So popular keyword research and grouping tool Wordstream has added some new features to their free tools. I’ve trialed their solution before, and it’s definitely an interesting utility for the serious PPC marketer and those who do advanced SEO campaigns with multiple keyword buckets.  Have a look at their new tools via the press release below:

WordStream’s new tools, The Keyword Niche Finder and The Free Keyword Grouper, are designed to help businesses and marketers solve specific problems:

• The Keyword Niche Finder – Instantly identify and target the most profitable keyword niches
• The Keyword Grouper- Group and organize vast lists of keywords into actionable keyword groups to turn into ad groups or website content

Strong keyword organization is the foundation of successful search marketing, and WordStream’s Free Keyword Grouper lets marketers take massive lists of target keywords and instantly group these keywords into tightly-knit, relevant groups. This advanced level of keyword organization is critical for creating effective ad groups for PPC campaign advertising and for informing content creation and site navigation for SEO.

With The Keyword Niche Finder, marketers can type in terms related to their business and receive a list of the most popular and relevant keywords for their websites, along with the most interesting keyword niches or clusters. Marketers and website owners can leverage the results from The Keyword Niche Finder to build and structure intelligent website information architectures or create new subsections of their existing sites to drive traffic and collect new business opportunities.

“One of the biggest challenges for business owners is determining where to begin their keyword research and how to continually expand and refine their campaigns to get maximum returns,” says WordStream Founder and Vice President of Product Development Larry Kim. “With our two new free tools, we’ve armed marketers and business owners with the power to instantly receive well-organized, prioritized lists of the most profitable keyword opportunities in their niche.”

WordStream’s subscription-based service also announced a major upgrade recently, including integration with Google Analytics and sophisticated multi-source keyword analytics. It provides users with a tool-set to take those insights to the next level by continually monitoring the performance of their keywords and offering actionable keyword suggestions that helps them grow their campaigns and revenues, all for a very affordable monthly fee.

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I’ll be flying out this morning bright and early to attend Day 2 of SES Chicago. If you’re part of the conference, feel free to say hi!  I’ll be speaking on the Search on  Dime panel running from 1pm – 2:15 in the Small Business track, on the topic of Local Search on a Dime. Here’s a break down of what’s covered on the panel:

Small Business Track

Search on a Dime
Search marketing has long been touted as one of the most affordable ways to market a business, but these days, competition is fierce. What’s a small business on a budget to do? Come and hear the tips and tricks that will help you pick up the valuable traffic being left behind by your competitors. Learn from the best how to maximize your exposure via organic, paid search and local search without emptying your wallet.

• Moderator:
  Jennifer Evans Laycock, Editor-In-Chief, Search Engine Guide
  
  Click to close

  Speaker Profile

• Speakers:
  Dr. Ralph Wilson, Found and Editor-in-Chief, Web Marketing Today®
  Stoney deGeyter, President, Pole Position Marketing
  Matt Van Wagner, President, Find Me Faster
  Dev Basu, President and CEO, Powered by Search

See you guys there!

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Monitoring rankings is an essential part of any good SEO’s regimen of competitive analysis, as well as to keep tabs on large scale keyword campaigns. While there are many free and paid solutions on the market, I’ve found the Advanced Web Ranking software suite to the most comprehensive, robust, and well supported application on the market today.  AWR as it’s commonly known offers many SEO features, including a keyword research tool, and depending on which version you purchase, also includes Advanced Link Manager which is a complete link management and acquisition tool.  That said, the features I find myself using the most include the core ranking analysis components which help with monitoring client search engine rankings over time, rankings in regional search engines, and creating professional reports for clients.

I’ve used AWR since 2007 while at another organization, but evaluated the trial version 6.9 very recently and wanted to write a short review of  the latest and greatest features AWR offers:

Monitor Local Maps Rankings

As a Local Search expert, I regularly monitor multiple business locations all over the country for a range of keywords.  Monitoring Google maps results for 1st page rankings used to be an absolute nightmare in the past, but it’s easy to do using AWR. When setting up any project, one of the first things one can do is set up the specific type of search engines that will be monitored for rankings. In my case, I generally choose either Google Canada, Google Canada Local Business Results, or Google.com if I’m reviewing US results.  You can also choose to further localize your search by selecting Google Canada (French) for example.

Over a randomized test of 500+  ranking checks over the course of a month, I found that that AWR was accurate 99% of the time, with errors only occurring if a business showed up more than once on the same results page. Creating ranking reports is also a extremely easy, especially given the number of preset reports such as keyword rank, current rank, overview, and the top sites overview.

Measuring Historical Data

I check ranking updates between twice to thrice a month, given that a good SEO program will maintain steady rankings rather than have them bouncing all over the place.  It’s interesting to see the correlation between the growth of a site’s global link popularity, along with a rough fit of the corresponding rise in rankings, and AWR gives you a good view of this by graphically mapping ranking shifts for different keywords over any specified period of time.

AWR also offers a delayed and randomized ranking check process so that the search engines don’t ban you temporarily for too many search queries at the same time. You can also use proxies to emulate IP diversity while you check rankings. Lastly, one neat feature that AWR offers is scheduled reports that can run while you’re away from your computer, which can then be automatically compiled into a neatly branded report, and backed up via FTP if needed.  The folks at Caphyon, the makers of AWR have also taken great measures to make the query requests from AWR look as natural as possible to the search engines, although I am not 100% sure on whether this is user-agent based or some other type of solution.

Automatic Search Engine Updates

AWR checks for search engine updates against its local database every time you boot the application up. This is a neat feature because the speed of the updates being released is a major advantage over its competitors. Prior to using AWR, my company at the time used Web Position, which later became a defunct solution after Google blocked all queries resulting from that software.

