aimClear Search Marketing Blog

With the proliferation of user generated media beginning to saturate sites like YouTube brands can’t count on control anymore. The question is what to do about it.

Real like a Heart Attack
Like it or not YouTube users create commercials for brand products every day in droves. The commercials, which are sometimes negative, bastardize and segment brands into little pieces that will keep you up late at night as 450,000 potential customers download the latest pro or con rant about your product.

Take this YouTube search for Chevy Truck which returns pages upon pages of user generated media about any twisted aspect of the brand. I like the video where an emotional male shares the experience of shepherding his truck over the 250K mile mark. Ask yourself how this ad might affect a potential Chevy customer.

Compare this how Honda might feel about this video of a Honda Odyssey burning on the freeway.  Read the rest of this entry »

Duluth, Minnesota search marketing firm and publisher of aimClear Search Marketing Blog seeks paid summer interns. We are interested in applicants with any of the following skills: content writing, graphic design, statistical analysis, web development. Preference will be given to applicants adept in social media like YouTube, StumbleUpon, MySpace, Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us, Twitter, Netscape, Facebook, Flickr, etc…

aimClear provides organic search engine optimization, paid search, and social media for an exciting client list in Minnesota and around the United States. Email applications to marty@aimClear.com with an attached resume.

“Content sourcing” means creating channeled mechanisms to facilitate the output of predictable and valuable recurrent content.  Out of all the challenges companies face as they embark on advertising, PR, and marketing online jihads, the need to source content creation is ubiquitous. This post examines the content sourcing riddle and offers tips to begin the flow.

It’s Not Really New.
Realistically speaking, every channel ever used to disseminate marketing and branding rhetoric has always been dependent on content creation. However, consistent output of worthy content has become more crucial now that search engines rank pages based on relevance of written words, quality and count of inbound links, bookmarked pages, buzz in social communities, and bookmarked RSS feeds.

Set-it-and-forget-it static brochure sites will always have their place in the website constellation, but ultimately the ability to generate site traffic and quality inbound links is dictated by the supply and demand of useful information. Actually it makes sense that search engines assign “value” and “relevance” to websites that publish a steady stream of useful content.  If there is nothing new on your website than there are fewer benefits for visitors who return or for others to discover and link to your site after repeated visits.

Whether one refers to the evolution of organic optimization stratagies and link building tactics as “New SEO,” “Web 2.0, ” social media, or any other catch phrase-at the end of the day successful website marketing comes down to creating valuable, predictable, and intentionally optimized content that people like and utilize. Read the rest of this entry »

I doubt I am in the minority today when I say I use and rely on the internet regularly throughout the day.   Going online to find my news, weather, and entertainment has become the primary method in which I stay current in my work and personal life.  There’s never enough time keep current with the web content I’m interested in.

Enter RSS
RSS is a technology that has quickly become mainstream, which facilitates content finding me.  I heard of RSS years ago but I am only just now realizing its awesome power.

What is RSS? 
RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or, more commonly, Really Simple Syndication.  What RSS does is an important development in Internet history – RSS frees you from time-wasting surfing ways by enabling web content publishers to “push” you any content you designate as desired. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week Google announced a number of changes, initiatives, and features that impact webmaster and marketers’ thinking for both paid and organic search. The world of search moves at dizzying speed. Here’s a summary of Google’s announcements, some of which already are having a significant impact on SERPs (search engine results pages) this morning.

Paid: Google’s New Preferred Bidding Option
Google AdWords announced a new bidding option enabling advertisers to an to stipulate an average  CPC or CPM bid. Previously the only option was to specify a maximum CPC or CPM campaign bid, requiring third party software to manage bid-to-placement through the API.

Google does not guarantee the exact placement or cost of ads. However selecting the new CPC/CPM option means your bids will likely fall around the price-point you chose. Now advertisers have more control of campaigns within the Google AdWords platform and manual adjustment of maximum bid may be less necessary.  The announcement of Google’s new AdWords Preferred Cost Bidding may signal impending obsolescence for paid search bid management software packages like Atlas, Dynamic Software, Omniture, KeyWordMax.

