so many changes to it because what all of these new social media ad opportunities and other new models reveal is how hard it is to find anything more effective than search engine marketing. Granted, people are only searching so much of the time online, and the new models for when people are consuming content are getting much more sophisticated. I’m really curious to see if mobile search gains traction.

Gord: Ah..search predictions. Gotta love them. Well, we’ll see continued experimentation and testing with both personalized and unified search (and hopefully, we’ll come to agreement on the label we attach to it..unified..universal..3D..it’s getting really confusing). And I’m thinking mobile will see some significant changes in the coming year as well. My crystal ball is a little fuzzy.

From my previous experience, this event is strategically focused in it’s programming and there’s an abundance of networking opportunities. Who do you think is the ideal delegate for an event like this?

David: Ultimately, I think the ideal delegate is someone who’s dying to learn, and who will at least be coaxed into contributing given the chance. This is an event for someone hungry to explore not just what works but why it works. It’s someone who’s up for taking a ton of notes that they’ll turn into action items for their CMO or their agency.

Gord: Not sure who the ideal candidate is, because there’s a lot of territory being covered. I’d think the people who are looking at how to further integrate search into their own company’s bucket of best practices would find it useful. Also, the agency folks who are looking at how to expand their internal search practices will probably find a good fit. If nothing else, they can gang up and push me off a chair lift or down a luge run.

Since the event will be held at the Stein Eriksen Lodge, which will it be for you? Skiing or snowmobiling?

David: I’ve never skied but I’ll be willing to try the bunny slope. With snowmobiling, I’m in Manhattan and don’t drive much, but I’ve been playing Mario Kart 64 on the Wii during an occasional sanity break, and I’m not sure you want to see me behind the wheel of anything right now. I’m hoping there’ll be smores.

Gord: I’m from Canada. Snow is not something I’m going to be going out of my way to frolic in. Finding a location strategically located by the nearest fireplace sounds good, preferably with some type of hot drink in my hand.

Thanks guys! See you next week!

You can find more info about the Search Insider Summit on the registration or session schedule pages.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2007. | Search Insider Summit Utah | 6 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

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?

RYAN: I am not aware of any other conferences at this time <grins>.

In all seriousness, it’s hard to maintain the lead while looking over your shoulder. I know I have said this before, our time is better spent focusing on creating and executing the best conference possible.

SES Chicago is tracking ahead of last year’s attendance. I won’t speculate on anyone else’s targeting desire, but SES is open to anyone interested in learning more about the impact of search and interactive marketing.

HEISLER: Most people not aware? Guess we’ll have to shoulder some of the blame: Search Engine Watch doesn’t cover conference scheduling, trade show attendance estimates, or actual show attendance. Why not? Our readers and Search Engine Watch members attend conferences to learn, network, and have fun.

They’re interested in helping each other solve search marketing problems: strategic and tactical. The numbers they care about: cost per acquisition, cost per lead, cost per order, click through and conversion rates, quality scores, algorithms, percentage of gross profit margins, and predictive modeling, to name a few.

Not surprisingly, the conference business doesn’t interest them.

Now that Search Engine Strategies has entered a new era, can you share some insight on the strategic direction and differentiation of the conference from what it was in the past and perhaps, in comparison to other events? With the companies represented on the advisory board, it appears there’s a shift in focus from search marketing agencies and practitioners to maybe more of a corporate marketing and brand focused audience.

RYAN: I think you have been reading too many agenda driven / axe grinding blog entries <more grins>.

There are a couple of points I’d like to make here:

1. The advisory board was always meant to complement the existing SES faculty. I have been pretty clear about this since day one.
2. The search world has — and will continue to — grow very quickly around the world. I can’t imagine anything more self serving and arrogant than trying to maintain a search autocracy. There are quite a few pioneers in the search space but ignoring (or attempting to limit) the expansion of the discipline into mainstream marketing and communications along with the changes that have occurred as a result of this expansion would be a serious mistake for anyone in the space.

Many of the folks on the advisory board carry pretty hefty titles. A few of the advisory board members have been SEO practitioners since the early days of search. I am grateful that so many people, representing a broad spectrum of senior and junior managers in brands to SEO’s and agencies have agreed to help shape SES.

HEISLER: My hunch is the strategic direction and differentiation of search engines would be of more interest to your readers. That’s what made TopRank blog a premier destination for search marketers. None of your top 10 posts focuses on conference scheduling. [Lee: Sure, but the interview is about SES Chicago, not the SEM industry...]

The SES advisory board? Corporate governance can be almost as thrilling as the conference business.

It’s easy to read too much into the choice of advisors. If it had been up to me to select a search engine strategies advisory board, here are the companies and people I might have chosen: a couple general partners of venture capital and angel investment firms; a couple university presidents; a couple execs from manufacturing companies, let’s say biotechnology and semiconductors.

But hey, that’s just me – and Google. (See Google Board of Directors.) Clearly Google intended to build the first university where students received vocational training in manufacturing.

Obligatory loaded question: What are you more excited about with SES Chicago – freezing to death on your way to a blues bar or listening to Seth Godin do his magic ala Meatball Sundae?

RYAN: There are a number of things I am excited about and I am happy to share some warming thoughts. Seth’s brand of guidance is very popular right now as it appears the marketing world is favoring non-nonsense sound advice. Go figure. I’ve read the book and I think it’s his best yet. Did I mention SES is the only place you get a pre-release copy of the book? [Lee: Awesome!]

It’s hard to play favorites.

Don Schultz’s keynote on Monday should be pretty enlightening and he’s a great speaker. Don is also a man that is known for offering practical advice. The Orion panels are engineered to speak the strategic nature of the SES brand and facilitate setting the tone for the rest of the week’s sessions. Some of the most popular sessions are coming back along with many new ones designed to offer both strategic insight and practical advice you can put to work right away.

I am more of a Chicago steak house kind of guy, but then again, the blues bars are nice.

HEISLER: Freezing to death in Chicago? Odd question from an SEO who hails from Minnesota. On Mon Dec 3 it’s 21°/9° in Minneapolis. C’mon down south to Chi-town where it’ll be 20 – 25 degrees warmer next week.

I saw Seth speak in Vegas earlier this year — Caesars Palace, interactive agency client summit. The audience made more money taking his advice than the casinos made from the audience. Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets.

You’re both fairly new (to Incisive Media). What’s the best thing about working for Incisive Media? (Here’s your chance to score BIG points guys)

RYAN: I’d have to say the administrative quagmires associated with working in a large corporate environment are the most entertaining aspects for me. <innate sarcasm>

I think the “group of suits” and “big corporate” misconception has been spun a bit too hard in this instance. The SES and ClickZ crew is pretty tight and though we work within a larger company, it feels pretty cozy. Aside from that, anyone that works with me knows that I spend most of my time working in my favorite jeans and t-shirt. There are a lot of people behind the scenes at SES that help carry the workload. The best part of my job is working with such a tight knit group of forward thinking people.

HEISLER: Helping new stars rise in the industry. Getting back in touch with friends who attended SES San Jose with me in ‘03: Anne Kennedy, Christine Churchill, Mike Grehan. Conducting the first-ever SEW members survey. Rebuilding the SEW Forums with Frank Watson. Helping readers solve search marketing problems. Readers, SEW Experts, and SEW members helping me solve searchenginewatch.com’s SEO challenges. Great team, great people, great search community.

From the agenda for SES Chicago, there appears to be increased attention on strategy with the Strategic Development Workshops while continuing to maintain a tactical focus with sessions on days 2, 3 and 4. Do you see SES evolving into more of a strategic marketing issues conference?

RYAN: Ideally, we should have both at every conference. You shouldn’t have tactics without a sound strategy to support them. More and more search practitioners at the tactical level in organizations are approaching me hungry for strategic insight. One of my goals is to help facilitate their growth at the trade-professional level while offering both high and low level insights.

HEISLER: “Search Engine Tactics” and “Search Engine Tips & Tricks” don’t cut it anymore. Google Webmaster Central does a fantastic job teaching companies how to do their SEO in-house. Matt Cutts, Adam Lasnik, and the GWC team are squeezing the Snake Oil out of SEO. MSN Live Search and Yahoo have followed suit. APIs, algorithms and ad platforms govern the optimization of paid search.

What’s left? Integration of SEO and Paid Search with other forms of marketing – online and offline — in a holistic strategy.

Plus, it’s Search on a global scale.

It appears that attention to social media is tempered in the programming for SES Chicago compared to past SES events. Is this indicative of a position the conference is taking overall regarding social media’s place in the marketing mix? Do you think there’s too much hype over marketing with social media?

RYAN: I think social media could use some tempering <why stop with the sarcasm now?>

The social space is still in its infancy yet to an extent, the phrase “social media” has become a catch-all in an attempt to label marketing and communications disciplines that have existed (in some cases) for decades. It would be pretty self serving and gratuitous for SES to slap a social label on every session while foolish for us to ignore its impact.

We have several sessions focused on (or inclusive of) the social aspects of integrated marketing, including an Orion panel. From search and privacy in the digital age to link building and getting real insights into blended search, the social aspects of marketing and search are connected and very well represented in Chicago.

HEISLER: The best conferences focus on top-line revenues and bottom-line profits. On how search marketers can increase both.

Social search drives revenue by helping people find content online – products, services, information – that they’re looking for. Sometimes it’s a “broad match” search: a cool video, new dance moves, the hottest new gadget. Whether the search results are generated by a human (Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube) or an algorithm (auctioned media), it’s all about search.

Search Engine Watch will publish one of the first verified case studies on how social media can drive traffic and increase conversions. It’s a case study defining the new social media metrics with actionable strategies and tactics.

Very few companies measure the impact social media has on revenue and profits. When that happens, there will be lots to discuss at conferences.

[Lee: A social media centric case study will be refreshing as there don't seem to be enough.]

Please list your top 3 reasons for attending SES Chicago.

RYAN:

1. Four (five if you are attending SES training) days of industry gurus and experts sharing key insights
2. SEMPO is serving drinks
3. My boss will get really upset with me if I don’t go

HEISLER:

1. Conversations with hundreds of former clients, colleagues and competitors, now — all friends
2. Asking Search Engine Watch readers what we can do to help them do their jobs better
3. Introducing new columns by rising industry stars: Catfish, C-Level, Nuke ‘Em, Material Girl, Search.edu, Downhill Racer, Eli’s coming, and so’s Search CrossFire

Heard of Smith & Wesson? We’ve got Boggs & Watson in the house. Champagne on the house.

Oh yeah. And “Foosball Wizards,” a Matt McGowan production.

Thanks guys.

For more conference schedule and registration information on the Search Engine Strategies conference happening in Chicago Dec 3-7, visit the SES Chicago site.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2007. | SES Chicago Interview: Kevin Ryan and Kevin Heisler | 3 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

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.

Danny and Neil were good enough to take some time out just a week before the conference to do a short interview covering the adoption of social media marketing by old school marketers, social media as a stand alone marketing channel, breaking out the crystal ball on the future of social media and rating which of the most popular social media sites will be successful.

Photo credit Matt McGee

Within the SEM industry there are plenty of early adopters on the agency side and that means a minority making loud noises about marketing with social media. There are still plenty of old school marketers and brands in control of significant budgets that have not yet adopted standard search marketing, let alone marketing with the likes of YouTube, StumbleUpon and Wikipedia. What can agencies do to make it easier for old school marketers to be “assimilated”? Should they be?

Danny:
Probably the easiest thing is to point at are the case studies that are out there where people are succeeding with social media. Combine that with the always favorite, “If you could go back in time pitch.” Those who have belatedly come into search often realize they should have started much sooner. I think that remains a powerful pitch with social media. Do you really want to be playing catch-up again?

Neil:
The most effective ways I have been able to convince “old school marketers” to incorporate social media is to show them examples of past companies that have succeeded in the social web and most importantly ones that are related to their clients. It is always great to use case studies as Danny mentioned, but if you can’t get any hardcore numbers, I recommend playing the angle of “your competitors are doing it, so you better jump on board while you can”.

In a guest post Ron Belanger of Yahoo recently contributed to Online Marketing Blog, he mentioned social search and perhaps inferring social media in general, as a third option for marketers in addition to SEO and PPC. Do you agree? Should social media be considered a channel on it’s own on par with PPC and SEO?

Danny:
Yes, I do see social media as a standalone marketing venue. That also means that some people might only do social media but not do search. Still, the two go well together. I did a piece earlier this year where I talked about social media as being a kissing cousin to search. There’s plenty of traffic to get directly from social media, but it can also be a driver of links and impact a brand presence in search results.

Neil:
I see social media as a standalone solution. Although many marketers are leveraging social media in hopes of getting links, then is much more to it. Leveraging sites like Facebook that can drive over 100,000,000 pageviews a month and can provide tremendous growth for a business. Due to the endless advantages social media can bring to a business, it should be seen as third option.

A few years back, companies used to “beg, borrow or steal” budget from other marketing channels in order to invest in search marketing. Now search marketing has it’s own cost center within many organizations. Do you see or anticipate the same thing happening with social media?

Danny:
I do think history will repeat itself, though social media might be easier in some respects as being seen as more “sexy.” Facebook, for example, might seem more fun than SEO. Developing interactive applets may sound more thrilling than changing title tags and ensuring a site is more search engine friendly.

Neil:
I think it’s already happening to social media, but not on a wide scale. The problem with social media is that it is very difficult to calculate ROI (before you do the campaign) because you can’t predict the results. Due to this it will take years before it gets mass adoption from marketers.

