I’m a Sophisticated Online Marketer
Posted on | June 30, 2010 | No Comments
I did an interview with Greg Sterling of Screenwerk regarding Living Social and The San Francisco Sailing Company. I’ve been quoted as being a sophisticated marketer which is what I like to hear. Read the article hear
Local SEO – Update on Yelp/Google review feeds
Posted on | June 3, 2010 | No Comments
Looks like change is coming since today all the maps/local listings on Google for “San Francisco Sailing” are showing yelp review results.
This could be the best news Yelp has had in the last 6 months. This is a big vote of confidence for Yelp as they go through their legal battles; however let’s not forget that the Lawsuit against Yelp also opens the doors to lawsuits with any company that manages the editorial and publishing of reviews. This includes all the major search engines.
Is an announcement between Google & Yelp coming soon? Is it possible that merger talks are in the works again ?
Tags: Google Map Results > Local Search Engine Optimization > Local SEO > reviews > Yelp
Local SEO – Google Pulling Reviews from Yelp for one Listing out of seven ?
Posted on | June 2, 2010 | No Comments
More than 1/2 a year ago Google Local had stopped using the “Review” data feed from Yelp on their Local listings but it seems like this has changed again? Google is again pulling data from Yelp and incorporating it into Google Maps or Local listings, (however you like referring to them). You can see the results for The San Francisco Sailing Co.
Is this a singular situations? It might by because if you search for “San Francisco Sailing” on google and click through all the local results only the SF Sailing Company has Yelp reviews incorporated. Although the SF Sailing Company also has listing on Trip Advisor non of the reviews from this site are currently showing up, however all the other listing do show Trip Advisro listings.
Something very strange is going?
Tags: Google Map Results > Local Search Engine Optimization > Local SEO > reviews > Yelp
Largest Domain Name Sale so far in 2010 – Slots.com $5.8M
Posted on | June 1, 2010 | No Comments
Techcrunch reports today that a Carribean VC firm engaged in building online gambling business paid $5.8 M for slots.com . This is the highest reported dollar sale for a domain in 2010 so far.
Content Is King, Will Always be King – Content is Expensive
Posted on | May 26, 2010 | No Comments
A very difficult task in the Web Development and Search Engine Marketing/Optimization world is to generate good content cost effectively. As you already know this was true prior to the inception of the internet and Demand Media got it. The Business Insider reports today that The Hearst Corp is outsourcing the content generation for two sections of the San Francisco Chronicle and Houston Chronicle to a company called Demand Media. DM not only understands the the value of content vis a vis Search Engine Optimization, but it’s also the largest Domain Name Wholesaler, and it’s in the Web 2.0 space. Some believe DM will be the first IPO in a long time to be valued at over $1B (when it happens).
Tags: Business Insider > content > content for seo > content writing > Demand Media > Local Search Engine Optimization > search engine marketing > SEO > The Hearst Corp
SEO Case Study on Keyword Research & Title Tags
Posted on | April 7, 2010 | No Comments
I came across this site on Michael Berkens’ blog The Domains . Michael is big in the Domain Name biz and he is also one of the biggest advocates for the positive development of the industry. Anyway, he reported today that UsedAirplanes.com purchased Flying.com for $1.1M, million and the Press Release said Used Airplanes LLC would be developing this domain into a Community/Social Networking based site that is compatible with the new iPad format. The last part of this sentence threw me off so I went snooping to see if there was anything special about the website usedairplanes.com.
I went to the site and immediately noticed an extra long title. By extra long I mean keywords all the way across the top of the browser. Things like this instantly pop out for people like me. This led me to believe that some sort of effort had been put into SEO but not a very good one which led me to do some more research.
I went to Google.com and searched “used airplanes” and found out that usedairplanes.com was ranked #4. For “used cessna airplanes” and “used piper airplanes” they were ranked #8. All three of the websites that were ranked above usedairplanes.com for the keyword phrase”used airplanes” had “aircraft for sale” in their titles. I did some research and found out the “aircraft for sale not only garnered a higher CPC but it also had 6x the search volume.
In conclusion I must say that usedairplanes.com is an absolutely fantastic domain and I’m sure the company does just fine by pulling of a $1.1 million purchase of flying.com, however they could be doing better when it comes to organic search engine ranking. They could have a giant link building campaign going, doing more KW research as we speak however from what I see at this point in time can be improved multi-fold at a very small fraction of the cost of their new domain.
Tags: case study > Keyword Research > SEO > Title Tags > usedairplanes.com
BusinessWebsites.com as an SEO Case Study
Posted on | April 5, 2010 | No Comments
We’re currently ranked as #13 on google for the keyword phrase “business websites” (without quotation marks), that’s right for the broad search term. How did this happen when we don’t even have a proper site developed?
