aimClear Search Marketing Blog

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: Read the rest of this entry »

The social Internet is about conversations that propagate virulently and index at various speeds.  Twitter, the fastest feed community of all,  can be easily leveraged to “proof” marketing concepts for slower social channels the same way SEOs use PPC (pay per click) to prove organic landing pages.

Read on for a tactical starting point to use Twitter’s flashpoint sharing environment to test your linkbait, promotional messages, calls to action, friend-making and branding. Read the rest of this entry »

The ever increasing popularity of social media sites YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook  reveal the necessity for brands to  connect with their customers in these arenas. This SearchEngineStrategies New York session will touch on  advanced tips for increasing online brand awareness & brand equity protection in a shaky economy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Unlike most blog posts, I’m truly hopeful that (a) selected good Samaritan Mac evangelists will chime in to explain why I’m completely wrong. (b) Apple and software manufacturers will take this input and fix some baffling ticks. Read the rest of this entry »

They don’t talk about butterflies, candy ass theories and granola bars here. You get the impression that these alt.news used-to-be geeks are delightfully modest, after systematically bringing the known marketing-universe to its knees over the last 10 years.

Having sprung forth from IRC, NewsGroups, Pine, BBSs and nightly modem buzz–PubCon is all about science, social engineering, huge business, perpetual evolution and a driven sense of humor. Rock on geeks and phreaks…rock on! Read the rest of this entry »

A “splog” is a spam blog which might scrape or otherwise rip off content from other blogs.

There are a myriad of motivations which drive unscrupulous publishers to steal content or create garbage posts: Organic prominence and AdSense revenue are classic spoils for plagiarizing.  Gaining false credentials to dupe unsuspecting clients is another. No matter how many times it happens or what the reason, it sucks when your content is stolen. Read the rest of this entry »

Storied search marketing publication SearchEngineWatch/blog has turned on their comment-threads. Yay! I was proofing my post just now and noticed the new feature for the first time.

Read the rest of this entry »

First day on the job as CBS Affiliate Creative Director, General Manager & friend Terry Hurly offered advice which has served well for 15 years. “Marty, when you send memos, do interviews, or otherwise deal with media or your employees, give OTHERS credit-sometimes even if you did it.” He continued, use the words “us,” “we,” “our” and not “I,” “me,” or “my.”

Years later, as the aimClear growth plan gestated, a dear Friend Dan Thralow sent over Jim Collins’s famous book “Good to Great.” Truly great leaders (level 5) share a number of mostly-common traits. One of them is crediting others (looking out the window) for success and taking responsibility (looking in the mirror) for failures. External factors contributing to success could include luck, excellent team members, & market trends.

Failure often stems from lack of a coherent game plan, inviting the wrong team members onto the bus, & not facing brutal truths. Tactic or trap, writing from the self-center person can be an intentional grammatical style book decision. Read the rest of this entry »

Cross-pollinating bookmarks between social communities you’re active in is rarely discussed and can be an effective technique. It’s especially powerful when using redirects to track outgoing traffic from social bookmarks to the actual posts you are promoting, a modus operandi we’ll discuss later in this post.

Bill Hartzer visited cross-pollination in his post, “Claim Your StumbleUpon Blog through Technorati”, which details how to increase links to your StumbleUpon blog and pass “link juice” to pages you add, review, or “Stumble”. There are a number of other C-P (cross-pollinating) protocols to consider between communities. These practices are white hat methods to share valuable content between groups of friends who tend congregate in different and/or multiple places. Read the rest of this entry »

Ask an experienced public relations guru to explain his or her profession’s fundamental aim and you’ll likely receive some variation of the following lecture: “PR is media relations, investor relations, community relations, customer relations, internal relations, human interest, and crises management.”

PR Has Been Important Since the Dawn of Time.
No doubt cave people intentionally spun messages to achieve goals and solve problems. Could anyone argue that Jesus’ disciples were not public relations stars in their authenticity and holistic intent? Thomas Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, John Adams, and the Federalists seemed keenly aware of the effect their words might have on the American population. These folks knew what they were doing.

Throughout recorded history humans have “published” with the tools of the day. Be the venue shouting from treetops, distributing parchment manuscripts by horseback, World War 2 propaganda trailers before Clark Gable movies, faxed press releases sharing professional accomplishments, political billboards, annual corporate reports, or Nixon feigning righteous indignation from the Oval Office, humans forever spin. Read the rest of this entry »