Organic: Google Search History is Now Web History
Google switched on search “history” for many account holders in February triggering an intense debate over the pros and cons of personalized search and privacy. Now in a provocative move Google has expanded search history to “web history.” Tracking user behavior has expanded to archive where Google users go and what they do as while surfing the web. In making this gigantic move Google has again sparked important concerns over privacy. While previously personalized search was impacted only by a user’s search history, now the SERPs are impacted by web surfing history. Read the rest of this entry »

Agencies Need Search.
We live in a world where organic and paid search marketing outperforms many other channels. If an advertising agency does not have a dedicated search department or a serious strategic relationship, it’s not always possible to do a 100% job for their clients. This post continues a series of articles aimed directly at advertising and PR agencies with the intent of demystifying the SEM process.

Managing Expectations
In the search marketing business keeping clients’ expectations real requires a good deal of clarifying communication. In fact this blog was born out of our need to consolidate myth-busting information in a centralized publication for our clients. Complicating the matter further is the reality that changes occur literally every day in the paid and organic search worlds. When we service advertising agency clients, as a third party subcontractor, managing the extra layer of communication between our SEM work and the client is a process which must be clarified and managed. Read the rest of this entry »

Are Yahoo organic search results honest when it comes to social media criticizing Yahoo? We’ll ask the question in SERP screen captures.

On April 5th we posted an article critical of Yahoo Small Business Hosting to the Search Engine Watch Forum (Alexa 1342 with significant page rank). The post was in regard to a difficult domain registrar situation aimClear was experiencing.  Within a week the post attained the organic #3 result in Google for the keyphrase “Yahoo Small Business Hosting.” The post is not indexed in Yahoo’s top 100 results. Here is a screen capture of today’s Google SERP. Yes, we’ve turned Google personalized search OFF.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you pay attention to seminar speakers (and anecdotal chatter) it’s quite obvious that many advertising agencies are grappling with (and feeling threatened by) the ubiquitous evolution of search marketing.  The new Internet marketing is about a constant stream of recurrent content published on SEO savvy platforms. The days of set it and forget it static pages are over…gone the way of meta keywords, and other antiquated SEO attributes.

Making the situation more confusing for agencies is the reality that advertising agency clients have heard about search marketing, they know they need it, and they ask agencies directly about it. This puts (formally full service) agencies in an awkward position including but not limited to the possibility of missed revenue opportunities. Agencies in our area seem to give their clients the stock answer: “we don’t offer those services and recommend working with a firm that specializes in SEM.”

This post begins a series of articles aimed squarely at advertising and PR agencies with the intent of demystifying the SEM process.

Old Information is Cheaper
This is especially true in second and third tier markets where engaging an “SEM firm” often means paying too much for second or third tier misinformation or web 1.0 advice (in a web 2.0 world). Unfortunately the current environment of great demand and fast profit for SEM wanna-be-companies breeds “SEM firms” that are actually last-generation website building shops. Hiring a design/build firm to market a website costs less in the short tem and you get what you pay for-less traffic and sales over time.

Read the rest of this entry »

From a marketing perspective “search” can be confusing, challenging, and exciting. However many industries exist in and must remain compliant to regulatory environments. For instance the pharmaceutical, health, alcohol, legal, and insurance industries all must deal with various rules, regulations, and laws when it come to advertising and privacy.

Adding this regulatory layer to organic and paid search thickens the soup. Interestingly enough, many companies do not pay full attention to the regulatory liabilities associated with certain aspects of paid and organic search marketing efforts. It can come back to bite them in the search engines.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week in a blog post regarding Rand Fishkin’s distinctive yellow shoes I asked the question “what is the story behind those yellow shoes Rand?” Well here you go sports fans! Rand Fishkin, revered Search Engine Optimization Guru,  reveals the inside scoop on the those bright yellow conference shoes (See video below).

It seems in Rand’s early days as an SEO speaker he was concerned that he would not be recognizable as he transitioned from his online identity to the physical world as a conference speaker. Hence he began the yellow shoes tradition with  those bright designer Pumas.