aimClear Search Marketing Blog

Egregiously incompetent, cutthroat, reckless or outright dishonest? No matter how you slither it, the latest generation of predatory SEO creeps proffer blatantly false information camouflaged by pretty reports. Deceptively branded reports aside, buyer beware when the snakes come to call. Here’s some hard facts to dispel this week’s crap-ass haze of myths and misinformation.  [Author's Note: This post is not aimed at any specific SEO firm, rather the amalgamate of experiences we've had over many years.] Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: RC_Fotos
Welcome to SearchEngineStrategies Toronto 2009. Today we took a glance back a decade to 1999, when parties had a reputation to live up to and some families were preparing for an all out cataclysmic technological failure come the new year. For the most part, times were swell.

Family Guy began its first season, Britney Spears’ hit “…Baby One More Time” climbed the billboard charts & Lawrence Fishburne took curious Keanu down the rabbit hole in The Matrix. In the realm of SEO, effective optimization was all about keyword, title & description meta tags and reciprocal link building. Life was good!

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For search marketing industry veterans, SearchEngineLand Editor-in-Chief Danny Sullivan needs no introduction. If you’re among the veritable legions of marketing professionals joining our ranks from traditional advertising trades, soon enough you’ll know his impeccable journalism and commitment to community.

Considered a founding “search engine guru,” Danny has been demystifying search engines for marketers, webmasters and users for well over a decade. His insight and expertise are regularly sought by mainstream media outlets including USA Today, The New Yorker, Forbes, The Wall St. Journal, The Los Angeles Times, ABC’s Nightline, Newsweek.

He’s Partner and Chief Content Officer for  Third Door Media, which also operates the highly regarded global  search marketing conference series SMX,  Search Marketing Now educational webcasts and  Sphinn.com, SEM mainstay social community.

Recently I had the opportunity to pose questions regarding  SMX Advanced, a brilliant 2 day SEM event he (and industry luminary Chris Sherman) sequence annually in Seattle.  ‘Advanced sold out in 2007, 2008 and is on track to do so again this year. Earlybird rates expire May 2 so register now to guarantee your attendance June 2 & 3, 2009.

We also discussed Danny’s passion for search, suggestions for Twitter, “tough love” for Microsoft Search and his recent move back to the United States after living in England. Read the rest of this entry »

Like most SEM shops, our business is an amalgamation of flat rate products and hourly work. It’s generally been our focus to procure longer contracts, usually 6 month to 1-year agreements.

We thought it prudent to evolve our model in preemptive reaction to these brutal economic times.  Little did we know the unexpected gems of perspective we discovered. Read the rest of this entry »

Here we are again at SearchEngineStrategies New York.From the Philharmonic to ChinaTown, this big city is the apple of my eye. A couple of times a  year, when our friend PPC Expert David Szetela (Clix Marketing) and I are speaking at the same conference, we have a little gathering with our industry friends.

Those lucky enough to be sporting the cliche’ orange wristbands are going enjoy lovely camaraderie, frightening anecdotes, “forgettable finger food” and an enjoy (yet another) awesome upstairs Times SQ Schmooze Fest NYC experience. Of course, we’ll be giving away SearchWiki Lamesauce T-Shirts. Life is grand.

Watch for more posts from today’s SES sessions later tonight. For now, heading to the shindig.

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The bandwidth involved working with my SEM colleagues, twittering, staying in touch with Facebook peeps and processing clients is delightfully staggering. Sometimes an innocuous written exchange blasts across my desk amidst the noise,  strikes a nerve and leaves me in thought.

In this case a state-level branch of a well known national brand, pinged me by email to ask common SEO shopping questions, including classic misunderstandings: personalized search and “site submissions.”  The inquiry was a bit of a “Dear John” letter, so other firms likely received a similar inquiry. We don’t respond to RFPs but make it our practice to answer polity to reasonable questions time-allowing, with the corporate mantra being to support potential clients.

I’m memorializing my answers to that inquiry in this post, for the benefit of future clients and our Account Managers.  I’ve fictionalized names to protect anonymity. Read the rest of this entry »

There was a palpable hush in our aimClear rotunda office yesterday afternoon as, *gasp,* I finally caved personally to incorrect usage of of the initials “SEM” to humor our PPC client. Sadly in this wacky world of nearly indistinguishable acronyms, abbreviations and cryptic terms there’s a colloquial tragedy afoot. Even the New York Times got SEM wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

Cash and ROI from ecommerce is easy to calculate. Measuring income from AdSense and other affiliate revenue is simple for publishers to weigh, in order to validate investments in content, SEO or arbitrage. Leads are easy to count, as are associated PPC expenses.

However, evaluating a website’s ongoing profitability is often not quite so cut and dried. In these times of budgetary duress, short-sighted thinking too often fosters short-sheeting the corporate web presence. Here are 6 less obvious cash-in-the-bank criteria, by which to measure a site’s hidden success. Start with the statement, “a website could be considered profitable if it:” Read the rest of this entry »

We’re pleased to announce aimClearBlog’s expanded coverage of Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2008. Our stable of bloggers, packing off to the lovely California sun, includes terrific writers like Todd Mintz (Portland), Jennifer Osborne (Toronto) and Charlene Jaszewski (New York).

Kicking off August 18th and running through the 21st, SES is one of the true granddaddies of mainstream search marketing conferences.  With over 70 cutting edge sessions, thousands of attendees, keynotes and even a mass excursion to the GooglePlex for the famed “Google Dance,” this year’s show looks fabulous. Read the rest of this entry »

SEM industry writers, conference organizers and attendees are passionately defending, disparaging and debating ethics surrounding so-called “gray/black hat tactics” presented @ SMX Advanced Seattle. I was surprised to find such virulent threads in BruceClay Blog and Sphinn. The contrast of post-show buzz caught me off guard and now over initial reactions, I have a few reflections. Read the rest of this entry »