B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®

B2B Marketing views, news and interviews.

Reader Poll: Best Paid Subscription SEM Communities

We recently posted a list of over 100 resources our readers could leverage to learn more about marketing online through search. One of the categories was paid subscription SEM communities that offer training, forums and often times templates, forms and guides for implementing effective Search Marketing programs.

A pioneer forum that has a paid channel in this area is the WebmasterWorld Supporter’s group. SEOmoz has been wildly successful with their Pro community over the past few years and SEO Book launched their training community after discontinuing the actual book.  The newcomer to this group is SEO Dojo.

Below you’ll find info and links on each community and if you’re a fan, take this poll to vote which is your favorite:

What is the best subscription based SEM community?


Reader Poll: Best Paid Subscription SEM Communities

SEO Tool Review: BuzzStream for Link Building

TopRank Marketing Editor
TopRank Marketing Editor
Link Building, SEO, SEO Tools

As I work with our clients on their link building projects, I am often testing out new tools to make the process more efficient. After meeting with Lee at PubCon South in March, Jeremy Bencken – one of the founders of BuzzStream –  followed up with Lee for the opportunity to demo and test out their link building tool – BuzzStream for Link Building. Lee requested that I take a look at this tool, and I was glad for the opportunity.

For many webmasters, managing link building campaigns can seem pretty daunting. Identifying a link building strategy is one key to success. Another is ensuring link building efficiency and follow up. Identifying processes and tools to help increase this efficiency can greatly increase the amount and value of links you achieve.BuzzStream for Link Building


SEO Tool Review: BuzzStream for Link Building

SEO Basics: 6 Tips for Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools is a free service that provides a wealth of information directly from Google. Once you have verified a site with Google, they’ll give you access to all sorts of information.

Here are just a few features of Google Webmaster Tools:

1. Errors
Google Webmaster Tools will show all sorts of errors with a site. Not only does it show broken links on the site, but also links that are driving traffic to the site for which there is no valid page. Google even tells you pages it knows about but has been restricted from crawling. That’s good to know incase someone accidently blocks to much.

Google Webmaster Tools Error Report

Google Webmaster Tools Error Report


SEO Basics: 6 Tips for Google Webmaster Tools

Raise Conversions By 55% Or More

marketingsherpa-landingpages.png

Raise conversions by 55% you say? That’s what Marketing Sherpa says in the promo copy for their new Landing Page Handbook. One of the most popular posts we’ve ever had on Online Marketing Blog was the 10 Landing Page Tips by Jon Miller of Marketo. That’s why I think this new report from Marketing Sherpa may be of interest.

You can spend a lot of time testing and fine tuning landing pages on your own from scratch, but in many cases, it makes a lot of sense to get a bit of a head start. This guide is about both the art and science of landing page creation and optimization.


Raise Conversions By 55% Or More

Google Webmaster Tools Review

TopRank Marketing Editor
TopRank Marketing Editor
Google, Online Marketing, SEO, SEO Tools

SEO Tool ReviewGoogle Webmaster Tools Logo

Google Webmaster Tools is a great resource for any site owner. It’s designed to inform webmasters about how Google bot is interacting with their website. It gives detailed information on broken links, popular keywords and how often Google is stopping by. It’s Googles way of giving site owners the information that they need to be successful.

The Setup

Getting started with Google Webmaster Tools is not to difficult. The first thing you’ll need is a Google account. Since all Google services use the same login, you may already be setup. If you have Gmail, Adwords, Analytics, iGoogle or one of the many other services, then you are ready to go. If not, sign up for a free Google Account.


Google Webmaster Tools Review

Windows Live Webmaster Portal Beta

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Earlier this year I participated in an online focus group where questions were asked about various webmaster and SEO tools. The session was run by a third party and I was able to get them to admit it was for Microsoft. Tonight, like many others that showed interest, I received an invite to register from Nathan Buggia, Sr. Product Manager of the Live Search Webmaster Tools Team.

