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.

If you liked this post, consider bookmarking it at Delicious for future reference, or vote on it at StumbleUpon by clicking on the respective link below.

How to be an SEO Rock Star - by Lidija Davis

Lidija Davis (WebMama Web Strategist) equates Rock Stardom in the Search Visibility world with keeping up in the social media world. Really an amazingly clear look at what should now be basics in SEO.

How to be an SEO Rock Star
By: Lidija Davis
June 2008
Visibility Magazine

BIO:

Lidija Davis is the Web Strategist for WebMama.com Inc. WebMama.com Inc. is Silicon Valley's premier search engine marketing company providing SEO and SEM services to corporations around the world. Lidija is also the Silicon Valley Correspondent for Tech Talk Radio Australia and runs her own blog at http://blog-well.com

Lidija's First Page Digg and Technorati Information Articles Include:
100+ Useful Web Resources for Small Business and Non Profits
100+ Resources for Web Developers

Edicts of Search Engine Marketing - WebMama Learnings

There are some things that are always constant in the world of search engine optimization and marketing. My team and I remind ourselves of these edicts when we are approached by a potential client. If the potential client does not accept these truths, we don't work with them.

Business Expectations:

1. Search Engines change their algorithms all the time.
2. A business CANNOT survive by relying solely on Google to rank them highest in organic results (see #1).
3. It is about Conversion not ranking (see #2).

SEO Tactics:

4. The fundamentals of SEO never change, they just adapt to new media.
5. Never leave it up to a search engine to decide what is important on your site, tell them through internal linking, tags and content.
6. Do NOT expect anything to happen overnight even if you use sitemaps.

Paid Search Tactics:

7. If you need to own a category then bid higher (#3 may need to be ignored).
8. Control your affiliates with changes to their written contracts, not just threats.
9. Automated bid management systems are not the best way to manage #7.

A final thought, encourage your clients to educate themselves on the world of search marketing through courses, respected blogs and conferences, not forums.

Moving your Site to a New Domain Name - Scary!!

The Google Central Webmaster blog has posted "Best practices When Moving Your Site"; and it confirms everything my team and I have been preaching for years and adds some additional good stuff. A summary in my own words:

- Use a 301 redirect on a file by file or directory by directory basis (this is really hard)
- Check to see if the new pages are in the index and the old pages are being taken out
- Don't change too much at once. Move the entire site, let it settle and then throw up a redesign or vice versa
- Watch to make sure pages aren't ending up in 404s unless absolutely unavoidable
- Make sure all internal links are pointing to the new domain
- Try (this is really, really hard) to get external links pointed to the new domain
- Keep the old site up and running for a while (Google suggests 180 days). [I would never give up control but I might take it offline]
- Submit a sitemap to all engines that accept the standard

They suggest using Google Webmaster Tools on both domains to help track 404s and to ensure that 301s are working. Some great questions and comments follow the posting.

Thanks for the validation and the great information Google.

The Definitive List of Resources for Keyword Analysis

Determining what keywords to use for optimizing a website is the first step in the SEO process isn’t easy. Here the WebMama team gives you our list of sources for information for this critical stage in all Search Engine Marketing projects. Hope they help make you more successful.

Tools

1. WordTracker [info , free trial]
2. Google AdWords [tool – no account required]
3. Google Trends [tool – relative volume analysis]
4. MSN Keyword Focus [tool - volume analysis]
5. MSN Keyword Group Detection [tool – no account required]
6. Keyword Discovery [info – free trial]
7. Thesaurus
8. Overture [tool – times out regularly]
9. Answers.com

Informational Online Sources

Inside the Client Properties

10. Corporate Blogs
11. Blog Tags
12. Press Releases
13. Current website content
14. Marketing creatives for banners, etc
15. Email campaign content
16. Personas developed for the site

Outside the Client Properties

17. Industry forums
18. Product/Service reviews (and comments)
19. Online magazines
20. Competition’s sites and marketing campaigns
21. Relevant social media group discussions

Non-Online Sources

22. TV ads
23. Radio copy
24. Print ads
25. Focus groups “what would you put in a search box to find our products and/or services”
26. Magazines/newspapers
27. Video advertising
28. Other forms of marketing, especially those of competitors
29. Sales training materials

Data Sources

30. Paid search statistics from all campaigns
31. Organic traffic statistics
32. Internal site search

People in the Company

33. Executives
34. Product Managers
35. Web Developers
36. Web Producers
37. User Interface Designers
38. Customer Experience team
39. Direct Sales
40. Inside Sales
41. Call Center
42. Customer Service
43. Content writers
44. Marketing brand managers
45. ‘whomever hired us’

Use your source information, filter it through the VCR edict that all keywords need to be a balance of Volume, Conversion and Relevancy, and the result will be the right keywords for optimizing your website and increasing visibility and converting traffic to your website.

