Comcast has a new video streaming service called Streampix that allows users to watch old movies and TV shows on demand.

The general consensuses on the web is that the service will become a direct competitor to Netflix, and Boston.com even went so far as to blame the Comcast announcement for a drop in Netflix’s stock price.

The Streampix service will be free to anyone who already subscribes to Comcast’s Xfinity premium service. For other Comcast subscribers, it can be accessed for only $4.99 a month, which is cheaper than Netflix’s base price of $7.99 a month.

Sure sounds like Comcast is out to take Netflix down, but the reality is, the cable company is simply trying to stay competitive in a rapidly changing media world.

Comcast’s biggest rivals are the satellite companies who are always trying to woo TV viewers away with more channels at a better price. Add to that the proliferation of TV shows and movies available on the web and on mobile devices and it’s easy to see why cable operators don’t sleep well at night.

So Comcast is doing what lots of companies are doing, finding a way to use what they have to create a better customer experience. In this case, Comcast has access to thousands of hours of NBCUniversal productions (Comcast has a controlling interest in the company) along with some programming from Disney, Warner Brothers and Sony.

By making these older titles available for streaming, Comcast pulls in the die-hard TV fans who would rather watch old Heroes episodes than new episodes of American Idol. They also capture the TV Everywhere people who don’t sit down to watch prime time TV at prime time.

The way we consume media is changing and everyone in the business has to find a way to catch up and stay relevant if they want to stay in business.  So do we all.

It’s not enough to keep doing what you’re doing. The phrase, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” doesn’t apply. You have to think about the future. You have to think about how your customers are changing. Are they on the go more? Then mobile should be your first priority. Are they getting older? Then changes in products and styles. Really older? Maybe you need to pump up the text size on your website.

Look at what you have and brainstorm new ways to provide what your customers need. A small change can deliver big results.

Social Media Solutions on a Budget at #seslondon #socialmedia

We are at Day 2 of the SES London event and today I have attended an interesting session about how to increase your social media presence with no or a small budget. The speakers showed us a wealth of great free to low-cost tools. Combined with a clever strategy these will have you up and running in no time. By leveraging these great resources, you can use social media to drive new business, create awareness, and become engaged with your target audience.

 

Your social strategy and free tools to help you get started

Andrew Girdwood, Media Innovations Director, Bigmouthmedia, starts explaining that our social media strategy cannot look cheap and that the most important is to have a strategy:

1. Monitor cheaply and react quickly.

2. Mention people.

3. To have & follow a strategy is better than taking shortcuts.

There are lots of different sites and platforms to use: Pinterest with Pinspire, Stylepin, Minglewing, Reform Revolution, Thinng, GetVega and Gentlemint., and also different free tools:

http://trap.it - Learns your tastes and continues to deliver “on topic” content.

http://beta.strawberryj.am - Shows you the links the people you follow share most.

http://www.pearltrees.com - Another tool that serves up content you may like from the web.

www.bufferapp.com - Shares your tweets on Facebook when you add #fb

Set time apart to engage and develop relationship – automate some other social output

Next on the stage was Paul Madden, Owner, Automica Limited , who tells us that the ROI for businesses on a budget makes it important for businesses to automate as much as you can. Influence takes time, hard work and money. Businesses need to find a solution to have it cheaper, faster and easier. You need to set time every day to step in, engage and develop relationships. “Automate the rest or the ROI will swallow you whole”.

Why is that important to post often? It helps your brand awareness, buzz and seeding content

Tools to use? Tweetadder (Twitter only), Socialoomph (Twitter and Facebook), Dlvr.it (RSS to tweet / wall update), Social enhancer (Twitter only)

What’s next?

Add your social accounts: Facebook, Twitter. Potentially you can post to blog platforms too: Wordpress, Blogger, Tumblr, Posterous, Drupal, Joomla, anything with an API.

Schedule updates .

Configure tweetcockpit and email notifications in other channels.

Tools to amplify your volume:

Tweetadder: Lots of automation tools around following and unfollowing, schedule tweets, auto follow lists of people and auto unfollow non reciprocal users

Dlvr.it - Takes a feed, applies filters and posts to a network

How to increase your social presence?

Marcus Tober, CTO, SearchMetrics Inc., reckons the following will help you increase your social presence:

1. Monitor regular events that are important in your industry

2. Find Influencers for those topics: retweet or mention them and use your followers during the event to jump on the buzz stream

Are these tactics working for both Twitter and Facebook?

No, those can‘t directly be used in Facebook. Twitter is much quicker, contents tend to stay fresh for a shorter period of time. Topic Hijacking“ is much harder in Facebook – posting on brand‘s walls ect. is not very effective. According to Marcus Tober, Twitter provides the best value for your money. Facebook marketing tends to require superb content and a complete social media strategy – both are hard to come by when your‘re on a budget.

We’ll be back tomorrow at SES London. View our images here, follow us on Twitter or join our digital advertising, search and social conversations on LinkedIn

Thanks,

Nadia Hamraie

EMEA Web Marketing Manager, Microsoft advertising

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Bing Linked Pages: Better People Search Results Microsoft Bing announced a new feature named Linked Pages. The purpose is to make the search results for you and...

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Cloud marketing platform BloomReach has launched with a suite of three intelligent discovery tools for businesses. BloomReach accomplishes some pretty incredible things for web businesses in need of a holistic, well-rounded marketing approach.

There’s a certain logic to the concept of spending the most ad dollars in places where people spend the most time. But then, bus shelter ads are effective. People don’t spend a lot of time there, but when they are there, they’re bored and probably more likely to examine the ad than an ad on a flipping magazine page.

Flurry took a look at the Time vs Dollars ratio and here’s what they found:

TV is looking nice and even. Web dollars are catching up to time spent and Radio is balancing out. But look at print and mobile. Talk about out of whack.

It’s interesting, because mobile is slowly becoming print’s replacement. Instead of buying the Wall Street Journal, people read it on their iPad. Instead of reading the TV Guide magazine, they let their smartphones remind them when their favorite shows are on.

But look at the dollar discrepancy!

Mobile, I get. The technology is growing and changing faster than we can keep up, so I’m not surprised that ad dollars are lagging. But why are we still dumping all that money into print? Someone must be making money here or it wouldn’t still be riding that high.

My guess would be advertisers in women’s magazines. From Cover Girl make-up ads in Glamour to Swiffer dusters in Good Housekeeping, these are tried and true and I suspect they’re still going strong.

But the same women who buy those magazines are also pumping up the eCPMs (effective cost per mille /thousands) for mobile ads. Flurry found that women, aged 25-34 bring in an average eCPM of $13, well above the male average of $8.

They also found higher eCPMs from people who earned between $60,000 and $100,000 a year.

Let’s summarize, well-educated, young, upper middle class women are ready and willing to buy things via their mobile device. And yet, mobile is claiming only 1% of the total media ad spend.

The time for excuses is over, my friends. Mobile isn’t a maybe, it’s the future of marketing.

Day 2 of SES London 2012 has come to a close. The day, much like Day 1, was packed full of great tips and strategies on SEO tools and metrics, PPC architecture, and more. Here's a roundup of today's live blogging and coverage of SES London 2012.

Microsoft has filed a formal complaint against Motorola with the European Commission over what it sees as a clear abuse of its industry standard patents, with Google's tacit backing. This follows a similar filing by Apple demanding EC intervention.

Microsoft Bing announced a new feature named Linked Pages. The purpose is to make the search results for you and your friends more personalized as well as richer. If I am friends with you and you do a search in Bing for [barry schwartz] you will see the following search result at the top: Linked...

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

SMX West starts next week, are you excited?  Having been to a couple of SMX conferences in the past myself, I can say without a doubt that it’s one of the best out there for online marketers.  There’s always a great mix of speakers from across the industry; if you don’t walk away from this event feeling like you learned something new, then you’re probably ready to be one of the speakers.

If you’ve been following us on Twitter, you’ve most likely seen the 10% off discount code we’ve been tweeting over the past few weeks.  If not and you haven’t registered yet, just do so by 2/27 and use code smx10bing when you do to get the discount.

Here’s a quick summary of the sessions where you’ll find Microsoft staff speaking:

• Tuesday 2/28 @ 10am: Best Practices with adCenter for Bing and Yahoo
• Wednesday 2/29 @ 10am: Bing Webmaster Theater Session
• Wednesday 2/29 @ 5pm: In-House PPC: Organizational PPC Challenges & Solutions
• Thursday 3/1 @ 2:20pm: Ask the Paid Search Reps – Open Q&A

In addition to visiting us at booth #406, and visiting the sessions above, there’s one more piece of info we want to share with you: the User Experience Research team is also going to be at SMX and they’ve asked me to pass along this information to attendees:

Are you an Account Manager or SEM Specialist who is passionate about SEM? Come share experiences about your role and the tools you use and be entered in a drawing to win an XBOX 360 Kinect bundle!

