It may be blustery outside, but this year’s SES Chicago looks like a burner! With more than 70 sessions covering PPC management, demographic research, SEO, social media, link building, mobile and duplicate content, SearchEngineStrategies Chicago is an annual techno-pilgrimage for fortunate attendees. We’re stoked because December 7-11th is coming up fast!

aimClear will be at SES (as always) in full blogging regalia covering sessions, speaking and hanging out with ya’ll. Here’s our speaking schedule, a look at notable sessions and what to expect from this year’s information-packed conference.

Steeped in search marketing history, each year the ornate Chicago Hilton Hotel plays host to industry movers, shakers, thought leaders and journalists.

First, the keynotes look fabulous: Dan Siroker, former Deputy New Media Director, Obama Presidential Transition and Founder, CarrotSticks.  Dan was responsible for strategic planning of the administration’s use of the Internet and technology. Obviously Obama’s use of social media from YouTube to Facebook rocked the house.

Peter Morville, President, Semantic Studios is widely acknowledged as a father of information architecture. He’s penned the best-selling books, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web and Ambient Findability, and helped such organizations as AT&T, Harvard, IBM, Microsoft, the National Cancer Institute, Vodafone, and Yahoo!

Jeff Jarvis is author of What Would Google Do ? He covers media, technology and business on his blog, Buzzmachine.com. Jeff is associate professor and Director of the Interactive Journalism Program at the City University of New York’s new Graduate School of Journalism.

December 7 – Monday, Day 1 at 1:45, I’ll speak on the The State of Search Track, Online PR: Where to Next? Panel. This session will take a look at “how social media and search will impact PR in the next five years.” The Moderator is Sally Falkow, President, PRESSfeed. Speakers are Beth Harte, Community Manager , MarketingProfs, Duncan Alney, President & Social Media Strategist, Firebelly Marketing and Andy Beal, CEO, Trackur.

On Wednesday, December 9 – Day 3 at 12:45PM, I’ll have the pleasure of moderating Facebook Rockstars RoundTable: Marketing For the Other Internet. Join kick-ass  social marketers Addie Conner, Director of Interactive Marketing, Avenue100 Media Solutions, Melissa Mackey, Search Marketing Manager, Fluency Media and Muhammed Saleem, Director of Social Media Strategy, ChicagoNow. They’ve experienced groundbreaking Facebook success and will share case studies and anecdotes surrounding winning strategies, tactics, trials and (importantly) process & errors, all which led to astounding breakthroughs.

Here are a few sessions that I’ll personally check out:

• Meaningful SEO Metrics: Going Beyond the Numbers
• Ghost Blogging, Tweeting, Content Production – Ethical? Does It Matter?
• Real Time SEO: No More Yesterday’s News
• Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues
• How to Speak Geek: Working Collaboratively With Your IT Department to Achieve Business Goals
• Black Hat, White Hat: Does it Really Matter Anymore?
• How to Cut Your Corporate Budget Without Cutting Leads or Sales

SES Chicago is the grand lady of search marketing conferences and this year looks like a burner. There’s still plenty of time to register and we hope to see you there!

Photo Credit Flickr/today is a good day

I first started evangelizing Facebook PPC at SearchEngineStrategies New York 2008 in a presentation entitled “The Impending Social PPC Revolution,” written about the platform passionately in SearchEngineLand, SearchEngineWatch, aimClear Blog and sold it to some of the coolest brands in the world.

Maybe Facebook should put some of the money being spent on rotating musical UIs (user interface) and put it into a business structure that includes regard for those who will pay their salaries when the VC cash is strategically expended.

For now Facebook’s lack of savvy is making us look stupid with clients…stupid for buying your product and attitude.

Mark Zuckeberg seems like a cool kid. Too bad the FB organization hasn’t a freakin’ CLUE as to how to treat grownup customers who spend tens & hundreds of thousands…and millions. What I have to say to you is that I’m like one of your best salespeople, you’re team is screwing up, appears to not care and your company needs to grow up.

The QOS Difference: “Free” Users Vs. Paid Customers
Sure Facebook has no obligation to provide quality of service or any type of support whatsoever, to the poor sweaty masses who are using free tools. Too bad for users as they get a cool tool in exchange for giving Facebook free content. There’s not even a phone number on the Facebook site.

A search for corporate yields a CA phone number with 3 options: 1) too bad (in a pretty voice), no phone support, use the web forms  2) “if you know your party’s extension please dial it now” 3) offers and  operator number where a message machine (with no outgoing message) lets Facebook users cast a futile message to a company that obviously doesn’t care or is incapable of doing so.  The trouble is that paying customers get the same weak-ass treatment.

Next year in my personal FB account, our clients will spend about a half million bucks. Got that, my PERSONAL account.  It can take 24-36 hours to get a response from the web support form.  But here’s what really pissed me off: We have a new client, one of the best known and respected brands in America.

Trust me you know the name, a perfect match for Facebook Ads. This client hired us to test a grid of Ads, advised by their AdWords conversion history. It makes a lot of sense to figure out where their demo lines up with FB.  Because it’s not reasonable for this client to give us access to the live Facebook account, we created a new FB account to run the ads from, registered in the name of our client’s marketing director.

Stupid Facebook Ads Fact #1 : Best we can figure, the only way run FB ads outside your personal account in this situation, is to violate Facebook’s TOS and open a second account in our Marketing Director’s name: “Advertisers cannot create or manage multiple Facebook accounts for advertising purposes unless given permission by Facebook to do so.”

