search engine marketing agency

Whether starting out fresh with a new Pay-Per-Click account, or improving an existing account, keywords are the root of every campaign. Knowing what words people are actively searching can help you capture the traffic you’re after. The following too

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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

Inside CRM has a really good post on “The Facebook Marketing Toolbox: 100 Tools and Tips to Tap the Facebook Customer Base“. If you have ever thought about tapping into the Facebook crowd for some high-profile advertising, then take a look at their list of 100 tools and tips that will help you maximize all […]
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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

Mad Hat follows up his first post on the topic of Shoemoney vs. SEO with his second installment:

*** Disclaimer: This post isn’t supposed to be about anyone in particular. This post isn’t about a post in particular. I may mention specific example

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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

You know there was a time I held out hope that Netscape/Propeller was a viable alternative to the lost boys club of Digg, however those days are long gone. Right now propeller is nothing more than a sham used to promote the most worthless spam and is completely infiltrated and overrun with manipulation. Case and […]
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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

You know I speak against the Google machine a lot, sure some of it is good theatre, but deep down our Google overlords and the church of google can get two powerful. Here’s and article from wired that knock it out of the park:

You can see it in comments by government officials: “Privacy no longer […]
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Excellent information about the use of title tags in SEO.

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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

Ad Intelligence is a new cutting edge keyword tool from Microsoft which will probably force Google and Yahoo to make better keyword tools. All of this data is free during the beta test as long as you have a Microsoft AdCenter account (you can set one up for $5, with this free $50 credit coupon) and a copy of Microsoft Excel 2007 (the Ad Intelligence link below allows you to download a free trial of Excel).

Get Started Today

Step 1: Create Your Microsoft AdCenter Account

Use the following AdCenter promotion code. Sign up today and get $50 in free clicks at Microsoft adCenter.

Step 2: Download Excel Trial & Ad Intelligence Plug-in

Download and install both here.

Example Keyword Data

Some samples of the kinds of data you can get from Microsoft Ad Intelligence:

keyword ad data

related keywords to advertise on

spiky keywords (recently hot search volume)

URL related keywords (site related key words)

Background Data Information Reviewed

Here are some of the sweet features of Microsoft Ad Intelligence:

• Keyword wizard: Allows you to extract keywords based on a list of keyword in excel, a given vertical, or a given URL. Then it allows you to generate an expanded keyword list based on category similarity, keyword bidding association, or keywords containing the core keyword. Then it allows you to export an output of estimated search volume, clicks, ad position, ad CTR, and click cost for a given date range and match type.
• keyword extraction: Extract keywords based on an input URL. Can set maximum keywords from 1 to 100, and can set a minimum confidence level of relevancy.
• keyword suggestion: suggest keywords based on aggregate advertiser behavior, keywords containing the core keyword, or keywords that are deemed to be similar based on category similarity
• search buzz: Top category keywords based on 22 core categories and about a couple hundred subcategories. The spiky tool uses the same categories but is focused on spiky keywords, and includes spiky index, spike start date, and spike end date. You can also set it to “all verticals” to discover leading overall spiky keywords or leading common search queries.
• monthly traffic: Monthly search volumes for keywords, and forecasts for the next 3 months. Also offers a daily search volume option.
• keyword categorization: Identifies categories that a keyword belongs to.
• geographic: Shows the geographic breakdown of a search query.
• demographic: Shows date range and male vs female breakdown stats of keywords.
• monetization: Allows you to view ad impressions, ad clicks, CTR, and CPC by category.
• advanced algorithms: Allows you to change date ranges and other variables for the above tools.

Try it Today

Step 1: Create Your Microsoft Ad Center Advertiser Account

Open your account using the linked to Microsoft AdCenter coupon / promo code. Sign Up Today and Get $50 in Free Clicks at Microsoft adCenter.

Step 2: Download Excel Trial & Ad Intelligence Plugin

Download and install both here.

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Posted by richardbaxterseo

Before you read this post, be sure of two things. First, I’m no SEO blackhat, so I could be wrong about this (or I may just have missed something), and secondly, I’m just making SEOmoz aware of this issue and inviting members of the community to help me get my head around whether this is gameable or not.