Participate in a 30 minute 1:1 interview session or a lunchtime focus group at the Microsoft adCenter Feedback Lounge. Your feedback will help prioritize future improvements to Microsoft adCenter and you’ll automatically be entered in a drawing to win an XBOX 360 Kinect bundle in addition to a gratuity…. and of course some conference SWAG!

It’s simple to participate. Just click here to answer a few questions and select a session time. You do not need to be an adCenter user to participate. All sessions will take place in the adCenter Feedback Lounge (Meeting Room C1).

For questions, or additional information contact Safiya Bhojawala (safiyab@micrsoft.com) or Angela Moulden (angelam@microsoft.com).

View XBOX 360 Kinect drawing rules here.

So, there you have it.  Have a great time at SMX and if you enter the drawing, good luck!

As I was sitting on the ferry commuting to Google’s Sydney office this morning, two thoughts occurred to me. First, Australia is beautiful. If you’ve never been here, you really should visit. And second, it’s amazing how productive I can be with just my Android phone and an Internet connection. I was responding to email, reading news articles and editing documents—just like I do at the office. Only the view was better!

We want to give everyone the chance to be productive no matter where they are, so today we’re releasing a new update to the Google Docs app for Android. We've brought the collaborative experience from Google Docs on the desktop to your Android device. You'll see updates in real time as others type on their computers, tablets and phones, and you can just tap the document to join in.

We also updated the interface to make it easier to work with your documents on the go. For example, you can pinch to zoom and focus on a specific paragraph or see the whole document at a glance. We also added rich text formatting so you can do things like create a quick bullet list, add color to your documents, or just bold something important. Watch the new Google Docs app in action:



If you want to hear about the latest Docs news or send us feedback on the new app, visit Google Docs on Google+.

Gotta run—I’ve got another ferry to catch!

Posted by Vadim Gerasimov, Software Engineer

SMX West 2012: BCI’s Events and Liveblog Schedule was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

Estimated reading time: 1 minute Audience: SMX Attendees and Observers Top takeaways: • Going to SMX West next week? Visit us in booth #401. Enter to win the new SEO All-In-One for Dummies! • Check Bruce Clay, Inc.’s YouTube channel and blog for video interviews and session liveblogging. • Catch Bruce in the theater Tuesday and in the Ask the SEOs panel Thursday to talk SEO and SEO tools.

SMX West is a week away! Will we be seeing you in San Jose? We’ve got some news to share for those going and following from home.

If you’re attending, we look forward to meeting and mingling! On the expo floor you’ll find Bruce and the gang at booth #401. Please stop by and enter to win the new edition of SEO All-In-One for Dummies, freshly updated and inked by Bruce.

At noon Tuesday, Bruce’s theater presentation will explain how to use the ranking monitor as a productive part of your SEO tools. He’ll be answering open questions during Thursday’s Ask the SEOs panel at 1:00. If you’ve got any lingering SEO questions, don’t miss this all star group of panelists who’ve seen it all.

Of special note! We’ve got a a great deal for conference attendees seeking intensive SEO training. Bruce Clay leads the official SEO training workshop for SMX West. The one-day crash-course held Monday presents foundational SEO to all levels and is a wise way to start the conference at full speed. And here’s the score! The cost of the SMX West SEO workshop can be deducted from a seat in the full Standard and Advanced SEO training course in SoCal.

Won’t be there but are interested in news and insight shared at the show? Our media coverage will include near-real-time blogging of select sessions and up-to-date tweeting. We’re also powering up SEM Synergy to capture video interviews and convos with attendees.

Along with the sessions here, our 2011 Small Biz Discovery Contest winner, Kathy Long, will be contributing to our liveblogging coverage next week. Mega conference media blitz ahead!

Day 1: Tuesday, February 28

Time	Liveblogged Session
10:45 a.m.	Getting Personal, Part 2: How Google & Bing Personalize With Search History & Geography
1:30 p.m.	Solving Problems & Seeing Success In Google Places
5:15 p.m.	Evening Forum with Danny Sullivan

Day 2: Wednesday, February 29

Time	BCI Liveblog Coverage
9:00 a.m.	Keynote with Susan Wojcicki, SVP Advertising, Google, Inc.
10:45 a.m.	SEO For Google+ & Google Search
3:30 p.m.	Making Data From Google Webmaster Central & Bing Webmaster Tools Actionable
5:00 p.m.	Duplication, Aggregation, Syndication, Affiliates, Scraping And Information Architecture

Day 3: Thursday, March 1

Time	Liveblog Session
9:00 a.m.	The “New” Killer Content
1:00 p.m.	Ask the SEOs – Open Q&A Forum
2:30 p.m.	Ask The Search Engines – Open Q&A Forum

Amazingly, it's been nearly two and a half years since I first published my Local Search Ecosystem infographic back in October 2009. With the 2012 conference season kicking off in earnest with SearchFest on Friday and SMX West on Monday, I thought it was high time for an update. I'd like to think that the original graphic has stood the test of time pretty well...but there have definitely been some changes worth noting in the last 900 days or so.

Conversion testing is the holy grail of ROI on the Internet. Every day, more of our customers start picking up their phones, asking what new test we are planning for their website. Or may that be a result of sales people “incidentally” dropping Conversion Optimization and in doing so, providing the...

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Due to the agile and complex nature of paid search, managing a paid search program can often degenerate into a constant barrage of fire drills and ad hoc report requests. I have been there and it is not fun. I have also found that there is a way to dig out of this chaos and [...]

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

In the world of search engine optimization, competitive intelligence is an indelible source of campaign sustenance. Knowing where competitors are ranking for key terms, and more importantly, why they might have better rankings than your site, is information you simply cannot go without. I am going to walk through a few different ideas that will help effectively analyze search competitors.

Of the many competitive research tools available, Open Site Explorer shines brightly above the alternatives. It’s very intuitive – first time users will find it incredibly easy to use. You simply enter your URL, along with up to 4 competitors, and you get lots of data to start analyzing.

 

Total External Links

External links are useful see how you compare to competitors in online conversation and presence, and will help you set goals in your SEO strategy.

Link building can be a numbers game, and this report will help you determine whether it’s quantity, or quality (meaning high value) links that you lack compared to other sites in your industry.

Total Linking Root Domains

The Total Linking Domains report gives you a look at the diversity of domains sending links to your competitor’s websites. If you see that they have a high number of links, but a low number of total linking root domains, you know that they are getting most of their links from the same domains. It is better to have both a high number of links as well as a high number of linking root domains.

Linking C Blocks

The Linking C Blocks (or C class IPs) report refers to the IP addresses of linking websites.

While very similar to the Linking Root Domains report, this isn’t the same thing. C Blocks are your way of identifying the true backlink diversity of any given website. Getting 500 links from 500 unique C Block IP addresses is more impressive to search engines than 500 links from 500 different domains that are hosted on the same IP (or even C Block IP), which may look suspiciously like a linking network.

It is always best to have both a high number of linking root domains and a high number of linking C blocks in your link portfolio.

Evaluating the ratio between C blocks and linking root domains is also a quick way to identify whether a particular competitor is using a network of links.

Back Link Portfolio

After we have looked through these stats and set some goals on what you want to accomplish in your strategy we can next pull the backlink portfolio and see exactly where the competitors are getting their links. It is always best to sort their link portfolio by highest to lowest by page authority. This way you can start with their highest authoritative links and analyze and see how they got their link on that site and figure out a way to get a link on that site as well, weather it is a directory that you can place a link or a blog that you can offer a guest post to. It helps to think outside the box and figure out a way to get a link on their site.

Hopefully these tips will help you the next time you analyze your competitors and you will be able to find some high quality links for your site.

Inspiration can come from lots of places, but none may be as simple as sharing a meal with friends, family or even strangers. Food brings people together no matter their cultures or walk of life. Often food is a direct representation of the wonderful people who grow, cultivate and make it.

Recognizing this, Microsoft Advertising and Toyota have returned for a third season of MSN’s hit series, “Appetite for Life” this time turning to America’s Deep South – a region that is known for its lively people, great food, and culinary contributions. Unfortunately, recent natural disasters have created difficult economic circumstances for the region but, with the help of host Andrew Zimmern, Microsoft Advertising and Toyota will lend a hand to restaurant owners and citizens directly affected.

While visiting different cities in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, Zimmern brings both fun and culinary experiences to communities in an effort to raise funds for community rebuilding programs. These programs include the Chattanooga Area Food Bank, Food Bank of Northeast Georgia, and Meals on Wheels Atlanta, among others. In addition to delivering over 4,000 meals throughout the show’s efforts to date, Microsoft Advertising and Toyota have pledged $10,000 to Feeding America and offer viewers the opportunity to donate throughout the series at http://appetiteforlife.msn.com. To date, donations including the pledge from Microsoft Advertising and Toyota have totaled to over $37,000!

