Sunday, August 26, 2007

Impression Share Reports for Adwords

Impression Share Reports for Adwords

Google announced on the Adwords blog that they now provide reports that show your share of total impressions for your keywords. Basically this means what percentage of total searches for your keywords did your ads show up for. Very useful to know what kind of penetration you're getting in your market (are you leaving money on the table?), but also useful to gauge the true number of total searches for any given keyword or industry.

How to Get Flashed by Google

How to Get Flashed by Google

Adam Lasnik posted the official guidelines from Google on how/when to use Flash content on a website.

The basic premise is, always show the search engines the exact same thing as you're showing your users. So you might get in trouble if you're hiding a bunch of keyword-rich content in an invisible div and that text is completely different than what shows up in your flash content. Best practice is to use Flash sparingly and support it with good, solid, on-page (visible) content for the search engines to chew on.

SEO.com - Official Announcement

SEO.com - Official Announcement

We made the Official announcement today about the acquisition of Web Targeted and the launch of SEO.com. We also decided on a logo for the new company and we've got a new website design in the works. Stay tuned for more new stuff from SEO.com in the coming days and weeks.

Search Geeks get a Digg of their own

Search Geeks get a Digg of their own


I've been impressed with the quality of the content being pumped out by Danny Sullivan and friends over at Search Engine Land, they do a good job covering the news and offering insight about all aspects of search marketing. I feel like Search Engine Land has emerged as the leader in the industry for timely, relevant, and quality news. Everybody loves Danny and he's got a great team of writers and contributors in the Land. On the Daily Searchcast last week I heard Danny announce his new social network for search marketing types: Sphinn. Although I haven't taken the time to go check it out myself yet, but it looks very cool and I read a glowing review by Rand at dmoz, so I better go sign up and try it out. I think it's a great idea that was overdue. There are so many search blogs and stuff going on in the industry, it's hard for any of us to keep up--especially when our jobs as search marketers take so much of our time. Like most SEOs I know, I subscribe to dozens of search blogs, but it's getting hard to sift through and find the best stuff. Digg and other social networks have the bad habit of burying good content just because it comes from SEOs. So it's great to have a place where all of us search geeks can stretch out and share our opinions about all the happening stuff in search. There are some detractors who are really just trying to get some of the attention themselves. It's funny how even the guys who rip on Sphinn are over there trying to Sphinn their blog posts. That's the search industry for you, everyone's got an opinion, but we're never too proud to pass up a good link ;)

Speaking at Domain Roundtable in Seattle Next Month

Speaking at Domain Roundtable in Seattle Next Month

I am excited for the opportunity to be a part of the SEO 101 panel at the upcoming Domain Roundtable conference in Seattle. The conference is Aug 12-15 and finishes up with a huge live domain auction that looks to be even bigger than the auction at the TRAFFIC show in June. They've got more domains, with lower reserve prices, so there should be a lot more sales. I'm excited to meet more people in the domain industry along with my esteemed colleagues who will be joining me on the SEO panel: Aaron Wall, Todd Mintz, Joshua Padau, and John Tompkins.

Check out the agenda for more info about the sessions. The sessions look good, but the networking will be great! You should definitely check it out of you're able to make it.

Top 25 SEO Blogs

Top 25 SEO Blogs

I just noticed a post on Sphinn a list of the top 25 SEO blogs. All the usual suspects are there, most of which are in my reader for daily consumption. Good stuff. Danny's Search Engine Land came out on top. I have to agree that they are the #1 source right now for SEO news, tips, etc. They've expanded into social media and other aspects as well, and continue to crank out the goods.

Forget About Best Practices

Forget About Best Practices

Kevin Gold says there are no best practices...he's not really saying there are no best practices for search marketing, but that "best practices" are simply a starting point from which you should test and constantly improve upon. I have to say I agree with Kevin on this, if you use the standard best practices to get started, and then constantly test different variations and strive to improve, you will develop the true "best practice" for your own situation.

