Search Engine Marketing - Search Engine Optimization
BLOG

YouTube’s new video, “Take the Money and Run.”

gerry@search-optimization.com (Gerry Grant) — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 17:17:00 +0000

The YouTube founders, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, investors and executives, have decided its time to get out of Google and to get some cash right now. They filed to sell as much as $1.53 Billion in Google stocks which they received when Google bought YouTube last year. What will Chad Hurley and Steve Chen do when they reach the old age of thirty?

The venture capital firm that was smart enough to help them out, Sequoia Capital, is making out quite well on the deal also, with $504.4 million coming their way. Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are expected to bring in somewhere around $326.2 million each. This should let them buy new cars and get into something new. They could start a film company next!

Yahoo URL Submit | Yahoo Sitemap Feed Optimization

Gerry Grant — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 17:09:00 +0000

Yahoo Submit – Yahoo Sitemap Feed

Search-optimization.com specializes in sitemap feeds. Yahoo until just recently, only accepted sitemap feeds in the form of a text file listing the urls of the website. Today I have the daunting task of getting a site with 65,000 products submitted to the major search engine sitemap feeds. When I went to the Yahoo Submit Your Site page to submit our clients sitemap feed to find that Yahoo is now accepting RSS sitemap feeds.

Yahoo Submit - Yahoo Sitemap Feeds

Yahoo Submit states that “any URL (directly submitted or obtained from a feed) our crawler will extract links and find pages we have not discovered already. We will automatically detect updates on pages and remove dead links on an ongoing basis.”

comprehensive keyword research services

Pay Per Click is Red Hot

Eric Darby — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 16:03:00 +0000

Pay per click marketing – also known by its acronym, PPC – is fast becoming a strategic and fast way to sell your goods and services online. Billions are now spent on paid search techniques. The cool part about PPC is that advertisers only pay when their ad is clicked.

Most companies who are new to this concept gravite to the big players like Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture.) However, a lot of money can be made if you implement a careful plan on a wider range of PPC engines. It can be a real pain to set em all up, but the returns can be huge. Try out some of these companies for your pay per click campaigns: ePilot, MIVA, Kanoodle, Industry Brains, SearchFeed, and 7Search.

Here is some further insight into properly running a PPC campaign:

Pay Per Click Marketing

The Necessity Of Synergism In Search Engine Marketing

gerry@search-optimization.com (Gerry Grant) — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 01:46:00 +0000

Good marketing professionals know that results will improve when everything works together. With search engine marketing this has become critical for optimum results. This is an ongoing article that will talk about search engine marketing (SEM), pay-per-click, Natural SEO, Editorial SEO, Content creation, SEM Public Relations, Keyword Research, Email Campaigns, Website Conversion and Website Tracking and Analytics. If you remove just one of these from your online marketing your results will not have optimum results.

Natural SEO
Natural Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process that aligns a website's code and content with strategic keyword phrase targeting creating “Topical Community” and ultimately assisting a search engine algorithm in understanding a website's keyword focus. SEO can be simple for some websites, while others may require intense website code, content, navigation and internal linking changes. This form of SEO increases the natural/organic search engine rankings.

Editorial SEOEditorial Search Engine Optimization involves several elements: the way the web copy is written, how and where copy is used, why particular copy is chosen for the site, the use of optimized articles with notable references and links, and the distribution of optimized press releases that will link to various landing pages on the website. All of these elements must be included simultaneously in order to gain a higher click-rate for the site.

Editorial search engine results are perceived to be more trustworthy. Editorial provides a site with real branding and trust, if the content is written properly. It is a fact that editorial coverage is 3 to 5 times more effective than advertising. These results can be likened to articles that appear in a magazine or newspaper. The credibility that enhances the website is superior to that of an advertisement in almost all cases.

Content, Content, ContentContent is the most important aspect of SEM. This is what the web users are searching for and because of this - content is also what the search engines are seeking. Properly created content will substantially increase rankings and traffic. Good content will also keep visitors at a website for longer periods of time and accelerate the buying process.

