Last Friday I attended the Search Marketing for Financial Services session at SMX-London. This session was moderated by Danny Sullivan. The session was aimed at addressing the specific challenges facing businesses in the financial services sector, a niche not exactly known for attracting tons of incoming links.
There are many keyphrase tools out there, but any quality search engine optimization company should know that they are in no way replacements for true market research. When one is embarking on a campaign of marketing on the Internet, it is important to select keyphrases that represent an understanding of one's audience. In this article, we'll discuss two crucial aspects of keyphrase research that your search engine optimization company should be taking into consideration: knowing the prospect and knowing the company.
I'm just returning from a well-earned, extra-long holiday weekend away from the computer, so I managed to miss Google's sneaky little update to their webmaster guidelines late last week. Thankfully, Search Rank's David Wallace was on the ball as usual and got a great post up noting the change. While the new guidelines did include mention of the nofollow tag if you went hunting for it, the new ones do a pretty good job of explaining exactly what Google expects from site owners who buy or sell links.
It appears the text Google is now showing [for a particular keyword phrase] is from our DMOZ directory listing. Until very recently (and while our listing position was as good as it is now) Google was showing the first few words of text from the body of our home page. Should we leave everything as is and enjoy the good listing position, but put up with the less than ideal text in the search results?
I've seen quite a few posts this past week from popular marketing bloggers asking if blogging is finally losing steam. They note a number of popular bloggers have been taking long breaks and others are simply abandoning their blogs completely. With the growth of social networking sites like Facebook, marketers are asking if the day of the blog is coming to a close. I found myself asking the same question last week and I've realized blogging is only just getting started.
Debra Mastaler knows and she's more than happy to tell you. Her latest column on link building over at Search Engine Land is a gold mine of information for anyone having a hard time building links a really competitive niche. Always ahead of the curve, Debra looks beyond the standard link bait and aims to help site owners learn the value of using a public relations style campaign as a link driver.
Can a proper balance between optimizing for spiders and humans be struck? Can you achieve the perfectly optimized web page for search rankings, while also maintain a perfectly optimized page for your audience? No, but since perfection is unattainable, what you can do is find the most effective balance between being both user friendly and search engine friendly.
I'm guessing that most everyone reading this article has received SEO spam and regular readers of Search Engine Guide know enough about the SEO process not to be suckered into believing the sorts of claims made in SEO service spam emails. However, as a public service to all, I am going to deconstruct the latest example to arrive in my inbox.
Last week I attended and presented at SMX-London. It was a great chance to meet with British search Marketers that don't get to make it out to the US conferences, and to hear a different perspective on familiar topics from mostly British presenters. Friday saw the "Search Marketing for Retail" seminar, which was moderated by Rob Kerry of Ayima.com.
How well do you know your customers and what makes them tick? Well enough to know they'll permanently tattoo your logo on themselves in exchange for your products? Do you know which hot trends to take advantage of to promote your business? What does this have to do with building links anyway? Everything...
comScore recently released its Search Engine rankings for the month of October 2007 in the US and the results favor Google which is up 1.5% from last month. Both Microsoft and Yahoo showed decreases in search market share while ASK held steady at 4.7%....
Is this the end of the target audience? Well, okay, to be honest... no. The target audience is alive and well. But what can you do to improve website performance further? Check out the concept of personas....
I missed a great post last week by Matt McGee, so I'm blogging it now. Titled "Eight Things the Search Industry Can Teach Small Businesses," the post offers up several great examples of how to market yourself online from people in the industry who were simply going about their business. From networking to staying visible to finding your niche, it's a great little set of tips and examples worth reading through.
If you've been thinking about attending one of the major search marketing conferences, you might want to check out the newly posted agenda for SMX West. Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman will be offering up more than 50 sessions on February 26-28, 2008 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. I won't be able to make it, as I'll be at another conference in London, but so far, it's shaping up to be a great looking show.
Anyone with an ounce of knowledge about online marketing knows traffic is worthless if you can't deliver compelling copy. Good copy earns search rankings. Good copy earns links. Good copy convinces visitors to stop shopping and start buying. Unfortunately, good copy isn't easy to write. That's why the Eisenberg brothers have put together a fantastic list of more than one hundred copywriting articles divided by topic and spread out over two lengthy posts.
The great thing about the Internet in 2007 is the ability to integrate several different types of media into your site. Faster internet connections, cheap bandwidth and free third party multimedia hosting services have made it easy for even the smallest of small businesses to work multi-media into their sites. Since it's well known that different people absorb information in different ways, smart small businesses are looking at the best ways to leverage social media and Web 2.0 technologies to better serve their customers.
Social media is about the hottest topic there is right now in the online marketing world. Search marketers and traditional marketers are both obsessed with finding ways to drive interest and traffic using this new medium. But how many of them are actually investing in social media marketing and how many are simply offering up half hearted efforts? And how many of them have any idea how to justify their investments?
How does social media media work without conversation? It doesn't. So how do you handle navigating the social media "vote for this" waters of friends lists? We are social creatures by habit, long for conversation, so why not strike one up with the folks on your friends list? This article includes tips on not annoying your friends with copious amounts of requests for Diggs, Sphinns and Fetches.
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