Ideas for Business

Here in Minnesota it’s been a roller coaster summer with hot smacking up against cold in the blink of an eye. The irony of that observation is that our BIGLIST of online marketing blogs has been cold for about 4 months, but just like a Minnesota summer, we’re going to smack that BIGLIST with some hot. Hot SEO/SEM/Social blogs that is. Enjoy:

• B2B Online Marketing Blog – The folks at Business.com have put together a fine resource for B2B businesses and marketers with a problem/solution format that includes case studies, conference coverage and insights on search, social media and a few Business.com product posts from time to time.

• Adam Sherk Blog – Adam Sherk works as a Search/PR Strategist for Define Search Strategies, part of The New York Times Company and writes about the publishing industry, enterprise SEO and social media.

• The Acquisio Blog – Naoise Osborne writes this “Canadian Flavoured Marketing Soup” blog mostly on PPC but a little Foo makes it interesting.

• vervesearch blog – Lisa Meyers and Sam Murray write this new, yet classically written UK based blog (personal insights, practical tips, conferences, etc) about search marketing and their experiences as internet marketing consultants.

• Upright Communications Blog – As the name implies, this is an agency blog written mostly by Eric Frye and Allison Kulage with image a video rich posts on search and social media marketing topics.

• Three Minds on Digital Marketing – Two heads are better than one and in this case, three is better yet. The  folks at Organic blog about digital marketing topics and according to the tag cloud, “exceptional experiences” are the emphasis along with design, social web, user experience and marketing strategy.

• SEO.com Blog – The team at SEO.com blog definitvely about search engine optimization from some pretty creative angles from “If your SEO skills were a song, what would it be?” to movie references like “Transformers of SEO” and Wall-e. There are also plenty of tips and how to’s.

• Fresh Edge Media – Rebecca Kelley, Jason Arango and Josh Patrice contribute to this snarky new blog about Advertising, Branding, Business and Fresh Edge News. Who says “snarky” anyway? Ah, the same people that say “douchey”. I’m just wondering if that’s pronounced “doo shee” or the snobbish, “doo shay”.

Remember, blogs included in the BIGLIST should express their bloggy hotness with a hot badge.

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | BIGLIST Marketing Blog Reviews Summer Edition 073109 | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

The New York Times features a great article on reputation management for small businesses. To summarize, the key points made in the article are:

• Start by monitoring your reputation
• Use local search sites to manage your reputation
• When addressing negative feedback, don’t get emotional or take it personally; respond only after you’ve had a chance to cool off and reflect on it a bit then send a professional, courteous response to your critic
• Promote yourself through local search sites

Online reputation management is an ongoing activity, not a one-time reaction to negative feedback. The place where most people make the biggest mistake is in responding to negative critics. If you are professional and courteous you’ll find that many critics will soften their critique of you. You could win them over. Site like Citysearch, Yelp, and Superpages are great for local small businesses that want to be proactive in managing their reputations.

The Microsoft-Yahoo! deal will change a lot of things for a lot people. One thing that will definitely change is SEO. Of course, performing SEO on your website for Google will still be the same, but SEO overall will be a little bit (not much, but a little bit) different.

Here are three ways I think SEO will change in the next few years:

1. Link popularity will become more difficult to measure - MSN has not been reporting inbound links for some time now. Google doesn’t report them all. The only search engine that has consistently reported inbound links is Yahoo! and they’ve been somewhat inflated. I think that once the deal is complete, MSN will not report any links at all. It will be much more difficult for webmasters to know what their inbound link count is.
2. Bing will become more competitive and begin to offer some of the same tools that Google has to make the lives of webmasters easier. Webmaster Tools is one of them. Imagine having one account at Google and one at Bing just so you can know how to present your information to both of the leading search engines. It will make SEO a little bit more time-intensive, but easier overall.
3. Bing will become as much a haven for spam as Google is. Since Bing is much better now for SEO than MSN Live ever was and since they are acquiring even more market share, they will be a major player in the search market. That will attract more spammers. Soon you will start hearing people complain about Bing spam.

What do you think? How do you think the Microsoft-Yahoo! deal will impact SEO?

Amid all the speculation this week, it’s official that Microsoft and Yahoo! have made a deal:  ”Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.”

