In poker, your bankroll refers to how much budget you’ve allotted to play, a concept that isn’t thought of in online marketing even though it’s value to online marketers is huge. (more…)
Ryan Kent runs an SEO shop (find him also on LinkedIn and G+) growing exclusively based on word of mouth, and has also dominated SEOmoz Q&A to become SEOmoz’s top member in what seems a rather short time. I interviewed this rising star of the SEO scene and he shared his knowledge of the business very generously… (more…)
SEOs building email lists (and email retargeting subscribers) just got huge help in the form of data mashup artists Rapleaf and Rapportive, two tools for gaining data on your email contacts. The impact will mutate weak little campaigns into car-throwing raging hulks.
Gab: Aleyda Solis is one of the savviest SEO experts in Spain and even in international SEO, which fact is obvious from her role managing an SEO team in the highly competitive field of Forex, or Foreign Exchange trading. We recently chatted over email about her
In addition, she runs a SEO consultancy called Orainti, and is prominent in the search space, writing at State of Search and her SEO blog; co-organizing the SEO+You meetup in Madrid; speaking at SEO conferences and tweeting SEO news and resources SEO blog.
I’m from Montreal Quebec, where a large percentage of people only speak French, and this slows the transfer of technology there. To what extent is that an international problem? Do Spaniards also lag behind the English-speaking world in technology?
Yes, in general that is an international problem and that happens for the Spanish speaking world too.
I think it’s always like that in technology: new products and services are usually launched first for the US market in English and later for the rest of the world.
You can also see that with online marketing and SEO related news, for example, Google updates are almost always launched first in English for the US and the latest information is usually in English.
At the end of the day this makes that for SEO it is fundamental to speak English in order to be updated in our field.
Who are the top Spanish-language bloggers you read?
Most of the blogs I read are in English –because of what we talked before-, nonetheless in Spanish I highly enjoy blogs like:
And of course the posts shared by Spanish SEO colleagues and friends, such as Lakil (http://www.seo-20.com/), SEOcom (http://www.seocom.es/blog/), Lino (http://www.mecagoenlos.com/), Jose Llinares (http://www.josellinares.com/), Iñaki (http://blog.ikhuerta.com/), Fernando Muñoz (http://www.senormunoz.es/archives), Jose Moreno (http://www.jbmoreno.es/comunicacion/blog/), MJ Cachon (http://www.mjcachon.es/) and Christian (http://www.christianoliveira.com/blog/).
Share some social media networking secrets. What do you do for successful outreach?
1. Identify and connect
Who do I share interests with? Who can I learn from? Who and where are the leaders of my sector? Connect with them!
A great tool for this is http://www.socialbro.com/.
2. Observe and Listen
Learn from what is shared. Take a look of what is successful within your audience. Analyze and understand its behavior. A useful tool to do it is http://favstar.com/.
3. Interact nicely and create value
Be honest, provide relevant feedback in a nice way. Share useful information to your audience according to what you have identified.
You’re speaking soon at SEOmoz’s MozCon. What’s the topic of your presentation and what will people take away from it?
My presentation at MozCon will be about Successful SEO Project Management, where I will be sharing best practices and tools to effectively managing SEO projects.
I have had the chance to wear many hats in very different scenarios as SEO that have given me the chance to learn the importance of good project management.
First as an SEO specialist, then as Head of the SEO department in an Online Marketing agency, later as an In-House SEO and now I’m a mix, of an Independent SEO consultant with my own company and also a Global SEO manager working remotely for an online company.
At the moment I work with people who are in Moscow, Madrid, Berlin, Podgorica and New York parallely so an effective management and workflow for the SEO process is fundamental to make things happen as initially defined.
Unfortunately I’ve seen SEO processes fail not due to he lack of SEO capacity or understanding but because of aspects that are more related to the coordination of a multidisciplinary, multidepartment project.
My goal is that after the presentation even highly experienced SEOs that will be attending to MozCon can have a much more specific criteria and roadmaps to follow when facing diverse SEO project scenarios that can be sometimes complex to manage.
What advice would you give to beginning, Spanish-focused SEOs?
Keep updated
Twitter is a great platform not only to interact with more experienced SEO specialists you can learn from but also an excellent way to keep updated with the latest SEO news and identify new SEO resources to use.Develop your own tests
If you don’t apply what you read or think might work you will never develop a real advantage over your competitors. Besides validating what is shared you also need to create your own hypotheses and check if they work. Like this you will also gain experience, which is very important if someone is starting.Connect with others
Attend to local SEO events. For example you can attend for free in Madrid to SEO+You) -an event that I organize with other SEO colleagues-, there’s also another great event called Evento SEO and in Barcelona there’s Clinic SEO. ??You also have local SEO conferences, like Congreso SEO Profesional , where you will have the opportunity to learn from and network with experienced SEO specialists.
