45 Online Resources for CEO's

Ten years ago, building a website was a no brainer. “Build it and they will come,” was the general consensus. You left the technical details to your IT department; the promotional details were handed off to marketing.

Today, this is no longer an option. If you’re a CEO, you must be involved in your company’s online strategies if you plan to stay ahead of your competition. And by being involved, this means understanding the fundamentals of the Web and keeping up with all of the changes taking place online.

I hope you find this list of resources useful.

Business Blogging - Reading and Writing

1. RSS in plain English
If you don’t know what RSS is, watch this video (3 minutes, 44 seconds) for a simple explanation in plain English.

2. The Best 10 RSS Readers for Windows, Mac, and Linux
Determining which reader to use can be difficult; take a look at these descriptions of ten of the best.

3. RSSFwd
If you’re still uncomfortable reading via a feed reader, why not begin by getting blog posts delivered to you via e-mail. RSSFwd delivers RSS feeds straight to your inbox.

4. EFF: Legal Guide for Bloggers
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has created this guide to give you a basic roadmap to the legal issues you may confront as a blogger.

5. Basic Business Blogging Suggestions
To create an authoritative and trusted blog, consider these 12 recommendations.

6. Blogging Mistakes to Avoid
Not only are there basic guidelines on how to do it right, you also need to understand what to avoid when blogging. Take a look at these 15 mistakes to avoid.

7. The Opportunities and Challenges of Corporate, Team, and Personal Blogs
Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang describes the pros and cons of the three main types of blogs.

8. Blog Topics for Business to Business
If you’re unsure what to blog about, consider these seven ideas to put get the creative juices going.

Social Media - Learn and Use

9. Your Social Media Strategy Begins With Monitoring
Before you can launch a successful social media strategy, consider monitoring existing conversations about your company.

10. List of Social Media and Social Networking Sites by Industry
A regularly updated list of over 400 sites, listed by categories that include: arts, bookmarking, auto, connecting with friends, consumer reviews, cooking, cultures, dating, education, event planning, family, games, fashion, health, networking, kids, Internet marketing, mobile, music, news, pets, photo sharing, pop culture, professional, real estate, religion, shopping, sport, technology, teen, travel, video sharing.

11. Social Media Press Release Template (free of copyright)
If your marketing department is planning to send out social media releases, give them this template to begin with.

12. Essential Guide to Social Media (Free e-book)
An overview of how to listen and participate in social media and new media marketing.

13. Social Media Networking and ROI
Gain insight into the goals and benefits of social networking, the challenges, and understand into how to best maximize your social networking efficiency.

14. Press Release Grader
HubSpots Press Release Grader evaluates your press release and provides a marketing effectiveness score; helping you create better and smarter press releases.

SEO and SEM - Visibility That's Relevant

15. Factors Affecting Your Search Engine Compatibility
This is a basic and useful resource detailing the common elements that affect your search engine ranking.

16. SEO Jargon Busters – A Comprehensive SEO Dictionary
Commonly refered to SEO terms, explained in English.

17. The Definitive List of Resources for Keyword Analysis
Your site won’t get search engine traffic without using keywords. As the CEO, make sure you are involved in this critical step.

18. Linkbuilding: 22 Dofollow Social Media sites
If your marketing department is not working on getting links to your site; or doesn’t know how to do it without being penalized by Google, point this article out to them.

19. Pay Per Click: The basics of Paid Advertising
Make sure you understand paid advertising; after all, you’re paying for it. Read this to get the basics down.

20. Best Practices for Pay-Per-Action Campaigns
Understand pay-per-action campaigns and best practices with Google’s start guide to Pay-per-action campaigns.

21. Google’s Conversion University
Free online resources from Google that include videos and tutorials, to help you understand search, marketing, and how your company fits in.

22. Google’s AdWords Learning Center
Another offering from Google; free training to sharpen your knowledge of AdWords.

Brand Marketing

23. A Practical Guide to Branding
From Business Week: Understand and define your brand identity—your product’s ‘personality’—before you spend money on advertising or marketing.

24. Word of Mouth Manual
This free e-book is available to download as a PDF. Alternatively, buy the book on Amazon ($45).

25. Brand Personality
Guy Kawasaki interviews Ogilvy’s Rohit Bhargava where they talk about the role of ‘personality’ in branding.

26. How’s your Rep? Online Reputation Management
When a potential customer searches for your firm on the Internet, you want to be in control of what they see on their first search engine results page.

27. Protect Your Brand Online
Everything you need to know about monitoring and managing your online reputation. eBook ($39).