In 20+ episodes consisting of fundraiser derbies and tailgate parties, Zimmern visits 16 spirited cities, all representing the heart and hospitality of the South, in hopes to bring awareness and much needed financial support to the region. Experience and learn from these great cities while watching unique, exciting activities including a Jambalaya cook off, charity cooking classes, car races at a local speedway and more! Zimmern will take you on a ride as you explore the great food of America’s Deep South.

We invite you to join us on this road trip built for good and to check out the episodes on MSN.

Enjoy!

Stephen Kim, General Manager for Global Creative Solutions, Microsoft

Google announced on the Google Webmaster Central blog that they are now adding video support for schema.org. They are doing this in combination with Microsoft Bing and Yahoo Search as a “joint effort.” Google says using the schema.org video markup is the “recommended way to...

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Today is the 155th birthday of Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, the German physicist who was able to prove the existence of electromagnetic waves. To celebrate his contributions to the world, Google has a special animated wave logo on their homepage. He built an antenna that was able to detect and measure...

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Google+ Pages have sparked a lot of discussion in B2B marketing circles. The ability to add multiple management functionality, site verification, and easy to integrate Google+ badges have leadership teams asking whether this truly is the next social media platform B2B marketers must focus upon....

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

In analytics, there are two truths about bounce rates: if you aren’t tagging your downloads or on-page events correctly, you could be missing out on the full picture; and segmentation is everything – it helps you discern "good" from "bad" metrics.

Google has been busy over the past couple of years acquiring a good number of small startups, including some that may help or have helped contribute features to Google Plus, such as Fridge, Tweet counting SocialGrapple, people sorting Katango, the team behind JustSpotted, social ranking PostRank, and social movie recommendation service fflick.

Google [...]

Google is getting ready to face the legal music for its latest dalliance with regard to privacy. That makes sense only in a world where lawyers run the show. I don’t understand the process of how these things work. I am not a lawyer and I did not spend the night in a Holiday Inn Express so I am SOL in understanding what is about to hapen.

Fortunately, Jeff Roberts of paidcontent.org, IS a lawyer and wrote a post explaining what Google is about to get tangled with for the right to continue doing business like everyone else.

In a case filed on Friday, a Missouri man says Google violated the Wiretap Act and asked for damages on behalf of 62 million users. The case names only Google and not the handful of advertising agencies who allegedly performed similar actions. Meanwhile, Bloomberg News reports that a similar lawsuit has been filed against Google in Delaware.

The seriousness of the new lawsuits will be determined by which law firms step up to join the suit. In the world of class actions, lawyers have a list of plaintiffs at the ready and then race each other to the court house in the hopes of filing the first claim. The early-birds typically become “tag-alongs” eligible for a pay-out when bigger law firms join the fray.

Warms one’s heart, doesn’t it?

My question is the same one I raised yesterday to some degree. If EVERYONE is doing this same thing will we also see the rush to the courthouse to put Facebook and others in front of a judge as well?

This doesn’t need any more “analysis” because it is very early in this process. There is a lot that will happen between now and the decision as to whether this kind of case holds any water or it sinks. In the meantime, I think we all need to be asking every other site that is doing the exact same thing whether they feel they should be dragged into court as well. Fair is fair, right?

Microsoft and Yahoo! are keen to bring advertisers the benefits of our combined audiences as soon as possible. We have completed the transition of organic searches globally, which means that any user performing a search on Yahoo! from a PC or a mobile is provided with Bing-powered results. With regards to consolidation of the audiences on one single ad platform, it is already live in the US, Canada and India and we have identified an opportunity to accelerate its implementation in the UK, France, and Ireland.

UK advertisers to access a combined audience this April

We are beginning to transition Yahoo! Search Marketing accounts to Microsoft Advertising adCenter today, on the 22nd of February. We would then expect to start ramping Yahoo! traffic to the adCenter platform as early as the 19th of March and to complete the paid search transition before the end of April for the UK, France and Ireland. As promised, our commitment is to keep you informed on the developments and any actions you may need to take during this transition period.

Next steps and key actions

As an adCenter advertiser you don’t need to do anything just yet. If you also advertise on Yahoo!, you can now access an easy-to-use portal from your Yahoo! Search Marketing account to migrate your Yahoo! campaigns to Microsoft Advertising adCenter. As a Yahoo! advertiser, you should also have received detailed instructions from Yahoo! by now on how to successfully transfer your campaigns to adCenter.

Then, starting around March 19th we expect to progressively start serving adCenter ads to Yahoo! searchers. The entire Yahoo! paid search volume is expected to be transitioned to adCenter within approximately two weeks from that date. Below is what you will need to do during this second phase of the paid search transition:

• Understand new editorial policies. All Yahoo! and Microsoft advertisers will be subject to the new editorial guidelines created jointly by Yahoo! and Microsoft. You should review the updated editorial guidelines to see if your ads and keywords may be affected so that you can update them even before you transition your account to Microsoft Advertising adCenter.
• Adjust your budget for increased traffic. As the Yahoo! Search traffic ramps on adCenter you will see an increase in your usual traffic volume on adCenter. We recommend you to increase your campaign budgets to capture this additional traffic. Once Yahoo! Search traffic has fully ramped on adCenter, your budget on adCenter should probably be equal to your current spend on each platform. As a routine best practice, remember to increase your budget if it is within a 20% range of being fully depleted.
• Adjust your bid strategy to maintain your competitiveness. As new advertisers join the auction consider adjusting your campaign bids to prepare for increased competition. You may also want to expand your bid across all match types and use negative keywords to ensure your impressions remain steady and relevant.

In the next few weeks, we will continue to publish more in-depth recommendations on this blog for you to prepare and set up your campaigns for success in the combined marketplace. If you cannot wait, there is already a wealth of resources published on searchalliance.com/uk, including detailed FAQs and a feature comparison highlighting the main differences between Yahoo! Search Marketing and adCenter and how to leverage them. 

Towards a competitive search marketing alternative

Yahoo! Search and Bing will soon offer a competitive search offering that provides advertisers both quality audiences and opportunities to leverage strategic partnerships to efficiently deliver a strong return on investment. As mentioned above, we expect to complete the transition in the UK, France and Ireland before the end of April 2012. This means our advertisers are now just a couple months away from benefiting from the new joint audience. By then, you will be able to advertise on the full Yahoo! Search, Bing and their partner networks traffic through your adCenter campaigns.

Until then, we stay at your side to support you through this transition phase, to ensure there is minimal impact on your business.

 

Quiet period, schmiet period. As Groupon haas proven there is no such thing in the new world of Internet marketing and communications. Facebook just happened to “leak” some documents regarding their new Premium Ads set to go live on Feb. 29 to the CEO of iStrategyLabs who just so happened to post them to GigaOm, well, you get the point.

Regardless of the circumstances, the following pictures tell the story of exactly what Facebook is claiming advertisers will experience with these new ads. Let’s just say they are haughty numbers indeed.

I love claims like these especially when they come with an asterisk! Take a look at the basis of the claims. I have blown it up for you so you can see it more easily despite the effective use of smaller font in a lighter color by Facebook. Are you feeling confident yet?

Ah yes. Internal tests from Facebook got these results. OK, well, enough said.

Marketing Pilgrim’s Social Channel is proudly sponsored by Full Sail University, where you can earn your Masters of Science Degree in Internet Marketing in less than 2 years. Visit FullSail.edu for more information.

With more than 150 million members, LinkedIn can be an extremely important and effective advertising opportunity when used correctly. Here are tips on how to set up your account, create your first LinkedIn ad, target your ad, and set your budget.

Posted by jennita

Conferences are always a great way to get out and meet the SEOmoz community. Luckily we have SMX West coming up next week and quite a few Mozzers will be attending, speaking, live blogging and tweeting. We want to get a chance to meet as many of you as possible so I forced everyone to decide on a schedule so you’ll know where to find us!

Before I get into talking about where we’ll be, it’s probably best to first introduce the Mozzers so you know who to look for.

Keri Morgret - @KeriMorgret

You all learned a bit about Keri a few weeks ago when we spilled the beans about the Community Team. In addition to all her great community work, she's also a freelance marketer and helps clients with both SEO and PPC. You will find her speaking on Wednesday at 3:30 pm on the Beyond the Google Adwords Tool: Advanced Keyword Research Tactics panel. She'll be talking about negative keywords and some ingenius ways to make sure you're not spending money on unnecessary keyword targeting. 

You'll also find her live blogging for http://www.seroundtable.com/. Catch her live blogging schedule below.

