Spotlight on Search Interview: Mel Carson of Microsoft Advertising on How Microsoft Does Social Media and the Yahoo Bing Search Alliance

If you attend Search Marketing industry conferences, you’ve no doubt run into the ever optimistic and charming Mel Carson from Microsoft.  When I was last in London, Mel connected me with an excellent Fish n Chips that the pubs around Trafalgar Square couldn’t get close to.  Mel is active as an advocate of Microsoft Advertising , especially via social media channels and at conferences to the Webmaster and search marketing community. His work is global and very interesting. With the Bing and Yahoo convergence, I thought it was time we did an interview – and he agreed.

Mel has accomplished amazing things with Microsoft’s use of social media and other large companies could learn a lot from this interview where he talks about Microsoft’s use of social media and what impact the Yahoo Bing Search Alliance will have on search and search advertising.

Welcome Mel, it’s exciting times as usual in the search engine world. Please tell us, what has changed about your job at Microsoft since you were last here?

My role at Microsoft Advertising evolved about 18 months ago as a result of the work our team had been doing in social media for adCenter. We had been building up an engaged audience on the adCenter Blog and forums for 3 years and started the adCenter Twitter account and Facebook page.  Our engagement with our customers was such a success, it made sense for someone to start using social to tell marketers about all our other digital assets. So I started the Microsoft Advertising Blog which brings our readers news and insight in what we’re up to in display, mobile, games advertising and research.

I also head up our events calendar. Last year we covered nearly 40 digital conferences all over the world, and it’s my job to ensure we have people trained to blog and tweet from @MSAdvertising at those events and really bring them alive.

Sometimes we go the full monty and come armed with a film crew and interview folks. Perhaps my highlight was Twitter founder Biz Stone at Cannes 2009 , but this year was awesome as we got backstage access to the TED@Cannes conference we’d partnered with them and the Starcom Mediavest Group on.

We featured Microsoft Advertising in a post about B2B Social Media Winners, earlier this year and I’m wondering if you can share how your group developed their approach to the social web?

In February this year we published a white paper (pdf) which outlined our story and approach. We’ve been listening to our customers since the start of 2006, way before Twitter and Facebook hit the mainstream. We got involved because it made perfect sense to use the web to communicate in a two-way dialogue with adCenter customers who were expecting best practices, tips, tricks and news to be at their fingertips.

We started slowly with a blog and forum, and built the strategy through common sense and by reacting swiftly to the needs of our advertisers. Social media isn’t the proverbial “rocket science”. It’s an awesome extension of traditional marketing and research methods which enable you to glean feedback in real-time, and help people in ways that never existed before.

What guides your social media strategy and participation?

Microsoft Advertising is an intensely customer-centric organization. It’s our advertisers, and potential advertisers, that guide us through where they go for news and information and what they tell us they need in order to be better marketers.

By investing in a team to monitor and engage with our paying customers, we hope we’re demonstrating that we’re open to feedback, want to build the best products and services we can, and are excited to provide insight through research and case studies that resonate with marketers all around the world.

What are your social media goals and how do you measure them? Or is it more accurate to say, what are your business goals that involve social media and how do you measure them?

Bit of both really. We look at growth as an indicator. Be it number of followers or fans, visitors to the site, number of answers to forum questions by other forum members, links from other blogs and news sites. The more reach we have, the more people we can tell our story to and let folks know we’re here and willing to help.

The other big ROI metric is how far we help lower support costs. It’s not cheap to have a call center, so if we can answer questions online through a carefully crafted blog post or tweeted link to the best information, we’re not incurring costs and we’re reaching more people with that information. A happy and informed advertiser is likely to spend more, so the two together increase the bottom line.

Return on In-action is another. What would people think if we weren’t operating in the social space? What would be the business implications of not having an early warning system in place?

How do you structure and manage listening and engagement?

We cover about 16 hours a day as I’m based in London and we have a team in Seattle. I’ll look after things from 9am GMT until about 6pm when it’s 10am PST and the US team takes over. We have various alerts set up on Twitter clients and monitoring tools and pretty much know within minutes if we have a problem or someone needs help.

We have rules of engagement which are pretty straightforward. We ask for actionable insight if an advertiser has an issue and have escalation paths internally to get things fixed.

Again, it’s common sense. You need a plan, you need outcomes and you need a team that can be flexible and personable.

A virtual smile goes a long way in this industry!

What listening or social media management tools do you recommend?

We recommend using lots. We trial, test and use a number of platforms, widgets and gizmos that all do different things with varying degrees of accuracy and success. The important thing is to find tools that are enablers and build a picture from the data they expose.

What challenges have you had gaining buy-in to social media projects and how did you overcome them?

To be honest, we’ve not had too much difficulty getting buy-in because we’ve always kept a step ahead by demonstrating the value of what we’re doing. I think many businesses dive into social media marketing with no plan around measurements of success.

Because we set out with the commitment to measure everything and tell compelling stories as we went, the business knows and relies on our data and successes now to be successful in itself.

Microsoft was called out recently as being one of the most, if not THE most social brands out there.  We get it and will continue to invest because it works well for us.

What is one great example of a social media success that like to share the most? It can be Microsoft or anyone else.

My favorite story that I’ve used in countless presentations is about how my old headmaster, who is a Benedictine monk, called me up many years ago to advise him on a search campaign to promote his website through which he wanted to recruit monks.

We set it up and 3 years later he actually did sign up one chap who found his site while searching for inspiration on the web. You can read the full story here.

Just goes to show how search and social are intertwined.

A story more close to home is obviously the Windows 7 Launch where Marty Collins and her team managed to garner 221 million impression of earned media running up to and post launch of the biggest selling piece of software ever. Check out the case study here.

If you were to give advice to a friend starting a small business on how they should get involved with social media, what would that checklist look like? What would the essentials be?

Figure out some goals and work back. Don’t think “social media” as in the tools. Think “social media marketing” as in the discipline. Research your market, find out who’s using what platform and build your value exchange around it. Make sure there are social elements in all your marketing endeavors. Have everything built for discovery and sharing. Measure as much as you can and use the data to inform decisions in other part of the business.

Oh….and don’t ever stop. Getting off the social train is not an option now it’s gathered so much pace under so much steam.

Enough of this social media, let’s talk about Microsoft and Yahoo. I know there’s the Search Alliance website and this clever little video, but can you sum up a few things for our readers who might not read Search Marketing publications?  Without any corporatePRspeak, what does the integration of Microsoft and Yahoo search mean to marketers?

It’s all on the www.searchalliance.com website. More volume with less effort. Now you’re optimizing for two marketplaces instead of three so you should see a return on time investment. More volume means we can make quicker decisions on which innovations will work best for marketers in the future.

What will it mean to consumers?

Having scale will mean speedier innovating of search results, which means those decisions consumers are looking to make get made quicker. More satisfied customers means a more loyal fan base, and as a result, we could increase share making our advertisers happy too!

What innovations in search technology (from a user perspective) are you excited about?

Bing Maps without a doubt – check out this Ted Talk with Blaise on some of the incredible innovation going on in his team.

How important is social media to the future of traditional search?

What’s traditional search these days? Ten blue links? It’s all moving so quickly but there’s no doubt that social media marketing is having an effect on search results. When you have algos associated with consumers liking content – YouTube, Facebook and others – when they’re added into the traditional mix, it makes for interesting times with optimization.

If you just take a look at what Bing has released lately in terms of social it’s obvious we feel it’ll be an integral part of how we all interact and make decisions going forward.

How do you stay current with search and social media and all the marketing, technology and communication channels that follow?

I subscribe to loads of newsletters, watch my Twitter feed and travel to many conferences around the world. We have a great ecosystem of learning and notifying here at Microsoft as well, so I pick up a lot of knowledge here internally.

Thanks Mel!

Post Script: Both Mel and I will be speaking at a new Search Engine Strategies conference being held in Hong Kong next week. Mel will be on a keynote panel, “Keynote Panel: Increasing ROI through B2B Lead Generation” and I will be on a panel about “The Business Value of Social Media”.  Here’s a video on this new event from Matt McGowan and Mike Grehan of Incisive Media.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Interview: Mel Carson of Microsoft Advertising on Social Media | http://www.toprankblog.com

Click here to view the embedded video.

Of course, we couldn’t talk to someone like Dave at Yahoo without mentioning the transition of search results to Bing over on the Yahoo site. What does this mean for SEO? What does it mean for Paid Search?  What’s the fate of Site Explorer and where does it fit within Bing Webmaster Tools? Is SEO good or bad for search engines? How much of a signal does social media provide search engines? We discuss these topics and more.

Thanks Dave!

Blog: Industrial Strength SEM
Twitter: DaveRothSays

The video is available in 480 and 780 formats as well, just click on the size drop down.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Video Interview: Dave Roth of Yahoo | http://www.toprankblog.com

Helping companies with very, very large web sites increase sales through improved search engine performance takes a unique type of person. Think equally strong left and right brain lateral thinking.  Heavy doeses of technical savvy plus creative problem solving are essential.

Shopzilla and Bizrate market millions of products and Michael Nguyen’s SEO responsibilities for those sites are substantial. In this interview Michael talks about Google’s recent MayDay update, a SEO checklist, his top resources for staying current in the field and the unique challenges (including duplicate content) that come with optimizing huge web sites.

There’s a bit of a trend as we’ve interviewed lead SEO practitioners for well known brands. They seem to have the combined experience of independent consultant, agency and having worked in-house. Please tell us about how you got into search marketing and how your past experience in these roles has contributed to your current position. Also, what’s the most interesting thing about working with Shopzilla?

Sounds like I’ve had a very similar path as your other interviewees. I started my career as a web developer for Aerospace Corporation, mainly building dynamic web sites and internal search engines. I spent a good amount of time testing and understanding search engine optimization on my own during that time – partly out of interest and applicability to my work. From there I did some independent consulting for a couple years and eventually joined an agency (SEO Inc). Spent a few years there working for a variety of clients, small and large. I had a chance to move in-house with Shopzilla about 4 years back and I took it. Been with Shopzilla ever since.

I do a lot of technical SEO on our large and complex sites, so it’s required that I understand the technical detail behind the scenes. It’s much easier to communicate with the development team if you understand what’s going on in the backend.