Let’s say you bump into a business owner at a party and in the course of chatting you are asked to describe/define what social media is. How would you explain the benefits of social media as well as the rationale of sending staff to training programs/events like SMX Social?

Danny:
I’d first explain that social media has different classes of sites: social news sites, social bookmarketing, social knowledge and social networking are the four we’re covering at SMX Social Media. Each type of site may have its own benefit, from brand awareness to driving direct traffic. The benefit is pretty easy — there’s traffic to be had, and there are still only a small number of people, really.

Neil:
When people ask me what social media is, I explain that it is a medium that allows individuals interaction over the web. For example MySpace and Facebook are two social websites that allow people to interact.

The benefits of these social sites are that you can more precisely target individuals and market to them on a wide scale. For example, with Facebook, you can get the background information of millions of people (with a little work) and gain millions of eyeballs for a very low cost compared to television.

The reason companies should attend these training seminars or conferences are so that they can better learn how to leverage the social web. There are hundreds of unwritten rules and if you break any it can harm your company’s reputation.

Now it’s time to break out the social media crystal ball. The following is a list of some of the social media sites that will be discussed at SMX Social. Please rate on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being most positive, the likelihood of success (compared to now) for the following social media web properties in the next 3-5 years:

Danny:
Likelihood of success is so hard to say, simply because most of them are likely to be successful in various ways. Some might be huge successes in terms of traffic, while others might be successful with thought leaders. These particularly impress me in terms of their future:

• Digg
• Del.icio.us
• StumbleUpon
• Flickr
• YouTube
• Google Blog Search
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Wikipedia
• Yahoo Answers

Neil:

• Digg 3
• Reddit 3
• Propeller (Old Netscape) 2
• Del.icio.us 3
• StumbleUpon 3
• Flickr 3
• YouTube 4
• Technorati 1
• Google Blog Search 2
• Facebook 5
• MySpace 3
• LinkedIn 4
• Twitter 3
• Wikipedia 4
• Yahoo Answers 3

While we have that crystal ball out, do you have any other predictions on the future of social media in the next year?

Danny:
Well, I think the obvious prediction is that one or more of the sites out there on their own will get absorbed by some of the major portals.

Neil:
Social sites are going to open up more to the users than they currently are. For example Facebook took the first dive by creating Facebook Apps and now we can expect the others to follow.

What 2-3 social media sites do you use personally the most often?

Danny:
Wikipedia, like everyone! Then probably Facebook, Digg and Delicious.

Neil:
Facebook, (the most powerful social site currently), Digg, and YouTube.

Thanks guys!

As an official media sponsor of this SMX conference, TopRank Online Marketing Blog’s Dana Larson will be covering the event in the same creative style you’ve seen in her previous work with Search Engine Strategies, San Jose. If you’re attending SMX Social Media, be sure to say hello.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2007. | Interview with Danny Sullivan & Neil Patel on SMX Social Media | 7 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Spotlight on Search Interview with Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, Search Engine Land

Photo Credit Liana Evans

Online Marketing Blog is very fortunate this week to have a special interview with Chris Sherman, Executive Editor at Search Engine Land and long time observer/analyst/practitioner/advocate in the search engine marketing industry. Chris has been a instrumental influence in the growth of the search marketing industry with his 10+ year old search consulting practice, past involvement with Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Strategies as well as his new role as Executive Editor at Search Engine Land, running the Search Marketing Now webcasts and helping to program SMX conferences.

In this interview, Chris shares how he became involved with the search marketing industry (get ready for some SEM history people), challenges with building a new search marketing publication and conference, what’s different about SMX and how he works with Danny Sullivan programming events. The next Search Marketing Expo show is SMX Local and Mobile and Chris also gives his insight into the local and mobile search marketplace, hot topics and technologies. He also throws in a few marketing tips for small businesses and gives a fairly good reason why in the world he’d ever leave our fine state of Minnesota and live somewhere else.

First off Chris, can you share some about your background and how you got into search marketing and involved with Danny Sullivan?

I was building web sites for clients in the early 90s, and one of the de rigeur elements of sites back then was a page of links to other “cool” sites – not for reciprocal links, but just to demonstrate that you were web savvy. Since there were no search engines at the time, it was a challenge finding sites to add to these pages. Email newsletters like “Netsurfer Digest” and “The Internet Tourbus” brought descriptions of new sites, but to find topically relevant sites, surfing the web starting from a known relevant site (similar to what search engine crawlers do today) was the most efficient way to find these links, but it was time consuming.

So when Webcrawler and Yahoo emerged in 1994 or so I was totally awestruck – what an amazing thing to be able to actually *search* for something on the web instead of relying on serendipity to find what you were looking for! You have to remember that these early engines provided just bare-bones clues (for example, Lycos pioneered the idea of including titles and descriptions in search results – before that, it was just unadorned links to URLs). I was hooked, and started spending a lot of time learning how these magical new machines worked, and since I’ve been a writer forever, began writing about them too.

By 1997, web sites were getting slicker and my clients were increasingly looking to agencies who could develop more complex sites. I was ready for a new challenge, and one day I was poking around The Mining Company (now called About.com) and discovered that they were looking for a “guide” to build out a new topic area dedicated to web search. I jumped at the opportunity, and ended up spending about four years writing about search for them – initially focusing on how to search, but later getting into exploring the then totally new concepts surrounding search engine optimization.

I also started Searchwise, a consulting business focused on web search – both teaching clients how to search and doing site optimization. I also became a consulting analyst for IDC, working primarily on enterprise search research and white papers. With Searchwise, I still train people how to search, and have run workshops all over the world.

During the late 90s Danny and I had been exchanging occasional emails, and we finally met in person at the Internet Librarian conference in San Diego in 1999. In 2000, Internet.com (the company that owned Search Engine Watch at the time) got concerned about what would happen if Danny “got hit by a bus,” so he reached out to me to join him, working both on Search Engine Watch, and also to start a new, daily publication called SearchDay. I started working on the Search Engine Strategies conferences soon afterward, eventually organizing and growing most of the international events while Danny focused on the U.S. shows.

Fast forward to two years ago, when Jupitermedia sold SEW, SES and ClickZ to Incisive Media. After the sale, it became apparent to Danny that his vision wasn’t in sync with Incisive’s. So he left, and after talking with literally dozens of different people, companies, venture capitalists and others, decided to start Third Door Media with Chris Elwell, who had been the General Manager of Jupitermedia. They asked me to join them as a partner in the company along with Sean Moriarty, a sales guy who built up the Internet World conferences. And now it’s full speed ahead building Third Door, with our web sites SearchEngineLand.com and Sphinn, our conference series, Search Marketing Expo, and our webcast business, Search Marketing Now.

What have been some of the challenges in building up a new online news and conference business? Things have grown very quickly so I assume you and Danny have some pretty big goals. What are you doing to make SMX events different from other conferences?

The good news is that we’ve done this before, so we know what needs to be done and the mistakes to avoid. The biggest challenge in starting anything new is that you have to build everything from the ground up. We’re running as lean as possible, so that means if we want something done we have to roll up our sleeves and do it ourselves. Fortunately, we’ve assembled a great team of exceptionally self-motivated people with years of experience who all really enjoy working together toward our common goals. We don’t need to spend much time deciding what to do – we just go out and do what needs to get done. So yes, things have moved quickly.

We’re also fortunate that people in the search marketing community have been very generous in helping us: speaking at our shows, writing for Search Engine Land, participating in Sphinn. It’s really great (and a bit humbling) to get that kind of support from our professional colleagues.

SMX will differ from other events in a number of ways. Apart from our years of experience developing and running conferences, Danny and I stay closely attuned to what’d happening in the search marketing space. We talk with the search engines constantly, and we also stay close to the people we feel are pushing the envelope as practicing search marketers. This lets us look ahead and create conferences that feature new ideas, tactics and approaches that help attendees come away with some cutting edge techniques that they can put to use right away.

We’re also putting a lot of effort into plain old customer service, trying to anticipate the needs of both conference attendees and sponsors and exceed expectations rather than running just a “same ol” type of event. A simple little thing we did at SMX Advanced was to offer really good food and beverages throughout the day. People loved it, and we plan to keep doing these types of things. Our goal is to get everyone involved totally engaged and excited about attending our events.

I posted a Reader Poll recently asking about search marketing conferences coexisting and since you’re pretty close to that topic I’d like to ask you as well, “Can SES, SIS, SMX, Pubcon and New SEM Conferences Coexist and Succeed?”

I can’t speak for the organizers of any of the other events, but I think we’re still in the very early innings of this game, and there’s plenty of room for growth. We’re not going to plan our events based on what anyone else is doing – we’re going to put on the best possible conferences we know how to do. I think any organization that puts the needs of their key stakeholders ahead of other considerations will do just fine.

[Editor's Note: As of the publishing of this interview, 69% of poll respondents do believe multiple conferences can coexist and succeed. 18% say maybe and 13% say no.]

When you and Danny are both involved with organizing or programming a conference, how does that work? How do you separate tasks and who does what?

We have a very fluid working relationship, both editorially on Search Engine Land and when we’re programming conferences. Typically we take a divide and conquer approach, where we’ll each take on specific panels and independently organize them, occasionally bouncing ideas off each other but for the most part just moving forward on our own. We know each other well and trust each other, so we don’t feel a huge need to check in on what the other is doing.

As we’ve done in the past, Danny will likely play a bigger part in organizing the U.S. shows, where I’ll be organizing and running our international shows, but there’s really no formal division of duties. There doesn’t need to be – we’ve done these things together for ages and we’ll just continue to work together in the way that’s served us really well.

I’ve always believed that to be a good search marketer, you should be a good searcher. I’m wondering if, with a book like “Google Power” under your belt, you think the same?

Absolutely. I don’t know how you can be an effective search marketer if you don’t have a mastery of the underlying technology. It’s important not only to be a good searcher, but to have a lot of empathy for people who don’t know how to search, or think they know but really don’t. Only when you get into the minds of these kinds of people can you create an effective strategy to connect with them. It’s amazing how many people build their search marketing strategy to appeal to people just like themselves – intelligent people who use appropriate, relevant search strategies, when so many people are out there flailing around with entirely different and often ineffective approaches to searching. I think reaching these people represents a huge opportunity that many search marketers don’t even consider.

The next SMX event is Local and Mobile. As the co-host for that event along with Greg Sterling, what do you think are some of the hot topics for local? For Mobile?

Its hard to really distinguish between local and mobile since they’re often so tightly interwoven. In local, it’s probably the community aspect that’s really catching fire. Sure, the search engines are getting better and making it easier to find local merchants and service providers, but now you can also tap into information and opinions provided by your neighbors and community to help inform your search.

I think we’re also seeing some real innovations in analytics and metrics in both local and mobile, allowing search marketers to get a much clearer sense of searcher behavior and conversions even when the much of that behavior takes place offline in a brick and mortar context.

With the SMX Local & Mobile show, we’ve also worked hard to offer up a mix of presenters from both the technology providers as well as experienced search marketers who’ve run successful campaigns in the local and mobile space. These are people who can offer really valuable advice to search marketers who’ve wanted to tap into local and mobile customers but don’t know how or who have been reluctant for one reason or another. SMX Local & Mobile is designed to offer tons of actionable tactics and techniques, and open up the emerging world of local and mobile search opportunities to attendees. We’re trying to provide content that’s really not available anywhere else, online or offline.

What are some of the technology innovations that you’re excited about when it comes to mobile or local search marketing?

Maps combined with images rock my universe. I can easily see a day when you do a local search and your results include thumbnail images of brick & mortar storefronts. Those images can in turn be the virtual storefront for the millions of small businesses that aren’t and probably won’t have web sites – hosted by the search engines. I think you’ll also start to see some immersive experiences where you’re not really searching as much as exploring – something like what EveryScape is doing with its virtual tour of Union Square in San Francisco. These kinds of things will improve, and as mobile devices improve, we’ll be able to do them on the run. I anticipate we’ll also see the emergence of something like bluetooth enabled eyeglasses that will project these types of immersive experiences giving us a live, 3-D experience literally in front of our eyes, allowing you to physically interact with these virtual worlds.

What kinds of companies are investing most heavily right now in local and mobile search? Do you think that will change as those channels build out?

All the usual suspects are investing heavily, along with tons of smaller firms with interesting ideas. But you’re also getting non-traditional players like Nokia and some of the mobile carriers, and some pretty good stuff happening with some of the internet yellow page providers as well. Too early to tell at this point who the winners will be, but it’s exciting to see the level of investment and development going on.

With so many considerations in the search space: text, images, audio, video, news, blogs, mobile, local, social networks, social media, etc, what advice would you give a small business if asked for 2 or 3 search marketing tips?

Know your customers, and go where they go. It’s not necessary to have a dominant presence everywhere – you just need to be positioned so your customers can easily find you. So for small businesses in particular, that mostly means the web right now – globally if you’re an online retailer, or locally if you’re a real world merchant or service provider. If you’re in a high-touch business, it’s probably worth exploring the social media & network spaces, or consider starting a blog. What I wouldn’t do, though, is stretch yourself so thin dabbling in all of these areas that you’re not effective in any. Pick an area and master it. When revenue growth follows, that’s the time to think about investing in other areas of search marketing. Otherwise you’ll be wasting time and money.

Besides Search Engine Land and Sphinn, what other information sources do you rely on in order to stay on top of what’s happening in the search marketing industry?

We’re in a fortunate position in that we’ve got long established relationships with the key players in the industry, and we’re often briefed well in advance of announcements, product launches and so on. We’re also often asked to provide feedback and offer input at during the early stages of product development so we have a good sense of what’s coming over the months ahead. Apart from that, I try to keep up with the sources listed on our blogroll at Search Engine Land – they’re there because we think they’re quality voices covering our search marketing universe.