Umm right. Just try and freakin’ contact Facebook for permission to spend say, 10K in a month. They don’t return your emails and there IS no phone number. Facebook tracks who logs in from what IP address and with which cookies.  There is no client center concept and no support. The TOS is Pollyanna as hell. Please fix it Mark.

So when we created this second account in our brand’s Marketing Director’s account, Facebook imposed a $50.00 a day cap ($1500 per month). Ummm, we have like 5-10K every month to test Facebook Ads segments and FB did not returned multiple email communications from multiple accounts (including my personal where I spend client’s money) for 36 hours!

What are we supposed to tell our client Facebook? Maybe we should try “gee facebook doesn’t trust us” or perhaps “I know you’re brand is famous but FB doesn’t want your media spend.” One thought would be to say “let’s take the cash to BING instead.”

Look, we are your greatest fans. We’ve supported Facebook Ads even when our SEM friends told us the traffic was empty and didn’t convert. We looked the other way in ‘07, when your team rejected our made-millions-in-adwords ads with a stern “stop abusing Facebook users, ” instead of being civilized.  How about if now you assign us a dedicated customer support manager or something. I will say that months ago we were contacted by a FB rep’, who did not return our emails about a month after.  Woot dude.

photo credit: Andrew Feinberg

FYI, we don’t ask anyone “permission” to spend money on their product. The appropriate approach is for Facebook to thank us for our business.  I know you’re a rock star Mark and I’m just some schlep-marketer, but I’d be happy to meet with you anywhere in America to discuss this matter.  I’ve got a few suggestions regarding the how to handle customers like aimClear. Say anything you want about Google AdWords, but they are a reliable partner when my company’s reputation is on the line. </rant>

At morning meetings we discuss each other’s jobs, progress, ongoing client dynamics, priorities, coordinate production and critique correspondences.  We focus on leadership, being nimble and doing whatever it takes for success. A lot of mutual teaching and learning happens in these shredding sessions. This post is part one of a three-part series to share what we’ve learned and offer our view of account management best practices. We’ll continue with Part 2 and conclude with Part three, which will offer insight for dealing with difficult clients.

Completely Understand the Goals
It’s frightening how far one can delve into a project without having achieved a satisfactory understanding of business objective at hands. Take time at the beginning of each project to gain absolute clarity. Ask for as many explanations as necessary, even if it means the need for additional training to understand. Time spent early to understand the goals, may be saved many times over as opposed to marching the uninformed army off a cliff.

Establish Your Customers’ Capacity For Moving Parts
With some clients it works to send incredibly intricate action plans expressed in line-by-line specificity.  To present hierarchical details once means the client will assimilate the information perfectly and never drop the ball. Others don’t read their email and need to have things spoon-fed in bite-sized chunks. These types need to be followed around and they’re implementation verified. Know the difference and be willing to raise your game to lower levels.

Lead Client’s Expectations
Every business has unique intricacies in execution.  In search marketing this might be how we’ll proof PPC campaign creative with HTML documents,  how many clicks to expect, the timing of a website’s server change, action steps for staging a blog, organizing a community manager to run video contest or writing SEO tags for a website.  Most clients don’t have enough granular experience in these processes to know what to expect.   Lead them! Explain what will happen next, before it happens, to align everyone’s expectations with reality.

Set Reporting Expectations Early & Often
Once goals and expectations are set, opportunities are rife for misunderstanding without rock-solid reporting.  Report types and depth of detail typically differ by job categories and the objectives of recipients who consume them. Executives may only have the bandwidth or inclination for single metric reports to define whether the cash register is going ka-ching. Marketing managers may want all the granular gory details along with training to read the reports.  Either way (or anything in between), what’s most important is to establish what each stakeholder needs to see and set up reoccurring reports early.

Keep Daily Promises or Explain Why Before You’re Late
My mom and dad had a rule, which I dared not break. If I was going to be late I absolutely had to call and update them.  The penalty for breaking the rule, which I only did once, was measured in weeks-per-minute.

Business is like that too. There are very few totally immovable deadlines but not many things kill relationships as quickly as bad communication when targets start moving.  In any complicated industry, it’s hard to predict contingencies like third parties, shipment speeds, and availability of needed assets or data.

Clients understand these things but often times their own reputation is on the line for promises we make.  Don’t ever hang them out to dry for lack of information.  As for me I like to send out emails every Monday where I touch every client and job I’m responsible for. I run the entire list every morning. Establish and make sacred routine updates regarding timelines, progress and deliverable schedule status.

Confirm Important Conversations in Writing
Everybody works different ways. I have some clients where every month we go out to dinner to review results and establish marching orders. It’s critical that these verbal outlines be memorialized in writing afterwards to prevent misunderstanding.  The account manager should always offer to originate the list, however sometimes the client has details, which make it more efficient to generate the first draft. Follow meetings that yield verbal agreements quickly in writing. It will speak volumes about your follow through and help prevent mistakes and misinterpretation.

Keep Appointments Whenever Possible
We’re all busy and it’s nearly impossible to prevent last minute conflicts.  However do your best to save emergency reschedules to true emergencies.  Like the boy that cried wolf, relationships can only withstand so many “gee my kid is home sick from school” excuses.

If your business or personal life gets to the point where you repeatedly need to cancel meetings with team members or customers for personal reasons, reevaluate your goals and timeline.  If the account itself presents recurrent roadblocks to keeping schedules sacred, call in your boss and reassess the situation.