There are many forms of content that one can add to a website including specifically defined web page content, articles, blogs, forums, podcasts and Videocasts. This also includes content that is on other sites and is linked to a site. Content must be absolutely targeted to a selected audience and then it must be very well written. The best written and intelligent copy by a professional writer will give higher visibility, trust and respect (branding, too) than copy that is not well written.

The difference between writing copy for websites and writing copy for articles is like apples and oranges. Web copy must be keyword rich and that requires the use of measuring the value of the keywords for the site and using them throughout the copy in a manner acceptable by the search engines.

Web 2.0 Content

A sample of a new type of web content is podcasting. Visit My Entertainment News to see and hear more about

about Gilmore Girls, Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie’s New movie “A Mighty Heart”, the Chinese actress Bai Ling, Paris Hilton and marijuana and Max Makowski at The Newport Beach Film Festival.

Be sure to look at the buttons on the right called RSS "chiclets" that allow users to subscribe. When reading the articles the chiclets at the bottom encourages readers to share what they like with other web users. Recent research indicates that this type of collaborative web use delivers as many new visitors as Google. Try the Digg one it and enter a new part of the Internet.

CLICK HERE for My Entertainment News Podcasts

More on Internet Marketing - Podcasting and Search Optimization Marketing

Yahoo! Sales Up

gerry@search-optimization.com (Gerry Grant) — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 19:05:00 +0000

Yahoo! reported $1.22 billion for last quarter up from $1.07 billion with profits dropping from 16 cents per share to 13 cents per share. Part of the profit number had to do with stock option expenses and costs for preparing for the launch of their new advertising system that will take into account the bid price as well as the ad’s quality. According to Yahoo CEO Terry Semel this should increase ad revenue. Other areas fo focus for Yahoo in 2007 include a new partnership with eBay, video advertising, social media, mobile services and Yahoo Answers.

A big part of these increases is due to the ever increasing shift of major corporations advertising budgets into search optimization marketing.

Google Income Only Triples

gerry@search-optimization.com (Gerry Grant) — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 19:04:00 +0000

Google announced that their income over the previous year had tripled for the last quarter of 2006. With $3.21 billion for the quarter Google had net earnings that broke the one billion dollar barrier for a quarter at $1.03 billion income. The stock dropped 4%!

"Advertisers are now using our targeting platform to place brand advertising across our content network, and they are going to have more options when the YouTube inventory comes online," said Sergey Brin, Google co-founder and president, technology

2007 The Year of Search Optimization Marketing

gerry@search-optimization.com (Gerry Grant) — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 01:13:00 +0000

I have over twelve years experience in SEO and search optimization marketing an in 2006 experienced the strong beginnings of a significant change. For years I would answer the question, “What do you do?” telling people that I did search engine optimization. This almost always resulted with the question of, “What is that?” I have been very active in marketing groups and many of these people owned or worked for advertising agencies. I was amazed that they did no know about the most effective form of marketing available.

Over the last two years more and more I would encounter people who knew what it was and would want to know more about it. At least they knew about it even if they did not understand it. Many would respond saying they needed to start doing more search optimization marketing and wanting to get started.

Another thing started to happen over the last two years, my company, Search-Optimization.com, started to get new clients that had annual sales in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Even with such large incomes they did not spend very large percentages of their marketing dollars. They have been in learning and testing phase. One client that have a market Cap of $460 million told me that that they will be moving a large part of their budget into search optimization marketing. I even had a call from an Investment banker asking if I would like to sell Search-Optimization.com to a multimedia advertising company that does in excess of $500 million in annual billing. He said the company had gotten tired of paying fees to search optimization companies.

Toward the last quarter of 2006 the big corporations started to really spend the money. These are the Fortune 1000 companies. The recent announcement by Google of having their income triple last quarter is a manifestation of this. Google had income over $1 billion in one quarter for the first time.