The greatest thing about working in the comparison shopping / product reviews space is the challenge. Our market is extremely competitive and there are many large players. You really don’t have time to rest, but it keeps me interested. With Shopzilla specifically, I’m given all the tools I need to do my job – it’s a simple concept, but in reality not many SEOs can say the same. I have access to large amounts of data, analytical resources, development teams, specialized tools, etc all tailored towards SEO. At the highest level, Shopzilla is a company that really understands search and user behavior. It’s the perfect environment for an SEO because we work at the intersection of search and users.

Working with large organizations and also companies with large web sites is unique for a variety of reasons. What have you found to be the best advice for getting quality SEO recommendations implemented with large web sites (or companies)?

I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but the best way to get things implemented within a large company is through education. Things get done faster when everyone is on board. So that requires constant educating and training. The more people that understand SEO the better. You want advocates for SEO in every area of the business – from engineering to upper management.

What are some of the unique SEO challenges that you encounter with a business like Shopzilla with its own network of sites and so much data being published?

With a business like Shopzilla, I’m always challenged with the sheer size of our sites. We have millions of products and various different business lines. So keeping everything indexed and ranking is a constant battle. I spend a lot of time thinking about optimal site architecture and site performance. For large sites, even small changes in indexing can equate to significant revenue shifts.

The comparison shopping and consumer review market is pretty interesting. Shopzilla not only competes with other shopping engines, but we also compete for organic traffic against informational portals, niche review sites, review aggregators, and blogs. We’re both a head and long tail business. All of us (Shopzilla, Shopping.com, Nextag, etc) start off with the same basic data from merchants. We all aggregate products and provide comparison shopping features on our sites.

So in order to drive traffic to our sites, we need to improve our product and provide value on top of that data. In the end it comes back to the user – what does the user find valuable and what is the user searching for?

Users want to easily compare a variety of products and make a confident buying decision. So at Shopzilla, we devote a lot of resources to ensure those two things happen on our site. We take millions of products and organize them around what users tell us is the most usable categorization. We allow users to refine by a variety of useful attributes. We help them understand the products they are interested in with user reviews, buying guides, and comments from the point of sale. We assist with merchant selection through our merchant reviews. So while we start with essentially commoditized data, we add a ton of content and value on top of that starting data. Increasing product value results in increased organic traffic.

In a sense, SEO is the product and the product is SEO.

What advice can you offer about dealing with content syndication and duplication? What are some common situations you’ve encountered and their solution?

301 Redirects and rel canonical are your friends when dealing with any sort of duplication/content syndication issue. It’s pretty common for sorting features (for example a “sort by price” feature) to create duplicate content. Rel canonical is perfect for getting rid of that type of duplication.

For content syndication, I recommend placing a variety of signals within the content that helps Google understand the true source of the content. Depending on the type of content this could be: links within the content pointing back to your page, a rel canonical, a URL, or your domain.

Can you offer some of your experience and insight regarding Google’s recent Mayday update? What can companies with large sites that rely on long tail traffic do about Mayday?

It’s even more important now with Mayday that large sites reconsider the signals they are sending to Google regarding their deeper pages (long tail). Obviously not every single page on a large site deserves to be equally promoted, so craft your navigation around the fact that different pages have varying value. Spend some time building links to deeper pages to support sections with weak indexing.

While it’s a little overdramatic, imagine how your site would perform if domain authority did not exist. Start tailoring your SEO strategy with that in mind.

If you were to provide a friend a checklist for marketing their new B2C website online, what would you be sure to include”

Guess my checklist would be pretty simple:

1. Build something people want
2. Make it extremely easy for search engines to crawl/index your site
3. Get people talking about your site online
4. Keep improving the site

Google’s guidelines are really helpful for a new site.

What web based SEO or social media marketing tools would you recommend for that new web site? Any tools we’ve probably never heard of?

These tools are more tech heavy than your typical SEO tools, but I figured some of these might be new to your readers:

1. 80legs – Crawl your own site (or a competitors) and extract whatever data you want
2. SEOmoz API – Mashup all that juicy SEOmoz data
3. Solr – Great for understanding the basics behind a search engine
4. nutch – Similar to SOLR, this one is great for understanding crawling/indexing

Monitoring tools are useful too, setting up a Google Alerts and Twitter RSS feed is helpful for keeping up with what others are saying about your brand online. Once you know what your users are talking about, you can join in on the conversation.

You’ve received kudos from people like the GM of your current company for “staying on top of what’s going on in the search marketplace”. How do you stay current? What are your favorite information sources? (Conferences, Blogs, Newsletters, Books, Forums)

I used to monitor a ton of different blogs/sites/sources, but I’ve paired it down to handful of sources recently. Here’s what I check regularly:

1. Hacker News
2. SEO Book
3. SMX/Search Engine Land
4. SEOmoz
5. SEO by the Sea

If it’s important, it will eventually make it to one of those sites. I’d also love to attend a WWW Conference someday.

Thank you Michael!

Michael Nguyen is the SEO Strategist for Shopzilla & Bizrate.com. Bizrate enables shoppers to quickly and easily find, compare and buy anything, sold by virtually anyone, anywhere on the Internet.  Find Michael on his blog, Social Patterns or on Twitter.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Shopzilla SEO Interview with Michael Nguyen | http://www.toprankblog.com

There simply is no substitute for well rounded experience over a period of time to give a search marketer perspective and the skills to handle a variety of problems. Add to that “sink or swim” SEO training and you have a guy like Matt Evans, SEO Manager at Monster.com. In this interview, Matt is generous with sharing his experiences working agency side and in-house, insights toward code SEO, the new Google design, social media, advice for marketers that want to enter the Search Engine Marketing field and how SEO is a lot like Rugby.

You’ve worked both on the agency side and now as an in-house SEO Manager for Monster.com. Can you share a bit about that journey and what are some of the big differences between working on the client side vs. agency? What do you like most about working in Search?

Previous to Monster I was with a search agency for 6 years. In those 6 years I saw both the organization and the industry grow tremendously despite the bubble burst of the early 2000s. At a time when friends were jumping from job to job it was very easy to stick around because I believed in the services we provided and the future of the search marketing industry. I believed whole-heartedly (and still do) that search is the best way to build an audience, connect with customers, and drive business online. I think the best part of working in Search is the vibrancy of the industry, the smart people, and the value that we can bring to our organizations.

One of the biggest differences in client side versus agency is being very involved in the software development life cycle. On the agency side of things you typically provide recommendations to clients, they take them off to their Product people or Engineers and most work happens behind the curtain. Being an in-house SEO means being involved in a project from concept to release – and all the “fun” in between. Sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it’s tedious, but it’s all a very good learning experience. If I was ever to go back agency side it’s the type of experience which would give me a huge advantage in dealing with clients.

Another major difference between agency and in-house is the feeling of ownership you have over your site/s. Because you’re completely invested in one site, you feel so much more accomplished when SEO enhancements are released.

What in your past work and education experience best prepared you for your journey as a Search Engine Marketer? What advice do you have for budding SEMs to make themselves more valuable and empowered to motivate change?

My initial year or so at the agency was by far the best experience in terms of preparing me for the diverse journey as an SEM. In 2000-2001 SEM was still the wild, wild west. For some perspective, we were still submitting pages to Lycos and HotBot, doorway pages were a legitimate and successful tactic, and GoTo.com was the only paid search engine of note. The company was still small and resources were non-existent, so account managers did EVERYTHING for their clients – from keyword research, to copywriting, to directory submissions, to project management. You learned real quick that you needed to focus your energy on the tasks that were going to get you results fast. Getting results fast was even more important back then because your clients were less likely to understand the nature of search, the fluctuations, and how long it takes for content to be indexed and ranked. As a result, much of our time was spent educating the client, which forced me to learn on the fly.

I would urge budding SEMs to think less about tactics and think more about strategies. The tactics will flow from those strategies naturally and you’ll have a much easier time selling executives a strategy rather than trying to explain to them why 301 redirects, XML sitemaps, and verification meta tags are necessary. They don’t care! The strategy should take into account how search traffic will drive bottom line results, because that’s what they care about. It’s also essential for SEMs to understand the value of a search referral to their business. For instance, at Monster we measure the value of organic referrals by equating them to the cost savings driving the equivalent qualified traffic through paid search or online media buys.

Ultimately, SEMs should be trying to get away from the perception that we’re one trick ponies. Aim to create a perception in your organization that you’re a well-rounded business person rather than an niche expert in the “dark arts of SEO.” Understand the parts of the business that intersect with search – PR, offline marketing, usability, etc. Too many times SEO experts are pigeonholed and viewed as only a small part of the business when many time the impact they can have on a business is much greater than any other person in the organization. Just ask the businesses who have had their site banned from Google to understand how important SEMs are!

What tips do you have for reporting SEO performance within an organization? What KPIs do you pay attention to? What overall performance goals are most important? Any tips on reporting that agencies give their clients?

The key to reporting in an organization is to provide tiered reporting based on your audience. The reporting that me and my SEO team review is far more detailed than the dashboard that the SVPs see. Also, we provide more specific reporting for our ecommerce team, Content team, and Product Managers. It’s important to get feedback from all these groups too so that you’re providing data that is interesting and actionable and you’re not wasting your time reporting on useless data.

At Monster the KPIs we pay attention to around SEO are pretty typical: visits, UVs, page views per visit, time on site, referrals by engine, and referrals by keyword phrase. The SEO team is mainly measured on the amount of overall traffic we drive, however, in order to prove our traffic is valuable and targeted we also track the number of job searches, job views, applies, new accounts, and new resume uploads that result from SEO traffic.

Agencies need to focus less on month to month comparisons and look at year over year. Seasonality is usually a large factor in search trends, so comparing MoM trends provides little insight into actual performance. For Monster, January is our biggest month for search traffic due to New Year’s resolutions to find a new job. December tends to be one of our lowest months due to the holidays. Comparing December to January may look great in the chart, but to get a real understanding on SEO success you need to look at year over year most of the time.

How important is ongoing & proactive SEO vs triage? What do you think companies should be paying attention to on an ongoing basis to achieve, maintain and improve their SEO performance?

