june 2008

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Mixx announces today that they are taking their mantra of ultra-personalization to a whole new level with the launch of Mixx Communities. These Communities, described as "Mixx Groups on steroids," are much like the Groups function you may or may not already be using, however Communities allows you to "customize" by importing an image header and/or logo, choosing a custom color scheme, and determining specific topics and categories to include. They are almost like custom Mixx sites within the larger Mixx portal.

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While plug-ins for the WordPress blogging platform are in abundant supply, I try not to depend on too many of them due to the fact that I don't want to have to worry about them breaking every time a new version of WordPress is released. That being said, there are four plug-ins as well as one adjustment to the post template itself that I feel are essential in order to have a great WordPress experience.

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Here are some great and newsworthy posts I came across today including a look at whether twitter is a great tool or an ultimate time waster and David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors - an exploration of 47 criteria with respect to their influence on rankings in the Google and Yahoo Local “Universal” search algorithms.

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Besides just hoping that Twitter runs consistently without experiencing outages all the time, there are a few things I would love to see the micro-blogging service add that would make the Twitter even more useful than it already is. Even though it is several months till Christmas, I give you my Twitter wish list.

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As a final installment to my "back to the basics" series, this post will discuss some of the pitfalls or obstacles you may come across when developing a SEO strategy. These may include duplicate content issues, potential problems with e-commerce sites and/or content management systems and obstacles that Flash and AJAX technologies may pose.

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The 2nd installment of SMX Advanced has come and gone. I was glad to have been able to be a part of it having missed the first one. In two days I live blogged a total of 8 sessions and attended one additional one that I didn't live blog. I met up with many old friends and even met some new people. It was also the first trip to Seattle for me although there was little time to actually enjoy the city. All in all, another great conference and a great trip.

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In this second part of developing a SEO strategy, I will look at using external cascading style sheets (CSS) and JavaScripts to clean up your code as well as how the age, size and trust factor of your site can affect your overall SEO efforts. Keep in mind that these factors will not always apply to a SEO strategy as many sites today are already using external CSS/JavaScript and may already have some age and trust factors working for their benefit. In cases where your site is not taking advantage of these, read on.

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In the latest scenario of content and copyright thieves lifting copy from this site to use for their own purposes, I came across a John Terry from Australia who claims to be a web marketer specializing in SEO and SEM. Mmm... he also seems to specialize in stealing other's content.

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What really matters? Accessibility, discoverability and conversions are the big stuff that matters. The place to really start in investigating potential problems is the search results themselves. If there is a problem, is it related to indexing, ranking or crawling? This session provides a checklist and workflow for diagnosing your web sites for SEO obstacles using freely available diagnostic tools.

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Many expect a recession to hit and no one knows how search will weather it. This session looks at strategies and tactics for those who want to prepare in advance for a worse case scenario. In this session which is being moderated by Jeffrey K. Rohrs of ExactTarget and Jessica Bowman of SEM In House (Q&A moderating), we will hear from Andrew Beckman of Location3 Media, Dave Davies of Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning, Russ Mann of Covario and Jon Miller of Marketo as they discuss what they are currently facing with the so-called recession and what steps they are taking ...

Click here to read the entire blog post

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What's a You&A? That's where you, the audience, put your questions directly to the head of Google's web spam team, Matt Cutts. As an engineer in search quality, Matt's been dealing with webmaster issues for Google since 2000 and is well known to many advanced search marketers from his blog and public speaking.

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When a paid search campaign results in leads, are you keeping track of them in an organized, efficient manner? This SMX Advanced session looks at integrating leads with Salesforce, ensuring that leads related to search but happening offline get properly tracked and other issues related to lead management.

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Hanging out your shingle is not building a business. Creating value that others will recognize and ultimately pay to own (read "buy") takes vision, planning and execution. In this session, we hear case studies from SEM business executives who have conceptualized and implemented strategies and tactics that make their companies intrinsically valuable.

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At one time the model was simple -- agencies got 15%. But that's not the case with search engine optimization or paid search advertising. Digital media and measurable ROI spawned a school of new services and nearly as many pricing models, such as retainers, billable hours, pay-for-performance, keyword management fees, percentage of media spend. But with so many options on the table, which pricing model works best?

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I am currently in Seattle where despite the rain, I am enjoying the weather immensely. I left the 100 plus degree weather in Phoenix yesterday and will be here till Thursday, attending SMX Advanced. I am here live blogging a total of 8 sessions throughout the 2 days that this conference takes place.