Search & Internet Explorer 8

After finally getting the new Internet Explorer 8 beta installed (demands to upgrade Windows, verify Windows, sigh), I spent some time playing with the new search functionality and checking to see if Microsoft was going to try and stack the deck in its favor with the new browser. So far, it remains pretty even handed. Indeed, so far, Microsoft seems kind of lame given that there are some cool search features you're hard pressed to locate. Let's take a tour.

Sir, Would You Like Fries With Those Links?

Recently in several SEO forums I noticed a number of threads discussing ways to find and build "economical" links. The forum participants wanted to know how they could initiate "safe" reciprocal linking as well as "fast" submissions to free article directories. They reasoned these tactics were worth doing because both linking methods were "econo

Google Offers New Content Hub For US Presidential Elections Home Stretch

Many millions of people saw Hillary Clinton speak last night at the Democratic National Convention. If you didn't (and are interested) you can see the speech on YouTube. Indeed, Google has been doing various things in various places -- on Maps, YouTube, iGoogle and elsewhere -- to offer news, content, video and visualization tools throughout this US electoral season. Now the company has introduced an additional set of election-related guides and services, explained in this spotted Google sporting new checkout badges for some Google Checkout merchants within the AdWords listings. I was able to reproduce it for a search on petco, a Google Checkout merchant.

Here is a side by side look at the checkout badges on AdWords. The $5 off version is the new version being tested, the other one is the normal checkout badget:

reported that Microsoft and mega-agency WPP have restarted talks that may result in the sale of Interactive agency Avenue A to the latter. Avenue A was part of the $6 billion deal for aQuantive that also included Atlas and the Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

Google Now Searching For Synonyms
Blink, and you might have missed it. Google's now doing synonym searching. It's something they quietly noted in a past Google blog post and on

Social Media Marketing ROI- Metrics and Analysis

When I attended South by Southwest 2008, I had the pleasure of attending a panel where four somewhat lost panelists were (with difficulty) trying to come up with metrics to measure success from a social media marketing campaign. I was a little annoyed when they concluded that there were no m

FindLaw Hit By Long Arm Of The Google Law Over Paid Links

Toolbar PageRank penalties are nothing new to the SEO world, we see them all the time. But when Todd Friesen broke the news that FindLaw.com is marketing a new advertising service to sell links that will "help you increase your company's visibility, rank and penetration within natural search results on major search engines such as Google," as the FindLaw email said, the legal industry was somewhat shocked.

Back in October 2007, we reported that Google That Girl From Marketing. To read the full rant... I mean post, visit th

Demographic Targeting for Organic Listings? Tactical SEO Needs Strategy & Attending Social Bookmarking at SFTechsessions?

Ok, so I’m pretty excited about actually scheduling time to go to my first SF Tech Session. And this one is on Social Bookmarking. It takes place tonight from 7-9 p.m. at CNET in San Francisco. Hopefully I’ll get to meet a few of you there - and have no ...]

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Marketing Strategy & The Paris Hilton Law of Visibility, Matt McGee Interviews Become.com’s Jon Glick & Social Bookmarking Tech Session Redux

I have so many notes from yesterday’s SF Tech Session on Social Bookmarking, that I’ll need more time to coordinate my thoughts. In the meantime, you can check out Daniel Riveong’s excellent recap: Social Bookmarking Talk at SF Tech Sessions as well Niall Kennedy’s Bookmarking and Social Sharing Trends (gosh I felt like ...]

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Online Marketing in B2B, Plugins Help E-tailers on Social Networks, Time, Query Quality and Search Results & Social Network Fatigue (aka: Social Saturation)

“As much as people want to connect through the Internet, the practice also can have the opposite effect: Social Networking Fatigue,” so says the article Social Sites Becoming Too Much of a Good Thing (via: SteinBlog). It’s been noted in Compete Inc’s paper on Social Commerce that marketers are facing the challenge of Social Saturation: ...]

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Game Mechanics & Social Software, Why Blogging Matters, Viral Video vs. Video Banners & My Integrated Marketing Epiphany

After having a conversation with a brand marketing manager this weekend about how she and the other marketing managers at her company interact on campaigns I’ve come to the following conclusion: “Integrated Marketing is like Communism. It sounds great on paper, but doesn’t work in reality.” (Update: Unless you you are JoinRed.com) The ...]

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Emetrics Summit Presentations, Statistics for Analytics & IE7 Rendering Issues

I was going to post this yesterday. But after downloading IE7 and realizing that my last template looked horrible in that browser, I spent the better part of last night trying to fix the style sheet. You can see by the new template, that this is still a work in progress ;). I guess I’m ...]

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HP Says No Way to MySpace / Facebook, Writing a Social media Press Release, PDF SEO & So Tired

As much as I would love to attend The SF New Tech November Meetup I am feeling beat, I have emails to respond to and ANTM to watch (ok, so I kid about needing to respond to emails…). The What Have I Been Reading Reading List: HP: Social networking not marketer friendly: “For Mary Bermel, Director ...]

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Plinking (Say what?), Spamming Spurs MySpace Exodus, Microformats, Targeting RSS to Your Market & TGIF

Thank God It’s Friday. And if you are going to the Blogger Happy Hour in San Francisco after User Research Friday, I’ll see ya then. The What Have I Been Reading Reading List: Technology Enables Product Placement in CGM – New term alert: Plinking – “Plinking is the process of adding a product or service link ...]

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What SEMPO Knows, Meta Descriptions Aren’t Dead & SEO for Web 2.0… Sorta

I recently went to a Silicon Valley WebGuild event at Google on what I thought would be a discussion on SEO for Web 2.0. I thought I would hear discussions on optimizing Flex and AJAX and learning how we could make these Web 2.0 Technologies more search engine friendly. Instead, the discussion was more focused ...]

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Second Life Optimization From a User, Online Media and Consumer Electronic Purchases, 30% of MySpace Users Create Content? & YAPR about Second Life

Last night I read Yet Another Press Release (YAPR) about a major brand’s launch into Second Life, and thought to myself, “Gosh, what’s the purpose at this point, especially if you aren’t offering anything to the community other than a virtual replication of your big corporate brand.” Then I read Sense.PSFK’s piece: There’s Gold In ...]