I need to balance between both triage and proactive strategic planning due to the speed at which the industry changes and the size of a company like Monster. Try as I might to be aware of all changes that happen to the site in a given release, it’s just not humanly possible to know everything. Also, since our site is so large it takes a while to figure out how search engine algorithm changes affect us. Much of my time is spent understanding how these changes might have affected our SEO performance. Monster is a global organization and has many, many priorities and a very competitive development roadmap. As a result I need to also be proactive and be thinking about what we need to launch 6-12 months down the line in order to hit our goals. It makes it busy, but very interesting.

Companies need to leverage the webmaster tools offered by Google, Yahoo, and Bing in order to maintain and improve their SEO performance. Beyond SEO, these tools give a company valuable information about how your site performs for users (which includes search engine spiders). Google especially has been adding a lot of great tools to their console to improve SEO performance and we’ve been trying to spread the word throughout our organization about the kinds of information that can be mined. As a result we have Product Managers in all the countries reaching out to the SEO team with problems they’ve found and it really creates a great sense of teamwork.

There’s some debate about the future interplay between code level SEO, structured data and sitemaps versus page content and social media. How do you see SEO evolving technically in the next 2-3 years?

Ultimately, because links are still so important to search engine algorithms I think that content and social media will continue to be king when it comes to SEO. Great content will always lead to more links and social is just the latest channel to distribute those links. However, I believe the number of technical levers search engines will provide to SEOs in order to improve and tweak how their site appears in search results will continue to grow. I think search engines need all the help they can get in crawling, indexing, and presenting the best results to searchers and giving more control to webmasters is one way to go about it. I predict we’ll see many more announcements from the engines supporting new technical innovations like we’ve seen in the past with canonical tags, XML sitemaps, rel=”nofollow”, and RDFa tags.

What are your thoughts on the new third column Google design? Do you see any SEO opportunities that weren’t there before? Are you planning on or doing anything differently? What are your top 3 signals of SEO influence?

As a power searcher I don’t find the third column design nearly as offensive as some users do. I see it as redundant navigation that’s aimed at luring the average searcher into exploring Google’s different engines before going back up to the search box and modifying their query, which they tend to do. I’ve found it useful when I’m trying to understand what type of content exist out there on a given topic.

I wouldn’t say there are new opportunities, but I think the opportunities that have always been there are magnified. If blended search results didn’t convince you that a universal search strategy is important, the new left hand navigation should.

There are new plans to change our strategy. We’re already on a path to improve our PR SEO and our Social Media presence to correspond with the emphasis the engines have put on real time search. We’ve built out a strong team in those areas and the SEO team regularly partners with them on initiatives.

What SEO (and/or PPC) tools would you recommend to an in-house marketer that wears a SEO hat among others? Do you have any SEO project management tools that you like?

They absolutely need to use Google Webmaster Tools if nothing at all. The data provided is just too valuable. I also am a big fan of the SEO Book toolbar for Firefox. It’s a great tool for a quick snapshot of what’s going on with a page.

What resources do you use to stay current? (Blogs, conferences, newsletters, books) What role do direct observation, testing and networking play for you in staying current?

I find Search Engine Land’s SearchCap newsletter the best source of news for the industry. It compiles all the best blogs and forum threads in one daily email. As for books, Search Engine Marketing, Inc. is my bible.  It sits on my bookshelf and I pull it down from time to time to refresh my memory on certain topics. The forecasting/modeling information is invaluable for those SEOs who are continuously asked to quantify the opportunity of an enhancement or new content.

If you were to compare SEO to a sport, which would you pick and why?

There is no question on this one – Rugby. I’ve played many team sports in my life – baseball, soccer, basketball, dodge ball – but none of them comes close to the ultimate team sport of Rugby. I played for 4 years in college and 5 years after and you learn pretty quickly that a team’s success is completely dependent on execution by all 15 players on the pitch (that’s a field for the uninitiated!). The backs can’t score tries if they don’t receive the ball from the scrum half, and the scrum half can distribute the ball unless the forwards ruck and secure the ball.

Everyone depends on each other to do their job. SEO is much the same way. The SEO can’t drive traffic to the site if the UX folks don’t design the architecture of the site right, or if the developers don’t code the page correctly, or the copywriters don’t use the proper keyword phrases in the copy. You are dependent on others within your organization to execute properly, and with a large, global organization like Monster, this is what makes the job difficult. It’s also what makes projects that much sweeter when we are successful!

Thanks Matt!

Matt Evans is SEO Manager for Monster.com, the premier global employment solution for job seekers with a presence in over 50 countries.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Monster SEO: Interview with Matt Evans of Monster.com | http://www.toprankblog.com

For every SEO guru speaking at a conference, there are 10 or 20 more SEO experts you might not have heard of, making things happen in amazing ways. Scott Skurnick has worked in the Search Marketing industry as long as anyone I know on the conference speaking circuit and has a tremendous amount of experience and expertise to share.

In this interview, Scott shares his journey to become Executive Director of Search Engine Optimization and User Insights at Edmunds.com, his take on social media and SEO, scalability of SEO, tips on audits, best practices, tools and more.

You’re a long time consumer products search marketer, having worked at companies like Circuit City, OfficeMax and currently with Edmunds.com. What made you decide to work in the search marketing industry and what do you like best about it?

Actually I got my start with Search Marketing in Mexico City when I was working in the Tequila industry. I had worked for Jose Cuervo for a number of years and then went to work for their main competitor at the time which was Tequila Sauza. When I launched the first brand websites back in 1995 I became obsessed with Tequila Sauza being the number one result in Yahoo and Alta Vista for the query “tequila”. Of course that wasn’t a very hard task because there weren’t a lot of tequila related sites but the whole concept of search engines intrigued me.

The thing that I like the most about our industry is the fact that it is ever-changing and there are no “absolute” answers. The end goal is the same for everyone in SEO in that we want to generate both traffic and some kind of conversion. What differs is how we reach that goal. Everyone’s SEO recipe is a little different and who’s to say that their approach is any better than someone else’s. What’s not to like about this?

What job skills and career advice can you offer to Search Marketers that want to work in-house vs working at an agency? Do you think it’s reasonable for companies to expect SEMs to be advanced at both SEO & PPC? And Social?

There are a couple of necessary skills that most people don’t speak of. I won’t get into the debate of whether or not we should be able to write code because I think it depends on the situation. The list of skills and qualities I feel are necessary for a successful in-house SEO are:

• Must be highly analytical
• Understand how the different parts of an organization work
• Have Great negotiating skills
• Be likeable and never bite the hand that feeds you (developers and writers)
• Be curious and never think you know everything
• Be humble. You have to be able to admit your mistakes, we all make them especially working in SEO
• Most importantly, you have to have thick skin. You will always have your doubters and people who want to see you fail because they don’t believe in SEO.

While I feel it is vital that an in-house SEO understand both Paid Search and Social, depending on the size of the company it may not be realistic for one person to manage all 3 areas. All 3 are highly specialized and changing very quickly. More importantly, you can easily ruin a company by committing errors in any of these 3 and errors usually occur when there is a lack of understanding or knowledge. At my current company we have separate teams handling PPC, SEO and Social and this seems to work the best. Of course we all interact and share information but at the end of the day we have an expert for each channel.

Speaking of social, what are some of the ways you’ve made SEO content more social at Edmunds.com? What are some of the immediate opportunities within the social web to advance SEO goals?

When we talk about Social Media at Edmunds, we are really talking about Forums, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Edmunds has been running an online automotive community (forums) since 1996 which is, for the most part, based on SEO best practices. As far as Facebook and Twitter are concerned, our editorial and PR teams are directly involved. While we do engage in some auto-tweets, the majority of what we put out there has an original voice to it. We also actively engage with people who are discussing our brand or the automotive market in general.

The biggest Social Media opportunity for us is brand promotion and audience engagement. Our content travels very well. Not only do we review almost every vehicle imaginable, but we also have a data department that is responsible for coming up with industry sales forecasts and results. When we issue a sales forecast or summary, this information is immediately picked up and re-tweeted or shared via Facebook.

Many agency marketers say quality SEO cannot scale because working with many different types of web sites and companies is unpredictable. Do you think that’s true for in-house SEO?

I couldn’t disagree more. Since 1995 I’ve worked as an in-house online marketer with tequila, office supplies, consumer electronics and automobiles. I view myself as product agnostic. For me it is all about the marketing channel. Of course every industry and website presents a different set of challenges but I’ve always followed the same SEO blueprint. The SEO blueprint changes due to the elastic nature of our industry but I’m going to apply pretty much the same strategy regardless of the product I’m trying to promote. Some sites may require more effort when it comes to link building while others may need better editorial content but at the end of the day the basic SEO infrastructure is very similar.

What are some of the common obstacles with large retailer web sites when it comes to SEO? What makes a successful large site SEO program so successful?

Enemy #1 is the CMS. Most large retail sites use shiny and expensive out of the box systems which are great for everything but SEO. From dynamic parameters in url strings (no not just 1 or 2) to duplicate title and description tags across hundreds or thousands of pages, most CMS’s just don’t know how to handle SEO. Add in code bloat and duplicate pages across multiple categories and there is enough to keep any SEO busy for years. The other big issue is unique content. Too many large retail sites don’t put in the effort to write unique and appealing product descriptions so their Sony Plasma TV description is the same as hundreds of others across the web.

As far as what makes a large site SEO program a success, this is very cliché but I dare any in-house SEO to disagree. It comes down to education and compromise. Until everyone in the organization has a very basic understanding of SEO, you will have a hard time getting a SEO project to succeed. The developers need to understand why you are asking them to change the code and the writers need to understand why you are asking them to change their titles. You never ever want to mandate change because this will only make you enemies. You also have to understand that sometimes SEO has to take a backseat to a more important goal. There are few instances where SEO and usability or SEO and development conflict with each other but when they do, you need to choose what’s best for the company. Never ever let your ego get in the way.

Let’s say a friend shows you his new retail product web site and asks you to do a SEO audit. What are 4-5 things you would look for?

Any audit starts with a simple question; are you willing to go under the hood and make potentially large scale changes…If the answer is yes then:

1. Need to understand the CMS / Shopping Cart solution and see if it’s flexible.
2. I’m checking urls, most retail web sites use too many dynamic parameters
3. I’m making sure a product only lives in one department / category. If it doesn’t I’m using the canonical tag (worst case scenario) or convincing him to change his categorization.
4. Making sure his product descriptions are unique and in-depth. Too many ecommerce sites use canned descriptions.
5. Making sure he is letting his customers review the products. You can say what you want about the now defunct Circuit City on the store side, but the web site had by far the most comprehensive customer product reviews on the web and these generated considerable SE traffic.