Evaluating the Competition

I almost never run a ranking report without comparing my sites versus that of the competitors website ranking. While setting up a project, you can add more than one website to be measured in ranking reports for a variety of keywords. Ranking data for competitive evaluation purposes can be a high-level or as nitty-gritty as you want to get i.e: You can view a list of the number of top 10 rankings a competitor has, and also dig in deep to see where your site is placed versus a competitor’s for a particular keyword theme.

Google Preview Tool based on Geo-Location

This function is only available in the Enterprise version of Advanced Web Ranking, and emulates the same features as the Firefox Google Global Extension by Redfly Online Marketing. Instead of using a proxy based solution, AWR can append strings to the search being conducted, and localize it to a particular city or town. If your clients are geographically dispersed using this type of tool is critical to ensure that you’re seeing the same results and rankings that your client is seeing in a live search results page.

Pricing & Recommendations

Advanced Web Ranking is priced at $199 for the Professional edition that includes a lot of features for the solo SEO professional.  I’d highly recommend getting the Enterprise version for $399 instead, since it comes with some key extra features such as the aforementioned Google Preview modules, as well as a project manager, user profile support, exporting data to CSV & XML formats, and the ability to use multiple proxies while running ranking reports.

There’s a couple of indispensable tools that should be in every serious SEO or web-master’s tool shed and Advanced Web Ranking is certainly one of those key tools in my books. I wasn’t paid to review the software, but I know it’s got quiet praise from many an SEO that I know, and definitely deserves the coverages as features SEO/Internet marketing tool of choice.  For a full list of features, which extend far beyond the scope of this post, visit their features page here.

You can test drive a full featured Enterprise version of AWR as well as the Advanced Link Manager software for a 30 day trial period, by downloading the software suite here.

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It’s That Time of Year Again

Fall is a wonderful time when students like cracking out the books again, and getting back into the world of academia. Between being knee deep in building a business, and staying on top of all the crazy changes the Local Search world has seen lately, I like to give back every year by delivering guest lectures at the University of Toronto at Scarborough. This year, I had the unique opportunity to have a different experience than talking to students about SEO and Internet Marketing as a  career. Instead, Professor Chris Bovaird got in touch me with to talk to his 3rd year class on the topic of Personal Branding and leading the life of a consultant.

The course, known as New Ways of Work: Consulting, Contracting, and Freelancing is aimed at entrepreneurial students geared towards freelancing, self-startups, and general contracting. I spent an hour or two discussing why having your very own personal brand is so important, followed by some tips and tricks I’ve learned over the years in the process of prospecting, pitching, proposal writing, and closing the sale. Here’s the slide deck I presented:

Disclaimer: The images are copyrights of their respective owners. The quote ‘people shop similarities, but buy the differences’ is courtesy Mr. Rick Shaban, sales guru extraordinaire.

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More Robust Reporting Eh!

When the Enhanced Dashboard reporting interface first went live in June 2009, I couldn’t wait till its new reporting features rolled outside the US and onto Canada and the rest of the world. The last two weeks have been pivotal in that type of progress, with reports that users in Europe and India being able to view the enhanced dashboard, complete with impressions, actions, and common search queries. I’m happy to report that as of today, the enhanced dashboard reports have been rolled out to all Canadian users.

As a recap here are some of the top features of the new reporting interface:

Top Additions to Google Local Business Center

• Graphical Impression and View Counts (akin to Google Analytics)
• Driving direction requests by view count that tie back to the Postal Code or City, State driving traffic.
• Top Search Queries triggering Local Maps

If you noticed the strikethrough above you’re probably wondering why the neighbourhood mapping for driving direction requests hasn’t rolled out to the Canadian reporting dashboard yet. This is something that irks me a bit as well, as that type of data should technically already have been gathered by Google over time, in the same way it is for US businesses.

Yet progress is progress and I’ll take it over the lack of any reporting at all.

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Local Listing Ads provide you with:

• Ads shown on Google.com and Google Maps
• A flat monthly fee based on your location and business category
• First 30 days free
• No bid or keyword management
• Free call-tracking, announcing each forwarded customer call (‘This caller brought to you by Google’)
• Full report on the number of calls, clicks to your ad, requests for driving directions, and clicks to your info window on Google Maps
• The option to cancel your ad at any time

The Threat to IYP Advertising & Other Local Advertising

Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) type sites have lost a ton of market share to the search engines with the advent of local search results being integrated into universal search. The erosion of users visiting these sites to obtain local business and service data will continue with a steady pace, but the real effects will be accelerated on the advertiser’s side. Major IYP publishers in Canada are currently in the process of making the premium ad spots even more expensive than they used to be last year, while offering advertisers a very vague picture of both the cost and ROI related to these investments. It’s easy to see how advertisers are ready to cut their investments not only in print directories, but also in the IYP space, hence migrating dollars to search engines in the process.

Local Listing Ads are bound to be a boon to SMB’s despite concerns related to placement, ranking factors, and costs relative to an SMB’s service areas and operating industry. The availability of free call tracking is just another way Google is bringing back its old news paper and radio advertising solutions granular call tracking, which again solidifies the benefits of investing in search. This is an opportunity that most IYP’s have long ignored, because despite doing measured ad studies for research purposes, none to my knowledge have ever packaged call tracking as part of their service offerings.

Lucky 7 Pack Results and Shaking up local seo Providers

I speculate that the change to the 7 pack from the 10 pack results has been made to make room for the local listing ads.  For SMB’s that have lost positioning due to this shift, it’s time to either optimize your listings further yourself, contacting your SEO company, or getting in touch with someone like myself. You can find a list of trusted local search consultants here.