Do your level best to make sure that the customer is the only party who ever cancels meetings. Bank the equity gained by accommodating their mishaps for the times you need equal consideration.  Always be polite and respectful when others cancel and apply measured reason if you ever need to challenge or charge them for the wasted time.

Build & Maintain Personal Relationships, In Person
We have clients I’ve never met in person and love.  I’m sure over the years we’ve had some that did not work out because we did not have a chance to develop a more personal relationship. That said I now make it my business to try and connect with everyone in person at least once.  Emails don’t convey emotions, important buttons and nuances that in-person meetings reveal.

After years of virtual relationships and telecommuting it’s becoming apparent that any client we work with past a very short term engagement, is totally worth the investment, even if it erodes profit on the initial assignment.  If meeting in person is just not feasible due to cost or distance, use video conferencing zoomed in enough to watch your trading partner’s face and mannerisms. Even just knowing what someone’s’ face looks like humanizes the dynamic. If things every get stressful between you, the added insight can be valuable.

Make Client Responsibilities Clear
In many businesses including mine, clients have an important role to play in any success. On the most basic level they have to return phone calls, emails and pay the bills.  It gets a great deal more complex when technology or other production is involved.  Many times our team interacts with multiple players on the client-side.  Make sure everyone knows the drill.

Lack of clarity in mutual expectations regarding both party’s’ roles can lead to misunderstanding and even failure.  Starting with the contract’s scope of services and continuing through daily communication, make your customers’ responsibility clear.

Be Totally Available to Your Customers
We live in the sweet age of device convergence and cloud storage so maximize the benefit cloud synchronization tools.  Smartphones (like Blackberrys and iPhones) easily sync to Google Apps’, SVN or MS Exchange (and other platforms) to offer groundbreaking options for mobile efficiency.  Often times I use my Blackberry even when the laptop is in front of me.

For instance learn  how to accept invitations, schedule and invite, forward text messages, links and docs as email on your mobile device.  Prepare for trips on your laptop knowing that hotel information will be at fingertips the BlackBerry’s GPS will be pre-loaded with necessary waypoints. As an Account Manager it’s crucial to understand what your gear is capable of and leverage it it to your advantage.  It’s incredible what can be accomplished in terms of the customer’s perception of your ability to react and respond.  Become a power user of whatever office tools are available.

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This is the conclusion of “The Guerrilla Account Manager’s Business Guide Part 1.” Stay tuned for Part 2, which continues this installment and then Part 3, “Dealing with Difficult Clients.”

Marty Weintraub is President of aimClear, and Internet focused advertising agency in Duluth, Minnesota. Twitter:@aimClear.

photo credit: Alex E. Proimos

PubCon is a whirling dervish, a collage of kindred spirits, sites, sounds, intensive learning and hyper-techno-geeks. All of this is hyperbolic stew mashed up with a healthy heaping of Las Vegas kitsch & killer eats.  Here are some snapshots to capture a portion of the frenetic ultra-vibe.

The boys from seOverflow: Yes, tell your boss that there is ROI for the sweet shirts. Someone might take your picture and post it in their blog. . I meant to ask but did not want to disturb you. What does your name mean anyway? ….that you take work that other SEO firms don’t have the capacity to handle? Overflow SEO?

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Our friend Cindy Krum, My MY you are so photogenic Cindy.

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A sweet pic from @Leeodden TweetPics: aimClear and Brett Tabke

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Left to right: Moderator Kevin Lee, Tim Ash, Jill Whalen, David Szetela and Bruce Clay

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Gillian Muessig, President and Co-Founder of SEOmoz.

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Killer strawberry Blintzs at the Hilton Buffet breakfast made me very happy.

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Matt Cutts (sans hair) playing Werewolf, a card game featuring search marketers on the cards, at the SEOmoz Party. Thanks for the cool party Rand.

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Ubiquitous signage at the Las Vegas Convention Center

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Our good friend Joanna Lord blogging in her traditional “black is beautiful” garb.  If you ever get a chance to see her speak, take it. She’s one smart lady.

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PubCon Session Room

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Sterling Brunch at Bally’s. You’re looking at lobster tail, oysters, crab, shrimp diablo and lox.

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Our good friends David Szetela and Michael Streko

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Place setting at Sterling Buffet

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My secret Blue Man Group Fantasy

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Ornate statues inside of Ceaser’s Palace

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The hallways at the Las Vegas Convention Center are ENDLESS!

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Harrah’s sign

Picture of a presenter’s .ppt deck on the big screen.

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Even the hotels are wired up here.

Ah PubCon, jewel of the Nevada desert.  The sun has barely risen here but I’ve been up for hours working,  thinking, tripping about the amazingly massive search marketing day ahead. 

Dude the energy here is unreal. Here IS the obligatory true-must-attend conferences of the year thing…so powerful and fully authentic.   Yeah, these are the post-bbs-nerds who took over the world. In a minute I’ll be pycho-trawling the eye candy people-watching Hilton halls. I’ve got my PubCon 09′ playlist cranking in noise canceling headsets. Dude, I feel like dancing.

Here’s where you’ll find aimClear today speaking, hanging, live-blogging for SEORoundTable and then (maybe) hitting the strip for some R&R later.

The conference is sequenced on “Tracks,” which are a bit different each day.