The backlink anchor text analysis tool from SEOmoz is great, extremely useful, and a nice bit of code. It even gives you a handy little URL so that you can share your results with a friend. You could also share your results with the world!

For example, here’s one I ran earlier: http://www.seomoz.org/backlink-analysis/index/d390b04f0a6866e8df0b54bb44ec0d8ef648709b

Now, first of all, I know there’s no Google cache of this page, so there’s not going to be much page rank! That’s not to say I couldn’t do a bit of link building to this URL to get it indexed. A bit of page rank and a few backlinks later and I’ve got some links with the right anchor text pointing straight back to a website of my choice from an extremely authoritative domain!

There are a few pages like this indexed in Yahoo and Google already. Most of these backlink analysis pages have no link juice except this page - but I’m sure it could be taken advantage of.

I suppose a small change to the coding on this tool to introduce a nofollow tag to every link created on the page would solve any potential future spamming issues. That, or add a rule to the robots.txt on the site.

SEOmoz, I’d love to hear your thoughts! Have i just barked very loudly up a very large tree?

Cheers,
richardbaxterseo

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The New York Times reports that traffic to Google Maps has grown sharply over the last year, and this increase does not appear to be at the expense of MapQuest traffic. MapQuest is still generating 10x as much traffic as Google Maps.

Very Intere

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SEMpdx has held back one Searchfest speaker spot for the person who gives us the best pitch. If you want to be the final announced speaker at our Portland Conference on March 10th, read the blog post to find out how you can speak at our conference

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Lyndoman has decided to make today Stumbleupon day… a day where he will Stumble more pages than ever before and review a ton of Stumblers.

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Adweek reports that CondeNet has done a 180 on its effort to target teen girls through social media. Less than a year old CondeNet launched its own social network site Flip.com.
Well 11 months later Conde Nast is reversing course and is converting Flip.com into a series of applications that will live on social networks, starting […]
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SEOMOZ’s Jane Copeland on Craig’s List classified headline writing: Classified ads are essentially TITLE TAGS for clickbait. Advertisers don’t think of all-important CTR when advertising properties, products, services & job openings.

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You will be assimilated. Resistance is Futile. This is classic SEOBook stuff.

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Sometimes it is easy to be drawn headlong into the linkbaiting, blogging and social media school of thought with little regard to the read world. In fact, most websites don’t have blogs and have a user base blissfully unaware of social news websites and bookmarking services.
Today I will address linkbuilding from the point of view […]

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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

You will be assimilated. Resistance is Futile. This is classic SEOBook stuff.

21 Vote(s)

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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

Rand Fishkin wrote a blog post on the reasons why you must attend SMX West. Among his reasons: you can meet potential employees and clients, you can perform competitive analysis, you can brainstorm with speakers, you can test your elevator pitch, you can set goals for yourself, and applications of the right tip may increase your ROI. This works for any conference, really, and it should be part of any Search Marketer’s agenda.

But why SMX West? Well, for one, I’ll be there. Rand mentions that great people will be going, and you bet I’ll be blogging from the front row as always. Rand argues that in comparison to other conferences, there’s also great food (just make sure you prepare Kosher food this time, Danny!) He adds that the timing is great, the sessions are new (the lineup is revamped), three days is a perfect length (I like it better than two, especially since I’m flying cross country), it’s in Silicon Valley, there’s free wifi, there are great after-parties (really?!), and there’s breakthrough content.

So if you haven’t signed up for SMX West yet, do it. The deadline for a discount registration is two days from now, so do it right away! You can register at the official SMX West website.

Also, as you know, Barry (you know, the guy who runs this blog) is arranging SphinnCon Israel next month (February 5th). If you’re a local or near Israel, you’re encouraged to attend. There are representatives from many search agencies in the country in addition to Google Israel representation. It should be a blast.

Postscript Barry: Danny wrote a post on SphinnCon Israel at Search Engine Land, please make sure to check it out.

SphinnCon has a limited number of seats available, and the full agenda has been posted. I won’t be there, so it won’t be as fun as if I would, but you’re encouraged to attend. If I could make it, you bet I would!

