ss_blog_claim=5f03e3e7fa6ca8c951b6fbd30fa71c10 2008 July | SEO ShootOut

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Question for readers about value of directories

With new evidence from Online Publishers’ Association showing branded environments are much more effective venues for online advertising than directories and portals, many directories come more into focus as SEO-only spends. How do you measure their effectiveness? What role do they play in your advertising or the advertising you recommend to clients? Has this changed in the last year or so? A lively discussion would be fun!

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Abigail Hamilton is a professional with over a decade of experience in small business, enterprise, and business-to-business design and marketing. She loves writing for the Web, creating and maintaining brand identities,…

Winner’s Circle Series Part 2: Ford Motor Company Continued

FordVehicles.com

Much like a Michael Bay film, FordVehicles.com is all flash and zero substance.  An encyclopedia of information on each car, truck and SUV is easily accessible and superbly organized.  The vehicle pages offer a 360 degree view of each product inside and out as well as detailed information on technology, design specs, safety features and environmental benefits.  However, wading through this information is about as much fun as reading a stock prospectus under a magnifying glass.  It’s almost as if each piece of information was designated a binary value of positive or negative - and any real world interaction between…

PPC Bidding on Your Brand Name

I’ve often suggested to clients that they run pay per click campaigns targeting keywords related to their brand name(s). Usually, there’s resistance. “After all”, they say, “we already rank first in the organic results for our brand name. Why would we run a paid ad when we can get traffic from our brand-related terms for free?”

In rare situations, this point is valid. But, there are only a few convincing reasons why you should, at a bare minimum, run pay per click campaigns for terms related to your brand name.

Bad Organic Ranking
Sometimes companies have trouble getting a top organic ranking for…

Must Read SEO Consulting Post

Alysson of SEOAly has written quite the post on SEO consulting. Having done SEO consulting herself, Aly has included real world experiences into her post, and does a hell of a job defining and explaining the myths, benefits and downfalls of SEO consulting.

This is a must-read if you are:

  • New to SEO
  • A small business owner
  • Considering SEO consultation
  • Considering entering SEO consulting field
  • Bored

One of the main points Aly makes is good SEO consultants help clients learn the why’s behind the SEO changes they suggest. She sums it up best here:

Let’s say a fat farm cooks and serves every meal during a person’s stay.  Will she…

Winner’s Circle Series Part 1: Ford Motor Company Websites

Years ago, I had the privilege of writing and producing broadcast campaigns for one of the biggest car companies on the planet.  From a creative perspective, the experience was a nightmare more often than not…but it provided a nonstop education on the intricacies and contradictions inherent in automotive advertising. One memory strikes me as uniquely apropos for launching our Winner’s Circle series…I was cutting a commercial at a post-production house, waiting for my client to call with updated incentive numbers from corporate.  My client, it turned out, wasn’t willing to make the decision himself until he knew for certain what…

Nobody obeys people who demand not to be worshipped or admired

T1homesenatorsap[Prologue: This post is going to be about brand connection, bear with me.]

Remember Biden being asked if he’d take the VP spot on Obama’s ticket? He told the journalist that he’s specifically asked Obama NOT to ask him and let him know in no uncertain terms that he did not want to be VP. But he added that of course if the candidate asks you to be on the ticket you don’t say no, so that’s WHY he specifically asked NOT…etc.

Biden may or may not be sincere in his demands — he’s on the short list of just a few possibilities this…

Adobe Flash Teams Up With Google & Yahoo

Back in June, Adobe announced teaming up with Google and Yahoo to make Flash more index-able.

I’ve been telling people if you want a “pretty site” and you don’t worry about SERPs, then go Flash.  If you want to be found on the internet, go with HTML. This is common knowledge. I wrote an article back in March regarding the good and bad aspects of Flash. So with this June announcement I jumped for joy.  Finally.

To bring people who are not SEO aware up to speed, Web Crawlers for search engines do not pick up on the Flash files. So if…

Social Networks and Ad Types

There has been a lot of talk lately about the overall effectiveness of advertising on social networks. Whether or not it is even a viable resource because of “ad-blindness” which is when users just turn their attention off to the ads on the page, there are ways to keep contextual ad effectiveness but it depends on where the ad is placed how it’s done. But also just as important, what is being advertised!

Beacon, burned out. It wasn’t for lack of technology, rather how it was implemented in such and intrusive manner. Since the suspension of Beacon, Facebook says that it…

SEO coming out of the shadows

SEO is leaving its roots behind. It’s not an “in-the-know,” esoteric discipline. Fewer and fewer people are wrinkling their foreheads and saying “What?” when it’s mentioned.

It’s now front-of-mind and on the tip of the tongue for a much larger group of business and marketing strategists. From small business to large, companies with a huge consumer market to those who sell specialized products within a single vertical, the word is getting out that SEO is a necessity.

In a striking move, eDrugstore.MD is branching out of its identity as a the leading online pharmaceutical retailer to offer SEO-based Web site generation software…

An Invitation To The Winner’s Circle

Everyone pays lip service to winners.  From competitive athletics to the cutthroat corporations of the Fortune 500 to high school music class where “first chair” is considered the laudable throne of achievement, the winner’s circle represents the pinnacle of achievement.  We’re culturally programmed to want to win at any cost because, as one of many similar sayings go: to the winner go the spoils.  Numerous books have been penned on the subject and psychology of winning - so what could I possibly hope to add to the existing body of knowledge in a single blog post? Nothing.  Which is why…