SEOToolSet

July 30, 2008

SEO Training: What's Your Favorite Flavor?

Next week's episode of SEM Synergy will feature a segment on search engine optimization training. Since Virginia and Susan got to square off and debate the topic on the radio show, I thought I'd give you a preview here on the blog. Mostly because I think SEO training is a pretty important topic, and also because I don't like being left out of conversations. [That's the understatement of the century. --Susan]

I think the importance of white hat SEO training is becoming really clear. As the industry evolves, we're starting to see a lot of white hat/black hat, "is X technically spamming?" type conversations popping up in blogs, forums and conferences. And if you don't know what's what, it's hard to make sense of it all and to know which tactics are approved and which you should stay away from. While blogs and forums can be a great place for information, these resources don't become truly impactful until you have a solid SEO foundation to pull from.

So what are some of the different outlets for search engine optimization training?

Online Training: Let's be honest, most of the established SEO training courses are happening on either the West Coast or the East Coast. That's great if you live there, but not too great if you're landlocked or outside the United States. Online training gives search marketers a relatively inexpensive and flexible way to brush up on their SEO knowledge, without incurring travel costs. Students can go at their own pace and are often given downloadable materials that they can reuse, either as a refresher or to help train new people as they come in.
One of the best examples of a great online SEO Training course is the one offered by SEMPO. They offer both basic and advanced training to help search marketers of all knowledge levels.

Seminar Training: I think seminar training is one of the best ways to learn about search engine optimization because it allows you to take notes, do homework, interact with an instructor and put your knowledge to use while still being supervised. You get a great wealth of knowledge poured into your brain and you get to ask questions on the topics you feel running off the sides. Seminar training is especially effective when it comes with an opportunity to try out the various techniques and tools being taught in the class. The down-side to seminar training is that you have to listen to everyone else's questions and it often requires travel.

Bruce Clay's SEO training course is a good example of seminar training. You come and learn with us, attend a lab where you can put your newly earned smarts to use, and then you back home and work your magic on your own site. If you prefer, we also offer on-site training for companies looking to train 20 or more employees.

On-Site Training: If you can afford it, onsite SEO training is the most effective (and the most pricey) way to learn search engine optimization because you can teach your entire team in one sitting. If you have 20 SEOs, you don't have to pay travel expenses on all 20 of them. Or, if you want to really be ahead of the game, you can pull together your IT people with your marketing people with your vice presidents and get everyone involved. This is a great way to teach those executives about the importance of SEO and increase your chances at getting them to sign off on projects.

Conferences: Conferences offer attendees to learn from experts while also establishing valuable connections that may assist them in the future. Larger conferences allow you to focus in broader topics, while the niche shows will help break down highlighted verticals.

SES offers a stellar broad industry look, while SMX has really shown itself to be the conference of choice to master the verticals. Both provide ample networking opportunities and can introduce attendees to important people in the space.

Often the best way to learn about search engine optimization is through a combination of hands on experience and one or two of the methods listed above. If you're looking for additional info, check out Virginia's article on Search Engine Optimization Training Opportunities or tune into SEM Synergy next Wednesday at 12pm PST to hear Susan and Virginia debate the topic.

Just a reminder to our East Coast friends, if you've been eyeing Bruce Clay's SEO training class but were concerned about making the trek to the West Coast, you can catch our SEO training class in New York following SMX East. Details should be up on the SMX site shortly.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 07/30/08 at 5:13 PM | Comments (2)

May 29, 2008

Be Part of the Search Engine Optimization Process

Jessica Bowman had a fantastic article over at Search Engine Land this morning entitled Why You Need to Know SEO Basics, Even If You Outsource. If you don't agree that it's important for your in-house SEO person to take the time to learn the fundamentals of search engine optimization, then you really must read that article. Actually, maybe read it twice. And then snuggle with it later.

Even if you outsource your search engine optimization campaigns to someone else, you're still responsible for knowing the basics. You're the one who is ultimately responsible for the success of your site. Just because you're not doing the work, doesn't mean you shouldn't be aware of what's going on, even if it's solely for your own protection.

There are quite a few reasons why it's important to be an educated SEO client. Here are the ones that instantly spring to mind:

You learn what's right for YOUR site: As Jessica notes in her article, every site is different. A tactic that may be a good idea for one site may not work on another. As recent events have showed, if you're running a respected news site, than maybe creating outlandish link bait isn't such a good idea. However, it may be a totally viable and effective tactic for a different environment. By educating yourself about what search engine optimization is, what the engines reward, and how sites are ranked, it allows you to make yourself part of the process so that you can make more informed decisions about what SEO paths your site will take.

Protect yourself from bad SEOs: As we're all too often reminded, there are enough unscrupulous and misinformed SEOs out there that not knowing your stuff can be dangerous. You need to educate yourself so that you're able to smell out when someone isn't being honest with you or if you're being sold something that could potentially harm your site. If people don't want to accept standards for search engine optimization, that's fine, but you still don't want to go into the process blind.