What are your favorite web based SEO and social media marketing tools?

For SEO:  Bruce Clay Toolset, SEOmoz Pro Tools, Xenu, Majestic SEO, Ranking Manager and Wordtracker. For Social Media: Co-tweet, Klout and wefollow. I also set up a really nice reputation management dashboard based on a post from aimClear a while back.

What role does social media optimization play in an overall SEO program? Do you think it’s worth optimizing content for search within social media sites like Facebook or MySpace?

Social media is important in that we want to let people consume our content wherever they feel comfortable. We try and optimize the content for the channel but not necessarily for search engines. We don’t create special content hoping to create a temporary lift from social media and we definitely don’t promote all our content via social channels. The worst thing a brand can do is abuse Twitter or Facebook. Our users can smell a “hyped” story from a mile away.

Staying on top of best practices in general and specifically for what’s most important to the web sites you’re working on can be a challenge. What do you do to stay current? What blogs do you read? Do you have favorite conferences, books, forums or newsletters?

I easily spend the first hour of every morning going over my analytics and reading up on the latest SEO news. As far as the sites I visit, they include: Search Engine Land, Michael Gray’s Blog, WebmasterWorld, WebProNews, MediaPost, paidContent.org and the IAB. I also love 1938media.com, it keeps me grounded. I don’t really go to a lot of conferences but I have been attending PubCon since 2005 and SMX Advanced since it started. PubCon is great because there is something for everyone and SMX Advanced is one of the few conferences where experienced SEO’s can learn something. The one conference I would love to attend but haven’t been able to yet is the Search & Social Spring Summit.

Thank you Scott!

Scott has been working in online marketing since 1995 in industries ranging from Tequila to Automobiles. He’s an avid Packers and Soccer fan and live in Redondo Beach, CA with his wife and two girls. You can find him on Twitter, LinkedIn and working hard on SEO at Edmunds.

Spotlight on Search is an interview series that shines a light on search marketing professionals to learn more about the nature of their work, differences in SEO amongst categories of web sites and of course, SEO tips, tactics and useful tools. We do not take PR firm pitch suggestions or solicitations for these interviews. They are by request from TopRank Online Marketing Blog editorial staff only.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Enterprise SEO Interview with Scott Skurnick of Edmunds.com | http://www.toprankblog.com

Working with Enterprise SEO projects is compared to smaller company sites is as different as marketing to BtoC vs. BtoB customers. This interview with Dan Perry, the SEO Director for Turner Broadcasting covers his SEO dream job, in-house SEO career advice and skills, enterprise SEO, the future of outsourcing to agencies, being persuasive inside organizations and of course, Golf!

We met while you were with Cars.com and now you’re with Turner Broadcasting. (Congrats) How did you get into the SEO world and what is it that keeps you there?

I started building very basic websites in 1998, but didn’t get into SEO until the summer of 2000. I built a site for a local golf course and a few months later, typed “Michigan golf” into a search engine. The site I built was on the first page! The light bulb went off immediately, and I’ve been promoting sites online ever since. The satisfaction of success is what keeps me in the industry. I’ve done enough SEO on sites of all sizes to know that it clearly works. Watching it work and seeing the baseline numbers for a site consistently increase over time is extremely satisfying.

What do you like best about your current position and company?

I’ll answer that with an example of a semi-typical day for me: Have an early conference call with London to discuss international SEO for Cartoon Network, have a meeting with PGA.com to discuss ongoing SEO Initiatives, meet with Topher Kohan (SEO Coordinator at CNN) to discuss strategy, have a call with NBA.com and TNT.tv to discuss the playoffs, and end the day by providing some Editorial SEO training to the team at Adult Swim. To have the opportunity to move the SEO needle on properties like these is truly a blessing. From an in-house SEO perspective, this job is as good as it gets.

You’ve spent a lot of time working on the client side with SEO. What advice do you have for individuals that would like to break into that kind of career path?

Doing in-house SEO in a large company is much different than doing it for yourself, or at a small company. I haven’t “done” SEO in years. My job is training others how to do it, and having them keep SEO top-of-mind. It requires an even temperament, the ability to explain why SEO should be prioritized to developers, executives, and everyone in-between, and a love of PowerPoint and Excel.

What skills should a corporate marketer develop in order to be capable of handling in-house SEO duties?

The ability to sell SEO internally. You may have to convince a developer to change the way they’ve always done things. You may have to convince an executive that SEO is a good business decision, and be able to back it up with numbers. I don’t believe that SEO starts at the top and works its way down, or vice versa. It has to happen at both ends (and in the middle) and then you need to keep it top-of-mind throughout the organization. To sum it up, a strong ability to sell internally, a logical approach, and an understanding of the SEO potential and the ability to put that potential into realistic forecasts.

Do you look for specific backgrounds, experience or skills when you hire in-house SEOs?

First of all, there has to be a base SEO skill-set; this cannot be overstated. There needs to be a level of SEO confidence that one can only gain with years of trial and error, dealing with algorithm changes, etc. Also, the ability to take a complex SEO element and describe it in a simple and easy-to-understand way is an under-rated skill. Finally, a diplomatic personality is key.

With enterprise SEO, you don’t get to roll up your sleeves and jump in with a program in most cases. What do you see as some of the more common challenges with achieving end-goal results from search engine optimization in a large or complex organization?

Prioritization. You and I both know that SEO is valuable, and can produce impressive results. My job is to convince an executive that SEO should be prioritized above the dozens of other possible projects. I need to pull together an SEO plan, forecast potential gains in traffic, and explain why this should be prioritized over other projects. The funny thing is that once that happens and you get approval, THEN the real work starts.

I’ve seen you present many times on in-house SEO panels, which btw, have been priceless for SEO agencies that work for large companies. Will companies still need to outsource SEO in the next 2-3 years?

I think so. There’s a lot of value an agency can add, even when there’s an internal team. For example, agency folks can see how an algorithm change affects many different companies and industries. Over time, the lessons learned from this broad collection of sites are invaluable.

What role do you see outside agencies playing?

Depends on the level of need within a given organization and the size/bandwidth of the internal employees.

Where are SEO agencies usually the most helpful?

Every property’s needs are different, so it needs to be property-specific and driven by the unique goals and needs of each. It can vary from assisting with major initiatives like a redesign to keyword research to spillover work.

What’s your best tip for getting other departments in an organization on “your side” when it comes to content creation, approval and promotion for advancing search marketing goals? Any examples?

Showing the opportunity lost in terms of traffic and revenue. For example, if one of our sites is on the second page of Google for a set of keyterms, and I can provide data that shows the potential gains they should receive (traffic gains, and revenue gains) by getting on page one, it makes the selling process much easier.

What are some of the common “low hanging fruit” SEO suggestions you see the most often with large site SEO? The classic of course, is updating one robots.txt file to stop blocking all bots.

The SEO maximization of publishing templates is a great place to start. Relatively small changes at the template level can have a big impact. Secondly, finding inbound links that produce 404 errors and converting them to 301 redirects.

Please share some of the SEO and Social Media tools that you like most:

Working with such big brands, a lot of the tools aren’t as important as they used to be. Because of that, I spend more times in our analytics package then I ever have before.

How do you stay current with SEO and all the marketing, technology and communication channels that come with it? What are your favorite conferences, blogs, newsletters, organizations, books or networks that you rely on?

I’m a big fan of David Meerman Scott’s book on the New Rules. He took a relatively complex subject and boiled it down into easy-to-understand language. My favorite book of all-time is Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug. One of the few books that made me look at a website in a completely different way. When I attend conferences, I usually choose the sessions I’ll attend by speaker name rather than session description. Finally, the Planet Ocean SEO newsletter is one of the most consistent, well-written newsletters I’ve ever seen.

Since you’re a huge golf fan, do you have any interesting golf metaphors for SEO?

Love them both; here’s my top 10 list of similarities between golf and SEO:

1. Accept that you don’t know everything.
2. Learn by doing.
3. Measure often and pay attention to the numbers.
4. Be prepared for the worst-case scenario.
5. Learn from your mistakes.
6. Stick with it, even during the bad times.
7. Seek out good advice.
8. Luck is just that.
9. Use the right tools.
10. Be patient and think long term.

Thanks Dan!

You can find Dan online on his Blog, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Spotlight on Search is an interview series that shines a light on search marketing professionals to learn more about the nature of their work, differences in SEO amongst categories of web sites and of course, SEO tips, tactics and useful tools. We do not take PR firm pitch suggestions or or solicitations for these interviews. They are by request from TopRank Online Marketing Blog editorial staff only.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | SEO at Turner Broadcasting: Dan Perry Interview | http://www.toprankblog.com

Spotlight on Search Interview with Alex Bennert, Chief Search Strategist at The Wall Street Journal

Spotlight on Search is an interview series that shines a light on search marketing professionals to learn more about the nature of their work, differences in SEO amongst categories of web sites and of course, SEO tips, tactics and useful tools.

This interview with Alex Bennert, a longtime SEO professional with experience working on very large web sites such as Zillow and now with the Wall Street Journal, offers SEO career advice, explores the difference between in-house, agency and solo SEO practitioner, her experiences providing SEO services for a large publisher and the inevitable obsolescence of technical SEO. Oh yeah, we hit the obligatory social media topic too. Enjoy:

You’ve provided your SEO expertise for quite a while with some very large web sites. What is it that keeps you motivated about search?

There are some jobs where the skill set you need is reasonably finite. There is a knowable amount of information you need to learn and eventually master. But SEO is a moving target and that makes it more interesting. Boredom never sets in because I never feel as though I’ve mastered it.

How did that motivation influence your journey to become the Chief Search Strategist at The Wall Street Journal?

After the Journal contacted me, I was invited down to NYC for a casual “meet and greet.” As my husband dropped me at the airport I remember telling him that it was highly unlikely that I would take a corporate job at someplace like the Wall Street Journal. I pictured buttoned-downed suits and a restrictive 9-5 culture.

