Posted by great scott!

Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by Glen Allsopp

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

Despite my love for SEO and my presence in the industry for almost 5 years, I have to admit that I barely followed the latest trends over the last 12 months. 95% of SEO related feeds disappeared from my Google Reader account and I stopped manually checking some of the biggest resources in this niche.

The main reason for this is that I no longer work with clients so new tactics and many advanced SEO methods didn't matter to me that much. I was also at the point where I felt I was getting overloaded with the same information or bad advice, instead of sticking with the basics and going with what I know.

Instead of reading 30+ SEO feeds per day and watching every Matt Cutts video like it was a direct message from God, I shut out all the noise and just started building websites around things I love. In the 12 months since going solo I've had more success than the previous four years and I've gained rankings for a large number of very competitive keyphrases.

I'm not suggesting that you ignore the industry and try everything yourself, as there is a lot of good information out there (especially from the likes of SEOmoz, Aaron, Sebastian, Rishi and David).

What I do suggest is that you go with what works and stick to it consistently, rather than constantly looking for magic-bullets to increase your rankings. Today I want to share four things that have been working very well for me in increasing my own rankings.

Many people may disagree that this is useful in improving your rankings, but I've seen far too many examples of this tactic working well to dismiss it. I stumbled upon this idea when I released a free eBook which received thousands of downloads, and mentioned a website of mine while mistakenly forgetting to link to it.

Because the site in question was an integral part of the guide, people started "Googling" the phrase. Within the first 30 days of launching the site there had already been 500 people searching for it in Google and landing on the domain.

The reason I say this is because this website ranked 2nd in Google for its main keyphrase very, very quickly, without the link juice to usually grant such a high ranking. The site literally had 5 links compared to the hundreds that competing websites had which were also much older.

Thinking about this logically, it makes sense that Google and other search engines would want to rank a page highly when people are searching for the brand name directly. I believe that because so many people were looking for the site and having to go to page 3 or 4 to find it, the rankings improved because Google want to show the best results to their users.

Google have said that this does play a part in the algorithm, but I was surprised at how big an effect it had. I don't recommend you do this for all sites, but if you release something or mention a product, try just mentioning the name and not linking to the site (not always, of course). Get people searching for your brand / domain directly and see what that does to your rankings.

I was contemplating whether or not to reveal this as it has given me some ridiculously awesome link ideas, but I try to provide as much value as I can, so here goes. If you head on over to Flippa you can find people buying and selling a lot of successful and high ranking websites.

What I've noticed is that some people are selling a lot of content websites that are ranking for great phrases very quickly and very easily. If you look hard enough you can find sites making $5,000+ per month from rankings they've achieved in just 2-3 months.

Instead of buying these sites in all cases, I've simply looked at where the backlinks are coming from and figured out how the seller is able to duplicate them so easily. I've seen sites ranking with nothing but spammy chinese blog links and other sites ranking with freely available link sources and making a lot of money.

If you have the time to look around, there are some real link gems to be found.

In 2009 I wrote more personal development related guest posts than anybody else and in return built a blog with over 6,000 subscribers. I recently sold the site for a mid five-figure fee, but still use this tactic for a number of other sites. (I know Youmoz links are nofollow, so I'm not using this as an example).

Apart from ranking number one in Google for "Guest Blogging" (;)), the tactic allowed me to rank on the first page of Google for two phrases which each get over 30,000 exact searches per month. One of which, was the phrase personal development.

I've wrote a 2,000+ word post on guest blogging over here so I'm not going repeat everything I said there, but utilising this method is very simple:

I have noticed a few big name SEO's abusing this already (I won't say who) so I don't know how long this tactic will remain effective, but it's working well for now and is probably hard to algorithmically block in all cases.

I don't know why, but social bookmarking links (even automated ones) are helping some of my sites massively. I don't love using this tactic as it feels kind of dirty but I can't deny that it is working well.

The two instances I find it working best are:

Trying this for competitive phrases on sites that are either new or don't have many links doesn't seem to be doing much, but for the two examples above I'm amazed at how useful this has been.

I know this won't be for everyone and I would not recommend doing it on a high-profile client site, but definitely test it for yourself. You can buy software that automates the process or you can find people on Digitalpoint who are willing to do it for a small fee.

Now I'm going to spend the next month catching up on the major changes in the SEO industry, so if you have any recommended links, please do share them in the comments.

Glen Allsopp writes for ViperChill which is a blog about viral marketing. He helps people build websites that others naturally want to talk about.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by richardbaxterseo

General Error Checking

Linking Out to 404 Errors?

Canonicalisation

“Spot checks” of Front End Code, Missing Page Titles and Duplicate Meta

Site Indexation

Indexed Development / Staging Servers

Significant / Recent Changes to Server Performance

Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by jennita

Note: This post will make you smile, possibly even laugh. It won't however teach you much about SEO. You've been warned.

Last week I attended SMX West in Santa Clara, California and took a couple flip video cameras along. I thought it would be fun to do "man on the street" interviews, somewhat along the lines of Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" episodes on The Tonight Show. Another great idea I had was to employ the help of Dana Lookadoo from Yo! Yo! SEO to help with the interviews. Little did I know she'd be so great at it (ok, I lie. I knew she'd do much better than I would!). She did so well in fact that our video editor, none other than my (awesome) husband Rudy Lopez, mainly only used Dana's interviews. A rockstar in the making!

Rather than keeping you from this awesome video any further... I present to you: SEOmoz "Man on Street" - A Who's Who in Search Marketing.

Thanks to all our great participants!

I also had great intentions of getting several Whiteboard Friday's with some of the speakers. Unfortunately I ended up just toting a mini whiteboard around with me all week instead. I'm sure I looked like quite the winner with my whiteboard in hand. I wonder if people think all mozzers are required to carry a whiteboard around just in case they get the urge to record a Whiteboard Friday. heh.

Thanks for watching along! I hope you had as much fun watching, as we had putting it together. Again a HUGE thanks to Dana Lookadoo and Rudy Lopez for all their help.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by randfish

WARNING: Get ready to read with this one. There aren't a ton of fun graphics or quick bullet points, but I do promise that if you read through, you'll feel much more knowledgeable about the topic, and likely get more value from organizing, speaking or attending an event.

Over the past 6 years, I've attended nearly 100 conferences on search, online marketing, startups and technology. I've given presentations or sat on panels at nearly all of them. I've organized our own SEOmoz seminars here in Seattle and in London, built panels for a variety of other conference series and sat in the audience for many hundreds of sessions. Oddly, in the past 3 months, I've had more discussions about the conference format and the optimization of the experience than I can ever recall in previous years.

