B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®

B2B Marketing views, news and interviews.

Online Marketing News: Pinterest’s Sneaky Tactics, Keeping Leaders Honest, 100 Million Videos Watched Per Day

How Social Media Keeps Leaders Honest

David Jones of Havas and Mashable CEO Pete Cashmore recently sat down to talk about the responsibilities of the leaders of today to respond to social media, and how it holds them accountable.

“Google Clarifies: No, Ads Shouldn’t Help Rankings & No, SEO Isn’t Bad”  Recent comments made by a new Google employee have some SEO’s up in arms.  Apparently his comments included “SEO isn’t good for users” and “It’s a bug that you could rank highly in Google without buying ads.”  Curious to know what else he has to say and what reaction this has caused within the online community?  Via Search Engine Land.


Online Marketing News: Pinterest’s Sneaky Tactics, Keeping Leaders Honest, 100 Million Videos Watched Per Day

10 Easy Local SEO & Online Marketing Tips

Google Places Pin There are currently 29.6 million small businesses in the U.S. (SCORE). 63% of consumers and small business owners use the Internet to find information about local companies and 82% use search engines (Webvisible & Nielsen).  That means there’s a lot of opportunity for local SEO.

Recently I attended GetListed.org’s Local University in Minneapolis which focused on how to optimize web sites for local search.  Out of all the good information that came out of the event, here are 10 easy things you can do today to optimize sites and content to attract local customers.

1. Claim your profile.
It’s as simple as logging into Google Places, Bing Local and Yahoo Local and walking through the verification steps which include a phone call or post card to verify your address.


10 Easy Local SEO & Online Marketing Tips

Google is Skynet. Search Suggest Opinions

To know what the world is searching for must be amazing. Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing are in that position but they’re not exactly sharing those insights. Well, except if you do a little guess work and leverage their keyword research or keyword suggest tools. For example, the suggest-as-you-type features that all the major search engines now offer can provide some interesting insight “on the fly” into what people are searching for.

For quick keyword research, Aaron Wall has a Google Suggest tool for keyword suggestions that adds more options and insight.

There’s some entertainment value to this as well. Start typing in “my girlfriend” or “my boyfriend” and you’ll see what I mean. Along those lines, let’s see some examples for each major search engine using the syntax, “Google is “:


Google is Skynet. Search Suggest Opinions

Search Engines Bringing Back Variables In URLs – At Your Expense

Duplicate ContentDid you realize that search engines have gone full circle on URLs in variables? It used to be considered something to avoid, now search engines are saying variables in URLs are good, as long as you use the canonical meta tag. Google is pushing them with FeedBurner and if webmasters aren’t careful, they could fall victim to a new onslaught of duplicate content issues.

One of the biggest issues with SEO is duplicate content. If search engines can’t tell which version of a document is the original or canonical version, then there can be consequences involving less than ideal search visibility. For example, the following URLs might all point to the same web page, creating the illusion that they are copies of the same thing. But in reality, it’s just one web page.


Search Engines Bringing Back Variables In URLs – At Your Expense

It’s a Deal: Q&A from Microsoft Yahoo! Call

microsoft yahoo

Amid all the speculation this week, it’s official that Microsoft and Yahoo! have made a deal:  “Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.”

Microsoft-Yahoo Deal History on Dipity.

The Search Marketing Industry news sites have covered this completely and a joint web site has been setup my Microsoft Yahoo. I also took a little time to listen in on the investor relations conference call with Steve Ballmer of Microsoft and Carol Bartz of Yahoo! and live tweeted some of the Q and A:

MSFT YAHOO conf call Q: Why no display ad component to the deal? Bartz: To keep the deal straightforward as possible


It’s a Deal: Q&A from Microsoft Yahoo! Call

Yahoo Mash Beta – New Social Networking Platform

I’ve updated my Yahoo mash profile page a bit over the weekend and with the help of a few friends. Note: if you have some mischievous friends, you may want to turn off their ability to edit or “mash” your profile page or it might start sporting another company’s logo as your background image, as was the case on my profile for a few hours on Saturday.

Mash is very easy to use with drag and drop modules ala Facebook but with the unique feature of allowing others to add and/or modify modules or even visual settings, depending on the sharing settings. You get a short URL, mash.yahoo.com/leeodden is mine, for example, but you need to be logged in to Yahoo and have a mash account to see the content.