Customer Service or the Lack Thereof

Google’s lack of customer service has long been a sore point and often a dealer breaker for SMB’s. The gap in the market for utilizing Google services and the support available to guide SMB’s in properly using them has created a huge market for training, support, and management for resellers, SEO companies and consultants alike. The new local listing ads FAQ does state that you as a business owner will get better support, albeit, still devoid of any human touch. I’ll be keeping a close eye on the evolution of local listing ads here in Canada, although something tells me that we’ll still have to wait till end of Q1 in 2010 for that to happen. On a side note, I’m personally a little irked by the folks at Mountainview for rolling out the LBC’s ehanced reporting dashboard to Europe and India, leaving Canadians with nothing more than a longing for the data that our counterparts south of the border have been enjoying for a couple of months now.

Further Reading:

David Mihm: My Thoughts on Google Local Listing Ads
Greg Sterling: Local Listing Ads and 7-Pack Live
Mike Blumenthal: Google Local Listing Ads: Random Thoughts
Mike Blumenthal: Google Answers Some Local Listing Ad Questions

Greg Sterling:More Info on Google Local Listing Ads

Taylor Cimala: Google to Start Offering Flat Rate Local Listing Ads
Learmonth/AdAge: Google Lures Local Advertisers by Subverting Its Own Search Policies
Mike B: Support to Be Available to Local Listing Ad Customers

Greg Sterling: Google Offers New ‘Simple’ Ads for SMBs
MB: Google Intros Local Listing Ads to LBC in Limited Markets

Greg Sterling (SEL): Google Creates A New, Simplified Ad Unit For Local Business

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Introducing Google Place Pages

Google has officially switched over from the tabbed interface presented in all Google map profiles to a new ‘places’ page that offers business information in a more concise and apparent fashion. The shift to Wikipedia style map entries that are supported by community edits (US only) is a welcome change to Google Maps, with countries other than the US going through a transition from the existing tabbed bubble interface to the new ‘place pages’ interface in about 2 weeks time.

Internal discussions with local search marketers has yielded some interesting points to note, including Mike Blumenthal noticing that places pages are already being indexed in the SERPs. The new pages also have SEO friendly and category drilled down url’s so it certainly makes sense that they are included in the organic search results. Here’s what a places page looks like for Barbara Oliver & Co Jewelry for example.

The Opportunity with Indexed Place Pages

The beauty of Google indexing place pages is of course that it gives businesses another chance to dominate top 10 results for brand name or even keyword related searches. Keyword optimized url’s for place pages look like this:

http://maps.google.com/places/us/buffalo/main-st/5820/-barbara-oliver-company-jewlery

The broken down standard format hence is:

US: http://maps.google.com/places/us/city/name-st/#/-full-business-name for the US

Canada: http://maps.google.com/places/ca/city/name-st/#/-full-business-name for Canada.

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Which right minded opportunist has not thought about striking it out on their own? I currently lead the life of an intrapreneur – One who thrives as an entrepreneur within a corporate environment…perhaps the best of both worlds.

My friend and fellow Toronto based marketer Satish Kanwar recently presented at Refresh,  one of the increasingly popular  ‘unconferences’ taking place in the city. Check out what he has to say beyond the jump:Satish Kanwar – Entrepreneur Versus Employee

Wikipedia (no you’re not getting a link) says:

Intrapreneurship is the practice of using entrepreneurial skills without taking on the risks or accountability associated with entrepreneurial activities. It is practiced by employees within an established organization using a business model. Employees, perhaps engaged in a special project within a larger firm are supposed to behave as entrepreneurs, even though they have the resources and capabilities of the larger firm to draw upon. Capturing the dynamic nature of entrepreneurial management (trying things until successful, learning from failures, attempting to conserve resources, etc.) adds to the potential of an otherwise static organizations without exposing those employees or self employed people to the risks or accountability normally associated with entrepreneurial failure.

Refresh Events: StayFresh08 -  Refresh is a rapidly growing monthly meetup that brings together Toronto’s interactive community in a learning, sharing, and networking setting. I’m planning on attending one of these in the very near future.

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Cliffnotes From Day 1

My first day at SES Toronto was info packed, networking wild, and quite interesting to say the least. Overall, the experience was worthwhile, though I do feel that the conference is better catered towards beginner to intermediate SEO/SEM types.  Reconnecting with old friends at the Expo hall and meeting new ones felt great, and I hope to do more that tomorrow. So here’s an abridged version of what you need to know about today in 15 minutes or less.

Keynote: Tara Hunt – The Whuffie Factor

Since I love the efficiency of bulleted points (almost as much as Twitter) here’s what Tara broadly emphasized on:

• SEO & Whuffie aren’t apart. They live together.
• Google results are the best representation of Whuffie.
• She talks about the 5 principles of getting more Whuffie (read her book for these)
• Create Automagic – A customer experience that is so seamless, it’s almost magical.

Tara’s message is consistent with folks like Chris Brogan and Seth Godin and even Guy Kawasaki – The common philosophy boils down to helping your customers and connecting with them because that is the right thing to do, rather than exploit customers for profit.  This philosophy isn’t new in any way, and the oldest sales reference I can think of is Zig Ziglar’s quote: “You can get whatever you want in life, IF ONLY you help enough OTHER people get what they want”.

Panel: Internationalizing Search Campaigns

Toronto’s own SEM Lady, Helen Overland and Kirsten Baker Ash lead up the talk followed by the Andy Atkin Kruger, all of whom seriously know their stuff.  Top globalization and localization tips included:

• Plan strategies centrally.
• Focus on regional search engines.
• Get a regional TLD *Important*
• Get regional inbound links.
• Get a regional host if possible.
• Don’t half-ass translation. Get a certified translator instead.
• Canonical link elements and no-f0llow, no index etc. are band aid solutions at best.