So I get there and the first person I meet is Kevin Delaney who used to cover the search industry for the Journal. I was immediately impressed by the breadth of his knowledge of search and his enthusiasm for embracing the Web at the Journal. Within 20 minutes of meeting him, I realized that I really wanted this job. That day I met with five other Journal people and my first impression was confirmed over and over again. These were not stuffy old-school folks looking back, this was a group of some of the smartest people I’ve ever met who were savvy about what was happening online and passionate about moving the Journal forward into it. And they were asking me to help! I’ve been with the Journal almost 2 years now and still to this day it’s the most fascinating and compelling job I’ve ever had.

What new insights about SEO have you learned after working for the WSJ?

Before working at WSJ I had assumed that Google Web search and Google News search would be minor variations on the algorithm.. Bad assumption! Google News uses a very different set of signals than Google Web and I’ve enjoyed the challenge of having a new algorithm to untangle.

Career advice: For people who’ve worked in corporate marketing, PR, web development or advertising that are looking to start a new career in search marketing, what advice would you give?

Many SEOs are evolving with the market and expanding their services into social media. I definitely see the value in expanding your skill set and your potential client base but personally I’ve had great luck going the opposite direction… specialization. I focus strictly on organic SEO with a strong emphasis on the technical. The list of what I don’t do is bigger than what I do… no paid search, no link building, no social media, no commerce sites. I know what I do well and I try to stick to it.

What are the most important skills for an in-house SEO vs a SEO working for an agency?

As an agency SEO you’re often juggling multiple projects that are in different phases and have different goals and frequently different resources. On any given day you could doing keyword research for a on a broad category (like autos), working with a junior web developer to launch a site redesign, deploying a search strategy for a small local gardening center, diving into analytics for a monthly report, or writing protocols to optimize title tags for an online hardware retailer with thousands of products. The upside is that you learn a lot because you get real experience in a little bit of everything. But you also have to be very organized and centered because you get pulled in a lot of directions.

Working in-house I’m still juggling multiple projects and working with different departments but in the end these goals have to ultimately be harmonious….everything has to fit together and support the site as a whole.

You have a lot of experience implementing search engine optimization from a technology perspective. What are some of the most common issues with content management systems and/or publishing systems that get in the way of optimal search visibility?

Common things I see are title tags that can’t be edited after the page is published or title tags that can’t be different from the article headline or title tags on paginated URLs that can’t be customized.

Do you have any headsmacking examples of simple fixes that resulted in large scale benefits?

Invest in a really good chair.

You have the unique perspective of having worked for an agency, for yourself and as an in-house SEO. Do you think companies will be able wean themselves from outsourcing any SEO work? Or do you see SEO as being like other professional services where companies will employ a combination of in-house and specialized or strategic outside expertise?

It’s important to know what you don’t know! When WSJ wanted to publish their international editions online my first recommendation was to bring in a consultant with a solid track record of executing successful SEO strategies in multiple countries. I’ve attended conference sessions on international search and read lots of information on it, but I had never developed, implemented and monitored an international search strategy for a client so my knowledge on the subject was academic.

Outside experts are the best way to learn what you don’t know.

What role does social media and networking play in today’s SEO for publishers?

In terms of SEO, social media offers a much more viable and authentic way to develop links to your site rather than link acquisition campaigns which were generally designed to get links for search engines. Now you can connect with your market, network, create buzz and really increase the exposure of your brand. And a happy by-product of that is links for SEO.
Also, social media provides another distinct source of traffic. A few years ago, you had email, search, referred traffic from editorial or advertising links and direct traffic from offline marketing. It makes me nervous when I see someone rely too much on a single source of traffic. If your business runs on a website and you’re getting 60% of your site traffic from organic search, you need to diversify. One little algorithm shrug and whammo… you could be feeling a lot of pain.

How do you see the influence of search innovations changing how you “do SEO” in the next year? In the next 2-3 years?

I have a hunch that the kind of technical SEO that I do will phase into obsolescence in the next few years. Google and Bing are aggressively expanding their Webmaster toolsets to put much of this information right into the hands of anyone that needs it. I think technical SEO will become a standard part of web development and other forms of SEO will be assimilated into social media, PR and analytics (except for paid search which isn’t going away). Obviously this begs the question, what will I do? I’m still thinking about that!

How is SEO for a large publisher (like Marketwatch or WSJ) different than some of the other large content sites (like Zillow) that you’ve worked on?

The great thing about doing SEO for a publisher is never having to worry about editorial content! Zillow, Avvo and DriverSide all started with a database of useful information. That database of content can be optimized so that it’ll rank for thousands of relevant queries (san diego homes for sale) but if you want to rank for queries like “best elementary schools in san diego” or “safest neighborhoods in san diego” you’ll need editorial content. Lots of it. On a zillion topics. Oh and make it high quality please? Yeh. We got that.

How much of a role do you see structured data and microformats playing in the future of search engine optimization?

I’m a big fan of Edward Tufte who writes about the visual communication of information through display. From a user perspective, I love the addition of structured data and microformats. From an SEO perspective, I firmly believe the more relevant information you can intelligently convey in a search result, the more qualified your visitors will be.

What about sitemaps and feeds? Essential or only necessary in certain situations?

For large sites, feeds and sitemaps are the most efficient method of discovery for new content. Far more efficient than getting crawled. But crawling is also important because you don’t get anchor text factored into a feed.

What tools would you recommend to an in-house marketer that’s newly acquired SEO responsibilities? Any advanced tools for more experienced marketers that you like? SEO or Social?
Most standalone SEO tools are geared towards linking and that’s something I stay away from. If you don’t have a viable PR strategy or a product that people will want to talk about our content that folks want to read and link to, then you’re not my ideal client. I’m not a PR person and to me, that is the essence of link building. So I don’t use too many tools. Xenu has been a workhorse for me over the years and I’m a big believer in having 2 sets of analytics. Besides that, using the engine’s toolsets as well as syntax queries provides the bulk of the data that I need.

How do you stay current with SEO and all the marketing, technology and communication channels that come with it? What are your favorite conferences, blogs, newsletters, organizations, books or networks that you rely on?

My favorite conference is coming up next month. SMX Advanced in Seattle is one of the few SEO conferences I attend where I always learn something to make it worthwhile. PubCon is another one. As for reading… I try not to spread myself to thin during the week because I could easily end up spending all day every day reading blogs. Generally I hit searchengineland.com because if there’s something I need to know, it’s there. On Fridays I try to make the round of blogs and catch up.

Is there a question I should be asking you?

You may not know that although I am “full-time” and “in-house” I’m actually a consultant for WSJ, not an employee. The difference for me (besides longer-than-usual vacations) is that I don’t *do* SEO for them…my goal is embed it as a process into their standard procedures and work-flow systems. I believe that a really good consultant works to make herself unnecessary. It may seem counter-intuitive to remaining employed but I’ve found that this philosophy makes me more valuable to my clients.

Thanks Alex!

Alex Bennert is the in-house SEO at the Wall Street Journal. Specializing in algorithmic search, she’s worked with clients such as Zillow, Philips, SFGate, JibJab and other enterprise level sites with millions of pages. A search geek since 1999, Alex analyzes bot behavior, ponders crawl barriers and conjures friendly URLs while waiting in line at the grocery store.

You can find Alex on Twitter as SEOsylph

UPDATE:
If you’re in Minneapolis  May 25th, check out the Integrated Marketing Summit where Alex is participating on a panel on SEO with Findlaw, International Dairy Queen, Apogee and TopRank Online Marketing.

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TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | SEO at Wall Street Journal: Interview with Alex Bennert | http://www.toprankblog.com

Spotlight on Search is an interview series that shines a light on search marketing professionals to learn more about the nature of their work, differences in SEO amongst categories of web sites and of course, SEO tips, tactics and useful tools.

Maile Ohye has become a well known public figure from Google that works with webmasters and web marketers coordinating Google Webmaster Central outreach efforts, including the Webmaster Central Blog. She has been speaking at search conferences for several years and has done many interviews like the one at the bottom of this post with Greg Jarboe on real-time search. Her involvement with Google’s Webmaster Central has been instrumental in helping many web site owners find solutions to their Google problems.

In this interview, Maile shares her experience working with Google, Webmaster Central, offers tips on improving page speed, shares unusual SEO problems, offers her perspective on SEO and Social Media as well a hint at her upcoming keynote presentation at SES Toronto.

Please tell us about your career at Google and what’s the most exciting thing about your work?

I’ve worked at Google for over four years. One of my responsibilities is to manage the Webmaster Central Blog. I love the internet, love Search, and it’s all exciting. Monday through Friday I’m able to eat these great lunches (food is another love of mine), collaborate with the coolest people, and work toward a cause I totally believe in: a better web. In my current role, I assist webmasters to implement open standards and best practices that allow search engines to crawl/index their site. Because in the end, better sites make a better web which better facilitates users finding relevant information. Yay!

So dorky, I know. Can’t help it. I really dig this stuff.

Google Webmaster Central has been a great resource for many webmasters. What tips can you share with web site owners to make the most out of Google Webmaster Tools?

Awww, Webmaster Central a “great resource” for many webmasters? That’s wonderful to hear. As for tips, I’d say verify ownership of your site in Webmaster Tools, sign up for email forwarding in Webmaster Tools’ Message Center, and then check out all the specific data for your site: our Top Search Queries feature was just revamped. Crawl Errors is cool for making sure your site is accessed as you’d expect (many people find unknown 404s, or realize they have server downtime because of noticing the “Unreachable” errors), HTML Suggestions shows you the URLs with duplicate titles or meta descriptions. I think once you start poking around in Webmaster Tools you’ll learn more and more. It’s addictive.

How does one become a Bionic Poster?

Lee, Bionic Posters aren’t born, they’re made. They’re the most active, helpful, accurate, friendly webmasters in the discussion forum. Many of them were bionic posters before we ever had recognition for bionic posters — they just went about their day helping others in the webmaster community. It was an honor for me to meet Richard Hearne and dine with webado while I was on holiday in Montreal. They’ve both individually written thousands (thousands!) of posts to help webmasters.

This thread still brings tears to my eyes.

The disclosure about page speed being a ranking factor will certainly have an impact on user experience. What’s the impact for Google?