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Microsoft to buy Yahoo

Microsoft have pitched to buy Yahoo. I’m gutted. Last Autumn it was obvious that Yahoo stock was seriously undervalued by comparison to Google, Amazon, and other major internet companies. However, not only did I not have an investment portfolio, but the promise of the stock markets tanking made it a bad time to set up a portfolio ...]

Google vs Links sales: the worst is yet to come

Aaron Wall posts about a trend that’s opened up to a lot of webmasters over the New Year - falling Adsense revenues. The chatter has been around for a while, and it seems the recent move to reduce the clickable space in Adsense could well be contributing - but the economic downturn hitting big corporate advertisers ...]

Important Notice - please read

I’m now blogging my secrets away at Internet Business. More explained here: Everything now changes on InternetBusiness.co.uk I work with small businesses you have never heard of - I work with massive corporations whose brands you walk past routinely on the high street. I’ve been interviewed by national media, national press, and spoken at international conferences. It’s time to ...]

Thomson has multiple adwords accounts?

Noticed this on one of my sites while coding today: How does Thomsonlocal get multiple Adsense listings for the same domain? Multiple Adwords accounts, or a glitch with adsense itself?

Admiring other content networks

I’ve taken the route of trying to be small publisher covering different niches, and sometimes can’t help but admire the strides some other sites have taken. Of course, certain networks such as internet.com and ientry have been on webmaster radars for a long time, and give the impression of being somewhat corporate. However, there are plenty of ...]

Miss Threadwatch? Time to rebuild it…

I began writing a post on Internet Business for June 28th, pointing out that Threadwatch had closed 1 year today. I started to write about the standard of members there, the quality of stories, and how basically no other site has been able to replace it. Simply put, no other news site I can think of focuses ...]

Watch out for Wordpress .htaccess hack

Just quick heads up for anybody who may have any older Wordpress installs running to check their .htaccess file hasn’t been hacked. I had this happen to a major site a couple of weeks back, and a cursory look at some other sites found it occurring elsewhere. In short, the original .htaccess file is replaced with one ...]

The Farce of easy A Levels

What a surprise - A Level results continue to show record improvements, with record pass rates and record A grades awarded. A Levels have become a farce - they are absolutely getting easier, and I know because I have 9 A Level passes over a 4 year period, and saw them getting easier as a student ...]

Hardest lesson in business: Managing growth

I’m at something of a business crisis point at present - managing growth. Simply put, my workload is far too large for me to handle. This is a big part of trying to expand my business - not so much client side, but general services side. Because I’ve always been a hands-on person, I used to do everything ...]

Lessons learned from speaking at SES London

Speaking at SES London was exciting and daunting - to be honest, I’ve *always* wanted to speak at SES since I started doing SEO, and having two sessions to cover on link building was a dream - many thanks to Mike Grehan for the opportunity. A couple of clear lessons learned, though: 1. Presentations are Linkbait The two ...]

Go Win Yourself A Copy Of Aaron Wall’s SEO Book

Disclaimer: I got paid to write this. If you don’t have a copy of Aaron Wall’s SEO Book, you might as well just go head on over to Internet Babel and subscribe to the email feed for a chance to get it for free. Internet Babeler, Nick Sullivan, is trying to get more RSS subcribers on his ...]

Warning: This Is A Stupid Post

So you like to read stupid posts, eh? I just really wanted to write something really quick. I ended up thinking about what to write, longer than it probably would’ve taken me to write something worthwhile. Hmm… Should I have put a comma between write and longer in the previous sentence? When I say the ...]

NEW Google Advanced Search Page

I just happened to notice that the Google Advanced Search page has a new look: (Click on image to enlarge) Here’s what the same page looks like with the Plus Box expanded: (Click on image to enlarge) This is how it used to look (still up on Google.ca and other country extensions): (Click on image to enlarge) I use ...]

Sweet New FireFox Extension For Quick & Easy Domain Lookups

It seems like there’s been more and more talk about domaining going on around the SEO-sphere, lately. I know that I’ve been buying more and more domains, in recent months. My UK buddy, Richard Kershaw, just emailed me about a new FireFox extension that he created called Domain Lookup. It a really sweet tool ...]

Actual Sighting Of Google Video Results Under AdWords Listings In Right Column

I’ve always been a big fan of the Ask3D SERP UI. It looks as though Google is testing a layout along those lines… Danny Sullivan wrote about AdWords Video, last month, with a mockup of what it might look like, but this layout is a bit different. My good friend and fellow SEO ...]

Great… Is This What It’s Come To?

I was performing some searches on Google when I came upon this search result: (click on image to enlarge) (Check out the first listing, if you haven’t, yet.) When I clicked on the “More sources” link, this is what I got: (click on image to enlarge) The first link is the same as the original OneBox listing from ...]

Get to Know SEO Consultant Adam Moro

I haven’t been writing as much as I would like to on my SEO blog, here… but a lot of other things have been keeping me busy. I’m actually writing this from Seoul, South Korea because I was skimming through my RSS feeds and I felt like I had to write real quick to say that ...]

Google Is Updating Their Technical Fiddly Bits

I just went in to add a listing to Google Local today and, instead of seeing the normal page, apparently Google is working on things and I was presented with this page: (click on image to enlarge) It reads: The Google Local Business Center is unavailable for the next hour We appreciate your patience as we perform some routine ...]

Synergize Your Twitter Account And Your WordPress Blog With Twitter Tools

I’ve had my Twitter account for about a year, now, but I didn’t really “get it” at first - mostly because there weren’t very many tweeps (twitter/peeps) on there that I cared to tweet to, or with. It wasn’t until November that I saw more and more tweeps that I knew, thus ...]

Start 2008 Right: Internet Marketing Ninja Style

I initially found out about Internet Marketing Ninjas last month at PubCon, where I picked up this nifty little tchotchke: Membership just opened up, yesterday. Since I found out about the service, I’ve been saving up my money here and there so that I can sign-up as soon as possible. I plan to do ...]

High Rankings Advisor 238 Wrap-up

Lots has happened since the last newsletter.

Top Search Engine Ranking Software

I'm about to renew our contract with our search engine ranking optimization software, but thought I'd check out other options before committing. What do you folks use?