View of the Competitive Landscape
- Google says there are 53,300,000 results for the broad match keyword and we are #13
- Google says there are 660,000 results for the phrase match keyword and we are #6
View of SEO factors in place
- PR 3
- Blog added very recently with PR 0 (at time of this post it has no effect)
- Great Domain Name
- Good Title Tag
- No Meta Tags
- Page uses H1-H4 tags and it’s all in text
- We don’t have enough content on the site
As a professional all I can say is that we have a very good generic keyword domain name, and we link our domain from some of the sites that we develop and work on. Please note that this landing page has only been up for about 6 months and we have not placed any conscious effort into SEO. We do have plans on developing a more robust site and adding content to it in the near future. Also, note that a single click on adwords for a 1st page result for this keyword goes for more than $4.00/click.
Tags: businesswebsites.com > case study > competitive analysis > page rank > Search Engine Optimization > SEO
Why PPC Prices are a Benchmark to SEO & Online Media Buying
Posted on | March 28, 2010 | No Comments
I had a small insurance brokerage firm call me last week asking me what I could do to help them promote their new website. Well, there’s a lot we can do but when you are in a highly competitive vertical such as insurance you better be ready to commit a decent budget or as an option you can learn how to do it yourself. The average small business however is not tech savvy enough and/or simply does not have the time because they’re already wearing multiple hats.
This potential client presented me their new website. It was decent looking site but sort of template-ish, it had a bad choice for a domain name,. and without any consideration to SEO within the site design. We Search Engine Optimization Professional SEOP’s can immediately tell whether SEO was taken into consideration at the time of website design or not. Anyway, the big question to me was “What Can You Do For Us” I went through the regular process of getting to understand what this client understood of search marketing and such and then we got to the point of talking about PPC. At this point he explained to me that he had worked with a similar company (financial services) in the past and understood that CPC in this area were as high as $9/click. I explained to him that he was correct. His response was “that’s why I want to focus on organic search marketing”. I asked him if he understood that the higher CPC is for a particular business vertical the harder it would be to rank organically. He said NO, I don’t see the relationship. Therefore I decided to blog about.
The economics of marketing are just like any other, they are supply and demand based. They are based on the number of competitors, the future value of each sale, the given level of demand, etc.. If the CPC for a particular keyword is high then most likely the level of competition on the organic side is in relative terms high also. As competition goes up so does the time need to achieve a ranking, as the amount of time goes up, so do the costs related to them. To me this seemed very simple however to some business folk this is a very hard concept to grasp. As a result if you want to buy a Lead from a lead generation company expect to pay more for that prequalified lead for the same reason. If you want to do display advertisng based on a CPM expect that to be high also. You get the pciture.
Tags: cpc > media buy > PPC > search engine marketing > Search Engine Optimization > SEM > SEO
BACK TO THE BASICS: What’s Adwords, What’s Google Maps, & What’s Main Search Engine Results?
Posted on | January 29, 2010 | No Comments
It’s 201o and a good portion of our prospective clients still don’t know the difference between Adwords also referred to as Sponsored Listings, PPC for Price-Per-Click advertising or CPC for Cost-Per-Click Advertising. Google Maps is referred to as Local Search Results and in our profession we call it Local Search Engine Optimization. Main Search Engine Results is everything else that is not Sponsored or Part of the Maps Results. Main Search Engine Results are keywords that you would do Organic Optimization for that are not part of the Maps Results. See the images below.
It’s important to understand the difference so that you can determine which part of search engine marketing will impact your business the greatest and which will draw the most targeted traffic resulting in conversions, whether that’s a sale or qualified lead.
Why am I blogging about something so basic, because apparently it’s not that basic. I just got off the phone with prominent Airport Shuttle service and they had no clue how to decipher the three. Get this they called me because they wanted to be trained in SEO so that they could handle it in house, which something we’re happy to do but if you don’t understand the difference between these three after 2 telephone conversations then most likely you should not be handling the SEO in house and yes you will most likely not understand how to budget for SEO. Note to prospective clients when you call and SEOP understand that you’re the first or only person that want’s to get to the TOP search engine results page.
This a day in the life of an SEOP 
!
Tags: AdWords > basics > cpc > google maps > Local SEO > paid search > PPC > search engine results page > SEM > serp > sponsored links
Search Advertising to Grow Double Digit in 2010 ?
Posted on | January 20, 2010 | No Comments
iMedia Connection reported yesterday that Search Advertising is expected to grow by double digits in 2010. Search Advertising experienced a respectable 6% growth in 2009. I say respectable because practically every other form of advertising shrank or experienced negative growth rates. We at Business Websites experienced a similar situation as described by iMedia Connection. The majority of the growth came in the last quarter of 2009 and we hope to see a more sustained growth rate throughout 2010 as advertisers realize that shoppers are moving online more and more due to multiple economic and technological factors. High gas prices and advancing search technology are two major reasons along with the highly anticipated mobile phone wars that will make the Search Engine Marketing arena even more exciting.