Jake was a quick-witted entrepreneur oozing with creativity.

He made decent money working for others at the agency that employed him. Somewhere along the way, Jake decided that he should come up with his own product.

So he did. Jake spent all his free time for the better part of a summer in quiet isolation. While he kept up his day job, as soon as the clock struck 5:00 everyday, the fire in Jake’s seat at his desk burned him right out the door to his hatchback.
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Reading the curiosity-arousing article on SEL, “The Phone, Calling,” I noticed that the use and presence of call tracking numbers, toll-free numbers and other non-main-line phone numbers could cause trouble for search engines.

“First, these numbers throw a monkey wrench in business identification. Second, they could expire, inadvertently creating a dead-end for a consumer. Publishers today struggle with how to accurately identify an actual business when many phone numbers are involved.”

The easiest solution, imho, is (more…)

In response to Google’s efforts to block access to Latma’s We Con The World parody, which is another proof of Google’s political bias and unreliability, I am going to go a month without Google search. I look forward to seeing how this works, and will report back. If you want to make a widget to this effect, or do the same, please feel free, and do let me know. (more…)

There are a number of services of questionable ethics around, offering students to research and write full term papers for them. This is at the university level. For anyone familiar with the kind of work that goes into this, I would suggest that these sources can also be valuable sources for premium quality content. The type to linkbait professors, and (more…)

To my friends, acquaintances and readers: I’ve got a sweet link opportunity for you that combines charity with trusted educational links.

Together with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s student union (the “Aguda”) and the Office of Student Activities of the Rothberg International School, we’re organizing an anti-smoking programme. The idea is to give away -free – nicotine gum to students who want to quit, to help them kick the habit.

We’ll be setting up stalls where students can come ask for a pack of the gum, and invite them to give us their names/emails for follow up to see how they’re doing a little later. Permission marketing rather than interruption marketing, to avoid giving away gum to students not really determined to quit.

If you want to contribute to buying these gums for students, send me an email at gab@seor.. for details. I’m taking payments for this through Paypal, as well as contributing $1000 myself. We’ve also got people matching donations dollar for dollar, so that if you give $10, you’re helping us get $20 total.

For the links, any donation over $100 gets you a link on the aguda’s old, trusted site and another one on the program’s site. We may get a third link n Rothberg’s site, but it’s unclear for now.

I’m not sure whether we can give optimum anchor text, but I’ll do my best to arrange it. For the record, Matt Cutts approves of charity-donation links.

Again, to send money and get links, email gab at this domain (seor..).

Reading the post Common SEO Mistakes: CSS Image Replacement, I found myself criticized for making the logo here an H1 tag, as well as for making it the first link.   (more…)

I’m currently working on an Advanced SEO Book. It will open with a number of principles that distinguish the thinking of advanced SEOs, and continue with a large variety of advanced tactics and ideas that illustrate this understanding. The following extract addresses the key question of people’s motivations. This applies equally to each side in a debate.

“What does the person comparison-reviewing these products want? To help, or to leverage their site into higher affiliate commissions?”

These questions illustrate the normal human instinct to use the argument that we think will be most appealing to the other side, or the argument that will make us look the most noble. We might tell a roommate that we did their laundry because we had some extra space [e.g. implying we’re nice guys] and not mention the fact that we’re hoping to have them OK a friend sleeping over on the couch next week.

Ask yourself why a person is arguing the way they are and not in some other way. Some useful questions in this regard are:

- Would it be respectable if they had some other motivation than what they’re presenting?
- Is this argument aimed at appealing to a wider variety of people than some other claims that advance a narrower interest?
- Who benefits from this? What are the consequences of accepting their argument, and how can people benefit from it?

Google’s Example

For example, Google may claim that one of their goals is providing a better user experience.

It’s well-known that humans rely on brands as a short-cut to decision-making. What’s less well-known is that one measure Google uses for the effectiveness of their search results are the speed with which people click through. So by placing brands in the organic results, Google encourages brand-based decision shortcuts.