Yahoo Mash Beta – New Social Networking Platform

Yahoo Book Party – Mona Elesseily

Yahoo Book Party

After a long day of sessions on day three of Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, some attendees mosied on over to the Yahoo Panama Book party for Mona Elesseily of Page Zero. It was great to see the support for her new report, “Mastering Panama – A special report on Yahoo!’s new search marketing platform”.

Yahoo Book Party

Yahoo Book Party

While I haven’t had a chance to do a full review of the book since last night, I have paged through it and it appears to be pretty comprehensive and very easy to read with plenty of ordered lists, “Action Items” and “Helpful Hints”. You can get your copy here.


Yahoo Book Party – Mona Elesseily

SES Video Tim Mayer of Yahoo Interview

Tim Mayer Yahoo

Going through proper channels, I was able to coordinate a short video interview with Tim Mayer of Yahoo. I’m a bit of a Yahoo fan and it was great being able to chat with Tim for a few minutes before we recorded on the various questions other speakers suggested.

In this video, Tim answers a few questions including:

  • What’s in store for Yahoo’s version of Universal search?
  • From Mike Grehan: “Why does my spam work so much better in Yahoo than it does in Google?”
  • From Stephan Spencer: “If another Yahoo web property was found to have violated Yahoo’s guidelines, what would you do?” ie, “What if you caught another Yahoo web site spamming, would you ban them?”

SES Video Tim Mayer of Yahoo Interview

9 Wishes For a Better Yahoo

TopRank Marketing Editor
TopRank Marketing Editor
Online Marketing, Search Engines, Yahoo

Editors Note:  As part of our continued effort at diversifying contributors to Online Marketing Blog and providing a public communication platform for our merry band of search marketing enthusiasts, here is a post from Blog SEO and Designer, Thomas McMahon:

Yahoo Logo

Yahoo is by many accounts, the grandfather of search. They’ve been around a long time and have quite a few popular services to offer but continue to trail behind Google in many areas. I’m a fan of Yahoo and think there are a few things that could make Yahoo better. Here are a few of the improvements I’d like to see Yahoo implement to make them a better search engine:


9 Wishes For a Better Yahoo

Yahoo Panama Recent Upgrades

Yahoo Panama is on the upgrade path today with several new features to help advertisers streamline account management:

Move/copy keywords: You can now move and copy keywords from one ad group to another without doing the copy/paste/delete thing. On the Ad Group page under the Campaigns tab, you’ll now see a Move button which will allow you to move or copy keywords from one ad group to another ad group. Note that there is still a 1000 keyword limit per ad group.

Streamline keyword selector tool: Yahoo now provides an estimate of the monthly searches on each keyword suggested. This provides more detailed information on the traffic that this keyword may be able to generate. As before, you can select the keywords you wish to add by clicking the box next to the suggestions and clicking Add Keywords.


Yahoo Panama Recent Upgrades

Yahoo Contest Giving $25k Away in Advertising

Normally we don’t really cover a lot of industry news here at Online Marketing Blog. We leave that to the experts at Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal and Marketing Pilgrim. However, when a search engine reaches out with a particularly interesting message, we can make exceptions.

For example, the new “Ultimate Connection” contest from Yahoo Search Marketing which involves Ivanka Trump. I had to read that twice and thought it an interesting choice of celebrity.  Whenever I hear about search marketing contests involving essays, I always think of Marketing Pilgrim’s Scholarship, but such methods of promotion have been around a lot longer than SEO blogs.


Yahoo Contest Giving $25k Away in Advertising

SES New York Day 3 Videos

I was able to do just two video interviews before my camera got dropped in a glass of water. I’ll have to explain that in another post.

[googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5655668133485217314&hl=en[/googlevideo]

Here’s Michael Gray, aka graywolf, just before our session with Todd Mailicoat and Neil Patel on “Social Bookmark Strategies” where he talks about tips for conference goers. Coverage of that session can be found at The Lisa, Search Engine Roundtable, Small Business SEM and CenterNetworks.

[googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4176575133923097250&hl=en[/googlevideo]

I also caught up with Mona Elesseily from Page Zero where she talks about Yahoo Panama pros and cons. Also two new Panama enhancements: Quality based bidding and being able to opt out of Yahoo’s content network.


SES New York Day 3 Videos