28. Free Tools to Monitor Your Online Presence
Take a look at these nine free online tools to monitor conversations about you on the Web.

Free Online Courses

29. Entrepreneurship and Business (Carnegie Mellon)

30. Open Source and Distribution of Digital Information (UC Berkeley)

31. Understanding Computers and the Internet (Harvard)

32. The Future of the Internet (Stanford)

Reports About the Internet - Trends and Stats

33. Forrester: Consumer Technographics data
Understanding the impact of technology and the Internet on your business.

34. Comscore: Key Measurements of the Digital World
Comscore covers today’s hottest business trends, with key measurements of the digital world.

35. Internet World Statistics
The latest data about Internet users worldwide.

36. Top US sites from Quantcast
Rankings for sites in the US; how many visitors, and type of visitor.

37. The Future of Media (video)
A panel discussion on the Future of Media, with journalists David Carr of NY Times, Keith Kelly of NY Post, Kenneth Li of Reuters, and Johnnie Roberts of Newsweek and Erick Schonfeld from TechCrunch.

38. User Generated Content, Social Media and Advertising—An Overview (PDF)
In 2008, if you’re not on a social networking site, you’re not on the Internet. A report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

Top 10 Management Blogs You Should Subscribe To:

39. David Kellog, CEO
Mark Logic, Inc.

40. Joel Spolsky, CEO
Fog Creek Software

41. John Mackey, CEO
Whole Foods

42. Guy Kawasaki, Managing Director
Garage Technology Ventures, founder of Truemors and Alltop

43. Jonathan Schwartz, CEO and President
Sun Microsystems, Inc.

44. Mark Cuban, Owner
Dallas Mavericks

45. Craig Newmark, CEO
Craigslist

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and hope we can start a conversation about what CEO’s most need to know about the online world.

Please let me know your opinions and suggestions by leaving a comment below; questions too are welcome.

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Google & Trademarks & UK: A Good Thing For Clients

What is all the complaining about? I am thrilled we will be able to bid on competitor's brand words in the UK and Ireland starting in May 2008. That has always been a successful tactic - for years and years. People seem concerned that the bid price will go up. Yes, the price will probably go up but it has been cheap for a long time and I am sure that smart marketers can find a way to control their Affiliates and Partners. We had to put those controls in in the US/Canada a long time ago. I am not saying it isn't still a battle and that it doesn't take constant policing, it does.

NetImperative- Google Sparks Controversy with New Trademark Policy
BigMouthMedia - Google to Introduce Open Keyword bidding on all terms in UK and Ireland
WebProNews -Google Gives UK Adwords Trademark Bidding
BlogStorm - Big Changes to Google's Adwords Trademark Policy and its follow up reactions

Note - I am constantly surprised by people who think Google shouldn't do this to 'line their pockets'. Of course they should. They are a public company who is accountable for their bottom line to stockholders. It isn't about good and evil - it is about growth and making Wall Street happy.

What is the Third SEO Question?

In previous posts I covered what the first and second questions should be when kicking off a full search engine optimization project including an seo technical audit.

First Question - What would your dream page 1 of results look like? (tip: don't promise to produce those results, yet)
Second Question - What do you want a searcher to do when they visit your site. (is it lead generation, brand awareness, page views, buy). Good Search Engine Marketing companies 'get' it that they need to understand their client's online strategy and goals.

The Third Question should be much more technical in nature because at this point you have pulled information from the marketing people about their messaging, keywords, pain points, and goals. Ask the technical team to join you, or at least stop reading their emails. Then ask them what is the underlying technology that the website is produced with. You will get answers about their content management system and hopefully the development technology. Dive deeper and ask about the file/directory architecture, the technology used to display the site (ie Flash, Java, Hidden Divs, etc), and are they in the middle of a redesign. [If they are in the middle of a redesign then the SEO audit becomes a lot more complex. More on this in a future blog.]

I forgot something, remember to ask them if they have done any SEO in the past and do they have in-house expertise. This way you know whether to look for spam tactics when doing your audit, an idea of whether you have to clean up after someone else's mess, and it helps you understand how much education may be required if the engineers are skeptical of the whole SEO-thing.

Forget the Tail - Focus on the Head for SEM

From the Pen of Amanda Evans - WebMama's Senior Search Consultant:

I was recently asked whether I thought the long tail really existed and I had to chuckle a little bit. You see, I’ve been lured in time and time again by this tantalizing idea - that there’s a missing pot of gold out there equal to the amount generated by my top terms and all I have to do is optimize for it. I’ve spent years trying to achieve this level of optimization – but no matter how efficient my campaigns have been, I’ve never seen a campaign where the sum of the sales of the tail terms equal the sum of the sales of a handful of head terms.