[Ed: I wrote this before Google made the brand shortcuts idea explicit, so it's funny re-reading this now in light of how things have developed.]

What effect does that have when brands are showing up in ad slots? It’s plausible that the net effect is a greater CTR for brand advertisers, who end up depending more on AdWords traffic and a lot bigger budgets to PPC as a result.

Of course, this is just theorizing about Google’s motivations. I’m not saying I have some inside memo as proof for this. Rather, I’m just demonstrating the application of these questions and the kinds of insights you might derive from such critical thinking.

The Paid Links Example

Perhaps a more obvious and well known example in the realm of search marketing is the battle between Google and paid links. Google has repeatedly put out statements to the effect that they catch paid links and penalize one or both of the parties to the transaction.

To which many SEOs retorted that Google was just trying to fight a competing business model to their own, which is also selling links. For a long time I didn’t find that a convincing argument, because the phrasing was awkward.

Then one day Jordan Glogau explained it to me in these terms. Google sells traffic from the sponsored listings, and text link sellers really sell traffic from the organic listings. That clarified Google’s motives in the war on paid links where I’m concerned.

[...]

If you liked this excerpt, get another free chapter by email.

The situation: Your competitors have inbound links that are broken because of typos, changes in URL structures etc.

The common link building commentary: Most SEOs who’ve been around the link building block will tell you that it’s an opportunity to ‘build links’ for free – to pick low hanging fruit. Just drop the site owner a little email and voila – good as new. More juice for you! (more…)

I’ve just been reading some of SEOmoz‘s Pro member tips and seeing their suggestions to use affiliate URLs that use hashtags, also referred to as the pound sign, number sign or hash mark.* For example, site.com/#aff123 . (more…)

An increasingly popular question in attribution management and in advertising measurement is what effect ads – that were viewed but not clicked on – have. These ads are known in the lingo as ‘View-Thrus’ or ‘View-Throughs.’ The related question people usually have is what percentage of credit to give view-thrus for conversions that came via multiple touchpoints (e.g. the customer saw and/or clicked several ads, before buying).

I’ve come up with an idea for an experiment to measure the effect of such “view-thru” ads on conversion, as well as on acquisition costs. (An acquisition cost is the cost-per-action of acquiring the lead/customer.) (more…)

Yesterday, I described what I saw as a trend towards content communities becoming commodified. We ended on the question – how do you build a competitive advantage in such a case? (more…)

Ads are increasingly being bought to promote content, rather than to create brand awareness or sell directly. What’s interesting to me about this is that it’s a trend growing in parallel with a trend amongst large, SEO-driven sites towards building blog-focused communities. (more…)

Competitive intelligence provides entertainment, an inside-track on industry trend-spotting, and the potential to develop tangential business opportunities before others, or at least catch up quickly. I gluttonously consume information, and thought I’d share some parts of my diet with other competitive intelligence collectors with hearty appetites. (more…)

Let’s face it – you’re only worth as much as it costs to replace you. Most businesses are going through budget cuts and lay-offs, or have at some point in the last two years, which makes it more important than ever to prove your value to your company or client.

They could hire another SEO for your salary… but they can’t hire another SEO; and a merchandising analyst; and a marketplace analyst; and a PR firm; and a blogger; and a customer service rep for your salary. Yet, a good SEO will be ALL of these things! (more…)

Are competitors mining your backlinks with tools like Yahoo! Site Explorer, Linkscape and Majestic SEO? Just because they can check your backlinks out, doesn’t mean you should make life easy by giving good data to their link building tools.

So here’s how to dirty the data that competitors see when using backlink checking tools or hub finders.

