Online Marketing Blog

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

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

I’m taking it light this evening and we will be heading over to the Las Vegas Convention center early am.¬† I’ll be posting some Pubcon conference coverage, some photos and a few videos as the week progresses.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For this Pubcon I’ll be bringing Karen and Jolina (the red thing is part of our PR firm’s logo), two of our PR/SEO Project Mangers. It will be their first search marketing related conference so it should be a great event for them. I plan on doing at least 10 interviews like the one above with Daron at Pubcon, so watch out for me and my tiny camera.

This Friday starts an exciting journey for the next 10 days or so. I will be leaving for San Francisco on Friday to the DMA06 conference in San Francisco until the 18th. I was just in San Francisco a few weeks ago for a SEO video shoot with AllBusiness.com.

On Saturday I’ll be doing one of the four modules for the DMA’s new Search Engine Marketing certification program. Then on Monday I’m doing a “Blogs, RSS and Podcasting” panel with Amanda Watlington and Stephan Spencer. My presentation will be about using blogs for public relations. On Tuesday I’ll be doing a search marketing lab where a panel reviews web sites from the auduience and that evening I’ll be participating on a panel on using RSS for marketing.

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

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

Lots of great sessions on Wednesday here at WebmasterWorld Boston Pubcon. Unfortunatley, I was only able to attend two of them (one as a speaker) due to a teleconference I did with Bulldog Reporter.

I thought the Public Relations panel in the morning went well. Robin, Lawrence and David all made strong presentations. What I liked best about the session and this is corroborated by feedback I received from attendees, was the diversity of perspectives offered.

Lawrence Coburn offered a small company’s inside perspective of what he called “dumb luck PR” and how to take advantage of that and snowball it. Very cool story actually. Television personality and CNN maven Robin Liss shared her perspective on getting TV coverage. David McInnis gave a rundown on press release optimization and some of the new features available at PRWeb. My presentation covered the notion of applying search engine optimization principles to blog and press release optimization.

About a month ago, Grant Crowell of Grantastic Designs posted an article at Search Engine Watch on SEO for podcasts, which pointed out how straightforward it would be.

Stephan Spencer also wrote up an informative list of Podcast SEO tips on his blog.

I would also like to point out a few things regarding how podcasts can support your online marketing efforts, particularly in conjuction with online PR.

The first is the very cool Podcast recording, production and hosting service offered by PRWeb Podcast. More details in this press release.

As an example, TopRank recently did a PRWeb Podcast in conjunction with Blogs, SEO and online PR press release recently for the upcoming WebmasterWorld Pubcon conference in Boston. David McInnis, the CEO and founder of PRWeb and I are speaking on the same panel about Public Relations.

I received an email the other day from a site called Search Engine Feeds claiming to be running a Favorite Search Engine Feeds vote for the next month or so. You can nominate your SEO or search engine related blog. If you’re in the mood, feel free to vote for “Top Rank Blog” near the bottom.

Posting has been REAL light lately because we are running at full speed here at TopRank. We’ve been very fortunate to sign on some fantastic projects in the past few months. The number of blog consulting and blog marketing projects has increased tremendously and I think it’s an indication from the business community that blogs are becoming more accepted as marketing tools and not just virtual podiums for pontification.

Spotlight on Search Interview with Brett Tabke of WebmasterWorld.

Recently I had the opportunity get the scoop from WebmasterWorld and Pubcon Search Engine Marketing conference owner, Brett Tabke. In this interview, Brett gives an interesting perspective on RSS, insight into how web services can be the next “golden goose” of revenue and the good news that Pubcon is kicking things up a notch in terms of advanced content.

The upcoming Pubcon in Boston has some really impressive speakers lined up. Personally, I think it’s smart of you not to have a search engine specific keynote speaker; there are only so many of those. What made you decide to pick Malcolm Gladwell as a keynote?