Labels: Search Marketing In House, SEO In House

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Our series continues with Aidan Beanland giving us his thoughts on bringing SEO In house.

Aidan Beanland is the Regional SEO Manager at Yahoo - Aidan is also a frequent speaker at Search Engine Bootcamp in Australia.

What is the biggest advantage for an organization to bring Search Marketing In-house?

The biggest advantage would be understanding. Having worked in agencies and in-house I've learned immersing oneself in products, platforms and content affords a depth of understanding no out-sourced expertise can match. It takes time to get to know how things work, and more importantly, how the people in the company function individually and as a team. I see myself as an internal consultant, advising at every step of production and liaising with almost every department; programmers, web developers, designers, content editors, project managers, sales and marketing. Educating each stakeholder is a vital factor in success, illustrating the benefits of SEO, teaching best practices and passing on knowledge to create a culture where sites are designed to accommodate human users as well as search engines.

On a personal level I relish this bird's eye view of the whole operation, I'm intimately involved with the business which fuels my enthusiasm and allows me to contribute to strategic development, providing value beyond my core SEO role.

What is the biggest challenge in accomplishing a transformation to In-house SEO?

I would suggest communication is one of the biggest challenges. Effecting change in a large company requires diplomacy, clear processes, patience and strong communication skills. The in-house SEO manager must be able to clearly illustrate success that's closely aligned to the true business goals - it's all very well ranking highly for a specific keyword phrase, is it meeting the right targets? You need to show how your efforts and advice have made a difference. Use whatever reporting tools you have available to track performance over time, and if possible, translate this into financial terms.

Once you have buy-in from all departments, people should proactively seek your advice and willingly implement it. Aim to empower your colleagues and share in each others' success.

It's also wise to take a look outside your usual sphere, keep your skills sharp and avoid becoming too comfortable with the same sites. Try to think objectively, don't be afraid of a second opinion, challenge yourself and try fresh approaches to familiar problems.

The rest of the In house SEO Series:

Part 1 - Chris "Silver" Smith - Net Concepts
Part 2 - John W. Ellis - ResortQuest
Part 3 - Rudy DeDominicis - Time Inc.
Part 4 - Jennifer Mathews Somogyi - Formerly at Classmates.com

Labels: Search Marketing In House, SEO In House

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In this multi-part series I am asking some of the Top In-house SEOs the same 2 questions:

- What is the biggest advantage for an organization to bring Search Marketing In-house?
- What is the biggest challenge in accomplishing a transformation to In-house SEO?

Today we're featuring Jennifer Mathews Somogyi who was formerly the SEO Manager at Classmates.com. Also check out Jennifer's SEM Website: http://www.semdiscussion.com/. Below are Jennifer's thoughts:

The biggest advantage to bringing Search Marketing in house really depends on the company and that scale of the campaigns. Search Marketing as a whole is usually split into 2 categories; 1) Paid Search Marketing (Or PPC) and 2) Natural Search Marketing (or SEO). Even when the paid search campaigns are handled in house there is usually a vendor brought in to manage the bidding, and the overall campaigns. The same can generally go for natural SEO. Vendors are often brought in for more man power with a larger site, or to help the in house SEO justify projects or bugs to those that still remain skeptical. Even the larger companies like Classmates.com and other even larger corporations bring in vendors to help with their paid and natural campaigns.

So what is the advantage to having an in house search marketing person? The scale of paid and natural search marketing can be such an immense undertaking that assigning one person to manage the vendor relationships as well as monitoring all of the paid and natural search marketing initiatives will not only help the individual focus on the companies best chance at increasing the return on investment (higher conversions through paid and natural search will generally increase the ROI). Rather than assigning the task to someone that already manages direct marketing, or another aspect of the business who then tends to place a low priority on the search marketing initiatives either from lack of knowledge or general interest in search marketing.

The first challenge as an in house person is brought in is lobbying the buy in from others within the corporation itself. Executives tend to believe in SEO and see what it has to offer, but don't always understand it. Those in Management and lower level positions tend to be more skeptical and therefore can be a bit more difficult in gaining the support needed to get initiatives moving. The key role of an in house SEO is to get the support needed from others within the company which will help in getting work completed for SEO (whether it be a change in url structure, change in content to include key terms, etc).

