Online Marketing Blog

In the film Hollywoodland, Adrien Brody plays a private eye tasked with determining whether TV star George Reeves, famous for playing Superman, did indeed commit suicide or, as his mother suspects was murdered. Brody’s character remarks that if the biggest headlines are insisting that Reeves’ case is indeed closed, the only way to reopen it is to sway public opinion to the mother’s side by manufacturing their own headlines, simply too large to ignore.

I was reminded of this scene, and how far we’ve come in a relatively short amount of time, while reviewing Andy Beal & Dr. Judy Strauss’ excellent new book “Radically Transparent: Monitoring & Managing Reputations Online.”

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If someone has a better photo, please link in the comments

On day three, the last day of sessions at WebmasterWorld Pubcon here in Vegas, I participated on a panel called, “Search and Blogging Reporters Forum” with Rand Fishkin and Andy Beal.

Moderation duties handled by Mike McDonald. Basically, it was a round table-style discussion about blogging in the SEO industry as well as blogging as a marketing tool. There were some good points about using blogs as a public relations tool as well as some debate about hosting team blogs separately or all under the company domain name.

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Spotlight on Search: Interview with Andy Beal

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

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

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Andy Beal lets the cat out of the bag with “Five Secret Strategies to Add $1 Million in Revenue to your Interactive Marketing Agency in 2007″. What the hell is he doing giving such advice away for free??

Mike McDonald of WebProNews interviews Rebecca Lieb from ClickZ and new Editor in Chief of Search Engine Watch.

Sean X. Cummings from Ask.com calls bull$#@! on 3 marketing strategies over at iMedia Connection. Check out the “Billy Badass” sunglasses on Sean!

Chris Winfield to write for SEO Buzz Box - Aaron scores!!!

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This morning Andy Beal announced the winner of the SEM Scholarship contest he’s been running the past month:¬† Ben Wills for “The Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing“.

As one of the judges for the scholarship, you might imagine that an article about social media would attract my attention and it did.¬† Ben walks away a $6,000 scholarship prize, which in reality, will be worth far more because of the additional knowledge he’ll gain. One on one consulting with Andy Beal alone, is probably worth the six grand.
Ben is not the only winner in this scholarship promotion, Andy Beal and Marketing Pilgrim walk away with a ton of new inbound links, traffic, subscrbers and industry visibility.  Not that Andy needs any more of that.

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It only took 5 years, but Andy Beal has finally come over to the world of WordPress for his blog, MarketingPilgrim. Previously, Andy ran SearchEngineLowdown.com on Google’s Blogger platform, building it up to one of the top SEO blogs on the Internet. Then after going out on his own, started MarketingPilgrim.com using the same tools.

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Andy Beal comes over to the dark side and launches a new blog design using WordPress.

Rae posts an excellent interview with Brian Prince of BOTW.org.

Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro does it again with a great article on search marketing reaching critical mass in a follow-up to his previous “Cross the Chasm” article.

Aaron Wall posts “Trusted vs Untrusted Links” and follows up with another “vs” post, “Tactical SEO vs Strategic SEO“, which is excellent, but has more to do with SEO for sites/blogs whose business model is ad revenue than advice most business web sites can take advantage of. Great advice all the same though.

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Are you the next big thing in search engine marketing? Then head over to Marketing Pilgrim for Andy Beal’s new Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest.

Andy asked me if I would be interested in judging articles submitted and of course I said yes! Other judges include: Rand Fishkin, Mike Grehan, Jennifer Grappon & Gradiva Couzin, Kim Krause Berg, Robin Nobles, Barry Schwartz, Aaron Wall and David Warmuz. You can read the press release, or check out the details below:

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Andy Beal has been around the block and then some when it comes to building SEO-SEM firms. Today he posted his “Top 10 Business Mistakes Search Marketing Firms Make“. Here are Andy’s tips 1-10 and I’ve thrown in my own thoughts and observations after each.

1. Charging a “Set-up” Fee.
We’ve pretty much moved away from this but not 100% as some small projects warrant it. It does help companies spread costs out, but it also has to be managed properly since so much work occurs during the first 60-90 days of a campaign.

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Here are a few more videos from Search Engine Strategies San Jose. Matt Bailey - SiteLogic, Andy Beal - Marketing Pilgrim and a short clip from Danny Sullivan’s talk with Google CEO Eric Schmidt. You can listen to the full discussion over at WebmasterRadio.FM.

Matt Bailey in between sessions talks about wookiepedia. I had no idea Matt was a Star Wars fan.

Andy Beal before the Ask.com blogger dinner talks about the “lunatic fringe” of search marketing.

And here’s a short clip of Danny Sullivan and Google CEO Eric Schmidt answering a question from the audience about whether Google will start allowing users to monetize the use of their own clickstream data.

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So I check my email today and what do I see?

An email from Andy Beal looking at me.

I open the email and read what’s inside.

Andy Beal is changing his tide! (buzz off, it rhymes)

Where will he go, what will he say, in his Texas-drawl mixed with a lingering British accent, sort of way?

The answer young pilgrim fan, will be found in San Jose.

We wish him good luck and more fortune than he’s had. (sorry FI, no link for you!)

Starting a SEO company can’t always be bad.

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Andy Beal’s company Fortune Interactive has upgraded their SEMLogic system for identifying search engine optimization opportunities ala SWOT that allow a comparison of client sites to competing sites as well as enhanced interactive display options.

Here’s a demo video of the SEMLogic virtual reality module with Mike Marshall narrating and you’ll see where I get the “sci fi” reference.

I beleive Fortunue Interactive will be exhibiting at the upcoming Chicago ad:tech if you want to see this system in person or you can probably get a demo via the SEMLogic page.

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