aimClear Search Marketing Blog

photo credit: pmarkham

All good things get better! aimClear has exited  those architecturally picturesque halls of Duluth’s historic Carnegie Building and “moved on up” to  loft-style grandeur, third floor corner suite offices in the iconic Paulucci Building.  We’re pleased to announce that we’ve relocated to Duluth’s famed Canal Park.  This space doubles the ol’ dig’s square footage, along with an immeasurable upgrade in scenery. New aimClear Office: Location, Location, Location

photo credit  (just fragmented link-juice by 2 links to do the right thing): Mykl Roventine

The most important news to come out of  ‘Advanced 2009 is Google’s blurt-of-a-revelation that they removed the algorithmic benefit from internal page rank sculpting, “about a year ago.” The change also affects how Google handles noFollowed outbound links.

Boiled down, noFollow still prevents the passing of link juice (energy) to the internal or external destination page. However the value is no longer divided up amongst the remaining followed links on the page. Though this 180 degree about-face in what Google had been preaching (literally) to webmasters was poorly handled from a public relations perspective, presumably it was made because the tag was overused, abused and had the potential to skew Google’s rankings.

No worries. We actually think the change will bring some positive changes to the SEO process, though as always there are tradeoffs. Here’s what we’re telling our clients: noFollow noWorries: An SEO Linking Update

On June 3rd, Matt Cutts freaked the technical SEO community by casually stating that PageRank sculpting, the subtle art of flow-managing page value distribution, had changed significantly from what Google had been prescribing.

Who cares, we don’t need noFollow. What bothers many is that know we’ve learned Google flipped the switch a year ago, all the while offering misleading public information. The Only Google-Thing Evaporating is Our Trust

Six months ago, I was a complete tweet-novice. I heard people on the street saying, “Twitter is just a narcissistic portal in cyberspace where social butterflies on steroids and self-proclaimed web-celebrities can self-indulgently broadcast their personal agenda to the world (so long as it’s under 140 characters).”

For a while, I was one of these skeptics. I didn’t understand Twitter and doubted it had much to offer, something I regularly heard from friends, clients and family. 6 Months Twittering: Skeptic to Evangelist

Don’t cut corners on your site’s foundation! Information architecture is an important part of a site’s performance and should be addressed from the very get-go of development. Many existing websites could benefit greatly if their content was only properly organized, labeled and prioritized.

This SES Toronto session Information Architecture, Site Performance, Tuning and SEO offered attendees classic methods to greatly increase site performance, while making navigation easier for users and search engines alike. SEO Blueprints: Preplan Sound Site Architecture

Web analytics data provides an abundance of insight that can ultimately increase revenue for a company. The problem is many aren’t up to the task of deciphering the metrics to really understand making associated reports pay. Today’s  SES Toronto session titled “Analytics for Search: ROI, Engagement, Attribution, and More” was just loaded, with a great panel which shared many actionable recommendations to attendees.
Web Analytics Power! Turning Data into Dollars

YouTube has become a beast, taking seat as the second largest search engine in the world. Hulu and other niche’ engines are nipping at YouTube’s heals. Yet video search optimization remains relatively uncharted territory for most.

Today at SES Toronto, respected industry experts answered the question “Are you overlooking the opportunities of video search?” The  answers were a veritable “how to” clinic on tactics and optimization techniques, which will undoubtedly prove insightful for any business looking to fire up a video content campaign. 4 Video Optimization Experts Dish Killer Tips

photo credit: RC_Fotos
Welcome to SearchEngineStrategies Toronto 2009. Today we took a glance back a decade to 1999, when parties had a reputation to live up to and some families were preparing for an all out cataclysmic technological failure come the new year. For the most part, times were swell.

Family Guy began its first season, Britney Spears’ hit “…Baby One More Time” climbed the billboard charts & Lawrence Fishburne took curious Keanu down the rabbit hole in The Matrix. In the realm of SEO, effective optimization was all about keyword, title & description meta tags and reciprocal link building. Life was good!

Evolution of SEO: A Decade of Perspective At SES

Speaking to a pair of packed sessions at sold-out SMX Advanced in Seattle, I took time to look out into the audience and measure attendees’ eyes. After all…you savvy wordsmiths, demographic research artists, technicians, agencies, account reps’, geeks, evangelists, administrators, parent-workers, presidents, marketing directors, CMOs, brothers and sisters are totally my people …right in the wheelhouse baby. Bring it!

Looking around the gorgeous auditorium and inspired by the stunning Pacific ocean backdrop, I noted your attitudes, attire, mannerisms and powerful group-aura. Honestly, ya’ll are the most beautiful people in the world, a rainbow of eclectic professional diversity and intellectual prowess. Joy! The Other Side of Search is Found

Do those old H1 tags still work? Actually word’s out, they don’t really count much anymore for SEO. Does quantity, power or diversity of inbound links take the hill for search engines ranking pages algorithmically for keywords? Actually, correlation data indicates that link diversity is a factor which has become more important.

SEO Ranking Factors in 2009 at SMX Advanced 2009 was a classic shredding session, originally blossomed from a session pitch submitted about “attainable SEO”. The esteemed panel was comprised of Rand Fishkin (SEOmoz), Laura Lippay (Yahoo), and  Marty Weintraub (aimClear). Danny Sullivan, Executive Editor of SearchEngineLand moderated. Read on for a  summary of which state-of-the art SEO ranking factors still work… and which page, site and keyword attributes are dead by the side of the road. Is Everything You Know About SEO Wrong?