Tony Hsieh’s Nevada-based Zappos is known for its fanatical devotion to customers, recently received a letter-of-intent from Amazon for a $900 million + Aquision. They recently exceeded $1 billion in annual sales. I’ll be at the keynote wearing bells.

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There are several cool options during the 10:00AM time slot but I’ve got to go see our buddies for the Interactive Site Reviews: Open Call. David Szetela, Bruce Clay, Jill Whalen, Tim Ash, among the biggest names in Search Engine Marketing are ready to review your site and rock the house.

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In the 11:30AM timeslot, I’ll head over the Advanced 411: Affiliate Networks and CPAs for a healthy does of affiliate geek speak. Really these folks are the best at monetizing websites. Real SEOs don’t need clients . The session features Stephanie Lichtenstein, Paul Schroader  and Moderator:Lisa Riolo.

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At 1:30 it’s my turn up for the Keyword Research, Selection and Optimization session which will also feature our friends Stoney deGeyter, Ken Jurina, Moderator:Stephanie Leffler, and Q&A:Aaron Shear.

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Then it’s time to get my hands dirty (true) live blogging the Enterprise-Level Bid Management featuring Dave Roth, Kevin Lee, Daniel Boberg, Wister Walcott. The Moderator is Kate Morris and Q&A:Jessie Stricchiola. Ad text, bidding, budgeting, targeting, positioning: Let’s talk about great structure on the massive tip.

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Last but NOT least, we plan on attending The Best Tactics in Landing Page Optimization. Really folks, Tim Ash, Brad Geddes, Kate Morris and Joanna Lord are among the very best when it comes to rocking PPC. The Moderator:Ken Jurina.

Then  Come the Legendary PubCon Parties!
Check out The Ironman Pu

SEOmoz Wynn WereWolf Party,
Wynn Las Vegas

Las Vegas Hilton Hotel and Casino

Vegas Lavo Nightclub

The Palazzo and PubCon host a lavish after-hours party at the luxurious Lavo Nightclub at The Palazzo Resort Hotel Casino.

photo credit: craigCloutier

Most larger Internet marketing agencies and in-house shops are configured as departments of specialists. It’s no wonder! In today’s complicated world PPC, ORM, social media, link building, affiliate networks, analytics, content creation, video, public relations, SEO, vendor and account management (whew) all require experienced and nuanced practitioners.

aimClear takes a different approach than most agencies in that literally every employee in the shop is trained long-term to strive for functional fluency in all departments and specialize in several.  We build complete”marketers here, trained to independently analyze clients’ objectives, determine appropriate marketing-mixes of goals, strategy, channel-tactics while crafting key performance indicators (KPIs).  Everyone here can research and deploy integrated campaigns spread across mainstream and niche’ distribution networks of various models.

When hiring we look for super-smart people, passionate about marketing and possessing a willingness to unselfishly take on labor-intensive tasks. We covet candidates’ potential to someday-train others, contribute entrepreneurial energy, grow in thought-leadership, build personal brand and speak in public.

We seek those excellent few who have a fanatical desire to be more than a one-trick-pony. In exchange we make it our goal to help everyone become as valuable as possible, to us now and for the rest of their careers.

In-House & Affiliates As Models
I come from a small business in-house background, working in the late 90’s for my own e-commerce endeavor and then a < 10 million in revenue .edu.  Hurtling into Y2K it was less of a big deal to handle all aspects of a search engine marketing operation. Crazy-wonderful days and nights were spent moving adroitly (most of the time) between channels and tasks. Yes…those were heady times indeed as a millennial industry was born.

The “full service” concept grew out of necessity then, as there was simply nobody else to help. The known marketing universe was exploding, as we post-BBS pioneer-geeks took over the world.

As the decade progressed, this hybrid-guerrilla mentality bubbled-mainstream in audacious next-gen affiliate marketers–mom and pop basement operators who made millions D.Y.I.  Now small-business in-house and independent affiliate marketers, to my mind, remain the most complete Internet marketing sharks in the world. In such a complex environment, the classic hybrid approach takes a special individual indeed.

Decisions, Decisions…
When we founded aimClear, to build out my personal practice, we thought long and hard about narrowing the scope of services offered. There were 2 primary considerations. 1) It’s much easier to brand a more focused product.  “Northern Wear” is easier to brand than “northern, southern, eastern & western wear.” 2) HR: Realistically it’s much easier to hire employees possessing singular skill sets.  Clearly to duplicate the work I’d been doing on my own by team-building in Duluth, Minnesota would require months or even years of training.

We recognized that a decision to build complete marketers is a decision to grow more slowly and deliberately.  We believed then and know now the reward: special employees and candidates seem to recognize the amazing opportunity at hand when driven to strive for “completeness” in their trade.

Demographic Research: The Thread that Binds
The first skill taught to our first employee (and everyone since) was keyword research. After listening to hours of Jim Collin’s “Good to Great” series of audio books driving back and forth to visit Minneapolis clients, I had it in my head to build aimClear on a foundation of skills that had a chance to be best in class.   Keyword research (and now buzz pocket mining) was and will always be the most fundamental front-end skill for SEM.

Absolute study of verbiage people use to ask questions, along with the ability to research and document what interests folks chatter about, are timeless keys to all marketing channels. No matter the media or method, the art of marketing is about honestly working customers’ perception of brand in demographic segments where the true value of products lines up with actual demand.”

