ArticleSnatch Blog

You are browsing the search results.

While it is true that a few people can skip protocol and begin writing for large markets without writing credits, the ordinary person cannot. Be prepared, because every publication will want to know w…
More: continued here
why you should write for free

At SES San Jose 2008, Rebecca Lieb, Contributing Editor of ClickZ, interviewed Chris Boggs, Search Engine Watch Expert and Manager of SEO at Brulant, which was recently acquired by Rosetta. Rebecca had moderated the SEO Through Blogs & Feeds session and Chris was one of the speakers on the panel.

Rebecca asked Chris about blogs and domain strategy. Chris discussed where a blog should be hosted, in particular, on a root domain, for purposes of search engine optimization. He also talks about appropriate blog protocol.

You can watch and listen in below.

Effective Blog protocol and domain strategy

The SEO Through Blogs & Feeds session will also be held at SES Chicago 2008, which will be held Dec. 8-11 at the Chicago Hilton. As I mentioned a few days ago, if you register before Sept. 26, you can save up to $600 by taking advantage of the “recession special.”

In accordance with the terms of the settlement with Carl Icahn, Yahoo has added two more board members to complete the expansion to 11. Frank Biondi and John Chapple, who previously were members of Icahn’s proxy board, have been appointed just two weeks after Icahn’s appointment was made official. 8 of Yahoo’s previous board stayed on for the deal.

Here’s the lowdown on the new dudes:

Frank Biondi has served as senior managing director of WaterView Advisors LLC, a private equity limited partnership focused on media and entertainment, since 1999. From April 1996 to November 1998, Mr. Biondi served as chairman and chief executive officer of Universal Studios, Inc. From July 1987 to January 1996, Mr. Biondi served as president and chief executive officer of Viacom, Inc. Mr. Biondi is a director of Amgen, Inc., Cablevision Systems Corporation, Hasbro, Inc., The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation and Seagate Technology.

John Chapple has served as president of Hawkeye Investments LLC, a privately-owned equity firm investing primarily in telecommunications and real estate ventures, since October 2006. Prior to forming Hawkeye, Mr. Chapple served as president, chief executive officer and chairman of the board of Nextel Partners from January 1998 to June 2006, when the company was purchased by Sprint Communications. From 1995 to 1997, Mr. Chapple was the president and chief operating officer for Orca Bay Sports and Entertainment in Vancouver, B.C., which at the time owned and operated Vancouver’s National Basketball Association and National Hockey League sports franchises in addition to the General Motors Place sports arena. From 1988 to 1995, he served as executive vice president of operations for McCaw Cellular Communications and subsequently AT&T Wireless Services following the merger of those companies. Mr. Chapple serves on the board of directors of several telecommunications companies: Cbeyond, Inc. (Nasdaq: CBEY) an integrated service telephone company, and privately held companies Seamobile Enterprises, which provides integrated wireless services at sea, and Telesphere Networks, Inc., a VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) company providing service in 44 states. In addition, he has served as a member of Syracuse University’s board of trustees since 2005 and as chairman since 2008.

Yesteday, I reported that YouTube user viewing histories would not longer be handed over to Viacom by Google per an agreement by the two. I also wrote that User IDs, IP addresses, and Visitor IDs would still be handed over. What yours truly completely missed (i am afterall, only human) is that even that data will be scrambled. Here’s the legalese:

When producing data from the Logging Database pursuant to the Order, Defendants shall substitute values while preserving uniqueness for entries in the following fields: User ID, IP Address and Visitor ID. The parties shall agree as promptly as feasible on a specific protocol to govern this substitution whereby each unique value contained in these fields shall be assigned a correlative unique substituted value, and preexisting interdependencies shall be retained in the version of the data produced. Defendants shall promptly (no later than 7 business days after execution of this Stipulation) provide a proposed protocol for this substitution. Defendants agree to reasonably consult with Plaintiffs’ consultant if necessary to reach agreement on the protocol.

Search Engine Strategies Toronto is coming up June 16-18, 2008. To give attendees a sneak preview of some of the trends in search engine marketing that will be discussed at the event, we’ve interviewed Ken Jurina, the President and CEO of Epiar.

Ken will be one of the speakers at the “SEM Toolkit: Marketers Share” session, which will be held on Wednesday, June 18, from 12:45 to 2:00 p.m. And Epiar and Yahoo! Canada will be hosting The Official Search Engine Strategies Toronto After-Party on Tuesday, June 17.

But, we interviewed Ken primarily for his expert opinion. Scoring tickets to his party was only a secondary consideration. (As Maxwell Smart would say, “Would you believe I’m from New England, which still thinks the term ‘party’ means Boston Tea Party?”)

Seriously, as president and founder of Top Draw and Epiar, Ken has more than 15 years of expertise in traditional advertising and Internet marketing. And I’ve heard him speak at SES New York, Chicago, San Jose, and Toronto.

Q. Can you give me a brief overview of some of the trends the search marketing industry is seeing this year and what the next 5 to 10 years might look like?

A. The Microsoft bid for Yahoo! accompanied by the subsequent bid withdrawal, along with the much talked about Google-Yahoo! search advertising partnership have certainly resulted in much speculation regarding the future of search marketing as we know it. I also don’t think the deal is entirely off the table just yet.

Ask’s withdrawal from mainstream search as it abandoned its efforts to compete against the search giants in March has also affected the search landscape. Over the last 12 months Google’s search share has increased slightly, Yahoo! search share has remained stagnant in aggregate, and Microsoft’s share has fallen.

