Webinar: Avoid SEO Mistakes, Sell More
By Mike Murray | October 6, 2008
If you want to increase leads and sales, you can make inroads by avoiding search engine optimization (SEO) blunders.
I’m tackling SEO problems in a new webinar, “How to Improve Sales with Search Marketing By Avoiding the 10 Biggest SEO Mistakes.”
You won’t need to shell out any cash either. Some webinars go long - like 90 minutes. We’re keeping this to just 55 minutes. Relax after lunch, check a few emails and enjoy the presentation.
Learn how to:
- Choose the right keywords
- Understand ranking analysis
- Target the right links
- Leverage Calls to Action
- Think of SEO and paid search in a holistic way
- Expand content
- Maximize local search opportunities
And more…(like a list of awesome tools and resources)
Sound like fun? Sign up today.
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Tonight I’m Gonna Search Like It’s 1999 or 2001
By Matt Keough | October 2, 2008
Google recently celebrated its 10th birthday. Happy birthday, Google.
You’ve come a long way, baby. As a fun little celebration, they have made an index from 2001 available. (The earliest versions are not readily accessible.)
Take it for a spin and ponder for a moment how much internet marketing has changed. I was involved with search engine optimization in the late 90’s, but I didn’t call it that. I was just trying to get visitors to my employer’s website. I had never heard the term SEO. And apparently nobody else had either.
For search marketing veterans, take a look at how you were doing in 2001. Are you embarrassed? I once heard an architect say “Doctors bury their mistakes, we have to grow ivy.” Thanks to this little throwback, search engine marketers can’t hide, at least for a month. Google plans on shutting this down in a month.
Here is a search 2001 FAQ.
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Fathom SEO Raises over $5K for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
By Kurt Krejny | September 29, 2008
After months of fund raising efforts for the Light the Night Walk, the team at Fathom SEO, along with help from family and friends, has raised over $5,000 to help with awareness and funds to cure leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma, and improve the quality of life of patients and their families.
We were the fourth highest fund raising company and/or team in all of Cleveland!
A few of us took part in the walk on Saturday, September 27th at Progressive Field in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. The mile-long walk started behind the stadium and finished with supporters walking around the warning track of the ball field.
Red balloons were carried by supporters, white balloons with lights were carried by cancer survivors, and gold balloons with lights were carried to honor those that lost the battle to cancer.
Check out the photos from this event on our Flickr and Facebook pages.
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How to Avoid Ranking Analysis Miscues
By Mike Murray | September 26, 2008
It’s not always easy to study rankings and determine your next move.
I have a new article at Visibility magazine that details seven tips from understanding basic rankings and search engines to the value of caching trends and knowing what led to a ranking in the first place.
See “Making Sense of Organic Ranking Analysis.” I think you’ll like it.
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Speaking of Redesigns - Google News
By Matt Keough | September 20, 2008
Twitter caused a stir, but far more people will be surprised to see the new look at Google News.
I can’t imagine that there will be too many complaints. This new design is easier on the eyes and seems to me to mimic the formatting of a USA Today style broadsheet. With the exception of the featured video and image search style rows of images :-)
They have added color cues to sections, featured photos stand out more strikingly. The international versions get a nice blue box at the bottom as well as the drop down at the top left column.
Unless I’m mistaken, and it is possible - I never memorized the old design - the default number of displayed stories in each section has been reduced.
And is this footer new? Seems a little cheeky, but I like it!
All the news that’s fit to crawl. Auto-generated from over 25000 news sources, void where prohibited.
Update: Looks very similar to these screen captures at Google Operating System from July. The version I am seeing has some refinements in fine line elements breaking up the left hand navigation and the colors used for the various section like Sci/Tech.
And I wonder how they are escaping the ubiquitous little g favicon? Here we see a newspaper. Perhaps this really still is an experiment.
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Twitter redesigns, but is the microblogging war over?
By Dominic J. Litten | September 18, 2008
In the latest post over on the Twitter blog entitled “Changes Afoot“, EV announced a number of changes to their microblogging/short messaging service, including some speedy Ajax refresh and some rearrangement of the tabs. While there may be some visual adjustment at first, I’m more likely to complain about a change in Twhirl than I am to the Twitter interface.
But while users debate the changes, the real question is if there is a better alternative to Twitter. In a blog post today, Jim Tobin slapped the FAIL tag on the many recent Twitter copycats such Rejaw and Fidj.it. He also wonders if any of the more entrenched microblogging formats such as Plurk and Jaiku missed their chance during the great Twitter blackouts of Spring 2008.
With it’s increased uptime and more reliable service, has Twitter already won the microblogging war?
While many of the early, early adopters like myself sign up to the latest copycat and blab about why we love/hate it, we often do so via Twitter. Why? Because that’s where all of our friends are. Heck, even the Cleveland Public Library is there. More than features and third-party software, knowing our buddies are all hanging out there is what keeps us coming back. Barring another series of massive downtime, any future Twitter competitor is going to have a hard time getting these types of institutions to jump on board.