Us in house SEO's are usually a team of one. There are so many aspects to natural search that the one person (if to given support ) will eventually burn out. Keyword research, analysis and tracking, campaign management, project management, and so on. The larger the company, the more man power is needed in order to fill all of these roles.


The rest of the In house SEO Series:

Part 1 - Chris "Silver" Smith - Net Concepts
Part 2 - John W. Ellis - ResortQuest
Part 3 - Rudy DeDominicis - Time Inc.

Labels: Search Marketing In House, SEO In House

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Labels: Search Marketing In House, SEO In House

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DM News has released their Essential Guide to Search Engine Marketing. The 56 page guide covers expert insight on topics such as Fundamentals, Paid Search, Organic, Conversion and Search 2.0. There is also 5 Featured sections with opinions from John Ellis, Danny Sullivan, Adam Lasnik, Tanya Lews and Giselle Abramovich. Download your copy here.

Labels: Industry News

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Labels: Search Marketing In House, SEO In House

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For the business to business market, generally focused on lead generation, this is a massive move forward. B2B marketers are acutely aware of the cost of a lead and therefore through the Adwords platform pay specifically that value......As the product is still in the beta phases its release is not available to everyone. Conversion tracking must be in place on your account and your account must have over 500 conversions per month.

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Labels: Search Marketing In House, SEO In House

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Bringing SEO In house is quickly becoming one of the hottest topics across the Industry. With businesses looking to cut down on marketing budgets and wanting to expand on preexisting In House teams it will be difficult for traditional SEM Firms to continually offer the same services (at the same premiums) as they have been in the past. Businesses are looking to strengthen their relationships with their online marketing departments and what better way to do this then removing the 3rd Party SEM firm out of the picture.

There are already some excellent resources available in helping businesses bring SEO in house and I would like to share the ones I have looked into:

• SEM / SEO In-house Blog by Jessica Bowman - Director of SEO at Business.com
• How To Structure An In-House SEO Team by Paul J . Bruemmer who writes for SearchEngineLand and its column "In House"
• Laying the Foundation for In-House SEO Success in Large Organizations: Part I by Melanie Mitchell. This is part 1 of a 4 part series at SearchEngineWatch
• Jessica Bowman for SearchEngineWatch: When the Honeymoon Ends, In-house
• Five Ways to Determine Whether You Should Bring Search Marketing In-Houseby Heather Lloyd-Martin - MarketingProfs (requires login)
• Jody Nimetz of Enquiro shares his top 7 reasons for bringing SEO in house: Bringing Search Marketing In-House - SEO 2007
• Tamar Weinberg of SE Round Table discusses: What Skills Should a Full-Time SEO Have? - a topic from the SearchEngineWatch forums
• Gary Angel, CEO/CTO of SEMPhonic provides his thoughts on Bringing Search Engine Marketing In House at Ecommerce Times.
• Chris Silver Smith provides an excellent list of Some Top In-House SEOs. Some excellent consultants who know what it takes to be successful as an in house SEO.
• Keep Current SEO or Take It In-house? By Jill Whalen at SearchEngineGuide
  

What about the other side of the story? Read: The True Cost of an In-House SEO Campaign: Why an SEO Firm Can Increase Your ROI by Scott Buresh from the American Chronicle.