Lastly, you’re a fellow Minnesotan right? Why would you ever leave our amazing state?

Well, I grew up in both Minnesota and Colorado. My parents, and my brother and his family still live in the Twin Cities, so I still get back there quite often. If I didn’t live in a house in a great family-oriented neighborhood with a spectacular view of the front range of the Rocky Mountains, I’d likely be in Minnesota. Like search engines, life often serves up multiple appealing options and you’ve got to make a choice!

Thanks Chris!

Another recent interview with Chris Sherman by Richard Zwicky can be found at the Enquisite Blog

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2007. | Interview with Chris Sherman of Third Door Media | 6 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Photo credit: webmoxy

One of the most popular categories of content we publish at Online Marketing Blog is the interviews. Recently, we ran a poll asking OMB readers for suggestions on people we should interview in anticipation of SES San Jose. There were some great suggestions and I’ve just started contacting a few folks as well as their mega company PR depts for pre-approval.

A book author, popular columnist at ClickZ, sought after public speaker and man about town, Mike recently joined the Bruce Clay organization as VP International Business Development and even more recently, was named the chairperson for the 2008 Search Engine Strategies conference in London.

In this interview, Mike talks about his ability to create a bit of controversy by voicing his mind, suggestions for webmaster/search engine communications, the SEO public image problem, why he joined Bruce Clay, the need for “new wisdom” in the SEO industry, his thoughts on the likes of Facebook (ouch!) and world travels.

Thank you for agreeing to do an interview Mike. Normally our interviews start with trite questions like “how did you get into the business” but let’s start with the good stuff first:

Just about everyone in the search marketing business would agree that things change fairly often in the industry. So the notion of certain tactics phasing out seems a natural part of the industry’s evolution. Why do you think so many SEOs get their shorts in a bundle whenever anyone, including yourself, publishes “SEO as we know it is dead” opinions?

This is still a rising medium with a long way to go. An emerging industry with, seemingly, a lot of people who can’t deal very well with change. Just when they’ve set their stall up to sell one thing, the search engines get a little more clever with information retrieval techniques and then their optimization methods become less effective. But because they’ve invested time (and money, probably) into developing a system that seems plausible, they’ll carry on selling it. And if that’s the case, the last thing they want to hear is someone like me saying in public that we’ve moved on a tad since SEO circa 1999.

Just look at how Google can force us overnight to change strategy, tactics, in fact our entire approach in some cases. In the first instance, they phased us out of being completely focused on on-page techniques because the optimization power shifted into links. Once they went public with that Stanford paper the industry went wild with PageRank mania. And there are still those in the industry who want to hang on to all the green fairy dust myths and hype. And recently, Google changed the rules again by throwing universal search into the mix. Bingo! The entire industry has to move up another notch. There’s no point hanging on to the past and former glories now.

I write an opinion column at ClickZ. And I feel that I’ve been around long enough in the business to provide fairly well informed comment. I get extremely positive feedback from the audience of online marketers I write for. But sometimes, from the pimply geek squad, if I dare to suggest that SEO as we know it just ain’t cutting it like it used to…Bang! It’s that heretic Grehan again. And out come the cries to have me dragged into Times Square for a public flogging.

There’s a bunch of people out there who come at the industry from more a of a technical/webmaster background and begin to feel a little alienated when industry pundits and observers start talking more about online marketing strategy and less about tags and server issues. You know, I get completely dumbfounded at conferences sometimes when webmasters ask me things like: “Can Google read my CSS?” I’m like, who gives a shit? Shouldn’t you be more concerned about finding ways to get end users to interact with your web pages, rather than losing sleep over whether a bot can read a little bit of your gobbledygook.

I agree with my colleague, Bruce Clay that, best practice is just that. So if you can make pages the best they can be for crawling and indexing, we should carry on doing that. Keep the fundamentals in place. But just getting pages crawled and indexed doesn’t do a great deal for a client if he’s not ranking for anything. It’s like taking a bunch of pages from one black hole and placing them in another.

Crawlers are getting smarter. CMS systems are getting smarter. Google provides analytics and communication via Webmaster Central, so marketers are getting smarter. And with an industry protocol such as sitemaps.org, the crawling and indexing issues of the past are gradually becoming less of a concern.

What people in the industry should really concern themselves with is trying to get a better understanding of the types of heuristics being used in Google’s universal search. What is it they are doing to match URLs with video clips, podcasts, local results, news results, stock quotes, blogs and everything else? There’s more to understanding that to enhance listings and force the competitor below the fold than there is to wasting time wondering if H tags get you ranked better.

Sure, there are people in the industry already bleating about universal results not being as good or relevant. Some hoping that Google (and Ask) may go back to good old fashioned HTML pages in a nice little row of ten blue links. But it’s end users who are demanding a much richer experience. Just think about the interaction going on at FaceBook. Each day a new utility or feature is introduced. Millions of people are having a totally multimedia experience. And once the end user gets used to this richer and more engaging experience, they’ll expect similar everywhere they go online. Search engines included!

So unbundle your shorts guys and deal with it!

What’s your biggest complaint about the search engines right now? What have they done right and what could be better in terms of webmaster/marketer communications and support? Do you think the engines have any real responsibility to non-advertising web site owners and SEOs?

I had this idea that, we should start a campaign in the industry where we spread the word to every known webmaster in the world to put a robots.txt file in their root and prevent all search engines from crawling their sites for about three months. Imagine how really crappy the results would be over at Google and elsewhere if they had no fresh content. And then, every webmaster in the world drops a note to Google telling them that, for the sum of x dollars (place your own figure there readers) you’ll be happy to remove the file and allow them to start crawling again.

Yeah, I know. We’d probably all go bust. But in principle it’s a good idea. At least that way everyone would be feeling a little more responsible to each other. If the entire SEO industry slipped off a cliff tomorrow, would you see executives from search engines crying in public? I doubt it. If companies involved purely in search advertising (PPC) all fell off a cliff, would you see executives at search engines crying in public. Probably not. The whole PPC thing has been set up to be self service anyway. And none of the search network owners think twice about going direct to your clients once they’ve reached a certain spend.

I think we’ve moved a long way from the bad old, them and us arms race days. There’s certainly a whole lot more interaction between search engines and the SEO/SEM community. These days, you’re literally falling over search engine guys at major industry conferences such as SES, SMX, PubCon and ad:tech. There are the official search engine blogs. And the unofficial, such as Matt Cutts’ hugely popular blog.

So yes, there’s a lot more communication and a little more (stress, little) transparency. Back in the day we were always asking if search engines could give us some kind of weather report about changes and updates. More recently we’ve been getting those kinds of alerts relating to changes and spam penalties, that sort of thing. And that’s great. But (and this is a hugely important but), with something that has such a major impact on the industry like the roll out of universal search, you’d think someone may have wanted to throw the notion of universal search into the communications pot before we all just had to wake up one day and deal with it.

I think there are going to be a number of major changes in the way we see results at search engines. And as the search engines make changes we’ll have to evolve with them. As a marketer I’m very excited about search moving forward into this rich new experience look and feel. And as a marketer with a certain depth of knowledge about a particular medium, I should always be able to help my clients. I don’t see much of a change in the vendor/client relationship in the marketing environment.

It’s entirely possible that we’ll see the listings switched around to give more priority to paid listings in the universal search age. It could be something as simple as switch from right to left for the paid listings. Or it could be much more adventurous than that. I think before something as dramatic as that occurs, search engines do really have responsibility to provide the long term weather forecast.

The search marketing industry seems to go up and down in terms of perceptions. Is this industry really characterized by “worthless shady criminals” or are there really that many clueless mainstream media journalists?

M: With respect to the mainstream marketing media, and also to the conventional marketing and advertising agencies, there still seems to be very little true understanding about SEO. I’ve been in a number of meetings with well established advertising agencies where an account director will try and explain to the team why I’m there and what SEO is. I’m sometimes left there thinking “that is so *not* what SEO is or what I do!”

So if you start at a level where many marketers are hugely uninformed about search (in particular, SEO) then there are always going to be those anomalies, where on the one hand we’re viewed as a bunch of algorithm botherers. And on the other hand a bunch of fakers getting paid “money for old rope.”

The entry level into SEO is not very high. Just spend a grand on some tools such as rank checkers, back link checkers, keyword density analyzers etc. And even if you’ve only been in the business for five minutes, start throwing those terms around in front of an uninformed client, then tell him you’re an SEO Guru. He’ll believe you.

Sometimes the industry gives itself a black eye and that seems to get more mainstream press. The BMW incident is a classic case, for instance. And then there are the purveyors of pure poop in the industry. People talking to clients and telling them their web sites should be LSI compliant, or whatever the latest industry buzz is. Some clients buy into the FUD, they get no results and then brand the entire industry as being nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

However, all the more, as search begins to creep its way as a line item up the marketing shopping list, a higher degree of understanding and awareness should follow with it.

You’ve led organizations, worked as a consultant and for other companies. In fact, you’ve recently joined the Bruce Clay organization (congrats!) as VP of International Business Development. I am curious why you would work for a company and not stay as a consultant?

The main reason I joined Bruce Clay is that, I can’t afford clothes. And when you join Bruce Clay, Inc., you get loads of free shirts!

Seriously, I’m very much a consultant at heart. But when I started my new brand at the beginning of this year, I started looking around for freelancers and subcontractors to work with me on specific accounts. It was then that I realized just how much of a skills shortage there is in the industry.

In particular, trying to find people who have had big site SEO experience (sites with more than a million pages) and also those who can work internationally and deal with cultural differences as well as everything else.

So, I’ve always had this hankering to do something beyond just the workshops, seminars and conferences I do. Some time, back in the seventies it seems like, when the first edition of my book came out, I registered search-engine-academy.com and had every intention of starting an SEO course. I even hooked up with my local university, where I still have strong connections and they were extremely keen to get something off the ground. But, as with a lot of good intentions I’ve had over the years, it’s still there on the back-burner.

Of course, Bruce has a well developed and successful certification course in SEO. He also has the tools. Not only that, Bruce has one of the few search marketing firms to be setting up a truly international presence. And international business is an area I specialize in. Plus, Bruce and I have known each other for a century or two and have talked from time-to-time about doing something together. Seemed like the timing was right. So when Bruce invited me on board a few months back, all the pieces seemed to fit.

You’ve written some excellent content of which “Filthly Linking Rich” is one of my favorites as well as a famous book about Search Marketing. There are many that say books about SEO can get outdated pretty quickly, so I’m curious if you feel your book is still relevant? All of it or parts?

I wrote the book because I was fed up with buying other books and eBooks on and offline which had a section called “How search engines work” and yet none of them really explained it at all. They all did the same thing and covered crawler activity. But none of them addressed true information retrieval (IR) techniques and the science behind it for indexing and ranking. Even now, with some of the more recent publications I’ve seen, the same thing applies.

Mine was never written as a “tips and tricks” thing as many eBooks are. It was more about the application of marketing communications to information retrieval on the web. And to that end, I haven’t seen anything else as in-depth. So, I think the section on how search engines work is still very relevant. Also, if you read the interviews I did with both search engine researchers and engineers as well as practitioners, the information is just as good today as it was then if it’s best practice you’re interested in.

Even as it currently is it still sells well. But there is an updated version due soon. And I’m well into the structure and content of the third edition. I’m not dashing any further into the third edition until I have my head around universal search though. And some of the other new changes we’ll be seeing in the immediate future.

I’m actually writing another white paper along the lines of “Filthy Linking Rich” called “Outside In” which is about heuristics and signals that search engines may be using for this new universal approach.

As a bit of a late bloomer to the blogging game with mikegrehan.com, do you think it was worth the wait? Has your blog been an effective tool for promoting the brand of Mike or do you consider it to be more of a personal blog? What blogs do you read and how often?

I didn’t bother with a blog for a long time because there were so many industry related blogs sprouting up all over the place. There was no point in me starting another one. The reason I did start a blog (other than the fact that everyone on the planet had one by then) was because of my mom.

She’s in her seventies and doesn’t travel very much these days. But she takes a real interest in my job (although she still doesn’t really know what I do, “It’s something to do with Google” she tells people) and she loves to hear about where I’ve been and who I’ve met. So I started the blog for her, mainly. Of course, my kids and the rest of the family as well as close friends all take a peek at it. But you could have knocked me over with a feather when my son showed me the traffic stats for it. Considering it’s just a blog about a little, fat, old English bloke getting pissed all over the planet, it has a huge international audience.

I’m often asked about writing a business blog. But there’s no point with “The Lisa” blogging over at Bruce’s place and me writing my ClickZ column. As for which blogs I read myself, if I’m honest (and I am) I don’t subscribe to, or read any unless someone sends me a link to something interesting.

The column you write for ClickZ is a must read in my opinion. You consistently succeed at provoking thought about the search marketing business that not everyone wants to hear. The great thing is that you don’t do it in a “I’m a bearded wombat and SEO isn’t rocket science” sort of way, but with more of a diplomatic “been there done that” style. Is this by design or are you a naturally provocative writer?

We haven’t had much time to hang together, Lee. But one thing that people in the industry do tell me after they’ve had their fourth Sauvignon Blanc with me is, “you write as you speak.” And that’s it.

I’m a practitioner first and foremost. So I air my thoughts and feelings about the industry in just the same way as I would if were standing at the bar having a beer. I don’t write to be provocative or controversial or anything else. Just to honestly voice my opinion.

