Gearing up for Dallas! On March 4 I'll be at the Fairmont Dallas to present a workshop on search marketing. This workshop will be a little different because I'll be teamed up with one of the Regional Directors from Constant Contact.
This is a bit of a departure from my usual class... I'll start the day off and do about 90 minutes. Okay, so my 4 hour class is like a graduate degree smooshed into 4 hours...this workshop will be the four hours smooshed into 90 minutes! It is a LOT of material to absorb. But - it'll be well worth it. While I'll have to keep things at a fairly high level, I think most attendees will get a lot out of the material. I'll focus most time on constructing a spider (and user) friendly Web page.
After I do my thing for 90 minutes or so, my Constant Contact counterpart will present info on e-mail marketing. I'll be telling businesses how to get targeted traffic to their Web site; Constant Contact will explain how to market to them after the fact. It becomes a real end-to-end presentation.
I'm excited for the Fairmont - it is the first time we've done a seminar there and it looks really nice. As a bonus for this trip, I'll get to see a cousin I haven't seen for a few years - and he and his wife are having a baby...TODAY! Congrats Jeff & Alaina.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Boston SEO Seminar
Last week I went to Boston to deliver a pair of four hour workshops on search marketing (what else?!). The sessions went great - though I'm thinking about moving everyone to the PM session - people are SO much more awake!
The seminar was held at Metro Meeting Center in Boston. This is a FANTASTIC facility. I have done seminars at facilities all over the country and this one is the best. That's big - out of all the others, this one stands out.
When you walk in, there is a nice wide open area with tables (high tops and low tops) with comfortable chairs. Plenty of places to sit and network or have meetings. Turns out the Metro is IACC certified, which means it meets some very high standards - something to look for when organizing an event, for sure.
Did I mention the food? We're not talking cheap continental here...they had some spread! All kinds of food, hot and cold. Since I am a bigtime coffee snob, this set up really was spectacular. They proudly served Starbucks coffee - which actually tasted like Starbucks (big fan). They also had fresh honey and sugar sticks (like rock candy on a stick) to sweeten your morning beverage of choice.
The conference room had a sweet AV setup, with ceiling mounted projector, touch screen controls in the wall and plenty of power outlets in convenient places.
The sessions went well. We had about 85 people total, with about 30 in the AM and 50 in the PM. My snap-poll showed about 10% were Web designers, the rest were business owners and marketers. One guy asked me what I meant when I kept mentioning "paper clips." There's one in every crowd... Not ragging the guy, he really didn't know. I think this speaks volumns about search marketing - when businesses don't know what pay-per-click is, how can they grasp ideas like organic ranking strategy? And how on earth can they apply it to their businesses? That's why I do what I do...to help these folks understand the power that can be harnessed by a well thoughtout SEM strategy.
Boston was a fun venue.
Next I'll be off to Dallas. I had a great time there last Fall - this should be more of the same. Let's see how the Texans do with this!
The seminar was held at Metro Meeting Center in Boston. This is a FANTASTIC facility. I have done seminars at facilities all over the country and this one is the best. That's big - out of all the others, this one stands out.
When you walk in, there is a nice wide open area with tables (high tops and low tops) with comfortable chairs. Plenty of places to sit and network or have meetings. Turns out the Metro is IACC certified, which means it meets some very high standards - something to look for when organizing an event, for sure.
Did I mention the food? We're not talking cheap continental here...they had some spread! All kinds of food, hot and cold. Since I am a bigtime coffee snob, this set up really was spectacular. They proudly served Starbucks coffee - which actually tasted like Starbucks (big fan). They also had fresh honey and sugar sticks (like rock candy on a stick) to sweeten your morning beverage of choice.
The conference room had a sweet AV setup, with ceiling mounted projector, touch screen controls in the wall and plenty of power outlets in convenient places.
The sessions went well. We had about 85 people total, with about 30 in the AM and 50 in the PM. My snap-poll showed about 10% were Web designers, the rest were business owners and marketers. One guy asked me what I meant when I kept mentioning "paper clips." There's one in every crowd... Not ragging the guy, he really didn't know. I think this speaks volumns about search marketing - when businesses don't know what pay-per-click is, how can they grasp ideas like organic ranking strategy? And how on earth can they apply it to their businesses? That's why I do what I do...to help these folks understand the power that can be harnessed by a well thoughtout SEM strategy.
Boston was a fun venue.
Next I'll be off to Dallas. I had a great time there last Fall - this should be more of the same. Let's see how the Texans do with this!
The Consistency Precept - Part II
Over on the Network Solutions Online Marketing Blog, I wrote about the consistency precept. this is the idea that once you find a profitable keyword, you need to apply it consistently throughout each on-page element to a new Web page. This works - in fact, it is how I have made many pages on various Web sites rank. There is a corollary to this - the multi-word content page corollary...