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

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Many SEO Book readers have seen Google Trends before, but did you know that Google Checkout also has a trends feature? Google has those touch-points, email data (now with a mailing list feature), AdWords bid data, conversion data, analytics data, and search referral data.

A recent research paper reviewed Google’s internal Prediction Markets [PDF]. Three key quotes from that research…

Biases

Google’s prediction markets are reasonably efficient, but did exhibit four specific biases: an overpricing of favorites, short aversion, optimism, and an underpricing of extreme outcomes. New employees and inexperienced traders appear to suffer more from these biases, and as market participants gained experience over the course of our sample period, the biases become less pronounced.

Arbitrage opportunities

As further evidence of short aversion, in order book snapshots collected each time an order was placed, we found 1,747 instances where the bid prices of the securities in a particular market added to more than 1, implying an arbitrage opportunity (from buying a bundle of securities for $1 and then selling the components). In contrast, we found only 495 instances where the ask prices added to less than 1 (implying an arbitrage opportunity of buying the components of a bundle for less than $1 and then exchanging the bundle). The median duration of these arbitrage opportunities was about 2 minutes.

The effect of proximity

An important caveat to our results is that they tell us about information flows about prediction market subjects, many of which are ancillary to employees’ main job. this may explain why physical proximity matters so much more than work relationships - if prediction market topics are lower-priority matters so much more than work relationships - if prediction market topics are lower-priority subjects on which to exchange information, then information exchange may require the opportunity for low-opportunity-cost communication created by physical proximity. Of course, introspection suggests that genuinely creative ideas often arise from such low-opportunity-cost communication. Google’s frequent office moves and emphasis on product innovation may provide an ideal testing ground in which to better understand the creative process.

Google’s new mailing lists wipes out the need for many boutique email services. They know what features they are going to roll out before anyone else does. And they have market moving data before others do. Google’s AdSense is the fuel that drives web innovation. And they can decide at any time if a competing service is no longer viable to push it toward its demise.

Virgin real-time data + arbitrage identification algorithms + understanding investor flaws + algorithms to target mental flaws + direct and indirect market influence = $

As I see it, competitive forces between traditional publishers, market saturation from the bottom, and market influence from the likes of data hoarding companies like Google are going to quickly commoditize anything that is sold as information. To survive you need emotional touch-points that consumers share.

A friend of mine was a leading affiliate for an information product, selling over $300,000 worth of someone else’s service. How did they reward him? They cloned his sales channel and killed his business model. Everything that is not a memory, brand, or experience is becoming a commodity. What prevents you or I from becoming a commodity?

You become what you surround yourself with, and when you push out you attract the right people or the wrong people. Threadwatch, for example, attracted the wrong people, or perhaps the wrong mood and tone from the right people. But you could also engineer the silicon valley in your industry if you work hard enough.

In the information age, where marketers

• have granular controls
• can remain anonymous
• can market brands in minutes
• leverage reverse billing fraud and computer destroying viruses
• can distance themselves from the fraud via affiliate programs or pushing blame on algorithms

there are a lot of scams to be wary of. Especially when there is so much information being produced to where content is published in biased sound-byte format to whore for attention. The stakes for calling someone out are big, because you need attention to profit, and unfortunately, the structure of the web has changed:

Google and it’s copy-tition were designed 10 years ago. But the web has changed significantly in the past decade. Google was built to index a web that no longer exists… a web where people still engaged in social linking behavior, for one thing.

But there are lots of experts who keep learning and change with the markets. Some people give because they like to learn and they are not driven by short term profits. Teach a man to fish, etc.

Each day we chose who we want to listen to, who we want to be like, who we want to like us, and why we want them to like us. Those relationships are the only thing that prevents us from becoming commodities.

“You’re lucky in life if you have the right heroes. I advise all of you, to the extent that you can, pick out a few heroes. There’s nothing like the right ones.” - Warren Buffet

My web heroes thusfar are Tim Berners-Lee and Seth Godin. Who are yours?

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Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire

May It Please the Mozzers,

Wecome to Legal Monday! I wanted to kick off 2008 by discussing an exciting, developing case on domain tasting. This case has three things that I think make for a sexy case. (1) It involves at least one well known party. (2) It exposes a cunning money-making scheme or business plan. (3) Finally, It’s obvious that this scheme should be illegal, but it’s not obvious which law is being broken.