Sure, as mentioned earlier, some people tend to take what I say personally and then launch these ridiculous attacks on me. Not that I could give a shit. If people don’t like my opinions, then don’t read them. Unsubscribe, read something else… Get a life.

There are so many buzz-tactics and catchphrases floating around the search marketing industry right now. For example: Google universal search, personalized search, social media, user generated media, video, local and mobile search. What advice can you give to budding search marketers in terms of how to separate the signal from the noise? There’s no such a thing as a silver bullet tactic in SEO but what emerging channels should marketers take more seriously?

Again, I think I’ve already touched on this. But just to reiterate, it’s time to leave some of the old wisdom behind and develop some new wisdom.

At the past two conferences I spoke at, I got into conversations with delegates, as I always do. And, I know that, when people are new to the industry, I’m going to get asked the same questions over and over. I don’t mind that at all. But I think that, asking questions such as “how many characters can you put in a title tag” is way down the list of priorities. Yet, it turns up over and over again. You know, if your company is called Kodak, how many characters do you “think” you need to put in the title tag?

The whole textbook SEO thing is so vastly outweighed by the marketing imperatives required to get some traction in the SERPs. Savvy marketing online to build up your brand and reputation, which in turn improves your linkage data and hopefully end user data is critical to success. I believe it’s so important to analyze the competition out there and see how they’re marketing themselves to get a true indication of the challenge. And by analyze, I don’t just mean count the characters in their title tags or keyword density of web pages, I’m talking about serious marketing analysis. The big picture.

Google is blending end user data in from so many different sources now. They want to provide the end user with the richest experience possible in order to keep them locked into the brand. It really is time to concentrate more on the end user experience.

How much do you buy into the idea of optimizing content for social media? Do you personally use social media sites like Facebook, Flickr, Digg, Del.icio.us, Twitter and/or YouTube?

I HATE Facebook! Please God, take it away and let me get some work done. If one more twat invites me to Facebook I’m going round their place with an axe! Someone has written on my wall. What the fuck is all that about? I log in and get told “three of your friends changed their underpants today” or some such bollocks. I don’t care. Go away and leave me alone. All of you. I have a job to do for crying out loud!

I think you get my point.

Wal-Mart has a Facebook profile. What a great place to get pilloried by your audience. Maybe they should have thought it through a bit more. It’s early days for this social media thing. To be honest, I think a lot of people talk about it, but I don’t think many are actually doing it. Mostly, like me, sitting on the sidelines to watch what happens next, I guess.

The most important fact about the social media thing is, these are real people having fun (if you can call it that) .And the last thing they need is to have marketing messages shoved in their face. If it’s not done carefully, it’s about as welcome as spam in your in-box.

You’re a world traveler, something I aspire to. What are your favorite places to visit?

Mainly pubs!

Hehe! Alright, I’ve been a traveler long before I got into internet business back in 1995. So I’ve covered a lot of the planet and it’s very difficult to pick a favorite. I have so many of them. My latest passion is Hong Kong and China. Hong Kong is dangerous for me. I could die of having a good time there. It’s such a vibrant, eclectic mix of everything. And it really is a city that never sleeps.

Then there’s Mother Russia. I simply adore Moscow. It’s such a happening place (and possibly the most expensive city on the planet). I love to eat in Café Pushkin for the genuine Russian experience. And I love to just walk the streets of Moscow as they are full of the most beautiful women on the planet.

Most of whom I’ll never see again, as my wife just read that bit and poked me straight in the eye!

Thanks Mike and I’m looking forward to a pint in San Jose.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2007. | Interview: Mike Grehan, World Traveler & Global SEO | 11 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Spotlight on Search Interview with Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro, SEMPO

It’s been too long since we’ve done a Spotlight on Search interview and I’m happy to say we’ve been able to catch up with world traveler and search marketing ninja master Gord Hotchkiss. He’s probably never been characterized quite that way, but there’s a first for everything. Gord is CEO of search marketing agency, Enquiro out of BC Canada and is a very busy/active speaker with a variety of industry conferences.

This isn’t Gord’s first appearance at Online Marketing Blog though, he was good enough to talk about Enquiro’s most recent analysis and eye tracking report of the major 3 search engines last year. I would highly recommend checking out this very insightful review of Google, Yahoo and MSN search results – at least until personalized search takes over.

While Gord is involved in many other endeavors, the one I’d like to point out is his involvement as chairperson of SEMPO, which has made amazing progress as an industry association for search marketing. SEMPO has made great progress in creating resources for in-house search marketers and also the SEMPO Institute.

He also contributes to MediaPost’s Search Insider and his own blog, Out of my Gord.

Next week Gord is the Emcee of MediaPost’s Search Insider Summit at the Hyatt Coconut Point Resort and Spa in Bonita Springs, Florida. Despite Gord being in New York this week at a SEMPO strategic planning meeting after which he’ll fly to Florida, he was very generous to take time out to answer a few questions about the Summit event, about personalized search and what’s in store for the future of search marketing.

What’s different about Search Insider Summit compared to other conferences? Besides the 2pm tee times

Good question, and unfortunately, not one I’m that well equipped to answer. This is my first Summit. Here, based on what I’ve learned, sets the Summit apart.

I think it tries to take a broader, more strategic focus that would appeal more to the executive decision maker. It tries to place Search in the big picture, showing how it integrates with other channels. And with the strong networking components, it’s really a more intimate opportunity to meet other decision makers who are also determining their search strategies.

As the Summit Emcee, your commentary will set the tone of the event. What’s on your mind right now regarding upcoming search marketing trends that you’ll talk about? Personalized search, the future of SEO, social media, click fraud?

To me, there are a number of factors that are dramatically shifting the landscape of search, including personalization. I think the factors that will change search dramatically are:

• Personalization – the end of the monolithic results set and the beginning of a much more personalized relationship with search functionality
• Integration – moving search from a stand alone activity and integrating it into the evolving functionality of Web 2.0. Think of search as an engine, rather than as an activity
• Ubiquity – Search will be everywhere, and will underlie the majority of our interactions with online content, in whatever form it takes. This reaches into social, video, mobile, everywhere!

You’ve been writing a lot about personalized search and your interviews with Matt Cutts, Sep Kamvar and Marissa Meyer from Google have been excellent reading. Between personalized search, web history and possibly Google categories, how long do you give search engine optimization as we know it on Google? And is that a good thing?

SEO as we know it has never really been “as we know it”. It’s always in flux. That said, the pace of flux is going to pick up dramatically. Google is signaling that they’re moving into a personalized experience across all their properties aggressively. And that, together with the other factors I mentioned above, is going to dramatically alter the game for SEO’s.

Is it a good thing? Well, if we can get rid of low quality, low relevance results, then it’s a good thing for users. But personally, that hasn’t been as much of a factor for me in the last year. Let’s face it, personalization makes organic visibility more complicated, not less so. The key for SEO’s will be to understand online user behavior, not try to control various factors that impact the search engine’s algorithms. And I think that’s a healthy move. Less controllable, but healthy.

What are some fundamental changes search marketers should make with core SEO principles in light of personalized search? Will this finally force SEOs to focus on optimizing for users?

Yes, as I mentioned above. And that’s why it’s healthy. There’s still a world of value SEO’s can add by optimizing for users, and helping marketers understand how online viral linking can happen and, when it does, make sure that it’s happening in a way conducive to being recognized by search engines. This makes SEO more complex, not less so, and as Danny Sullivan has said on a number of occasions, complexity is great job security. If you went to 100 sites at random, I would say 99 of them are not doing SEO right, or at least, not getting full value from it. And that includes a number of companies with in-house SEO staff. This is no knock on in-house SEO, it just means we all have to up our game, both in-house and external agencies.

Let’s say Google does “close the loop” as you say and offers advertisers the kinds of behavioral targeting you’ve written about, how long before consumers revolt? Or will they even notice?

The first time they notice, they’ll be creeped out. But this is the new reality of marketing, so we’ll get used to it. The networks have to make sure they’re adding enough value to the user experience to make sure the privacy trade off is worth it. This is the path Google is treading very carefully now.

Enough about personalized search. What are a few trends for 2007 search marketers should have high on their priority list?

• Social Media Optimization – Get to know it.
• Local Search – It’s time is almost here.
• Vertical Search – With personalization comes greater opportunity for richer vertical experiences. Expect users to be spending more time searching vertically.

I wish I could say Mobile, but 2007 is too soon..maybe 2008, but more likely 2009.

Thanks Gord and I’ll see you in Florida next week!

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2007. | Gord Hotchkiss Search Insider Summit Interview | 2 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Photo by Jeremy Zawodny

I first bumped into Amanda Watlington via AIM, (Association for Interactive Marketing) and then in person at a WebmasterWorld Pubcon conference several years ago. Further collaboration occurred through involvement with the next iteration of AIM, the Direct Marketing Association’s Search Engine Marketing Council, of which Amanda was a past chair.

Amanda is famous for her in-depth knowledge of blogs, RSS and podcasting and she has one of the first popular books on the subject. However, this long time marketer’s roots are in public relations and she also has an extensive background with search marketing.

In this interview, Amanda talks about getting involved with search marketing, her appreciation for being hands on with the work, her thoughts on marketing via Second Life, the DMA Search Engine Marketing Certification program, tips on business blogging and the power of networking.

Please describe your background and how did you get involved with search marketing? What are your areas of focus today?

As I blogged recently, I have been involved in search marketing since 1995. I got involved when I was working in public relations, and we were discussing doing a fax newsletter for a client. I suggested that we dispense with that idea and build a site instead. Since we were in the business of relevant readership, search marketing was a direct outgrowth. Since our clients wanted accountability for such projects, I developed an early interest in Web metrics. This in turn led to a call for improved results, and I think the continuation of the cycle is pretty obvious.

Today my practice is really still gaining visibility in search for online assets. These are no longer just Web pages. They cover the length and breadth of the types of information that we consume on the Web – blogs, audio, video as well as more traditional Web pages. Most of my clients are the new type of search marketing client – very knowledgeable, yet looking for strategic and tactical advice.

I’ve found that my practice blends strategy with tactical recommendations. I am often called upon to interpret the technical requirements for the Web development teams that support my marketing clients. Although I do not write code myself, I have over 25 years of experience in information technology. I am fluent in geek and marketing – so to speak.

You’ve worked with a large SEO/SEM agency and you’ve run your own consulting practice. Which do you prefer? What are some of the pros and cons for each?

During the early 1990s worked for a major search marketing firm, where I had the opportunity to develop a lot of cutting-edge methodologies. The early days were very heady fun. SEO was new, and all of us, the early practitioners, were learning and developing what are today the best practices. An axiom that I have found in business though is that the higher you go in an organization, the less your contact is with the work itself.

When you are the head of a small consultancy, you are deep in the work. I enjoy search marketing. It still fascinates me. When you run your own consultancy you are also deep in the marketing and promotion and management of the business. It is a different kind of balancing act.

Getting to choose my own projects and managing my own future has enormous appeal to me. I like being able to take on work that interests and challenges me. I also very much enjoy charting my own course. With this freedom comes the inherent risk and concerns over business prosperity.

As someone who is active with the Second Life communities, do you feel there is a genuine and significant marketing opportunity there?

As if there are not enough opportunities for all of us marketers in first life, now we should be looking toward Second Life. My interest in Second Life and online worlds is not something new. In the mid-1990s I was teaching college, and a group of us (digital experimenters) wanted to build a Palace environment for teaching online. I had done some experimenting with the MUDs and MOOs and found the graphical interface of The Palace environment very attractive. The problem was getting through the firewall. It is the same issue that some users of Second Life encounter.

Just as I saw a teaching application for The Palace, I see lots of opportunity for marketing both in world (on Second Life) and for promoting products that may exist in either or both worlds. It is really only a matter of what the imagination will create. Who knows what the future holds?

What do you think are some of the biggest mistakes marketers have made so far in Second Life and what do you think marketing on Second Life will look like in 3 years?

The biggest mistake that marketers can make and are making is of trying to jump in without understanding the social mores of Second Life. It is a community and success is based on networking and building credibility. Just because a business is well accepted in the real world, it is a false assumption to expect it to transcend to Second Life. Join the community and take part in its life before launching a business effort. We’ve been active in Second Life for sometime now, and we are just moving forward with a business/marketing effort that is directed at this community. Go slowly to go fast.

You’ve been charged as the architect for the DMA’s Search Engine Marketing Certification program. Please share your thoughts on the DMA’s motivations and the industry’s need for such a program.

Search marketing has enjoyed explosive growth in the past five years. Today, there is an absolute need for marketers at all levels to know the principles and the best practices of search marketing. It has become a core marketing skill. There is a need for talent at the strategic and tactical levels, and this is the need that the DMA is addressing.

Where can people turn to learn what they need to know about the discipline? How can they evaluate what has been learned? Yes! There are programs available or they can send staff to conferences with a list of sessions to attend, but there must be a framework to set the valuable tactics within. You don’t jump into a novel writing workshop if you have never written a paragraph.

With its broad experience in direct marketing and large constituency of direct marketers, the DMA is a natural fit for developing training in search marketing.

What do you think are some of the more promising marketing opportunities of the new media, web 2.0 and social media sort?

I really must admit that I don’t mentally separate new media or Web 2.0, social media etc. out. They are morphs of their predecessors that require morphed thinking on behalf of marketers. Marketing in its purest form is facilitation of an exchange relationship. Of course, you can throw into the mix that marketing creates and expands the demand for products and services. The task of finding opportunities then becomes relatively simple. First, you must learn how the new media works and then begin a process of using it to move the agenda forward. It there are no current marketing examples for jump starting your thinking, revert to the definition and ask how it applies.