Is Twitter for the Birds?

Today's guest article comes to us from my friend and long-time HRA subscriber Jim Spencer, founder of JBS Partnersnbsp; a website design and marketing firm in Winchester, MA, that serves small business and solo entrepreneurs. I met Jim in person at a SEMNE (Search Engine Marketing New England) event. nbsp;

Can Google Follow Non-www Links?

For purposes of discussion, let's say my main URL is www.example.com. I have a plethora of links in my site for indexing purposes between pages. The page links all go to their respective pages properly, but are linked to example.com (without the www part).

Advanced SEO Forum Thread: Will Google Suggest Changes in the Way You Optimize?

Google has announced that they are rolling out 'Google Suggest' this week, which will provide searchers with a list of query suggestions when they start typing into the search box.

Save $10 on Writing With Keywords

So, I'm a total toad! In the last newsletter, I mistakenly sent Karon's special discount offer on the latest version of her 'Writing With Keywords' book only to the 'text-only' newsletter subscribers and not to the HTML ones...duh. Since the HTML readers make up more than 2/3 of the readers, Karon has agreed to extend the offer through this week.

Advanced Forum Thread of the Week: Important Hub Pages in Supplemental / Not Ranking

Forum member 'don h' discusses a website problem that's been plaguing him for ages.

Stuff You Might Like: Recent Interviews With Jill Whalen, CEO High Rankings

I had the pleasure of being interviewed recently by a number of online marketing folks and thought you might enjoy learning more about me and my thoughts on a plethora of search marketing issues.

Getting Search Engines to Re-crawl

I recently set up a new site, which isn't something I often do, and forgot to set up the meta title and description. Now what is called up on Google for my site is HOME and a sentence from mid-page. Now that I have fixed the Web problem, how do I get the search engines to do another crawl of the site?

Blog on Different IP

I'm wondering if there is more link value provided by a new blog if it is hosted on an IP with a different C block than the IP address of the web site itself. The owner of the business would be writing the blog and sharing business expertise with the idea of building the brand of the business.

Is Twitter Cloaking Their Site to Show Adsense Ads in Their Cache?

Ok, so, I have been doing a little redesigning on Sugarrae as you all have probably noticed and I added the user photo plugin. The plugin will show pictures for commenters and authors - and since I have a lot of guest posts, I we

Lisa Nova is an Absolute Twitter Whore

So, it has been almost three months since I’ve blogged, but I saw two videos that absolutely kicked ass re: Twitter that I felt the need to share. They’re made by Lisa Donovan under the screen name Lisa Nova (p.s. it’s a shame that her real site ranks #9 for her name with a few imposters and some universal search taking the higher slots). I seriously suggest that you’re not drinking any beverages while watching:

Good Financial Advice for Startups: AKA Calacanis is Right

I stumbled across a Techcrunch post about how startups need to manage money and hiring processes or risk failing that came as a result of a post by Jason Calacanis about how startups can save money that was then sensationalized and Twitter effectively, most people point to the twitter accounts of big brands like Comcast and Zappos

Some Sugarrae.com Updates

As you can see, there is a new design for the Sugarrae site. It is a customization of the awesome Thesis wordpress theme (and you’re damn right that’s an affiliate link… I obviously thought it was good enough to actually pay for it). It has some fantastic options to it and since I am not PHP inclined, it was a very smart purchase for me.

I’ve updated my consulting page to show that I offer special community discounts in regards to Streko. Not only am I the official Sugarrae fanboy, but I still have my guest whore password and I decided to light some fire under Rae’s ass.

I mean seriously, who gives a crap about Lisa Nova? Last time I checked she wasn’t paying Rae anything. So why waste the sp

Not at the SMX? Want to be? I can help…

Its that kid again, Michael Streko - the one who was unable to write a post because of some crappy car accident, remember it could have been awesome? Well guess what - its going to be awesome. While Rae is out ~~drinking~~ speaking at the SMX I have invaded her blog for the guestwhore post that should have been…

So I am not at the SMX - yeah it sucks.

Pimping Your Wordpress Theme for Humans

When we talk about “pimping” a Wordpress theme, at least in this industry, we’re often talking about making it more SEO friendly.

When I upgraded my site to the Thesis theme, I wasn’t simply looking for a “new design” (my old one was aweso

A Review of the Thesis Wordpress Theme

Before I go any further in this post, I’d like to make a few things crystal clear. I was not given a “review copy” of Thesis. I bought the theme. I f

Dear SEO Community, It’s Not Me, It’s You

Let me start off by summing up this entire post in one sentence for those of you busy actually doing some productive shit today (which I usually am):

This “community” is fucked and way too wrapped up in its own communal and deluded level of self importance and needs to get a life.

For those of you who have Search Blogger of the Day. Today I'd like to highlight a post called Top Google Adwords Quality Score Misconceptions. Remember the old days when all you had to do was buy your way to the top of Adwords? Right, and despite the fact that those old days are long gone, people still have that misconception. PPCHero debunks that and more in this post which is just one of a series of Adwords Quality Score posts. Go read it and

Google Hijacking Sites Now? No, Just Fail

Wow, I just had a bizarre thing happen to me while reading an article over on Money-Hacks.com. I’d been on this page for about 30 seconds or so, and had read half the article, before suddenly I was whisked away to another page…no, another site…a Google error page! What The … ?? Here’s where I was…

Search Blogger of the Day. Today I'd like to highlight a post called Google Local Business Center: Local Search Engine Optimisation. Richard gives some quick tips on how to optimize your local business site, using Google's Webmaster Tools, Local Business Center, maps and videos, and local business directories. If you're looking to rank better for local searches, and provide more targeted infor

About.com Redesign Goes Largely Unnoticed

Apparently, about a month ago (not sure of the exact date), About.com did a major redesign, and sadly, it went largely unnoticed. I could find a few mentions of it in a handful of blogs and a forum I visit, but it didn’t cause the kind of stir that a major redesign of a major site would normally cause. In a way, I’m not surprised, because About.com has always been the kind of site that many people hate, and yet, it’s still a huge presence on the Internet. How sad is it to own one of the largest sites, do a…

Congrats Search Marketing Standard Magazine!

