1. Liz Jones Daily Desperate Search

    1 month, 1 week ago

    The power of searching on the Internet can often be undervalued and indeed social networking sites sometimes suffer journalistic criticism. Facebook for example has suffered bad daily press thanks to Liz Jones of the daily mail. Mel Carson at Microsoft ran this by me and I have to concur with his findings. Liz Jones eluding […]

    Dave Naylor

  2. Looking for Guest Posts

    1 month, 1 week ago

    So over the years I’ve been asked more than once do I accept any guest posts, and they answer has always been no. Well I’ve decided to change that policy and try letting a few guests posts go out and see what happens.
    So what’s it take to be accepted as a guest author? Well you […]

    Michael Gray

  3. Google Loves Wikipedia - Even the Empty Pages

    1 month, 1 week ago

    If you’re one of those kooky SEO’s that doesn’t believe that domain authority/trust is the single most important factor in SEO today, I really think you are either blind, stupid or both. Situations like the Tour De France really highlight the weaknesses in the Google Algo.
    The official Google Blog has a post about the Tour […]

    Michael Gray

  4. $100 of FREE Text Links

    Recently

    The friendly folks at Tet Link Ads are offering all new customers

    Text Link Ads

  5. Does SEO Consulting Have a Future?

    1 month, 1 week ago

    This is a guest post by John Hargaden from wevolution.ie, which is a follow up to our post on selling SEO consulting services.

    a chip in the sugar

    Try not to look like a country bug. Blend. Blend in.
    - Flik, A Bug’s Life

    The complexity of SEO, the forensic nature of parsing words and matching lines, is a hard sell. How do you describe it without sounding like Lou Grant, as opposed to a can-do service provider? PPC is transparent, measureable, a better market to focus on.

    SEO versus PPC. Experiential versus rational processing. Intuition versus logic.

    Once upon a time, there was no ‘versus’, no sound of a hair, splitting. Just SEO and PPC. Now, as the online market matures, limbs get minds of their own, and the question becomes, “Which would you prefer, working in organic search or working in PPC?” And I say, “Organic search” (because I’m trying to be cool). But I mean, “PPC” (because I need to eat).

    And I also speak today, because I can’t help it, about the parallels I see in the evolution of the online marketing sector today, buffeted by a recession (petty distinctions among the econ gurus aside) as a mirror of the games development industry in 2000, buffeted by the dot com deflation.

    Why Pay-Per-Click is Important

    Pay-per-click marketing allows you to test in real time. Conversely, the more expensive the associated PPC ads are, the more value there is in performing SEO on a site in a paid niche.

    Why Traditional SEO Consulting Tires Easily

    In a frontier, we few settlers have the time and space to hold hands, to tame the beasties. With online marketing, the elastic mindshare stretches ever outwards, and how a client interacts with the media and people in their marketplace (and here I’m thinking particularly of social marketing, semantic search etc.), rapidly morphs as time delivers a consumer and producer net-literate family – we will watch our care grow surly, independent and, oddly enough (or maybe not oddly at all), conservative and risk-averse.

    Oh dear.

    As SEO movers and shakers, then, our assumed mantle of progenitors will, as history teaches, count for nought; it will be up to us to change. Again.

    But, here’s the thing: companies and corporates, for all their twittering on about flat management structures, are hierarchical, irrespective of how big the base or how shallow the pyramid. And I mention this because, at this stage in the evolution of the search marketing industry, the internal architecture of a company cannot accommodate what is, at this moment in time, an essentially horizontal agent – the SEO analyst. You can tell that companies are caught in the headlights of oncoming online traffic, because they invariably advertise for an online marketing manager “….reporting to the Marketing Manager.”

    Ah lads, get a grip.

    I have faced grown marketing managers across the mahogany tables of traditional sales and marketing lairs, lilac carpets bristling with empathetic static, as their watership down eyes peer into mine, pleading with me to answer that question normally reserved for their newly-appointed, crabbid-out CEO, but now commandeered almost exclusively on the appointment of an online marketing executive, “What the hell am I supposed to do with him….?”

    Empathy is a shared keyword. You hear a lot of talk about empathy. Perhaps, as an online marketer, I can admit to valuing the relationship with the Client more than the relationship with the product. Liking the Client drives motivation. I wouldn’t worry about it – it’s a growing pain.