I don't know whether it's me thinking about the problem more or just stumbling into conversations that center around conference strategy and business models, but like Twitter and conversion rate optimization, it's been finding its way into the nooks and crannies of every lunch, dinner, casual coffee or post-session beer.

Wow... Even Google Trends says this is a hot topic.

I consider the organizers of conferences like SMX, SES, Pubcon & many overseas events (RIMC, SMX Sydney, the SMX/SES shows in the UK & Europe, etc.) to be both good friends and good people. This blog post is in no way meant to denigrate or cast aspersions at their intents or achievements (which have been remarkable - SEO itself has gained tremendous legitimacy because of their efforts). Quite the opposite - it's meant to highlight some of the reasons why things we, as conference goers and speakers, complain about continue and why it's hard to change the status quo. I'm also going to try putting forward some ideas at the end of the post that I have seen work well and would love to see more of (or more experimentation with) in the future.

(Added late) It's important to note while reading this post that I'm sharing my perspective, opinions and experiences, so please read with SEOmoz's usual "this is an opinion piece" lens.

Competing Incentives

On one side, we have conference & event organizers. They have businesses to maintain, revenue and profits to grow and pressures from owners/investors/boards to meet certain goals. They have to please advertisers, sponsors & exhibitors, but can't do any of that without first delighting customers (those who buy tickets to the events).

On the other, we have attendees (and, to a lesser extent, speakers) who want to learn, have an enjoyable experience and get personal and professional value from the event(s). Most attendees are not paying themselves - this is a business expense they need to justify and hence, managers and C-level types hold the pursestrings.

In the subsections below, I'll try to walk through the competing incentives and goals of these two parties and why they make the conference experience so tough to perfect.

Venues, Locations & Timing

This is one of the easiest dichotomies to describe. In one corner, we have the organizers, who are optimizing on cost. In the other, we've got attendees, who want the best experience (particularly if they're traveling). Not surprisingly, every organizer wants to hold their event at the best possible time in the most optimal location. That means, at least here in the US, winter events in warm weather climates like southern California, Las Vegas, Florida and Hawaii, summer events in mild climates like the Pacific Northwest or the Bay Area and events in extreme climates like the Northeast and Midwest in Fall/Spring.

Economics dictates that supply for these optimal locations at optimal times will be low because demand is high. This also means that prices will rise accordingly. Organizers know it's hard to pass those costs on to attendees. Once a conference's price has been set for a few years, fluctuating dramatically is challenging.

What many may not realize is some of the additional, behind-the-scenes inputs. For example, conference venues like to book 12-18 months in advance (sometimes more for very large/expensive/high demand events/locations). They require down payments and guarantees, since re-booking a space if an event cancels 3 or even 6 months ahead often proves impossible. In addition, advertisers, speakers, exhibitors and conference goers themselves get accustomed to certain events at certain times in specific places. Changing an established event always carries risk.

Next time you wonder why SES has a show in Chicago in December and New York in March or why RIMC hits Reykjavik in winter, remember that costs, momentum and contracts make those very hard things to change. If we were all willing to fly to Anchorage in January, you can bet the costs would be rock bottom.

Attendance Level

This one isn't quite as clear cut. For some attendees, an intimate, small show experience is ideal. You get one-on-one time with the speakers, more opportunity for Q+A, a less stressful environment and, typically, easier times with everything from getting good food to booking hotels to scheduling meetings with other conference-goers/speakers. However...

The incentives are frequently the reverse for both speakers (who want large crowds so they can justify the travel expense and preparation time) and for organizers (who have a tough time charging enough to a small group to make up for what a larger base could bring). Organizers also want to signal that their event is "a big deal" and high attendance numbers is one of the best ways to do this.

So why not go for huge venues and trim the costs down to minimal levels I hear you ask? Good question.

The obvious answer is profit margins (and sometimes, just covering costs), but it's not the whole reason. Advertisers, sponsors, exhibitors and even speakers want to be in front of "qualified" audiences. An audience of web marketers paying $100 to go to a show is hard to pitch as a compelling and potentially lucrative base to these groups. However, if tickets are $1,800 and 5,000 people show up, every speaker and sponsor in the world wants to make their voice heard and presence known to that group. Even the big industry players like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc. will be willing to lose their top notch talent for a week to get in front of the audience, mingle with the crowd and network with the best and brightest.

Some attendees are also more excited by large events. They provide greater opportunities to meet a high quantity of peers and help lend credibility to the value and importance of the event. They also tend to draw big name speakers and presenters, which means a perception of greater value from the learning aspects of the conference.

Of course, this is all balanced by the availability and affordability of venues. SMX Advanced happens in Seattle and for each of the past 2 years, it's been completely sold out. The organizers could go to a larger facility, but Seattle doesn't have many that support in excess of 2,000 people without dramatically raising the costs (and likely lowering quality) and the SMX organizers may like the feel/vibe of the current audience size. It can also be a positive signal to consistently sell out a show - every SEOmoz seminar we've thrown has sold out weeks before the event and this means more early bookings, greater consistency in attendance and revenue and an easier time planning (to be fair, SEOmoz's seminars are a small fraction of the size - 150-250 attendees - of true, large conferences like Pubcon, SES, SMX or even OMS - and hence aren't particularly comparable).

Speakers

Things get more contentious and thorny around the issue of speakers. Attendees and organizers alike can agree that in a perfect world, only speakers who consistently earn top ratings and attract large followings would present. Sadly, in virtually every industry, these individuals comprise only a handful of players. Google's Matt Cutts and Avinash Kaushik are likely among them as is Danny Sullivan of Third Door and Seth Godin. However, I'm hard pressed to name many more that would attract paying audiences simply with their presence.

There's also a large group of phenomenal speakers like Greg Boser, Dave Naylor, Vanessa Fox, Jessica Bowman, Marshall Simmonds and the like who are excellent presenters, incredibly valuable to the audience, and, together with other positive signals, are likely to draw in paying attendees. This is where the trouble starts, though. These individuals didn't necessarily start out as remarkable presenters. In fact, I've personally seen speakers I'd consider "rock stars" today many years back and the same couldn't always be said of them. It takes a trial-and-error, weeding-out process to determine who's going to be great, and that means you need to try out new names and faces as an organizer.

Finally, you've got groups of new or nearly-new speakers, some of whom may be diamonds in the rough and others who may be complete duds. Organizers have little information to base this on other than their CV, a pitch form and possibly recommendations from previous events. Tragically, even great online writers/bloggers/personalities sometimes turn out to be less-than-amazing when placed in front of hot lights, a restless audience and 15 minutes of Powerpoint.