Labels: Search Marketing In House, SEM, SEO, SEO In House

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• How Bloggers Make Money from Blogs - Darren Rowse, ProBlogger.net
• How to Make Money From Your Blog - Steve Pavlina - who now makes $1000/day through blogging
• Washington Post shares how to Make Money off Your Blog
• Users share their tips on how to Make money blogging on 43 Things
• Get Paid to Blog through PayPerPost
• Jeff Wuorio for Microsoft Small Business: How to make money from your blog: 5 tips
• Robbin Good explains How to Make Money with Your Blog Site
• Maki at DoshDosh.com: How to Make Money Blogging: 7 Strategies to Help you Get Started Immediately
• Make Money from Your Blog - Matt Huggins
• Matt Bacak posted an Ezine how to: Make Money Blogging
• John Chow on How to Make Money Blogging - 52 Page PDF
• Make Money Blogging For Know More Media: 20 Open Blogs
• How To Make Money Blogging The Easy Way: HubPages Gets You Started by Michael Pick
• Seopher.com 8 ways to make money online in a short amount of time
• EbMug.com Learning How to Make Money Blogging
• Learning How to Make Money Blogging by Yaro @ Entrepeneurs Journey
• Bob King at GraphicTruth.com - Feeding the Beast - making blogging pay without selling your soul.
• See this Squidoo Lens: How to Monetize Your Website or Blog on Squidoo
• Ask Shane: Top 10 Blogs About Making Money Blogging
• How to Start a Blog and Make Money Online - in 10 Easy Steps
• Advertising Tactics that Simply Do Not Make Money - Web Analytics World
• Get Paid to Write Reviews
• Have you tried Reviewme.com?

If you have a suggestion for a link that needs to be added to this post, please leave a comment and I will add it.

Labels: Blogging, Make Money

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The main reason we created confetti is that it helps you make sense of data that you never understood before. You know how Google Analytics shows you browser data and you have no clue what to do with the data or what it means? With confetti, you can see how FireFox users interact differently then IE users. With my blog I noticed that very few IE users clicked on the "Older Posts" link even though they make up almost 1/4 of the traffic. This shows me that I need to try and get more FireFox users to my site because they maybe more interested in reading the content. - Neil Patel

Labels: Industry News, Web Analytics

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The Canadian Association for University Education has given the Web Analytics Association and the University of British Columbia an award for excellence for their 4 course Award of Achievement in Web Analytics Program. The Four courses consist of:

1. Introduction to Web Analytics


2. Web Analytics for Site Optimization


3. Online Marketing Campaign Measurement


4. Creating and Managing the Analytical Business Culture

The program was honored for its innovation in the growing web analytics sector and for offering superior value to this niche audience. Web marketers from major companies, including Coca-Cola and the American Dental Association, have praised the WAA-UBC Award of Achievement program for its ability to provide immediate, actionable knowledge and tactics for applying, leveraging and understanding web metrics.

By taking the UBC Award of Achievement in Web Analytics, participants receive practical approaches to:

• assessing effective methods and tools used in web analytics, weighing each tool's pros and cons


• designing and tracking marketing or communication from initial entry into the web site through to the desired sale or action (known as a "conversion")


• optimizing conversions by analyzing web site content for enabling, supportive or confusing messages


• applying the concepts of participation marketing and visitor segmentation to determine how different markets are responding to your content, leading to conversions


• analyzing click and navigation patterns to determine the best product or service mix as well as identify profit centres.

Labels: Web Analytics

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Labels: Web Analytics Jobs

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Labels: Industry News

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On Friday, the YouTube Blog announced some updates to YouTube's website. The updates consisted of the following 5 updates:

• Search Layout Makeover: Search now more prominently displayed and search results sortable in list/grid formats.
• Homepage Additions: See thumbnails of videos being watched as well additional notifications for friends, video responses and messages.
• Watch 3.0: Increased video player size, more videos from that user's channel are more easily accessible, and related videos are more prominently displayed.
• Upload Redesign and Geo Tagging: Complete re-design of the video upload home page with the improved ability to assign the location of our video.
• Adobe Mixer: Edit your videos with text, audio, graphics, overlays, effects, and transitions with the Adobe Mixer.
  
  

Labels: YouTube

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What's difference in user experience between Baidu and Google?

When you compare a 62% market share (Baidu) against a 20% market share (Google China) you would think that there should be a significant difference in user experience behind those numbers, right? Well, there is, but not in the way you would expect. Based on North American standards, Google should present a better user experience...On Google, users found what they were looking for in literally half the time (30 seconds vs 55) and with half the real estate - Gord Hotchkiss for SearchEngineLand

Labels: Baidu, Eye Tracking, Google

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It's difficult to stay on all the hottest stories so I have decided to recommend a few posts/articles that are definitely a must read:

SEM

• Vanessa Fox Leaves Google, Heads To Zillow - SearchEngineLand has the story
• GrayWolf talks about Google Adds Paid Links Reporting
• SearchEngineGuide says: Hide and Speak: Google, We Don't Need No Stinkin' Google!
• Kevin Newcomb discusses Laying the Foundation for In-House SEO Success in Large Organizations
• Bloomberg Interview: Yahoo Battles to Gain Ground on Google
• In her last post at Google Vanessa Fox discusses Duplicate content summit at SMX Advanced
• ASK Enquiro - Online Strategy: Why is it So Hard for B2B Marketers?