Michael King - @iPullRank

As an Associate for SEOmoz, Mike focuses on answering questions in Q&A and writing for the blog (you may have seen his epic post yesterday). He's also done a Whiteboard Friday (or two) and is a great contributor to the SEOmoz Community. In his regular life, Mike's the SEO Manager at Publicis Modem in NYC.

You'll find him all over SMX West this year! He'll be speaking on two panels: What Search Data Reveals About Customer Needs & Desires – And How To Use It,  and he'll be on the Link Building Clinic. Two panels you'll surely not want to miss!

One thing you may already know abut Mike is that he loves to get to know people, so if you see him walking by, say hi! I promise, he doesn't bite.

Everett Sizemore - @balibones

Another grand Associate, Everett helps out by answering Q&A and now and then I twist his arm to write for the blog. He's the Director of SEO Strategy at seOverflow.com and will be speaking on the panel Driving Ecommerce & Retail Sales Through Search, Thursday at 1pm. If you saw his post about building deep links into e-commerce sites, then you know a bit how his mind works.

If you're working on an e-commerce or even just a really large site, I'd highly recommend not just going to this panel but also seeking Everett out in person. He's a ridiculous wealth of knowledge and we shouldn't let him keep all that inside. :)

 

Charlene Inoncillo - @charcillo

As our Marketing Admin, Charlene pretty much knows everything going on at all times on the marketing team. She’s new to the industry, so reach out and say hello! (ok, not literally).

She'll be attending all of the SMX Bootcamp sessions on the first day and in general learning all about search marketing. Be sure to stop her to say hello and show her how amazing this industry is!

 

 

Justin Vanning - @JustinVanning

Justin does Paid Search Marketing for Moz so you’ll probably see him spending much of his time in the PPC & Retargeting sessions. He'll be looking for ways to help out the SEOmoz Marketing team in addition to meeting our community.

Want to know more about our retargeting efforts, or how we do Facebook advertising? Justin's your man. Give him a holler and ask him about his Twitter strategy. ;)

 

 

 

Jen Sable Lopez - @jennita

*waves hello* If you haven't met me yet, I'm the Community Manager here at SEOmoz. I’ll be live-tweeting the heck out of SMX so be sure to watch out for my tweets from @jennita.

I'm hitting up a lot of the SEO and social media panels. I love to sit in the front row and make faces at the speakers, so beware! If you're not able to make to SMX follow my tweet stream and I'll attempt to keep you up-to-date.

If you're at the conference, please say hello! I love meeting our community members and really try to make it my goal to meet as many of you as possible.

Now that you know who you should be looking for, let’s see where all you can find us! Remember some of us are speaking, others are live blogging (or tweeting) and some of us are just attending. Also, we reserve the right to change our minds and attend different sessions as necessary. :D

Monday, February 27 – 6:00pm to 7:30pm

SMX Meet & Greet

Most of us will be attending the networking event on Monday night, so find us and say hello! We’re also planning on going for drinks after so let us know if you’d like to join us. :)

Tuesday, February 28

9:00am-10:15am
SMX Boot Camp: Keyword Research & Copywriting For Search Success - Charlene
Getting Personal, Part 1: How Google & Bing Personalize With Social Connections – Jen (live tweet) + Keri (live blog)
Maximizing Paid Search Campaigns With Google’s AdWords Extensions - Justin

10:45am-12pm
SMX Boot Camp: Link Building Fundamentals - Charlene
Getting Personal, Part 2: How Google & Bing Personalize With Search History & Geography - Jen (live tweet)

1:30pm-2:45pm
SMX Boot Camp: Paid Search Fundamentals - Charlene
Solving Problems & Seeing Success In Google Places – Jen (live tweet)
Power Tools For The Paid Search Pro - Justin

3:30pm-4:45pm
SMX Boot Camp: Search Engine Friendly Web Design - Charlene
Don’t Panic! A Hitchhiker’s Guide To Surviving SEO Changes – Jen (live tweet) + Keri (live blog)
Retargeting & Remarketing: The New Behavioral Ads - Justin

Wednesday, February 29

10:45am-12pm
SEO For Google+ & Google Search – Charlene + Jen (live tweet)
Search Ads: Taking Your Ads From Good To Great! – Justin
Real Answers For Technical SEO Problems – Mike (Q&A Moderating)

1:30pm-2:45pm
Building Buzz On Twitter: Getting Followed & Retweeted – Charlene + Jen (live tweet)
Best Practices For Paid Search Testing – Case Study Panel – Justin
Schema.org, Rel=Author & Meta Tagging Best Practices – Keri (live blog)

3:30pm-4:45pm
Building Buzz On Facebook: Getting Liked & Shared – Charlene + Jen (live tweet)
Beyond The Google AdWords Tool: Advanced Keyword Research Tactics – Justin, Keri (speaking)

5:00pm-6:15pm
Creative Facebook Ad Tactics - all of us will be there!

9pm-11pm: SMX After Dark @ Motif

Thursday, March 1

9am-10:15am
The "New" Killer Content - Charlene
Justifying The Investment: Analytics For Social Media  - Jen (live tweet)
Maximizing Enterprise PPC ROI - Justin

10:45am-12pm
Enterprise SEO – Challenges & Solutions - Charlene
What Search Data Reveals About Customer Needs & Desires – And How To Use It – Jen (live tweet) + Justin + Keri (live blog) + Mike (speaking)

1pm-2:15pm
Driving Ecommerce & Retail Sales Through Search – Everett (speaking)
Link Building Clinic – Mike (speaking)

Say Hello!

I'm serious here. If I find out that you were at SMX and didn't say hello, I'm going to be sad. Just think if you find us, you may even get a lovely picture with some of us... like this:

See you at SMX!

PS. If you haven't bought your ticket yet, use the code smx10seomoz to get a discount when you register for SMX.

 

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

With wave after wave of insightful stats, a common hazard for PPC managers is losing site of the shore and getting lost at sea. Here’s how you can avoid losing sight of your core business objectives when you’re neck-deep in statistics.

Posted by Chris Fernandez

There’s always a great deal of interest on SEOMoz and other blogs around trying to pin down what the “going rate” is for SEO, Inbound marketing and other related agency services, and what most firms charge for those services.

In fact, SEOMoz just released a survey of over 600 agencies that gave us great insight into this topic straight from the horse’s mouth.

As a result of all this interest, I thought it would be enlightening and potentially helpful to your agency or firm – especially if you are struggling with your current pricing model and/or client expectations – to see how we charge for our services at Biquitous, why we do it this way, and explain some of the benefits for us and our clients, and how those could extend to your agency.

Let’s Start At The Top

Before I go into the specifics, I think that it’s really important to first take a step back and look at what we are expected to do as SEOs.

For clarity, I’m going to utilize a fantastic graphic that Rand put together in a post some time ago regarding the growth in Inbound Marketing:

What this graphic illustrates is that “free” traffic involves a lot more than just SEO, which is usually all that most clients think of when they approach a firm regarding increasing “rankings”, traffic and ultimately sales, to their websites.

As we know, increasing traffic involves a lot more than just spiffing up a client’s website through content updates, META tag refreshes and site architecture fixes.

When we inevitably get the call to “help us with our rankings…” I can’t help but chuckle, or roll my eyes – whichever is appropriate at the time – in thinking that it must seem so damn easy from the outside looking in to try and qualify and quantify what we do as Internet marketers.

From a client’s perspective I’m sure it seems that all we do is snap our fingers and magically ratchet up a client’s rankings with almost no effort at all.

Part of this stems from ignorance on the part of a client who just doesn’t understand the time and effort it takes to increase the profile of their website and online presence – especially if there is heavy competition in their niche.

And why should they?

They’re experts in their business and they have inevitably come to us to tap into our expertise in ours.

But another, perhaps darker and more insidious reason our services aren’t as valued and respected as they should be, is because of the commoditization of SEO through outsourcing and “package” deals that these same business leaders are bombarded with every single day.

While beyond the scope of this post, it pains me deeply that our industry is so severely misunderstood, such that the value that oftentimes is placed on our services is seen as a necessary evil at best, and a loss leader at worst, rather than a viable cash flow generating initiative.

So, with all that being said, if you really want to set yourself apart from other firms and agencies, I suggest you try a fresh new approach to Internet marketing in general, and SEO and Inbound Marketing services in particular.

A New Approach

The reason I included Rand’s illustration above is because it ties in directly with our own approach to “SEO,” or more correctly, Internet marketing, of which Inbound Marketing services are a piece – albeit a very large piece.

In fact, because what your agency does probably involves a lot more than just SEO, email marketing, PPC or any single aspect of Internet marketing, I decided to put together a graphic that illustrates the many ways that Internet marketers generate traffic for clients, above and beyond just “free” traffic or Inbound Marketing:

This is not meant to be a comprehensive list by any means, but focuses on the most well-known and utilized strategies to increase traffic to a client’s website through the Internet.

