aimClear® Search Marketing Blog

Welcome back to our ongoing coverage of #SES San Francisco! A true content wizard, Lee Odden’s (@leeodden) Content Marketing Optimization session reminded the audience that content can make or break your website. When you’re looking to optimize your site, you have to take everything from rich media to web pages to digital assets to PDF documents to both created and shared content into account. Always remember: “If it’s searchable, it’s optimizable.”

With so many people looking to break into the already well-established online marketing realm, brand marketers have to go after the Holy Grail of content marketing optimization – that is to say, they must be efficient and improve the impact of their SEO and social media efforts. aimClear live-tweeted this session via @ericasendros Keep on reading for the real deal.

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Unless you’ve got a time machine, it’s not always realistic to achieve a sustainable CPA (cost per action) by way of paid cost-per-click online marketing channels alone. This post offers a pragmatic multi-channel scenario to prove the significant financial benefits of SEO, social media, and public relations for CPA-pumping traffic and conversion.  Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve recently had two transcendent experiences to further frame my now nearly 20-year career as an online marketer. First, I essentially stepped away from aimClear’s offices in Duluth and Saint Paul for 6 months to write a book about Facebook Ads. Then, literally as the book was completed, I had heart damage fixed. During cancer treatment over five years ago, my aortic valve was seriously impacted by chemo and radiation. Both the book project and open-heart surgery took me away from my decades-long daily study of SEO for weeks at a time. Both experiences turned out really well, were essential and deep, made aimClear an even better company, and provided me with magnificent perspective I would not have realized by other less extreme experiences.

Any CEO, whose company grows over five years from only him to approaching 20 souls, needs to trust the team. I knew aimClear was totally cool because now, these years later, we’ve got an office full of brilliant SEO brainy-types who practice state-of-the-art social, PR, SEO, PPC mashup strategies and tactics with vigor, wit and thought leadership. After each chunk of time away, the team briefed me so I never got personally very far out of sync with SEO changes. From daily vicissitudes in Facebook, YouTube template changes to Google’s +1, I asked for and received comprehensive studies from our team whenever anything important evolved. Still, being away from my beloved SEO study broke my heart. Well, it was broken already. The whole thing was very ironic.

Still, temporarily stepping aside made me a much better marketer. The unexpected silver lining was that constantly returning to SEO news tuned out to be a bit like perspective gained by a lonely parent who rediscovers his children after weeks away at summer vacation camp. Though I was (truly) stunned at how significantly SEO had changed each block of time away, not too much had changed at all.

In fact now that I think about it, not much has not changed at all since the days of “Fetch,” “Archie” and my hot little 14.4k Modem (V.32bis) (2400 baud) modem. Heck, not much of marketing’s essence has changed for hundreds of years. As I wrote Killer Facebook Ads, the book became much more about marketing, beyond just Facebook Ads.  After completing the book, the sabbatical from the daily SEO grind to repair my heart gave me some unpressured time to assimilate things, to think and I felt inspired to see things clearer than before. SEO is ever new and barely ever changes. Long Live SEO! This is the first installment of two, the second half of which will be published later this week. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to #SMX Advanced 2011! The science of SEO. It’s a code everyone and their mother has been trying to crack since the dawn of organic rankings. Just when we think we know the elements to a success by way of SEO, something changes, wanes in significance, or gets added to the mix. The traditional chemistry between optimized titles, tags, anchor text, on-page content et. all are no longer the only players in the petri dish. The social side of the user experience is gaining some serious traction, and factors such as merchant reputation, user reviews, content quality and social signals are becoming increasingly vital to healthy SEO.

Matthew Brown, Founder, AudienceWise, Duane Forrester, Senior Program Manager SEO, Microsoft, Jeff MacGurn, Director of SEO, Covario, and Jamie Steven, VP Marketing, SEOmoz took the stage on the morning of #SMX Advanced 2011, ready, willing, and eager to tour the audience through The New Periodic Table Of SEO. Moderated by Search Engine Land’s Editor-in-Chief, Danny Sullivan, and Jeff Ferguson, CEO, Fang Digital Marketing, together we donned our proverbial lab coats and goggles, and saddled up to get scientific about SEO. Read on for the full scoop. Read the rest of this entry »

Bruce Clay was SEO way before SEO was cool. His name has become synonymous with corporate SEO training. Having created one of the first iconic SEO agency brands, nestled in the lovely foothills of Simi Valley, CA, his book, SEO For Dummies is a staple.  He is a mainstay in the international online marketing conference circuit and an early advocate for the “Siloing” concept of channeling authority and energy throughout content management systems by linking.  Bruce Clay Inc. has made the INC5000 multiple times and with good reason. With a couple of advanced degrees from Pepperdine, dude  is extremely buttoned down. Bruce Clay, the agency, has a presence Los Angeles, New York, Sydney, London, Tokyo, and soon in China and Brazil.

Next week at SMX Advanced Seattle, he’ll be speaking on the Mega Session: SEO Vet’s Take All Comers, day two (June 8th) at 3PM PT.  Also, the ever ubiqutious Bruce Clay SEO Training, a full day affair Bruce teaches himself takes place as customary after ‘Advanced June 9th. It’s not too late to enroll.

On a personal note, Bruce is a real friend to aimClear, having unselfishly shared a lot of proprietary insight as to what it takes to run full day training sessions, and truly empowering us to launch the  aimClear® Facebook Marketing Intensive full day workshop. He’s a mentor and a friend, and I’m pleased to share this interview after sitting down with him in his Simi offices last month. Read the rest of this entry »