As a Father of two, I got asked a couple times what I was doing for Father’s Day and replied ‘Baseball’.    But, baseball gave me an unexpected Father’s Day gift today as I was able to witness a very gritty performance by my 10 year old Son and his baseball team.

Just the day before, my Son asked me “What’s a Milestone?” and I explained that a milestone is a significant event in someone’s career, or a defining moment that is a turning point.

He looked at me and repeated, “Dad’s What’s a Milestone?”.

I did my best to explain, but it was much easier today as he experienced several milestones of which I am proud and will remember for some time:

• His baseball team reached its’ first championship game after winning 4 straight baseball games this weekend. While they didn’t win the championship game, they qualified for a spot in the USSA World Series.
• In the semi-finals, he pitched a complete game (6 innings) which I haven’t seen done by a 10 year old. His pitch count for 6 innings was around 75 pitches and he was exhausted when he took the mound in the last inning, but he wanted to secure the win for his team.

Of course the entire team was devasted to lose (rather convincingly) in the championship, and he was upset on the way home. As we started to talk about team and individual milestones that were reached, he started to feel a little bit better.  By the time we got home, he was feeling a lot better about the weekend and how much he and his team had accomplished and I feel like I got to experience a life changing event in my Son’s early life…which is a great Father’s Day Gift.  Thanks Son!

Once this is created, we use tracking software to monitor these keywords on a weekly basis while providing a report to our clients. Invariably, this creates a lot of conversation around normal fluctuations of rankings and the relationship of keywords to traffic.

One of our strategies for clients is to identify keywords that rank between 6 - 12 for quick movement up to top position(s) which we consider to be #1 - #3. Once we have a keyword rotating through the first 3 positions, we can often work on external link building and on-site link architecture to lock in a top position.

When only viewing a keyword ranking report, these small movements don’t seem very important. For example, a move from 27 to 8 looks a lot more impressive via our ranking reports as this keyword is soaring up the charts. While this is a nice move and may result in a little bit of traffic, a move from #6 to #2 is much more impressive and will lead to more traffic or conversions. Of course, the movement from #2 to #1 is the last step and most important step, all of these are just points of illustration.

#1 Ranking = 56% of Organic Clicks

To make it a little more scientific, I like to reference this study done by SEOResearcer.com. They produced this as a quick overview of how click distribution on the average Google results page is recorded visually by the user.

A #1 ranking, for example, results directly in almost 56% of all clicks possible on the page. In comparison, the #7 ranking through #10 ranking on the page only generates 1-2% total click traffic rates. This chart provides evidence that jumping from #10 to #3 is great—but jumping from #3 to #1 is huge in relation to total increased traffic referrals.

We tend to spend a lot of time doing keyword research at the beginning of every client project, so we have to assume our target keywords will deliver quality traffic to our clients.

One last note, Google owns approximately 80% of the search market compared to Yahoo! at 10% and MSN at 5% (I know these aren’t exact numbers, but I want to make a general point). When looking at rankings and ranking click percentages, this means that a #1 ranking on MSN is worth a combined factor of .0028 (56% for a #1 Ranking with 5% market share) which is comparable to a #10 ranking on Google with a combines ranking of .0204 (2.55% for a #10 Ranking with 80% market share).

I’d be more happy with a #10 ranking on Google than a #1 ranking on MSN since Google traffic tends to be higher quality and we know can work on moving the keyword even higher once it is on the first page of Google.

Here are some examples from the showcase on the product website:

This is good for deep linking and mistakenly thought to be good for SEO.  However, Google (and other search engine robots) won’t spider this content as it views the # reference as indicating an anchor tag.  This means that it references considers the previous two Nike Skateboarding Pages to be the same page.