If we look at trends from the perspective of consumer behavior we continue to see increasing growth in the use of image and video search. Another consumer trend significantly affecting the search marketing space is the astronomical increase in the influence of social media marketing, in the form of consumer feedback and reviews, on brands, ecommerce conversions and tactical refinements of on-page content.

Google’s Universal Search results have been seen to have an impact on the traditional F-shaped heat maps generated by eye-tracking studies as eyes are now first drawn to image and video search results. The inclusion of the OneBox, as well as Sitelinks and ‘Search Within a Site’ search box features, are all affecting the usability of the results in the organic listings. User interaction is facilitated by these features and the probability is that the trend in click-throughs will skew towards increased searcher interaction with more ‘visible’, usable, graphic listings – assuming the relevancy factor is retained.

Google has also recently revised its display URL protocol in AdWords, and has been experimenting with the inclusion of video results in the paid search listings.

As to what the future holds, I think current behavioral trends and further improvements in the relevance and universal appeal of results provided by the search engines will continue unabated. However, based on the dramatic events in the industry in the last few months alone, at this stage I think it would be fool-hardy and irresponsible to attempt to predict anything more specific.

Q. How will marketers have to adjust their budgets to compensate for the upcoming changes?

A. Marketers should seriously consider budgeting for continued SEO initiatives, particularly regarding Internet market research on consumer search behavior. Assigning marketing dollars to image and video production and optimization is imperative, as is integrating with relevant social communities. Brands need to aggressively begin to empower brand proponents and embrace reputation management (RM) tools. RM has only recently gained the recognition it should have attained years ago. With the huge growth in both social influence and social media marketing, and the impact of reviews and consumer feedback on online purchase decisions, the need for brand transparency is becoming ever more important. Consequently, the need to facilitate consumer feedback and interaction is key to future success in the search and ecommerce space.

Q. How important is it to understand all the online touch-points of your visitors?

A. This answer is basically an addendum to the previous one. Understanding where and how your online market interacts online, what they do, and what they want, need and expect to achieve at each touch-point is imperative.

Meeting them on common ground in forums, on blogs, and in the social space is very important. Openly dealing with detractors and embracing and supporting evangelists is best done in this space.

Consumer exposure to your brand and online offering is unlikely to be limited to the information housed without your official web site. Review sites, feedback consumer forums and blogs are going to discuss businesses with or without official permission – freedom of expression online has reached previously unimagined new heights as regards the impact of this freedom on brand reputations. Proactively embracing the social space via RM tools and facilitating interaction on your own blog or site is no longer something to merely be considered, it has become a necessity. Advertising these social – touch-points via paid search is also something to be considered.

Q. When we talk about “tricks of the trade” used by search marketers, can you share a bit on what kind of “competitive intelligence” is required and what exactly is “exotic analytics?”

A. RM tools allow you to see what’s being said about you and your competition in the online space. Internet market research allows you to see how your consumers are behaving online and what terms they are utilizing when searching for your offering.

By understanding what your online market is really looking for – not what you think or want them to look for – can provide competitive intelligence on brand awareness and market share. It can also identify new product or service opportunities, consumer feedback and trending data, and a host of other factors that will allow you to refine your online offering.

As for “exotic analytics”, different web analytics software packages offer different levels of service and different features. Some are highly advanced for sure – trying to predict visitor behavior based on trending for example. However, a wealth of information is available through the basic measurement standards if it is analyzed properly and thoroughly.

Q. What excites you about Search Engine Strategies Toronto? What do you look forward to most?

A. The Epiar / Yahoo! Canada Party on Tuesday June 17 of course! There will be more details to follow closer to the event but you can expect it will be a party to remember like we are known for.

Q. Are there any advantages to being a Search Marketer based in Canada rather than any other place in the world?

A. Numerous advantages:
• 85% of Canadians have high-speed Internet access (one of the top ten levels of broad band penetration in the world);
• 94% of online Canadians interacted with Google and Microsoft sites in February;
• Canadian online business reaped $62.7B in 2007, an increase of 26% year over year, but the proportion of private sector companies who sold goods and services online remained relatively stable at 8%.

The market is big, it’s relatively untapped, and the returns are obvious. The future of search in Canada is promising. In fact, PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that online ad spend will grow faster in Canada than anywhere else in the world over the next 5 years for two primary reasons:
1. high broadband penetration
2. lower online market saturation

It’s great to be Canadian, eh!

7% of searches are local, including a zip code, city or neighborhood term. With over 10.8 billion searches conducted by Americans in the month of March alone, 7% is a lot of searches.

Now Urban Mapping is making it easier for search marketers to improve the effectiveness of their online advertising and paid search campaigns for local search. Today, the neighborhood data provider announced the launch of its Geomods platform, designed to “deliver more geographically-relevant results for users.”

Here’s what you can expect from the new platform:

• Platform utilizes standard web protocols and serves geographic terms relevant to a specified area.
• Provides a custom service area based on a variety of demographic, spatial and business factors (via a separate module)
• Leverages the installed user base of its neighborhoods boundary database, providing many of the same geographic keywords that power search portals, Internet yellow pages and mapping platforms.

“This geotargeting platform is a radical departure from traditional IP-based geotargeting,” said Ian White, Urban Mapping CEO. “It has been proven again and again that traditional geotargeting does not provide a high degree of confidence for local search, where granularity is of paramount importance—blocks, not ZIP codes or metropolitan areas matter.”

Urban Mapping’s GeoMods services includes US, Canadian and European coverage. The company currently counts SuperPages.com, YellowPages.com, MapQuest, Microsoft’s Live Search, Ask.com as customers.

Related Reading:
The Benefits of Geotargeting
Marchex Shows How to Cash In on Local Search
Mobile Local Search: A Perfect Storm
Social Media Meets Local Search