In the majority of campaigns, the top 10% of keywords make up 90-95% of revenue. And in many campaigns, the top 10 keywords (not 10%...just 10) make up 95% of the revenue. The next 3-4% is made up of the next handful and the last 1-2% is made up of tail terms. And so, over the years, I’ve had the good sense to realize that my efforts are best spent optimizing and policing the top 10% of head terms and continually testing other search marketing avenues.

Now don’t misunderstand – if someone types in “hot pink Tinkerbell tank tops” and I sell it, I want to be visible. But I don’t want to spend the majority of my time optimizing for a term that someone may or may not type in. That is precious time that takes my eye off the terms that make up 95% of my revenue.

Instead what I would offer is the following:

• Spend a proportionate amount of time optimizing for the tail terms. If they make up 5% of your revenue, spend 5% of your time optimizing for them.
• Rely on the technology created by engines to assist in long tail searches to do the heavy lifting– aka broad match & keyword insertion. (Make sure that any insertions d one are of the highest quality and make grammatical sense.)
• Ensure that your web site has adequate content so that if someone searches for obscure content, the search engines will find it.
• Never take your eye off the top terms which make up 95% of your revenue.
• Keep an eye on the searches done on your site to ensure that a) your head terms aren’t changing and b) that you have the right content represented on your site.

Good luck & Happy Optimizing!
Amanda

Sigh...One Less Search Advertising Opportunity

While everyone else is thinking about the benefits of having Yahoo's user base merged with MSN's, I just see it as one less media outlet for advertising. Maybe I should say one half less as I could envision the integration of Yahoo and MSN search distribution outlets create maybe one and one half (1 1/2) the reach that they do separately. In the pure search advertising world, no matter how low the traffic volume, we need more opportunities, not less.

The Blurring of Business Strategy and Search Strategy

It has been a wild ride being in the search marketing business for over 10 years. Part of the success of WebMama.com has been the razor sharp focus on Search Engine Marketing and nothing but SEM. This certainly gets the company in the door. Once in the door things change and I find myself talking business strategy even if it is thinly veiled as search marketing strategy.

Examples: Helping (insisting) a client decide on a list of keywords to use for search optimization is in essence asking the client what is it that generates sales on your site. Asking pointed questions like, 'what is a lead?' touches on their key online strategy and not just direct marketing. Bringing up subjects like 'metrics' and tools, profit margins, etc really forces them to think through entire areas of reporting. And I can't think of anything more important in business beyond sales then what is the image they want to convey to the public.

Is Search Marketing unique in this way; that it touches on Business Strategy often? I don't think so, but it is something clients don't necessarily expect from their SEM agency. So keep saying things like, 'but my opinions stem from the search point of view', and you will stay undercover as a business strategist.

Search Marketing Educational Opportunities

SES Latino - Miami - June 18 & 19

Summary: Hear the new and innovative approaches and learn the right tactics for the South American and US Hispanic markets. Listen to "success story" case studies and learn about best practices from SEM/SEO industry leaders and experts in the U.S. and Latin America.

My Session: Successful Site Architecture - Barbara Coll, WebMama.com Inc.
Learn to successfully architect your site for search engines and how specific page elements and design technologies may impact your ability to gain good organic listings. Covers topics such as directory and file structure, server-side includes (SSIs), 404 error trapping, java-script, robots.txt use, frames, secure area usage, and much more. Toward the end of the session, volunteers from the audience will have their sites examined to see how changes could be made to their site architecture and design to increase search engine traffic.
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Searchnomics - Santa Clara, CA - June 27, 2007

Summary: Searchnomics is where the leaders of the search industry meet to share cutting-edge knowledge, best practices, and trends in search engine marketing, web analytics, SEO and more.

My Session: Search Engine Marketing Tools - Barbara Coll, WebMama.com Inc.
A panel discussion on using tools for search engine marketing. More and more you see the offer of search engine marketing solutions for managing PPC buys. Those solutions are primarily a set of tools for keyword analysis, keyword expansion and bid management. This panel will cover three aspects of 'tools': automated systems, a hands-on service model and outsourcing. Come hear the panelists debate the relative merits of their chosen method of managing search engine marketing campaigns.