Don’t Put The Cart Before The Horse

Ultimately, when most clients are ready for our services they usually want to jump directly into one or many of these traffic-generating initiatives because they think that focusing on increasing traffic will solve their underlying business problem.

However, instead of focusing on any of these Internet marketing strategies to help a client increase their traffic, I urge you to instead begin your strategy with the end result in mind – that of converting the visitor into a tangible lead, action or sale.

I’m sure your agency is probably already focused on this outcome – and if not, you should be – for a very simple reason:

If a tangible Return On Investment (ROI) isn’t delivered, you will quickly lose a client.

Therefore, a detailed and comprehensive action plan is necessary to implement a client’s SEO/Internet marketing strategy in order to create a thriving and sustainable business – oftentimes before any actual Inbound Marketing work is done.

With that background in mind, let’s dive right into the meat of how we do things and how you can apply this model to your own client interactions.

Strategy First, Execution Second, Traffic LAST

The actual implementation of an Inbound/Internet marketing strategy is the LAST thing that we do at Biquitous – and I suggest it be the last thing you do as well.

Instead you should be more concerned with making sure that the client’s website is ready to receive the additional traffic and convert those visitors into high quality leads and sales.

Not to mention the very real probability – and added bonus – that the client will see an immediate increase in traffic and sales simply from the work you do to prepare their site for an Inbound Marketing strategy.

In fact, most websites fail miserably because the owner or business leader responsible for a company’s Internet presence, executed this entire process backwards.

Here’s the way we fix things before beginning a traffic driving strategy:

(Note: The above image was taken from a post I wrote on why most websites fail. You can read the entire post by clicking here.)

We call this approach our Three-Phase Internet Marketing Execution Framework:

• Phase 1 involves deep research and strategy into the client’s needs, industry, competition, business model, purpose, passion, keywords, target audience and end game.

• Phase 2 involves executing that strategy. So for instance, if a client came to us with a website or social media presence that was atrocious and wouldn’t convert regardless of how many visitors it received, we need to first rebuild their entire online presence from the ground up.

• Phase 3 then builds upon the work we did in the first 2 phases to drive traffic to the client’s website and allows us to then use various Internet marketing strategies for ultimate effect.

Now that the client’s website and online presence are ready to roll, we then turn our attention to the full spectrum of Internet marketing services – of which SEO is a large part.

This stage is where you can and should, differentiate yourself from other agencies

What To Charge For Inbound Marketing/SEO Services and How To Execute

With that background to our thought process in mind, now we can dig deeper into our business model and how it has allowed us to be very successful with the types of clients that we serve.

I’ll preface this by saying that even if this model isn’t right for your agency or firm, I think there are some valuable insights here that you can still use to better serve your clients and potentially alleviate a problematic industry-wide dilemma with regards to “what to charge” in addition to handling client expectations.

• What To Charge: Because of the initial investment in Phases 1 and 2 of our Internet Marketing Execution Framework outlined above, we require all of our clients to agree to a minimum six month term of SEO or ongoing Internet marketing services before we’ll even begin working with them.

This is billed as a flat fee at the beginning of each month that starts at no less than $2,500 per month.

Since most of our clients have revenue in the range of $1-30 million, or are startups ramping up a new business, our minimum required investment is usually not a problem for them.

The upside to this model (more below) is that the client becomes fully invested in the process and in seeing all this time, money and effort pay off.

This creates loyal and collaborative relationships because the client has to really analyze their online business structure, and in many cases modify it, based on our advice and expertise. Therefore, they are committed to creating a thriving and successful online presence.

These are ideal clients because they understand the time, investment and resources necessary to get this right – often after having gotten it wrong previously.

When you commit to a 6-12 month project you are more likely to actually LISTEN to your Internet marketing agency, work closely with them, trust them, and appreciate the results that you get. This in turn breeds fierce loyalty.

In other words, your services become VALUED!

This is a word, and a concept, that many SEO and Internet marketing firms and agencies struggle with because many clients don’t see the value (even after a ROI analysis) in what we do.

So, the first thing that I highly recommend for your agency is to price your services such that a client has to make a REAL commitment to you, and more so, to themselves. Otherwise they weren’t very committed in the first place.

This approach has been so successful for us that most of our clients remain with us for years and depend on us to be their Senior Vice President of Internet Marketing.

• How To Execute: Now that we’ve secured a client for at least 6 months after our initial engagement, we can roll up our sleeves and get to work.

How do we deliver our entire suite of Internet marketing services?

Here’s the same “Inbound Marketing” graphic from before:

So what we do instead of charging a client for the “Super Deluxe SEO Package” and doing the same routine tasks each month (directory submissions, press releases, link outreach, guest blogging, etc.), we instead offer an a la carte suite of potential ways that a client can increase market share, brand awareness, rankings, traffic, and ultimately, cash flow.

What we do is deploy their monthly budget for the highest ROI initiatives that we feel would help the client based on their specific industry, budget, competition, sales cycle, timeline, sales structure and other factors.

For instance, most medium sized businesses are ranking terribly for their major search terms because they simply have poor on-site SEO factors. We take care of that in Phase 2.

Therefore, our clients often see immediate ranking and traffic increases because their websites already had high authority and backlink profiles, and simply needed some tweaking.

In these cases, we don’t have to begin with the usual heavy dose of off-site SEO strategies like content marketing, guest blogging, link outreach, Q and A, PR’s, etc. to try and get them more authority – at least not initially.

Instead, for example, we can apply that client’s budget to creating an iPhone app if appropriate (see example below), or creating a specific social media campaign or Infographic campaign for that particular month.

In other words, while we’ll likely always incorporate some form of off-site link building initiatives, our structure allows us to deviate from this tried-and-true approach and cycle through various other traffic drivers when appropriate.

A Quick Example:

Say a client already has an authoritative web presence and wants to focus on other initiatives to drive traffic, loyalty, brand awareness and customer interaction.

After assessing their goals and objectives, we determine that at this juncture, creating an iPhone app is a great way to utilize some of their marketing budget.

We determine that a simple iPhone app that they want will cost about $5,000 to complete (all hypotheticals here).

We’ll then apply that client’s monthly “SEO” investment towards creating that app.

In the case of a smaller budget of $2,500 per month, we’ll use two month’s worth of dues to complete and deliver that specific project.

Another Example:

Likewise, if a site is brand new and has a very poor SEO profile, no link outreach, and low authority, we’ll go right into traditional SEO initiatives and work to improve the site’s overall Internet profile, and commit to that specific goal by using all available (white hat!) methods until we see traction.

What If They Exceed Their Budget?

If a client wants other services above and beyond their specified budget and the initiatives that we have implemented for them, we are happy to accommodate whatever they want/need and simply charge them a flat or hourly rate depending on the services rendered.

For example, if a client needs a social media manager, or someone to write blog posts for their company blog, we’ll take care of the logistics, find the writer and deliver a polished, end-to-end solution for which the client simply pays us separately from their monthly Internet marketing investment.

This “a la carte” approach allows us to not only explore and expand on traditional Internet marketing and Inbound Marketing methods, but to further serve the client on a deep and personal level and construct an action plan based off of our work and research in the first two phases of our Internet Marketing Execution Framework that will best serve their immediate and long term needs.

Why This Model Works: Takeaways For Your Agency

So why does this work so well for us and how can you implement some or all of these strategies into your own agency’s pricing or business model?

Here are a few reasons broken down from our perspective as well as that of the client.

Why This Model Works – Agency Perspective:

• Budgetary Certainty: Obviously, having a known revenue run rate for each client allows us to effectively map out an Internet marketing plan and effectively gather and utilize our resources.

• Product Roadmap: With a firm timeline in hand, we’re able to project a product roadmap for the client and implement complex product and service launches to take advantage of the various stages of our initial action plan.

• Measurement of Results: This gives us ample time to test and measure results and effectiveness, and implement improvements on the fly.

• Adjust Initiatives: Similarly, we are also able to make adjustments to initiatives that aren’t delivering the desired outcomes without having to worry about the client bailing because they aren’t seeing immediate results.

• Internal Pressure: This is a personal favorite of mine because we are on the clock. Having that external and internal pressure is a great motivating and driving force for the team involved to deliver specific and measurable results in order to retain the client long-term.

• Flexibility: Because the client’s budget can be utilized for virtually ANY initiative, this gives us great flexibility to spread our wings and try new and innovative marketing initiatives while remaining within budget. Internet marketing initiatives sometimes take a long time to bear fruit; this pricing model allows us that flexibility.

• Motivated, Vested Client: It goes without saying that one of the largest frustrations that most agencies face is a client who won’t listen to them or work with the agency. As a result of our pricing structure, our clients are intent on working closely with us and alignment is much easier to attain.