Web Analytics

• Many bloggers around the Industry Discuss: John Marshall Leaving Clicktracks
• Dennis Mortensen talks about Cookies and their effect on Unique Visitors
• Google Analytics Adds New Features
• LunaMetrics - Conversion: Assessing 15 sites in 90 minutes
• Tracking Google Audio Ads with Analytics at Epik One
  
  
  

Labels: Industry News, Must Reads

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Google's Vanessa Fox has posted an excellent entry on Duplicate Content at the Webmaster Central Blog. She touches on the most common issues in regards to Duplicate Content:

• Specifying the preferred version of a URL in the site's Sitemap file
• Providing a method for indicating parameters that should be stripped from a URL during indexing
• Providing a way to authenticate ownership of content
• Making a duplicate content report available for site owners
• Working with blogging software and content management systems to address duplicate content issues

Vanessa also mentions the answers to questions that were posed to her at SMX:

• If I nofollow a substantial number of my internal links to reduce duplicate content issues, will this raise a red flag with the search engines?
• Are the search engines continuing the Sitemaps alliance?
• Many pages on my site primarily consist of graphs. Although the graphs are different on each page, how can I ensure that search engines don't see these pages as duplicate since they don't read images?
• I've syndicated my content to many affiliates and now some of those sites are ranking for this content rather than my site. What can I do?
• As a searcher, I want to see duplicates in search results. Can you add this as an option?

Source: Google Analytics Blog - Vanessa Fox

Labels: Google

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Eric T. Peterson of Web Analytics Demystified, the noted web analytics author, consultant, and speaker, will marquee as Keynote Speaker and also serve as one of the expert facilitators.

In addition to Mr. Peterson, expert facilitators will include leading authorities in web analytics: Gary Angel, Manoj Jasra, Marshall Sponder and many others. These practitioners will work peer-to-peer with attendees on subjects such as Engagement and Brand Measurement, Site Base lining with Functional Analysis, Social Network Analysis, and Managing Data Quality Issues. Participants will work through their unique problems, brainstorm solutions and help define new solutions and best practices in the most important areas of web analytics.

Labels: Web Analytics

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Play Video

Labels: Google, Yahoo

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After receiving numerous requests for the same features, Google Analytics has added some new features. They include:

• Clickable URLs - We've added the ability to click on external links in certain reports and navigate straight to those pages. These external outbound links are available in the Referring Sites, Top Content, Top Landing Pages, and Top Exit Pages reports.
• Hourly Reporting - Many of the reports now have a "View by: Daily/Hourly" switch that allows you to select whether you want to see your data by day or by hour.
• Adwords Integration- It’s now easier to add an AdWords account to an existing Google Analytics account.
• Search Engine Detection - The list of French search engines has been updated to include aol.fr, club-internet.fr, and voila.fr. US search engines now include mama.com.
• Report Linking Issue Fixed - Reports that are newly added to the dashboard now have their data properly linked to their more detailed versions.
• Added Support - We've added more Help resources to the Email Reports interface.
• Smoother Registration - Some countries have been added to the list menu in Step 2 of the Account Activation process. The list is now consistent with available country choices in AdWords.
• Translation Errors Fixed - Some translation errors and omissions in the interface and Help Center have been corrected.
• Bounce Rate Issue Fixed - Bounce rates measurements have had their colors changed for visual consistency. A decrease in bounce rate is now colored green to match other positive changes, while an increase in bounce rate is colored red like other negative changes.
• Cross-segmenting by Network Location has been added to the standard list of segmentation options throughout the interface.
• More data viewable at once - We have increased the maximum number of table rows per page from 100 to 500 rows.

