B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®

B2B Marketing views, news and interviews.

Interview with Andrew Goodman of Traffick and Page Zero Media

Spotlight on Search: Interview With Andrew Goodman

Andrew Goodman is known as the guy who “wrote the book” on Google AdWords or at least that’s one of the ways I like to think of him. He’s authored/edited Traffick.com since long before blogs became popular, speaks at numerous industry conferences and also has a successful SEM agency, Page Zero Media. In this interview, Andrew explains how he tossed in the towel on his PhD to become, gasp, an internet marketer!

Andrew, we’ve been bumping into each other at conferences for a while now and Ed Kohler is nowhere to be seen. Maybe if he reads this he’ll hit SES New York?

I hope so. I’ve been missing Ed!

Please tell us about your background. How did you get involved with search engine marketing?


Interview with Andrew Goodman of Traffick and Page Zero Media

SES Chicago and Week Wrap Up

It’s been a pretty amazing week. Chicago SES Sunday through Wed and Thursday my 300C was rear ended by an Isuzu Trooper – ugh. Today I’m still catching up. We’re getting more inquiries for new business now than every before. That’s the idea, right?

My situation this week is nothing compared to what Barry had to go through to get home. Here’s Barry’s wrap up of all the posts he, Ben and Chris covered this week. It’s amazing what those guys can get done.

I heard from several people that I missed a great party Wed night at SES in Chicago that was sponsored by WebmasterRadio.fm, Bruce Clay, TrueLocal and NY Times held at Buddy Guy’s Legend Jazz Club in Chicago. Ward Tongen has a photo on his moblog. None of the search engines or other vendors were planning an overall party for the conference, so Brandy from WebmasterRadio.fm set it up on the fly – that’s amazing.


SES Chicago and Week Wrap Up

DMA Beefs up Membership with Andrew Wetzler

Since I’m on the DMA Search Engine Marketing Council, I thought I’d post this release that just went out.   The Search Engine Marketing Council (SEMC) of the DMA was previously known as the Association of Interactive Marketing (AIM). Lots of acronyms, but also lots of good work.

MOREVISIBILITY PRESIDENT ANDREW WETZLER APPOINTED TO MEMBERSHIP CHAIR, DMA SEMC COUNCIL

New York, NY, December 7, 2005 – The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) announced today it has appointed Andrew Wetzler, president and co-founder of MoreVisibility, membership chair of its Search Engine Marketing Council (SEMC).


DMA Beefs up Membership with Andrew Wetzler

SES Chicago Day 2 Wrap Up

This is the first SES conference I’ve been to where there were no large scale events sponsored by any of the major search engines. There are smaller, invite-only gatherings, but they only involve a small number of attendees. 

I opted to check out some of the Chicago steak houses recommended to me by Jolina, one our Public Relations rockstars, who is from the area.

On Sunday, Andy from WebCertain and I first checked out Harry Caray’s.  This place is definitely a Chicago tradition in sports bars. Unfortunatley, their interpretation of what "medium" means was very different than what Andy and I had in mind. Service was excellent though.


SES Chicago Day 2 Wrap Up

SES Chicago Keynote with Danny Sullivan

Keynote Day 2 of Search Engine Strategies with Danny Sullivan

Danny says keynotes should be inspiring.

How are we (search marketers) viewed?  Shows photo of guy wearing spam shirt and drinking a beer.

Shows quotes from various sources characterizing SEOs as:  Worthless, shady, criminals, cockroaches

Who to blame?  

Blach Hats:
Blog spamming, keyword stuffing, content thieves, cloaking

But consider some contradictions:

  • Some news sources are allowed to cloak
  • Large respected pubs selling links
  • Web site of respected blog software maker hosting spam pages

White Hats:
Algorithm ingnorant, simple tips overselling, industry best practices

Consider:  

  • Simple tips aren’t simple to people who don’t know
  • Working with designers and others to do content SEO is a skill

SES Chicago Keynote with Danny Sullivan

Day 1 Chicago SES

I arrived in Chicago last night and had dinner at Harry Carey’s with Andy from WebCertain. We perused the conference Hilton pub afterwards and chatted it up with the attending SEO/SEM conference revelers. After short chats with Bruce Clay and David Warmuz of Trellian, it was off to bed.

Today should be a busy one and I plan on attending the following sessions:

Advanced Track – Searcher Behavior Research Update

Advertising Track – Earning From Search & Contextual Ads

Vertical Track – Global Search Landscape

Advanced Track – Advanced Search Term Research Tools

SEMPO is having a party after and will be announcing preliminary results of their annual survey. I am very much looking forward to that report. 