Organizers & panel leaders (those who organize individual sessions or tracks) complain to me all the time about the necessity of finding the new stars, getting those diamonds-in-the-rough enough experience to shine and providing a diversity of speakers. Many technology conferences face the constant problem of gender imbalance and I'm certainly not immune to it. Last year, between Seattle and London events SEOmoz & Distilled had less than 15% women give talks - a shameful number.

Everyone can agree that we need more truly great speakers and fewer mediocre/poor ones. But when you're trying to discover new talent, mature up-and-coming stars AND bring as many speakers into the event as possible (see the next section), it clashes with the goals of consistently excellent quality speakers and presentations.

Session Formats

This might be the toughest problem of all. More speakers = more attendees. And yes, that often holds true for even new speakers and those of low-middling quality. The reason is that speakers frequently invite clients, partners and colleagues as well as promote the event on their sites, blogs and social media accounts. If you want your event to have thousands of attendees, get 100+ speakers and they'll (hopefully) help spread the word for you.

The problem is the session formats this creates. In order to maximize numbers of speakers while fixing the event length, you move from solo presentations to panels with increasingly larger number of participants.

Some organizers argue that panels are a good thing and I'd agree in moderation. For something like an "Ask the Search Engines" panel, having a representative from both Bing & Google makes sense. For Q+A sessions in general, 3-4 panelists can help to spark discussion and even get into vigorous and valuable debates (at SMX West last week, my friend Roger Monti and I got into a nice tiff that I think helped keep the audience on its toes - and yes, it was all in good fun and good humor).

However, when it comes to learning about an individual topic in a robust, in-depth fashion, I think it's very tough to argue that having a highly talented panel of 4 or 5 speakers give 10-14 minute slide decks can compare to a single 45-50 minute session with a single great speaker who can go both broad and deep (and then take questions). The highest rated panels (from my understanding and from direct experience with the ones I've seen) are always those where a remarkable presenter has the full time to dig into their subject matter. Three weeks ago I was at OMS San Diego where Dharmesh Shah spoke on Twitter and Tim Ash presented on Conversion Rate Optimization. The difference between that and a panel approach is night and day - there's just no comparison.

But, as an organizer, if you optimize towards these highly rated sessions and kill the panels, you lose speakers which costs you reach and buzz and, likely, attendees. Happy attendees might rave about the value of the session in their reviews, but no one has the incentive to fill the seats like a speaker (even a bad one). Solving this issue might be a pipe dream.

Session Topics

What about the topic choices themselves? I hear attendees constantly complain about certain topics going missing while others get too much coverage. Organizers, meanwhile, struggle with how to fit in esoteric, but likely fascinating topics against tried-and-true (and in-demand) popular sessions.

The best thing an organizer can do is to survey their audience ahead of time and plan/prepare from that feedback. But, this is much easier said than done. Organizers don't necessarily know who's going to be at a show with enough lead time to arrange speaker schedules and build a topic plan. It's also very hard to get commitments from a large number of speakers with a shorter deadline and nearly impossible to nail down keynotes and big names without months of advance notice.

When Will Critchlow and I do the planning for the SEOmoz/Distilled seminars, we get to cheat in a lot of ways. First off, we have the email addresses of all the PRO and registered (free) members on SEOmoz, so we can survey to our heart's content ahead of time (and do). Second, we actually optimize to speakers - since we largely don't use the panel approach, we pool together a list of the speakers we've seen in the last 12 months that have wowed us and then ask them to give performances that speak to their strengths and experiences. Since we only need 10-15 speakers per event, we can personally invite a handful of top-notch folks each time. We know we're only covering a fractional amount of material (more cheating), but can get away with it since this is a niche event that doesn't need to appeal to a broad audience.

Can a larger conference use these tactics? Almost certainly not. Their audiences aren't nearly as nicely packaged ahead of time, and panels are critical to growing the number of speakers, providing the diversity, giving experience to the "diamonds-in-the-rough," addressing all the important topics of the day, etc. Conferences like Pubcon, SMX, SES and OMS would also almost certainly take a huge amount of heat if they stopped accepting pitches and simply relied on a smaller contingent of consistently excellent speakers. Advertisers, exhibitors and sponsorships would likely drop too (even though they're technically not at all tied to the editorial programming side of the equation), and these are a massive source of revenue.

Amenities

As an attendee, we probably think that things like reliable wifi, better food and comfortable seating with tables and power outlets in session rooms makes a big difference. The problem is, these don't tend to correlate with how we actually choose conferences to attend and/or return to.  I know organizers who've invested hugely in the attendee experience, only to see retention rates drop (despite the fewer numbers of tweeted/blogged complaints). When those dollars are re-invested in marketing the conference, drawing in bigger keynotes, or optimizing other aspects, the numbers get better (even when cardboard sandwiches and grade-school chairs are employed).

We, as conference goers, vote with our wallets, and we apparently don't care as much about the amenities as we make out to (personal note - please, conference organizers, don't use this knowledge against us too much; I love comfy chairs, good food and great wifi).

Press Passes & Guest Passes

Speaking of thorny issues - little in the conference world raises as much public ire as this one. For nearly every event it makes good sense to give bloggers and journalists press passes. However, when a big, expensive, popular event is thrown, these can quickly gobble into profit margins with questionable returns.

The problems are myriad - bloggers don't often deliver the extent or quality of coverage they promise and traditional journalists frequently make no promise of coverage at all (and then write nothing). Feeding and seating them alone can run into the hundreds of dollars per day (trust me, you don't want to know what a trade venue will charge for a cup of coffee or a bag of Cheetos). And, as savvy organizers know, some (possibly even many or most) bloggers would pay to attend the event if their press pass request was rejected. You don't want to anger this vocal minority, but you also can't afford to be taken advantage of.

For sold out events, it gets even harder. Longtime "friends" and traditional receivers of press passes may need to be sacrificed to make room for paying attendees, especially if the event relies on those last 1-200 seats for the majority of the profit margin.

Organizers know they need to be careful to be generous, but discerning, or risk becoming known for "giving free access to anyone who can set up Wordpress." They also want to try to give newcomers to the blogging/coverage scene a chance to make an impact, while being mindful of abuse and sensitive to the dangers of angering influencers. It's a tough tightrope to walk and one that press pass requesters should be more sensitive to (I'm speaking from personal experience on this one, and know that we certainly owe some apologies for past requests and perceived slights).