Although I don’t usually do “announcement” type posts, I had to throw out my congratulations and best wishes to the Search Marketing Standard Magazine. The company has been acquired by iNET Interactive, and the staff of the magazine will remain in place. They are all jazzed about the future of the magazine, and as an avid reader, I am too. I wonder if this means we can convince them to move to a monthly print schedule (hint, hint). Anyway, if you haven’t yet subscribed to the magazine, you’re really missing out. It rocks. Search Blogger of the Day. Today I'd like to highlight a post entitled, Facesaerch for Finding Faces. Phil often brings new (or new to us) search engines to our attention, and I really think we should be paying more attention to this. Sure, we all focus our attention on those that bring the most traffic, but we need to at least check out the alternatives.

Pierre Far: Search Blogger of the Day

Meet Pierre Far, the Search Blogger of the Day. Today I'd like to highlight a post called What Do You Do With Unauthenticated Search Engine Bots?. Pierre brings up some interesting thoughts about what to do with those pesky bots. He just blocks them, but he mentions that others will either ignore them or feed them bogus info, which could get them banned (if they are MFAs that are just scraping). What about

PPCBlogger: Search Blogger of the Day

Meet PPCBlogger, the Search Blogger of the Day. Today I'd like to highlight a post called Why I'm Not a Fan of Submitting Sitemaps. PPCBlogger lays out three reasons why submitting a sitemap can be a bad idea, and it's probably not for the reasons you think. Some good arguments are made, so head on over and read the post. Do you agree with PPCBlogger? Do you have evidence to the contrary? Join the conversation by commenting on the article.

Raaj Paatkar: Search Blogger of the Day

Meet Raaj Paatkar, the Search Blogger of the Day. Today I'd like to highlight a post called Site-wide Links Can Hurt Your Rankings. Raaj explains what sitewide links are, and then discusses the value of these links, going so far as to say that they can actually hurt your rankings. Do you agree? Have you tested the effects? Raaj also wonders about blogrolls, since these are often sitewide. Go read Raaj's post, and then chime in with your

Build up Your Site Traffic With Article Marketing

Right off the bat, I want to disclose that I'm not an SEO guru. Yes, I've studied it and I do know something about SEO, but my expertise is actually in generating great content. I work for a magazine and write articles each month, but I also have a website with lots of info and I make some good money off it as well. While I am not quite ready to quit my job and work from home in my pajamas, I have had some great success with my website using article marketing, and I want to share some of the tricks I've learned with you.

Engage the Cloaking Device: My presentation at SMX Advanced (slides and comments, too)

I promised everybody that I’d be posting my presentation slides from my talk at the SMX Advanced Bot Herding panel, so here they are! First, let me say that I was very excited to be speaking at a major search marketing conference, and I can say with confidence that all the traveling was definitely ...]

Link Mass: How to determine how much effort it takes to rank for any particular keyword phrase

Based on the emails and response I received for my contribution to the “Link Building Secrets” project, I know that I am not the only one that loves to use metrics to measure how close I am to my goals. Thanks to everyone for your emails and encouraging comments. In this post I want to ...]

A Radically New Concept in Keyword Research

SEO expert and blogger Donna Fontenot recently honored me with a positive review of my recently launched software, RankSense. I must admit that I was not born a salesman and I detest hype and hyperbole, so it feels great when my peers see the value in what I am trying to bring to the market. ...]

Using pay-per-click guinea pigs: How to leverage PPC for more successful SEO campaigns

It happens to the best of us. You work on an SEO campaign with a few carefully chosen keywords for months. But when you finally get to the top of the search engine results…nothing. The traffic you expected doesn’t come in or, even worse, neither does the money. You start to wonder, “What went wrong? ...]

Baiting and Beseeching — Obtaining the right mix of chasing links and getting them to chase you

In this blog, I’ve often spoken about different link-building strategies. Generally, we can break them down into two categories: chasing links vs. letting them chase you. Both methods have their pros and cons, and personally I’ve found that a mixed approach of link acquisition and link baiting is best. In this post I’m going to ...]

Simple SEO: explaining and understanding SEO in the simplest way possible

It’s been a while since I’ve had time to post here as I am extremely busy with RankSense. In selling an SEO software suite I answer a lot of technical questions, but, oddly enough, I feel I have become much better at explaining what SEO actually is. As SEO has become more mainstream, ...]

Do we follow? A look at the notorious nofollow attribute

This is a post I wanted to do a while ago, but I didn’t find the time. It’s about the infamous nofollow attribute. As most of you know, I’m not particularly a fan of the nofollow tag. In this post I’m going to talk about why it is used and, I say this part sadly, ...]

The SEO feasibility report: When SEO is a good idea and when it isn’t

This is a guest post by Paul Burani from Clicksharp Marketing, a very sharp search marketer I met in NY In the search engine world, it’s easy to think in terms of black and white. Some traffic you pay for, some you don’t. There’s page one, and there’s everything else. And of course we ...]

The Slow Sale: Getting conversions from ads outside the search world

I’ve been spending a little bit of time lately out of the search marketing world and into the broader Internet marketing space. I signed up for every “guru’s” newsletter, accepted all the free offers and I even signed up for a few paid ones. There are a lot of scams out there, but ...]

Keep your eyes OFF the search engine rankings

There’s been an interesting debate on WebmasterWorld, Search Engine Roundtable, Sphinn, SitePoint and Search Engine Watch about Google’s recent block of popular rank-checking tools like WebPosition Gold and WebCEO. It appears that clients are very used to tracking their SEO consultants’ efforts and gauging their success by looking at the regular rankings report. But querying ...]

Benefits Of Blogging - A Practitioner’s Perspective

Two things in this post: 1) Quick reflection on a birthday. 2) My perspective on the benefits from blogging. Hopefully you’ll have as much fun reading this as I did writing the post. Act 1. Occam’s Razor (the web analytics blog, not the principle!) is exactly two years old today. First post: Traditional Web Analytics is Dead. I can’t believe it ...]

A Primer On Web Analytics Visitor Tracking Cookies

If you are using a modern web analytics tool (tag based or log based) it is quite likely that it is using cookies for tracking purposes. In my conversations it is embarrassingly common to find a lot of FUD and confusion and lack of understanding (or appreciation of!) cookies and the role that they play ...]