Day 1 Chicago SES

TopRank Sends 2 Speakers to SES Chicago

Next week Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Strategies conference comes to Chicago Dec 5-8. A few notes about this conference from today’s Search Engine Update newsletter:

  • Record advance registrations – all your colleagues, clients and competitors will be
    there
  • More sponsors/exhibitors than any prior Chicago event
  • Best conference program ever for Chicago

TopRank Online Marketing will have two speakers at this event: SEO Manager David Temple and myself.

David will present on the Global Search Landscape day 1 along with Nacho Hernandez, Lucas Morea and my good friend Andy Atkins-Kruger who is the Managing Director at UK based SEO/SEM firm, Web Certain and President of the SMA-UK.

I will be on a panel covering News Search SEO on day 2 with Greg Jarboe, Nan Dawkins and Sally Falkow presenting. I will also be blogging several of the sessions day 1, 2 and 3.


TopRank Sends 2 Speakers to SES Chicago

Pubcon X Wrap Up

The conference portion of Pubcon ended yesterday. Exhibitors pulled down their booths promptly at about 5pm. It would be great if there was more time in between sessions to visit the exhibit hall though. Overall, it was a great show and opportunity to connect with many of the leaders in search marketing.

Yahoo drew a lot of attention to the Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) program and seems very committed to building a great program for publishers and advertisers.

Yahoo also announced the availability for blog publishers that are participating in the beta YPN program to place ads in their RSS feeds. That’s something that I will be testing with this blog very soon. Feedback is welcome.


Pubcon X Wrap Up

Google Base

The launch of Google Base today is being covered to death today.

Details from Google Blog:

“Today we’re excited to announce Google Base, an extension of our existing content collection efforts like web crawl, Google Sitemaps, Google Print and Google Video. Google Base enables content owners to easily make their information searchable online. Anyone, from large companies to website owners and individuals, can use it to submit their content in the form of data items. We’ll host the items and make them searchable for free. ”

This afternoon here at Pubcon in Las Vegas, Google has a meeting about an unannounced topic. Perhaps it’s about Google Base?


Google Base

Pubcon X Keynote: Robert X. Cringley

The first session at Pubcon 10 started out with a keynote presentation from Robert Cringley.

Robert Cringley has been on the internet since 1977. He was a war correspondent in ’77 in Beiruit and had enough and went back to CA and started working for Steve Jobs. Apple offered him stock but he regretably, took cash. Cringley taught at Stanford University. Came back to Apple for work on Apple Lisa user interface.

Claim to fame: He invented the trashcan icon, which he created as an experience he had when writing a book. He accidentally deleted 8000 lines of text – 96,000 words. So he was resolved to create the trashcan functionality and make delete a two step process. Shared other anecdotes regarding trashcan.


Pubcon X Keynote: Robert X. Cringley

WebmasterWorld Pubcon Day 1

Today starts Pubcon X. My hotel is right next to the Las Vegas Convention Center and there’s a huge WebmasterWorld.com banner hanging outside. A pretty good match to most things here in Vegas, BIG.

Sessions I’ll be attending today include:

Keynote : Robert X. Cringely

Big Site – Big Brand -Big SEO
Marshall D. Simmonds, Jeremy Sanchez, Chris Zaharias, Bill Wise

Competitive Intelligence
Jake Baillie, Anne Kennedy, Joseph Morin, Andy Beal

Yahoo YPN Sponsored Lunch : What is the Yahoo! Publisher Network
Will Johnson, David Zito, Donald Loeb, Arnie Gullov-Singh

Organic Search Forum
Bruce Clay, Aaron Wall, Todd Friesen, Todd Malicoat

Super Session : Blogging for Fun and Profit
Barry Schwartz, Jeremy Zawodny, Andy Beal, Mark Fletcher, Chris Pirillo


WebmasterWorld Pubcon Day 1

Urchin is Now Google Analytics and it’s Free

I’ve been raving about Urchin to clients for quite a while at only $199/mo and now Google has decided to change Urchin over to Google Analytics and offer it for free. Wow.

The Urchin site is now redirecting to http://www.google.com/analytics/

According to Digital Inspiration blog, “the free version is limited to 5 million pageviews a month but the limit is is removed if you’re also an active AdWords publisher.”

Also, Google Analytics is said to intergrate very well with Google AdWords to better measure paid search ROI and you can track up to 50 profiles.

Online sign up is easy and only requires a Google account. Once signed up, just paste a snippet of JavaScript code into your web pages and that’s about it.


Urchin is Now Google Analytics and it’s Free