• Long-Term Partnership: Provided we delivered on our commitments, the usual outcome of this process is a happy client who enjoys working with us, appreciates our workflow, and ultimately becomes a long-term client.

Why This Model Works – Client Perspective:

• Cost Certainty: The client can properly budget their resources for the length of the contract and have cost certainty within their business.

• Measurement of Results: This approach allows the client to measure their results and effectiveness without having to succumb to instant gratification. Changes can be made based on iterative testing, feedback and collaboration.

• Freedom for Experimentation: Most companies would never try a new initiative for fear of losing their budget with little to no results. This approach allows much more flexibility and experimentation because the investment is already committed, so there is a higher willingness to try more non-traditional initiatives to generate a higher ROI.

• Collaborative Experience: We’re in this together. When our client succeeds so do we, as cliché as that sounds. Therefore, from a client’s perspective, having the benefit of knowing they can speak with us anytime to brainstorm new initiatives, modify existing ones or just strategize on a new product launch is comforting and akin to having your own in-house marketing team.

• Flexibility: Similar to freedom for experimentation, a client in this cost structure has the flexibility to move around their budget and allocate it to various initiatives because they know that, even if that initiative costs more than their monthly budget, the flexibility of our pricing model allows them to pay for the new initiative without having to invest additional funds. In addition, if the client does need additional work done, we offer a full suite of services and merely charge them on a per project or hourly basis for additional work.

• Commitment: As I stated before, this approach oftentimes produces a motivated and fully invested client who wants to see results as much as we do. Therefore, they are fully committed not just to the process, but also to the end game. Clients appreciate an agency that is working closely with them on a direct 1-1 basis that they can count on for literally anything that encompasses any of their Internet marketing initiatives.

Final Thoughts

As I said earlier, this model may or may not be right for your agency based on many factors such as your business model, client base, work structure, expertise, logistics, etc.

My intent was to share our model and how we mold it for each of our clients so that you can take away some of the most salient points and apply them to your business to increase your retention level, customer satisfaction, and ability to deliver results.

At the very least, you can see an example of how an a la carte, flat fee monthly structure can work while not pigeonholing your firm into doing the same exact tasks over and over without allowing you the flexibility necessary to sculpt a custom action plan for each client to help facilitate the results you need and they expect.

I would love to hear your comments below and get your take on how your agency or firm handles the “what and how to charge” dilemma.

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The wavy blue, red, yellow, and green logo on Google’s homepage today is in honor of Heinrich Rudolph Hertz. The German physicist, who was instrumental in the discovery of electromagnetic and radio waves, was born on this date 155 years ago.

Google is upping its game with improvements to ad sitelinks. The new sitelink option gives users more options while delivering more clicks for advertisers. On average, Google said the click through rate is 30 percent higher for ads with sitelinks.

Is a new version of Google’s mortgage comparison service in the works? After scaling back the service in November, mortgage comparison went offline earlier this month. Mortgage comparison search is also gone from the Google Advisor site.

The mystery of Google’s stealth consumer product has apparently been conclusively solved. The NY Times is confirming earlier reports that Google is going to release “heads up display glasses” by the end of the year. The glasses — or literal Google Goggles in this case...

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Some adCenter API users may experience up to a 2-6 hour delay with API performance reports beginning Thursday February 23 at 8pm PST through between 10pm PST and 2am PST on Friday February 24. Reports are expected to be running normally by 2am PST on Friday, February 24.

New versions of both Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android are available today. Both apps bring back high-demand features, including the swipe shortcut, and they also introduce new design and functionality improvements. Here’s a rundown.

Both apps

• Swipe shortcut: Swipe a Tweet in your home timeline to reply to, retweet, favorite or share it, or view the Twitter user’s profile, without leaving your timeline.
• “Find friends”: We’ve added a confirmation alert when you select “Find friends”. This notification more clearly and explicitly messages the fact that when you upload your contacts’ email addresses and phone numbers, you can quickly find which of your friends are on Twitter (that is, if they’ve chosen to be discoverable by email or phone number).

Twitter for iPhone

• Copy and paste: We’ve returned the ability to copy and paste the text of Tweets and user profiles. Just press and hold to copy.
• Link love: The “share” feature used to just give you the option to copy or email a link to a Tweet. Now, if there’s a link within a Tweet, you’ll see the option to tweet, copy or mail that link, or you can choose to read it later. (Select a “Read Later Service” under Settings > Advanced.)
• Pressing and holding links provides similar options, along with the ability to open the link in Safari.

Direct messages: We updated the design for Direct Messages and returned the ability to mark all DMs as read. Simply tap the check mark in the lower right corner.Font size settings: Change the font size under Settings > Advanced.Twitter for Android

• New devices: Twitter for Android is now optimized to run on Android devices running Ice Cream Sandwich, as well as on the Kindle Fire (available today through the Amazon Appstore) and the Barnes & Noble NOOK Color and NOOK Tablet (available February 23 though the Barnes & Noble NOOK Store).

You can download Twitter for iPhone today from the App Store and Twitter for Android from Android Market.

Google has been improving its flight and hotel search results over the past few months, adding capabilities and polishing the overall experience. In accordance with that “iterative” approach Google announced today that flight search will now be available on mobile devices (browser...

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Posted by randfish

I've been running an experiment with some dark-hatted links for several months, consistently hoping Google will catch them and remove their value. So far... Nothing. Well, except top 3 rankings for all the anchor text pointed at those pages. Google's webspam team has all the incentive, brainpower and money in the world, yet their bets seem to be centered firmly on Google+ and the social graph eventually subsuming the "natural" results with those biased to what our friends and connections share/+1. Fine. I get it. Link buying isn't going away, no matter how much we wish it would.

Even if link buying is working in the short-term and webspam's being less aggressive, I still think it's a waste of money for three reasons:

1. Rankings are tactical: Earning your way to the top rankings is awesome, because it brings with it the branding, familiarity, trust, social sharing and dozens of other positive marketing signals that "earned" links carry. Spam and paid links just give you some more traffic (and not even as much as a trusted brand could earn in the same position). Conversion rates are lower than your peers, and the secondary traffic benefits from other sources, word-of-mouth, etc. never come into play.
2. It's Overpriced: My wife's travel site gets offers for several hundred dollars to put in a few links on a single post, and that's not even an efficient market like those created by professional link sellers and link platforms. Playing the link buying game in the big leagues takes thousands to tens of thousands of dollars each month 
3. There's Always Risk: You're already familiar with the horrific pain of Google's Kafka-esque penalties, but maybe you're banking on not getting hit, given their relative ineffectiveness over the past couple years. Problem is, Google+ has created two new kinds of risk for link spammers. The first is that social search results, which have virtually no ties to the link graph, will overwhelm "natural" results and make those purchased links largely useless. The second is that Google+ gains enough momentum and data to leverage for webspam analysis. If you've been pointing lots of links at sites and pages that earn no social traction, get ready to feel some pain. Maybe you're risk-tolerant enough to scoff off both of these, but I don't think Google+ is going anywhere, and I give them even-odds to have a social content/sharing graph big enough to pull off both within 24 months.

"Blah, blah, blah, I've heard your white hat evangelism before, Rand" Yeah, you have. Fair enough. So how about instead of just warning about what not to do, I give you somewhere to spend all those earmarked-for-spam dollars.

Here's some rough calculations on link purchasing in a moderately competitive vertical:

• Ranking goal: single keyword phrase plus some slight modified phrases
• Required: minimum of 50 unique root domains
  • 35 will be one-time payments, but are relatively low quality, $100 is the average price (like I said, low quality)
  • 15 will require ongoing payments to maintain the link, $100/month (on average) will probably do it
• Total cost over 12 months: ($100*35)+($100*12*15) = $21,500

So, for $21,500, you can probably buy your way into the top 3 rankings for a moderately competitive phrase in a vertical like niche travel, low-volume e-commerce products, etc. Many black hats I know would argue they can get it cheaper, and they can, but that's usually because they own networks and properties or have relationships for which they wouldn't pay directly. A marketing guy working in-house at a brand has none of the connections, no networks of spamfarms, nothing except dollars and a business model that can turn $21.5K in spammy links into $100K in CLTV at 50% margins for a net of $28.5K.

Now let's try an alternative: Buying a blog.

Say you're LastWear Clothing (a site one of my favorite Moz engineers, Marty, particularly likes). They could buy some links to key pages (in spite of all the many good reasons not to) and try to get rankings for queries like men's hakama or womens underbust corset. There's a small amount of existing search query demand, and they're one of the only sources on the web selling those precise garments, so there's a good chance that would turn into sales.

