This week we did a bit of house cleaning and removed 37 blogs from the BIGLIST of SEO blogs - some of them from well known SEOs. One of the quality measures we use for inclusion on the BIGLIST is frequency of posting. If a blog gets stale, we say bye bye for now. Get your BIGLIST updates via Twitter.
This week’s update includes several SEO blogs new to our list and a few re-inclusions. Enjoy!
John W. Ellis SEM Blog - John writes mostly about PPC, analytics, SEO and social media marketing with a bit of sports, travel and Nashville sneaking in from time to time.
SEM Geek - Besides contributing at SMG, Greg Meyers writes an awful lot about paid search marketing including specific PPC platforms, analytics and overall marketing on the internet.
Gonzo SEO - Taylor Pratt writes about his personal experiences with search engine optimization and client relations […]
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Written by on March 14th, 2008 with no comments.
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Just as with Leverage Your Brand Lovers, the “Branding and Search” session gave the SMX West audience much to think about.
Bob Tripathi, Search Marketing Specialist at Discover Financial, reinforced the need to understand your brand as it relates to SEO/SEM.
Brand Recognition: Do searchers recognize your brand?
–ex. McDonalds’ arches are recognized worldwide
Brand Perception: Do searchers know what you do?
–ex. Discover Financial doesn’t just offer credit cards, but they offer a slew of other financial services
Brand Loyalty: Are searchers loyal to your brand?
–ex. Google and its VERY loyal followers
Brand Affinity: Are searchers aspiring to be part of your brand and culture?
–ex. Mercedes and the status associated with the brand
Not every searcher will know your brand, be loyal to it or want to be part of it. But you have a better chance of influencing how prospects and customers view your brand by ensuring you target the different types of searchers.
Bob introduced the […]
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Written by on February 28th, 2008 with no comments.
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Day 1 of SMX West wrapped up with a tailgating party and the SMX Search Bowl which pinned the search engines, the search marketers and Microsoft against one another in a game of industry-related trivia.
Tailgating party at SMX West
More tailgating
and more tailgating, but this time people were paying attention
The SMX Search Bowl contestants, with host Danny Sullivan
Matt Cutts getting ready to play
A packed house for ‘kick off’
Look - I’m one of the contestants!!!….sort of
Sponsored By: Check Out the New TopRank Site SEO, Social Media, Online PR and Email Marketing
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Written by on February 27th, 2008 with no comments.
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The personas session, today at SMX, reminded me so much of psychology classes in college. A large group of people discussing why other people behave the way they do.
Gord Hotchkiss, President and CEO of Enquiro, kicked things off by helping the audience understand the factors impacting how humans make decisions, including:
explicit, implicit memories
past interactions with a brand
current interactions with the brand
emotions
Additional panelists included:
Brian Bond, VP Marketing and Products, Future Now, Inc
Ian Lurie, President, Portent Interactive
As Ian put it, personas are our brand’s imaginary friends.
I think the advantage of personas is really in the research it takes to get there. In order to develop personas, you must dive deeply into what’s behind prospects’ decision making, something that companies may not always invest the time in understanding.
Understand your prospects and customers (remember, they are your former prospects), what makes them tick and why they chose you.
If you decide to use […]
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Written by on February 26th, 2008 with no comments.
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Hello – My name is Nicole St. Martin. I recently joined TopRank Online Marketing as an Search Marketing Manager. I will be working with the TopRank team as a liaison between clients and the service specialists, assessing client marketing needs, providing strategic direction and setting tactical implementation plans.
After working in the SEO industry for 6 years, it’s refreshing to be part of a company that is customer focused and truly passionate about what they do.
Search Marketing is well documented as one of the most effective marketing strategies a business can employ regardless of the economic environment. Now more then ever companies recognize search as an essential element to their businesses bottom line and are seeking out the help of professional SEO firms.
Finding the right search marketing agency is no doubt a daunting task. But what happens once you’ve done your due diligence and chosen an SEO firm that best suits […]
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Written by on February 21st, 2008 with no comments.
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Monday night, Jessica and I represented TopRank at a Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) Event in Minneapolis.