Optimizing the Conference Experience

Now that we're through some of the reasons events are so hard to get right, I'll try to provide some recommendations for every participant in the process. This is personal opinion, and unlike SEO, it's not based on thousands of hours of experience, but probably just a few hundred and my own observations. Still, I hope it's valuable, or, at the least, worth considering.

Advice & Experiments for Organizers

Advice & Experiments for Attendees

Advice & Experiments for Budget Authorizers

Advice & Experiments for Speakers

Your Thoughts

I don't mean to be forward, but I suspect a lot of organizers, speakers and attendees in the search marketing conference space will check out this post. Please, please share your thoughts and feedback below, with one caveat - we like to keep this blog TAGFEE, so no harsh insults or personal attacks. That's what YouTube comments are for :-)

p.s. I'm just back from Searchfest in Portland (which was a terrific event that continues to get better every year). I was originally asked to give a 20 minute presentation on SEOmoz's toolset, but decided I couldn't be quite that self promotional and created a deck that covers a wider range. I saw folks giving my co-presenter, Enquisite's Richard Zwicky, a hard time over Twitter for talking all about Enquisite's software, but in fact, that's what we were asked to do and I was the one who went off-focus (so if anything, you should blame me). You can check out my slide deck here -  SEO Problems and the Tool to Solve Them. Hope you enjoy and sorry about the weird formatting; Scribd didn't import PPTx very well this time.

p.p.s. Please excuse my lack of links to appropriate sites/pages/people and probably spelling errors (drove back from Portland tonight and still not over my sinus infection). Jen, if you have time early tomorrow, maybe you can help add those in? :-)

Do you like this post? Yes No

Targeting Multiple Keywords vs. Singular Keyword Focus

8 Mar 2010 at 5:23pm

Posted by randfish

Despite being a seemingly simple topic, this one seems to stymie even experienced SEOs. There's a natural conflict that creates the issue - the more keywords you target on a single page, the less you need to link build and optimize (for both search engines and user experience/conversion rate) on many pages.

To answer this question in a logical and truly optimal fashion, you need to start with the answer to two other important questions:

How many of these keywords carry the same visitor intent? How competitive are the targeted terms/phrases?

When you answer the first question, you'll be able to break up lists of keyword terms into buckets of "intent." Searches are almost always intended to discover information or take action. If there are too many pieces of information/actions you need to provide on a single page, your conversion will drop. Remember that a 10% conversion rate for position #10 is better than a 0.5% conversion rate for position #1 (assuming the avgs. from the leaked AOL data cited below).

NOTE: This data is from averages via AOL's data release in 2007. New numbers have not been forthcoming from any of the engines or third-party studies.

For the second question, you need to know something about the competition levels. In a scenario where every shred of keyword usage matters a great deal, from the anchor text focus to the keyword being employed at the very start of the title tag, breaking up keyword targeting to multiple pages can make a great deal of sense. If you're deep into research on this topic, you can do something like the image below, where I've taken stats and metrics for all of the top 25 ranking pages for the query "broadway tickets" on Google.com and run analysis:

NOTE: data in this graph via Open Site Explorer's Backlink Analysis

If a keyword is highly competitive, I suggest single page targeting. This is not only because you can maximize on-page optimization, but also because it means that internal and external links that point to the page can focus more directly on the target term/phrase. It's also likely that you'll be competing against pages that are more highly targeted on that keyword phrase and could lose out if you don't have that singular, pinpoint focus.

I wrote another post on a similar topic highlighting how to format titles, meta descriptions and keyword usage on pages that aim for multi-keyword targeting that may also be of help.

Look forward to your thoughts on the topic.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Search Marketing Success Stories

7 Mar 2010 at 3:10pm

Posted by RobOusbey

Search Engine Optimization covers a huge range of tactics - all of which can bring direct benefit to a website. In this post, I've shared examples of different tactics used at different websites, and the effects that have been seen. If you're considering an SEO campaign for your site, or are trying to persuade someone else to invest in internet marketing, I hope this post will help demonstrate the potential of internet marketing.

The post includes real screen shots from Google Analytics (click any of them to enlarge) but the sites and data have been anonymized.

Target Your Target Terms

Remember that post about building a page with perfect keyword targeting? SEOmoz wasn't kidding around.

A website that sells homewares had issues with site structure and on-page targeting. Their category level pages were at subdomains such as

Getting appropriate H1 tags onto each page was a quick job, improving title tag structure took a bit longer, clean & friendly URLs and internal links with appropriate anchor text were also added.

The site saw ranking improvements across the board, which brought new traffic through head, mid and long tail terms. Can you guess when the changes were made? ;-)

Getting sorted in Google Local

Before getting into the nitty-gritty of ranking factors for Local Search, dead simple tactics, etc, it's important to get the basics right. A large chain of restaurants created a 'bulk upload' file with the correct data for each one of their locations. After uploading the file, they applied for it to be reviewed and 'whitelisted'. Local data that's been uploaded by the business owner and whitelisted is treated as authoritatively as locations that have been manually verified by postcard.

Despite various issues (Google's best practice guidelines still aren't quite the best solution in some cases) the traffic generated by visibility in Local Search has been significant and valuable. (The uploads were verified in late November when the traffic begins its steady rise.)

Architecture of Change

A current affairs magazine wanted to get more from their website. Because of falling advertising revenue, the publication was at risk of being closed down. They'd seen some growth from SEO already, but wanted to prove that the website had greater value.

Although the site had a good brand and some great content, it suffered from similar problems to many news-type websites, including badly archived content, duplicate issues and a CMS that hampered keyword targeting or promoting individual articles. Recommendations were made to improve the site's architecture and migrate to the new structure.

The effect of the changes was immediate growth which took the organic traffic to 257% in three months. A month later, the magazine's owner explained that the falling revenue from print advertising meant that they couldn't continue to lose money publishing the mag, and closed it down.

Hook, Line, Sinker

An office cleaning company wanted to improve the profile of their site through SEO. Amongst other tactics, a member of staff spent a day writing a 'linkbait' post to publish on their blog. This generated huge amounts of traffic from social media sites (dwarfing their regular daily visitors) and was subsequently linked to from dozens of sites. This post, along with other content published on the site to attract links, helped the site grow in strength and authority, and it now ranks position 3 for 'office cleaning' in their country.

Paid In Full

This is SEOmoz, but I'd like to share a graph from a PPC colleague working on a site that sells scooters. They were initially bidding on very broad terms (scooter, scooters, buy a scooter, etc) but the campaign was adjusted to target more long tail terms, including descriptions, specifications, etc.