Consultants, Analysts: Present Impactful Analysis, Insightful Reports

What would make you cry of happiness in a Web Analytics report? What would make you cry of happiness in any report / presentation that you got from a analytics practitioner or consultant or your mom? This post attempts to sort through the good, the bad and the ugly and answer that question (except that Mom bit, ...]

Google Analytics Help: Questions, Answers, Tips, Ideas, Suggestions

Tags, tracking advanced javascript functions, navigation summaries and exit pages, delights of benchmarking, challenges with goals and funnels, monogamy or polygamy, flash tracking and ajax, multi domain tracking, entrance paths (my favorite!), bosses and robots (is there a difference?), we tackle all these topics & more in this post. But before all that, some context. A ...]

Competitive Intelligence Analysis: Google Ad Planner

Google’s Ad Planner is less a competitive intelligence tool and more a tool that gives fantastic insights into understanding behavior of visitors to your website in context of the broader ecosystem. It also helps answer critical questions that have thus far stymied Online Marketers of all shapes and sizes (especially those in charge of acquisition). For example, ...]

Competitive Intelligence Analysis: Google Trends for Websites

If you are on the web, or do Web Analysis, it is a real crime if you don’t tap into the reams and reams of competitive intelligence data that is available online. It is a core component of a successful Web Analytics 2.0 strategy. A lot has changed even in the last six months in the ...]

Tracking Offline Conversions: Hope, Seven Best Practices, Bonus Tips

There is perhaps no challenge greater than tracking offline impact of your online presence (campaigns or other activity). It is perhaps one of the last few complex nuts left to crack. Why? Because it is hard. Not impossible. Just hard. And for now it is equal parts quantitative, qualitative and faith. This post bravely attempts to: ...]

Pick One, Just One Web Analytics Report, Go!

“You are stranded on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean. You can only pick one web analytics report to take with you on this deserted island. Which report would you take?” There are so many things wrong with the above scenario! While not quite framed that badly, I do get asked a question like ...]

Contest Winners: The Best Web Analytics Report

The original title of this post was going to be. . . . Contest Winners: We Are All Made Of Stars. I love that song (am a Moby fan) and it was the first thing that came to my mind as I went through all the comments for our fun contest last week to pick the best ...]

“Yes M’am, Yes You In The Back Row” [13 Web Analytics Questions]

In the last five weeks I have given 20 plus speeches between my public and private speaking engagements. And I am not done yet, this week it’s London and Amsterdam (Web Analytics Congres). Next week Barcelona (Practitioner Web Analytics). Whew! So lots of time on planes (including writing this post as everyone around me is sound asleep), ...]

Your Strangest Referral String

OK, we all check our logs, but just out of interest and for a laugh what is your strangest actual referral string in recent times. Found one in passing today that got me thinking: When did birdseye change the name of chicken nuggets to dippers? At the time of writing, this was a #2 spot. So go on, if ...]

SEO Roadshow 2008 - Limerick

It’s now official….. SEO Roadshow 2008 is a go project Miss it (unless you have real reasons) and you are a tool! See you there, can’t wait. Rich

I dont wanna be a gimp!

I friends dog has mashed up it’s leg. Apparently this could render the poor pup a long term gimp. Whilst gimping about ain’t that bad I am not sure it is the life for a dog. Take a look and more than anything, give it a small digg (I don’ mean kicking it): Help Da Puppy

Follow Me on #hitter or is it Twitter?

I really dont get this one. Now it has become a test of will, to never sign in again: Twitter/#hitter

Ebay Fined For Allowing Fake Goods

About time really. I don’t trust anyone on there. It is definitely “buyer beware”. But then if you really think you can get a Luis Vuitton bag for £3 you are a bit of a muppet anyway. Ebay Fined £30M for fake goods

Mark All Emails as Read in Gmail

I use a Gmail a lot and quite often I send myself lots of information as it makes a nice central storage point for wherever I will be. It can be quite annoying though when you have loads of unread emails, which can be pretty off-putting. Gmail only seems to allow you to select emails with ...]

Brand Bidding and Closed Groups - A Step in the Right Direction?

There has been a lot of talk about closed groups and the opening up of brand bidding. Many, including mate Doug Scott have been getting their truncheons in a turmoil. If you don’t know what sanctioned brand bidding is, it is where merchants allow you to bid on their brand terms. eg : Next What is different about ...]

Wordpress Failing as Real CMS?

Until wordpress can sort out the way they deal with categories they will never be able to handle the sort of sites people really need. The way categories are handled is fine if you only have a few. But if you have a need for multiple and several depths of categories, for example Countries > ...]

Man Sues Over Fake Facebook Profile

A company boss whose personal details were put on Facebook under a fake entry has begun a landmark claim for damages. A false profile of Mathew Firsht was entered on the social networking website with his name and date of birth, incorrectly stating he was signed up to gay groups. Read More Personally I think it is super ...]

Google Showing Athens 2004 Medal Tally

Medal Tally Olympics For me at this time there are some “news” results in #1 and #2 is 2. Full Medal Tally. Results. Athens Olympics 2004. ABC Sport. Medal Tally Live Results from the Athens Olympics. ABC Sport. www.abc.net.au/olympics/2004/results/medaltally.htm - 25k - Number 4 is relevant though. But surely they should have this sort of query hand promoted? Just a bit ...]

SES San Jose Day Four Wrap Up

What a great conference for SES at San Jose and the many new people to the event in attendance. Below are the TopRank team blog posts for the final day. Another big thank you goes to (L to R) Jessica, Ashley, Thomas and Dana for a great job covering sessions. If you saw these happy ...]

Google Dance 2008 Photos

There were so many good photos taken at this year’s Google Dance that we decided to show a collage here with a link to the full set on TopRank’s SES San Jose Google Dance photos on Flickr. A big thank you goes to the hard working TopRank blogging team at SES putting out an amazing number ...]

SES San Jose: Social Media Analysis and Tracking

Social Search can be used to drive traffic, conversions, and increase ROI by monitoring conversations happening online. This panel is a first for SES with Marshall Sponder, Senior Web Analyst for Monster.com as the Moderator. Industry leaders Todd Parsons, Co-founder and CPO of Buzz Logic, Rob Key, CEO of Converseon, Edmund Won, Vice President of Strategy ...]