Speed is now a factor in rankings because we’re trying to best serve users, and studies show that users are happier with faster sites and less satisfied with slow sites. More satisfied users are shown to spend more time on the internet. More time on the internet means more time spent learning new things, becoming a better informed citizen, surfing the web and, of course, checking out your website. Speed can be a win for all parties involved.

Please share a few tips and/or tools for improving page load speed:

First, I’d get a gauge of your site in Webmaster Tools Site Performance. Then, I’d download the Page Speed plugin. Simple implementations to improve performance are compressing/gzip-ping as many file types as possible, using an expires header, and ordering stylesheets the top of the page/scripts at the bottom. More information in my blog post/video from last week, You and site performance, sitting in a tree…”.

In your work with Google Webmaster Central, what are some of the most common mis-conceptions about SEO? Common problems? Really unique or unusual problems?

A more complex problem we’ve discussed recently is what to do with a page that has its (boilerplate) template translated into different language, causing different URLs, but where the actual (non-template) content remains the same. In other words, only the navigation can switch languages, the content itself is unchanged. This configuration is common in user-generated sites. For example, a discussion forum may have it’s template available in 20 languages, however the individual user posts are written in any language and are not translated.

Because the actual/main content is the same, rel=”canonical” makes theoretical sense. So should the webmaster use rel=”canonical” from the different languages to one preferred version? Let’s say the webmaster uses rel=”canonical” on her entire site. She points the French/Spanish/German versions to her canonical English-template version. Now, however, French-speaking users only see the English-template version in search results. Is this a desirable user search experience?

It’s a tough call. At this point, we can’t give a best practice recommendation across the board. It’s a decision left to the individual webmaster as they know their audience best.

If a web site owner was deciding how much effort to focus on standard SEO (keywords in content & links, crawling, external link acquisition) compared to social media (creating profiles, growing a network, sharing content) what tips would you give to help them decide where to spend their time? How do you see SEO and social media working together?

I think having a solid site: great content, good experience for users (intuitive navigation, responsive), descriptive page titles, standardized URL structure, etc., is of primary importance. A strong site is the foundation where you’ll likely make your online conversions. Once this foundation is established, the social media approach helps drive traffic, builds excitement (and inbound links), that you’ll be able to capitalize on with your solid site.

Congratulations on the keynote presentation at SES Toronto. What will you be speaking about?

Thanks! I’m super excited. I expect to talk about Search, Real Time Search, Webmaster Tools, cool new projects on the web. And hopefully I’ll hear feedback/concerns from the web community in Toronto, too.

Thanks so much for the interview, Lee. Hope to talk again soon.

Thank you Maile!

Find Maile at:
Twitter: @maileohye
Blog: SEO category

Update: I’ve added a recent video interview with Maile from Search Engine Strategies in New York. As noted in the interview above, she will be presenting a keynote presentation at the upcoming SES Toronto, so be sure to get more information on that event and get signed up.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | SEO Google Style: Interview with Maile Ohye | http://www.toprankblog.com

One of the most insightful voices in the online marketing industry when it comes to advertising is Max Kalehoff of Clickable. I was introduced to Max at a Search Insider Summit conference several years ago with very high regard by David Berkowitz, another intelligent voice in the industry, so I knew immediately he was someone to pay attention to.

Max’s company recently announced the addition of Facebook Advertising to their PPC management platform and he was very kind to take the time to answer several detailed questions about social media advertising on the Clickable platform, the future of the online advertising industry, slimy SEO middlemen, how he stays current and blogging about his Weber grill.

1. You have impressive credentials in the interactive marketing industry with your experience working at Jupiter, comScore and Nielsen. How did you come to work with Clickable?

It’s mostly luck. I’ve been fortunate to work with a series of successful startup teams and entrepreneurs that played a key role in shaping the Internet. I came to Clickable from Nielsen, which bought our last startup, BuzzMetrics, the pioneer in social media measurement and research. I admire Nielsen and have many close friends there, but I wanted to build things and innovate again in a startup environment. Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures, a Clickable investor, introduced me to David Kidder and Munish Gandhi, Clickable’s co-founders. I shared their vision for helping businesses succeed by simplifying online advertising. We quickly became friends and colleagues and the rest is history.

What’s behind your passion for building early stage companies?

Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve been passionate about building things, solving creative problems and exploring new territory. I’ve always tried to live out those passions through education, work, hobbies and family life. With work, entrepreneurial ventures are the best outlets for those passions.

When I was in college, I started two summer businesses. The first was sailboat charter business, and the second was a Web development consultancy. Post college, I spent a few years in the marketing agency business but soon threw myself into technology and Web startup life. There’s nothing more invigorating than working closely with a group of like-minded, passionate people trying to change the world. Big companies have their purpose, but nimble upstarts attract smart people who crave abstract problems, peer-to-peer learning, mastery, self-imposed discipline and persistence. Upstarts also require a lot of risk-taking, serendipity and authentic discovery.

To me, that’s the only way to live. And given the mess our world is in, we need more of these minds and ventures to invent our way to a better future.

For the uninitiated, what is Clickable and what types of companies should be using it?

Clickable is a software-as-a-service platform that makes online advertising simple, instant and profitable. Our tools empower beginners to professionals, and companies of all sizes, to maximize their advertising investment. We have three core products: Our flagship Pro tool is a simple dashboard that empowers marketers to manage online advertising with transformational return on investment. Clickable Pro activates instantly with an intuitive experience that makes it easy to manage performance across all major advertising networks, like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and, now, Facebook.

Clickable Pro is complemented by Clickable Assist, a managed service that delivers agile assistance to maximize online advertising success. Finally, Clickable Platform is a white-label solution for big services companies to rapidly deploy large-scale online advertising programs to their local business customers under their own brands.

We have a simple purpose that ties everything together: to help businesses survive and thrive by simplifying online advertising success. We pursue that purpose by living up to three core values that comprise our DNA:

• 7:1 – The 7:1 ratio of good to bad acknowledges we’re not perfect. This is a powerful admission that enables us to listen better and constantly improve. This underlies transparency, trust and collaboration with each other and our customers.
• Simplicity – Our complex world is desperate for simplicity. Simplicity is difficult, yet it creates value, differentiation and opportunity. That’s why we make everything simple and beautiful.
• And – We are multidimensional. We innovate constantly to perfect our product-to-market fit … And we are a competitive sales culture that closes business. We celebrate both.

Recently the Clickable ad management platform announced the incorporation of Facebook ads.  Being able to track Facebook and search marketing PPC programs side by side seems a significant opportunity for all.  What should advertisers, especially small and medium sized businesses that you serve, expect from social media advertising? What kind of advice do you give to temper expectations? Or do you even need to?

We first removed the complexity that prevented marketers from expanding into search networks besides Google AdWords, by introducing a simple interface that marketers could use to manage all of their search marketing campaigns. It’s become clear that the next place where marketers want a simple, effective solution is on the world’s largest social network: Facebook.

With over 400 million members, Facebook introduces a new way to advertise that complements search marketing. Using extensive demographic targeting criteria, advertisers on Facebook can get out ahead of their customers and create demand that they can later capture with their search campaigns. Marketers can also use Facebook to promote their brands and drive direct sales. Indeed, this is new territory for everyone. We look forward to experimenting with our advertisers to surface best practices and customer profiles that achieve success.

In the course of doing business with many SMBs in conjunction with TopRankSMB, a surprising number of marketers mention having “tried PPC and it didn’t work”.  In most cases it’s due to a lack of knowledge, tools and time to gain the knowledge to run a successful search marketing ad campaign. What advice do you find yourself or your company giving SMBs most often in regard to online advertising? What tips can you give to those just starting out?

Indeed, we found that up to 50% of SMBs that try online advertising don’t succeed, primarily because of complexity. Similarly, a recent study we conducted on SMBs indicated that roughly half don’t properly track conversions. Knowing conversions is the first step in how an advertiser defines success, whether it’s generating a lead, having someone fill in a form or making a sale. Tracking conversions is important in directing your ad investment to the keywords that will drive the greatest return on investment. There’s a lot of talk about efficiency of click-throughs and cost-per-click, but in the end what really matters is the return on your ad spend, and the profitability of your business.

Our most common advice? First, make sure you are tracking your results, and don’t do anything until your analytics are effectively in place. Second, embrace “goal-based advertising” — that is, make investments only toward very specific and realistic business goals. That requires determining the monetary value of your goals, and figuring out which of your services and products have enough potential to justify spend. Finally, invest the time to get educated in PPC and do it right, or hire sometime to do it for you. Otherwise, you will quickly become another statistic in the “tried PPC and it didn’t work” category. That’s a disadvantageous outcome for most businesses.

You really hit a nerve with, Brands: Beware Of Slimy SEO Middlemen Meddling Through Social Media.  The behavior of the SEO account exec you interacted with is strikingly similar to how many media relations people and start-up business owners behave when they pitch us to write about them on Online Marketing Blog. It’s often a bucket of fake suck-uppiness wrapped around a pitch for a single, short term outcome. It’s sad because something far more significant could be achieved if they looked past the one “placement”. Client demands drive a lot of this behavior and agencies of all types (SEO and PR) often comply. What’s your advice on creating a more meaningful connection with bloggers?

My advice for creating a more meaningful connection with bloggers is the same as my advice for success in life: Give more value than you take. If you provide unselfish value, then people will  become attracted to you and they will advocate you. Advocacy may result in links, testimonials, business referrals, constructive feedback, partnership, loyalty and friendship. But calculating relationships purely based on SEO objectives can quickly become a risk to your brand. It’s that simple.

I like that you can switch from “My New Weber Grill” to “Social and Search Advertising“.  As an accomplished and long time blogger, what advice do you have for other interactive and marketing types for blogging over the long haul? How has your own blog affected your career and work?  How satisfied are you with your corporate blogging efforts?

It’s important to acknowledge that despite all the experts and gurus, the Social Media and Interactive bible is far from completion. We’re only in the beginning of the first chapter, and we’re all students. With that in mind, I think more successful blogging and social media efforts have a defined purpose, goals and room for lots of experimentation.