Over a period of around six weeks, the cost per click was reduced by 30% and the more targeted traffic converted increasingly well - this allowed the site owners to increase their ad budget and generated more sales than their paid search campaign ever had before.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by randfish

This week, despite still being seriously under the weather (see this week's sad WB Friday), I flew down to SMX West to speak on the Link Building Strategies panel. Although I'd wanted to put more work in and deliver a better presentation, I received some very kind words afterward and requests from folks to share the deck via the blog. Before I embed the actual deck, though, I need to provide some context (as this isn't a wholly self-explanatory presentation).

Link building has, classically, been a tactic slapped on to a marketing campaign or website post-launch. I believe that those companies/sites that treat link acquisition as an afterthought, rather than building it into the product, will always lose out to those who treat link building strategically. In the deck below, I walk through a number of examples of sites, primarily startups, that have done this. These include:

Here's the deck:

Strategic Link Building

As you can see, I've put in a shameless plug for Open Site Explorer at the end. If you haven't seen the new features launched yesterday, you're missing out. Tons of the data is completely free, and top pages is just about the easiest way to find traffic and link opportunities ever built (not that I'm biased or anything). :-)

Look forward to your comments about the presentation and the concept of productizing link acquisition into a site.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by great scott!

Do you like this post? Yes No

The search never stops! Here are the search industry headlines of the week, brought to you by Pandia.

Web censorship battle rumbles on (techcrunch March 2010)

SEO stats as the page loads, stats tracking, on-page diagnostics help, etc (SE Journal March 12 2010)

The challenge now for Google is how to find a compromise position and remain in the country (SE Land March 12 2010)

Plan your session strategy. Stay at the conference hotel. Ask questions… (SE Land March 12 2010)

You can check out the product’s availability by clicking on the “blue dot” included in the search results. (SE Journal March 11 2010)

Google ads and TV ads bring the traffic (SE Land March 11 2010)

Google Reader Play could be the tablet’s killer app (techradar March 2010)

A misrepresentation of your information can determine whether you’re eligible to take out a mortgage, buy a car, even get a job (About March 10 2010)

Yahoo recently brought the advanced search capabilities more to the forefront (ResearchBuzz March 10 2010)

Collecta pushes a live stream of pictures, news articles, status updates and more right to your mobile device. (Next Web march 10 2010)

SortFix then pulls results from each search engine which it makes available in a tabbed window. (P Bradley March 8 2010)

Eye-tracking shows that tweets added into search results don’t get much attention. (Guardian March 9 2010)

The one thing I keep coming back to is that Buzz on the iPhone and Android is pretty impressive. (techcrunch March 8 2010)

You run a search, see some results, click on a link that interests you and the engine will then go off and find more results based on what you want (P Bradley March 10 2010)

When you search the name of a television show on Yahoo!, you’ll now see a link to the show’s page on tv.yahoo.com (SE Watch March 12 2010)

Bicycle directions and bike trail data for some 12,000 miles of trails on Google Maps in the United States. (Google Watch March 10 2010)

Street View has been controversial and unpopular with residents in some countries but mostly with the EU and European governments (SE Land March 8 2010)

Big ad campaign urging ‘Bing and decide’ (techradar March 2010)

The Data Explorer includes data from the US Census Bureau, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the World Bank and five new data providers (SE Land March 8 2010)

Lack of training brought down app service (techradar March 2010)

Amazon is looking for for an engineer to help build “an innovative embedded web browser.” (MediaMemo March 9 2010)

100% compliance is not necessarily a factor in ranking. (SE Journal March 9 2010)

Google is testing a new TV search service with Dish Network, the no. 2 U.S. satellite TV provider, the WSJ reports. (Marketing Pilgrim March 9 2010)

Introducing the “local edition,” a collection of persistent Bing search queries presented in a structured and browse-able way. (SE Land March 9 2010)

But Right Now, It’s Undervalued (SearchBlog March 2 2010)

I wanted to look at the current search partnership terms and why a sale may not be on the agenda for some time. (State of Search March 10 2010)

Items in Reader Play are presented one at a time, and images and videos are automatically enlarged to maximize the viewing experience. (Google Blog March 3 2010)

Google Apps Script lets you write short programs that automatically perform simple actions within a spreadsheet. (Google Blog March 3 2010)

Its 9.7% share of US searches in February was up 4% over its January numbers. (SMX March 11 2010)

The internet is nominated for the prize, advocated by the Italian version of Wired magazine for advancing “dialogue, debate and consensus”. (techradar March 2010)

Video of the Week: Google Search Basics A well done Google video for beginner’s featuring Matt Cutts as your host. It is part of a series of videos on How Google Works.

SMX East: NYC Oct 5-7 Click Here for Agenda!

SMX is arranging expos and conferences for experienced search engine marketers in Seattle on June 8 and 9 and in London on May 17 and 18.

The idea is to have knowledgeable practitioners meet to discuss search engine marketing without having to go through all the basics.

In the audience you will find advertising budget holders, in-house search marketers, brand managers, paid search advertising planners and buyers, organic search optimization specialists and web technology professionals.

In Seattle Google software engineer Matt Cutts will make participate in an “You&A” format keynote, an intimate and unscripted conversation with the audience. The conferences will be chaired by search engine experts Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman of Search Engine Land.

Seattle: Click here for more information and the sign up form. If you register before March 21 you get the lowest-available pre-agenda rate.

London: Click here for more information and the sign up form. There is a special early bird rate before April 16.

If you are more of a beginner, you may want to take a look at the following regular SMX conferences:

München March 23-24 Toronto April 8-9 Sidney April 22-23 New York October 4-6

Disclosure: Pandia and SMX have a reciprocal promotion agreement.

SMX West: March 2-4Go to California!

The AltSearchEngines site on alternative search engines will no longer be updated. The editor, Charles Knight, managed to cover some 4000 search engines in its three year long life.

To Federated Search Blog he says that AltSearchEngines had reached a plateau:

“There are only so many people interested in a daily dose of niche search engines. Not only that, but after 4,000 posts, I really felt that we had found most of them.”

He is now blogging about search over at the Next Web, a new blog devoted to search and search engines.

By the way: Charles Knight’s favorite alternative search engine is the very advanced German Tag Galaxy

SMX West: March 2-4Go to California!

People who are new to the business of search engine optimization quickly learn that they need to obtain links to the pages on their website. This can be a daunting task for a newcomer. It sounds simple until you go to do it. How are you supposed to go about it? Where do you start? What kinds of links should you be trying to get? This is where many people go wrong.