Seth Godin Squidoo Article

Seth Godin Squidoo Article

Pauline Kerbici from High Rankings recently posted an interview with Seth Godin about Squidoo. She asks some interesting questions about Squidoo and SEO. Several interesting points arise. She pointed out some over-hyped content on Squidoo where they previously touted the Google PR-raising value of having a Squidoo lens. Pauline notes that the offending text was removed shortly after the interview. He says they aren't building their business to pleas Google, but he admits that the "spam overhaul" came after they got dinged by Google. He also closes by emphasizing that they've done a lot of good through the charities that they support, which I agree is a very cool part of the whole Squidoo concept. In fact, I think it would be cool to set up a similar network that gives all the money back to charities, rather than just 5% or whatever these guys do.

Popular Searches - Cool New Tool

Popular Searches - Cool New Tool

Since this blog is called Search Trends, and due to the industry I'm in (SEO), I am very interested in what people are searching for. Most of the time, my clients don't care about what the most popular searches are, they just care about the most popular searches for their industry. However, I find it very interesting to see what keywords people are searching for. Many search engines and social media sites offer up data showing the most popular searches.

Rand and friends over at SEOMoz have recently released another cool free tool, the Popular Searches tool that compiles popular search data from several data sources.

I like that this tool pulls from a variety of sources--blog search (technorati), web search (Yahoo, Google, AOL, Ask, Lycos), ecommerce (eBay and Amazon), social media (flickr, delicious). I'd like to see all this data somehow weighted and pooled into a single database that could be sorted and analyzed over specific time periods. It would be interesting to see search trends for specific products, or music bands, genres, etc. But it's definitely easier than going to each of these sites on your own to try to figure out what's hot.

Internet Business Reality Show

Internet Business Reality Show

I stumbled across the website for The Next Internet Millionaire. From what I can tell, it's a reality TV show in the spirit of The Apprentice, but this particular show is all about building an online business--and the show is only online. You can view the first episode on the website, or through iTunes. The show is the brainchild of web marketing guru, Joel Comm, who is also the host of the show. It's a very fun concept. I haven't watched the whole episode yet, but it looks like it's well produced, especially for a web-only show like this. It will be interesting to see how much attention this gets. Will we start seeing all kinds of niche reality competition shows like this? Anything is possible on the 'net.

Search Engine Strategies Coverage - San Jose 2007

Search Engine Strategies Coverage - San Jose 2007

I was planning on going to SES this time around, but I just had too much work to take time out for it. Thank goodness for all the SEO Bloggers who provide great coverage of these events. It's not quite the same thing as being there and the networking and parties can't exactly happen though a blog, but it's better than nothing.

There are several blogs that have great coverage, but the best and brightest are linked from Search Engine Land's industry conference page (thanks, Barry). You can browse by day and then they have links to the best coverage of each session. Good stuff, Maynard!

Search Engine Optimization - SEO

Search Engine Optimization - SEO

Web Targeted is now SEO.com. SEO.com is a search engine optimization company located in Utah, offering services worldwide. The key to building a successful search engine marketing plan is to target the right market and give them exactly what they are looking for. We specialize in helping our clients pinpoint their target market on the web by choosing the best keywords--the ones that convert to sales--and optimizing your website for top search engine placement. By using our proven, targeted internet marketing tactics, our search engine consultants help you increase the traffic to your website while lowering your marketing expenses. The result is a lower cost per acquisition and higher ROI (return on investment).

Our Internet marketing consultants understand how the search engines work. We know where your site needs to show up, and we know how to make it show up in the search results. Our search marketing starts with in-depth research into your competition. We analyze what your competitors are doing to market their businesses online and create a marketing strategy to achieve your goals. We conduct extensive keyword research and work with you to identify the exact keywords and phrases that will yield the maximum conversion rate on your site, then we target those keywords and phrases in our marketing effort. In addition to search engine marketing, our marketing services include targeted link building, online press release optimization, search engine friendly web design, content copywriting and optimization, marketing planning, local search marketing, web analytics and contextual advertising.

We realize that web marketing does not end once a visitor reaches your site. In many ways, that is where your marketing efforts begin. Once your site is getting targeted traffic from the search engines, it is essential that your site provides all the necessary components to allow the visitor to complete the desired tasks. Regardless of how targeted a visitor is, you must remember that your competitor is only a click away. Our usability experts will analyze your website and order process and make recommendations for improvements. We will work with you to remove any barriers to a successful experience for your site visitors, resulting in more profitable online marketing.

When you combine highly targeted visitors from the search engines with an easy-to-use website, your website profitability will skyrocket. Your web marketing costs will decrease and you will exceed your online marketing goals.