    The point is, search results – the kind that the Client wants – are predicated on future, not current, ambitions. Marketing managers, and their staff – they implement based on what’s coming down the product pipeline. The Head of Search Marketing, on the other hand, is required to be at the conception of the new ambition, before the specifications are written, at the point where the Boss wakes up in bed in a cold sweat, turns, and, leaning over his (shhh, sleeping) Corporate Body, whispers to his online acquisition principal (who, convinced that he as ‘a bit of all right’, as opposed to being, quite literally, just ‘a bit on the side,’ is patiently consuming lines of shifting search engine algorithms under a night-light livid with the colour of validation), “I think I know where this is going to next.”

    Yummy.

    With marketing managers, size matters; we, on the other hand, console ourselves with the thought that it’s what you do with it that counts. Traditional marketers view adrenaline as a reward; we view it as a rival for our charms. Design versus dasein. A chip in the sugar.

    Which reminds me: epistemology and metaphysics, logic, semantics – we need philosophers, not technologists (whatever they are). And still we repeat the sins of our forebears, when online games recruitment banged on about quote having a passion for gaming unquote, until it copped itself on and realised that what games development needed were full sets of feet to march forward upon, not more ingrown toenails. Perhaps even we can teach the old dog new tricks.

    Less self-regard, more oxygen. To paraphrase William Goldman about another all-sex, zero-foreplay industry, nobody knows everything.

    Why Traditional SEO Consulting Will Persevere

    Businesses that value their online objectives will be clever enough to realise that you can internalise process, you can internalise implementation, but you must outsource strategy, you must outsource training, you must outsource mentoring, you must hold your nerve, be sufficiently confident to absorb externals telling you what needs to be done – and what doesn’t. The only people I know who can provide that level of service are people who value what they have learned from their mistakes more than their successes. Scars versus skills. SEO versus PPC.

    Cor. And blimey.

    John HARGADEN
    wevolution.ie

    Aaron Wall

  6. Website for Sale

    1 month, 1 week ago

    You are starting an online business venture and have heard that new sites lack authority and could take months before they see visitors, you don’t really have the budget for  ppc  or indeed SEO yet can afford an initial outlay on a website. You are not really concerned about how the website looks and have […]

    Dave Naylor

  7. Yahoo Board to Tears

    1 month, 1 week ago

    Money talks, well it certainly may do at Yahoo. Investors line up for the kill and  any fears about change of  Yahoo ownership are of course allayed with all contenders emphasising maximum shareholder values. Icahn’s proposal to change the Yahoo board may well take flight. Meanwhile, as if  waiting in the wings Microsoft are now […]

    Dave Naylor

  8. Hey Google Going to Drop the Paid Links Hammer on Coke

    1 month, 1 week ago

    Hey Google Going to Drop the Paid Links Hammer on Coke? I’m not sure how sending someone a mini fridge knowing full well they are going to blog about it is any different than sending someone cash for link advertising. Then again you created the two tiered internet justice world we now live in, and […]

    Michael Gray

  9. Google locks down Universal today

    1 month, 1 week ago

    Dan Horton lost a bet today .. to me HAHAHA, after I blogged about Marc Chagall, he said that I was trying to rank for that term, so I bet him a £10 that the post wouldn’t rank in www.google.co.uk by 5 o’clock today.
    So why did I win, well it was pretty obvious that if […]

    Dave Naylor

  10. Follow Me on Friend Feed - Yes it’s Time

    1 month, 1 week ago

    We’re getting close to approaching critical mass on friend feed, and with twitter’s horrible performance and feature removal yes I think it’s time people start looking at friend feed.
    if you’re interested you can follow me there Michael Gray on Friend Feed
    Feel free to drop a link to your profile in the comments, spam from low […]

    Michael Gray

  11. Google’s “&suggon=1″

    1 month, 1 week ago

    Ideas on a postcard for what this switch does, Seen quite a Few in my referrers recently.
    Dave

    Dave Naylor

  12. Marc Chagall : Google Logo

    1 month, 1 week ago

    Today’s is Marc Chagall birthday, born in 1887 died in 1985, the I came across his work years ago ( thats another long story, but I like stain glass windows ) he has an amazing piece in the UN

    DaveN
    “All colours are the friends of their neighbours and the lovers of their opposites.”