2007 will be the “Year of Search Optimization Marketing” because even the old school marketing executives are buying into it, and they have just begun the stamped to do so. To not move a significant portion of their marketing budget into search optimization marketing could be career suicide at the worst, and at the best would make them look uninformed and uneducated in current marketing.

All hail the “Year of Search Optimization Marketing” 2007.

Who pays? PPC Click Fraud

gerry@search-optimization.com (Gerry Grant) — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 01:45:00 +0000

Recently I was fortunate enough to be a sponsor of the “Search Engine Watch Forums Live” held at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim Orange County. Danny Sullivan was in attendance because he was on vacation with his family at Disneyland. During the search engine marketing event a woman shared her experience with click fraud. She was in tears by the time she finished telling her story and no one had much of an answer for her on what to do.

While I have been aware of click fraud for some time, it comes up at conferences that I speak at; it seems to be very newsworthy these days. At my last Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Conference for Marketing Professionals Irvine, CA November 17, 2005 I included it as a topic and had attendees from three different click fraud companies. Search-Optimization.com has since formed a strategic alliance with one of them to furnish click fraud analysis and investigation.

Well it is such a hot topic Wired magazine has run an article on it, “How Click Fraud Could Swallow the Internet.” The question is who is the victim of the theft? Would advertisers pay more per click if they received higher ROI? What would Google be worth per share if 15% to 25% of their revenue went to them instead of to fraud? Will the SEC get involved? Stay tuned!

Google Joins Motorola on Mobile Search at CES Trade Show

Gerry Grant — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 22:10:00 +0000

Local Search Engine Optimization
Local SEO - Google Mobile

We had a feeling that something big would come out of the CES Trade Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. As you can imagine we are paying particular attention Google Mobile, as well as podcasting, as this will prove to be a big year for both in the search engine marketing arena. The CEO of Motorola, Ed Zander introduced a former work colleague at CES - none other than the CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt. Together they revealed that Google and Motorola, Inc. have come together in an alliance to enable mobile users’ easy access to Google Search on Motorola devices.

Press releases issued by Motorola and Google state that Motorola will integrate a Google icon onto select handsets so that users can connect directly to Google anytime, anywhere. The new Google Internet optimized devices will be circulated some time in the spring 2006 to select Motorola customers globally.

Fuzzy Set Theory Applied to Keyword Research for Search Engine Marketing

Gerry Grant — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 21:04:00 +0000

Fuzzy set theory is the extension of conventional set theory. It handles the concept of partial truth. Using truth values of 1 being completely true and 0 as completely false. It was introduced by Prof. Lotfi A. Zadeh of UC/Berkeley in 1965 as a mean to model the vagueness and ambiguity in complex systems.

Applying the fuzzy set theory to comprehensive keyword research can improve the profitability of your website and search engine marketing. Search-Optimization.com will increase your search engine saturation and keyword reach with comprehensive keyword research.

Search engine marketing keyword research has become a complex task with the evolution of information retrieval (IR) system algorithms. Fuzzy keyword sets are a simple and natural extension of search terms associated with a high level key search term. Using additional keywords that co-occur will give your top keywords lateral support with out keyword stuffing or keyword spamming.

Let Search-optimization.com lead your search engine marketing efforts with our keyword research, search engine marketing plan and 12 years of experience.

Yahoo PPC Less is More: I think NOT!

gerry@search-optimization.com (Gerry Grant) — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 01:38:00 +0000

Yahoo pay per click announces new search results pages that will translate into more clicks for your listings.

Yahoo pay-per-click will have a new look starting on January 18 2006 with shorter listings. I guess they figure less is more, but it is not. Google Adwords already is to short requiring users to click to find out what the advertiser’s web site is about only to discover after the advertiser has paid that it is not what they want. Why doesn’t Yahoo ppc and Google Adwords just let us write more.

Yahoo PPC will debut a new design that will make the search results displayed on Yahoo pay-per-click results easier for consumers to read. Yahoo PPC says their research has shown that advertisers can generally expect to see an increase in clicks, while maintaining their conversion rates. Shorter description, less information, more clicks, same conversion rate, how is that possible?