BtoB Magazine Puts WebMama.com into Search Engine Marketing Vendor List

Thank you to BtoB Magazine for listing us with 29 other Search Engine Marketing companies in their 2007 Interactive Marketing Guide. We specialize in B2B marketing so it makes sense for us to be listed with other large SEM companies that have B2B clients as we do.

With all the hype around brand-name companies spending money on video ads and ads on social networking sites, I found it very refreshing to read a few interviews with CMO-level executives from large B2B companies talk about their investment in search:

Jim Davis, CMO, SAS: Search is a strategic component of SAS' overall marketing and branding strategy. ... Over the next 12 months, as we focus on globalization and optimization of our search efforts, we'll be looking to maximize our investment in search.

Juanita James: CCO, Pitney Bowes: We'll increase our spending in this area by healthy, double digit percentages this year.

Thomas Haas, CMO, Siemens: Search works for us and we intend to consolidate, optimize, and expand our investments in search across general interest and btob search properties.

Jocelyne Attal: CMO, Avaya (Monster): SEM is critical to any online business and Monster is no exception. Search is the foundation of Monster's online advertising program and we do not expect to change in the near future.

Thanks to Carol Krol for the article 'Medium draws funds from other Channels' that shows the pie piece is still growing for search. {smile}

Different Search Marketing Tactics Require Different Success Metrics

The art of search engine marketing requires at least one spreadsheet addict. That addict creates reams & reams of data showing cost-per-click (CPC), click-through rate (CTR), Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA) and other minutia too numerous to mention here. We have spoiled the upper class of management by providing them with edible data that blows all other marketing campaign numbers out of the water.

But..there is only so much pure search inventory available. In order to expand lead generation campaigns we need to move into the next set of search engines' advertising offerings - contextual or content-based ads - specifically by Yahoo and Google (and MSN has just launched). It is still based on keyword groups, it is still CPC, and it is still text-based BUT it doesn't convert at the same rate as pure search. We have addicted our clients to the high returns of the 'real' search visitors and, after all, they say, it is all coming from the same agency and the same budget and the numbers are telling a different story. Oops!

So, education must ensue. Clients need to be trained that not all traffic from Google advertising #2 (ie AdSense) will convert to bottom line sales as Google advertising #1 (ie AdWords) does. A different success metric needs to be put in place. Best of luck to other agencies to get this one across. I haven't been able to retrain many of my clients.

WebMama.com's Search Engine Marketing Client from Hewlett-Packard to Speak at Ad-Tech

Daina Middleton, Global Interactive Director (Printing and Imaging), Hewlett-Packard Company, will be speaking on Paid Search Strategies at Ad-Tech - Thursday April 26th at 12:15. Daini is the strategic leader behind the aggressive search marketing tactics of the IPG division of Hewlett-Packard. While her focus at Ad-Tech is paid search, she is a believer in ensuring HP's visiblity on the web through all relevant (and profitable) means, including SEO. (See the Ad-Tech/MarketingSherpa article about Daina, SEM and the HP IPG group).

In 1999 I started working with Hewlett-Packard introducing them to this small company called Goto.com. We have been working with HP ever since.

SEMPO Canada is LIVE!

As a Canadian it always vexes me when Canada gets lumped in with the US. But Search Engine Marketing is well represented in Canada and the gang there noticed an opportunity to unlumb. SEMPO.ca has recently launched. Way to go, eh?

The STATE of Search Engine Marketing from SEMPO

Each year SEMPO conducts a survey of agencies, individuals and advertisers to trend and predict the future of the Search Engine Marketing industry. This survey, which now has 3 years of data under its belt, has 4 goals, to:

§1. Understand the size of the industry in order to help promote its growth

§2. Understand where marketer spending is going, among different recipients (search engine media companies, SEM agencies, in-house) and towards what types of SEM programs (paid placement, paid inclusion, organic SEO, SEM technology)

§3. Identify key industry trends

§4. Identify key industry issues SEMPO should address

These is the first of many blog posts on the significance of the data gleamed from the SEMPO survey results. For those that want view the highlights I have posted the executive summary in PowerPoint format and in Word. Feel free to view and share as long as you credit SEMPO.

First Highlight - Spending on Search Engine Marketing (Paid, organic and inclusion) increased 62% from 2005 to 2006. If you aren't maxing out your spend on SEM what are you doing? Everyone else seems to be figuring it out.

Second Highlight - Why is SEM a big part of advertisers' and agencies' strategic marketing plans? A majority say for BRANDING! I have long promoted search marketing for brand purposes. I say 'if you want to own the category, then you better own the top search results'. Do you want to be the #1 player in the used cars market? Then you better be above the fold in the paid and organic results on Page 1 of all 3 search engines.