Identify your USP
There are already a lot of SEOs out there, so what can you offer that they don’t? What is your USP (unique selling proposition)? Usually you can find this when you have already developed a bit of experience, see what are you the best at and what you love the most in SEO. Maybe it’s link-building or technical SEO, the important thing is to identify it and make the most out of it to provide a unique value to your clients and have an advantage over your competitors.
Have fun
If you’ve started doing SEO because you’ve been told is great but you’re not enjoying it really… you should ask yourself if this is really what you want. Remember: you should always love what you do and have fun!
I recently sat down with Chris Dyson over email and we got to chat about a topic many SEOs regularly ask about: how do you run an SEO consulting business?? Of course, our interview ranged wider and addressed topics such as Inbound.org, but even those essentially are tangents of our main discussion.
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@ Jason Acidre is the Co-Founder and CEO of Xight Interactive, a Philippine-based Inbound Marketing Consulting Agency. He’s also the author of Kaiserthesage, an SEO blog, and has been the marketing strategist for Affilorama affiliate training for the past 2 years. [I gave him nicer anchor text; he didn't ask for it, for you haters out there.]
You’ve built an impressive amount of comments on your posts [ed: 20+ average] in just under 2 years of blogging. What 3 things have you done that have most encouraged this community of commenters to build around your blog? (more…)
Did a little interview you might find interesting with Jon Rognerud. We talk about advanced SEO, trends and so forth. If you want a condensed class in advanced SEO, go listen in. (The transscription is so-so.)
BookCrossing.com is a unique book giving community where people label their books, give them to other members to read and then those members pass them on further to others. In 11 years it’s grown to over 1M members, with 9M books in circulation.
How BookCrossing Works: Label your books, share them with others, and follow its travel worldwide!
In this unique interview, Co-Founder & Director of Finance Heather Mehra-Pedersen shares what has helped grow their community, motivate their members and ultimately build the business. (more…)
Since I started in SEO 6+ years ago, one forum always ranked for SEO – SEO Chat, a part of the Developer Shed network. Jim Boykin, he of the Internet Marketing Ninjas, just acquired the forum and the rest of the network.
I’m pleased by the news because to me, SEO Chat has long been a site with no personality, when personality is really a distinguishing feature in this industry. (more…)
Here’s a look at 4 new platforms and why you should consider getting social on these networks.
Keith Hagen of ConversionIQ is set to speak at the next Conversion Conference in Chicago. He graciously agreed to an interview ahead of the show.
Click here for a $100 discount
on Conversion Conference. You’ll see the discount code listed in the upper right after the click.1) What’s the topic of your presentation? How did you come up with that?
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If you’re using both an autoresponder series of emails as well as “broadcast” messages that go out with no regard to sequence, you run the risk of annoying people with too-frequent emails. (more…)
My friend Andrew Breem of Outshine Online Marketing asked:
“As far as I can tell, you’ve built your business as a sole consultant as opposed to say building out a big team. Was this a conscious decision or did it just evolve? I’m at a cross roads now where I’m trying to decide exactly what route to take and I’m considering both approaches. I’d love to hear your opinion on why you made the choice you did, if you don’t mind sharing. ”
A: It’s not been my conscious decision, it’s just been a product of circumstances, really. I started consulting when I was turning 19 (started SEO 6 months before 
) and I couldn’t build an agency while being in university. So that was 2006-2010.
I moved to Israel December 30 2010 and then was back in school studying Hebrew for 5 hours/day for the next 5 months. Then I got engaged and was busy planning the wedding with my then-fiance (now wife). Around the same time I also finally launched my book and obviously that took a fair amount of effort.
The closest I came to running an agency was doing a decent volume of guest posting where I subcontracted with up to 12 bloggers at a time. Problem was that with monthly-renewal contracts you don’t have the stability to hire people full time so you’re limited in what you can build.
That’s for circumstances.
For my personal intentions, I did want to build a shiny big agency when I was new and starting out. SEOmoz’s high rates and cool work really motivated me to imitate them … until, like them, I realized that SEO services have limited scale.
I’m pretty ambitious in terms of the size of the business I want to build. When I see brilliant SEOs like my friends at NVI, Distilled, SEER Interactive, Portent and elsewhere “only” growing organically as opposed to the growth of a Facebook or a Twitter, it just makes it painfully obvious to me that the way to go for mega-success is to be the market owner – the Walmart, eBay, Odesk – instead of the guy owning a stall in the market. I have some ideas on that and hopefully I’ll get around to building a startup eventually.