Interesting facts:

• Europe lacks properly SEO’ed websites compared to N.America.
• Keyword searches in languages other than english are often exclusively short-tail.
• Keyword tools are underdeveloped, so using qualitative data from print media and focus groups is a good practice.
• Russia is the fastest growing country in Europe, in terms of overall of website growth.

The Orion Panel : The Future of Search

The highlight of this panel were the hardcore stats provided by Microsoft’s Stacey Jarvis. As an ex-Microsoftee, I was happy to see MS tracking this sort of data. Statistics included:

• 98% of all Canadians going online use search.
• 8% YOY growth in search engine usage (assuming ‘08 vs ‘07).
• A searcher conducts 144 searches on average every month.
• Only 1 in 4 queries are satisfactory.
• 15% of all queries result in completely irrelevant results.
• 42% of all searches require refinement.
• 30 minutes on the search engines is the average session time.
• 9% of all query sessions last 3 minutes on average.

I’m not sure if these stats are specific to Live/MSN/Bing or to all search engines in general. The rest of the conversation between Tim Schigel, Stacey Jarvis, and Bryan Eisenberg revolved around a multitude of things such as the quality of search, educating children on using search engines, safe-search for kids, and a lively debate on whether search engine leaders should make changes to ’steer’ the public, or if search engines should adapt to their users instead.

Althought I don’t have the exact words, Stacey said something along the lines of ‘users are not sophisticated enough to make decisions of their own and so we have to make them for them”. My tweet in response says: #sesto search engines should shape around their users, and not focus on teaching users how to search. This is why google gets it right…

I attended the video optimization session next, but didn’t end up taking notes. If you’re at #SESTO tomorrow, tweet me and let’s meet up!

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Heading To SES Toronto 2009 Tomorrow

SES Toronto is the perfect setting for new search marketing and intermediate ones to learn all kinds of juicy tidbits on SEO, Paid Search, and how search engines are evaluating new signals and evaluating user behaviour.

I’ll be liveblogging or live tweeting the conference the best I can, so follow the news at my Twitter profile, and right here on Search Marketing Insights. From what I’ve heard the official twitter hashtag will be #SES or #sestoronto/ #sesto (not a 100% sure about that yet).

If you’re coming down to the conference, I’d love to meet up with you and have a chat. There are a ton of great guest speakers lined up for the event, ranging from close friends who I’ve known in the industry for years, to news one’s that I’d like to meet.

See you tomorrow!

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Local Reporting Gets More Robust

The future looks very very bright for local search, and I am extremely happy to see that Google’s Local Business Center (LBC) dashboard will be more versatile in the very near future.

The local dashboard currently only shows impressions and view counts,  and is very limited in keeping historical data or trending. It doesn’t show which search phrases are attracting local search traffic either, but all of that is about to change. Check out the video beyond the jump to learn more:

Top Additions to Google Local Business Center

• Graphical Impression and View Counts (akin to Google Analytics)
• Driving direction requests by view count that tie back to the Zip Code or City, State driving traffic.
• Top Search Queries triggering Local Maps

Now that’s what I call progress! Please read my related articles to find out more about designing a website optimized for local search,  other factors related to local search. I don’t toot my own horn much, but I am one of two Canadian Local Search Experts invitied to David Mihm’s Local Search Ranking Factors 2009, which is the definitive guide to learning about what makes local search tick, so go check that out too.

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Shari Thurow Makes for Candid and Insightful Commentary

Shari Thurow has been in the search marketing industry since the very early days of the internet, when having a website was a big deal. She’s speaking at the upcoming Search Engine Strategies Toronto, taking place June 8-10, 2009. I’ve had the unique opportunity to interview Shari, related her panel on “SEO Then & Now: What’s the Same? What’s New?“. I’ll be liveblogging SES Toronto, so I hope to meet you there.

Q: Hi Shari, welcome to Search Marketing Insights! Can you please give us some background info on yourself and tell us how you started out in search marketing?

ST: Hello, Search Marketing Insights readers. Some of you might know of me already, since I have been a search engine optimization “expert” since 1995. My area of specialty is search-engine friendly website design, since I began my web career as a designer/developer. From the outset, back in 1995, I have designed search-engine friendly websites.

I still am a designer/developer. I see how search engines and users interact with various types of web pages and websites on a daily basis. I do not only design, write, code, script, program, etc. websites for search engines. I have always designed, written, coded, etc. websites for people who use search engines, both the commercial web search engines and site search engines.

I have authored three books: Search Engine Visibility (1st and 2nd editions) and When Search Meets Web Usability, which just came out in April 2009.

So even if you haven’t heard of me personally, believe me, almost everyone in the search marketing industry has been influenced by my research and work over the past 14 years. I very much enjoy what I do, and will continue working in the field of search marketing.

Q: A plethora of businesses who had their initial websites designed in circa 2000-2002 are finally considering complete site overhauls. As a site owner, what does one need to be aware of in 2009, in order to build a search engine friendly website?

ST: Honestly? Truthfully? I would say that the vast majority of self-proclaimed “experts” in search-engine friendly website design are not experts at all. The strong foundation needs to be there, regardless of the new technologies that have evolved or have been created in the past 10 years.

Search-engine friendly website design is based on 4 building blocks. These building blocks have not changed in over 10 years, and they are not about to change in the next 10 years.

Search engines spiders index text and follow links. Therefore, to make your website more search-engine friendly, pages must contain the words and phrases that people type into search engines, and the pages need to appear somewhat focused on those words.