By Guest Writer Thad Olszewski

Let me share some quality insight with you that you are probably having a hard time finding online. There are two ways that people can go about link building. The first and most common one is going for quantity over quality. Most people start by going after the really low quality links that are easy to obtain.

What do I mean by low quality links?

There are several ways to get a lot of links in a short time; It is easy to get links in free for all forums and blog comments. Another way to get links quickly is through article marketing and mass article submissions. Unless you really like writing, this is going to be a hard job. You might even outsource some of it, thinking that paying less than a hundred dollars for thousands of links is a good idea.

These methods will work to some degree, especially if you are in a niche that has little competition. However, if you are in a competitive industry, you are soon going to realize that relying on this form of link building is not going to get the results you really want.

Instead of focusing on low quality links or hiring an outsourced SEO firm to build thousands of them, you will likely be far better off focusing on building fewer high quality links back to your website.

What are high quality links and what how do I get them?

The kinds of links I consider to be high quality are harder to get. They would be contextual links on the pages of certain websites. Links on websites like these would apply:

The best place to obtain high quality links is from other sites within your industry that are considered trusted authorities or from websites that are considered large information hubs for that industry.

For instance, a website like Pandia.com would be considered a very high value website for my field of study. This website ranks high for many terms related to the industry. Plus, there are many well known industry experts who share their knowledge here. The website contains a wealth of information related to search engines and search engine marketing. This is an ideal website for someone like me to mingle with other professionals in the industry. You can tell from reading the information here that the site is valuable to people searching for this kind of information.

Ideally you would want links that are in context (contextual), like right in the middle of a paragraph. Getting one at the end of an article or being listed as a reference is also valuable. It is also very valuable to be included in a list of links so long as the other links on the list are all to high value relevant websites. Those lists have high hub scores which pass lots of authority.

In case you didn’t know this, one good relevant editorial link from a trusted top level domain can bring you more ranking juice than thousands of those low quality links. It may take you a while to figure out how to get those high quality links, but the work is worth it in the long run. Those high quality links will stand the test of time. They will keep giving you ranking juice and traffic day after day for many years. Your competitors will be discouraged because it is so much harder to get those quality links.

Where do you start? How do you find these kinds of sites?

For starters, if you know a lot about your particular market, you will already know the domain names for some of these high value sites. If you want to find other ones, here is how you could do it.

Okay – I have identified some good ones. Now how do I get them to link to me?

This is where you need to be creative. You should start by getting them to notice you in some way shape or form. There are different ways to do this. Here are two possible methods you could experiment with.

Become popular:

Maybe you can produce a piece of content that is so popular on one of the social media websites that some major industry journalists notice you. Then you might get mentioned unexpectedly in one of their articles. If you produce enough really popular content like this, you are sure to be noticed by someone. It isn’t going to happen with every piece.

Say hello:

For those people who have no idea how to produce content that becomes that popular, you could take a more practical approach. Use some good old fashioned networking skills. Introduce yourself. Hopefully you have a respectable website that showcases your quality workmanship.

Offer your help:

Find a way to create value for them. If you are helping them to create value for their property, there is a much better chance (a pretty good one actually) that they will want to reciprocate in some way. One way to do this is to send a little traffic their way or some link juice.

Be patient:

You have to give before you receive. Some people will appreciate the gesture and want to reciprocate immediately. Don’t expect immediate rewards though. Maybe this one gesture this time won’t pay you back immediately. Somewhere down the road it might, though. You should take the same approach with your website. Build real value for people.

Each situation is going to be a little different. You are going to have to spend some time to think about each one to decide the best approach to take.

It pays to get quality instead of quantity

If you have aspirations of achieving the top position in Google for even a moderately competitive keyword, then you are going to have to work on getting quality links. Too many people get hung up on whether the site uses “No Follow” links or not. This should not be your primary concern. Your primary concern should be the overall quality of the site’s content and its relevancy to what your website is about. Focus on that and you will start to find places that are well suited.

Remember that Google and the other search engines are finding new ways to devalue those really easy to get links. Every year those types of links lose more ranking power. All the while these weak links are losing power; the best links are gaining more and more juice. Get yourself the best possible quality links from the best possible sites and your work will be rewarded many times over for years to come.

photo credit: Desmond Kavanagh

Thad Olszewski owns and operates The Website Promoter service for business websites. His company helps businesses generate publicity for their websites as well as drive organic search engine traffic to them. He is the author of numerous articles including How To Get Ranked Number One on Google.

SMX West: March 2-4Go to California!

Here is our weekly wrap-up of Internet search and search engine industry oriented headlines.

Something good is about to happen with Google’s cloud computing service – that is interoperability with Microsoft Office files (SE Journal March 3 2010)

Arrange data from the web in a neat spreadsheet (techradar March 6 2010)

To use the search, you write a letter across the screen. (SE Watch March 5 2010)

The ability to re-order, remove, and comment on search results has been replaced by a scaled-down version (SE Land March 3 1010)

Keri Morgret of Strike Models and Brian Ussery of Beu Blog spent a tremendous amount of time and energy live blogging the event. (March 5 2010)

At SMX West on Thursday, reps from both search engines said they’re in the process of supporting rel=canonical right now. (SE Land March 5 2010)

Latest speech recognition breakthrough for the hard of hearing (techradar march 5 2010)

A list of new products from Google (SE Watch March 3 2010)

Speaking at SMX WestGoogle’s Director of Research said that PageRank is overhyped and probably needs a new name (SE Land March 3 2010)

The documentation is live on Google Code (SE Land March 3 2010)

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz stated she would have sold Yahoo at $36 when Microsoft was offering (SE Watch March 2 2010)

Its time to finally get the law straightened out. Laws in almost every country in the world are outdated. (State of Search March 2 2010)

On January 12th, Google said they are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn (Blogoscoped March 2 2010)

What would you do to get Google to build a super high-speed broadband network in your hometown? (SE Land March 2 2010)

Picnik is, among other things, the default editor for Yahoo’s Flickr. (BoomTown March 1 2010)

Using Picnik, you can crop, do touch-ups and add cool effects to your photos, all without leaving your web browser. (Google Blog March 1 2010)

Geo-tagged, user-submitted Flickr photos as well as other location-specific photos from Google’s own Picasa (Marketing Pilgrim March 1 2010)

It’ll be the first Android device of any kind with Yahoo as the main search engine (Gizmodo March 2 2010)

Bing adds support for query history in Autosuggest (Bing Community March 1 2010)

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said he thinks the deal with Yahoo will greatly improve the relevance of advertising placed next to search results (Newsfactor March 5 2010)

I don’t agree that Google has crushed real-time search for startups. (Venture Beat March 5 2010)

The Open Net Initiative (ONI) on Friday said Microsoft’s search engine Bing is more prudish than government censors (AFP March 5 2010)

China has pledged to punish hackers who attacked Google if there is evidence to prove it (Reuters March 6 2010)

SMX West: March 2-4Go to California!