How this change to Yahoo impacts pay-per-click (PPC) listings:

Yahoo ppc will display shorter descriptions for ppc Search listings
They will automatically be shortened for you when displayed on Yahoo.

If you'd like to optimize your paid listings for Yahoo ppc, begin your description with one short sentence that includes your keyword and focuses on your most important information in the first 70 characters. Who knows where they will cut your copy off.

Over time, Yahoo ppc will fine tune the exact character count that they believe works best for advertisers and search users.Does this mean they can get more on a page?

Most of the Yahoo ppc partners, including MSN, CNN, ESPN and Infospace, will still display longer descriptions for pay-per-click search listings, though the exact length may vary from partner to partner

Yahoo Search Marketing says they are taking this step to improve the search experience for its users. For those of you who have spent hundreds of hours writing and testing those descriptions having them shortened automatically can only be a bad thing.

Gerry Grant

CEO

Search-Optimization.com

The Secrets of Successful Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Search Engine Optimization ROI
http://www.search-optimization.com/pay-per-click-marketing/ppc.htm

Editorial Search Engine Marketing vs. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Search Optimization Marketing - what should I do?
http://www.search-optimization.com/seo-article-library/editorial-search-engine-optimization.html

Using Google Sitemap Feed Statistics and Errors for SEO Analysis

Gerry Grant — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 18:09:00 +0000

Google has enhanced their sitemap feed program to include website statistics.

Google Sitemap Feed Index Stats
More web site data is a good thing. The more you know about your website the better off you will be in your Internet Marketing and Search engine optimization campaigns. Google sitemap feed statistics give you samples of your pages in Google’s index or search engine results pages (SERP’s). Examples of some of the stats available are: >> Read more about sitemap stats

Google Everflux Starts to Steady after Jagger

Gerry Grant — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 15:42:00 +0000

The everflux from the Google update dubbed “Jagger” has starting to slow down.

We have seen that the most interesting effect of Jagger on rankings has been diminished or eliminated reciprocal linking as a measure of popularity. Jagger has negated the hard work of thousands of website owners. The result is expensive linking campaigns that lead to high rankings and high revenues have plummeted.

On the other hand article submission seems to have come through the Jagger update apparently safe and sound. This I believe is because Google has put more emphasis on one way links. All the sites that we work on focus on at least ten different angles for top rankings. This diversified approach has led to long lasting search engine visibility.

The moral of the Jagger update story? Make sure that you do not follow the fads and the top new found ranking factors of the search engine algorithm. If you have all your eggs in one basket; Google is sure to trip you up eventually. So diversify your SEO efforts, hire a SEO consultant at the very least to take a look at your efforts.

An analogy is the stock market. Yes you can dabble, but most people have an adviser to avoid the ups and downs of the market shift or everflux.

Google Base Google's New Hot Product

gerry@search-optimization.com (Gerry Grant) — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 17:27:00 +0000

Google Base
Google announced a new way to get content found on the internet; Google Base. This is a place to put everything from your Grandma’s cookie recipe, white papers to your entire inventory list. This is going to be major!

www.search-optimization.com/google/google-base.htm

SEO Irvine Case Study

Gerry Grant — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 16:43:00 +0000

Many website development companies totally ignore search engine optimization factors when designing a website. Website design companies only focus on the aesthetics and the ability of humans to navigate the website. Web design companies totally drop the ball when it comes to search engine algorithms. They like to name files “products”, “solutions” or “press”. These terms do not include business keywords. Keywords are used to search for your site or product. No one is going to go search for just any “product” they will get more specific to narrow down the results returned. Therefore, if you do not use keywords in your naming conventions, meta data and other key places you will never rank well for your product or services. This was the case with XYZ Irvine Co. website. Full Irvine SEO case study

Search Engine Marketing - Search Engine Optimization BLOG