This list is available in a Word document called KeywordResourceList.doc should you want to spread the word.

Google Filling in Forms - security risks & marketing disaster

Seriously this is scary. Matt Cutts talked about Google filling in forms to get at more data. From an SEO point of view it is unnecessary - if the site owner wants stuff indexed they should make it available. WebMama's clients are all directed this way.

From all other points of view I see this as a real problem.

1. Marketing uses forms all the time to capture lead information. And they measure it. Let’s say Google tries to ‘fill out’ the form and get to the inside information once a day for a month. That is 30 hits on the form that were completed but did not convert. Kind of messes with the data.

2. No matter what they say would you, as a security/risk manager, be satisfied that Google isn’t going to try and ‘guess’ the login or password just because the button or form element has something familiar on it like ‘password’. A lot of personal information (aka healthcare) and business information (aka intranet access) lie behind forms.

3. What if the form is about gathering demographic information. I am not sure that the demographics of a search engine or the demographics of some bot with keywords that are randomly chosen is information an advertiser is trying to capture.

“So now we get GoogleBot instead of Donald Duck as the false name on our forms.”

Google Organic Search - Second Search Based On Previous Query

This is important. Danny Sullivan reports from Austrailia today:

Previous Query

Last year, we covered (and here) how Google was changing the ads it displayed based on the previous query someone performed. For example, search for [spain] then do a new search for [travel], and you may notice how the ads will be targeted around Spanish travel (see also Google's help page on this).

Google's never given this feature a formal name, but Marissa said internally the company calls it "Previous Query," the first time to my knowledge that we've had some type of formal name put to it. Learn the name well, because Previous Query refinement is now coming to unpaid or "organic" search results, she said.

For example, if someone were to search for [spain] and then [travel] after that, BOTH the ads and the organic results will be altered to take the previous query into account. To some degree, it will be as if the second query was for [spain travel].

This is a big deal. Big deal. It means that the results for many "single word" queries, which can be hard for sites to rank for when billions of listings come back, will become queries involving two or more words -- and much more specific ones.

When's it happening? "Soon." Indeed, it's already been happening for several weeks for some people randomly selected. Who will get it, when live? Everyone that accepts a cookie. IE, it's not personalized search thing that only happens if you're logged in.

How could a user opt-out. Heh. I didn't get to asking that, sorry. But I imagine any search where the + symbol is used before a word or words will override Previous Query.

Google Sitelinks - Observations and Recommendations

Ellen Ferlazzo, WebMama.com Content Optimization Specialist, on Google Sitelinks:

Barb recently asked me to take another look at sitelinks, those links on Google search results below your main entry. Sitelinks are now appearing in the SERPs for smaller sites as well as larger ones.

How do you get sitelinks to show up?

You seem most likely to get sitelinks when users search for your branded term and your home page ranks #1 for that term. But while branded terms are more common, I know some sites that have sitelinks on non-branded terms. This seems to occur most often when the home page rather than an internal page is ranked #1 for that non-branded term. But I have also seen internal pages that are getting sitelinks so it’s not a hard and fast rule. I suspect the algorithms are being tweaked and tested.

As to getting sitelinks, I think the basics are still the key. Make sure you have:

• Clear navigation for the user
• Appropriate title tags, H1s, etc.
• Internal linking on or near key terms pointing to your important pages

Which pages show up in the sitelinks?

Google says the selection is totally automated. Some sitelinks pages are popular pages but others are not. They do not have to be linked to directly from the home page but all the ones I have seen are linked to quite often. Speculation is that Google is analyzing user behavior as well as site navigation to select these. One of my clients has two different sitelinks with slightly different text going to slightly different pages. I suspect one will disappear soon as it doesn’t seem very useful. Once Google has selected sitelinks for you, you can log into your Google Webmaster Tools account and block a particular page from being used as a sitelink but you do not get say in what ones should be included; you can’t even make suggestions along that line.

What text is used in the sitelinks?

Matt Cutts said Google is varying the text used in sitelinks, sometimes a bit from the page title and other times from the link text, which is certainly what I’m seeing today. For one of my clients, they’re picking up the text near a link placed underneath the Flash for those who have Flash disabled. One of their other text links exists nowhere on the home page, but it is a common call to action in one section of the site. Again though, Google is not using the actual linked text here. At one point they were picking up part of a title tag but they’ve changed that to be just part of the link text at this point.

Something else new: a new search button below sitelinks

Several of my client sites now have a search field and customized button “Search theirsite.com”) underneath their sitelinks. On one of them, Google reduced the number of sitelinks from 8 to 6. The other stayed at 8. Experimentation is definitely the name of the game at this point. [note from Barb – this box is a bad things for our clients. Searchers use the box thinking they will be sent to results inside the site, but no, they are sent to another Google page with more ads. Bad user experience and if you ask nicely, Google is taking it down.]