Personally I really liked the addition of the hourly reporting and clickable URLs and am amazed how fast these new features/updates were rolled out - well done Google Analytics Team!

Labels: Google, Web Analytics

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Labels: Google, Universal Search

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Searchnomics focuses on the importance of search to websites and online businesses, including site discovery, optimization, advertising, user experience, commerce and measurement. Attendees are about 50% Fortune 500 Internet marketing groups, and 50% online retailers. We're sending a lot of presenters there, including keynote speaker Marissa Mayer, our Vice President of Search Products and User Experience, as well as Google Analytics' Brett Crosby and Avinash Kaushik. It's a one-day conference with a packed agenda of seminars about SEO, SEM, design, branding, engagement, conversion, and tracking. Both Brett and Avinash will be presenting on action-oriented web analytics to improve your website and business. - Google Analytics Blog

Labels: Google, Searchnomics

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Visual Sciences’ HBX Analytics is a comprehensive and highly scalable on-demand Web analytics solution, delivering deep insight into online visitor and customer behavior. It provides an extensive set of Web analytics reports and offers the optional HBX Visual Workstation interface for in-depth interactive visual analysis. The optional HBX Active Viewing interface overlays a heat map and metric values on to Web pages while the HBX Report Builder Excel-based interface loads metrics directly into spreadsheet models or custom reports. HBX Analytics expands the dimensions of analysis beyond the tracking of basic Web sites to include the tracking of Web 2.0 technologies and content, such as streaming video and audio, RSS feeds and podcasts, to more fully analyze audience interaction. E-Consultancy

Labels: HBX, Web Analytics

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To recap, Universal Search is a term coined by Google in which results from different vertical search engines (images, video, news etc...) are integrated into Google's regular search results.

But when will these different search results show up? For example, what causes a video of a presentation by Steve Jobs to appear within the organic search results for the query: "Steve Jobs" Obviously it has to do with Google's sophisticated algorithms which can correlate the right content to a user's query, however here are some factors that I think can help influence the Universal Search results:

1. Number of Searches per Individual Search Silo - This theory is based on shear volume for a given query on a given vertical search engine. For instance if the query "scenic mountains" has a high number of searches within the image search, perhaps this influences the top images to appear within Universal search for the same query.
2. Performance through ratings and views - This applies mostly to Video Search because on YouTube and Google Video both ratings and the number of views are kept track of. Could the ratings/views affect the appearance of videos with Universal Search?
3. Clicks per listing - Google applies this same type of algorithm on both AdWords and organic search results therefore it's something that can help Google gauge the relevance of non-text based results.
4. Time Spent - With the Google Toolbar installed on so many users' computers as well Google Analytics installed on so many websites, Google can start to understand how engaged users are with a website (after a user clicked on a listing) by measuring time spent.
5. Return Visits - If a user clicks on a result listing, visits a website/image/news listing, returns immediately and clicks on another listing and continues this cycle, will Google start decreasing the quality of the websites/image/news listings that were selected?
6. Usability - While at Searchology I found out that Google performs rigorous usability testing using eye tracking to further understand users' search behavior and reactions to different types of search results.

Google and ASK.com are both heavily involved with perfecting Universal Search and as search marketers it will be important for us to help our clients create relevant content which is not necessarily just text anymore. Go here: for strategies for Universal Search

Labels: ASK, Google, Universal Search

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Labels: Industry News

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Another busy week in search marketing which started with the first ever Search Marketing Expo hosted by Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman. Here are some posts/articles worth reading:

Search Marketing

• Planning for Personalization - It's here to stay, so let's talk strategy
• Miss SMX? Well, Lisa Barone will fill you in on the entire conference
• SE Round Table reports of a Yahoo! Search Update Underway
• Google Webmaster Guidelines Gets Another Overhaul
• SEO Space: ASK.com The Second Coming of Search Means Personalization
• Website Issues? Enhance Usability with Eye Tracking

Web Analytics

• LunaMetrics says Criticize Google Analytics. Win Prizes
• Buy Avinash Kaushik's Web Analytics: An Hour A Day
• The Web Metrics Guru shows you how to Track Mobile Communications using Web Analytics
• Jason Burby asks: Web Analytics: Are People on Your Team Accountable?
  