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If you could find out what competitors’ conversion rates are and you can estimate the traffic value to your competition? Surely the PPC pros could use that conversion data…

Well, it turns out you can get a pretty good idea about competitors’ conversion rates. (more…)

Hey guys,

After my previous great experiences going to you for advice, I thought I’d ask how I should go about creating my “Best Of” page? In particular, I’m interested in 2 things:

1) What posts belong there?

2) How should I highlight the page? I used to have a best of page in my main navigation, but it got very few clicks. I’d like to perhaps try a different approach – what would you guys suggest?

Cheers

Gab

Here’s what I’ve been reading for the past few months. Most of these are excellent, and I encourage you guys to get your own copy. (more…)

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… And Based On That Projected ROI, Get Management Buy-In, Set Priorities and Spend Time Wisely.

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Does the legal team or your boss absolutely insist on having a splash page? Here’s a tip to SEO the homepage in the search engines despite the splash. It’s untested as of yet, but I feel it’s good enough to be worth a try.

Are you ready?
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by One Good Bumblebee
From the Seattle Times today (read in print version) comes a story headlined: “Google Says It Will Challenge Amazon On Electronic Books.” Loyal readers of mine would have known this was coming 7 months ago. Here are a few choice excerpts from my old post: (more…)

By observing patterns in visitor intent and demographics, conversion optimization and redesigns can be planned more intelligently. The patterns you identify can be used to create personas. Through my use of 4Q visitor surveys, I’ve learned the top reasons people visit SEO ROI Services and developed corresponding personas.

What’s a persona? (more…)

Normally, a 404 Not Found error is shown to visitors when they try to visit a non-existent page. But what about when there is a page there, only it doesn’t have what they want – what do you do then? One solution is to offer them a link to the right page, duh! Sounds simple, but it can actually be a bit tricky. Another is to update the page and answer people’s question. (more…)

1. You need social proof? “As Seen In [the following media]” is a popular and well-trusted form of social proof. So next time you run a campaign, why not hit up Google News for inspiration, plus the internal search functions of major news networks and trade publications? (more…)

Aha! I finally realized why measuring relationships is the best way to measure social media results! Two words: Opportunity Cost. (more…)

by jalb If you’re using captchas to protect your forms, or other forms of logic, you’re probably finding that you’re still getting spammed despite the captcha.
Well, here is a new idea for you to beat those captcha cracka bots, and some ways to implement it. (more…)

Officially, SEO best practices say you can’t use those beautiful branded fonts in those pictures-of-text for your headings. And conversion best practices say that you may not always want to use keywords in the headings – just use whatever converts best. So wrapping an image with keyword-rich text in h1 tags is not the solution.

So how do you make the web designers and brand managers and conversion experts and SEO pros play nice and get along?

a – Have them talk it out and come to a compromise.

b – Go with a majority vote.

c – Have the SEO throw raging fire and brimstone until they comply.

More seriously, here’s a neat little workaround. (more…)

From this interview with Google’s Chief Economist, Hal Varian, I found out that the Borgle‘s leading economist (and California university professor) has also noticed the trend towards data commodification. (more…)

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Over the past year I’ve had this site rank for a number of terms, after blogging about them, mostly on the strength of its own domain authority. The catch is that over time, (more…)

A while back someone in the search community recommended I get a form fill extension (more…)

Link buying advice often sounds something like, “Get links from relevant sites and pages for the greatest boost to your rankings.” Link buying advice is often wrong.

According to everyone’s favourite content network guru, keyword selection on the content network needs to be based on demographics. That’s why I saw the following weight loss ads on a page that had nothing to do with weight loss, and nor did the site hosting the page. (more…)

I’ve written before about what I see as the correct paradigm for measuring social media success: the strength of the relationships you’ve built. I’ve been aware of FriendFeed for a while, but I wasn’t aware what it was precisely. And more importantly, I didn’t know that it had an API.