More blogs on sitelinks

Matt Cutts video from Nov 2007
Vanessa Fox from Nov 2007
SeoPedia FAQ from March 2008
blah,blah technology from Feb 2008

More about the Google Patent that relates to sitelinks:

From SEO By the Sea:
Google filed a patent talking about how they "might" use these. Best guesses are that Google is accessing:

* how often the page is accessed
* how long people stay on the page
* the likelihood of making a purchase there

The patent application suggests they're using toolbar-gathered info as well as general SEO practices. The patent also suggests they might eventually present personalized sitelinks based on your past behavior but this does not seem to be happening now.

How links are generated

http://searchengineland.com/070212-093435.php suggests it's mainly based on internal link structure and the popularity of internal pages.
http://www.threadwatch.org/node/8704 suggests actionable web pages get higher value (downloads, contact us, buy.) I suspect Google is trying to provide a mix of information pages and action pages.

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.

100+ Useful Web Resources for Small Business

My crazy publicist, Lid Davis, has published the most amazing list of resources for small businesses; kind of a crash course on Internet Marketing and Fresh Content. This list is a must 'follow' for anyone with a small business that has an online presence and wants more visibility, traffic and a better reputation. Lid - you are definitely THE consultant for businesses no matter what their size. Thank you!

The list can be found at Lid's Blog -

100+ Useful Web Resources for Small Business and Non Profits

It's 2008 already! Fix your copyright tag!

Pet Peeve: Companies that have not updated the copyright tag on their websites. Drives me crazy. Not to mention that it makes your site look out of date and neglected :(

Examples of companies that need to change the 7 (or even, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) to an 8.

Coke, Longs Drugstores, Staples, Chrysler

[interesting to note that many of these sites are not search engine friendly]

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

What is the Second SEO Question?

When engaging with a new client that has contracted you for search engine marketing services, there are important questions to be asked right away. These questions are not necessarily about technology or products, or structure of websites. They certainly aren't about domain management, file naming, redirects, tools, pagerank (oh man don't get me started), content, linking, or even keywords at this point.

The first SEO question I proposed in a previous blog entry was 'What would the first page of search results look like if you could dictate them to Google?' This pulled information out of the client about their pain points and attempted to get them to talk about expectations no matter how much you are going to tell them rankings don't count in direct marketing later in the project process. [Notice I didn't ask about keywords again as this is a great opportunity to see what words they pick without being prompted.]

The second SEO question should be something like this: 'What do you want a searcher to do when they visit your website'. Now this may seem like an obvious question but is amazing how few can answer this succinctly, and this is critical for any search marketer to know. Is it lead gen, is it sales, is it getting them to tell their friends, is it to get them to review and comment? Answers to these questions lead to other questions about what are the success metrics for the SEO project, how do you measure ROI from search visitors (or do you measure), is this about direct marketing or awareness/brand marketing?

Stay tuned for my thoughts on the third question that should be asked.

Page Not Found (error 404): Rules of Engagement

Why aren't more people paying attention to 404s? This is a hot button of mine — not only is the fix for this cheap and easy; the cost of not doing it is high.

Open a new browser window right now and enter your domain name or that of your client's. Wait - don't hit return/enter yet, instead, add garbage characters at the end like http://www.webmama.com/errr. This simulates a visitor following a search result that points to an non-existant page. Now hit enter. What do you see? Do you see a beautiful page telling you that this URL is no longer a part of the site you wanted to see, and offers you other pointers to interesting pages on the site that are available with a touch of the finger? Or, do you see the dreaded (and ugly) ERROR 404 page served up by the browser?

While search engines catch dead pages and stop included them in their index, it takes time, sometimes up to 3 months. Why drive traffic to your site just to baffle and irritate visitors when they try to visit? There is really no excuse for an irritating and useless page when you can easily make sure that all pages that have EVER been indexed by a search engine — current or obsolete — point to a valid page on your website. All you need do is to TRAP the "Error 404s" and bring up your own tailor-made error page kindly guiding your visitors, and potential profits, right into your website. Of course, redirecting old pages to new ones is the best course of action but no one can do that consistently or completely for large sites. Or you can redirect to the home page but that doesn't return the right code to the search engines so I don't recommend it.

The Components of a Perfect Error 404 Page

While I am on my soap-box preaching about creating a custom-designed Error 404 page for your website, I think it only fair to list the components of a good error 404 page. Each component is geared toward letting a customer know where they are and helping them get to where they want to be. So, the components are:

• high-lighted links to popular pages on your Web site
• your standard navigation bar
• your look, feel & branding of the company/site
• a search box in case your links aren't what they want
  
• a friendly tone, with plain, polite language
• something that helps sell your products/services

Consider presenting them with specials, teasers or free samples/downloads. Weigh the advantages and disadvantages carefully. If they reached your error page, they wanted something from you and they are a captive audience. On the other hand, they were trying to get somewhere and are probably anxious to get there. Don’t hold them up, unless you are sure they’ll thank you for it.

