Archive of Google Posts

Last week Jill Whalen’s Twitter Question of the Week asked, “What has changed most in Search Marketing since 2000?”  ... Read the full post

A recent Technorati blog post poses the question as to whether the expanded Google personalized search will challenge the SEO market.

Background: If you don’t know about this development, here is Google’s video explaining the change:

In my opinion, Google personalized search could very well be the best thing to happen to the SEO industry since…well…since Google itself. While there certainly will be discussions on privacy, here are four reasons why I think personalized search will change the SEO industry for the better.

Tuesday, a client asked me how Twitter might integrate into their SEO strategy. Here is part of my answer, paraphrased:

Twitter helps …as a function of our link building efforts. Twitter will help us (build) relationships with bloggers and site owners who may be interested in linking …an additional benefit is that both the profile and individual updates (may) get indexed in search. As a result, there are opportunities for both to rank for various keywords (the brand for the former and long-tail keywords for the latter).

 ... Read the full post

Market researcher Nielsen Online (PDF) reports that the time online users spent on Facebook in April is up 700% year over year. The U.S. spent 13.9 BILLION minutes on Facebook in April 2009 alone and over 20 billion minutes were spent on social networking sites altogether.

 ... Read the full post

Google has released a white paper touting the benefits of the Content Network. The paper provides the following analysis:

Ads on the Google Content Network can be an effective way to gain additional conversion beyond those you get via search.

• When used in combination with Search, the median advertiser has a content CPA that’s within approximately 2% of their Search CPA.
• The Content Network drives nearly 20% of total conversions for the median advertiser.

Conversion rates are higher for advertisers who used either of two AdWords campaign management controls: the Conversion Optimizer and site exclusion.  ... Read the full post

The AdWords blog has recently published a post about how they are changing their conversion metrics.

Directly from their post:

Today we’ve taken the first step by clarifying the conversion terminology on the AdWords Report Center and conversion tracking tool pages. “Conversions” columns are now labeled Conversions (1-per-click), while “Transactions” columns are now called Conversions (many-per-click). The current AdWords campaign management pages display 1-per-click conversions, so if one click leads to multiple conversions, they’re counted only once. On the other hand, many-per-click conversions count each conversion that occurs after a click on your ad.  ... Read the full post

Over the past ten years we have seen link building strategies come and go but they never really disappear.   There is always something that can still be done.

I have listed three such tactics below that not only can be used but should be used.

1. Reciprocal Linking

I can’t tell you how many emails I sent and received asking for links when I first started in this industry (and trust me when I say they weren’t very good emails).  Links were links and it really didn’t matter whether the site had anything to do with your own, as long as they placed a link on their site, you’d do the same.  ... Read the full post

Yesterday I wanted to forward a link to someone that Chris Winfield posted on Twitter. I knew I “retweeted” the update some time ago but after clicking through a few pages of my Twitterstream to find that retweet, I also knew there had to be a better way to do this.

 ... Read the full post

As part of SEMPO’s Boston Working Group, I want to help spread the word about 2 upcoming events (make sure to scroll down to see the Google Universal Search event!):

Event 1 – Networking (learn from others & make connections!)

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

6:00 pm

RSVP Via Meetup

Donohue’s Bar
87 Bigelow Ave
Watertown, MA 02472
617-924-4900

This meeting will be a purely networking event. Connect with people who have the similar interest in search marketing yet experience levels tend to vary. Who knows you may find your next client, employee, employer, or mentor at this meeting.  ... Read the full post

If you read a lot of pay per click blogs you’ve probably read 100 different posts about how to write good / cool / different / exciting Ad Copy.  So instead of giving the same tired tips over and over, I am going to give a few different tips I’ve picked up over the years.

Use Only Alphanumeric Characters (Excepting &) to Maximize Clickthrough Rate.

Personally I love using dashes and slashes.  I think they look very neat, draw the eye to the ad, and can even save valuable character spaces.  However, I’ve tested dozens of ad versions that had had dashes, slashes, or a combination of both and in almost every instance percentage of clickthroughs were down when compared to a similar ad that did not use dashes or slashes.  ... Read the full post