Blog SEO Tips from SES San Jose

Blogs have been abuzz for at least 4 years in the tech space and in the past 2-3 years in the business marketing world. Like many new marketing/communication channels, there continues to be a need to demystify shiny new objects and what they mean for businesses. Blogs and search engine optimization are no different. One point ...]

Internet Marketing Conference Tips: Michael Brito Intel

Wow, what a conference! Search Engine Strategies is near it’s end and what better way to wrap up our series on internet marketing conference tips than with the following super-tips from super smart Michael Brito, Social Media Program Manager at Intel. Michael worked with HP then moved on to Yahoo and is now with Intel ...]

Internet Marketing Conference Tips: Heather Lloyd-Martin DMA SEMC

SES San Jose week is nearly over one might say we’ve saved some of the best internet marketing conference tips for last with the ever enthusiastic and insightful Heather Lloyd-Martin. Heather is Chair, DMA’s Search Engine Marketing Council and President of SuccessWorks. She also blogs about copywriting at SEO Copywriting. Attend all the “search marketing site ...]

Digital PR and SEO Series: Part 1

What exactly, does Web 2.0, social media and even SEO have to do with public relations? Everything! You’d be hard pressed to find any modern public relations agency practice that isn’t researching or already implementing a digital PR strategy including search engine optimization, blogging/blogger relations and social media. The winds of change are here and ...]

BIGLIST SEO Blog Reviews 082508

Welcome back to the BIGLIST Update of SEO, SEM and Social Media Marketing Blogs. This week’s blog reviews include ecommerce, social media and PR as well as agency insights on industry trends. Enjoy! eCommerce Optimization Blog - This ecommerce blog by eCopt (aka Matt Franklin) advises you’ll sell more online if you read the many tutorials, ...]

SES San Jose Photos - Paparazzi Style

At marketing conferences readers of Online Marketing Blog mention to me frequently about the photo roundup posts we do as favorites. We certainly like to make those posts and since readers like to see them, here is a collection of favorite candids taken during SES San Jose. Kevin Ryan, Misty Locke, Kevin Newcomb Danny Sullivan, Matt Cutts, ...]

5 Ways to Re-Purpose Content for Blog SEO

Content is King and links are Queen. Together with a nice dose of marketing they make a nice little kingdom. But what if you have trouble generating new content on a regular basis? How can resource strapped bloggers and busy web site owners leverage what they’re already doing for the benefit of their online audiences ...]

WordPress.com Bugged XML Sitemaps

WordPress.com has added XML sitemaps so I thought I would take a glance at their implementation. My immediate though was to take a look at Lorelle's sitemap.xml

Homepage daily priority
Every other page updated on a weekly basis?

That seems like a good way to tell the spiders to index your site less often than they currently do. With Lorelle you would certa

Paydirt: Blogcatalog Interviewed on Technorati Blog Advertising

Technorati have now officially announced their new blog advertising platform surprisingly called Technorati Media. It is a significant step, though not as many seem to think unusual. Afterall, Google started as a search engine, then monetized search, and finally introduced their own publisher program Adsense.

How To Build Profitable Minisites

I tend to leave newbie internet marketing tutorials to experts, but often I say that a little tongue in cheek - the people writing the newbie tutorials are often writing them because they couldn't do advanced stuff. (the "Advanced Whitehat SEO Debate?" ) In the case of Minisite Secrets Exposed, Michael Rasmussen does a great job of covering all the basics, and there are some quite advanced tip in there as well. This is a great alternative for bloggers who are struggling making any real money online.

My first cover

Paid Content - A Dying Business Model?

Michael Arrington in his boycott of Associated Press seemed to suggest that paid content is a dying business model. I must admit I am not a huge fan of linking to articles from Associated Press, simply because it is extremely difficult to determine the original source when these stories "go over the wire". A great example of the reasons why is when I reported about the Could social news aggregators such as Digg, Techmeme & Technorati be sued for copyright infringement because the frequently used lead for a story often encompasses the core story? Larger concerns will no doubt have their own team of lawyers, but do bloggers need Blogging Insurance? The idea of specific insurance policies for blogger

Eperks On Mahalo

Here is a little olive branch for the guys at ePerks, an unbiased resource that could be used to present 2 sides of the current Vlad vs ePerks legal kerfuffle.

I am not going to portray Mahalo as some kind of "sacred ground", and I have been a little negative about Mahalo in the past, but it does offer ePerks the opportunity to submit links, hopefully not from anonymous sources, of people happy with their service.

Mahalo I am sure will validate links, and if they seem to be from an anonymous shill blog on WordPress.com, my hope

Never Underestimate The Power Of The Dark Side of Search

That title might have inspired thoughs of Jedi Knights, those with ADD might have instantly warped their thought trains to Pink Floyd and "The Dark Side of The Moon". Both might be correct in their connections. Just like you couldn't see the dark side of the force, and you can't see the dark side of the moon, you can't actually see all of your traffic that originates from search on the internet. This is something that Tim O'Reily seems to be forgetting.

Search

ePerks - I Am Not A Minion Mr Cook

In what seems to be an impartial report on the ePerks vs Vlad lawsuit, Mr Ron Cook, the lawyer representing Brabus Ventures, owners of ePerks, made the following highly controversial statements.

Clearly, his minions out there are rallying behind him ...] They are trying to live off the company and raise their blog ranking. It's really disgusting.

Mr Cook, what is really disgusting is that a failed startup, ePerks, is now trying to somehow recover some or all of their initial investment by taking an innocent blogger to court. Fake Steve Jobs is an internet phenomenen and now we have fake Jerry Yang which I am sure will be a huge success, and add valuable perspective to the internet tech news scene. John Cow was a revelation, a wonderful parody of the (in)famous John Chow, and the legend continues with new owners of the parody site

Google Suggest Becomes Search Default

The Official Google Blog has acknowledged that it will begin rolling out Google Suggest, which will let you formulate queries with more ease, reduce spelling errors, and save keystrokes. An example screenshot is below: It's about time, but one wonders...

Google announced that the quality score metrics are more real time based on a per-query level, now. Not that this has been implemented on everyone's campaigns yet, but it will happen soon enough. Since then, advertisers have been noticing anomalies...