I’m aware of both now. So FYI: you can create a basic social media analytics software/platform. (more…)

That’s a pretty inflammatory statement, isn’t it? But why is it any less inflammatory than “Those who can, do. Those who cannot, teach.” You hear that all the time in internet marketing circles (especially affiliate ones) and it’s pretty silly. (more…)

Kevin Kelly recently wrote about how you can sell something that might otherwise be obtained for free. I disagree with his premises: (more…)

Standard conversion advice says remove navigation from the landing page (at least for lead generation landers). Standard SEO says use links. The next best thing would be to put the navigation out of sight, in the footer, and have your calls to action above that so visitors won’t use your navigation to leave your page.

But if you put the nav in the footer, it might get less search engine trust, precisely because folks don’t use footer navigation. What’s a conversion minded SEO to do? Here are 4 options to play navigation peekaboo with search engines and humans to convert your SEO traffic better. Blackhats use some forms of this, but I think I’ve also thought of original twists too. (more…)

“roi- are you kidding! did columbus know what the roi was before he went out and discovered the new world?”

Sounds like an inhouse sem tasked with doing SEO projections.

What is crowd clout? It’s a trend identified by Trend Watching whereby consumers congregate at a given merchant’s store and get a discount for buying in bulk. As I was reading Inc magazine’s article on a restaurant saving money and again when I dropped by Cesar Serna’s blog , I was reminded of this idea I had to adapt the restaurant’s technique and crowd clout to online marketing. (more…)

This post is about search… but first, a little anecdote. I was playing poker with some buddies this weekend, and it reminded me of a thought I have often had about my friend Jon’s bluffs: he’s very succesful at finding that threshold “pain level” above which our other friend Will and I are hesitant to call the bluff. That is, he knows what the minimum raise is that he needs to make to intimidate us out of the pot. Typically it’s about 3-4 times the big blind. (more…)

Get the lowdown in my post at Youmoz. The template’s already had over 250 downloads! And on a related note, Internal Link Building just crossed the 2500 download mark!

Aaron Wall hasn’t written extensively on WP blog security in the past, to my knowledge. However, he knows it’s a topic likely to be popular with the general blogger community and not too technical to push them away, while still being meaty and fresh enough to appeal to his regular SEO audience. (more…)

Facebook offers the best demographic and niche targeting in existence on any ad network, anywhere. Is it any surprise, therefore, that it’s an extremely fertile grounds for recruiting? Here’s how a recruitment agency developed around Facebook ads could become a major player in the staff hiring game. (more…)

In the past few years, the three big engines have spent big dollars on acquiring data. Now free and/or affordable tools are making search data available to any SEO with a few bucks to spare. In this post, I’d like to share with you what I see as an emerging trend and one around which new businesses can be built. (more…)

With Google preparing to monopolize online shopping, webmasters everywhere need to be asking themselves what businesses they can build independent of those odd entities we call search engines. Over the next few days/weeks, I will share some back-of-the-envelope business models I’ve considered but not implemented for lack of time. Today I’m going to share a Facebook app idea adapted from Lucas Ng’s original take. (more…)

What do Google’s search-within-search, the Google Affiliate Network, and Google Suggest have to do with each other? It’s all about Google’s transformation from being a bridge and toll-gate on the information superhighway to being bridge, toll-gate and destination! (more…)

I wrote a while back that Google Maps Guide Jen offered a way to demerge merged listings in Google Maps. Well, while things seem to have gotten better, it appears that the filtering on Google Maps still isn’t perfected. Consider (more…)

Are domain names the internet’s real estate? Can keyword research be considered intellectual property? I put these and other questions to Eric Goldman and Mark J Rosenberg, both of whom are speaking on SES San Jose’s legal panel. (Clarification: This is an interview, not coverage of an SES session.)
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While I’m usually not the one to swear on a professional blog, there are exceptional occasions where it’s appropriate, and this is one of them. I’m waaaaaay overdue for a links post, and there are so many quality ones here, that I had to use my affiliate friend‘s expression. (more…)