aimClear Search Marketing Blog

Welcome to those tuning in for  our SearchEngineStragtegies Chicago 2009 conference coverage. After a night of tossing and turning in a cold sweat, replaying the brutal defeat of my beloved Vikings , I’ve pulled myself together. Hey, at least SES Chi-town 2009 won’t let me down.

My session today (first session of the day titled Search Industry Today) focuses on where the paid search and SEO industry sit after a decade of growth tallying over $10 billion. Will the flow of ad dollars into search soon plateau? Is search too expensive and competitive or is it realizing a larger share of advertising revenues? What is the value of search beyond performance and results? Have most of the SEM + SEO brand strategy insights and performance gains been discovered by the industry or will the road to discovery continue?

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If you missed Webmaster Radio April 13th. Here’s the PPC Rockstars podcast where PPC legend David Szetela interviewed our very own Marty Weintraub. Read the rest of this entry »

This last session for SES NY, “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark: Black Hat PPC Tactics” was chalk full of ideas (nudge, wink) not to use.

After surveying the room for Google representatives in the room, the panel of PPC experts launched into presentations outlining gray and black hat tactics for PPC.  Are these great ideas or diabolical thinking … you decide. 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 »

[This post is our continuining coverage of SES Chicago 2008] Proper execution of the basic, proven and successful models is necessary for success in any business endeavor. Search Marketing is no different. After spending the past 3 days listening to excellent people extol us to further develop and exceed current practices and performances, it was time to stop for a moment and “Get back to the basics.”

Search Advertising 101 was just the elixir and this baby was a cool tall drink. Covering basic tenets and language surrounding keywords, online ad creative, placement and campaign management processes provided an accelerated  learning curve.

Moderator Anne Kennedy, Managing Partner and Founder of Beyond Ink did a great job setting the pace and handing over the podium to Matt Van Wagner, President of Find Me Faster and Mona Elesseily, Director of Marketing Strategy at Page Zero Media.

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As snow flew sideways on the chilly frontier, SES Chicago 2008 participants waited to be regaled yet again with insight and information. Eisenberg did not disappoint.

This session focused on shifting the mindset from “Pay Per Click” to “Pay Per Conversation.”  Clearly it is imperative to remain cognizant of the current state of the economy, where every click and hence every dollar matters.

Every click is a potential customer trying to engage you and their choices are limited.  Will the customer continue the dialogue through to a purchase funnel or will they bounce immediately off your landing page?  In order to continue the conversation, the value of the product and service needs to be demonstrated.

This session helped  identify missed conversations and then how to woo them back.  The introduction was given by Anne Kennedy, Managing Partner & Founder, Beyond Ink.  Presenting valuable insight was Bryan Eisenberg, Co-founder, Future Now Inc. Read the rest of this entry »

PPC, search engine optimization and SMO do not exist in a vacuum. In fact for countless small business SEMs, the delineation between working amongst these classic disciplines is simply a matter of how the marketer’s day is spent.

Larger in-house and agency settings often present internal walls built between each department, along with classic pros and cons of specialization vs. becoming fragmented. Read the rest of this entry »

Tune in to Webmasterradio.fm and hear yesterday’s interview. David Szetela and I described a reputation management crises we handled for a client together, that tallied 32 million targeted “emergency PR” Google pay per click impressions for less than 4K.

We had a client with a bad “problem-word.” The nasty verbiage also existed in annoying permutations like “problem-word” + DirectBrandName. Mission one was to serve the public with timely information. There were thousands of news articles in the SERPs, ranging from major sources to po-dung radio station sites. Read the rest of this entry »

We encounter companies spending obscene amounts of Internet marketing cash on unfocused local television and newspaper website banner ads, relying on semi-useless statistics and without building in the campaign’s ability to calculate return on investment.

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It’s Day 4 at SES San Jose and it looks like they saved the best for last. Moderated by Gregg Stewart SVP, Interactive, TMP Directional Marketing, this session looked at Contextual Advertising from two directions: from a publisher’s perspective on how to generate more revenue dollars and also effective tactics for managing contextual campaigns. David Szetela CEO, Clix Marketing shared world class content targeting  tips from Advertisers perspective. Read the rest of this entry »