aimClear Search Marketing Blog

aimClear gets daily cold calls from confused businesses that are losing ground. The stories are eerily similar. “We used have high Google rankings”, “Why do Internet Yellow Pages rank above us for the name of our company?”, and “What are all these maps, videos, and news stories?”`

The answer is easy. Universal search and third party verticals are wreaking havoc on those unfortunates who didn’t adapt and evolve. A surprising amount of businesses have absolutely no idea that nearly half the websites in the world have blog-like tools which connect them to each other, RSS aggregators, social communities, the media, and modern link building communities.Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft Word and WordPress make strange bedfellows at first gape. However our clients have increased productivity significantly by speeding up the blogging process with clever use of MS Word (Office 2003 and 2007). Anyone who has ever tried to paste formatted text from Word to WordPress and observed the awful results is probably wondering exactly what the heck this post is about.

Linking and Text Scraping is Much Easier with Word.
It’s true that you can’t select fonts, bold, italic, images, or other fancy typography tricks in Word and successfully paste content into the WP visual editor. However there is a method to compose text and create links in Word, clean the formatting, and successfully paste the copy into WP while maintaining the link-formatting integrity.Read the rest of this entry »

Many skilled and experienced marketing professionals do not yet understand that the blog structure is the killer SEM enabled content management system. I know first hand what it means to misperceive blogging software. Though aimClear mashes up chunks of blog functionality behind many websites we work with, it took a few years to become personally committed to blogging.

The truth is that bloggers pioneered software and linking methods which socialized the interconnected grid of links and content. Blogging communication tools, laid over the Internet, have helped maximize the social promise of http protocol. Blog-style tools are ubiquitous in nearly all online social communities.

We build blog software hybrids to facilitate feed marketing, content management, hosting community dialog, interactions with social websites, and for blog powered online media rooms. It makes tons of sense. These pockets of functionality are easily available to mash up from open source software like WordPress and integrate easily with traditional website structures. Read the rest of this entry »

DVD Hack on Mainstream Site
It’s just 32 tiny little numbers but for the average teenage valley tech kid it’s the key to unlock copy protected DVDs at the expense of big American intellectual property corporations. In the wrong hands this code (in tandem with black hat software) beats protective mechanisms on commercial High definition Blu-ray DVD releases.

As often happens, the code has been posted by hacks on sites like digg.com. To see the latest clever version search on Digg for “AACS.” It’s been widely reported that the monolithic trade group (Access Content System) including Warner Brothers, IBM, and Sony delivered cease and desist notices to a number of websites. Most sites complied. Digg complied at first.

The Diggers were Mad.
As you might expect, digg.com users were pissed so users took to reposting the code each time digg removed it. Apparently, after a few days digg.com changed its mind and no longer is working to filter out the content. Then it got really weird.

It is with increasing ingenuity that new hacks are circulating the DVD unlock code. Here’s a link to a SONG posted on YouTube called…wait I can’t publish it here. Suffice to say that it is a tender little ditty with 32 character lyrics.

With one click on Digg you can purchase a t-shirt that has the DVD copy protection crack code screened on the front. You can even read the code on the e-commerce site that sells it.Read the rest of this entry »

With so many of our clients blogging now (and asking lots of good questions) the subject of blogs comes up often in our “how-to” conversations. Obviously I’m a big fan of blogs. I love to write and I love search marketing.

Blogging is a wonderful pastime and satisfying personal endeavor that can pay returns on a number of levels.

Three critical components any blogger should consider when working to build readership include content, frequency and distribution. Content must be interesting and useful to your readers. Develop your unique voice and don’t be afraid to post things others will not agree with if it is your truth. Be responsible and change your mind in public if you are wrong.

First, by way of background, here is a post from earlier this where we covered the historic progression of blogging (from the early BBS days) to the SEO enabled heat seeking content management projectile that applications like WordPress and Movable Type have become today.

15 Time-Tested Blogging Tips (Believe me we’ve made mistakes in learning some of these) come from various sources, including our own experience. I hope they prove useful.Read the rest of this entry »

“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 »

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 »

The panelists in the SES Video Optimization seminar, Eric Papczun, Sherwood Stranieri,  Gregory Markel, Founder/President, Infuse Creative stressed the growing strength of properly tagged video content on the regular search engines.

To drive this home they shared some brand-related keywords turning up in “normal” Google SERPs within view of consumers. Given the investment most large companies make in branding, it’s a no longer optional  as the whether a company monitors and defends the SERPs video results. I have some large clients who would would fall over dead to discover such an uncontrollable subversion of the brand.

Below I show the keyword, search frequency annually (Trellian Global Database), how many documents were returned, and how many documents contained all of the keywords in their title tag.  Take a careful look. Some of the keyword spaces are relativly uncontested (with  different scales of search volume). Other keyword spaces could be a more serious undertaking to increase your rank for.

I would like to note that in nearly every search I undertook in orginizing this post, I found wikipedia.com results ranking higher than video. If any of you bloggers would be interested in sharing faciniating links, feel free to comment with SERPs for video in normal search engines. youTube is not the only game in town so it would be fun to hear about long tail results from smaller video sites.

Beyoncé
Annual searches: 1,168,180 (Trellian Global DB annual searches)
23,800,000 documents for beyonce
636,000 for allintitle
Google page 2

CSI Miami
Annual searches: searches 79,787
1,870,000 dcuments for csi miami.
allintitle:”csi miami”
Google page 1Read the rest of this entry »

To keep current I travel quite a bit and attend a number of industry specific trade shows and conferences each year. If there is any business on earth where staying current on evolving trends and technologies is critical, it is search marketing.  We know from having been around diverse businesses for a long time  that staying current is important in every occupation.

Not much is static these days in any profession given technological advances in every field. In this post I’m going to share tips on maximizing the benefit of conferences and tradeshows you attend.  If these techniques can work for an Internet marketing company (an industry moving at the speed of light) the techniques will in all likelihood work help your business harvest value when you attend business conferences.Read the rest of this entry »