    Dave Naylor

  13. How to Guarantee Your Stories Will Fail on Digg

    1 month, 1 week ago

    Here’s a perfect example of how to shoot yourself in the foot on Digg (link)
    What’s going to get more attention, clicks, or votes …
    “How to avoid laptop loss at the airport”
    or
    “US Airports Lose Over 10,000 Laptops Every Week”
    If you’re wondering why your submissions flounder look at your titles are they more like #1 or […]

    Michael Gray

  14. Selling SEO Consulting Services

    1 month, 1 week ago

    Why Traditional SEO Consulting Usually Sucks

    I do not like doing much traditional SEO client work, and see the business model as having limited longterm value for most SEO consultants. The best consultants could usually make more promoting their own sites and brands than they would working for clients.

    • Most prospective SEO customers are not ranked well because their businesses are unremarkable and have little to no competitive advantage. Worse yet, some of them have arbitrary constraints that hold back growth potential. In many cases it would be cheaper, easier, and more profitable building from scratch with a strong brand and domain name that was built around succeeding on the web.
    • Those who have not fully bought off on the power of SEO often end up underpaying the first time they buy services, which precludes honest consultants from working with them. After they got burned once, they want to minimize future risks, which sets off a market for lemons effect.
    • As the web gets more competitive many of the best SEO techniques are going to relate to content strategies and how a client interacts with the media and people in their marketplace…something that is a bit hard to control as an external consultant unless there is an internal team that also pushes to get it done.
    • Businesses that *really* get SEO and value SEO bring it in house.
    • The people with in house SEO teams sometimes hire 3rd party consultants, but there is a limit to what they *can* spend before their own competency is called in question.
    • Most the time clients do not want you to mention them, and if you do there is a risk that Google will edit the ROI right out of your service.

    3 SEO Consulting Models That Work

    If one wanted to sell search marketing services for the long haul then the best options are probably

    1. Quasi-Publisher: having an editorial position in a niche vertical (like automotive or consumer credit) where you act as both a thought leader and a promoter who monetizes through display ads, affiliate offers, and product sales. The diversity of revenue streams allows you to shift focus as desired or needed.
    2. Paid SEO Tools: some sort of tool or software product that adds incremental value to the SEO process, though this model is hard because so many people are giving away tools to gain mindshare. At the higher end this model can work for companies that get SEO but have temporary IT related roadblocks that prevent indexing, though it is hard for that to be a longterm strategy for clients because tool providers could keep hiking prices after the companies are dependant on them.
    3. In House SEO Training: some sort of training program where you help others succeed, but you offer guidance more than doing the work directly, though this model is also hard because there is so much free information, and most people do not realize the hidden cost of free.

    Why I Still do Limited SEO Consulting

    If it doesn’t pay well relative to my other income streams, why do I still occasionally sell SEO consulting services?

    1. Projects where I feel I can learn: one of the things that attracted me to search is that it intersects with so many marketing disciplines and site aspects that it feels like I am always learning. Having a partner who is a 20 year veteran of the ad agency world that knows the algorithms better than I do makes it easy to learn something from every project.
    2. Projects where I feel I can have fun: when I was new to the market cash flow would have been a bit more of a criteria, but if client work is a pay cut (which it usually is for me) then it needs to be enjoyable.
    3. Ego and validation: I think more than most people I find a need for validation. This is still a bit of a remnant character flaw of mine that I have been quickly losing since meeting my wife. But it is cool to go to websites you know and patronise often, and see your ideas and strategies make their way into the source code and marketing.
    4. Diversity: variety is the spice of life, and if you sit and look at a computer screen far too long every day it is nice to mix up what you are doing from time to time.

    When PPC is Better Than SEO

    The complexity of SEO makes the barrier to entry much higher, which is why I like SEO so much from a publisher standpoint. But if you are selling consulting services PPC is a better market to focus on. Businesses using PPC spend lots of money and would look at any external help as a chance for cost savings on current spend, rather than an unknown investment or investment that had to be limited in scope for internal business reasons.