In the first of a series entitled ‘Conversations About the Future of Advertising’, Jan Leth from Ogilvy & Mather gave a presentation entitled ‘Dada, Data, Alpha and Beta’ in which he highlighted how marketers can take advantage of the digital age.
In particular I found interesting, the idea of momentgraphics versus demographics. Marketing of years past would have concluded that we need to know the age, race, income and interests of each of our prospects.
Momentgraphics focuses on the periods of time in which we need to target prospects. For example, someone searching for the phrase ‘cold medicine that works in less time’ is the prime target for a company producing cold medicine. The demographics of that person are irrelevant because we know they are in a ‘target moment’ making them the target market.
To take […]
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Written by on February 6th, 2008 with no comments.
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9:45am: Managing Search in an Uncertain Economy with:
LeeAnn Prescott, Director, Research & Communications, Efficient Frontier
Roger Barnette, President, SearchIgnite
Joe Charlson, CMO, EDMC
Moderator, Cam Balzer from DoubleClick Performics
Cam: “What uncertain economy?”. Panel will offer two perspectives: Agency (LeeAnn and Roger) and a client side marketer or CMO perspective (Joe).
LeeAnn from Efficient Frontier, manages 300-400 million in paid search management. EFF has seen an increase in spend of 35% over the past year.
Roger from SearchIgnite explains their technology platform and says they haven’t had that much fluctuation.
Joe from EDMC gives a client perspective. EDMC is a parent company, direct response. 70& of students from marketing, lead gen. Sees search spend rates to continue. In the past took a leap of faith and spent more without the data tracking and now that they have that, they’ll continue.
Search will be the one channel that will continue to perform and show a return (in an uncertain […]
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Written by on December 13th, 2007 with no comments.
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9:00am: Keynote address - FaceOff: Will Agencies Ever “Get” Search? with:
Gord Hotchkiss, CEO & President, Enquiro
Mike Margolin, VP, Interactive Marketing Director, RPA
To present his point about whether agencies “get” search or not, Gord started things out by telling a story. He brings up John from MediaPost to be a human map of Ontario, points out some factual information about Ontario.
Gord asks the audience, “Based on that, would you want to visit?” Not really. To find out more about Ontario, what would you do? Search.
Using broad topics and search phrases, what sorts of sites would you expect to find? Official Tourism board. Unfortunately, that site isn’t going to get found. What the OTB bid via paid search was all long tail phrases and only from April - July. Doing so misses out on all the investigative search and off season search from people planning vacations.
Gord says that for some […]
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Written by on December 13th, 2007 with no comments.
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Search Marketing within large organizations, often presents a unique set of problems back to the search marketer/marketing firm.
It’s nothing that’s does on purpose (for the most part), but rather it simply comes along with large, complex organizations.
The panel for this session outlined what they see as the most frustrating components of working for large organizations and how search marketers can adapt to reach the end objectives.
The panels’ top frustrations include:
1. Uneducated individuals
2. Resistant individuals
3. IT Departments that say NO
If you’re running into any of the above while trying to work with an organization, try the following:
Uneducated Individuals
1. If there are uneducated individuals within the organization, which there will be, then educate them! Explain what SEO/SEM is, how it works and share case studies/results to get them on board.
2. Identify internal champions of Search and give them the tools to help educate others in the organization. This will ensure that positive information […]
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Written by on December 4th, 2007 with no comments.
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Day two at SES Chicago opened with a keynote speech from Seth Godin talking about Meatball Sundaes.
So what’s this Meatball Sundae all about?
Let’s break it down first: The meatballs are the core of the organization whether it’s products, services or traditional marketing.
The sundae, the whipped topping, nuts, sprinkles and cherry is what new marketing provides including channels like social media.
I’m sure we can all agree that a meatball sundae does not sound appetizing, but they’re being created across organizations with marketers trying to force traditional messages into new online channels.
Seth encouraged the audience to embrace what the web wants and architect your messages accordingly.
Specifically, Seth gave the audience 14 Trends that can help us avoid making a meatball sundae:
1. Direct Communication with your target market.
Stop creating go-betweens and hurdles that stop your customers from talking to YOU.
2. Consumers are louder than ever before.
If consumers are Chatty Cathy’s, give them […]
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Written by on December 4th, 2007 with no comments.
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