  

Labels: Industry News, Must Reads

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Although I’m tempted to join the smart and silent search marketers, I think I’ll make one last attempt to share this information with the SEM/SEO community — perhaps in a white paper, perhaps a future column. But I’m only going to do it if you’re serious about pushing the envelope into this new opportunity. Reply to the blog below and let me know. Otherwise, I’ll just shut up and nod my head while you bitch about the fact that it’s too hard to opt out of personalized search. You’ll excuse me if I don’t answer; you see, my mind is on something else.

Labels: Personalization, Personalized Search

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Google Analytics Evangelist and now published author, Avinash Kaushik has just released his first book: Web Analytics: An Hour a Day. If you're looking to get up to speed on web analytics or even a seasoned veteran there's probably no better person to learn web analytics tactics, best practices and strategies better than Avinash. So CLICK HERE to go buy his book and turn your business into a finely tuned revenue driving engine. The book is also a very inexpensive investment for businesses looking to enhance the skills of in-house web analytics analysts.




Here are 5 reasons (straight from Avinash) on why YOU should buy his book:

1. Web Analytics: An Hour A Day for the first time provides a Practitioner’s in the trenches perspective on web analytics.
2. It is a book about Web Analytics 2.0.
3. The book will turbocharge your execution capabilities.
4. Immediately actionable web analytics (your biggest worries covered).
5. In 480 pages the book goes from from beginner’s basics to a advanced analytics concepts.
   
6. Bonus: Interactive CD: Contains six podcasts, one video, two web analytics metrics definitions documents and five insightful powerpoint presentations.

Read more about Web Analytics: An Hour A Day on his blog:

Labels: Web Analytics

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1. When asked "Do you personally believe that the majority of people in your or your clients’ organization who come in contact with web analytics data understand the data?" which speaks directly to the overall utility of the data in organizations, 69 percent of respondents said "No" and another 13 percent offered "I’m not sure."

2. When asked to "Indicate your opinion about how easy or difficult you personally think web analytics is?" which broadly addresses the ease-of-use of available tools and the process through which practitioners and consultants apply web analytics to business problems, 47 percent indicated that they believed web analytics as "somewhat difficult" and 9 percent indicated that they believed web analytics was "extremely difficult."

3. When asked "Keeping in mind that this survey is completely anonymous at any time in the last 6 months have you considered looking for a new web analytics job?" which speaks to both employee satisfaction and the overall stability of web analytics initiatives inside organizations, a full 50 percent of respondents indicated "Yes" they had considered looking for a new job.

Labels: Web Analytics

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I am just going through my copy of the Search Marketing Standard Magazine and I have to say I am quite impressed with level and quality of content. The Summer 2007 version features the "Insiders Guide to SEM Training and Certification" written by David Temple. But that's not it, there were many different items which caught my interest:

• Paid Search's Quality Scores written by Kevin Gold


• Link Building Guru, Eric Ward's: Think Before You Link...Bait


• Industry Analysis by Chris Boggs

• June 12-13 SES Toronto


• June 118-19 SES Latino (Miami)


• June 21-22 PPC Summit (New York)


• June 26-27 AD:Tech Miami


• June 28-29 High Rankings Search Engine Marketing Seminar (Denver)


• July 8-10 Affiliate Marketing (Miami)


• July 10-11 PPC Summit (London)


• July 31-Aug 1 Ad:Tech Chicago


• Aug 20-23 SES San Jose


• September 24-25 PPC Summit (LA)


• and there's more...

Labels: Industry News

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This would mean that if you speak at SMX, you cannot be an SES speaker, and likewise, if SES gets you as a speaker, they'd require that you don't also speak for SMX - SEOMoz

Labels: Search Marketing Expo, SES, SMX

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SE Round Table's Tamar Weinberg provides an in-depth analysis of the first day's events at the 2007 Search Marketing Expo in Seattle.