For the time being, circumstances are such that am going to continue offering consulting services for the foreseeable future. I’m still having fun with SEO, with my book, and I’ve also got a stint in the Israeli army coming up – I just got my first summons as a draft-eligible 24 year old. Consulting and book sales give me the flexibility I need in my work.
The kind folks at internet marketing company IM Ninjas (formerly We Build Pages) sent me some nice clothes including a tshirt, polo and sweater (can’t show pics since they went to my address in Canada and I’m living in Israel) and to Dixon Jones of Majestic SEO link tools and Receptional SEO for treating myself and a number of other SEOs to dinner during last week’s SMX Israel show.
It’s no secret that editorial links are typically relationship driven, but who has time to build relationships? That’s why we talk at each other in ephemeral tweets that last 140 characters … if you had that kind of lasting power in your relations with your wife, a divorce would not be long in coming! (more…)
Via Eric Ward’s newsletter, I found out that Google Chairman Eric Schmidt recently testified (PDF) before Congress about claims that Google is anti-competitive. Amongst his remarks are some truly amusing statements for anyone that knows Google and/or the current state of the web. Other things were less amusing and more amazing in what they revealed.
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Short tip for today, scratchpad style:
Retargeting ads are very successful … because they target an audience that already visited your site, and because they tend to offer deals to people who almost bought, but for whatever reason left before purchasing. These deals help push people across the threshold and get them to buy.
What if you did that offline? Someone comes into your car dealership and walks away with no keys… Call them back the next day with another offer based on what you think would close the deal. Don’t start chasing the next prospect [yet].
Have you guys ever done this? Or taken other online tactics offline?
An infographic that provoked my curiosity, by longtime expert in the linkbait field, Muhammad Saleem: (more…)
I’ve been digging into online marketing tools and to my chagrin, most want an annual fee (or one time payment usually roughly equivalent). It’s the rise of SAAS…
Email: (more…)
From LiveCity: “LiveCity provides a website building service, which is both easy to use by novice website builders, and robust enough to allow skilled customers to express themselves by accessing the background code. The LiveCity system was developed by us, and with more than 200,000 websites already opened with our website builder, we are glad to be a leading service provider in the field of CMS systems for websites.”
I spoke with CEO Nir Alloush about his company’s product and how they’re helping SMBs. Of most note is his eye for how customers will use the product and providing room to grow with his company’s tool, as well as their thorough QA/usability testing process… For the advanced folks reading, you can skip over the marketing tips as you’ll know them.
1) What is wrong with other website builders that you saw the need to create another tool? What does your tool solve?
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M.-J. Taylor is a moderator on V7N’s forums and has been working in SEO since 1997. She’s recently launched a SEO & social blog and offers services via her site Cyber-Key , focused on the web design and SEO in the Florida Keys.
How did you get involved with V7N?
I was a moderator on WebProWorld and kept hearing about V7N from other members. I checked it out. It wasn’t the most learned forum I’d ever visited, but it was the friendliest. I was made to feel welcome and a “part of.” And I felt I was needed, as well as wanted. (more…)
In yet another fascinating case study, Mr Green’s blog shares a mobile marketing campaign aimed at recruiting panel members for a demographic research service. (more…)
The IM scene here in Israel is growing and is ripe for a monthly meetup for schmoozing and having fun with your peers. That was most evident this Sunday at SphinnCon, which was very well-attended and featured some pretty impressive presentations from the likes of Barry Schwartz of Rustybrick Web Dev and Adir Regev of Go Internet Marketing in particular.
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Sending cards is a cheap way to build goodwill, especially when personalized. Here are some nice examples I’ve received from my friends at Outsourced Program Management Pros, Milestone Internet Marketing, and Aweber Email Marketing. (more…)
Recently, Sphinn has changed from a vote-driven (read:clique) system to editor-driven (read:non-social) system. This explains any things that seem out of place, as well as Twitter not being mentioned). Besides that, this continues our Sphinn Interview series, which previously featured Bob Gladstein, Pat Altoft, Sebastian, and Dave Harry.
Wiep runs the popular Link Building Blog aka Wiep.net, and co-founded LinkBuilding.nl which you’ll agree is pretty self-explanatory. (It’s part of the inspiration for me to get off my ass and do something with linkbuilding.ca …)
1) What benefits have you seen from your activity at Sphinn?
Sphinn turned out to be not only a great networking tool, but also the perfect place to find outstanding SEO related info. (more…)
If so, contact me for more info! For details, read on.
Here are some other benefits of working as a salesman for SEO ROI Services:
Here’s a sample testimonial, from Dave Davis of Red Fly Marketing.
“We’ve used the link building services of Gab Goldenberg and SEOROI for the past four months and we have found the service absolutely amazing. The quality of the links we got was astonishing and nothing that we could have gotten without incredible effort on our parts. Probably not at all. I would highly recommend Gab and SEOROI for any link building or SEO services. The knowledge, quality and attention to detail provided is an extremely rare thing.”