My personal blog is very much me, reflecting the perpetual blur between my professional and home life. They are impossible to separate, and the tension between the two is what makes life interesting. My blog has created an online presence that’s delivered myriad opportunities. It’s led to new business, new friendships, introspection and (in some cases) breaktrhough ideas. I also believe a personal blog is the best laboratory to become fluent and personally vested in interactive technologies. The learning I gained from my personal blogging endeavors directly contributed to some of our more successful interactive marketing strategies at Clickable.

I know we’re already into Q2 but what predictions can you offer on the future of paid search for the rest of 2010?  What are your thoughts on: Microsoft and Yahoo, Mobile PPC, sponsored social content or what’s next for Google and it’s array of advertising opportunities?

Our Q1 2010 analysis of search spending among advertisers on the Clickable Platform reveals that budgets are significantly higher in Q1 versus year-ago, suggesting an economic and advertising rebound. We have seen 75% of our advertisers increase their budgets versus year-ago, while 25% maintained flat or slightly decreased budgets. Based on Q1, we forecast that 2010 full-year search budgets will increase anywhere between 10% and 30% versus 2009. Meanwhile, search budgets are diversifying in terms of network distribution. Microsoft/Bing seems to be gaining ground on Yahoo and Google. Last year, only 5% of customers were using Microsoft/Bing, while currently this percentage is at 9%.

We believe one of the big stories in 2010 will be gains in social-network advertising, particularly Facebook. Inefficiencies and behavioral friction have prevented serious experimental dollars to shift, especially among PPC marketers.  Social advertising will grow dramatically in 2010 as the major social networks surface in third-party management tools, as well as improve their own self-serve dashboards. A lot of advertisers are highly interested in seizing new opportunities to connect with customers. Mobile advertising is picking up speed, but won’t be terribly relevant for most advertisers in 2010.

You blog and write for MediaPost which I recommend people read. How do you stay current yourself? Do you have a short list of industry conferences, blogs, newsletters, Twitter handles or books that you’d recommend?

I read a mix of news aggregators and thinkers in strategy, venture capital, tech and media, including: TechMeme, John Hagel, Fred Wilson, Umaire Haque, Jeff Jarvis, All Things Digital, TechCrunch, BusinessInsider, NYTimes Bits and (of course) TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog. While I write a weekly opinion column for MediaPost, I believe it’s one of the most thorough and ubiquitous sources of hard news in the interactive advertising industry.

I’m also blessed with a quirky list of friends whom I pay close attention to on Twitter, and they reward me with serendipity, personal tips and reading recommendations. I’ve not read any good business books in years, so I’ve abandoned them for fiction, history and poetry. The market is saturated with conferences and good ones are becoming rare; the best ones tend to be grass roots, niche and local, like many Meetups. We co-founded the New York SEMPO Search Meetup, which now has a passionate following of more than 1,000 members. We also founded and run Interesting Cafe, a discussion series that features some of the greatest living innovators in tech, media, culture and science. Small, passionate gatherings like these have the most profound and positive impact.

Thanks Max!

Max Kalehoff is vice president of marketing for Clickable, a platform that makes online advertising simple, instant and profitable. He also authors AttentionMax.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Max Kalehoff on Social Media Advertising, Blogging & the Future of Paid Search | http://www.toprankblog.com

Tim Ash is a marketing machine. He writes a blog, contributes to Search Engine Watch, hosts a weekly show on WebmasterRadio.fm, is author of the book “Landing Page Optimization”, speaks at numerous conferences and is the chair of the upcoming Conversion Conference in May.

Oh, and he also runs SiteTuners, a successful landing page optimization consulting business and has launched a new tool called AttentionWizard that offers eye tracking “without the eyes”.

Tim has worked with American Express, Sony Music, American Honda, Coach, COMP USA and many other major brands.

“Landing page testing is the best accelerator of your business that you have available.”

Tim is a very smart and very nice guy who took a few rare moments of time to answer a few questions about measuring social media ROI, budgets for testing, common mistakes, tips, tools and how he stays current in such a fast paced and changing field.

Please tell us about your background, your business, and the book?

I am a recovering technologist. I almost got my PhD in computer science, but dropped out to start my first Internet consulting business. Over the years we have focused on driving traffic. But after a while it became clear that the bigger problem (and business opportunity for us) was to improve the efficiency of that traffic once it landed on the website or landing page. That’s how SiteTuners was born. We offer a range of consulting services to improve conversion, full-service landing page tests in which we guarantee performance improvement, and software such as out cutting-edge TuningEngine testing software, and the AttentionWizard visual attention prediction tool. We work with some of the biggest companies in the Internet universe, as well as scrappy smaller companies.

I wrote the Landing Page Optimization book a couple of years ago and it has been very well received. Wiley Press has asked me to write a second edition that I am co-authoring with Rich Page and Maura Ginty. It will be out early next year and will have over 150 pages of completely new content.

There’s a lot of speculation about social media and measuring ROI. Do you have examples where conversions were improved from content on a social network or other social media site as a result of a/b or multivariate testing? What is significantly different about measuring social media marketing efforts versus search marketing where the goals are conversions?

The fundamental principles are the same – you should be trying to increase the efficiency of conversion actions that have a measurable impact on your business. The only difference is that the conversion actions might not be sales, but rather “micro conversions” such as re-tweets, fan page sign-ups, or visits to blog or content pages that you are trying to promote. So if you can lower your cost-per-acquisition for any of those actions, that is good. What makes testing a bit more tricky to conduct in a social media setting is that you need steady traffic sources over an extended period of time. Unfortunately much of social media happens very quickly and results in one-time traffic spikes that go away.

The type of social media marketing executed by many SEOs does seem to behave according to the “go hot” principle where content gets voted on and attracts spikes in traffic. However, many companies are building networks on social channels and community participation often drives more steady streams of traffic according to the content publishing schedule of the brand. When it comes to measuring social ROI, are you seeing more social media marketing efforts fall in the first situation versus the second?

Many social media programs are based on “go hot” kinds of activities. The content is often “perishable” and time-sensitive. But there is also long-term “content farming” activities which continue to add to a pool of general company awareness through creation of new content pages on the website, whitepapers, blog posts, and media placements. This takes a more disciplined approach and a long-term commitment of resources, so in our experience is more rare.

This is one of those “it depends” questions but let’s give it a shot. Is it your experience that most marketers allocate budget for testing as part of overall web analytics? What percentage of that budget should go towards ongoing testing for say, an ecommerce site? What advice do you have for getting more approved?

Landing page or conversion rate optimization is not a part of Web analytics. It is a top-line revenue-growing activity. How much would you pay for a 5% increase in volume? 10%? 50%? Landing page testing is the best accelerator of your business that you have available. It should not have a fixed budget. The economically rational thing to do with any marketing activity is to keep spending money on it as long as it produces a positive ROI. Setting fixed budgets is the same kind of silly logic that some companies use when driving traffic. If you have a fixed pay-per-click budget and you could buy more profitable traffic above that threshold, you are just throwing profits away.

It’s interesting that you say that when it comes to budget allocation, since both concern measuring and improving web site performance. Of course there are many things that make sense to a consultant or service provider that don’t necessarily fit with the reality of how companies forecast their marketing budgets. Have you been successful at winning more budget with the “keep spending money on it as long as it produces a positive ROI” argument or do you only work with companies that have more flexibility with where they spend?

Technically landing page testing is part of measurement and Web analytics should always be actionable. Unfortunately often it is just looking in the rear-view mirror at things that have happened in the past. My friend Jim Sterne insists that all Web analytics should be forward looking and actionable, otherwise it is useless. But in practice most analysts spend more time on data mining and not on landing page testing. If you have a testing mindset, then the question you continually ask is “Where can I make the biggest impact on our business by tweaking a mission-critical step in our value creation chain?” If you do that, the resulting improvements should make the business a big pile of money and will create psychological momentum inside of your company for further testing and experimentation. Once an organization gets excited and buys into this continual-improvement mentality, the testing budget question often goes away.

What are some of the most common mistakes experienced search marketers make when it comes to landing pages? Top 5?

That’s easy – I can give you more than 5. If you have heard my “Seven Deadly Sins of Landing Page Design” presentation, you know that there are seven common types of mistakes on all landing pages: unclear calls-to-action, too many choices, asking for too much information early in the process, too much text, not maintaining continuity with the expectations that were set upstream of the actual landing page, visual clutter and distraction, and lack of trust and credibility.

What tools do you recommend (in addition to Google Website Optimizer and those at SiteTuners like AttentionWizard) for corporate marketers that are still fairly new to conversion rate improvement? Advanced tools?

There are a number of tools that have come out in just the last couple of years that make it much easier to diagnose and correct conversion issues. These include ClickTale.com, CrazyEgg.com, UserTesting.com, and CrossBrowserTesting.com.

How do you stay current with practices? Do you have favorite conferences, books, blogs, newsletters or other resources that you rely on?

Wow – that’s tough. There is an explosion of resources around landing page optimization. I pay attention to Bryan Eisenberg, Avinash Kaushik, Anne Holland, and try to look for interesting resources through Twitter tags like #lpo, #cro, and #measure. Conferences like Search Engine Strategies, eMetrics, and PubCon always feature solid content on the topic.

Conversion Conference is coming up soon (May 4-5 in San Jose) with some big names in the conversion and testing space including Bryan Eisenberg, Jakob Nielsen, and yourself. Who is the conference for and why should they come? What prompted you to start it?

I created the new ConversionConference.com series to give conversion improvement it’s own home. Until now, conversion has been a side topic at conferences that focused on driving traffic. The first event will be in San Jose next month, and then in Washington DC in the fall. There is also a German show in Hamburg, and other international shows on the drawing boards. The San Jose show will feature three dynamic keynotes that you mentioned. There will also be twenty six fast-paced sessions over two days covering all aspects of conversion. The presenters are all top notch. The show is held in parallel with eMetrics and will share the expo hall, lunches, networking events and the Conversion Bash party put on by WebmasterRadio.fm. The top conversion tools and services companies will also be there. If you want to turbocharge your online marketing you should be there.

By the way, your readers can use an exclusive promo-code “CCW562” for an additional $100 off of the early bird rate if they register by April 15th.

Thanks Tim. You can connect with Tim Ash on the social web at:

Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
Blog

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Landing Page Optimization Deep Dive: Interview with Tim Ash | http://www.toprankblog.com

(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 | 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 | http://www.toprankblog.com

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Spotlight on Search Interview with Matt McGowan of Incisive Media: Search Engine Watch, ClickZ, Search Engine Strategies.