Google Ad Manager Opens to All Publishers

Google's ad serving tool, Google Ad Manager (google.com/admanager/), which launched as a beta in March is now open to all publishers. If you are a publisher using OpenAds, OpenX, phpAdsNew or a similar product, you may want to strongly consider...

Google AdSense Stops Displaying on Google Cache Results?
A WebmasterWorld thread reports that many publishers have started to notice that their Google AdSense ads are not showing up when someone accesses their pages via the Google cache. For example, a recent Google cache copy of my personal blog...

I Feel Lucky and have big Dreams, and we’re up to 40 now.
Ok, I’m at the office after midnight again, but I’m taking a break and posting a nostalgic "I’m feeling lucky rant" - hope ya enjoy my happy rant. … At times like these (when I’m at the office late at night working alone - only time I can get things like non-emergencies and emails done) I ...]

(QualityGal) Your mom doesn’t know SEO.
Part of my job, as I understand it, is helping to keep Jim honest. Not to imply that he would ever be intentionally dishonest – nor would most respectable SEO professionals – but I think that, sometimes, it’s easy for SEO folks to lose sight of the people who actually click on the pages ...]

What if a Human Reviewer Looked at your Backlinks?
So last night I gave my "Quiz" asking you to find the "unnatural" link. I’ll admit it….those pages don’t link to any of our clients, nor to any sites we own It was really a rhetorical question. The point is…you really couldn’t see what link that might, or might not, have been influenced ...]

(QualityGal) That page fails at meeting user intent. No, really.
* Jim’s note: Feel free to Sphinn this. Tough love. It’s something I’m going to have to start getting used to as the office consultant on user intent. It’s hard to tell someone - like your boss, or a client - that their keyword targeting campaign is due to fail miserably because it doesn’t match up with ...]

SES San Jose 2008 - See ya at Night!
Sunday morning I’m heading out to San Jose for the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference with 7 other ninjas. I’ve actually got a pretty busy week… Monday night there’s the IMCharity event for the The Leukemia and Lymphoma Foundation and the Childrens Hospital.� I’m also proud to say that we’re one of the sponsors of the ...]

(QualityGal) Keyword-Rich Domain Names and Sites That Don’t Suck
Kurt Krejny of Fathom SEO is causing a bit of a ruckus on Sphinn with his piece about Domain Name Gaming. Basically, he’s irritated with keyword-rich domain names being bought up and filled with useless content that ranks well. I have to agree. What’s the controversy? First, johnandrews commented that Kurt’s argument is ...]

Seeking an Experienced Perl Programmer.
We’re seeking someone who is very experienced in Perl. This job is in Troy New York. You will need to move to Troy New York. No Exceptions. Our ideal candidate: Is fluent in Perl, PHP, SQL, and Javascript (with experience with AJAX) Writes code that is easily understood and maintained by others Can design databases from complex real-world scenarios ...]

Patrick Sexton (Feedthebot) joins We Build Pages!
Last week I attended SES San Jose, and I ended up coming back to NY with Patrick Sexton (Feedthebot). We’ve got really big plans for the future of We Build Pages and Patrick will be a big part of that. Here’s the press release. I’m Feeling Lucky! document.write("Add to Del.icio.us") | Digg it | Add to Slashdot | Add ...]

How should Search Engines treat Paid Links?
Eric Enge did an excellent interview with Priyank Garge, the director of product management for Yahoo Search Technology (YST). The interview was almost exlcusively centered around to topic of "links", and Eric did a great job of asking the right questions, and Priyank gave some great honest insights into his/Yahoo’s view on links. Here’s what Priyank ...]

How many businesses really ‘get’ the social web?
This Featured Guest Post is by James Duthie of Online Marketing Banter. Image by activeside How many businesses really ‘get’ the social web? Rand Fishkin recently wrote a post on SEO Moz about ‘getting it’. By ‘it’ Rand was talking about the web… and he guesstimated that just one person in ...]

Holy Smokes - I’ve been Nominated for the Hot Blogger Calendar
Wow!! I have been nominated for the Hot Blogger Calendar!! What is the Hot Blogger Calendar? It’s a real honest to goodness calendar filled with hot guy and girl bloggers from all over the internet. And get this, the winner will travel to New York City for a ...]

TheNanny612 and the Three Avatars
I wrote a post regarding my avatar change on Collective-Thoughts. This post is a continuation of that. The avatar I had chose at the end of that post didn’t work out. And since my 6 year old daughter helped me come up with my final choice for an avatar ...]

Selling versus Telling - Does your site convert?
This Featured Guest Post is by Edward Beckett of Florida Search Engine Optimization. Image by jakeliefer It would be interesting to know just how many people in Internet marketing actually had professional sales experience before marketing on the web. Having had a bit of experience in several sales sectors, ...]

StumbleUpon is Finally Removing the 200 Friend Fan Limit
StumbleUpon has plans to finally remove their 200 friend limit. I am so thrilled as this has been a huge pet peeve for me for months now. I have over 1300 fans, but I can only make 200 of them my friends…. meaning at this moment I can only ...]

What the hell can social media do for me?
This Featured Guest Post is by Mark Hayward of MyTropicalEscape.com. Why am I asking - because your clients want to know! How do I know - because I am them. image source: azrainman I am a small business owner in the purest sense of the term, in fact, it’s just my wife and I ...]

The ABCs of Social Media
Social Desire will be featuring Guest Posts for the next few weeks. Today’s Featured Guest Post is by Mark Dykeman. Image by Steve & Jemma Copley Everyone’s got a Top Ten list, an 8 step guide, or some other how-to post to succeeding in social media. This ...]

A Recap of my 1st Wonderful Year using StumbleUpon
July marked my first anniversary being a member of the StumbleUpon Community. It has been an incredible year for me. I have met some wonderful, wonderful people. And, I have stumbled across and discovered some truly amazing websites. Sites that if it wasn’t for StumbleUpon I probably wouldn’t have ...]

Is it possible to have Intimacy online?
Image by uayebt Lately, I have been thinking a lot lately about Web 2.0, Social Networking & Romance. With the Next Generation of Web bringing all parts of the World together through Social Media got me wondering what this has done to Love & Intimacy. Is it possible to have Intimacy online? I ...]