No Channel is an Island
Every SEM discipline is inextricably interrelated and no channel exists in a vacuum. For instance we believe it’s impossible to create integrated marketing strategies in social media without considering SEO & PPC, even if it’s to rule out certain channels as not viable. Serving PPC Ads in social environments like Facebook can sure have socio-viral implications. So far as reputation management goes, the entire Internet is one big ORM puzzle for which PPC, social and SEO can play tactical roles.

These overlaps and many others illustrate why it’s so crucially important that specialists in every channel learn to identify how their favorite channel-tactics are symbiotic in how they affect other nodes.

Mad Men Talking
In 1994 I asked a retired 80-year-old sliver-haired ad agency-owner Mad Men guru, the difference between public relations and advertising.  His answers astounded me.

“There’s no difference,” he purred “ with a sweet age-induced vocal resonance. “Both involve the art of working customers’ perception of brand in market segments where the true value of products lines up with actual demand.”  “It’s important that every shop employee, from administrative assistants to CEO, understand the interconnectedness of all channels to support strategic objectives.”

In clarification he explained, “Both PR and advertising are forms of marketing.” Each includes “channel with idiosyncrasies,” costs, areas of strength and weaknesses and great for different tactics.  While PR appears to be free and therefore more desirable than buying billboards or television commercials, in fact “nothing is free.”

He understood that public relations is more about “socializing” messages, by bringing “events” to life on many nodes to the public’s attention. If they like it they’ll “pass it along” to others and the message can become self-perpetuating.  “Son, PR is a channel just like radio, direct mail and TV. PR is a channel,” he used to chortle.  I learned early that the entire marketing universe is made up of channels working together.

Search & Modern Mad Men
So it is the same today in search. Google, Yahoo and Bing organic SERPs are channels.   We know they’re not free because it takes resources to get there. YouTube, LinkedIn, AdWords, Facebook (PPC & Organic), Email and shouting out the front door of our office building are all channels.

The things we do in MySpace & Flickr are channel tactics. The objectives pursued with channel tactics are sewn together by a strategy. There needs to be a strategic reason to pursue any channel that can be quantified by goals. Everybody in the shop operating on any node of a campaign needs to be functionally fluent enough to work in accordance.

The essence of marketing has not changed much since Mad Men days.  Advertising, public relations, broadcast or Bing SERPs, it’s entirely about matching customers who have somehow demonstrated they might care our products’ true value. Demographic research has improved the near absolute level.

While many shops are tooled to distribute specialists who come together,  each of our goals is to become a complete marketer, a hybrid who grows to aspires to understand the larger picture.

Rand worked his way to thought-leadership by classic pathways: hard work,  experimentation, speaking engagements at early Danny Sullivan/Chris Sherman SearchEngineStrategies conferences, tackling ambitious data-driven research projects, ahead of the times tool-making, endless sharing, participation and blogging.

We first became aware of his work while researching aimClear’s business model build-out in 2006.  I couldn’t believe anybody was willing to give such incredible information away.  We still carry DNA sewn into aimClear’s agency model as a result.

He remains a lightening rod for some and sage to many. Typecast Rand Fishkin however you like, to our mind there are few individuals who have given as much, as tirelessly to our community. I’ve had the pleasure sharing several conference stages with Rand, interacted in other ways and happy to offer you a snapshot of what it’s like to spend time with him talking search and life.

[Marty] There’s been a lot of talk these days about whether SEO should focus on optimizing pages for search engines or users. Some like Shari Thurow assert that we should build pages for users which will “force” search engines to figure out better ways to index content. Others range from hard core crap-ass SEOs who don’t care about users. Most or us are  somewhere in the healthy-in-between.  How do you think about this matter?

[Rand] Oddly enough, I think I’d argue that it’s actually a complete non-issue and something that’s been hyped too much. I actually take full responsibility for that – my blog post on the subject had a title that was too aggressive and I saw a lot of responses around the web that didn’t read the content, just skimmed the title and wrote an opposing viewpoint. What I argued is that building for users is the priority and the primary goal of all websites. However, once you’ve designed an excellent site for your audience, to presume that search engines will simply visit and judge you on the great user experience you’ve made is folly. Search engines aren’t human – they can’t appreciate and enjoy the site or content in the same way users can. They’re naive about crawling certain kinds of paths humans can follow, they judge quality not on its own, but by the quantity and quality of links that point to a page.

“In short, you need to build and optimize with both users and search engines in mind and, honestly, over the last few years, it’s gotten pretty easy to find a solution to nearly every SEO problem that’s great for users and good for engines, too. Hence, I think it’s a non-debate.”

[Marty] As Google prepares to withdraw the only (crappy) non-personalized public display of their possible algorithmic regard for any given page, PageRank (conjecture), what are your thoughts on the importance and evolution of open-rank tools like SEOmoz LinkScape? What place will such APIs have in SEO’s future?

[Rand] Regardless of what happens with PageRank, our goals for mozRank and all the metrics we calculate inside Linkscape are to make them as valuable for SEOs trying to solve problems as possible. mozRank today is a great metric for comparing against PageRank to help determine penalties or see areas where link juice can be obtained (or needs to be).

In the future, we’re also working towards these kinds of uber-metrics (described in Ben’s latest blog post on correlation and ranking models) that are actually highly predictive of Google’s rankings. PageRank is neither of these things – Google doesn’t particularly want it to be overly valuable or prescriptive for SEO, and many people inside Google would like to drop it altogether. My feeling is that regardless of what happens with PageRank, our goals remain the same – to produce a set of metrics that add tons of value to the SEO process.