Good Examples:

WebEx (WebMama client), VMware (WebMama client), BabyCenter , Hewlett-Packard (WebMama client), SpaFinder (sends visitors to an error page that doesn't look like one - certainly a valid tactic)

Bad Examples:

Amazon , WebMD (redirects to home page), Cingular (redirects to ATT Wireless which is inexcusable in its appearance - shame on them), NY Times (takes you into the member center- confusing), Zazzle (just weird)

In the WebMama Journal in November 2001 I pointed out a few bad 404 pages; believe it or not, the are still bad today. [Disclaimer: when visiting the old WebMama Journals the content may still be relevant but they have not been updated to reflect the SEM stragies and tactics of today or checked for broken links.]

Exxon, Macy's (even has an old trademark date), Nasdaq (defaults to browser error page - STILL!)

Tell me what error pages you like (and dislike).

What is the First SEO Question?

So, you are starting with a new client. What is the first question you should ask the 'team' who hired you? It would be easiest if I could say to them - 'and why did you want to hire an SEO company?' - to get directly to the root of their needs but that may sound just plain stupid. So how about:

What would the first page of search results look like if you could dictate them to Google?

Notice I didn't mention keywords, sales, products or technology. I ask the question and sit back and see what they have to say. All of the other information can be gathered at a later date or as follow-on questions. This start-off question is especially important when we are being hired by a division of a company that has multiple websites that could be considered competition for each other. So try this one next time and let me know how it goes.

Fancy URL Manipulations by the Travel Companies

How many of you have seen the 'magical changing URL' tactic? Watch this:

Classic Search Engine Optimized URL on TripAdvisor.
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Flights-g60713-San_Francisco_California-Cheap_Discount_Airfares.html

Now delete some of the words in the URL, thus:
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Flights-g60713-.html
On this one they use a permanent 301 redirect so it never gets indexed.

And you get the same page. The URL is refreshed to be the original with all the keywords. A permanent 301 redirect is used so it never gets indexed. The display URL is being driven by the combination of 'flights' and the number sequence 'g60713' (which must be the database entry for San Francisco Flights). The rest of the keywords are for search engines.

Clever. TripAdvisor San Francisco flights' page is #1 on Google for:
cheap flights to san francisco
san francisco flights
and a ton of others.

And I said the filename mattered and many disagreed with me. Of course that was back in 2001. I bet they have changed their minds now.

Do Web Design Firms Really Know about SEO?

So SEO isn't sexy. We know that. Should that stop web marketing companies from paying attention to it. NO! But I recently heard a comment I had to disagree with and I decided to blog about my response. So the comment was about Web Design Firms and developing sites that are search friendly. "Anyone worth anything in the web design space should know the SEO part". Oh I wish it were so. It should be so. There is enough research and educational material to tell web site developers that eliminating barriers to search engines is critical. But it isn't getting across. Flash is sexy. Entry pages where you have to pick your country is efficient. Minimal content on a page is clean looking. Sure, but search drives sales.

Usually optimization tactics need to be retrofitted into an already designed site. Or, when an SEO expert is brought in, a site redesign is initiated. Usually it ends up as a 4 way battle between the search expert, the designers, the developers and the CEO. SEO isn't about adding anything that the visitor doesn't want to see anyways. It is about giving search engines what they crave - content - in a format that is appealing and visible to both them and visitors.

An example of design gone wrong - Focus4. Focus4 just spent about $50+ to reach me through direct mail. And yet, their web site is unsearchable from the home page. Their result in Google for their own domain name is embarrassing. I know the graphic designers were doing their best to provide a website that reflected the company product line, but they forgot two things: search engines don't like flash and visitors don't like flash. Sigh....

Search Engine Optimization and Marketing Tools Presentations

You will find the following two presentations on my website:

SES Latino - Successful Site Architecture (ppt) - my standard pitch on making your website search friendly by adhering to some basic development and design guidelines that DON'T change. In this version of the talk, I address the method of sending all URLs to the search engines for review (it DOES NOT guarantee indexing in the databases, just crawling). Check it out to learn more about Sitemaps for Google and Yahoo. (zip version)

Searchnomics - Search Engine Marketing Tools - I address search marketing tools for paid search and optimization. My twist on this subject is the belief that using automated tools is NOT a good idea for paid search marketing; that it hinders competitive and messaging advertising through search. (zip version)

It is one of my joys in life to present in front of an audience. (For those that know me this will not come as a great surprise). And sometimes I do it for the pure pleasure of seeing people in the audience smile in agreement when I tell a story of the pain of SEO.

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.