Online Marketing Blog

Ah yes, we skipped a weekly update of our SEO blog review for the BIGLIST. Conferences in New York will do that to you. This week we have the usual social media trend as well as SEO with one re-inclusion.

• Social Media Mom – Social media consultant Kristen Munson sports some nifty red pumps on her avatar and in between doing mom things also blogs about, you guessed it, social media!

• Cruces – Michael Myers, COO of FreshCurrent, blogs smart about social media and marketing online.

• Seocracy – Take a step over to the dark side (toursists only please) for SEO advice from Rob: A self described “craven, obnoxious, immoral individual” on all manner of news, scripts, downloads, theory and tactics.

This week we did a bit of house cleaning and removed 37 blogs from the BIGLIST of SEO blogs – some of them from well known SEOs. One of the quality measures we use for inclusion on the BIGLIST is frequency of posting. If a blog gets stale, we say bye bye for now. Get your BIGLIST updates via Twitter.

This week’s update includes several SEO blogs new to our list and a few re-inclusions. Enjoy!

• John W. Ellis SEM Blog – John writes mostly about PPC, analytics, SEO and social media marketing with a bit of sports, travel and Nashville sneaking in from time to time.

• SEM Geek – Besides contributing at SMG, Greg Meyers writes an awful lot about paid search marketing including specific PPC platforms, analytics and overall marketing on the internet.

For the first or maybe the second time ever, we skipped a BIGLIST update last Friday.  Things got a little crazy with SES London and other business tasks. But no worry, we have a great lineup of SEO blogs for you this week:

• SEO Copywriting – Let’s celebrate the launch of SEO and wordsmith guru Heather Lloyd-Martin’s snappy new blog about the magic of writing for users and search engines.

• Jon Myers Search Blog – Jon is the head of search and Associate Director at MediaVest in the UK writing about his views of the search engine marketing world.

• Own Page One SEV Blog  – Ann Arbor, Michigan based search marketing agency Pure Visibility runs the gamut of search marketing topics on this company blog ranging from PPC to local to SEO and even has a category just for Twitter.

This week’s BIGLIST update of SEO and social media blogs is pretty close to being the best batch of new blogs I’ve seen since we started publishing the list a year ago. What a great collection of resources! It really makes our industry better by having more and more people blogging their ideas, insights and even letting a few “secrets” slip out now and again.  Check it out:

Trail of the Fire Horse – Another excellent Canada based search and social media marketing blog comes this time from the very smart/savvy Dave Harry aka “the Gypsy”.

Search Enginuity – Clay Fisher is the Global Director of Search Marketing at Monster.com and he writes about search marketing industry news as well as paid search and analytics on a very cleverly named blog.

It’s pretty hard to compete with news like Microsoft offering to buy Yahoo for $44 billion or Amazon to buy Audible for $300 million, but there’s plenty to read on those topics and more on this week’s BIGLIST SEO blogs update.

• SEO Design Solutions Blog – You don’t see too many practical tips blogs these days and that’s why it’s nice to see Jeffrey Smith blogging all manner of tips on SEO from WordPress optimization to organic vs PPC.

• Smackdown! – Michael VanDeMar is full of piss and vinegar especially when it comes to Matt Cutts. What this blog lacks in subscriber numbers it makes up for in good humor.

• Learning SEO Basics – SEO student and fan of Kalena Jordan’s Search Engine College, Kimberly Bock (aka spostareduro) writes about all the basics of search engine optimization.

So many blogs and so little time! This week’s BIGLIST update brings you a mix of blogs covering analytics, social media, entrepreneurship, emerging media and a nice SEO aggregator.

• Leveraging Ideas - Sam Huleatt, a Brooklyn-based Internet entrepreneur & strategy guru writes about the social media space, strategies and entreprenuership.
• Analytics Talk – Justin Cutroni of EpikOne writes about the array of Google products, including analytics, he works with.
• Original Signal Transmitting SEO – Aggregation of the 15 most popular SEO blogs and web sites ranging from Search Engine Watch to Search Engine Land and TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog.
• Cam Balzer Web-Cite – Google/DoubleClick/Performics’ VP of Emerging Media writes about 2.0 topics, search and marketing along with a few ranted items.

Can you believe it’s Friday already?  Like clockwork, TopRank brings dear readers of Online Marketing Blog yet another nice roundup of search marketing blogs we lovingly like to call the BIGLIST.  Fire up your favorite RSS reader and start clicking.

• Metamend SEO Blog – Without question, one of the most prolific and talented writers in the SEO space is Jim Hedger who also consults with the Metamend agency in Vancouver.
• johnmu.com – Software engineer Johannes Mueller works with Google Webmaster Tools as a Webmaster Trends Analyst in Switzerland in addition to being exceptionally helpful on the Cre8asite forums and Google Groups. He writes a variety of deep insights into SEO, search engines and the technical side of search marketing.

After reading Neil’s post about Pronet Advertising, Search Engine Land and Online Marketing Blog making Technorati’s Popular 100 list, I thought I’d search T’rati a bit more and noticed an Authority score starting to appear next to the blogs in the search results. I know a widget was released that blogs could use to show their Technorati score earlier last month I believe, but this is the first I’ve seen it on the Technorati site.

Here’s a screenshot:

Since I’m one to have fun with lists, I thought I’d take the Search Marketing Blogs by Feedburner RSS Subscribers list and see what their Technorati scores were. I am assuming “authority” is an indication of inbound links withing a certain amount of time. The higher the number, the more authority.

Yesterday one of our account managers emailed me about a very nice hit (mention in an article) for a media relations client (way to go Bill!) in a prominent technology publication. This pub has an online version and the topic was pretty provocative.

I did a quick search on Google blog search and noticed a significant number of blogs buzzing about this topic. It would be a great opportunity for the client to participate in those threads of dialogue and present their unique perspective. Doing so with a blog post to link back to offering more details would be a great way to connect with a community that cares deeply about the topic. Except one thing. The client doesn’t have a blog.

Is blog optimization part of search marketing? Absolutely! Blogs are web site content management systems with additional functionality such as comments, trackbacks and RSS. Blogs are really no different than web sites.

If you can optimize a document and that document gets indexed, categorized and ranked by a search engine, it’s part of search marketing in my book. As such, marketers should be aware of how these kinds of channels can be used within the overall online marketing mix. Blogs are one of many platforms that benefit from optimization.

Dave Sifry has released his quarterly State of the Blogosphere report which informs us that Technorati is now tracking 57 million blogs.  With this report comes some fun blogging stats:

• 100,000 blogs created daily (Q3)
• 55% of all blogs are active
• Over 70% of pings are from known spam sources
• English and Japanese remain the two most popular languages
• Blogging Elite – 500 or more blogs linking in the last 6 months

According to the report Technorati continues to spend quite a bit of time fighting spam blogs, or splogs.
FYI: Online Marketing Blog is ranked 1,179 out of 57,000,000 blogs.

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Later today I’ll be presenting here at DMA-06 on a panel called, Blogs, RSS and Podcasting with Amanda Watlington from Searching for Profit and Stephan Spencer from Netconcepts. Basically, my presentation will cover how blogs can be used as public relations tools in the context of “Push and Pull PR”. The presentation is broken up into:

• Opportunity
• Push and Pull PR
• Blog Optimization & PR
• Blogger Relations
• Case Study

The “opportunity” section explains how many journalists are ignoring the noise of getting pitched by so many PR firms and company PR staff. Whether it’s a pitch by phone or email, many members of the media go online (98%) to find news sources (76%), story ideas (92%), experts and to research press releases (73%). The percentages come from a study done by Middleburg/Ross.