Search engines will not access and analyze that text unless you give them access to that content. So you have to provide user-friendly access to that content in the form of site navigation, supplemental navigation element, and URL structure. Notice that I emphasized the phrase “user-friendly.” Remember, search-engine friendly design is designing a site for people who use search engines, not throwing out every site navigation scheme a computer program can muster.

These two things? I haven’t changed these items since I first became a web developer in 1995. People still don’t “get” these items. Doesn’t matter that you know Flash. Doesn’t matter that you know AJAX. Doesn’t matter that you know IP delivery. Doesn’t matter that you know the Cold Fusion URL workaround. If you don’t “get” these two items, then as far as I am concerned, you don’t “get” search-engine friendly website design.

I know those are bold statements, but I stick to my guns. I think it is very sad that the #1 mistake I still see is the lack of attention to a strong infrastructure.

Q: Flash animations have long been the bane of many a SEO. With recent advancements in Google’s ability to deal with links in Flash, is it a wise decision to incorporate partial flash content into a site or is it still prudent to build flash-less sites?

ST: There is a time and a place to use Flash technology, just as there is a time and a place to use AJAX or other “cool” technologies.

I understand that people and companies use Flash for the wrong reasons: management or the marketing department thinks it’s “cool” or some other bogus reason, usually in the form of a “people love interactivity” argument. Developers love to use Flash. Who wouldn’t? Flash interfaces can be a lot of fun and make for great portfolio pieces.

But, as I said before, there is a time and a place to use Flash. If your target audience genuinely wants to use Flash-based interfaces and can more effectively complete their desired tasks using a Flash-based interface, then, by all means, use Flash. But be pro-active about it. Don’t just jump into it (Flash projects typically cost 3 to 4 times as much as straightforward XHTML projects). Do a pilot run on the pay-per-click engines. Usability test – don’t rely on focus groups. Parts of a site can be greatly enhanced with Flash-based portions. Most sites should not be Flash-only sites.

We chose to do a Flash site for NASA because the site had to be available on the web and for museum kiosks. Flash was just the best choice. But we also had to create an XHTML-only version for accessibility reasons. For another site, we created a concrete calculator that helped buyers calculate the amount of concrete they needed for a given work area. The calculator had to be available on CD as well as the web. But the entire website didn’t need to be programmed in Flash. Only one portion of it was necessary.

In my opinion? Savvy website owners should quit falling for the marketing hype that businesses and overly zealous web developers propagate. I’ve been listening to this hype for many years, and the web analytics data, usability testing, and other user data have reinforced my opinion. There is a time and a place for Flash technology. Use it for the right reasons.

Search engines still are not that great with Flash-based content, in spite of all of the hype surrounding it. Flash-based content is typically not the best content.

Q: Recently, local search has been gaining much prominence with the google local ten pack showing up for generic searches such as lawyer, dentist, sushi etc. What are some best practices to use, when building landing pages to serve local customers?

ST: It’s all about users. What does your local target audience wish to know about your company when they call? When they walk in for that first appointment? When they call you again for more products and services?

Contact information and physical location is extremely important to local searchers. What is the best way to contact your company? What are your business hours?

To be honest, we do not build landing pages for local seo. We build comprehensive sites for local businesses (and not in Flash). People want to know the main products and services your company offers. They always have questions – so an FAQs or a Customer Service section is always a part of that site. Why should people do business with your firm? A Benefits and/or Testimonials portion of a website really helps, especially since most local companies get more business via word-of-mouth referrals than websites.

We always try to give extra instructions on how to get to a business’s physical location – driving directions, nearby parking garages (if the business is located in a large city), etc.

The main physical location is always emphasized on the entire site, usually in a footer and via other means of optimization. But you can easily overdo it. Just do it well. People can always tell when a site is over-optimized. An over-optimized does not communicate a strong brand. It communicates desperation, I think.

I know that a local site can do well with a single landing page. But I would never put all of the aforementioned information on a single page.

Q: Back in 1999, forums and message boards were a prominent way of advertising one’s services. While still fairly potent for niche focused services, how can businesses utilize social media to achieve the same or great effects in a scalable fashion?

ST: Well, let me say this: a blog is a website like any other website. Content needs to be categorized, labeled, and archived appropriately, just like any other website.

Blogs and forums and message boards are really easy to set up, but what happens a few years down the road when content becomes difficult to manage? Few blog sites are prepared for this. SEO professionals just see the benefit of the quick turnaround time without thinking about the long-term, big picture.

Social media has existed for a long time. It’s just “hot” topic now as other things were “hot” a few years ago, like the whole long-tail thing. Social media sites are great as a means of distribution. Unfortunately, I’ve seen a lot of wasted time and effort put into social media optimization.

I don’t think most people “get” social media. Like Flash, there is a time and a place for social media usage. You have to understand your audience and the type of social media consumer they are. Target the wrong one? That is a lot of time and energy wasted.

I am not a naysayer of social media. I’ve been a blogger (content provider) for a very long time. My firm and my client firms have greatly benefited from the social media’s distribution capabilities. But I’ve personally seen more companies waste time and money on social media optimization (and Flash optimization) that could have gone into more effective means of optimizing a site, such as coming up with a strong information architecture.

Q: The core fundamentals of good SEO still rely on well optimized on-page factors and content, with the addition of quality inbound links. Do you see this changing in the near future, given that the search engines are beginning to consider other signals such as user reviews, user generated content, and historical user behavior?

ST: These fundamentals have not disappeared and will never disappear, I believe. That is why they are called “fundamentals” – they ARE fundamentally important. But people and companies do not “get” the fundamentals. They still believe that inbound links trump on-the-page criteria when, in fact, these items should reinforce each other.