"Branding and direct sales are the top objectives of paid placement programs. One shift from previous years is that direct sales is now as compelling an objective for SEM spending as brand awareness. Respondents could give multiple responses to their spending motivation and in 2006, direct sales was the top choice, at 58 percent, followed by brand awareness as the next most prevalent objective, at 57 percent."

I would like to take this moment in blog time to congratulate the SEMPO Board and Members on continuing the strong programs and expanding into new areas. In December 2002, I helped found the SEMPO industry association along with a few others who saw the need for raising SEM to the next level through education, industry reporting and communication amongst the members of our industry community. We made the decision to 'do' SEMPO in March 2003. The organization has fulfilled and continues to fulfill many of the goals set out in the early days like broad education - see SEMPO Institute. Well done gang! All my best to the new Board of Directors who will be announced shortly.

Godmother of Search?

Yesterday, Andy Beal on his Marketing Pilgrim website offers his opinion on who should be named “Godfather of Search” in response to a survey Jeremy Shoemaker was doing.

But it got him thinking: “Who is the Godmother of Search?” In the early days half of the speakers and industry experts were women. It is an interesting development that over the years more of the speakers are men but there are still a large number of women running the successful search marketing companies out there. [Just a few examples: me, Ellen Siminoff, Lisa Wehr, Dana Todd, Christine Churchill, Laura Thieme, Cheryl Pingel and Misty Locke)

Take the poll on his site and vote for the most powerful woman in search. You can choose from the list he compiled or put in your own. And thank you Andy for putting me on the list.

I saw two things in 2006 that really made me smile/cry. One was a headline from the Search Engine Watch Blog - "2006: The Year Search Grew Up" and second the announcement from SEMPO of the SEMPO Institute. [The Institute was created to help educate people on SEM - bringing many people into the fold in a uniform and consistent way.]

Both showed the moving of my dream to reality of what Search Marketing could be and how SEMPO could help make it happen. When a few of us dreamed up the idea of a non-profit industry association for Search Marketers we had an official sounding mission statement about spreading the word about search - that was in December 2002 (SEMPO officially launched in August 2003). Privately I had another way of describing why I got involved (and ran the organization for 2 years) - to help mature our industry - to get Search Marketing to GROW up.

Thanks Elisabeth and Chris Winfield for giving me some confirmation that we have come from being babies crawling on the floor to tweens. We have much more growing to do to become teenagers. More about that in future posts.

WebMama.com awarded 13th rank in the January 2007 list of Organic Optimization Providers.

For over 9 years we have been working with top brand companies to help increase their visibilty in search engine results, in a way that helps their brand and their bottom line. As SEO Agency of Record for Hewlett-Packard, WebEx, VMware and Verisign, and a significant contributor to the sales funnel for Salesforce, HomeGain, eLance, Imperva, and Actuate, we have broad experience in paid and organic search. We are please to be recognized as one of the leaders in the pack of 1000's now in the business.

In evaluating each applicant, Topseos.com considers the following key factors:

1. What are the applicant firm's competitive advantages?

2. How are the applicant's services and pricing levels superior to the competition?

3. What is the availability of customer and technical support?

4. What is the average response time and time-to-resolution for client problems?

5. What SLA does the applicant provide?

6. What other attributes/innovations does the applicant provide to set it apart from the competition?

7. What is the average rating for the firm in terms of customer service?

8. What is the average rating for the firm in terms of efficiency?

9. What is the average rating for the firm in terms of overall performance?

The complete list of winners can be found at: http://www.topseos.com/option,com_rank/task,viewRank30/cat_id,1/

WebGuild Presentation entitled Search Engine Marketing (podcast)- an informal few hours with myself, Massimo Burgio and Jessie Stricchiola presenting to the WebGuild members in December 2006.

Every year SEMPO (www.sempo.org) takes a look at the state of search engine marketing. The results of this survey are used to help not only report on the issues, trends and elements of search marketing, but also to help point the organization in the right place for its members and sponsors. SEMPO's survey results are quoted in multiple publications throughout the year in articles that reference click fraud, price-per-click, search advertising spending levels, etc. This provides visibility for our work and the SEM industry. All part of the original goal of SEMPO when I helped found the organization in early 2003 - educate the world of advertisers and agencies on the value of SEM.

All advertisers and agencies and consultants are encouraged to take the survey - one representative from each company. http://www.sempo.org/learning_center/research/sempo_research/sempo_2006_state

20 minutes time and you will be contributing 'real' data to an important study.