The Search Marketing Industry news sites have covered this completely and a joint web site has been setup my Microsoft Yahoo, but I did take a little time to listen in to the investor relations conference call with Steve Ballmer of Microsoft and Carol Bartz of Yahoo! and live tweeted some of the Q and A:

MSFT YAHOO conf call Q: Why no display ad component to the deal? Bartz: To keep the deal straightforward as possible

MSFT YAHOO conf call Q: Why no display ad component to the deal? Bartz: To keep the deal straightforward as possible

MSFT YAHOO conf call Q: Why no up-front fee to Yahoo? Bartz: Big cash payment up front doesn’t help Yahoo ongoing operating costs

MSFT YAHOO conf call Q: What impact on jobs? Bartz: Many Yahoos w/be asked to work @ Microsoft, work elsewhere @ Yahoo, some redundancy

MSFT YAHOO conf call Q: How much does deal affect areas where MSFT & YHOO compete? Ballmer: Innovate & need privacy disclosures

MSFT YAHOO conf call Q: What does it mean for MSFT to license Yahoo search? Why not all Bing? Ballmer: We can benefit from Yahoo search tech

MSFT YAHOO conf call Q: Examples of innovation from deal? Ballmer: UI, algos for search relevance, scale provides feedback loop to innovate

MSFT YAHOO conf call Q: Why is this deal better than last year’s? Bartz: Current deal is longer term, more of a partnership, skin in game

MSFT YAHOO conf call Q: Why is this deal better than last year’s? Ballmer: This deal is not better, it’s different.

Last MSFT YAHOO conf call Q from @dannysullivan: What happens to Yahoo news, directory, paid inclusion, Delicious? Bartz: Decide on paid inclusion later. Ballmer: Yahoo has full flexibility & how that pans out is up to Yahoo

Danny Sullivan live blogged the call with a lot more detail.

Other coverage of the Microsoft Yahoo deal:

• Search Engine Watch - It’s Official: Microsoft and Yahoo! Finally Strike Search Deal
• Search Engine Land - It’s Finally Official, Microsoft & Yahoo Make A Deal, Yahoo Gives Up On Search

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | It’s a Deal: Q&A from Microsoft Yahoo! Call | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

It’s likely you’ve heard plenty about search engine optimization but what about “Digital Asset Optimization”?

Many companies that have applied basic SEO principles to standard web site content see substantial benefits. Adding new content and attracting links help maintain search marketing performance but is that all you can do to be competitive with SEO? No.

A natural progression of SEO is a holistic approach that considers all of a company’s searchable assets that can be keyword optimized and promoted online. Standard optimization of content in the form of web page SEO is a starting point that can be extended to various media types that are increasingly prominent in both standard search as well as media specific search such as images, video and audio. Digital Asset Optimization (DAO) can be applied to various document/file formats such as RSS, MS Office, Flash, PDF, etc as well.

In the screenshot above from Google on the search query, “social media”, images, video and news results are incorporated into standard search results. All are opportunities for optimization.

Search Engine Optimization is challenging enough for organizations rich with digital assets. An effort to optimize and promote those assets to bots can be even more challenging – and rewarding.  Since 2007 we’ve been using Digital Asset Optimization at TopRank as a way to describe for clients what new opportunities there are to enable their customers to pull themselves via search to client content.

Companies that are not rich in digital assets can leverage the variety of assets offline and online that they DO have for improved search marketing benefit. A common example is the repurposing of offline content and digital media for online marketing purposes.  Tradeshow or training videos used offline could be remixed & edited to provide online content in the form of video, images, text. Each media type can be optimized for standard search like Google, as well as promoted on distinct media sites such as YouTube and Flickr.

The fundamental premise for good SEO or DAO or whatever you want to call optimizing content is that “If it can be searched on, it can be optimzed”.

“Searchability” implies an asset is crawled by a bot and subsequently available for sorting within search results when consumers perform queries. As such, each type of searchable content presents an opportunity for optimization and improved visibility.

The benefits of a more holistic optimization and marketing approach can be extended beyond content used to attract leads and sales. There other types of search that can drive or benefit business including customer service related content, job listings and news content. Each has it’s own audience to consider and therefore, a different context for optimization.

Making it easier for search engines to do find, index and sort content will bring benefits to most companies who make the effort to do so in the form of increased sales, recruiting, and news coverage as well as lower customer support costs. That is the new opportunity this year and next for corporate content optimization efforts.

Developing an interdepartmental process for matching up the various digital assets with corresponding channels of promotion gives companies with minimal content resources additional online marketing opportunities. It also gives companies that produce substantial content an overwhelming competitive advantage. They key to any successful SEO or DAO effort is developing the proper strategy, implementation and management to reaching business goals.

Is your company’s SEO effort focused on web pages or do you optimize and track search performance for other digital assets as well?

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | What is Digital Asset Optimization? | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com