Technorati is currently tracking about 59 million blogs and counting. Blogs have also begun to be used more commonly as marketing tools. How long before companies accept blogs as they do web sites as a normal tool for marketing? Or will they ever?

Blogs are normal tools for marketing with different rules of engagement. I am finding it quite amusing the continuous mishaps and missteps that some of the biggest agencies are experiencing as they attempt to make the blogosphere conform to their view. Blogs are not regular Websites. The technology that underlies blogs can be used to power websites, but once you extend beyond the platform, the rules start to shift. The mores of the blogosphere are by now reasonably established. Two years ago I would not have said this, but today flogs are still reviled. Since the goal is readership, then the charge is to make something that is reader-worthy. We are all so challenged for time that our tolerance for disinteresting, badly written materials is limited. It invites the delete click.

You speak at conferences quite often about blogs, RSS and podcasting. Can you share 2-3 of your most valuable tips for aspiring blogs or podcasters out there that want to get noticed?

Here are three short tips:

1) Create interesting content
2) Apply the principles of SEO to all files – image, audio file, etc.
3) Track your results

What could search engines be doing better in terms of communicating with the SEO community? Are there tools for search marketers from the search engines that you would like to see?

From my point of view, I am thrilled that they no longer view us as complete enemies. I still find the communication a bit opaque but that is slowly changing. That being said I would still do the same tactics if I had the so-called algo. on my desktop – since I look as SEO as marketing, not algo-chasing.

The one tool that I would like to see is a less laborious way of reporting egregious spam. – a bulk upload feature so to speak.

What advice can you give to those that are trying to stay ahead of the game on SEO and social media in terms of keeping up with industry information, strategy/tactics and best practices?

Read broadly, there is a wealth of information available. Don’t scrimp on the time it takes. I read for several hours each day just to keep ahead, and this is with an RSS reader to assist. No! I am not a slow reader, but I am an avid link follower who wanders widely as I read and learn.

The second bit of advice is to talk to others involved in the work, not just the usual suspects (your close friends). I speak at and attend a number of conferences and always find that I learn from everyone and everything that I take part in. The difficulty is taking the time to absorb the information and to think deeply on it. I call this noodling on an idea. Sometimes in the crush of getting the work done, we don’t spend enough time in reflective thinking. Blogging is great for prompting this type of reflection.

Thanks Amanda! Find out more about Amanda Watlington on her blog, “Blogs and Feeds” or her company web site.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2007. | Interview: Amanda Watlington on Second Life and Blogs | 6 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

I’ve known Andy Beal via blogging and search marketing conferences for a while now and had the privilege of speaking with him on a SEO Blogger and Reporter panel at the last WebmasterWorld Pubcon in Las Vegas.

While I had great respect for Andy’s accomplishments at building search marketing companies and developing top notch blogs, his performance during the panel was genuinely impressive. His grasp of the big picture and business aspects of search marketing were/are very insightful. My public relations firm has even hired Andy for some consulting on reputation management and I am happy to recommend him.

Andy started in the search marketing business with KeywordRanking and also the blog, Search Engine Lowdown. He moved on and started another company, Fortune Interactive and a new blog, Marketing Pilgrim and then moved on to becoming an independent consultant which he continues to do today.

In this interview Andy talks about his background in search marketing from corporate guy to independent consultant, he offers some valuable insight into search marketing agency management issues, a response to the Dave Pasternack SEO silliness, tips on business blogging, partnerships and his British/Southern accent. Enjoy!

Please describe your background and how did you get involved with search marketing?

I mostly just fell into search marketing. Before I moved to the U.S., I worked as a paralegal, financial planner and mortgage broker. However, I’ve always had a passion for computers and have technically been online since 1987 – the pre-WWW days – so, when I moved here, I decided it was a good time to make my hobby a career.

You’re worked for a large SEO company, started your own SEO company with VC funding and now you’re and independent consultant. Which do you prefer? What do you like best about your current situation?

Well, there are certainly advantages and disadvantages to each. I wouldn’t change anything I have done, as each role has been a great experience and has helped develop my expertise in some way. I will say that I am having a lot of fun being an independent consultant.

In the past year you’ve done quite a bit of public speaking on the topic of reputation management. How can companies tie proper online brand monitoring and reputation management to the bottom line?

I think there’s a lot of ways that monitoring and managing a corporate reputation can have a positive effect on the bottom line. You need look no further than Kryptonite locks to learn that not monitoring your online reputation can have a negative effect on your business – they lost over $10 million due to a flaw with their locks. You can also benefit from gaining insight on your market and customers by listening to conversations that are going on each day. By listening to the community, you can learn about their needs, what products they like, and what your competitors are doing to please them.

You’ve done some organizational development consulting for several prominent SEO firms this year. What are 2-3 tips you can share with small SEO companies in terms of organization and management issues?

When I switched to consulting, I didn’t expect that my experience and knowledge would be in demand by other search marketing firms. Fortunately, business coaching for other firms is very interesting and has allowed me to gain insight on the common problems marketing agencies face. When I meet with clients, I typically discover common areas that they need assistance with.

The first is that many small firms rely on the expertise of the owner or some senior executive. This works when the company is very small and has just a handful of clients, but as the company grows, it is limited by the amount of time that person has available. I help companies learn to share that expertise among other employees, freeing up the time of the executive and allowing the company to grow.

Another common mistake I see is that many firms simply don’t know the best way to promote themselves. They rely heavily on referrals from existing clients or business partners and don’t really pay attention to other ways to grow their business. This reliance is fine when you are smaller, but as you grow your business, you need to put in place other channels to bring in new revenue to sustain your growth.

The winds of change are strong right now in the search marketing industry. What do you think things will look like this time next year in terms of conferences and SEO/SEM media?

Wow, good question. I’ve tried playing the prediction game before, but the industry is so fast moving, it’s hard to predict beyond the next three months. I definitely believe that search marketers will become a lot more integrated with their client’s other marketing channels. I also feel that social media marketing is going to become a very important skill set. I’m not talking about simple “linkbait” tactics, but strategic marketing that identifies social networks and utilizes word of mouth and viral techniques to attract clients and increase brand-awareness.

What is your advice for companies that are thinking about starting a blog? Can you give 2-3 tips or best practices for corporate blogging?

Whenever I meet with a company looking to start a blog, I always try to get to the root of their motivation for having one. Often, companies don’t have a good reason for starting a corporate blog, but feel pressure to have one, because other businesses do. So, my first tip is to don’t feel compelled to jump into the blogosphere, if you don’t have the passion or a clue about what you’ll put on the blog, you’ll likely fail.

For those that do want to start a company blog, I advise that they should have a two-way conversation with readers, otherwise it’s not so much a blog but a public relations web site. For a company blog to build a following and become a success, it needs to be committed to engaging its audience, even when it becomes a little uncomfortable to do so – such as when your customers start criticizing your business.

You have a marketing partnership of sorts with Converseon. Can you describe the nature of that relationship and how valuable is it to partner with other companies?

I consult with Converseon on a number of different topics including reputation monitoring, blogging and search engine optimization. They are a great group and I enjoy the opportunity to assist them with client campaigns.

In the past, I have found partnerships to be hit and miss. Some relationships work out well for both sides, while others never really amount to much for either party. I think it’s a good idea for firms to partner with companies that provide complimentary services – don’t try to specialize in everything – but I’m never afraid to ditch a partnership that’s not benefiting my company. I think that’s key for any small marketing firm – partner with companies that fill the gaps in your own service, but remember that they don’t have to be long term relationships if they become fruitless.

Competition is increasing in the search marketing industry and despite some questionable analysis (Marketing Sherpa) and characterizations (Dave Pasternack) what are some of the most significant opportunities for companies that still have not yet embraced SEO into their marketing budgets?

Well, I’ve never heard of Dave Pasternack but I see he’s the co-founder of Did-It.com. Two things spring to mind. First, it’s no wonder that Kevin Lee is the public face of the company, with comments like this coming from Pasternack! Second, is it any surprise that a paid search company is writing negative things about SEO?

While SEO may not be “rocket science”, as Pasternack puts it, it’s certainly a lot more effort than a paid search campaign. SEO is going to evolve, becoming a mixture of optimization, viral marketing, buzz generation and public relations. Pay-per-click, on the other hand, will become easier to manage, with better tools being provided by the search engines (look at Yahoo’s Panama), so anyone can manage a campaign without the need for outside assistance.

SEO may not be rocket science, but the coming year will see PPC becoming as easy as putting together a child’s Lego set.

What could search engines be doing better in terms of communicating with the SEO community? Are there tools for search marketers from the search engines that you would like to see?

I definitely believe that Google’s Webmaster Central is a big step in the right direction. As the search engines become better at pinpointing spam, they appear to be a little more relaxed when it comes to communicating with search engine optimizers.

I think we certainly need better guidance from the search engines, so we can understand what they like and what they don’t like. We’re already seeing isolated cases of better communication – Matt Cutts appears to be leading the charge in that regard – but I think the search engines can take further steps to share information.

Since you’re from the UK but living in North Carolina, I am curious if you speak with a British accent or a southern drawl at home?

My accent is now at the point where it’s somewhere over the mid-Atlantic trying to figure out which direction to go. I think my wife misses the days when I sounded more like Hugh Grant instead of Andy Griffith, but I’m afraid the drawl will continue in its quest for domination. In the meantime, “Tally Ho, Y’all!”

Tally Ho to you too Andy and thanks!

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2006. | Interview with Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim | 9 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

There has been quite a bit of buzz on the paid search marketing front with the launch of the new Yahoo! Search Advertising platform aka “Panama”. At the WebmasterWorld Pubcon conference in Las Vegas, Yahoo! announced the launch during a sponsored lunch. Dan Zarrella did a good a review of that session here.

Our YSM account recently went through the upgrade and we’re going through the process of getting familiar with all the new platform features. After talking to my contact at Yahoo PR as well as Mona Elesseily from Page Zero who has written a book about the Yahoo Search Marketing program, I thought it would be good to get some insight directly from Yahoo for Online Marketing Blog readers. John Slade, Senior Director of Yahoo Global Product Management was kind enough to field a few questions for me.

How has the upgrade roll out been going and when do you plan on having everyone moved over?

The upgrade has generally been going quite smoothly. We’ve noticed that most people experience a brief period of disorientation when they get started in the new platform – like when you move in to a new house and need to figure out where your silverware ended up. Once people make it through their orientation to the new platform, we’ve been quite pleased with the responses we’re hearing from customers. We are targeting a complete transition of all of our US advertisers by the end of the Q1 2007.

What are the major differences between the new advertising platform and Yahoo!’s legacy product?

The new platform represents an especially major breakthrough for advertisers because it’s:

• Easier and More Effective: Yahoo! consulted hundreds of advertisers to develop a campaign management work flow that is more intuitive and will provide more effective controls and tools than other competitive products.
• Action and insight-oriented: Our new campaign management application will provide advertisers with more visibility and insight into their performance and more control over how to improve it. This ultimately provides Yahoo! users with a better online experience.
• Built for the future: With the launch of this new platform, Yahoo! will in the future be able to provide advertisers with many more targeting, format and distribution options.

What can you do now to run a campaign that you couldn’t before?

With the new platform, advertisers will have access to many new capabilities for managing their campaigns.

• Geo-Targeting ‚Äì Enables advertisers to display their ads broadly or to narrow their distribution down to specific metropolitan areas, allowing them to better target their customers, customize their ads and control their costs.
• Ad Testing ‚Äì Allows advertisers to easily test multiple versions of their ads to determine the message that works best for their customers. They can also choose to let our systems automatically optimize serving to the ad that performs best on clickthrough rate.
• Goal-Based Campaign Optimization ‚Äì If an advertiser has business metrics they‚Äôre trying to hit, such as a CPA, ROI or ROAS goal, our systems can automatically adjust their ad rotation and bids to help them meet those goals.
• Campaign Budgeting and Scheduling ‚Äì Allows advertisers to create, budget and schedule individual advertising campaigns for greater control over their advertising strategy and spending. Advertisers also have the option to place an account and/ or campaign daily spending limit to increase budget control.

What are the fundamental differences between the new Yahoo! Search Advertising platform and Google AdWords? What are the competitive advantages?

The new platform allows advertisers to:

• See what kind of volume of leads is available for any given campaign or ad
• Understand how search marketing campaigns impact immediate and deferred transactions
• Define a standard business goal like ‚ÄúCost Per Action‚Äù (CPA), then let the system automatically find the most cost-effective way to deliver against that goal
• Take action on campaigns at the very point of insight
• Manage campaigns with the level of control and at the level you want with the tools that best fit their needs/experience

How much of an impact on new Yahoo! advertiser acquisition do you think the new sign up process will have?

Our new sign-up process has been streamlined and simplified with the goal of getting new advertisers up and online as quickly as possible. We’re optimistic that this new process will make it easier for more and more advertisers to take advantage of the quality leads which Yahoo can provide them.

Can you provide an overview of the upgrade process for existing advertisers?

When an existing advertiser is invited to upgrade to the new platform, they will be notified up to two weeks prior to their upgrade date. When that date comes, two links will appear within their current Sponsored Search account – one that will take them to a preview of what their account will look like after the upgrade, and one that will allow them to initiate the upgrade process.

Once an advertiser sees these links, we recommend:

• Logging into the account and accessing the preview. This will allow an advertiser to become familiar with how their current listings will be transferred to the new account structure.
• Initiate account upgrade. If an advertiser is ready to upgrade to the new Sponsored Search, click on the ‚ÄúUpgrade Now‚Äù button that will be displayed within the account. Because the upgrade process can take up to eight hours (during which time advertisers will not be able to make any changes to their account), we recommend initiating the upgrade at the end of their business day, to minimize any disruption to the account.