User reviews and user-generated content is overhyped. Some SEO firms pay people to write user reviews whether the reviewers actually purchased a product/service or not. User-generated content has been around long before Google came into existence. Who is going to write using keywords? Some people will – most won’t. You can’t train the world to be search-engine friendly copywriters, though it would be a noble cause, I think. J

People pay reviewers to write bad reviews about their competitors. And people who have a negative experience with a website tend to tell more people about that negative experience than people who had a great experience. The end result? Some really great products, services, and content get unfairly evaluated. It happens more frequently than any of us care to admit.

Finally, user behavior is not as developed as we like it to be. Most user behavior is based on log file data. It tells you how people act but not why people act. To make a search-friendly website, you need to understand both the how and the why. The why comes from usability testing, which is rather time consuming and not scalable. But man, is it accurate and can often indicate the exact opposite of what log file data, and even web analytics data, indicates.

In conclusion, I think there are plenty of areas for improvement in the search marketing industry. And kudos to those people who think outside of the box – the outliers – who want to see search industry evolve. I don’t know about you, but I sure am waiting for the next great web search engine. We’re long past due, don’t you think?

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Find Out Why SEO’s Will Still Be Around

For those of you that don’t know Matt Cutts, he’s the gentleman that has THE word on all things SEO related at Google, as part of their web spam team.

I’ve heard a lot of hearsay from know-it-all type marketers telling me that SEO won’t be around in the future and so hearing the head of the web spam team at Google “tell it like it is” might help .

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Landing Pages Made Easy: The Affiliate Theme

The Affiliate Theme Focuses on Ease of Use, SEO, and Efficiency

I generally don’t endorse products or services unless I’m significantly impressed with what they have to offer me or my readers, but the folks at Unique Blog Designs haven’t failed to impress. Much like the Wordpress Thesis Theme, Affiliate Theme brings with a new level of speed, efficiency, and aesthetic appeal that is hard to come by in the affiliate marketing industry.

There are 3 major bottlenecks that most new affiliate marketers face:

• Finding the Right Offer – Separating the winners from the losers
• Getting the Right Type of Traffic – Setting up and Tracking Campaigns
• Building and Testing the Right Landing Page(s) – This is the part that most marketers mess up most of the time.

The Affiliate Theme makes the last step incredibly easy so that you can pump out sites for multiple niches in under 10 niches, straight out of the box. In fact, the theme comes preloaded with:

6 Different Layout Options

Good landing pages don’t come cheap. If you can’t code or draw up a landing page in Photoshop you might find yourself paying upto $200 per page for a good landing page designer. But what if you want to test your offer by changing up the landing page a little bit? Unless you’re willing to shell out more cash for a redesign, or are willing to spend hours trying to do it yourself (and I suck at Photoshop), you’re out of luck.

The fact that the Affiliate Theme comes with 6 different layout options really helps because now changes to content versus call to action versus conversion form positions become very easy to execute.

Test your offers for positioning Left, Right, Top and Center.

The Colour Picker Which Customizes Your Landing Pages

Remember how I said I suck at Photoshop? Well that’s still true, but from time to time I do want to change up the colours on my landing pages based on what I’m promoting. The Affiliate Theme’s colour picker gives me the flexibility to pick any gradient I wish for everything from Headers, Backgrounds, Buttons, Submit Forms, and more. What I like is that you can choose between choosing colours from a gradient, or you can choose to implement your own HEX codes. The beauty of the system is that its geared towards newbies and experienced marketers alike.

6 Templates in Hot Affiliate Marketing Niches

When I first started in affiliate marketing, it was difficult to understand what sort of niches to drive traffic to – The affiliate theme comes preloaded with templates in hot niches like weight loss, ringtones, IQ quizzes, and other CPA type offers which ask for zip and email submits. This is a major plus because high quality landing pages in these categories tend to convert much better than the vast number of sub-par (and sometimes shocking) landing pages I see on a daily basis.

Add to this the ability to customize each of these templates in any way you wish, you can essentially pump out:

6 Layouts X 6 Template Niches X 5 Page Elements (Headers, Footers, Backgrounds, Content, Call to Action Buttons) X 6 Basic Colours

1080 Dynamic Page Combinations

This is where the Affiliate Theme truly excels in cutting down on the time and effort required to build out customized, high quality landing pages.

SEO and PPC Out of The Box

This part is pretty darn important – You are reading a search marketing blog afterall . Each landing page created through the Affiliate theme is complete with proper meta tags, alt tags, and content header tags. No additional plugins are necessary to enable this funcionality.

The landing pages are also geared towards achieving a decent Quality Score for paid search traffic through Google adwords. Additionally, you can embed tracking codes for PPC campaigns directly into the landing pages through the modified Wordpress admin that the Affiliate Theme creates.

Pricing and Packages

Single-Use Package – $97.00 (one time payment)

• Use Affiliate Theme on a single domain/website
• Six (6) unique page templates
• Access to Video Tutorials, Knowledge Base, and Support Forum AND Affiliate Interviews

Multi-Use Package – $147.00 (one time payment) **Recommended**

1. Use Affiliate Theme on a UNLIMITED domains/websites
2. Six (6) unique page templates
3. Access to Video Tutorials, Knowledge Base, and Support Forum AND Affiliate Interviews
4. Free Lifetime upgrades
5. BONUS Ten (10) pre-made UBD Niche Header Graphics for various affiliate marketing niches

Affiliate Theme – Super Affiliate Package – $197.00 (one time payment)

• Use Affiliate Theme on a UNLIMITED domains/websites
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• Free Lifetime upgrades
• BONUS Thirty-one (31) pre-made UBD Niche Header Graphics for various affiliate marketing niches
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• BONUS Get access to new UBD headers graphics, every month!

