aimClear® Search Marketing Blog

Welcome back to aimClear’s coverage of #SMX East 2011! Breaking News: Changing SEO elements of your website, e.g.: title tags, Meta descriptions, anchor text, interlinking structures, can have a tremendous effect on organic rankings. Okay, so maybe you don’t need spades of sophisticated know-how and online marketing agility to know that little tidbit. Pretty straight-forward: Update your site and take note if a ranking change occurs. One did? Great! Was it causal or correlative?

Was it what?

The ability to successfully distinguish between website updates that cause a change in rank and updates that merely correlate with change in rank is something deep marketers must possess in order to be a master craftsman craftswoman SERP-ninja. But hang on a tick… are there specific SEO changes that directly cause a change in your SERP position? Surely those are golden tickets every sitemaster should implement straight away!

Or is it more of an indirect effect? A mere, yet telling, correlation?

Fortunately for any frazzled marketers at #SMX East 2010, moderator Danny Sullivan, Q&A moderator Max Thomas, and speakers Eric Enge, Micah Fisher-Kirshner, Mitul Gandhi, Kristine Schachinger, and Tony Wright were set to take the stage and weigh in on Great Debate of Correlation vs. Causation. aimClear live-tweeted this session via @beebow. Fruits live after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

aimClear’s coverage of #SMX East 2011 kicked off with… PANDA WATCH! How else? Google’s furry little algorithm update, aimed to crack down on duplicate content, among other things, rolled out in waves during the late winter and early spring of 2011. Initially, only a portion of U.S. sites were affected, then international sites, then more U.S. sites, etc.

Largely due to this sweeping smackdown, Panda has been a hot topic at online marketing conferences this year. Google estimates the algo’ update has affected a mere 12% of all websites, but how many of them truly deserved the ranking-spanking?

On the morning of #SMX East Day 1, moderator Matt McGee, Q&A moderator Chris Silver Smith, and speakers Alan Bleiweiss, Director of Search Services, Click2Rank Consulting, Micah Fisher-Kirshner, Senior SEO Manager, Become, Inc, & Mark Munroe, Senior Director, SEO, Everyday Health, came together to share insightful two cents and survival tips for overcoming Panda’s wrath and staking your claim in the search engine result pages (SERPs) once more. aimClear live-tweeted this session via @beebow. Read on for the full guide. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s here, it’s here! #SMX East is finally here! You know what that means: Pilgrimages to the Big Apple, strolls through Central Park, and one of the coolest online marketing events this side of the Mississippi. Traditionally held in October, the East coast edition of Search Marketing Expo is usually the signal that rocket-launches New York City into autumn. This year with the conference calendared smack-dab in the middle of September, attendees are in for a sweet taste of late summer in the city that never sleeps.

From the aimClear team, Marty Weintraub, Manny Rivas, Merry Morud, and  Lauren Litwinka (me), are eastbound, energized and eager for the conference to kick off. Joined by Lisa Buyer, President and CEO of the Buyer Group, and Will Scott, Founder and President of Search Influence, we’re starting the week aimClear’s Facebook Marketing Intensive Workshop where we’ll rock marketers for a full day of soup to nuts training in all-things Facebook. Read on for the full scoop. Read the rest of this entry »

Amy Vernon a.k.a. The Bacon Queen a.k.a. fellow New Jerseian and IRL pal is just about as genuine as they come. With over 20k Twitter followers and the title of “top 15 submitters of all time on Digg.com (and the highest-ranked female ever),” she’s also a powerful social media maven worth paying mind to. VP of Strategy and Alliances at Hasai, Amy’s a familiar face at an array of digital marketing conferences, whether she’s on stage speaking or in the crowd pumping out lightning-fast tweet coverage.

I met Amy at last year’s #140Conf in NYC, and as we “chewed the fat,” so to speak, over U Café grub on the upper East Side, it became apparent why her cult-like following across various social media circles, from Tumblr to Facebook, flocks to her consistently. She works a seriously smooth combo of calculating community manager and super-cool social-savvy friend.

On the advent of #SMX East, I had the pleasure of sharing a candid Q&A with Amy. Topics ranged from “Who are ya, howdidja get here?” to favorite social sharing services, advice for social marketing n00bz and the battle between newsprint & online media. Read on for the full scoop. Read the rest of this entry »

Google’s recent modification of how link data is categorized in Webmaster Tools had observant SEO practitioners and clients asking interesting questions. If you’re wondering if it’s time to put the brakes on rolling up your subdomains as an SEO tactic because of this Google change, this post has important information. Read the rest of this entry »