You & A with Matt Cutts

A live question and answer session with Google's own Matt Cutts. Here are a few of the questions that were posed to Matt:

• I have a question about image results in the search results page. How is this going to evolve?
• Why does Google love Wikipedia? When will you break up with him?
• A lot of people have found that supplemental pages don't come up. Is this the way that they'll be in the future, or will they be found in search results if there are links in the near future?

Matt Cutts finished the session by asking everyone what they'd like to see from the Webmaster Console.


Duplicate Content Summit

Issue and concerns over duplicate content featuring personnel from the major search engines: Vanessa Fox, Google; Amit Kumar, Yahoo; Peter Linsley, Ask.com; and Eytan Seidman, Microsoft Live.

This session addressed items such as:

• Why duplicate content matters
• How to avoid having people copying your content
• How each of the search engine handle duplicate content
• The definition of duplicate content
• Legitimate reason to duplicate
• Accidental Duplication
• How users can help the Search Engines

SEO, Meet SMM

Social media marketing experts spoke about leveraging social media in addtion to traditional SEO Strategies. The speakers included: Rand Fishkin, Cindy Krum, Neil Patel and Todd Malicoat.

Topics covered included:

• Social Media Marketing vs. Viral Marketing
• What can viral marketing do for you
• Places you can submit link bait
• Unwritten rules for Social Media Marketing
• The Golden Rules for SMM
• Benefits to strategic linking with Social Media
• Building Reputation within online communities
• Social Media Brand Awareness
• The creation of Profiles
• Developing Evangelists

Nice work, Tamar!

Technorati Tags: smx smxadvanced07 smxseattle07

Labels: Search Marketing Expo, SMX

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One of my favorite blogs to read is John Chow's http://www.johnchow.com/. The content is always fresh and John is never afraid to share his secrets, especially in relation to making money through blogging.

John Chow has recently released a FREE eBook in which he shares numerous methods on how he got from making $0 to over $10,000/month with blogging. Download it HERE.

Here are some of the main sections covered in this 59 page eBoook:

• My Recommended Money Makers
• Beginner's Blogging Tips
• Must Have WordPress Stuff
• Pumping out Content
• Monetize your Blog
• Google Optimization
• Promotion Ideas
• My Story

Link to John Chow's eBook:
http://www.johnchow.com/book/make-money-online.pdf

Labels: Blogging, Make Money

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If you're interested in truly understanding how visitors interact with your site then I recommend using Eye Tracking. The results from Eye Tracking can really help you improve the usability of your website and can help answer numerous questions:

• How visitors use your site?
• How easy is your site to use?
• What features/advertising are visitors glancing right over?
• How effective are your landing pages?
• How will users react to a new design?
• Are users reading your messaging on your site and on search engine results pages?

After data is collected with Eye Tracking you can generate a heat map (similar to the one above) which shows the areas on a web page where visitors' eyes spent the most time gazing. If you're interested in using Eye Tracking on your website, search marketing Firm, Enquiro, has become a leader in providing usability testing through their Eye Tracking Panels.

Below is a video of an actual eye tracking session being done on the home page of Enquiro.com. In the video you can totally see where users are scanning and what parts of the website they find interesting. Go to Enquiro's Eye Tracking page to find out more information.

Labels: Usability

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• Ebay Purchases StumbleUpon for $75 million
• FeedBurner Sold! for $100 million to Google
• Google Buys Panoramio, Photo Mapping Software
• Fox Interactive Media (NWS) Acquires Photobucket and Flektor
• Google buys GreenBorder Technologies for more security in Google Apps
• Microsoft buys aQuantive Inc, for 6 billion US dollars
• CBS buys Last.fm
• AOL Buys Mobile Ad Network
• Microsoft Buys CareerBuilder; Google Interested In SimplyHired
• AOL Buys German Ad Server Adtech
• Yahoo Fully Acquires Right Media (April 30th)
• Facebook Partners with Oodle for Classifieds

Google and Microsoft seem to be positioning themselves strategically in order to keep up with each other in the war for Internet dominance. I expect to see this trend of acquisitions continuing strong into the summer.

Do leave a comment if I have missed any major partnerships or purchases.

Labels: Google, Industry News, MSN, Yahoo

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