At what point do we slap the Fail Whale on Jaiku and Plurk? I’m guessing sooner rather than later.
Wondering what people are saying about the Twitter redesign? Go here and read all the responses.
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Want More Usability and Visibility? Check Your Sitemap
By Paul Richlovsky | September 17, 2008
People only use them 7% of the time. 7 years ago the number was at 27%. Despite the low numbers, Jakob Nielsen’s latest usability study on sitemaps states that having them done right is a good thing because they “don’t hurt,” “cost very little” and “do help a few people.”
I would add a 4th reason to do them right: search engines. As Bradley Leese has written (see Part 6), sitemaps:
- offer search bots “an additional point of access” for the individual pages of your site
- “document the physical directory structure” of your site
One component of top search results and Google PageRank is Google’s ability to explore and comprehend your site. The easier it can find and categorize your site, the greater your chances will be of getting listed high on its result pages.
Read the rest of Jakob Nielsen’s article or download the entire 176-pg. study for detailed instruction on proper sitemap structuring.
Do you have a sitemap? When was the last time you checked yours?
Don’t leave your visitors–human or robot–out in the cold.
Photo courtesy of QTea via Flickr.
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Selecting Search Terms Is Easier with Fathom SEO’s New Keyword Refinery Tool
By Mike Murray | September 15, 2008
Getting keywords has never been a problem - we have plenty of places to look for possibilities.
The tough part has been deciding what keywords to choose for a client based on website viability, competition, target markets, etc.
We’ve just released a proprietary tool, the Keyword Refinery, that makes that job a lot easier. Fathom SEO clients now benefit from the new product that scores each keyword based on an array of on-site, off-site and technical considerations.
Other firms have approached final keyword selection on a smaller scale, but not with the ability to rate numerous keywords at one time over a distinct set of factors.
Although robust, the Keyword Refinery is still flexible enough to address different clients regardless of their size or industry.
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Twitter, now a lead generation tool?
By Dominic J. Litten | September 9, 2008
One of the most fun things about working at a search engine marketing company is that we get to play with a variety of social media tools everyday, and we’ve made no secret that plenty of the Fathom crew uses Twitter on a regular basis, and not just to praise our favorite Chinese restaurant.
As Twitter is a great conversation/collaboration tool, I recently used it to inquire about the community’s experience with a specific piece of software. As this software was fairly common in the marketing/PR world, I got some anecdotes in a fairly short period of time. Impressed with how social and cool I was* I stored it in my memory and went on with the rest of my day.
Three hours later, I received a call from a competitor of the very software I tweeted about earlier. When I asked the gentleman where he got my name, he immediately told me his colleague found my discussion about his competitor on Twitter. While the gentleman didn’t specifically tell me how his colleague came across my conversation, I’m guessing it was through the Twitter Search function (formerly Summize).
By going to search.twitter.com, anyone can search Twitter conversations about specific topics like your company or competitors in real time. Another cool thing about search.twitter.com is that you can monitor that term effortlessly by subscribing to an RSS feed for that specific term (look in the top right hand corner of your results page). While, in my mind, this would be best used for customer service, reputation management and competitive intelligence purposes, it never occurred to me one would use it to scour for (and contact) potential customers.
All that aside, using this strategy for mining potential customers may not the best use of a sales team’s time. For example, not everyone who uses Twitter uses their real name and even if they do, finding their employer and then their contact information may be a wild goose chase. Even after all that research, that person might not even be a decision maker.
Taken aback by the company’s sleuthing, however, I did schedule a demo after reviewing their website and product. So while I wouldn’t recommend this strategy for everyone, I would certainly recommend people try out search.twitter.com and see what the results look like for your own company. At the very least, you’ll learn if your company is worth talking about.
*Not true
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Our social media newsroom theme has been found in the wild
By Dominic J. Litten | September 4, 2008
Since we unveiled our social media newsroom and our social media newsroom WordPress theme in May, we’ve received a lot of feedback from those who have used the theme successfully. Most of it has been good, with some constructive criticism sprinkled in. As you can imagine, any feedback is appreciated because it’s the only way we can make any future versions of the theme better for everyone.
The most detailed feedback we received thus far has been from Jennifer Leggio on her ZDNet blog. In her post entitled “The easist little Web page ever built,” she discusses not only her web designing prowess, but also how she used our theme to develop a newsroom for the SOURCE conference.
But it was so easy. Sure, I had to read through some code but I didn’t have to actually code anything myself. I did a lot of “delete + paste” of links and content that already existed. Posting my news coverage was as simple as posting a regular blog. It took me, altogether, about two hours from nothing to perfection.
My point is, no matter how small your business or your marketing team, you can achieve this type of Web presence by using the free tools that are out there. And don’t think you need to hire a Web designer or some $200-per-hour consultant to do it. You don’t. It would be a waste of your money. Get the template, install it, manipulate it, and publish. Then blast it out to your team and educate them on its many uses.
You can view her super-awesome version of the social media newsroom here. If you have any feedback of your own about our theme, tell us in the comments or find me on Twitter and tell me all about it.
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