[Marty] Change in our industry has been beautifully tumultuous over the years. Things were so easy back in the day . What timeless values, strategies and tactics have remained the same. What differences matter the most?

[Rand] Content that appeals to those who control the web’s link graph (bloggers, journalists, site builders, social media participants, etc.) has been very successful in the past and continues to succeed through visibility in both search engines and the evolution of the social web.

On the tactical front, classic on-page/on-site SEO hasn’t changed much in the last 7 years. Keyword research + good targeting combined with accessible site architecture, canonicalization and unique content has been the prescription for a long time now. Link building has changed a bit – classic manual link building is not nearly as effective or scalable as newer, more popular tactics like content licensing, social media marketing, viral content development/promotion, etc.

[Marty] Who are your mentors, in search, in life and why? How did they make a difference to your personal and professional evolution?

I’d certainly have to start with Gillian, my Mom and business partner, who kicked off my entrepreneurial adventure. Over the last few years, I’ve been blessed with a number of amazing mentors, though, from Kelly Smith and Michelle Goldberg (who sit on SEOmoz’s board of directors) to Dharmesh Shah of Hubspot and Nirav Tolia from Fanbase. In search, there have been amazing people like Danny Sullivan, Greg Boser, Anne Kennedy and Seth Besmertnik (and hundreds more). All of these people have encouraged me, enabled me to grow and taught me valuable lessons that I’m applying to the business every day.

[Marty] In your opinion, to what extent will search engines underemphasis the Internet’s link graph in favor of the social graph? What multi-channel buzz monitoring API tools (like PostRank) do you believe in. Do you think buzz tracking tools, which may define future-authority, can be gamed?

[Rand] Funny you should mention PostRank We’re actually doing some correlation and data modeling stuff with them right now, and should have the results of that soon (which I’m fascinated to see). I certainly think the engines are looking at how to use social graph and buzz signals to improve their results, but I think it’s still up in the air about how much value those may add (and how easy they are to game/hard it is to find the signal amongst the noise). The link graph, in my mind, still has many years of life left in it, though I do believe social signals (like the Twitter integration Google/Bing both just completed) will also make their way into the discovery + ranking systems.

[Marty] Speaking of gaming search engines, coming  up day 3 at Search Engine Strategies Chicago you’ll be speaking on the “Black Hat, White Hat: Does it Really Matter Anymore?” panel. Moderated by Frank Watson, you’ll be joined on the stage by David Naylor, Matthew Bailey, and Todd Friesen. This represents quite a clever, heavyweight and diverse panel. Can you give us any insight regarding what you’ll discuss?

[Rand] Even I’m not privvy to what’s going to be discussed! I suspect we’ll cover the distinctions between black and white hat and where/how those practices can impact businesses, individuals and consultancies that engage in them. Hopefully some fine blogger will cover the session

[Marty] What is the most gratifying part of your work? What pisses you off the most?

[Rand] The best part of work is when a new tool or product we’ve made launches and I see people across the industry start adopting it as part of their SEO process. A lot of the tools inside Labs have been like that lately, and I’m always humbled and amazed to see so many people using our toolbar (though, with the analyze page button, it really is a big time saver).

The part that pisses me off worst is probably constraints that restrict production and execution of great ideas. SEOmoz is a startup which means limited resources and budget. As we grow, there’s more and more to maintain and that takes time away from new projects, which means development takes a long time. Producing quality software is more challenging and time-consuming then I ever imagined – it’s tough not to get emotional when you find out that “promised” deadline is slipping another 6 weeks. Still – we’ve got an amazing stuff that’s done some really remarkable things; I guess as a founder, I’m never supposed to be satisfied with the status quo

Roll over Beethoven! Legendary search marketing conclave PubCon looms large as  Sinatra on a flashing Las Vegas billboard. Beginning November 10th at the  ‘Vegas Convention Center, PubCon truly is one of the world’s most storied annual Internet marketing conferences.

Steeped in history, stand by to experience 4 killer days of content spread across 7 tracks, over 90 sessions and fantastic networking events. Learn from and mingle with over 200 expert speakers gathered to share real-world examples of bleeding edge SEO, PPC and affiliate-think-genius.

On Day One the Interactive Site Reviews Track, Focus on Organic presents an esteemed panel of top-notch SEOs to review and critique/scold attendees’ sites live. Derrick Wheeler, Senior Search Engine Optimization Architect at Microsoft will be speaking on the pannel and moderating the rest of the crew: Brain Combs, Principal of Ionadas Local, Amanda Watlington, Searching for Profit, and our very own Marty Weintraub.

After lunch Marty will keep attendees energized while speaking on the SEM Search Marketing track Keyword Research, Selection and Optimization moderated by Stephanie Leffler, CEO of Juggle.com. Misty Locke, Co-founder and President of Range Online Media, Stoney deGeyter, President of Pole Position Marketing and Ken Jurina, Epiar Inc President, will join Marty on the panel to divulge killer tips and tools for generating the right keywords and phrases for your search marketing campaign.

On day two of the conference, stick around til the end of the day for the money-saving SEO and Viral Tactics on a Shoestring Budget session on the SEO: Organic Search Optimization Track moderated by Heather Lloyd-Martin and Scott Brinker. As companies tighten their belts yet again thinning marketing budgets require viral marketing tactics and small-budget strategies. Marty joins Brett Tabke, CEO of WebmasterWorld.com and Ben Huh, CEO of Pet Holdings, Inc to outline major viral and money-saving marketing tactics.

