aimClear Search Marketing Blog

Dear Marketer-folk: You’re missing serious demographic opportunities. The dual income gay & lesbian household, the force-of–nature purchasing power of latino consumers, teens, tweens & African Americans. You’ve probably read the NYT articles or some Adage infographics on these demographics, but if  these recent advertising efforts are any indication, the boat = still missed.

Paid Search Bullseye was the first time an SMX panel focused around staying relevant  & being true when targeting to users in gay, lesbian, youth & ethnic communities.  Understand that everyone is a consumer and that all marketers should strive to dial in the correct awareness, sensitivity and tact with our marketing messages and techniques to these emerging demographic segments. Read the rest of this entry »

Peter Norvig, you might have heard of him, or felt his presence on stormy mountain tops. Among several other accomplishments, he is the creator of Norvig’s Law, the world record holder for the longest palindrome, former head of computational sciences research at NASA,  ballet dancer, current director of research at Google, & a human being.

SMX West Day 2 kicked off with a keynote from the genial Mr. Norvig, while Search Engine Land’s Chris Sherman & Danny Sullivan picked his behemoth brain. The keynote was split into two parts, first a laundry list of notable Google Research accomplishments, followed by a Q & A session with Danny & Chris. Read the rest of this entry »

Some people think keyword research consists of going to the Google Keyword tool, typing in four of their industry phrases & then just grabbing the keywords with the highest volume. But some people are ultra DumbPants month-punchers & need additional research guidance in order to find the highly targeted keyword permutations, relevant stemming topics & true opportunities for their brand/product/designer puppy-couch site. Where should a  DumbPants month-puncher search marketer begin look for these keyword opportunities?

Starting things off on Tuesday afternoon’s SMX West 2010 Keyword Research: Beyond The Ordinary panel was Christine Churchill, of Key Relevance. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s an old adage – If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, unless you are carefully able to fix it in ways that helps all parties who use it & also it will make you more money, then you should think about trying to fix it, so good luck with this. Google essentially took this approach when they began testing new Adwords ad formats last year.

While  opportunity with these new formats is apparent and massive, information is limited, compared to the abundance of tutorials & tools available for classic ads. What the heck are these new ad formats, how do I get them, & how do I use them to make mad guap? Welcome to Not Your Father’s Adwords, the first afternoon session on the SMX West advanced track. Read the rest of this entry »

When it was first announced that Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer would be keynoting this year’s SMX West, it was perceived as a nice surprise and unexpected legitimization of the search marketing industry from one of the big guys.  The announcement left many marketers existentially pondering their role in the somewhat dysfunctional search family.

Did Ballmer, Microsoft, & Bing finally release SEOs from their search-kennel to offer them a seat at the dinner table? Or was it a pat on the head… an assurance that were are, indeed, “a good boy?” Read the rest of this entry »

So here’s kinda what was going on with “news” at the end of 2009: the news stations and newspapers were dying continuing to have a difficult time adjusting to the fact that there is “an Internet.” Specifically, the fact that the Internet has reprogrammed consumers to expect get news updates by the second, streamed directly to their phones, all for, uh, free. Also, everyone and their mother’s cagefighting vice-barrister has an opinion on how newspapers and other media outlets should retool and monetize. And oh, it’d be great if these once unparalleled news platforms could stop being the butt of the jokes we all love to hear… and tell. Read the rest of this entry »

However, you can make money from your website when properly advised & optimized  by your web analytics, as Jim Sterne so correctly pointed out at SES Chicago 2009. Many of us have access to some sort of analytics for web properties we’re involved with, but how many of us really use the data effectively?  More importantly, are we making real money from analytics insight?  Is there more to life than just the conversion?

The session How To Turn Your Web Analytics Into a Money Making Machine was totally educational, not just because it provided answers, but because it proferred the types of questions we should all ask when pulling up our analytics dashboard over morning tea.  Read the rest of this entry »

For better or for worse, mixed media or “blended” search results pages are probably here to stay. If you assume that raw authority is going to guarantee you a first page result  for a hot news story or push down a viral video that’s harmful to your brand, you should probably just quit now think again. Will you blend? Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s get this out of the way: Matt Cutts is the head of Google’s web spam team. He is perceived as a rock star in the industry and everywhere he goes he is a followed by a giddy horde of search marketers. SEO trends and techniques live and die by the words of the affable Mr. Cutts.

Yet there remains a healthy degree of skepticism and about Google’s advice. At the end of the day, the various teams at Google are doing what’s best for Google’s search users, which is not always best for an SEO’s clients.

Continuing the SMX Advanced tradition, Matt was kind enough to sit down with Danny Sullivan once more to take on audience questions in a You & A with Matt Cutts. Read the rest of this entry »