Search is going mobile. The number of people accessing the web on their mobile phones is skyrocketing. Searching on your mobile or cell phone is different than searching on your computer: The screen is smaller and typing can be a hassle. To make your mobile searching fun and easy we present five great tools for mobile web search.

If you have an iPhone, you have probably already seen our Top 5 iPhone search apps article. But whether you are surfing the web from a regular cell phone, a smart phone or a web enebled PDA, searching is bound to be important to you. The five tools presented here, work on all platforms. The winners are:

Google Mobile

It starts out a bit confusing: When you first come to Google Mobile, you find no search box. Instead, Google pushes apps and a huge number of services. Click “Web” for web search.

Once you are in the right place, though, the rest is easy. You are spared the trouble of typing more than strictly necessary, as Google suggests search terms as you type. The search results are easy to scan and it is no hard to get an overview of your field of interest.

The search results are based on the principle of universal search: You get images, news, maps and more, depending on your query.

It is easy to set your location by your phone’s GPS. And Google’s local search is the only one that offered no problems in that respect. It finds relevant local businesses even here in Norway and phone number and link to directions are displayed for each business.

News search (along with images and buzz) is available via a link on the front page. I get local news by default (e.g. news about the Chile earth quake in Norwegian).

If you want to search Buzz, be aware that if you disclose your location, this information will be available to the whole world.

Google also offers speech search: No typing is involved at all, you simply say your query. This works in English, but not in, say, French or Norwegian. In English, it works like a charm, though, even for complex queries.

Taptu

Taptu is not as advanced as Google, but in most cases, it will provide just what you need. This is a service that is tailored specifically for touch screens and it does a great job at simplifying web search on touch phones.

The front page conveniently offers links to hot search terms. There are also quick links to images and buzz search.

The results are easy to access. Along with regular web pages, they include images,videos, news, blogs and more, depending on query. And in stead of clicking through to the web site and wait for it to load, only to discover it was not what you were looking for, you can choose a preview which loads quickly and includes a thumbnail of the web site as well as an excerpt from the content.

The search results also include links to “the touch friendly web”, web sites that fit your query and are optimized for small screens. What a great idea!

On the downside, Taptu offers no local options, and there are a couple of quite prominent Google ads in the search results — but this is still a great product.

Yahoo! Mobile

Yahoo! Mobile offers much of the tools Google Mobile does (there is no speech search, though). In addition, there is a list of hot topics on the front page and easy access to turn on and off safe search.

You get search suggestons as you type. At the bottom of the web search result, you get links to other relevant hits in categories like news, images and answers.

It is easy to set your location by GPS and Yahoo will suggests restaurants, movie theatres and more. I couldn’t test this, though, because it doesn’t work in Norway.

Bing Mobile

Bing Mobile has a smart design which makes searching easy: There are quick links to directions, maps, weather and movies on the front page. The search results are not universal (like Google and Taptu), but tabs provide easy access to results in the categories videos, images and news.

You can set your location, but not by GPS. Bing doesn’t attempt to find local businesses in Oslo. A handy tool lets me save several locations (home, work, other) which I can toggle between.

Ask Mobile

I am generally a big fan of Ask, but Ask Mobile is not too impressive. The front page has convenient quick links to web, images, news, local and maps & directions. The search results are easy to navigate. Ask presents universal search results, but in strange categories. My search for pizza retrieved results in these categories: news, images, questions, ringtones (!). Pizza ringtones?

There is a local search option which might be excellent, but it doesn’t work in Norway.

Padia Powersearch has links more mobile search sites.

photo credit: Dushaun

SMX West: March 2-4Go to California!

Outsource SEO/PPC $11 - $15 per hour

This week an Italian court sentenced three Google executives to six months in prison for allowing users to post a video on YouTube.

The video, which was uploaded in 2006, showed kids bullying a child with Down’s syndrome.

Sickening video

Let there be no doubt about our position on publishing such videos online. It sickens us, and it must be possible to bring such cases to court. But it is the one that uploaded the video that should be brought to justice.

The Social Web

The problem is that the Italian judge clearly does not understand the nature of the Social Web.

He has a mental lock-in based on the old paradigm of print and broadcasting media, from a time when publishing was for the few and the editor could control what content appeared in their newspapers or on their TV channels.

The whole idea of allowing people to comment on blogs, participate in online discussions and upload their videos makes it impossible to exercise an editorial regime of the old type. Google and YouTube cannot watch every video uploaded to their sites before allowing them to be published. There are simply too many of them.

The Italian government of Berlusconi is even planning a new law making online video services like YouTube liable for invasions of privacy, violations of copyright and other transgressions that occur in user-generated content.

Don’t blame the postman

Paolo Brini, a spokesman for Movimento Scambio Etico, a group that campaigns for an unfettered Internet made the following point after the trial:

“In all of history, nobody ever thought you had to put in jail a postman because a package contained something illegal.”

He has a point, although you would expect the Post Office to help the authorities track down illegal materials like weapons and illegal drugs.

Google did act

What you can expect Google to do is to remove illegal material when they find out about it. Google does, for instance, close down Blogger blogs that violate Goolge guidelines. The Italian video was removed when Google received a formal complaint.

They also helped the police find the person responsible for the video.

The family of the boy has withdrawn its lawsuit against Google, as they believe the case is being used for other purposes than the protection of the boy. The fact that the case was not stopped after this seems to prove that they are right.

The lawyer of the family states that Google has been demonstrating care and sensitivity to the problems of persons with disabilities.

The Italian verdict represents a threat to the social nature of the Web.

Google will appeal the decision.

Another week has passed in the world of search engines, and there are no surprises: Google has again got most of the attention. It seems Europe has decided that Google has to be disciplined.