It’s not too late to register for PubCon and, if search is your business, we highly recommend the experience.   Hang out with a gaggle of post-BBS geeks who arguably took over the world. Please reach out to aimClear if you’re going to be in attendance so we can get to know ya’ better. Everybody travel safely and we’ll see you soon in Las Vegas!

The wind whistles howling, this blustery Canal Park morning, 7:20 AM.  The water churns brown, surface licking little whitecaps, tinted iron ore agitated by waves. There’s going to be snow south of us along the Shores of Lake Superior today, hazardous travel they say.  It’s about 43 degrees Fahrenheit outside but I’m good.

Each year it takes about a week of around-freezing weather to acclimate a soul and I’m there.   Really, I got up and went to the store pre-dawn this morning wearing shorts, sandals and my Marshall School blaze-orange down vest.  I’m good because Duluth makes you hardy in deep & handy ways.  The seats in the Jeep are heated. Bring it.

It’s quiet in our office as I’m the first one here.  I never turn on the lights in the morning, because darkness is such an elegant lady. This is such a wonderful place. My sweet baby grand looks delightfully warm and inviting in the back left corner of Lift Bridge & Lake. It would be so cool to take about 5 weeks and make a record. I’d remember what to do.

A sweeping look down a row of waiting workstations reminds me that aimClear will light up like a candle in about 13 minutes, as our crew arrives. You never know what will be on their mind.   There’s a ton to do today! Welcome to aimClear, fire of the northern lights, an underground Canal Park beacon of American energy.  aimClear is regional economic development of the actual kind.

Our business has exploded in a starburst of brilliant clients, stimulating tasks, new friends, old values, exciting opportunities and for-the-most-part-peace.   The family’s good, so very good.

There are staffing decisions, budgets, killer-brew coffee, Harmon Killebrew talk, contract proofing, SEO spoofing, authentic social and ad copy writing to push the limits.  Accountants meetings, lawyers, agencies, brand, friends, the most amazing daughters, good wine and 1 day (Saturday) to plant bulbs before the ground freezes under.

Today’s Affirmations
Keep things in perspective, stay focused, and don’t distract others or myself.  How good do I want to be? Dare to lead by example, push the limits, take only prudent risks, gravitate towards freshness, pursue life-affirming associations, don’t be afraid of feelings, embrace pain and joy equally and responsibly shed relationships that for any reason don’t fulfill either or both parties.  Often such things are not personal, rather life having it’s way.

Give more than I take, take unselfishly, go last in the food line, focus on my breathing, be quiet and listen.  Say no to work, sing out loud, stand on the chair and shout, look in people’s eyes as we speak.  Savor the movement, don’t fear death,  remember that having both of my parents alive is an incredible blessing.

Manny, Matt & Merry are here. Someone’s singing in falsetto. Really, they’re such exciting people to be around and work with.  In about 8 minutes someone will put a warm cup of Caribou on my desk. They know I’d make coffee, breakfast or blue cheese Pinot’ Gris for them. They just know if brings me pleasure to be focused and have someone hand me coffee. I am SO lucky.

Bring the singing northern wind Duluth. It’s warm in here.

What does it take to rank in Facebook’s newly enhanced internal search engine, which now spans the entire user base? This post offers results from aimClear’s study of Facebook search and offers SEO tips & tricks for getting keyword queries ranked in FB’s organic SERPs.

We also examine opportunities for savvy marketers to best exploit Facebook’s expanded social graph search to immediate advantage and share what we learned about ranking factors.  

(Advanced Facebook search-users can skip directly  to “Facebook SEO.”)

Why Do We Care?
Facebook is almost unimaginable, a well laid play for network domination.  Of 300+ million active users, 50% login every day.  2 billion photos and 14 million videos  are uploaded every 30 days. 2 billion content blocks (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc…) are shared every week.  The fastest growing demographic is age 35 and above.

Behind the login wall, FB amounts to a massive walled garden parallel Internet. With the exception of canned public profiles, the community doesn’t allow mainstream search engines Google, Bing, Yahoo or others to crawl and index inside the site.

Facebook’s Internal search engine has always been people-focused and rather weak. However in August they rolled out an enhanced inside search product which indexes a great deal more of users behavioral data points. Given the breadth of FB’s community, this development has some search marketers excited .

For insight as to what data points one can search for among other FB users, have a look at your own privacy/search settings and note the stepped permission levels by which you manage others ability to search your own profile.

This screen actually means “I will allow everyone, my networks & friends of friends, etc…”  to search my profile. Turn the analogy around to mean “the populations I can now search include friends of friends, only friends, etc…”

The CUSTOMIZE dropdown option provides further opportunity for reciprocal insights. The key option here is a checkbox which enables the entire FB population to find you.  Some Facebook profiles we tested had this option checked by default. Others did not.

These permissions are also stepped, with the option of including or excluding your profile picture, friend list and links for others to send messages or friend you. Of course your friends can always find you. Turn this around to understand population segments visible to you.

The implications here are obvious. It’s now possible to search users who are not your friends. This can include others’ links, status updates, pages of which they’re fans, videos and wall posts.

The availability of this searchable user data is transient much of the time and only available for the last 30 days.

Anatomy of Facebook Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)
Facebook SERPs are chunky, hierarchical in the ordering of blocks and within each block.

