Lee Odden

Aaron Wall of Search Marketing info has posted a good interview with long time SEO DaveN
who publishes a very interesting SEO blog. Dave’s tactics are bit more risky than most.

Topics range from disposable domain names (you don’t want to know) to what will work for most webmasters to the future of (aggressive) SEO: “SEO will become much darker as the search engines get cleverer, SEO‚Äôs will have to adopt and adapt new techniques.”

There are some good tips regarding linking, importance of algorithms and the right time to be aggressive – worth a read.

In a partnership between the Web Analytics Association (WAA) and the University of British Columbia the first comprehensive university-level web analytics program is under development. The program is called the Web Analytics Award of Achievement and will be delivered 100% online.

Learning Units will be divided between Opinions and Case studies. Course content will cover three primary areas:

1. Web Site Optimization – Usability, Search Engine Optimization, Navigation, Checkout Funnels, Visitor Paths
2. Measuring / Managing Marketing Campaigns – Creative Testing, Pay-Per-Click, E-mail Marketing, Banners / other Display ad units, Rich Media
3. Analytical Business Culture – “People issues” including organizational buy-in for analytics usage and data-driven decision making, choosing and deploying the right solutions to meet business needs, staffing and training the organization properly, and communicating information to diverse constituents.

A NY Times article today covers how retailers are using blogs to give “their stores more personality and giving customers a reason to return even when they’re not in the mood to buy.” Full article

In the past 6 months we’ve noticed a significant increase in interest from online retailers that want to use blogs for a variety of purposes ranging from brand building to direct sales via RSS feeds. As a communications channel, blog and RSS offer excellent options for retailers to augment their current marketing initiatives.

It’s still early in the game though, and many retailers will be looking to early adopters for evidence of results.

Update: Ian Turner has been found in Atlanta. He apparently had some issues with his passport. Glad to hear he’s safe. LOTS of support on this from the SEO/SEM community – well done.

Ian Turner, a SEO from the UK has gone missing after attending the WMW conference in New Orleans. If you’ve seen him, please find authority contact info here. More facts here.

I’m happy to report the “Mayan Riviera” is an excellent place to spend a week away from the search marketing business. Despite a little difficulty getting out of Mexico and lost luggage, it was an excellent trip with a minimum of Internet usage and lots of relaxation.

Thank you to Thomas who has, as always, done an excellent job filling in with timely and informative blog posts regarding search engine marketing and blogs. Be sure to check out his newest blog project, SEO Blog Marketing.

Fresh content is a distinct advantage for your search engine placement and for your site visitors. Repeat traffic from people and search engine spiders will increase proportionate to how fresh your content is. Producing fresh content takes time and resources. Tools like RSS Mix can help by automating a part of your content development.

RSS Mix allows you to combine any number of RSS feeds into one unique new feed. You can then use a parser to display a mix of stories from various sources on your website.

Tags: SEO, RSS

Tim Mayer has announced on the Yahoo Search Blog that there will be a major update to it’s index this evening.

“We will be making changes to the index tonight so you should be seeing more of your pages in the index as well as some fluctuations in the rankings of results from previous searches”

Per a request from Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose last summer, Yahoo has started issuing “weather reports” of updates to its search engine.

Alas, I am unable to attend the two conferences I’ve been looking forward to for months: WebmasterWorld Search Conference in New Orleans starting today and Chris Pirillo’s sold out Gnomedex June 23-25 in Seattle. I had to go and turn 40 this week and my dear wife is taking me to some exotic locale (I don’t know where yet, it’s a surprise) for a week.

Posting from me will be light, but Thomas will be posting daily on search engine marketing news and insights.

Be sure to watch for RustyBrick’s coverage each day of the New Orleans WebmasterWorld conference.

Is Google launching a payment management service like PayPal? The Wall Street Journal Online edition has reported so. See this Reuters story, “Google plans pay service to rival PayPal-WSJ”

A link to the free version of the WSJ article (thanks Carl)

From John Battelle’s SearchBlog:
“Google Inc. this year plans to offer an electronic-payment service that could help the Internet-search company diversify its revenue and may heighten competition with eBay Inc.’s PayPal unit, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Search Engine Watch ala Gary Price:
“I did a bit of research (love that deep web (-:) after reading the article and discovered that two months ago Google filed the paperwork with the California Secretary of State and formed the Google Payment Corporation.“

I just noticed an interview I did with a Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter on Yahoo 360 was published today, “Yahoo spreads its net on the Web “. At best I thought I’d get one little quote. He used at least three plus a mention of my SEO firm, TopRank Online Marketing. I guess everyone gets lucky once in a while.

The article touches on what Yahoo is doing with Yahoo 360 and also Microsoft’s Wallop. Here’s a post on Online Marketing Blog/2005/06/whats-up-with-microsoft-wallop.html”>Microsoft Wallop from earlier this month.

Incidentally, if you are interested in a Yahoo 360 or Wallop invite, post a comment.

John Battelle’s FM Publishing has announced they’ve received a round of angel investor financing from some pretty big names. Congratulations!

“FM Publishing will employ a pretty simple three-pronged technology platform consisting of a console/dashboard for bloggers, another for marketers, and a database of inventory and rules which ties the two together (we’ll also have an ad serving platform, of course).”

Battelle’s move into RSS advertising is particularly exciting in light of a recent Forrester Survey: “64% of respondents to Forrester’s survey said they are interested in advertising on blogs, 57% through RSS”

I hope the implementation is careful as one of the joys of reading RSS feeds compared to email is the lack of blatant advertising.

MIT is running a blog survey

“Our goal is to help understand the way that weblogs are affecting the way we communicate with each other. Specifically we are interested in issues of demographics, communication behaviors, experience with weblogs and other technology, and the meaning of various types of social links within the blogosphere.” more info

This is an interesting survey with questions regarding media interation and sources of influence. It also brings up some interesting ideas about how people connect.

Request an invite to take the survey