However, there is a work-around using Mod-Rewrite (or similar redirection strategy) and here is an example:

Basically, Google is indexing http://www.gensler.com/projects and non-flash reading browsers (turn off javascript to simulate) and spiders will get the actual content on http://www.gensler.com/projects while FLASH readers will get http://www.gensler.com/#projects

Out of curiousity, I decided to run a couple more to see what I would get. Here are a few of the the results:

The Seeking Alpha Internet Sector appears to be focused on platforms & applications:

Google Adwords Blog - They must like to drink at Google:

New’s Year was huge at MTV, but I missed it. I was busy watching VH1’s 100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs with my wife as we rolled into the New Year.

From the ESPN NFL Nation Blog, it looks like the Cardinals & the Ravens in the Super Bowl:

If anyone wants to take the St. Louis,I mean Arizona Cardinals and give me the points, email me here!

Here are a few examples:

• Dual Monitors - Running two monitors is no longer a ‘nice-to-have’.  I could try to switch to a bigger main monitor, but I prefer to have the primary and secondary work-spaces as I organize my work and attention to a main and secondary screen.
• Firefox Browser - I have tried Google Chrome and was a user of Internet Explorer for years.   It does seem like the Firefox browser is slowing down a little bit these days, but with all of the plug-ins I have running that really shouldn’t surprise me.  Our team spends most days with 2 or 3 browser windows and 4-5 tabs open on my screens.
• GoToMeeting - Working virtually has its benefits and drawbacks.  GoToMeeting.com makes is easier to run virtual meetings.  In addition to the desktop sharing, we also receive free phone conferencing for $50 - $100 per month.  I estimate our SEO team spends over 2,000 minutes a month using GoToMeeting teleconferencing and this is a huge savings.
• Google Apps - We made the switch from Microsoft Exchange / Outlook to the Free Edition of Google Apps and the Gmail system.  So far, for me anyway, the transition has been seamless and even enhanced as I switched from using a Blackberry to a G1 Phone.  Being in the Search Marketing business with my livelihood actually being generated by Google, I figured I would go ahead and make it an ‘all-in’ from a technology perspective.
• Google Analytics - Sticking with Google theme, we heavily rely on Google Analytics for the statistical tracking and performance of all the websites (over 100 in total) that my team and I are involved with.  The market share won by Google and the price point is reminiscent of the early browser domination by Microsoft.  Having a common stats package for the majority (>95%) of our clients allows us to efficiently monitor and report on our clients weekly and monthly performance.
• Adwords Editor - Ok…make it 3 in a row.  While SEO is our top business priority, we do manage an ever-growing list of Paid Search on Google and Yahoo!.  This tool by Google has saved us literarily 100s of hours in setting up the structure and segmentation needed for most Google Adwords Campaigns.  Our general strategy is to optimize a campaign for Google and then provide that to Yahoo! during a setup process.  I have experienced some installation issues with the product, but another great Google tool for SEM.
• WordPress - Websites are a critical component of our internet strategy even though we often find ourselves optimizing and promoting sites instead of building them.  When we do build them (and we plan on building many more in 2009), we use Word Press not only as a blogging platform but as a CMS (Content Management Systems).  With the large number of templates and themes available available, we hope to continue to find that we can leverage Word Press for all of our Internet publishing.
• Project Management - Just a few months ago, I would have listed Basecamp, but we simply outgrew it as we moved through 2008 and are moving to an alternative project management system at MyIntervals.  The biggest downside we experienced in Basecamp was the ability to assign dates and really communicate at the task level.  It also became hard to manage ‘lots’ of projects as we moved beyond the 30 or 40 project level.
• Web 2.0 - In wrapping up, we have moved as aggressively as possible for our company.  We maintain an internal blog, manage our books online, interact on social networks, and outsource all of our IT needs.  Our top priority for the beginning of the year is to find our solution for our CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software as we have tried a number of products and haven’t found one that really meets our needs.  Each of our individual applications may not be a must have application, but when combined together the entire suite of partners, vendors, and software as a service provider plays an important role.

I am sure that this list is not that much different than most Internet marketing companies.   Being virtual and doing search engine consulting means that we are heavily reliant on Internet technology that collects data and allows us to communicate and collaborate.  I hope to revisit this list often throughout the year and will be anxious to see what types of new tools and technologies emerge over the next year.