Social Media Karma – What Goes Around Comes Around
This Featured Guest Post is by James Duthie of Online Marketing Banter Image by dmax3270 Do onto others as you would do to yourself. It’s a fine philosophy to live by. The laws of karma state that our personal actions & behaviour influence future experiences. In other words, we’re responsible for our ...]

Changes in Store for Recently Acquired Search Marketing Standard
Nearly 3 years ago, we welcomed a new magazine to the search engine industry called Search Marketing Standard. Cre8asiteforums has been a strong supporter and Publisher, Andrey Milyan, Editor in Chief, has kept us updated for years. Search Marketing Standard has been acquired by a media company called iNET Interactive, a social media ...]

Kim Krause Berg Speaking at Search Camp Philly
If you’re looking for a relaxing way to learn new skills by experienced practitioners from the web development and marketing industries, an unbelievable opportunity is available from Saturday, September 6 to Sunday, September 7 at Temple University in Philadelphia. Called Search Camp Philly, this two day event will focus on search engine marketing, analytics, web design, ...]

For SES SJ Attendees to Read on the Plane Ride Home
The annual class reunion conference for Search Marketing Industry folks, called SES San Jose is wrapping up. All week I was glued to the radio, aka “Twitter”, listening in to the events while working, cough, working. Having been to one of these affairs, catching up next week is going to be hell. Co-workers resent ...]

Do You Support Your Favorite Bloggers?
NOT EVEN BEING NOMINATED for Hottest Female Blogger, hurt my feelings is a giant relief! Because as it goes, several of my friends were nominated by their fans and made the Hottest Female Blogger Calendar poll. I was faced with having to pick just one. Ridiculous! As one who rarely wins anything (my ...]

Mobile Marketing Focus in Search Marketing Standard Fall Issue
Here’s your challenge. Where can you find topics in one place that will go with you in the car, bathroom or office and doesn’t need electronics to access? Alternatives to Google AdWords - There are? Ranked Hard SEO comic Performance pricing Mobile marketing Google Ad Planner An Interview with Andy Beal Micro-blogging (Tweet Tweet) What a Link can tell a Search Engine (peekaboo?) Tigers ...]

Bido.com Launches And I Was First FTW!
So Bido.com launched yesterday and I scored the first domain ever. Yes, I am making history. Anyway, some of you loyal readers might be unaware since this is primarily an SEO blog (or rather a rant filled time wasting blog) so I’ll fill you in. Bido does live domain auctions that are unlike any other ...]

Friday Tea Time - Failure Edition
I don’t know how you people have time to post 17 times a damn week. In lieu of an actual post, here is to me on writing another blog post. FAIL. Here are some of my favorite FAILS and other stupid things you get in email forwards. The End. Have A Nice FAIL. a Friday Tea Time - ...]

Why You Should Spend More Than $1 On Content
Has anyone noticed that all my posts lately are filed under the retarded category? Well that’s because you are. So Sugarrae Fanboy and I were sitting around not seeing any twits from Rae so we had to find something else to do. Our plan? An actual SEO post. Well sort of. Streko drunkenly stumbled upon ...]

Google Images Thinks I Fail At Upskirt Voyerism
WTF Google? So I’m browsing through my webmaster console for this blog. I don’t know why, I was bored I guess. Now I realize some of the images I put on this blog aren’t exactly safe for those of you under 25, but give me a break. There is no reason one of my pictures ...]

Yo Fat Girl Look At Me, I’m Skinny. It Never Stopped Me From Gettin’ Busy
If you’re offended…STFU already. That’s shut the fuck up already for you idiots who have been living in a cave. It’s an analogy. Or metaphor. Or something, I skipped English a lot. Maybe I should say “Yea, I do a little blackhat, but I can whitehat circles around your ass.” There’s been a week of ...]

Back In Action, Canada, And Mosquitoes
As you may have noticed, I’ve been absent lately. Some of you know it’s because Google aimed the Hammer of Dawn at one of my sites and blew me into oblivion. After nearly a month and a half of hell work correcting “violations”, they decided to play nice and let me back in. I’ll be ...]

Open Letter To The SEO Community
SHUT THE FUCK UP Many moons ago I wrote about staying away from posting just be keep a consistent posting schedule. I’m changing my mind. Don’t waste any more of my mother fucking time with useless shit. Post all you want about fake profiles. Call someone out if you want, but have a fucking legitimate reason. ...]

SEO Sucks And Shoemoney Swallows At SES
Since my padawan wouldn’t get off his ass and do this, I felt it my duty to be a dick. Someone had to. Actually I’m just pissed I’m not there. So with Shoemoney sporting the SEO Sucks t-shirt, I’ve made the one I’m wearing to Pubcon. Complete with a cardboard cutout of Chris Winfield. Just joking Shoe, ...]

Do Not Click Here
No, I don’t have a post done, I’m busy. I told you not to click, it’s your fault. SMX Social next week. I’ll be there Monday - Thursday. Hit me up on twitter or shoot me an email and we’ll have some Jager. Don’t try to keep up, you’ll regret it. � � � ...]

[($ Money) / Google Hatred] = Rank
Since I don’t have time to post because Sergey Brin and Larry Page decided bring the pain, here is something for your enjoyment from Search Engine Journal: a ($ Money) / Google Hatred] = Rank

SMX Stockholm
I love this job at times. I have NO customers in Sweden and I have to be honest - there are plenty of clever enough Scandinavian Search Marketers out there. But somehow I seem to have been asked back to Stockholm time and again, for both SES and now SMX. I think that this happens ...]

Yahoo warning in organic results
Has anyone seen this before? Hayley just noticed it. A number 1 organic result being highlighted as an email spammer! What’s especially interesting is that Yahoo chose to tell you they are a spammer rather than give them a penalty or ban them. Initially I thought that’s crazy… but actually it’s quite clever. It is ...]

10 ways to be in 10 places at once
Do you feel some people are everywhere at once online? I don’t blog much - but if I did, here are some of the techniques I would make more use of. 1. Schedule your blog to post when you are doing something else. This isn’t as pointless as it seems. I am writing this at 4:45 ...]

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SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 27, 2008