Dell has stepped in where I-CANN and Verisign have feared to tread by filing suit against  one of the largest domain tasting networks. Dell did everything right to put itself in a good position for this lawsuit. Unfortunately, documents filed with the court last Friday, January 5, 2008 indicate that Dell may lose the case despite its efforts.

Part I of this post talks about Dell v BelgiumDomains, LLC.
Part II of this post asks a few questions about domain tasting.

Let’s recap the facts for those of you who haven’t been following this case over the past two months:

In the Southern District of Florida, Dell filed suit against three domain registrars, ten John Does, and a gentleman who goes by the name of JP Vasquez. Dell alleges that these defendants were involved in a domain tasting network that registered and used over sixty-four million domain names. According to John Levine and Jay Westerdal, these three registrars have been responsible for about 72.5% of the 255 million domains tasted in the past six months and have the most egregious history of domain churning.

According to Dell’s Complaint filed in October 2007, the registrars acted in concert with several shell corporations scattered around exotic locations with liberal banking laws, such as the West Indies, the Caribbean, Mauritius, Panama, and Argentina. Dell cannot yet identify who owns these registrars and shell companies (hence the John Doe defendants), but it does know that Mr. JP Vasquez managed the registrars out of Florida. Like smaller scale domain-tasting rackets, the network passed around profitable domain names like a hot potato in order to take advantage of I-CANN’s five-day refund policy. If you keep passing around your domain names in an endless loop, you never have to pay for the privilege of owning and using the web addresses. Meanwhile, the profitable sites bring in pay-per click dollars. If you want more information about how the scheme works, I commend to your attention the Washington Post article outlining the facts more fully.

No One Knows Who the Man Behind the Curtain Is.

Vasquez, a man of simple means, does not appear to be the mastermind behind this international scheme. All that is certain is that the Dr. Evil orchestrating this plot must have extremely deep pockets. Keeping millions upon millions of domain names registered, even if only for brief, temporary intervals, takes substantial amounts of cash.

Dell v. BelgiumDomains, LLC et al was originally filed “under seal” (that’s a term of art meaning "in secret") so that Dell could swoop in with its forensic experts, image the hard drives, and freeze the defendants’ U.S. assets before they even realized they had been nailed. Dell needed this information to build its case and find out who is behind the domain-tasting network.

While Vasquez originally claimed that he would cooperate by preserving and turning over valuable evidence, it appears that Vasquez changed his mind.

Dell Accuses Defendants of Destroying Evidence

Dell filed a request for sanctions last Friday, January 5, 2008, accusing the defendants of willfully and in bad faith erasing information from nine out of twenty-two servers. Allegedly, the defendants began erasing data only three days after they were instructed by the Judge to preserve evidence and hand it over to Dell. The defendants, who had remote access to the servers, used BCWipe to permanently and selectively delete information on at least five of the servers.

Dell is Seeking a Default Order Against the Defendants for Spoliation of Evidence.

In response, Dell is asking the Court to enter a default judgment (in other words, to give them an automatic win) as punishment for spoiling the evidence. You can read the Motion for Sanctions and the supporting declarations of the forensic experts here and here.

Granting a default judgment for spoliation of evidence is an extraordinary remedy and the chances of it being granted are slim. However, the defendants’ conduct is certain to inspire rancour in the judge hearing the case. It is more likely the court will award monetary sanctions than hand Dell a freebie win.

Dell’s claims may not survive without the missing evidence. There is solid evidence that the registrars are involved. However, without proof that the registrars and the foreign shell companies were acting in concert and owned by the same person/s, Dell’s case weakens.

Dell May Encounter Collection Problems Even if the Court Grants its Request for Default Judgment.

Further, even if the Court does award a default judgment or monetary sanctions, it is not clear whether Dell will be able to collect on the judgment. Having a slip of paper signed by a judge that states someone owes you money doesn’t put the cash in your bank account. You’ve got to chase it down. Dell probably doesn’t have much of a chance of getting to Dr. Evil’s assets.

The Defendants are Seeking to Dismiss the Case, including Dell’s Big-Money Trademark Counterfeit Claim.