Similar to Google’s Webmaster Tools (Vanessa Fox interview here) and Yahoo’s Site Explorer tools (Tim Mayer interview here), the services included in this Beta of Microsoft’s Windows Live Webmaster Portal appear to be split up into three categories:

Troubleshooting

  • Site crawling
  • Site Indexing
  • Robots.txt
  • Sitemaps

Sitemaps

  • Creation
  • Submission (upload, autodiscovery)
  • Ping

Windows Live Webmaster Portal Beta

SES Video: Vanessa Fox Google Webmaster Tools

Even though she’s moved on from Google to Zillow, Vanessa Fox still carries quite a bit of passion for her creation, Google Webmaster Tools which was renamed from Google sitemaps about a year ago. She was even spotted at the Google Dance giving advice to SES attendees at the Google Webmaster Tools product demo table.

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Many webmasters and beginning search marketers could benefit a great deal from the features offered by Google Webmaster Tools so I asked Vanessa if she’d do a short video with me to provide a few tips.

For more info on Google Webmaster Central visit the blog.


SES Video: Vanessa Fox Google Webmaster Tools

Microsoft Webmaster Tools

Last week I agreed with Barry’s speculation in the comments at Search Engine Land that Microsoft is developing their own set of webmaster tools. After a conversation today, I have an even stronger reason to believe this is so. I cannot disclose the source, but it is credible.

While there are an array of AdCenter tools, Microsoft is also working on additional software to be of assistance to webmasters for use with natural search results ala Google Webmaster Central and/or Yahoo Site Explorer. Unfortunately I do not have a time frame or a specific description of what the tools will be, but I do know Microsoft is putting quite a bit of effort into their development.


Microsoft Webmaster Tools

Social Bookmark Tool Updated

The super popular social bookmarks tool that Thomas created last year has recently been updated. We’ve been keeping him exceptionally busy with “client projects that are fun, interesting, challenging” for quite a while, but he was still able to sneak in a quick update and added several social news and bookmarking services.

New services added:

  • Google Reader
  • Diigo
  • Netscape
  • DZone
  • Squidoo
  • Looklater
  • RecommendzIt
  • Segnalo
  • StumbleUpon
  • Mr. Wrong

Several of these should have been added a long time ago, but hey, we’re busy helping clients. 🙂

If you’ve used the TopRank social bookmarks tool in the past, you may want to “freshen up” your links with Google, Netscape and StumbleUpon. Hint hint.

As a reminder here are the distinguishing features:


Social Bookmark Tool Updated

Google Webmaster Central

Today I had lunch with Joe Dolson and Mike McDonald as well as several hundred other search marketers in the Google Sponsored – Google Webmaster Central session.

I took several photos below as well
Danny Sullivan Amanda Camp Samantha Fox

Danny, Amanda and Vanessa

Amanda Camp and Evan? from Google

Amanda and Evan from Google
Adam Lasnik

Adam Lasnik from Google

I know what you’re thinking, where’s the blog post about this session?¬† It was lunch so I decided to take photos and a few videos instead. It will take a while to get the videos uploaded to Google Video, but I will update this post with those links later this evening.


Google Webmaster Central

Fortune Covers MySpace and YouTube

On my flight from Minneapolis to Vegas today I picked up a copy of Fortune Magazine, which had and the founders Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe of MySpace on the cover. The article, “MySpace Cowboys” was pretty good describing the founding of the company as well as the acquisition by News Corp.

With an acquisition price of $580 million, Tom and Chris are still singing the “we’ll keep working as long as we can keep building the vision” song. Well, not exactly, but pretty close. They do seem pretty committed to continuing the journey of making MySpace all about the users and the community.


Fortune Covers MySpace and YouTube

Keyword Tool Based on Leaked AOL Logs

There’s a new keyword tool called AOL Keyword Analyzer that has been posted based on the full dataset of the recently leaked AOL search data. The tool claims:

  • “First tool on the web as far as I know that allows you to view what keywords a site receives in search engine traffic.”
  • “First time you can see how much organic traffic every site gets from a search engine.”
  • “First opportunity the public can see how many clicks individual SERPs get.”

You can view the most popular sites and also the most popular phrases. The most popular sites can also be segmented by top level domain such as .org, .edu, .gov (think link research) as well as .com, .net and coutry specific domains.


Keyword Tool Based on Leaked AOL Logs