Contact me for more info!
If you work with anyone else, watch this video. Via Got Safety.net, Michael Roberts, and its creators, Cognitive Media Graphics / TheRSA.org. Cognitive does the graphics fwiw. (more…)
This is a guest post by Troy Redington. Find him on Twitter @TroyRedington !
I’ve been into web development since 1995. I started dabbling in high school and just couldn’t stop. I felt comforted, and challenged by the vast sea of knowledge that I could learn. Plus, since the languages, technologies, and trends were always changing – I knew I wouldn’t get bored with it. (more…)
For those of you who don’t know, my name’s Gab Goldenberg and I run SEO ROI Services. There are a few practices that I’d like to share, which give me both pleasure and pride in running this business. (more…)
Mixergy.com is one of my new faourite sites, because it’s got a huge archive of high quality interviews with fascinating people! The guy making it happen first and foremost is Andrew Warner, whom I got to interview. Here’s what we discussed.
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Patrick Altoft directs search for Branded3, a Leeds-based full service digital agency. He also runs the popular Blogstorm SEO blog and is a pretty interesting guy to chat to overall! Hit him up if you’re looking for search services in the UK! 
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Sebastian is the technical genius and SEO behind Sebastian’s Pamphlets. This warm fellow’s well-known avatar is rather ironic – a crab! 
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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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A long, long time ago… almost 2 years to the month… I asked a bunch of cool Sphinners I was getting to know for their advice and insights on that great search marketing network we know as Sphinn. For various reasons, I never published those interviews – until now! (SEOptimise reminded me.) In light of Twitter and Facebook‘s exponential growth in the past 2 years, the changes in the link graph this has engendered, and related developments, these answers are pretty interesting.
“Well sheee-it there monsieur Gabs, not sure what use this will be but I said I would give ‘er a go and I shall…. Right away I just wanted to say that while I appreciate your kind words and invitation to get social, I spend as much time playing the devil’s advocate in the world of Social Media Marketing as I do supporting it. I am certainly not a social media darling ( almost a Social Media Ninja though….)
Without further ado… let’s get into it;
What benefits have you seen from your activity at Sphinn ?
Well, I suppose the real benefits have been;
1. Making new friends
2. Padding my address book
3. Maxing out my reader
4. Some increased visibility
5. And of course access to learning something new every day 
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This is a guest post by Troy Redington. Find him on Twitter @TroyRedington, and his wife, an architect and photographer, at Johwey!
As the solo in-house SEO for Fatwallet, it is important that I keep up with the constant changes of the industry. My two staple conferences have been SESNY and Pubcon Vegas. Last spring I was toying with the idea of attending Pubcon South instead of SES when Danny Sullivan told me to skip both and go to SMX Advanced. I decided to go to New York. Big mistake. SES sucked, and the SMX Advanced conference was blessed with the nofollow pagerank evaporation announcement. (more…)
This is the continuation of yesterday’s post featuring my deadblogging coverage of SphinnCon, the recent SMX-affiliated 1 day conference here in Jerusalem, Israel (where I’m currently living).
Ophir Cohen – Compucall Web Marketing (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…)
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…)
This is a guest post by Arnold Zafra for TopHost.gr, a hosting company offering shared web hosting plans as well as dedicated servers. The English is a little awkward at points, but Arnold still shares some valuable tips.
So, you just snagged a deal with a client. Everything seems to flow smoothly and according to plan. You’re able to deliver the goods, but somewhere along the way, you client become restless and starts playing hardball.
And you wonder what could you be possibly doing wrong? Why is the deal running not so smoothly, where in fact you’re doing everything that you promised to do. How can you re-establish rapport with your client especially when your SEO deal is still ongoing? (more…)
…Hacked websites are really no big deal. Sit back, kick your feet up on the desk, grab your coffee and let me tell you a story about Mrs. Yona Sussnovitch and I. (more…)
I’ve got a new piece up over at Michael Gray’s Wolf Howl, rebutting Seth Godin on why journalists should or should not get paid. (more…)
Carolyn Nolte, Customer Service Manager at Footshox, a company that sells insoles and shoe inserts, understands what it takes to seriously impress customers. (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…)
I’m a member of the Montreal, Quebec internet marketing community and as such, I like to participate in monthly meetups we have, aka Yulbiz. I met a bunch of people and had a fantastic time catching up with old friends. I also had the pleasure of bringing my friend Victor Benaderette, who is an expert salesman and who happens to be looking for work now, if you’re in the market. Contact me and I’ll put you in touch with him.
Here are the interesting folks I met, in no particular order. (more…)
