aimClear Search Marketing Blog

I had a near out of body-real-time SMS/search/tweet experience last night interacting with our attorney, Laura.  (No, the picture’s not Laura.)  She’s in Manhattan to attend the Social Media Risks and Rewards legal conference, and pinged me to quick-search for information about a ruckus she was observing outside the famed Waldorf Astoria.

Our innocent little text exchange and my ensuing searches (illustrated later in this article) make it entirely clear there’s a radical new type of query intent (what users’ are looking for): situational. It turns out Google’s not adept at some situational searches which, to some minds,  leaves them vulnerable to services like Twitter in a substantial segment of emerging search inventory. Read the rest of this entry »

On June 3rd, Matt Cutts freaked the technical SEO community by casually stating that PageRank sculpting, the subtle art of flow-managing page value distribution, had changed significantly from what Google had been prescribing.

Who cares, we don’t need noFollow. What bothers many is that know we’ve learned Google flipped the switch a year ago, all the while offering misleading public information. 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 »

Periodic, if not constant, change in search marketing is a certainty. Proof positive is that “Google” didn’t even exist 10 years ago and is accepted in the vernacular as a verb (“She “Googled” this or that”). The growing use of online media provide new avenues for searchers. Watch for the changes, and always ask yourself, what is out there and how will your customers find you?

Today at SES New York, speakers focused on what Google has done and what they could do better in “Beyond Googling: Where Will Your Customers Be Searching in Five Years?” The session was moderated by (one of our favorites) John Marshall, SES Advisory Board, CTO, Market Motive. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a sad fact of modern SEO life. You can’t slay a dragon with a sling shot and ya’ can’t rank for for Las Vegas Hotels with a brand spankin’ new domain. Life just doesn’t work that way.  It only makes sense that measuring which keywords a page can reasonably expect to rank for, in this competitive Internet age, is now an essential aspect of keyword research.

With improving accuracy, it is now possible to evaluate SERPs  (search engine results pages) competitiveness for a given keyword, evaluate the strength (and future predicted strength) of the page one wishes to get ranked, and base keyword selection on what is reasonably attainable for that page’s strength. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello to all, Manny Rivas here at SES Chicago 2008. I’m thrilled to be here providing coverage for aimClear Blog. Thanks to Sandy Prouix and the whole SearchEngineStrategies team. The weather is cold outside but the energy in these sessions is great! Read the rest of this entry »

Is there life beyond Google? According to this session’s speakers, the answer is YES, YES, YES, a resounding YES! As the early afternoon bell rang at SES Chicago 2008, a diverse panel of speakers did indeed assure participants that there is life beyond Google. But is this like trying to find life on Mars? Read the rest of this entry »

Association with domains perceived by Google to be in bad neighborhoods can get your domain blown out of Google or seriously crippled.. This reality has spawned a favorite tactic amongst malfeasant black hats, who use the wormhole to destroy competition. It’s happened to our friends and it can happen to you. Read the rest of this entry »

aimClear Blog’s homepage Toolbar PR ticked from PR5 to PR4 overnight. Also, TB PR seems to be distributed with more power & deeper within the blog. Imagine that… I happened to be reading Sphinn about Matt Cutt’s blog comment on the impending update, checked aimClear and noted the change. Upon a cursory glance several other SEM blogs, PR5 previously, have been bumped to 4. Hmmm…Smackdown baby…. Read the rest of this entry »

PPC and organic search alike serve classic functions in the marketing mix. However Google is effectually forcing many advertisers into buying more AdWords PPC by systematically setting out to neuter SEOs, who are increasingly going underground.

We all know Google’s been eviscerating organic paid link-building tactics which historically have been a vital component of attaining prominence in natural (unpaid) search results. Let’s take a closer look at how Google’s organic linking policies are as much about selling AdWord as preventing spam. Read the rest of this entry »