But, let's try another thought experiment. I'll head over to Google Reader and run a search for "steampunk" (the aesthetic of LastWear's clothing):

The second site that pops up has a blog with 6,647 subscribers... And it's talking about the fashion of steampunk! I think we're on to something.

The Steampunk Workshop blog has thousands of subscribers, and they're already clear proponents of LastWear (I know, at this point you're thinking I planned all this from the start, but I swear, it just fell into place as I was searching/writing). That Workshop site is also running ads on the sidebar and between posts, which suggests an attempt at monetization. While not every site like this is a potential option, many are likely to be interested in an acquisition.

Here's one way I might structure it:

• Steampunk Workshop moves their blog to LastWear.com/blog
• They continue blogging about all the things they normally would - no editorial interference or direction needed
• LastWear helps with a more professional design, subscription buttons, some marketing polish, etc. to help the blog earn more traffic, visibility and fans
• In exchange for the move, LastWear offers a monthly stipend to the blogger(s) and a lump sum payment at the end of 3 years. After those 3 years, they own the blog and the content therein, and both parties can decide how they'd like to proceed with the relationship.

If LastWear went down this road, I can promise two things; #1) they'll get far greater short and long term ROI than buying links and #2) it will be less expensive in the long run.

To my mind, this is a no-brainer. When you buy a blog or any form of online community, you're not simply acquiring links, you're getting:

• An engine for brand building and indirect customer acquisition
• An ongoing methodology to pull in links, tweets, shares, +1s, likes, etc.
• Brand evangelists who will help expand your reach and credibility
• A PR opportunity like few others, even in fields where PR is hard to come by (acquisitions are talked-about, blogged-about, and make the news, even those of relatively small blogs)
• Content that's already been proven to attract an audience
• All the organic signals that search engines love to see - from links to social to usage to content to branding

I honestly don't understand why this problem exists:

It makes you want to yell, "Why don't you just go get married already?!"

Here's five questions I'd ask brands considering online marketing to answer before choosing link purchasing tactics over a blog investment strategy:

1. Which is more likely to be scalable in the long term?
2. Which is more likely to work across multiple channels (content, social, SEO, referring links, etc)?
3. Which carries a greater risk->reward ratio?
4. Which is more likely to increase conversion rate and customer lifetime value?
5. Which is more likely to earn you accolades from your community and which is more likely to earn you a rankings penalty one morning when you really need to hit your quarterly traffic numbers? 

To be fair, there's plenty of challenges and hoops to jump through in these types of transactions and some won't work out. But, I see a huge disconnect between those who are naturally earning all the signals engines say they want (blogs and online communities) vs. those need them (commercial sites) and no reason the two can't co-mingle. If you're a marketer looking to invest dollars into earning a presence in the search, social and web world, you can either build it yourself or you can buy it. I hope to see lots of dollars flowing to the content pioneers who've already proven themselves effective earners of inbound marketing signals -- the bloggers.

p.s. In the future, I hope to cover this topic in more depth and detail and provide tools and methodologies to structure discovery, transactions, value-creation, etc. but for now, I hope this post offers at least a little inspiration and an alternative use for capitol that can do far more good in the hands of bloggers than fly-by-night spam operations.

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Women may be tops when it comes to communicating but online, they’re more careful about what they say and to whom.

A new study from UK company uSamp shows that overall, men were more apt to share personal information online, topping women in every area except one – brand’s liked.

78% of the UK women surveyed said they’d be happy to share information about what they buy and even 74% of men said they’d share that info, too.

One of the biggest gaps between “I’d share” and “I wouldn’t” was date of birth. 55% of men said they’d share their birth date but only 45% of women were willing to admit how old they were.

Men were also much more willing to share their phone number online, 12% vs only 4% of women.

The phone number, like the home address are security issues. But income was another taboo subject with men coming in the highest at only 10%.

The big surprise? 70% of women were happy to share their relationship status. Men actually topped that number with 73%. The survey didn’t say, but I wonder how many of those men were married.

Education and occupation were too other bits of info that scored high on the “happy to share” scale.

The survey doesn’t only relate to public, social sharing. It can be inferred that folks feel the same way about sharing this information with websites and retailers. Keep this in mind when you’re putting together your registration screen and profile pages. More and more sites are making a phone number a required box and that’s likely to drive away customers. Feel free to ask for the moon, but don’t require your potential customers to give out more info than you really need to service them properly.

Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Scroogle’s Gone? Here’s Who Still Offers Private Searching You’ve probably read the news already that Scroogle is gone forever. It launched back...

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Webmaster level: All

Videos are one of the most common types of results on Google and we want to make sure that your videos get indexed. Today, we're also launching video support for schema.org. Schema.org is a joint effort between Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! and is now the recommended way to describe videos on the web. The markup is very simple and can be easily added to most websites.

Adding schema.org video markup is just like adding any other schema.org data. Simply define an itemscope, an itemtype=”http://schema.org/VideoObject”, and make sure to set the name, description, and thumbnailURL properties. You’ll also need either the embedURL — the location of the video player — or the contentURL — the location of the video file. A typical video player with markup might look like this:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/VideoObject">
  <h2>Video: <span itemprop="name">Title</span></h2>
  <meta itemprop="duration" content="T1M33S" />
  <meta itemprop="thumbnailURL" content="thumbnail.jpg" />
  <meta itemprop="embedURL"
    content="http://www.example.com/videoplayer.swf?video=123" />
  <object ...>
    <embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" ...>
  </object>
  <span itemprop="description">Video description</span>
<div>

Using schema.org markup will not affect any Video Sitemaps or mRSS feeds you're already using. In fact, we still recommend that you also use a Video Sitemap because it alerts us of any new or updated videos faster and provides advanced functionality such as country and platform restrictions.

Since this means that there are now a number of ways to tell Google about your videos, choosing the right format can seem difficult. In order to make the video indexing process as easy as possible, we’ve put together a series of videos and articles about video indexing in our new Webmasters EDU microsite.

For more information, you can go through the Webmasters EDU video articles, read the full schema.org VideoObject specification, or ask questions in the Webmaster Help Forum. We look forward to seeing more of your video content in Google Search.

Posted by Henry Zhang, Product Manager

Avinash Kaushik’s keynote kicked off SES London 2012 today, and what followed was a day filled with tips on landing page optimization, PPC, link building, and more. Here's a roundup of today's live blogging and coverage of SES London 2011.

This is the cheesiest–and most awesome–video I’ve seen in a while.

The fact that it happens to be Microsoft in a full on attack* of Google Apps, means that I have the perfect excuse to share it with you:

And, I’m laughing because I’m a Google Apps user.

* Bonus points for using YouTube to host it!

(Hat-tip)

Discussing SEO with clients is no easy task but educating them about what is required to get them rankings is extremely important in order to set the right expectations. Individuals working in SEO must understand how Google and other search engines crawl, index and rank websites to be able to educate the client accordingly.

It is hard to know how difficult achieving rankings with a new search engine optimization project will be because so many factors play into it and Google is always adjusting its algorithm. By understanding search engines you can help clients understand how difficult an SEO’s job is at times.

So how does Google’s algorithm work?

The Anatomy of a Search Engine:

This is a basic breakdown of a much more complex process.

• A URL Server sends over lists of URLs to be crawled.
• The crawlers download the web pages then send them to the store server. The store server compresses and stores the web pages.
• Every web page is given an associated ID number called a docID then sent to the indexer.
• The indexing function is performed by the indexer and the sorter.
• All of the documents (webpages) are converted into a set of word occurrences called hits. Each hit records the word, position in document and other variables.
• The indexer sends these hits into a set of “buckets”, creating a partial index.
• The indexer separates out all of the links in every web page and keeps important information about them in another file. This file contains information about where each link points from and to, and the text of the link.
• The links database is used to compute PageRanks for all the documents. The sorter takes the barrels, which are sorted by docID…., and resorts them by wordID to generate the inverted index…… The searcher is run by a web server and uses the inverted index and the PageRanks to answer queries.

 

 

A much more in depth process of this can be found at - http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

In laymen’s terms this is what it happens:

Say someone is looking for information about blu ray players. Google takes the billions of documents on the web and converts them into wordID’s. Then it looks for instances or patterns of the wordID’s across all of the documents and ranks the documents based on how often the wordID’s appear. For example,

Blu ray player

blu	1	4	6	23	37	52	94	134
ray	17	23	66	94	134	176	236	561
players	45	66	134	210	236	371	561	788
Blu ray players	23	134	561	765	876	1023	1348	1762

 

Based off of the table above you can see that document 134 shows up in every document making it the most relevant and thus potentially ranking very high in the search results. Google has to sort through millions of documents on the web that could be talking about Ray-Ban glasses that are blue, blue ray jackets, Tampa Devil Rays jerseys that are blue, Devil Ray players, Blue Apple players and so on. In addition to looking for wordID’s, links and other on-pages factors are taken into consideration when trying to rank a site. This gets very complex really quick.