When you are trying to rank for a specific word, sometimes there are other terms that are very closely related and mean the same thing. Most often, it does not make sense to create separate pages for two words that mean essentially the same thing. This comes up also with words that have different spellings, each of which may be correct, or at least accepted.
How do you spell "go-cart?"
Is it gocart, go cart, go kart, go-cart, go-kart, or gokart? Each of these words will have different measures of traffic and competition. So it will be up to the SEO to determine which one you should focus your efforts on. Or, possibly even use both versions. You'll need to be careful of course, because you don't want to come off as having poor grammer or spelling.
I did a quick test in Google to see what happens with these variations... in fact, you do get different rankings/results with "go-carts" vs. "go carts." Interestingly, go-cart produces a pair of YouTube results at the top of the SERP and Google Image results at the bottom of the page. "Go Cart" (no hypen) on the other hand, produces three product results at the top of the SERP, with additional "go cart" related products available via Google check out. Although you can click on the "images" button on the SERP to get images, there were no image results displayed.
This quick test showed that there is a difference in the smallest change in keyword.
In a less obvious example, you may well want to optimize a single page for two words that mean substantially the same thing: "Antiaging skin care" and "anti aging skin products." With this, you'll be covering many bases. Just select the one with a higher overall profitability and focus on that version. The sprinkle the secondary version in - perhaps an H2 tag and some of the body copy.
Sometimes, it doesn't make sense to optimize a single page for a single keyword. It is okay to focus on two words on one page. For maximum effectiveness, I wouldn't do more than that.
When you are trying to rank for a specific word, sometimes there are other terms that are very closely related and mean the same thing. Most often, it does not make sense to create separate pages for two words that mean essentially the same thing. This comes up also with words that have different spellings, each of which may be correct, or at least accepted.
How do you spell "go-cart?"
Is it gocart, go cart, go kart, go-cart, go-kart, or gokart? Each of these words will have different measures of traffic and competition. So it will be up to the SEO to determine which one you should focus your efforts on. Or, possibly even use both versions. You'll need to be careful of course, because you don't want to come off as having poor grammer or spelling.
I did a quick test in Google to see what happens with these variations... in fact, you do get different rankings/results with "go-carts" vs. "go carts." Interestingly, go-cart produces a pair of YouTube results at the top of the SERP and Google Image results at the bottom of the page. "Go Cart" (no hypen) on the other hand, produces three product results at the top of the SERP, with additional "go cart" related products available via Google check out. Although you can click on the "images" button on the SERP to get images, there were no image results displayed.
This quick test showed that there is a difference in the smallest change in keyword.
In a less obvious example, you may well want to optimize a single page for two words that mean substantially the same thing: "Antiaging skin care" and "anti aging skin products." With this, you'll be covering many bases. Just select the one with a higher overall profitability and focus on that version. The sprinkle the secondary version in - perhaps an H2 tag and some of the body copy.
Sometimes, it doesn't make sense to optimize a single page for a single keyword. It is okay to focus on two words on one page. For maximum effectiveness, I wouldn't do more than that.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Small Business Summit
Last week I had a great time attending the Small Business Technolog Summit in NYC. I was representing Network Solutions and was asked to speak to the conference about, you guessed it, search marketing.
Before my talk, I was able to enjoy the conference and meet so many of the great people - both those who organized the show and those who were participating. I was most struck by how Web focused the attendees were. Though many of the companies represented were not necessarily Web-based, all of the talks seems to focus on how to use the Web. I actually wrote about this over on my Network Solutions blog.
I had the priviledge of speaking just after Ramon Ray. He is the most energetic and passionate businessman I have had the peasure of meeting. His message was clear and concise - things you need to do in buisiness to succeed. Not, you WILL succesd if you do these things, just that, it'll help you BIG TIME if you just get some basic pieces down pat. After this great set up, I was on... My friend and co-worker Shashi Bellamkonda, Social Networking Swami, got my SEM presentation on video.
Before my talk, I was able to enjoy the conference and meet so many of the great people - both those who organized the show and those who were participating. I was most struck by how Web focused the attendees were. Though many of the companies represented were not necessarily Web-based, all of the talks seems to focus on how to use the Web. I actually wrote about this over on my Network Solutions blog.
I had the priviledge of speaking just after Ramon Ray. He is the most energetic and passionate businessman I have had the peasure of meeting. His message was clear and concise - things you need to do in buisiness to succeed. Not, you WILL succesd if you do these things, just that, it'll help you BIG TIME if you just get some basic pieces down pat. After this great set up, I was on... My friend and co-worker Shashi Bellamkonda, Social Networking Swami, got my SEM presentation on video.
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