We expect that many advertisers will want to upgrade as soon as possible, but Yahoo! will work to accommodate advertisers that wish to defer the transition until after the holiday season. Alternatively, advertisers that wish to upgrade even earlier than their scheduled date, they can request to be migrated as soon as possible through the upgrade reservation page.

What was the motivation to offer the upgraded version to new advertisers before existing advertisers?

We’ve been offering existing advertisers the ability to request upgrades to the new platform for several months now. At this point, in addition to that reservation system, we were confident enough in the platform that we wanted to offer the new, streamlined sign-up process to new and prospective advertisers as well.

In your video interview with WebProNews, you mention that the platform is built to be extended to support things like graphical advertising or mobile ads. Along those lines, what kind of enhancements do you have planned for 2007?

Plans for future versions of the new platform include introducing additional distribution options, targeting capabilities and pricing models, whether it’s by demographic, behavior or by combinations of these factors. In addition, the platform will be able to support all kinds of ad formats Рfrom graphical to rich media – and many different kinds of distribution, from a cell phone to a television set.

What resources are available for advertisers that want to learn more?

We have a complete Upgrade Center for advertisers that want to learn about the upgrade process. It contains hints, FAQs, tutorials, and more. It’s available at newsponsoredsearch.yahoo.com.

Thank you Lee for this opportunity to discuss our new platform with you and your readers.

Thank you John! Readers might also be interested in the Yahoo Search Marketing blog.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2006. | Yahoo Panama – Interview with John Slade of Yahoo! | 6 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

I first met Lawrence Coburn when we presented together on a Public Relations panel during a WebmasterWorld Pubcon conference in Boston. Lawrence told a great story about being at the right place at the right time and taking proper advantage to build publicity for his web site, RateItAll.com.

At the recent Pubcon conference in Las Vegas, Lawrence presented on a panel about viral marketing where he focused on using widgets as a way to drive traffic and links. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend this session since I was presentingon a different panel at the same time, but Karen and Jolina did and they came back with excellent feedback. Multiple people mentioned this session to me actually, including Rand Fishkin in this video interview.

There’s no doubt in my mind that widgets are going to be gaining a lot of attention from creative online marketers in the coming months, so what better time than now to talk to someone who is already in the thick of widget marketing? Read on to discover what widgets are, how they work, see some widget examples, learn about measuring widget results, resources and what Lawrence’s opinion is regarding whether widget marketing is just a passing fad or tactic.

Tell us about yourself and how did you start working with widgets?

I’ve been running a large social network and consumer ratings community called RateItAll since 1999. My interest in widgets was sparked by seeing the success that other online communities (like MySpace) have had in allowing their users to embed widgets, and the related success that widget publishers (like YouTube) have had in pushing their reach out beyond the confines of their domain.

With the possible exception of Google AdSense, the growing widget ecosystem is the single largest development in web publishing that I’ve seen in my seven plus years in the business.

What exactly IS a widget and how do they work?

When I talk about widgets, I am referring to web widgets – chunks of embeddable code that can be grabbed on one site, and embedded in another. Depending on who you’re talking to, widgets can also be referred to as gadgets, modules, badges, or blog bling. One of the neatest things about web widgets is that you don’t have to be a developer to make use of them. Anybody who understands copy/paste is able to display widgetized content or functionality on their own blog, social networking profile page, or personal web site. It’s sort of like opening up the world of mash-ups to non-technical web users.

What are some of the benefits to using widgets and how can they help companies engage in viral marketing?

From a site perspective, widgets are all about providing your users with the tools to promote your business. A properly executed widget can spread like wild fire – introducing your site’s content / functionality to new users who may not have known your site existed. Widgets are especially interesting to me as a site owner as a means of acquiring new customers at a minimal cost, pushing my site’s reach out to all corners of the Web, leveraging my site’s existing content, reducing my site’s dependence on SEO, and providing a nice source of organic, one-way, inbound links.

How do you measure the effect of a widget?

Widget analytics is still in its infancy. Currently, you can get a rough idea of how many times your widget has gotten picked up by doing backlink searches on Google, Yahoo, or Technorati using the “site:” qualifier to isolate the big widget aggregators like MySpace. Inbound traffic from widgets can be measured by checking your log files. However, as of now, there are no off the shelf solutions to help widget publishers understand exactly how folks are engaging with their widgets. There’s a company called Clearspring that is working on this problem, and I look forward to seeing how they progress.

Is it possible that widgets are just a fad like link baiting and social media?

Your question assumes that link baiting and social media are in fact fads, which I don’t think is accurate. (Perhaps “tactics” would be a better characterization – Lee) At their core, widgets are really about providing more control and a better experience to web users. Specifically, they’re about giving users the ability to be able to call up specific content and functionality when and where they want it. Now that the genie is out of the bottle, so to speak, I don’t think that widgets are going away. Even if the largest aggregagators were to make the unwise decision to start blocking widget embeds, other communities would step up to take their place.

People like being able to customize their online presences with widgets. It’s a way for folks to provide a better experience to their friends / readers, and a way to broadcast to the world a little bit about themselves. I see widgets as part of the larger movements of citizen publishing and customization – which few would argue are fads.

What are some good examples of widgets?

A widget that I think is great is the iLike widget. iLike is a social music discovery site that features an iTunes plug in that captures all of your iTunes listening behavior. iLike spits out a widget that displays your most recently listened to tracks, as well as your top bands overall. The widget is also a music player that allows readers to play samples of the songs from your own iTunes history. This widget is updated in real time, and is a great example of a widget that is powered by implicit, personalized data.

Bitty Browser is another widget that I like, that I think provides a glimpse of the next generation of widgets. Bitty Browser is an embeddable web browser, that allows publishers to embed mini versions of their favorite sites within the expience of another site. Unlike most widgets which offer snapshots of content, Bitty Browser enables a fully functional experience within the body of the widget.

A third widget that I’m a big fan of is the community widget provided by MyBlogLog. The MyBlogLog widget attempts to provide social networking functionality like user profiles and user to user messaging across various blog properties. Blog publishers embed the MyBlogLog code in their sidebars, and MyBlogLog displays thumbnail photos of the blog’s readers within the widget. Clicking on a thumbnail launches the reader’s MyBlogLog profile page, and allows basic social network functionality like testimonials and messaging. Readers are also assigned to blog communities based on their reading habits, and introductions are facilitated to similar readers.

What are some useful resources for people that want to know more about widgets?

Sexy Widget is my own blog, and focuses almost exclusively on widget best practices and widget reviews.

Mashable is a great Web 2.0 blog that covers a lot of widget related news, including Mashable Labs which has some good stats on widget penetration on MySpace. Richard MacManus over at Read / Write Web also follows widgets closely, along with other Web 2.0 stuff. Other widget focused blogs include Widgify, Flying Seeds, and Widgets Lab. The guy who I consider the leading proponent of widgets on the web is VC blogger Fred Wilson of A VC. His blog is cluttered with just about every widget under the sun, and he invented the term “microchunking” which I think was a precursor to the whole widget movement.

What was your favorite part about the recent Las Vegas Pubcon?

The best presentation that I saw at Pubcon was Rand Fishkin’s stuff on linkbaiting. The most useful off the cuff remarks came from Todd Friesen, AKA Oilman. He mentioned something in passing that has helped me a lot in how to think about leveraging internal links for SEO purposes. I thought Guy Kawasaki gave a great keynote. As usual with Pubcons however, the real value comes from late night conversations with folks like Werty, Caveman, Stuntdubl, Jeff Coyle, RogerD, and Martinibuster.

Thanks Lawrence!

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2006. | Marketing with Widgets – Interview with Lawrence Coburn | 12 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

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.

This interview clarifies Adam’s role with Google as well as some of the most common webmaster questions/issues, his thoughts on the common sense of site optimization (think about the user!), long but satisfying days at the Googleplex, the Google Webmaster Help Group, the increasingly important role of Google Base and his thoughts on SEO certification.

Note: with the exception of one link to Matt Cutts’ blog, all links were added by me.

Tell us about how you became a Google employee. What was involved with getting “recruited” by Matt Cutts?

I’ve been a fan of Google for quite some time, even writing up a “how to Google” tips article in early 2000 for a former employer’s internal newsletter. Also, many of my friends have worked at Google since the early days, and I was impressed by what they shared about the corporate culture. Amazing amounts of trust, freedom, and goodwill.

I was particularly intrigued by the idea of strengthening communications between Googlers and Google users, amongst groups of Googlers, and so on. As a happy coincidence, Matt and the Search Quality group had been increasingly interested in extending these sorts of conversations as well, and so you might say we sort of found each other.

Matt’s detailed the situation a bit more here: “Better Conversations”

So there’s not much more for me to add. But about eight months later, I can say that it’s been a great fit and I’m really pleased things worked out the way they did.

Please explain the webmaster liaison work you do. What sorts of questions annoy you the most? (besides that one) What have been some of the more rewarding interactions?

I think there’s a misconception that my main role is “getting out there”‚Ķ meeting with Webmasters, giving answers, solving specific problems, and so on. While — as someone who was Webmastering even back in’95 — I do enjoy the external aspects of my job, I think the most powerful part of what I do is internal. I’d say about 20% of my job involves interacting with Webmasters, SEOs, geeks, and even non-geeks at conferences, online, and otherwise. The remaining 80% is where the talk is translated into action. I am blessed with colleagues who care deeply about search and also about Webmasters; some of them are pretty well-known in the Webmaster community (including Vanessa, and — of course — Matt). But countless others work behind the scenes‚Ķ the crawl folks, the Googlers working on indexing, and so on. I’m confident that I’m helping Webmasters most when I’m tackling both the urgent as well as important-but-long-term issues with my teammates, serving as both a Webmaster advocate and facilitator internally.

As for what questions annoy me the most? There aren’t any specific ones that I find particularly frustrating. Rather, I do occasionally grow weary with two types of questions:

1. Questions that are clearly answered in our much-improved Webmaster Central, via a quick search of our Webmaster Help group, or questions that would also be likely answered via use of our Webmaster Tools. There’s no such thing as a stupid question, IMHO, but lazy questions‚Ķ well, that’s a different story.
2. Accusatory “questions.” I suppose I need to get some thicker skin, but it stings when people imply that we either don’t care or — worse — that a relationship between Webmasters and Google must inherently be adversarial. Every time I’ve spoken with Larry Page and Marissa Mayer they’ve made it unequivocally clear that being mindful of Webmaster concerns is something resonating not just in Search Quality, but from the very top of Google.

And thankfully, most of my interactions — with Googlers and Webmasters — have been decidedly positive. I got some incredible insights when I visited my colleagues in Dublin, Ireland (our European headquarters) as well as various Webmasters / Google users throughout Europe, all of whom offered thoughtfully global perspectives on search. Closer to home, I’ve especially enjoyed chatting with Webmasters and IT folks from non-profit organizations; these are people who often lack the resources to delve into the world of SEO, can’t even afford a week to schmooze at a conference. It’s made me think about how we (Google and all of us passionate about search) can most scalably and responsibly spread knowledge, and broadly share best search and user-experience practices in this area.

What are some of the most common issues that you’ve heard from Webmasters in terms of problems with ranking on Google? What are some of the most common solutions?

The two most common concerns we hear are:

• Hey, all or most of my pages aren’t in your index! And
• My site’s not ranking as high as I’d like or for the keywords it should show up for.

In the first case, the sites at issue tend to be relatively new, or have so few meaningful backlinks as to be practically invisible. In a few instances, the sites violate or have recently violated our Webmaster Guidelines. The solutions involve patience and/or responsible networking to garner at least a few good links. Or, when violations are an issue, then cleaning up the problem and filing a reinclusion request is the way to go.

In the second case, ranking can quite often be improved via either making one’s site more accessible / user-friendly (clearer titles, cleaner navigation) or — in a broader sense — by making the site more interesting or useful or entertaining to make for a better user experience.

Lastly, I think our FAQ on creating a Google-friendly site in particular can address many Webmaster concerns and questions both in the initial stages of making a site and also in troubleshooting.

The last time we talked, you mentioned that Google Base will play a more active role with information supplied in search results. You also mentioned that the line between the various Google services is becoming more fluid. Can you elaborate on that?

Sure. This is in line with our Google-wide push towards fewer products, more functionality and power per product. You’ve probably noticed that we took the search box off the Base page; that’s because we figure consumers would prefer doing one search instead of two. On the whole, we want to make it easier for folks to get information into Google and, of course, easier for users to find information with the least amount of effort. Another example of this is our Onebox, the “teaser” at the top of many search results pages that shows related images, Google Groups messages, and so on. Again, it’s about getting as much relevant information to the user in the most expedient and useful way.

Can you describe some ideal applications of Google Base for web site owners? How about some that are not so obvious?

I think Base is great for any individual or company that has a large amount of structured (and, perhaps often-changing) information that they’d like to share. Obvious (and currently present) data sets include real estate listings and recipes. I’d love to see some quirkier-but-still-useful applications, though. Maybe hiking trail information by city region, or broad sets of nutrition information of common foods‚Ķ? In the meantime, folks who want to get more familiar with Base can check out our Base quick facts and related info.

Anyone who relies on search engines for their online marketing would love to spend time getting “inside” information from Google Engineers and those “in the know” about how Google ranks web pages and other media. Since that’s unlikely, outside of Engineer availability at the annual Google Dance, what resources would you recommend for webmasters in terms of understanding search engines as a marketing tool and for learning about specific tactics?