Support Forum and Resource Manuals

If you’re not adept at tweaking code yourself (not that you need to with this theme), there’s a whole range of support resources that the UBD team has created for Affiliate Theme users. These range from comprehensive guides towards editing different elements of the site, to a forum where other Affiliate Theme users can help you trouble shoot any problems you run into.

Perhaps the Affiliate Theme introduction video best summarizes the different features and benefits of the theme. In my opinion at a cost of $97 for one time use, or $147 for a multiple site license, buying this theme is a no-brainer for the amount of time and effort you will save in building out quality affiliate sites.

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Canadian SEO is Not the Same as US SEO

The chart you see above shows a normal distribution. Let’s assume for a second that this is the normal distribution of all the US search volume inclusive of short tail and long tail keywords. Now, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that Canada’s population is about 1/10th of that of the States, so naturally there’s some changes in proportionality. In simple speak, we get less of everything, as the normal distribution curve is essentially squashed by a factor of 10. 

While we’ve got the same population as…oh say.. California, we do have differences in the way we search too. For example, there are far less long tail queries in Canada than there are in the States. There’s a couple of reasons I can think of as to why this disparity exists and a few of them are:

• Lower total inventory of goods and services. A prime example of this is in the retail goods market, where Canada has far fewer available items than the US does. Lower inventories = lower long tail searches for products and services.
• Thinner Geo-Centric Marketing – I notice that in the States there’s a lot of categorization by counties, and/or semi large neighbourhoods. Search trends in Canada still hover heavily around generic keywords, or major cities. For example, there are close to 6+ cities that comprise the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) yet, search volumes for each individual city are fairly low when compared to ‘ Service + Toronto’ based searches. Research from existing local clientele in a various industries prove that people as far away as 50-60 kms from the downtown core of Toronto still end up searching Toronto based terms rather their individual city based searches.
• Sparse E-Commerce Sites and Less Vendor Choices: I could count the number of truly e-commerce enabled sites off the top of my head, as in general, e-commerce in Canada is underdeveloped. This status quo regarding e-commerce creates unique opportunities for vendors, and frustration for customers at the same time.

Of course, then there’s the issue of French SEO, which is a whole different ball game. For example, one general consideration for all my Quebec based clients is having a bilingual SEO’d web site and often ranking them for both English and French keywords. 

How to Rock Canadian SEO

1. Get your spellings right – We spell words differently like favour, colour, cheque, airplane, amortize etc. Here’s some help on getting Canadian spelling correct.
2. Keyword Research – This is a no brainer,  but you can’t use the same keywords for a Canadian audience as you do you for the US audience. We don’t have zip codes, and while we do have postal codes, no one searches in the fashion ‘ drycleaner M3C1A8′…
3. Research Cultural Differences – Google trends and insights happen to be handy tools for determining ’synonym searches’ – For example, while Canadians and Americans alike look for ‘car rentals’, the Australians prefer to search ‘car hire’. 
4. Rock a .CA domain if possible – This is an issue of nationalistic pride and SEO benefit. Having a .CA domain name can boost conversion rates, increase trust, and generally separate your site from the dozens of US competitors trying to advertise in the Canadian market place.
5. Know the Difference Between Quebecois French and the French of France - To the rest of the world it may be the same, but to Canadian SEO’s in the know, the keyword research tells a very different story between searches for Quebec based goods and services, as compared to similar searches for France.
6. We use Google.ca for Almost All Searches – But you already knew that right?…

The past few months have been incredibly busy as I’ve been growing my business, and expanding my reach to local clients and those in the States alike. That hasn’t changed my focus for this blog one bit, so expect actionable, detailed advice on search marketing as always. In the near future I plan to add a massive resources page for all things SEO/SEM related, and also grow this blog horizontally to add more resource segments. To be the first to find out as to when all of this happens, sign up to my rss feed today!

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Templatizing Link Requests Doesn’t Matter Without Targeting

The purpose of outsourced SEO isn’t to JUST have cheaper costs, it’s also to make sure your folks on-site aren’t driven crazy by mundane and repetitive tasks. That said, the job of your outsourced SEO is ‘TO DO’ and NOT TO THINK – Thinking is your job.

I received some link exchange spam today, and was really surprised at how many points outsourced SEO’s could improve at, and if they did, their success rate would go up phenomenally. Here it is:

—-

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How Google Is Shaping User Search Behaviour

I believe I’m the first to observe this new addition in Google regional search, which effectively tries to suggest more local search queries for generic search terms.

Try it – Type in any generic service type such as lawyer, dentist, or florist into your regional Google search engine, and you’ll notice results such as the one above. In what seems to affirm to their ‘Do No Evil’, and ‘offer the most relevant results’ mantra, Google has started to suggest localized business queries for generic searches on regional google domains such Google.ca, .co.uk, and .com.au.

In essence, Google is shaping user search behaviour from searching generic phrases to more localized ones that offer better relevancy. After all, one of the main reasons most folks use regional google search rather than google.com is to get better results – No one wants to find a plumber in Waco, TX (due to heavy SEO) when they are really located in Vancouver, BC.

The caveat of course is that people are stubborn – they don’t change their habits easily, but this is a step in the right direction. Local search terms may have lower search volume but they generally have higher conversion rates as buyers are pre-empted by the very nature of the local search.