    Are you still selling SEO consulting services? Do you still plan to do so in 5 years?

    Aaron Wall

  15. Automated Internal Linking on Steroids

    1 month, 1 week ago

    For a while Google was against the idea of seeing search results inside of search results, calling them redundant. But over the last couple years they losened up their stance on the issue…not only do they index and rank tag pages, but they go so far as generating content pages on the fly by entering keywords into search boxes on websites.

    Search and tag pages usually have some editorial input, but some community content sites (like associated content) automate the process of adding links to content through algorithms which are likely self reinforcing on rankings and revenues. eHow takes this one step further by automating the internal links and pointing them at recycled content from Dealtime, eBay, and Amazon.com…just in case you are shopping for Ice online ehow.com/shop_ice.html.

    Automated internal linking will become a big SEO trend in 2008 and 2009. Jim Boykin offers an interlinking tool inside his Internet Marketing Ninjas program, which came as inspiration for Gab Goldenberg to make a free Wordpress plugin to do the same. If a site like TechCrunch installs the plugin they could basically pick any phrase and own top rankings in a week. For smaller sites they might need to partner with a circle of 20 or so friends that swapped promotional editorial links back and forth.

    Search has been a driving force in lowering the value of most traditional media business models, but how useful will search be if most major publishing platforms aggressively use automated internal linking, especially if they start doing it to point links at custom advertising pages focused on high value keywords? The problem with many publishing business models is a high cost structure coupled with poor targeting. Automated internal linking fixes the targeting issue, and those ad pages would subsidize the cost of their editorial.

    Update:

    I am guessing that if people are too aggressive with this they could get penalized. In fact, at SMX Todd Friesen stated the following tip, attributing DaveN as the source

    Because different link brokers moved from Sponsored Links to inline linking, there’s now a Google filter that looks for too many new links coming from old blogs. If you have a network of 40 aged blogs, go back into the archives, add a link to the site you want knocked down across the network; you’ll knock someone down.

    A safer way to use the automated linking strategy is to look at data from tools like SEO Digger, ranking reports, analytics, and SEO Digger. See where you rank close to the top, and then add a few more links pointing at pages ranking for the best keywords…keep iteratively testing and make a number of smaller moves rather than automating mass shifts in PageRank, especially if you are doing automated linking cross site.

    Aaron Wall

  16. Social Network Theory

    1 month, 2 weeks ago

    The more I learn about the field of SEO the more it feels like public relations and the less it feels like anything to do with machines, algorithms, or search engines. I am soft launching a blog about social stuff called social network theory.

    Not so much Digg spamming sorta stuff, but tips and ideas about how social networks work from my limited understanding thusfar. In time I hope to read lots of books on the subject and related subjects like behavioral economics and linguistics. The blog might just be a fling, or it might turn into more if I really get into the topic. SEO Book will still be my main venture for the foreseeable future.

    Aaron Wall

  17. Sponsored Links

    Recently

    Google

  18. Hey Fortune Would it Have Killed You to Put in A Few Pictures

    1 month, 2 weeks ago

    So Fortune Magazine has an article titled Jimmy Choo founder’s well-heeled office. In it they talk to Tamara Mellon the founder and president of Jimmy Choo and she gives some tragically desperate to sound hip and inspired, suggestions on setting up an executive office space. OK good title, lame-ish content, but where’s the payoff with […]

    Michael Gray

  19. Would you buy a HTC Diamond ?

    1 month, 2 weeks ago

    let’s have a quick straw poll here, If you had decided that you are going to buy a sim free HTC diamond, and someone sends you two sites to buy from both are the same price, same offer really, but one site is covered in adsense and one isn’t.
    are You like me, does Adsense turn […]

    Dave Naylor

  20. Why Fast Company Won’t Exist Long Before 2016

    1 month, 2 weeks ago

    So Fast Company posted an article entitled Six Jobs That Won’t Exist in 2016. Hey Fast Company Staff get your heads out of your collective asses and stop with the paginated articles … especially when you don’t need them … if you don’t people will stop reading you and you won’t be around to see […]

    Michael Gray


Page 6 of 29« First...«45678»...Last »