I’m going to have to give the anti-answer to this one . I think learning tactics, per se, is sort of self-defeating; I know *I* can’t keep up with all the nuances of our algorithms because various teams are always updating them. Furthermore, if a particular tactic is likely to annoy or raise eyebrows for you or your customers, it’s likely to be exactly the sort of thing that our engineers will add as a negative signal in our algorithms. Hence, in the end — as cliched as it might sound — it really IS best to think like a user.

Along those lines‚Ķ do focus groups. I mean, even simple ones. Grab your dad. Your next door neighbor. Watch them navigate through your site, preferably on an older browser or slower computer, maybe even on dialup. It’s amazing (albeit sometimes painful) what you can learn by just watching, not judging. One of our key engineers pointedly debates features and defaults in our products based upon what frustrates her Mom, and while quantitative data drives decisions at the end of the day, these examples often really help shape the way we view search quality.

So, okay, maybe these things fall under the heading of common sense, and so for a more “insider” view of how we think at the Plex, I’d recommend participating in our Webmaster Help Group. Sprinkled frequently throughout the many threads you’ll find some damn good insights from other Webmasters, along with input from me, Vanessa, and other Googlers. It’s our aim to help steer the community in the right directions; we can only feasibly participate in a small fraction of threads, but over time I’m confident that best practices will be emphasized and increasingly valuable information will shine through.

Can you describe what a typical day is like for you working in the Googleplex?

Wow, that’s a toughie. As we often joke, there’s rarely a “typical” day, certainly not a dull day here. I dutifully created a detailed project/to-do list months ago, and though I do find it important to keep my eyes on long term goals, I am amazed and often amused by how much crazy stuff comes up each day.

But on the whole, I’d say a typical day consists of lots of internal collaboration (in person or via e-mail or internal Google docs), and also informal alpha testing of new products, visiting a large set of forums, blogs and other online publications, and preparing for or attending interviews or conferences.

The collaboration is most noteworthy, IMHO, because it’s practically devoid of grandstanding, politicking, or buck-passing. Most positively, the level of empowerment here is pretty uniquely high, I believe, so when folks bring up an idea for improving something, they can often just go and do it themselves. Of course, that can also be a bit daunting sometimes, too .

What’s surprising to me, I think, is the change in my thinking about work/life delineations. I’m still pretty firmly clinging to my own blog as my personal space, so I don’t think you should expect to see Googlisms there in the near future. But timewise‚Ķ it’s not uncommon for me to leave for work on the Google shuttle at 8:15am and get home at 9pm or later. Previously, I’d have frowned upon that as “workaholism,” but given the diversity of tasks I tackle and the flexibilty to intersperse social / personal tasks with work projects, well, it just feels comfortable and natural now. Taking breaks midday to work out at the gym or have an extended lunch with friends or attend a lecture from a renowned economist‚Ķ I think this sort of fluidity and flexibility might be frowned upon elsewhere, but in the end it makes me happy and also more fit mentally and emotionally.

You recently did a class in basic search engine optimization for Government sites. How did that go? Do you and/or Google plan on doing more classes for other groups?

It was my first such experience — leading a lengthy session with thankfully lots of Q&A — and it was both rewarding and enlightening. Content- and format-wise, I think the surprisingly dichotomous group (estimated at 70% gov’t folks more new to SEO vs. 30% of more experienced for-profit SEO-types) presented challenges I hadn’t anticipated, but it’s good practice for the real world . As for future projects of this sort the jury’s still out. My team and I definitely want to help and learn from as many groups of Webmasters as possible, but it’s tough to keep it scalable. Make the groups too large, and it’s like a performance, not a truly interactive session. Make the groups too small and numerous, and then I — or other folks on my team — end up spending too much time externally and not enough time getting things done on the inside. It’s a delicate balance, but something we’re thinking a lot about.

Recently the DMA launched a Search Engine Marketing Certification program. SEMPO is launching it’s own search marketing education initiative for in-house marketers and of course, Google offers the Google AdWords Professional program. Do you think it makes sense to try and “certify” search marketers?

While I understand the allure and value of that idea, I do think we’re shying away from directly certifying either individual SEOs or SEO organizations.

The market moves so fast, so frequently, that there’s a significant danger of missing the mark‚Ķ failing to recognize an SEO company that’s begun better focusing on user experiences or spotting (and delisting) an SEO that’s sacrificed usability for dramatic “quick fixes.” Specifically, we’re concerned about the challenge of making sure that certified individuals or companies adhere to best practices on an ongoing basis. And — unlike with AdWords — there are no immediate quantitative measures that we or Webmasters can use to assess ROI or evaluate practices. AdWords is a more controlled and measurable environment.

So I believe for now we’re preferring to play a greater role in the background‚Ķ helping individuals and organizations via Webmaster Tools as well as our documentation and our help group‚Ķ and hoping that Webmasters can use these resources to gauge the trustworthiness and knowledgability of firms they might want to do business with in the search space. But — as with everything in this industry — nothing’s set in stone.

Thanks Adam!

==

If you plan on attending the WebmasterWorld Pubcon conference Nov 14-17, be sure to visit Adam’s session, “SEO and Big Search” with Jake Baillie, Joe Morin, Dave Roth of Yahoo and Melanie Mitchell of AOL. Get event updates at the Pubcon blog.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2006. | Interview with Adam Lasnik of Google | 16 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Normally when I do interviews, I categorize them under “Spotlight on Search or Spotlight on Blogging”, but Chris Pirillo doesn’t fit in just one category. He’s a bit of a renaissance man when it comes to all the enterprising projects, ventures and activities he’s involved with.

Chris started Lockergnome in 1996 and hosted TechTV’s “Call for Help” show for 2 years. He hosts a popular conference every year called Gnomedex which has been sponsored by the likes of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. He’s written books, columns and many articles and he produces a popular online radio show.

I met Chris when I started writing about SEO on Lockergnome and in person at SES conferences. Chris did a podcast interview with me at SES New York in April and I’ve been threatening to interview this fellow Midwesterner (he’s from Iowa) for almost a year. Things finally worked out and I was able to do a short interview.

In this interview, Chris talks about his TagJag project, web traffic from social media, favorite conferences, plans for Lockergnome 2.0, his upcoming wedding with fiancee Ponzi and fun quotes like: “Google is the internet”, “Email is dead” and “Let’s not blog about blogging about blogging about blogs anymore, okay?”.

There appears to be an increasing amount of buzz about using social media as a marketing tool with the majority of tactics relying on tagging. Tagging is also essential to your latest site TagJag. Can you tell us a little about how TagJag works, and how you came up with the idea?

TagJag has been an interesting project for me, and it’s about to get kicked into high gear again. I had the service developed out of my own need for finding information across various indexes – simultaneously. Essentially, TagJag.com is a discovery engine. It enables people to search for a brand (and/or keywords) and subscribe to those original results in RSS instantaneously. Try this: http://tagjag.com/all/webpronews/opml – there’s no easier way of doing that on the Web today, and I’m constantly looking for new indexes to add to our list.

For pirillo.com and Lockergnome.com, have you noticed a shift in visitors coming more from social sites like Del.icio.us, Digg, StumbleUpon etc. as opposed to search engines?

Not really. At least, not unless they see something that gets continuous traction in the blogosphere (which seldom happens). Out of all of ‘em, I think StumbleUpon drives the most – largely because it’s a service that’s very friendly for “normal people.” Google drives most of my traffic. Google is the Internet, as far as I’m concerned.

It’s great that everybody can get online and start publishing their thoughts immediately. The problem is that most of ‘em are nothing more than “me too” posts. Awesome. Let’s not blog about blogging about blogging about blogs anymore, okay?

At Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, you were good enough to start a short video interview but my camera’s memory filled up. You mentioned that there need to be some fundamental changes in the search marketing industry. Can you finish that thought?

I believe it had something to do with slimy jerkwads finally having to straighten up and fly right. Spamming just pisses people off – but creating value for the Internet actually generates traffic and good will (at the same time). I realize that gaming the system can be lucrative, but is that really what you’d want to have chiseled into your tombstone at the end of your life? “Helped Himself by Hurting Others.”

You’ve recently changed Lockergnome’s layout. Did you employ any search engine or social optimization to it? Do you consider things like SEO or “social media marketing” with your web sites?

Well, what you see on Lockergnome.com today is just the beginning of our evolution – a long-overdue upgrade. We’re adjusting our direction to benefit those who care to monetize their knowledge (but don’t necessarily know how to do it themselves). It’s not just about technology content anymore, either.

We’ll be accepting beta testers (independent writers) very soon – and I definitely will be welcoming in my closest SEO friends for feedback. They, too, will understand the extreme value in writing smart content on the www.lockergnome.com domain. We’re focusing on tools and features to maximize external AND internal discoverability.

At lockergnome.com, you offer email and RSS feeds for subscription options. We offer the same at marketingblog.com with about a third of our readers subscribing via email and the rest via RSS. Is this ratio consistent with your own experience? Have you seen any shift from email to RSS?

Yeah, definitely. I don’t know if I was the first one to say it, but I was certainly the most vocal about it: email is dead. We can still use it to communicate with one another on an individual basis, but as far as content is concerned – RSS holds infinitely more value and promise. Remember, I was trumpeting its power long before any SEO knew what a blog was.

I’ll likely continue to “do” email newsletters, working with preferred vendors like WhatCounts. The new Lockergnome will likely see new email delivery partnerships spring up as well. Ultimately, I don’t want to mess with email anymore – at all. It’s a complete drain on my time, energy, and other assorted resources.

Lockergnome is about to leap into the blogosphere in a big way. We shifted from MovableType to WordPress MU for a lot of reasons recently – and are actively developing our own WordPress MU “Community Edition” (trust me, SEOs and markters will be very intersted in our short-term and long-term strategies).

Blogging can easily turn into a grind when you do it often and it’s the source of your income. Between Lockergnome, chris.pirillo and thechrispirilloshow.com, you appear to do a LOT of writing. What methods do you use to keep your posting quality up to the “Chris Pirillo” standard?

I really only write when I have something to say and/or share. Lockergnome is turning into a marketplace of mindshare, so it’s fundamentally different than the content inside my personal space. It’s to the point where I’m actually writing more in my blog than I am in Lockergnome. The “show” site is just another way of sharing my creativity.

Besides Gnomedex, what are your favorite conferences to speak at? I see you are speaking next at the Business Blog Summit. What are your favorite conferences to attend?

Conferences like Gnomedex, honestly. I dislike panels and PowerPoints.

I do, however, enjoy attending conferences outside my area of expertise or comfort zones. I’ve learned a lot about SEO from attending SES – as I’m not really a traditional Internet marketer (yet always seem to run in those circles, sometimes running in circles).

I hear you’re getting married this month. Are you stressed about making plans, or are you leaving that all up to Ponzi?

It’s all about Ponzi at this point. Although, I’m still seeing what I can do about getting some smart company to sponsor our honeymoon.

I got Pluggd.com to sponsor our Internet connection on a cruise to Alaska, and it worked out very well for them. Google still seems to like a few of my Alaskan cruise posts.

Thanks Chris!

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2006. | Interview with Chris Pirillo | 13 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Lee, I will probably blog about this more in depth this week on the PRWeb blog. We have been talking with Vocus for well over a year now. The timing was not right until recently for a few reasons. First, I felt that I had a lot left to accomplish (read try) with PRWeb before I handed the reigns over to someone else. I wanted to do these things on my own to see if I could execute a few new enhancements on my own dime and vision. In the last year alone we have really changed the practice of PR.

Thinking about everything we accomplished makes my head spin. We started the year with PRWeb Photowire, a flickrized photo newswire service. On the heels of that announcement we announced PRWeb Podcast and have completed nearly 1,000 podcast episodes with our clients. We introduced trackbacks into press releases, a concept that we have patented because of its unique value proposition for the PR space. These are just a few services that we announced in the beginning of the year.

So why did I finally agree to the acquisition? First I need to say that from the start my team and I always saw a strategic fit with the Vocus team and brand. We distribute PR and the Vocus platform manages it. Can you get a better fit than that? Secondly, I felt that it was important to take our message and vision for new PR mainstream. The Vocus acquisition allows us to do just that. They have the marketing and sales team in place to make sure that we can maintain our thought leadership in this important space. In addition, the purchase price of the acquisition validates, in a major way, our approach for news distribution. It says to our detractors, and we have had a few, that what we have been doing for the past decade is revolutionary and really is important.

Think about what we have done for a minute. In less than a decade we have democratized the media on behalf of small business and large corporations everywhere. This is a big deal.

What do you think are the most important synergies that will come out of this partnership?

I really think there is a lot to be gained from the transaction that will benefit both the combined PRWeb / Vocus user base and the PR/IR and corporate communications space. First, we now have access to a sales and marketing team. WOW. I am really excited about this. As you know, PRWeb has never had a marketing department much less a marketing plan. We have been built on 100% word of mouth. (Okay, maybe we amplified that WOM a little by supporting industry trade shows. But really we have never spent any other money on marketing.)

Vocus has a platform. Within that platform are modules that I would like to borrow and bring into the PRWeb system. I don’t know what form that will take at the moment. But can you imagine an online newsroom attached to your account? Or a fully integrated clipping and news monitoring service? I am excited about the possibilities and will keep you posted as we meet with the Vocus team over the next few weeks to determine what we are going to be able to do.

We will also be working with Vocus to integrate the PRWeb offering into the Vocus platform. This is important because, as I said earlier, Vocus manages PR. A single location for managing and distributing your PR is a logical integration.