Here are your headlines, hand picked by Pandia:

True Knowledge is a pioneer in a new class of search technology that allows you to ask questions on the web (P Bradley Feb 25 2010)

Facebook Pages are basically advertising tools for organizations, businesses, celebrities and bands (GoogleWatch Feb 25 2010)

kgb is a text answer service. Text a question to 542542 and get an answer. (ResearchBuzz Feb 23 2010)

47 Wikipedia alternatives you can use to find information, research a paper, get quick answers, and much more. (About.com feb 22 2010)

Search engine for Google Buzz (cnet Feb 16 2010)

Xerox accuses Google and Yahoo of infringing patents (Reuters Feb 23 2010)

Yahoo has announced a fairly substantial overhaul of how Yahoo Answers looks and works (SE Land Feb 25 2010)

Chinese scientists say their research will be dramatically compromised if Google shuts down its search engine in China. (SE Land Feb 25 2010)

On January 12, baidu.com was hijacked and pointed to a Web page displaying the Iranian flag (Softpedia Feb 26 2010)

Google employee Jason Morrison recently discovered that his own personal site had be delisted from Google (techdirt Feb 26 2010)

I find the idea that we would allow government bureaucrats to dictate how search engines rank their results to be a horrible idea. (borud Feb 2010)

Mobile location-based search capabilities are now available to desktop computer users. (InformationWeek Feb 26 2010)

Google argues that revealing more about how its technology works would make it easier for companies to “game” its system and undermine its service. (FT Feb 26 2010)

One of the three companies filing complaints about Google is owned by Microsoft (TechCrunch Feb 26 2010)

Google will not not offer concessions to companies that have accused the Internet giant of abusing its market power in online search and advertising. (NYT Feb 24 2010)

Rate This Article: Poor Best E-mail Print PDF Version The European Union urged Google to provide people advance notice when its Street View vehicles are roving European streets (eWeek Feb 27 2010)

Yahoo!’s search deal with Microsoft could usher in a new purple patch for the former web giant (Telegraph Feb 27 2010)

Mobile release limited to latest version of Android platform. (SE Watch Feb 23 2010)

Google will introduce 550 or so improvements to its fabled algorithm (Wired Feb 22 2010)

Probably the two most useful new features are a yellow bar to denote new items from the last time you checked your Buzz (Marketing Pilgrim Feb 23 2010)

BlackBerry jumps 39 places to nab third place (techradar Feb 2010)

No free Jeffrey Archer on Google (techradar Feb 2010)

Right now, Buzz basically is Friendfeed but with immediately greater penetration. (SE Journal Feb 24 2010)

The European Commission has launched an anti-trust investigation against Google after three online companies alleged that the internet giant’s search functions were penalising their businesses. (Telegraph Feb 24 2010)

Yahoo will now show a wider range of Twitter updates in its search results. (Searchcowboys Feb 25 2010)

It shows Google with a lead comparable, almost exactly, to its market share on the PC in the US. (SE Land Feb 25 2010)

Replaces the Searchcowboys radio show (State of Search Feb 24 2010)

Video of the Week

Bing is doing some impressive work on Bing Maps, mashing up their own streetwiew panorama images with creative commons pictures fetched from Flickr. Take a look!

SMX West: March 2-4Go to California!

Google has added a local search tool to its Search Option panel. The Nearby option only works for google.com searches in English.

Here’s what you do:

Do a search in Google for let’s say “Chinese restaurant”. Normally you would have added your geographical location to the query: “Chinese restaurant Oslo”.

Instead click on the link to the Search Option panel. Then click on the Nearby link found in the left hand column of the search results page.

I must admit my own experiment (searching for “kinesiske restauranter” from a location in Oslo, Norway) failed miserably, as google.com gave me a list of Copenhagen restaurants! Norway split from Denmark in 1814, so this was a bit of a disappointment.

Google finds your location based on your IP adress. However, it is possible to fill in the location manually. When I did so, I got a mix of Danish restaurants and Google Maps listings of Chinese restaurants in Oslo.

I guess the reason is that this feature only works in the US.

The Google Blog has more.

photo credit: KellyB.

SMX West: March 2-4Go to California!

State of Search is a new blog covering the search engine scene, focusing on articles relevant to the industry, search engine marketing and social media.

It is a well designed site with interesting news articles and comments.

The man behind State of Search is Bas van den Beld, who used to write for the European search blog Searchcowboys.

Van den Beld has been running the Searchcowboys radio show over at Webmasterradio.fm. This is to be replaced by a State of Search podcast.

If you go to our Detective page, you will find links to a large number of sites with search engine industry coverage.

SMX East: NYC Oct 5-7 Click Here for Agenda!

The Hitwise report for search volume for Febuary shows Bing gaining ,2 percent market share (11.5) while Yahoo (16.8) dropped the equivalent amount. Google gained 0.1 percent that same amount Ask dropped.

Seems the Italian government is not finished investigating Google. Last month three Google executives were convicted of privacy violations and received suspended six-month jail sentences over a video showing a teenaged boy being bullied.

Antitrust investigations over Google's impact of the newspaper industry were started in Italy last year, but this is the first announcement of the government's examination of Adsense.

Translating the news from il Giornale:

- Google is not obliged to comunicate how the payments are calculated; - The payments are calculated exclusively from data that Google holds; - Google can modify at any moment the price determination and payment structure at its discretion.

Speculation has already started on whether Google would just stop offering Adsense in Italy - but the likeihood that other EU countries could do the same suggests they would fight the action.

Or while waiting for panels at SXSW - if you can get a signal.

Click to read the rest of this post...

I've been out talking to journalists and bloggers about SES New York 2010, which gets underway the week of March 22nd. One of the questions that I'm frequently asked is: "What will be the top stories at the event?"

Click to read the rest of this post...

It's nicer, but not yet as comprehensive, as FriendFeed.

Click to read the rest of this post...

One click to comprehensive info on your favorite shows on the telly.

Click to read the rest of this post...

YouTube experienced 160% growth in traffic to their mobile site in 2009.

Click to read the rest of this post...

It's gonna be a great year for stalkers.

Click to read the rest of this post...

Yesterday, I posted Video Marketing Case Studies with David Meerman Scott and Me. At the end of the post, I said, "If you have any video marketing case studies that you'd like to share with us, just mention them." Silly me.

Click to read the rest of this post...

Find out what's in stock nearby.

Click to read the rest of this post...

Easily enable stalking by anyone your network. Just kidding. (Sort of)

Click to read the rest of this post...

The announcement was as short as usual.

Click to read the rest of this post...

February is always a weird month for search data.

Click to read the rest of this post...

Recently, I sat down with David Meerman Scott, the author of the bestseller The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly and the new book World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories. I'm the author of YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour a Day, we have the same publisher, and we're virtually neighbors.

Click to read the rest of this post...

Experian Hitwise today announced that Bing's share of searches has increased for the third straight month.

Click to read the rest of this post...