Archives for January 2008

Bridging the Gap: Old and New SEO @ SMX West

As part of our media sponsorship of the SMX series of conferences, I’ve been picked as the TopRank blogger to visit the Bay Area next month for SMX West – Feb 26-28, 2008 in Santa Clara, CA.

Looking at the agenda for the 3 day conference, one can tell that there are big shifts taking place in the search industry, specifically the transition from ‘old SEO’ (i.e. the optimize and wait approach) to ‘new SEO’ (i.e. optimize, then promote promote promote approach). Validating this transition, many session titles include topics such as ‘Search 3.0’, ‘Search 4.0’ and the ‘Blended Search Revolution’.

Co-chaired by industry legends Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman, SMX West will be full of SEO industry leaders providing attendees with ideas about how to bridge the gap between the banks of the old and the opportunities of the new.

Bridging the Gap: Old and New SEO @ SMX West

Social Media Marketing Tips

Not too long ago I queried a number of online marketing and public relations peers ranging from Aaron Wall, Matt McGee and Neil Patel to Todd Defren, Triss Hussey and Peter Himler about sharing a few of their social media marketing tips. Out of that informal survey in combination with community specific solicitations came posts about marketing with MyBlogLog and Twitter.

However, there are many more social media communities and channels besides MBL and Twitter that I received tips on and from very reputable sources which you’ll find below. Enjoy!

Todd Defren from SHIFT Communications shared two of his own posts from a series on social media: Tips on using Twitter for finding and developing relationships and another post on using Del.icio.us for PR “edgework” or direct interactions with consumers.

Social Media Marketing Tips

The Fox, Social Whirl, Cutts Smackdown, UGV, B2B and PRSA Webinar

Sometimes a Monday blog post deserves a good collection of links:

The Fox on viral link building and listening to your audience
Smackdown on Matt Cutts re: spanking SEO blogs
Jeff Jarvis @TheGuardian and the social whirl driving the development of search
eMarketer says B2B’s are buzzing over Marketing 2.0
Vox on Video: Measuring engagement of user generated video
SEO Lowdown on the LED: “You’re doing the SEM industry a dis-service by characterizing the level or complexity of SEO work according to the size of a company.”
Grehan Clickz’s the SEO and Public Relations connection. Mike, what took you so long? 🙂
Speaking of PR and Search, be sure to check out Himler, Bradfield, Miele and Odden @PRSA Webinar on PR and Social Media Feb 26

The Fox, Social Whirl, Cutts Smackdown, UGV, B2B and PRSA Webinar

Have it Your Way at SMX West

One of the (if not THE) fastest growing conferences over the past year has been Search Marketing Expo. A real world compliment to the successful Search Engine Land blog, the Sphinn community and Search Marketing Now webinars, the SMX shows have brought both a familiar (Danny and crew) and unique flavor to the search marketing conference circuit.

SMX West is coming up fast on February 26-28, 2008 in Santa Clara, CA and offers:

50 different sessions
13 different tracks
3 different ways to attend (All Access, Networking or Exhibits-Only)
1 big satisfaction guarantee. If you register now, you’ll save $200.

There appears to be something for everyone with the 3 different show attendance options and a variety of topical and level of expertise tracks ranging from SEO Bootcamp to SEO 3.0 and 4.0.

Have it Your Way at SMX West

20 Analytics Tools For Blogs

There are a lot of data points that can be meaningful for tracking blog effectiveness. That is, tracking what happens when visitors arrive at and engage with your blog content. It really comes down to the purpose of your blog. Metrics for a blog that’s focused on making a web site more search engine friendly by adding crawlable content and attracting links is quite different than a blog that’s meant to build thought leadership or brand credibility.

Many of the metrics tools used for blogs are also used for basic web site analytics. That makes sense because many blog initiatives do not have the same kind of budget as web site marketing programs do. Therefore, the analytics employed tend to be low(er) or no cost.

20 Analytics Tools For Blogs

SEMMYS – What Were the Best Social and Viral Marketing Blog Posts of 2007?

Matt McGee recently reached out to a number of industry bloggers to be involved with a blog content award he’s calling “The SEMMYs“. Even though the SEJ SEM Blog Awards just happened, I thought I could at least be a judge – Matt being a good guy and all. If you read Small Business SEM, you’ll know that Matt picks the best blog posts of the week or so on a regular basis. He’s taken all of those posts from 2007 and categorized them to be voted on. This includes a few good posts from OMB like”Evaluating Client Search Marketing Readiness” in the SEO category.

SEMMYS – What Were the Best Social and Viral Marketing Blog Posts of 2007?

New Media and Blogging for Influence with Journalists

In a recent study by Omnicom Group’s Brodeur and Marketwire about how journalists use blogs, it was found that blogs are a regular source for journalists for improving the speed of reporting news as well as guiding tone, but not for improving quality:

Over three quarters of reporters see blogs as helpful in giving them story ideas, story angles and insight into the tone of an issue
Nearly 70 percent of all reporters check a blog list on a regular basis
One in four reporters (27.7%) have their own blogs
About one in five (16.3%) have their own social networking page
Almost half of reporters (47.5%) say they are “lurkers”
Over half said that blogs were having a significant impact on the “tone” (61.8%) and “editorial direction” (51.1%) of news reporting

New Media and Blogging for Influence with Journalists

Optimize your blog by updating or removing plugins.

Plugins Blog are just like any computer in the fact that they are only as good, and secure, as the software on them. Keeping your blog software up to date is important, but so is keeping your plugins and third party code updated.

Updating your blog’s plugins can give your blog a few advantages:

Additional features if the plugin is a major update.
Security fixes.
Optimized plugin code that runs faster and more efficient.
Better compatibility with the blog software or other plugins.
Better compatibility with third party sites if it’s part of another service.

Optimize your blog by updating or removing plugins.

Fun Friday Online Marketing Links

It’s Friday and the end of the Holiday bump that seems to make things move slowly. There’s lots to look forward to in 2008 and while getting an early start today checking rmail, feeds, Twitter, Facebook, etc the following links stood out:

Success with social media is very much centered on building profiles and one online marketing channel where profiles have been important long before social media became the latest online marketing poster child is forums. Danielle Winfield brings a nicely illustrated post on this topic, Ins ands Outs of Forum Marketing.

Do you want a peek at some of the tools one of the smartest SEO / social media marketers uses? Then check out this very nice list of Firefox Extensions from Michael Gray.

Fun Friday Online Marketing Links