How will PRWeb customers be impacted? Will there be any considerations for PRWeb clients that want to become Vocus clients?

How will PRWeb customers be impacted? I think we stated it best in our announcement.

You will receive the same great PRWeb service. You’ll continue to use PRWeb exactly as you do now. Without interruption of any kind, you’ll enjoy the same great features and customer support you’ve come to expect. You’ll continue to work with the same PRWeb editors and customer support staff.

Will there be any considerations for PRWeb users wishing to get on the Vocus platform? I hope so. We will be working with the Vocus team in the next weeks to determine how to do this. There have been discussions around creating a PRWeb version of the platform to address the needs of the SME and SOHO market. No promises, but I will lobby for something.

What will your role be on a go forward?

Janitor if I am lucky. No, seriously, I will remain on board for a long time to come as CEO for this business unit. Vocus has allowed me to keep my team in tact so that we can continue to grow this business unit as we have done in the past. Granted, there will be more business structure around what we do but this should not be perceptible to our customers.

My mind doesn’t stop when it comes to this space. I really like it. And CastleMonkey (that’s the CTO) and his team are cranking code as fast as we can collectively envision new ideas. So I see a long-tail on this thing.

What kind of PRWeb/Vocus integration enhancements will there be?

Plenty. I’m pretty certain we can do a really slick integration so that corporations get killer PR management AND delivery, and PRWeb clients get to experience better management of their PR campaigns, as well as increased metrics.

Thank you David!

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2006. | Interview with PRWeb CEO David McInnis | 4 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

And now for something completely different. Since so much of what’s covered here on Online Marketing Blog deals with the marketing of blogs, I thought adding some interviews with people involved with blog marketing would be of interest to our fast growing audience of readers.

Today’s interview is with Phil Hollows, Founder and CEO of the popular RSS to email service, FeedBlitz. With an active circulation of 682,330 and 53,955 active feeds, FeedBlitz is likely the most popular RSS to email service available. I had a chance to preview some features of FeedBlitz a while back and have been using it personally and with our PR and blog consulting clients ever since. Recently Phil took FeedBlitz on as a full time gig, has secured investor financing and is hiring. What better time than now to check in with Phil for a peek behind the FeedBlitz curtain.

Tell us about your background. How did you get involved with blogs, RSS and starting FeedBlitz?

I first started blogging when I was VP marketing for an enterprise security software company, OpenService, about a couple of years ago. I was looking for a way to reach our prospects and customers more informally and more frequently than the traditional monthly newsletter or press release permitted. Setting up a blog was the obvious answer, and it worked well. The blog let us build a closer and more trusted relationship with our market, helped establish thought leadership, and brought good SEO benefits – carefully written, good relevant blog posts can often appear on SERPs relevant to the business.

So the blog was great, but I wanted too get email updates going to push the content out to our readers. RSS was part of the blog, of course, but I wanted to reach as wide an audience as possible. RSS is tech heavy, unfamiliar to many and potentially user hostile, and I wanted a more familiar, comfortable way to reach our readers. In other words, email. Plus we had a five figure house list already receiving monthly email newsletters from us, so it made sense to get the blog to them using email since they were already used to hearing from us that way.

I signed up with Bloglet, which was the market leader at the time. It worked fine, But then I signed up with FeedBurner, and Bloglet didn’t like FeedBurner’s feeds. Say what? Support messages bounced and all of a sudden my pet project was at risk from an unsupported service that wasn’t playing nicely with my other systems.

I wasn’t about to let that happen. After extensive Googling and asking around I found a few alternatives, but none of them had what I really liked about Bloglet – it’s publisher features. I needed a service that let me manage my subscribers, and there was nothing else around that could match these criteria.

This was the perfect opportunity for me. I saw the complaints about Bloglet online, and the market gap that nobody was filling. And, as luck would have it, from some experimental work I’d done at home in the late nineties, I happened to have an embryonic email marketing system partially written. I figured that all I had to do was dust it off, get it fed from an RSS feed and I’d be done, and maybe others would be interested in using it too.

Well, the work was of course much more complex than I’d originally thought, that’s for sure. But that was the beginning of the project that became FeedBlitz. Many, many late nights later, once it was more or less ready, there still weren’t any products filling the gap. So I mailed a few people who had been public about their dissatisfaction with Bloglet, invited them to check it out, and it grew rapidly from there.

I should let you know, the first SEO service I started in 1998 was called Net-Blitz. So naturally I like the name you’ve picked. How did you arrive at the name FeedBlitz?

Really? It’s a small world I’d owned the domain blitrzware.com for a while (but I let it go before FeedBlitz – drat!). As I was searching for a domain name all of the obvious ones had gone, and then I remembered Blitzware. FeedBlitz was available, I liked the “lightning” connotation of brightness, intensity, speed, and it hearkened back to the Blitzware name I’d used before. Perfect!

So now you have moved on from OpenService, gained some financial backing and are taking FeedBlitz full time. What are your plans for FeedBlitz? Feature enhancments? Where do you see FeedBlitz in the next year or two?

1) FeedBlitz will remain the Internet’s preeminent RSS to email service. We’ll continue to add more value and more capabilities, more easily delivered for publishers.

2) We will set the bar higher and higher in terms of the benefits we deliver for both our standard and premium services.

3) We will innovate and automate enterprise-class messaging and communications using RSS and “Web 2” for all.

As I look at the RSS to mail market today, one of the core strategic decisions I have to take is deciding what we’re not going to do, because the realm of possibilities is so large. It boils down to this. Our mission is messaging using RSS and related technologies to underpin what we deliver. And our philosophy is to make your messaging work with whatever services you want to use. So you will see us enabling greater and simpler integration with third party services, instead of adding features or services that are already successful and prevalent in the broader market. We will stay focused, in other words. We’ll also make it easy for third parties to integrate FeedBlitz into their sites and services.

The next three months is going to see significant innovation from us on all these fronts. There will also be enhancements that make more use of content in a typical RSS feed. The FeedBlitz blog is the place to track new features and announcements. We’re also using some of our investment on a professionally redesigned web site that will be radically easier to use, as well as being easier on the eye.

FeedBlitz has become a very popular RSS to email service. How did you market it? What marketing plans do you have in the future?

Thanks! There were really two strategies at work. One was to make the most of the market opportunity created by Bloglet, so we made it utterly painless to migrate subscribers out of Bloglet and into FeedBlitz. (We’re an open system too, so publishers can grab their readers at any time).

Secondly, we worked directly with a few key bloggers who seemed to want the services we offered. We paid attention to them, used their ideas to improve the service, and so they’d blog about us and recommend us to others.

As a result, our initial success and work integrating FeedBlitz metrics with FeedBurner enabled FeedBlitz to be set up as FeedBurner’s email engine of choice last Fall. FeedBurner effectively became a channel for us, and that’s still the case for publishers wanting more sophisticated capabilities and customization.

Together, these three approaches delivered a phenomenal word of mouth / viral effect that just keeps on growing, with time and customer care being our #1 investments.

Going forward, we’ll be making the most of our partnerships and innovation to keep momentum up.

When we check our RSS stats, about 1/3 are from FeedBlitz, a 1/3 are from Bloglines and the rest from MyYahoo and other feed readers. Is that common for your subscribers?

It really varies. The FeedBlitz News blog’s readership is over 95% by mail. The more RSS-aware your readers are, the smaller the number of email subscribers you should expect to get. So, for example, a tech heavy blog talking to a tech savvy audience might see incremental circulation of order 10%. On the other hand, a blog talking to consumers about a hobby or family matters might get over 50% of their readership from FeedBlitz. But regardless of your content, everyone will see incremental readership because now you’re giving your readers choices about how to read your content.

Enabling readers to subscribe to your content using email takes advantage of a familiar medium. From a publisher perspective, it also makes it personal – you know the addresses of most of your subscribers. Those are all potential leads. RSS aggregators can’t tell you who is reading your content, so from a marketing and sales process, aggregator circulation is a lot less valuable than an equivalent email circulation count.

For the most part, FeedBlitz is used to convert blog posts that are published in a RSS feed to Email. What other applications and uses are you seeing?

The beauty of RSS and related technologies such as OPML reading lists is that FeedBlitz just works. As “Web 2.0” grows, FeedBlitz will be able to deliver these innovative applications directly to users inboxes.

Indeed, many sites and systems are publishing RSS feeds, beyond blog posts. We’re seeing email updates of eBay auctions. People are using FeedBlitz to deliver their local weather forecast to their inbox every morning. Using FeedBlitz to track tags in, say, Technorati is a great way to automatically gather market intelligence about what people are saying about you (and your competition). We’re seeing users replace listservers and simple discussion groups with blogs and FeedBlitz – the content is richer, and less prone to spamming. And it sends blog updates too, of course.

We’re also seeing more traditional corporate marketers realizing that a blog coupled with FeedBlitz is a simple yet powerful combination that can do the job of much more expensive systems – but for much less time invested and at a better price point. It’s for these users that we are the only RSS to mail service that offers a blog-based autoresponder capability, for example, as well as the recently introduced “newsflash” broadcast option which sends updates to your readership that are NOT in an RSS feed.

As we move forward and enable even simper integration of FeedBlitz with other services, I expect our publishers will produce a swath of innovative applications that will incorporate FeedBlitz, and I expect that you will see much more FeedBlitz in places other than your inbox.

Please explain what’s behind FeedAdvisor and what has been the response to it? Any plans on making it into an open blog/RSS feed search tool?

FeedAdvisor is a new spin on searching and ranking blogs. It’s like Amazon.com’s feature that recommends books to you based on “People who bought this book also bought….” So FeedAdvisor looks at subscription patterns and says “People who subscribe to your feeds also subscribe to ….”

FeedAdvisor works because of the subscription patterns it detects. It’s time is yet to come, I believe, but Tom Evslin (our investor) and I have had some very interesting conversations about how it will grow. It can’t become just another search engine because (a) there are a lot of these about anyway, (b) generic search doesn’t have the subscription information that FeedAdvisor uses to analyze the data, so in fact it won’t work. Amazon’s feature is the same; they work from their sales patterns, and don’t incorporate (say) Barnes & Nobles’. As FeedBlitz grows and more users join, it will become increasingly comprehensive, and we will be able to build out the information in it to augment our other services.

Starting FeedBlitz and working with thousands of subscribers must have exposed you to some interesting and innovative blog and RSS marketing trends. What insights can you provide regarding marketing via RSS? What aspects of RSS marketing should companies be aware of most?

I think the thing to think about is not “RSS Marketing” but “RSS-powered marketing.” If you position programs based solely on content delivered to or in RSS then your return will be low and you may be disappointed unless you’re dealing with a very technical audience for whom RSS is old hat. For example, many are disappointed by ads placed purely in RSS feeds as they perform relatively poorly compared to other media. Targeting RSS as a niche medium isn’t the path to success.

On the other hand, if you build, augment or replace your marketing programs and technologies with services and products that use RSS as the underlying data mechanism, and simply treat your pure RSS feed as an integrated part of (as opposed to distinct from) your web marketing, you’ll do very well. Why? Not necessarily because it’s RSS per se, but because technologies that have RSS at their core are much more flexible, easier to use and just as capable Рif not more so – then their older online or desktop cousins. For example, you can ditch your expensive content management system for a blogging platform. It’s faster, cheaper and probably better for most of us. Add FeedBlitz and your newsletter production is painless, more frequent, and automatically linked back to your site. Plus it’s a boon or search engines because now your content is changing rapidly and, thanks to trackbacks and comments, relevant blogs get a lot of high value link love, with other people – your readers Рdoing all the work for you.

The power of these technologies is illustrated by the fact that corporations are now building large, complex and content rich web sites solely on blogging platforms – the efficiency gains alone make this approach worthwhile for a lot of non-data driven content. That’s a clear trend that will only accelerate.

In the end, I believe RSS will disappear into the woodwork, just as HTTP and SSL and SMTP have now. It will become the glue that enables dynamic web sites and content to link together seamlessly. It’s the applications that use RSS that are key, not RSS itself. And the same is true for marketers. Ask yourself how you can take advantage of RSS to reach a more technically savvy audience or to automate otherwise tedious and repetitive tasks (e.g. newsletter production). RSS-powered automation and services enables us to spend more time doing marketing, and less time (and money) doing production.

What are some of your favorite business blogs and blogs about blogging?

I believe in actionable, relevant and practical solutions to practical problems. So of the well known blogs, I follow Fred Wilson, my investor Tom Evslin, Chris Pirillo, TechCrunch, Steve Rubel’s Micropersuasion, Guy Kawaski and Seth Goldstein (all by FeedBlitz of course). At the enterprise level I think Charlie Wood is on to something with his work in salesforce.com and RSS. I use Technorati and Google blog search for market and competitive intelligence.

Ssshhh, don’t tell anyone I said this, but I find most blogs about blogging to be very cliquey and practically irrelevant; I don’t read them. I don’t care about this video blogger or that format war or whoever such and such an A-lister has annoyed this week. It’s all too incestuous and irrelevant for me.

What 3 tips can you provide to bloggers that are considering or using a RSS to email service?

1) Why not? You’ll get 10-50% circulation boost, push content delivery, better SERP placement, gain lead information, develop metrics, all automatically.

2) Customize your emails to match your branding and messaging, and enable subscriber tracking metrics to measure your activity and effectiveness.

3) Don’t wait. It’s fundamentally free, takes only a minute or so to set up, just do it.

Some excellent insight and advice. Thanks Phil!

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2006. | Interview with Phil Hollows Founder of FeedBlitz | 6 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com