Implications on Organic and Paid Search

Shaping user behaviour and therefore traffic can have significant implications to the world of organic and paid search. If the trend continues, we will see an increase in traffic from local search terms, thereby increasing the bid costs on terms that were once cheap. It is impossible to say how long this might take for users to generally stop searching generic terms and start with localized search queries from their base (first) search.

In any case, this means that advertisers will have keep a very keen eye on the shift between generic phrase searches to local search, and adjust their campaigns accordingly. From an organic SEO standpoint, this means that search campaigns will require more components of local seo, in order to rank at the top. For example, some of my client’s rank very well for generic keywords (which is great), but do not rank within the top 5 for every single market they service, simply because a lesser number of hours has been focused on attaining city based rankings. In other cases, clients who have no e-tailer presence and are purely local will benefit from existing rankings that are relatively ‘cemented’ compared to other sites that are trying to optimize for local search queries.

In general, local seo will no longer be an add-on to an SEO campaign, but rather become an integral part of it, with local seo best practices such as:

• Building links or reviews from local citation sources.
• Having a separate landing page for each business location, or service area.
• A greater focus on local business directory link building (as a part of passive seo).
• Enhancing existing PPC campaigns with local maps targeting and business coupons.
• Since searches are being localized, optimization for the Google Maps one-box will become that much more important.

Why It Might Be Counter-Intuitive For Google Shareholders

Unless the industry jumps ship from generic keywords and switches over to local-only keywords overnight (ain’t gonna happen), revenue from Google Adwords will go down as local search terms generally cost far less to bid on than generic keywords.  As previously stated, user search behaviour takes a long time to change, and this should diminish any impact on overall revenues Adwords as a paid search platform, but in the long term one has to wonder if Google is shooting itself in the foot? Perhaps it hopes to make more revenue from sheer volume of keywords, but I do not forsee local keywords being more expensive than generic keywords any time soon.

Rolling it Out in Canada, the UK, and Australia

I’ve only tested the local query suggestion box in .ca, co.uk, and com.au but the box seems to be customized based on which regional search engine is used. For example, here’s the difference between Australia and Canada respectively, for the same search term:

Thoughts? Comments? Observations? Let me know if I’m completely off base, or if you agree with me on my thoughts regarding this change. Looking forward to discussions in the comments then.

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A System Ready To Be Gamed for Cheap

Lot’s of speculation has been created around Google’s introduction of SearchWiki, which is  their mandate for users to create their own so called ‘private‘ google experience, effectively allowing customization of search results. Now, when you’re logged into your google account and turn on SearchWiki, you can have the awesome liberty of having results you found hidden on the 8th page show up higher due to your vote. Furthermore, your family, friends and the entire world will be able to see your preferences in voting up or down search results.

There is an inherent problem with all social platforms that rely on mass aggretation of popular opinion – the votes can be gamed. Call it back scratching, vote buying or whatever you will, it’s damn easy to get on top of any social network if you’ve got the right contacts, or have enough money to spend. This is a harsh reality, and while I believe that any successful social media user should contribute real value to their community, that does not change the fact that many top users influence stories regardless of real popularity to go ‘hot’.

When Search Gets Social

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I believe Google is incorporating the same features that Wikia offers to see if a social signal in aggregate can be significant enough to put less weight on the section of their algorithm with less weight. This is in line with any new social media site – they all want user engagement and activity, other wise the site would essentially be dead.

My predictions include a bevy of forum thread over at DigitalPoint Forums (Google this) that offer the following (and in true digitalpoint engrish):

• 100 Vote + Comment on SearchWiki – Improve Google Ranking in 10 Days (sic).
• All unique c-class ip and proxy located all over the world.
• Manual submission by dedicated team.
• Report provided at end of work in excel format.
• Giving away 5 free review copies – Please PM me…

With automated gmail account creation, and many a webmaster holding thousands of aged account, I do not see why such a service wouldn’t show up? From a usability standpoint, I like the simplicity of the SERP results. With so much modification from Firefox extensions as a result of being a savvy netizen, I really didn’t want another bunch of vote up/down buttons. As a marketer, I see this a something I will be keeping a very keen eye on. I for one, will not take part in SearchWiki, and if you’re thinking the same way I am, you won’t either.

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Comment Spamming SEO’s is Just Plain Stupid

I think we can all agree that Online Reputation Management is important, both for big brands and for up and coming companies. While sifting through my spam comments (I check to see if there’s any legit ones caught by Askimet), I found this archaic comment spam from not, one but two different IP’s leading to the same destination url – in this case widecircles.com (you don’t deserve a link, but this post will rank for your name!).

Wide Circles is a ‘Social Media Marketing’ platform as per their website, but they clearly arent’ paying much attention to their link building efforts. Commenting on blogs is still enough to rank in some low competition niches, but the ease of commenting should be accompanied by some prior prudence. Something along the lines of:

1. Don’t comment where you can be called out for being overly promotional or spammy
2. Don’t be stupid enough to look for links on a competitors blog, or dropping your own links in.
3. Don’t be daft enough to think that spamming SEO’s of all people wont get you into ORM issues.
4. Make your comment relevant to the blog post you’re commenting on (Duh!…)

For all I know they may offer a great platform, but if they are outsourcing their SEO then they should probably work with a provider that knows what they are doing.

Conclusion

There are many times I’ve thought about putting together massive SEO programs that follow a checklist of tasks and handing it over to an offshore outsourcing agency. Stuff like the above is exactly what tells me not to take that decision every single day I think about scaling SEO in volume. It’s about time that folks who still think that the template : ‘hi, nice post, very informative’ <drop link> need to think twice before spamming. In the end, it’s not the (so called) SEO that suffers the most – it’s the client.

Wide Circles, if you’re outsourcing, take my  $0.02 and fire your SEO provider or agency.

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