In addition to destroying evidence, the defendants are also trying to use legal means to avoid responsibility in this case. They have requested dismissal of Dell’s claims. They claim that Dell’s claims are inapplicable and improperly pleaded. Most of Dell’s claims against the defendants are what you would expect in a domain tasting case: trademark infringement, trademark dilution, unfair business practices, etc. However, one of Dell’s claims, trademark counterfeit, is considered by many to be a novel claim that would expand the purview of trademark law. The U.S. law on trademark counterfeit can be found at 15 U.S. Section 1114(1).

Dell Has the Chance to Win Multi-Millions in Damages if the Court Allows the Counterfeit Claims to Go Forward.

Why bring in a counterfeit claim at all, you may be asking? The difference between a counterfeit claim and a regular infringement claim is hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages. Check out this math: If Dell proves its infringement claims, it can “win” up to $100,000 per domain. That sounds substantial, but it’s nothing compared to the damages for trademark counterfeit. If Dell proves its counterfeit claims, it can earn up to 1 million dollars per violation.

The defendants argue in their Motion to Dismiss that there is no such claim as trademark counterfeit in the domain tasting context. Hosting ads on an infringing domain name, the defendants argue, is not like selling fake Gucci bags on the street. Instead, it is a bona fide business model. The defendants claim they are offering a search service. Well, that’s one way to look at keyword advertising, I suppose.

Dell, on the other hand, argues that counterfeit is not limited to mislabeled physical products. Rather, trademark counterfeit should be defined broadly as occurring whenever a deceptive commercial practice involves an “identical or substantially indistinguishable” mark.

These are very different visions of counterfeit. It will be interesting to see whether the court will be willing to expand the law and hold that mass cyber- and typo-squatting amounts to counterfeit. There hasn’t been a ruling on either the request for sanctions or the request for dismissal. I’ll keep you posted as those decisions come in.

People have divergent, passionate views on domain tasting. Most people agree that registering and using web addresses that include trademark infringements or typographical errors, such as many of those in the Dell case, should be off limits. No one except Dell should be allowed toe use DellFinancialServices.com.

 However, people disagree passionately about domain tasting purely descriptive, non-infringing sites, such as icecream.com.

Domain tasting is not illegal or against I-CANN policy so long as there are no trademark issues. Regardless, some people believe that I-CANN should take immediate action to curtail domain tasting. They believe it stresses the registries’ resources and harms legitimate businesses by hoarding all of the good domain names. Further, small business owners, lacking the resources to do any medium to large scale tasting of their own, are disproportionately shut out from valuable web addresses. The big fish keep getting bigger and it doesn’t trickle down from those off-shore banks.

The Public Interest Registry (PIR) that registers dot-org web addresses has eliminated free trial periods for some registrars in order to discourage domain tasting. David Marher, PIR’s Senior Vice President, told The Washington Post that PIR was “being hit by a few registrars that were tasting millions of domains but literally deleting 99.9 percent of their domains so they wouldn’t have to pay for them.” PIR decided to take action because domain tasters were straining the automated systems and hoarding domain names from ‘legitimate’ users. In June 2006, PIR instituted a five cent surcharge for registrars that deleted 90% or more of their domains within the five-day grace period. The policy was successful. Almost overnight domain tasters abandoned dot-org domains.

Despite PIR’s success, there is no similar policy for companies managing other top level domains. Verisign, for example, has no current plans to institute a similar program. There is speculation that Verisign refuses to take action because it makes money off the domain tasters [gasp]. However, Verisign claims that it is waiting for ICANN to issue a universal policy for all registries. [Don’t hold your breath.]

Jay Westerdal has started an excellent post listing some pros and cons of domain tasting. There is also a good thread with well-made points on both sides of the domain tasting debate at webmasterworld.com.

As always, thanks for your attention. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Very truly yours,
Sarah

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Search Engine Optimization is not an exact science. It takes lot’s of work and research. Trial and Error. Read through our posts here and try to learn from our experience. We offer some of our insight… news and comment. Please feel free to share your thoughts, and ideas. The site does allow "follows" so post your links.

Just a quick note:
I’ve got bytchin.com for sale - auction listed here and here.
(Only the domain name is for sale)

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