After searching the default segment is ALL RESULTS. PAGES & GROUPS usually top the list

However popular APPLICATIONS (apps’) can trump PAGES & GROUPS at the top of the chunky SERPs food chain.

Next up on the SERPs are usually POSTS BY FRIENDS.

WEB RESULTS are usually last and powered by Bing.

To be clear, Bing indexes the external world wide web and not internal Facebook.

PEOPLE search shows friends first…

… then extended network and geographic proximity for common names…

…and then from anywhere. Think of these as long tail names.

PEOPLE search also reveals folks who game by using profiles as business pages (First Name: Waldorf, Last Name: Astoria) or idiots screwing around.

For GROUPS, ranking fan count is the main, but not the only correlation. We tested freshness, geographic proximity, phrase density to erratic results. We think this would be an excellent place for Facebook to monetize the community in a minimally invasive way I.E. get groups to pay for play.

We tested to see if users’ stated interests impacted their GROUPS results.

They don’t. Even though there is a GROUP called “Giant Bicycles” and others using the name “Biking,” expressing those keywords as a personal interest did not result in finding those groups in the SERP for keyword “bicycles.”

Facebook crawls GROUPS titles, descriptions and rankings are mostly based on members-count. In the ALL chunky SERPs, GROUPS listings can be erratic and not based on member-count.

When searching GROUPS, note the preset query segmentation available. The are the same presets available when creating GROUPS. Turn this around to understand the importance of choosing new GROUP categories intentionally.

APPLICATIONS rank based on a) keywords in the app’s name & b) a straight up popularity contest scored by monthly active users.  It is unknown what type of behavior constitutes “active” users.

EVENTS are ranked by geographic proximity and other block box factors.

EVENT titles are indexed along with Geo’.

Once again your ability to search Facebook by EVENT-categories lends insight to what others can search about EVENTS you create.

Bing WEB RESULTS within Facebook index the outside ‘web and not internal Facebook. They are not geo-savvy or personalized.

POSTS BY FRIENDS & POSTS BY EVERYONE are similar except for width of the network included in results. Keywords in links,  status updates, wall posts, and notes are indexed.  In some cases, the HTML title tag of external content is indexed and displayed. After keywords, rankings are simple.

Strictly chronological, how long listings last at the top of FB SERPs for any keyword is determined by how many users are bookmarking pieces of content and at what pace.  If many users post topically relevant content, the faster the results are pushed down the page. It’s a linear fire hose effect and not personalized we’ve seen indexing occur as quickly as 30 seconds.

Yet again, segmentation available to you as you as a searcher displays exactly what others’ can search in your Facebook profile.

The results below for the query “Indian Food”  indexed from the user’s status update.

The next result indexed from a Wall post.

Here’s an example of a business profile’s Wall post indexing. The query was “New York Seafood.”

In this case the HTML Title Tag of a profile’s external content Wall post indexes for the query “New York  Seafood.”

Tips For Facebook Ranking Success
First, make your profile and/or Page visible to everyone Facebook-wide.  If others can’t see you, they can’t search your data points.

Facebook SEO

• Optimize GROUP titles & descriptions with keywords.
• When Creating GROUPS, Categorize intentionally. If geo’ matters, include it in the GROUP name.
• Optimize EVENT name with keywords and include geo’ in the name.
• When creating EVENTS, categorize intentionally.
• Put most important information and keywords in HTML Title tag of outside content your control.
• Drop links to such content on Walls, Status. Updates & Notes.
• Optimize  photo album titles with keywords. They index.
• Remember, every Facebook says they index content from the last 30 days. We suggest posting constantly. Gain FB organic prominence with app’s.
• Bing optimization now serves double duty with it’s inclusion as the external ‘web engine within Facebook.
• “People” with KW “names” can Index easily.
• Do whatever it takes, lift group & page fan-count.

Facebook does not release statistics for how many folks use search. Clearly the best best usage for marketers is the same as it ever was, one-on-one research to find plugged in users for selective relationship building. As always, engage and friend holistically and with purpose.

With FB’s expanded internal search, tons of new social competitive intelligence is available. Also we don’t discount the possibility that Facebook, with their recent acquisition of FriendFeed, won’t evolve to become a significant situational search engine to compete with Twitter search.

• Friends, friends of friends, networks & networks of friends are now your personal crowd sampling and demographic research tool.
• There are privacy Issues. Giving marketers access to discover this much about individual users is a lot like letting the fox in the chicken house. Wield this power responsibly but don’t miss the opportunity to make true friends with users whose recommendations matter to large groups.
• Find users chattering about specific topics, list them and reach out in friendship word-of-mouth style.
• Get around befriending limitations of “pages”  by having real people be “ambassadors” using personal profiles. Deploy regional ambassadors for regional events.
• Leveraging friends is sticky business so give much more than you take
• Steadily share recurrent content to serve others.
• Holistic self promotion is cool but support the community first.Share links throughout FB to optimized content.

In Conclusion
Is Facebook internal search a threat to conventional search models? Obviously it isn’t right now. However by sheer magnitude of participation and personal nature of available data, anything is possible.

It makes sense that community members might trust SERPs comprised of friends, extended networks and themed groups-especially those with real-world authority.  All of this depends on the rate of users adopting Facebook internal search and FB “the company’s” business slant.

For now, Facebook SEO is easy and the crowd sampling unbelievably robust. We welcome any contribution of our community’s understanding of Facebook search. Of course it’s possible to gain immediate prominence by paid FB search.