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 | http://www.toprankblog.com

The Internet Marketing instructional program including videos and tools conceived by 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 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 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 a host of experts in our industry.

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

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

How did you get involved with search marketing (and the SEMPO Institute) and where does the intersection of search and education come into play for you?

Thinking about beginnings, it was almost a birth of triplets: Web, search engines, search engine marketers.

I launched a website the first year the Web went commercial. Within that first year I had to run to keep up with developments in the search industry to become successful with my sites and the ones I was developing for others.

Usually in an industry there is a time lag from its inception and the development of training and education. But, the Web is one of those unique industries that necessitated an immediate need for training and education.

There was not much training or education initially, you had to jump in the water and learn to swim or you drowned.

As you well know Lee, the need hasn’t lessened, everyone must keep up on changes in the industry to be successful whether you just having one web site, work for a company with one or many, or are employed in an Agency.

In previous careers I was involved as an educator so it was natural for me to team up in 1999 with Robin Nobles to form one of the first online training companies in SEM. After 4 years I returned to focus on my SEM consulting until the SEMPO Board of Directors hired me in August 2006 to oversee the development and launching of SEMPO Institute. Now with Katie Donovan or Business Development Manager taking on everything else I’m able to just focus on the curriculum and overseeing the professional content authors.

Can you describe how the SEMPO Institute program was built? How did it work with content authors and peer reviews? How will the content stay updated?

I’m glad you asked that Lee because this is one of the major strengths of our education and training; professionals teaching others from their own experience and expertise. With SEMPO Institute training you aren’t getting just one person’s perspective or expertise, you are getting a complete faculty.

4 prominent SEM professionals in SEMPO developed the first lesson outlines: Dana Todd, Paul Bruemmer, Fionn Downhill, and Anthony Mueller. I enlisted a handful of top SEM professionals to add to those outlines what they thought might be missing.

Then with the SEMPO Management Team we selected over 30 working SEM professionals associated with SEMPO. They wrote first drafts in their specific area of SEM expertise. These drafts were sent to a different group of peer SEMPO professionals to edit, evaluate, and make further recommendations for additional content.

We finished with a professional editor editing every lesson to ensure consistency within the lessons before I passed them on to a development person to create each lesson and publish in our robust online Learning Management System.

A final group of SEM professionals went over the finished online product to edit and make any final recommendations for changes.

As for updating, that’s been going on from the first students until now. As students, graduates, and some selected evaluators recommend areas that need attention we make updates when appropriate.

Two times a year we will perform a more formal updating of the lessons to ensure that everything is still correct based on changes made in the industry since the last updating.

Once a year we are going to return to each lesson and determine what new areas have arisen that should be added into the lessons. We will go through the same process as I outlined before when we make those changes. You don’t want to do that too often or too quickly because new things that come up in the industry have to get some “legs” before you want to start teaching people about them.

From the web site, it seems the SEMPO Institute course material is targeted towards people that want to become search marketers. Have you seen any trends in distribution of students in terms of being client side, agency side or independents? Who is the ideal candidate for this program?

The original idea for SEMPO Institute was to meet the need of our general and circle SEMPO members who could not find a big enough pool of trained search professionals for the openings they had and continue to have. So the web site is targeted towards individuals who want to get into the industry.

During this first year we have learned much. One lesson is that agencies, eTailers and corporations have a need to purchase courses for their current employees and interns who are entry level as well as the experienced search marketers. With our three courses, we do have a course that fits all these demographics and the ones you mentioned.

Fundamentals of Search Marketing is a perfect start for someone who plans to become a search marketing practitioner but has little or no experience/knowledge. We have full-time students and career changers who have taken or are taking the courses on their own in preparation to enter the job market.

Others who benefit from this course are people who are not the day-to-day practitioners but whose work is associated with search, i.e. agency sales reps, account managers, client services, and marketing managers who outsource search and search advertising.

Advanced SEO, designed for people who have some understanding of search marketing, is the course search optimization practitioners and the people who want to become practitioners would take. Agencies have purchased this course for employees to bring new employees up-to-speed quickly while establishing a consistent level of knowledge for all search optimization practitioners. Agency personnel, in-house personnel, and independents have taken the course with agencies personnel representing a slight majority.

Advanced Search Advertising is comparable to the Advanced SEO course. It is designed for the practitioners or soon-to-be practitioners in paid search. Once again, people employed at agencies, corporations, and independents have taken the course, but agency personnel have taken the vast majority of this course.

What are the goals for SEMPO Institute for 2008 in terms of content offered and students?

First, keep the current three courses, Fundamentals of Search Marketing, Advanced SEO, and Advanced Search Advertising updated and current. As for additional courses, we decided to get the first three offerings firmly established before extending our reach too far. The final decision for new course offerings has not been made as of yet.

There’s a huge demand for search marketers within pure play SEM agencies, other types of agencies expanding their services into search marketing and also companies that are building out their in-house search teams. Is SEMPO Institute designed to address the training needs of all those scenarios or just a segment?

SEMPO Institute’s courses do not focus on where you work but on the goals of search and search advertising. Our courses cover everything necessary to understand the elements of SEO or search advertising that a professional needs to work individually or within an agency or an in-house corporate team. The specific strategies of SEM agencies and in-house teams are going to be unique to them and our graduates will be equipped to understand the specific strategies and techniques used. So, yes our training allows the search professional to be successful in whichever venue best fits his/her career goals.

What mix of training experience would you say is ideal for someone brand new to search marketing? Conferences, online courses, blogs, books, forums, networking groups, associations, personal experimentation, on the job training, etc?

The first thing someone new to search marketing needs is a base of understanding. Of course the industry has many means to get indoctrinated, conferences, courses, blogs, etc. Yet, there is no one size fits all in any industry for gaining knowledge. If you survey 100 search professionals about how they got started and where they learned the answers will vary slightly.

A combination of formal and informal learning experiences is important for anyone new to search marketing. I recommend beginning with formal (SEMPO Institute specifically) because the industry is established enough that certain basic knowledge is not going to change.

Learning on one’s own from resources like those I mentioned earlier and just jumping into experimenting with a site does not help with the core knowledge but is a great means to broaden and deepen understanding.

I am a huge fan of networking as well. It helps learning as well as finding out more about the careers options available. How else can someone new to the industry find out about the differences between working at an agency or in-house unless through networking with the people who actually work in these settings? This is why SEMPO Institute established a SEMPO Institute Group on LinkedIn for our students and alumni.

The question I’m often asked is how to get the hands-on experience that hiring managers prefer. One recommendation I make is to provide search marketing to one or two non-profit organizations that the student supports. It helps a cause you believe in while establishing hands-on experience.

As a $10 billion + industry, you’d think there would be more SEM courses offered at universities. Do you think that will change and if so, how fast and in what way?

It may take another five years for such courses to become commonplace but the changes will occur. I think we will see search marketing taught as a subset of other courses first, then established as a full course, and finally multiple offerings in various aspects of search such as SEO, PPC, and mobile search.

SEMPO Institute’s Fundamentals of Search Marketing was used as a required resource in one college for a search marketing course this Fall and will be required at another this Spring for an eCommerce course. College and universities have not been the main focus in our business development but we are excited to work with them and welcome working with others.

The fact that one school, Fanshawe College in Canada, actually has a course entitled Search Marketing and used Fundamentals of Search Marketing is very exciting. I believe we will see more and more schools establishing such courses whether part of their marketing curriculum, advertising curriculum, IT curriculum, or other curriculum.

It’s a pretty big accomplishment to put together the program that’s currently offered through SEMPO Institute. So many people were involved, volunteering their time and have helped promote it. Do you have any “shout outs” you’d like to make? (sorry to put you on the spot

You are so right Lee, until this last updating of lessons where we pay authors everyone volunteered their time except for me, a development person and our editor. I’d encourage everyone to go to www.sempoinstitute.com and see all the people who should be honored but the list is too long to go over here.

To single out just a few I think I have to say that Dana Todd, Fionn Downhill, and Jeff Pruitt should receive golden crowns for following the original vision with hundreds of hours working with me to get SEMPO Institute to the place of prominence we now have as one of the foremost SEM distance learning educational institutions.

I guess the second group to get a big thanks is the 2006 and 2007 SEMPO Board of Directors you’ll find at www.sempo.org. These forward thinking leaders authorized a significant investment of capital to facilitate training the next generation of SEM professionals.

There is one final group to thank. SEMPO has 19 committees who lead our professional organization. One of the committee’s is the SEMPO Institute Committee co-chaired by Fionn Downhill and Jon Schepke. There are 16 members in this Committee who are active in decision making on the Courses and their promotion. Your readers can see a list of those SEMPO Committees and the Members of our Institute Committee at www.sempo.org.

What are some of the top online resources for search marketing would you recommend?

A Well, let’s start with the search engines themselves. They have excellent and important information, even Microsoft. Our lessons refer directly to them repeatedly because we teach best practices acceptable to search engines. Just as importantly, the way they work must be integrated into our broader training in SEM because the search engines are the foundation of the industry.

Next let me recommend that your readers go to www.sempo.org for some important resources we supply in our lessons that the SEMPO Education Committee added to the SEMPO site.

First, there is an excellent Glossary from our Lessons and links to other Glossaries that are important.

Second, if you follow Resources and Links you’ll find many of the resources we refer to in our SEMPO Institute Lessons; Blogs (like your excellent toprankblog.com blog), Discussion Forums, Newsletters, Tools and Software. This great resource area spins your head around as you realize how much is out there. One would have to read through much more if you didn’t take a set of courses like ours to orient yourself and be prepared for using these resources effectively.

Thanks Terry!Â

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Interview With Terry Plank SEMPO Institute | http://www.toprankblog.com

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

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

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. | David Berkowitz & Gord Hotchkiss – Search Insider Summit Utah | http://www.toprankblog.com

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

Click here to view the embedded video.

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

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2007. | Pubcon Video: Melanie Mitchell AOL | http://www.toprankblog.com

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

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2007. | Pubcon Video: Tanya Vaughan Interview | http://www.toprankblog.com

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

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2007. | Pubcon Video: Neil Patel Interview | http://www.toprankblog.com