Key Takeaway: Google has to create an “association” or see that your site is relevant for a given keyword out of billions of documents. That association could take months if not years to create and it becomes even more difficult to create as you move closer to the top 10 results. *We know Google has around 200 ranking factors so it would be a good idea for a client to implement as many on-page elements as possible, to send a clear message to Google as to what the page is about, since on-page elements tend to be easier to control then the link building aspect.

Knowing the basic process is good but how much information does Google have to sort through in order to find the most relevant webpage for a search query?

What Does It Take To Get a List of Results?

• More than 1 million computing hours have gone into preparing Google’s index
• More than 1 billion searches are performed on Google every day
• More than 1,000 man years have been spent on developing Google’s algorithm
• Google’s Caffeine index contains over 100 million gigabytes
• In July of 2008 Google processed 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs. What does that equate to: That is the equivalent of, “fully exploring every intersection of every road in the United States. Except it’d be a map about 50,000 times as big as the U.S., with 50,000 times as many roads and intersections.” Google computes this every day.
• Google’s database of indexed pages is 5 million terabytes – A stack of DVDs holding Google’s index would be as tall as 3,192 Empire State buildings.

This is the task of an SEO, to try and help Google effectively sort through all of the web pages and then to help a client rank for a certain search query. This is why it takes time to potentially rank for a given keyword. As SEO’s optimize pages and build links Google is sorting through the tremendous amounts of data every day in order to better understand which pages should rank in the top positions.

As you can see a lot of time and energy has been spent by Google in order to bring back relevant results to users. It does not stop there. Since new web pages are being created daily, Google has to keep up with all of this new information. Because of that Google and other search engines need to be efficient and effective in how they manage all of this information.

Google is Always Changing

Even if a client has everything in place and is able to get to the first page of the search results, Google is always changing and tweaking its algorithm so it is an uphill battle.

Google made over 500 changes to their algorithm last year and Matt Cutts has stated,

“Overall, our advice for publishers continues to be to focus on delivering the best possible user experience on your websites……This change is just one of the over 500improvements we expect to roll out to search this year.”

The news came on January 19th when Google announced another algorithm change.

While the majority of these changes are small, a number of big changes took place last year that affected nearly 50% of all search queries.

For an up to date timeline of Google’s changes over the years check out SEOmoz.org. Since Google is always changing the way they rank sites it makes an SEO’s job that much more difficult. Keeping up to date on the latest changes and industry news is never ending for an SEO.

Obviously there are many more factors to consider when getting into an SEO campaign but I have found that helping clients recognize how much work it takes to get sites to rank can improve the overall relationship in a positive way.

Stats above can be found at:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/we-knew-web-was-big.html

http://www.google.com/insidesearch/underthehood.html

http://adam-thompson.me/2011/02/03/google-how-big/

You’ve probably read the news already that Scroogle is gone forever. It launched back in 2003 and was popular among searchers who wanted to get Google search results in a private setting. Now that it’s gone, where can searchers go for a more private search experience than Google and...

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

If you answered “watched an online video” to our headline question then you’re absolutely right!

New data from the comScore Video Metrix shows that in January 2012, 181 million U.S. Internet users watched nearly 40 billion online videos.

In January of 2011, that number was 171 million. That’s a heck of a jump up in the space of one year.

The big winner was, of course, Google / YouTube. They blew everyone else out of the pool with their 152 million unique viewers watching 18.6 billion videos.

The next closest player was VEVO with 51.5 million viewers. VEVO was the biggest YouTube partner channel, with Warner Music and Machinima coming in second and third.

Here’s the wild part, the average person watched 22.6 hours of online video in January. This is up from only 14 hours year-over-year.

Google has the highest individual effort with 7.5 hours and Hulu came in second with 3.2 hours. Hulu also took the top spot for ad impressions, reaching 11% of the US population.

What’s your online video, guilty pleasure?  We promise we won’t share your answers with anyone who isn’t on the internet.

 

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Google’s circumvention of Safari privacy settings is just the tip of the user tracking iceberg. Privacy and user experience are in serious conflict, with billions of advertising dollars at stake as search and social converge.

I’m obsessed with Google. (I mean, you kind of have to be if you’re in this industry.) But sometimes, you need a break from the hand that feeds. There’s no denying the power of advanced search queries, but you’d be surprised how many other and different prospects you can...

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Russia’s top search engine Yandex has made two big moves on the social search front. In addition to incorporating content from popular social networks into its search results, Yandex has partnered with Twitter to make tweets searchable in real time.

We’re reporting from SES London to share some top PPC and social tips with those attending who love a re-cap and those chained to desk, unable to make it. We wriggled our way to the front seats of the ‘Landing page optimization’ session this morning. If visitors arrive on your site but conversions aren’t up to scratch - your landing pages are one thing you should examine.

When a visitor comes to your webpage you’ll be surprised on how large the impact of great targeted ad copy, good images and relevant products are. Improving only one of these elements can better your conversions with 5-10% says Nathan Richter, Strategic Services Director at Monetate.

Landing page optimization tactics and their impact

If your message, image and merchandise are aligned this could improve your average conversion rate by 5-20%. Product ‘badging’ -adding emblems with a rating- can improve conversions by as much as 55% according to Richter, international & geographical messaging can improve conversions by as much as 100%. He also points out that we should think of landing ‘sessions’ opposed to ‘pages’. When your visitor starts looking around on your site, it should be easy to click back to the initial product he or she showed an interest in.

Putting of off ustomers never helped anyone

A while ago I watched ‘Alex Polizzi, the Fixer ‘ on the BBC. For those not familiar with the program: a sometimes rather scary business woman visits a struggling business and gives them brutally honest advice on what they have to improve to survive. One week a furniture business was under scrutiny. Alex’s beady eye had fallen on the family businesses brochure (yep never mind website!) The headline was negative; the image showed a far too young woman being launched out of a lazy boy chair and the body text did not focus on their unique selling points. No wonder their spend-ready audience wasn’t queuing at the tills as a result of this.

How to attract customers on your landing pages with ad copy

Not only brochures but plenty of websites would benefit from a critical review. Karl Blanks chairman at Conversion Rate Experts shared some copy writing best practices for landing pages.

1. ‘Your landing page is only as good as its creator’ says Blanks. He recommends finding someone in your business that has a lot of ‘face time’ with the customer and let them review your landing pages. Does the information answer your customer’s common questions? Does it put frequently voiced concerns to bed? Does it highlight those features that often sway the customer to buy?

2. He also recons buying (or signing up) yourself on your site is a sobering experience. Blanks and his colleague ordered a shed once following this process and realized (apart from site issues) that - when the shed arrived - the parts did not fit through the house.

Finally Karl shared some copy writing tips to make your landing page too tempting to resist:

1. Open with recognisable line (that makes them think ‘hm hm that’s me!)
2. Create a headline that makes people want to read more.
3. Add USPs as bullet points.
4. Summarise the main benefits of your products.
5. Ensure the font size is not too small.
6. Add links to enable visitors to jump to the section of their interest.
7. Ensure the first paragraph captures the main points so that people know what they’ll get when they read on.
8. Add a call to action at the bottom.
9. Give a guarantee (to reduce risk).
10. Add an incentive for prompt action.

We’ll be back tomorrow at SES London. View our images of day 1 here, follow us on Twitter or join our digital advertising, search and social conversations on LinkedIn. Don't forget that tomorrow at noon you can join the round table forum with Yahoo! and Bing on the search alliance.

Simone Schuurer – EMEA Community Site Manager

Apparently, when Facebook filed its plans to go public, analysts saw nothing but “red flags” that the social network had thus far failed to monetize its 425+ million mobile users…

The disclosure sent up red flags for analysts, because the company also said it does not “currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products, and our ability to do so successfully is unproven.”

Talk about a “glass is half empty” attitude. For me, that looks like a huge opportunity for Facebook and I suspect that the dire warning was nothing more than the obligatory pessimistic statements needed when making any financial statement.

Anyway, it appears Facebook’s ready to give mobile advertising another crack with a major announcement in New York on February 29th.

Of course, the big question is, will mobile Facebook users tolerate ads appearing in their smart phones and tablets. And the answer? Of course they will!

Oh sure, they’ll be some huffing and puffing by many Facebook users. Heck, I’m sure profile pictures will be changed and anti-Facebook Pages will be created, but when all is said and done, we’ll just get used to it and move on. Anyone remember the outrage over Facebook’s Ticker? Heck, I kinda like it now!

One “social-media expert” went as far as to say…

Facebook could end up “irritating their user base by inundating them with ads,” he said.

Since when has that ever stopped Zuckerberg et al? Over 400 million in unmonetized users? I have one word for ya: ka-ching!