Changing Vendors: You may be in the honeymoon phase with your optimization vendor right now, but there may come a time when you'll need to switch. Maybe client/vendor satisfaction will drop, you'll need something they don't offer, or it's just time to move on. Either way, the more you know about what's happening in your campaign, the faster you can get your new vendor up to speed and start seeing real improvements. You'll also want to know what your old SEO did so that you can compare it to the new vendor to make sure everyone has similar methodologies, beliefs and colored hats. ;)

Increase Your Company's Vocabulary: The more SEO knowledge you have, the more knowledge you'll be able to share in-house. I can't stress how important it is to spread knowledge transfer as a way of getting everyone on the same team. A Vice President who doesn't know what search engine optimization is won't put room in the budget for it. The IT person who's not on your side isn't going to allow you to make the necessary tweaks that you need. Your marketing team isn't going to run efficiently, your content writers won't write with the users and search engines in mind. Having an educated staff and getting everyone speaking the same language is critical to your site's success.

Save You Money: Chances are, you have a certain number of consulting hours allotted in your contract. Those hours are precious and you want to save them for the hard stuff. Don't waste them on fundamental SEO tactics. Hold on to them for when you really need them.

An educated client is better client. In her post, Jessica outlines a number of ways that site owners can educate themselves on search engine optimization. I'd recommend you take a look.

At Bruce Clay, we're big supporters of knowledge transfer. It's the only way to get the whole team involved and invested in a project. We require our clients to attend our SEO training program in order to get them involved from the very beginning. You want to work the same way with your SEO vendor, whoever they may be.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 05/29/08 at 1:52 PM | Comments (3)

March 11, 2008

SEO Headlines

You take a day off due to sickness and suddenly when you get back you’re buried in three weeks worth of work. How did that happen? Here are the SEO headlines you need to know to not look like a n00b at the water cooler.

Google Officially Takes Hold of DoubleClick

This is either good (if you’re Google) or scary (if you’re not), but Eric Schmidt has chimed in on the Official Google Blog to let us know that Google has officially completed their acquisition of DoubleClick after shelling out $3.1 billion for the company last April. Now that the European Commission has given Google its blessing to go ahead with the merger (and without any conditions!), Google is one step closer with its plan for world domination.

I kid. Sort of.

Now that integration is on its way, Eric says there may be a “reduction in headcount” as Google tries to figure out where overlap exists between its own and DoubleClick employees. Not surprisingly, Eric feels that the DoubleClick merger gives them the leading display advertising platform, “enabling [them] to rapidly bring advances to the market in technology and infrastructure” to improve “the effectiveness, measurability and performance of digital media for publishers, advertisers and agencies”. Well, duh. This is why Yahoo and Microsoft were so up in arms about it in the first place – because it basically locks everyone else out of the game and allows Google to take over the one area of online advertising they hadn’t yet conquered. Too bad the EU didn’t buy their complaints.

What’s The Best Site Traffic? Direct URL Visits

An Engine Ready study analyzed 18.7 millions visits to 500 client Web sites over two years and found that the highest converting and most valuable source of traffic comes from a user who actually types a URL directly into their Web address box. Comparing organic search to paid, the study found that paid listings convert 17 percent more often than visitors coming from the organic side.

The moral of the story here is that your ROI ultimately rests on your ability to brand your company and get users associating your company with your most important keywords. Seems obvious, no?

We really didn’t need a study to tell us that a visitor who is familiar enough with your Web site to type its URL directly into their browser is more likely to convert than someone who is simply finding you through the search results. I’d also suggest that perhaps the reason said user has established trust in your brand is because of those SEO and PPC campaigns you’re running. Seems to me, Internet marketing is about building that oh-so-important brand image that is going to increase your conversion rate over the long term. But again, we’ve known this forever.

Bruce Clay UK SEO Training Rescheduled

Remember how last week I gave you the dates for UK SEO training? Yes, well they’ve now been rescheduled and it’s not my fault. However, I now have the new dates and these have been confirmed, locked in and bolted down so they can’t change. Get your pen.

Bruce Clay’s UK SEO Training will take place 9-11 September 2008 in London. Got it? Good. Mark those dates on your calendars and start booking travel arrangements if you need them. These things have a way of selling out pretty fast.

Fun Finds

Search Engine Roundtable posted their session schedule for next week’s SES New York show. Our schedule should be up tomorrow (assuming Susan comes to work again), so keep an eye out.

Matt Cutts chimes in on the impact of search on the lodging industry and Web 2.0. That’s “lodging” like hotels and not “logging” like men who climb up trees for fast times. I was confused for a moment there.

Huomah.com gives us Alls fair in love and SEO. Can I get an amen and for people to stop complaining now? Sweet!

Posted by Lisa Barone on 03/11/08 at 4:46 PM | Comments (2)

February 12, 2008

6 Reasons Why Your Awesome Site Isn’t Indexed

One of the first things we do when a potential client approaches us with their tales of search engine ranking woe is to see how many pages they have indexed in the search engine. Let’s face it; if the search engines aren’t even indexing your site, rankings are the least of your concerns.

Typically, when we say “search engine”, we’re most concerned with Google, and a really easy way to see how big Google thinks you are is to do a quick site: query. This will give you a list of all the pages Google has indexed on your site and will clue you in to your indexing ratio (the number of pages Google has indexed in relation to the number of pages you actually have). Often when we do this test with new clients we’ll find that Google isn’t indexing their site at all due to some common search engine optimization mistakes.

Here are some of our favorites:

You’ve disallowed the spiders in your robots.txt: This will always be my most favorite reason for why sites are not indexed simply because it’s a classic search engine optimization mistake. If you’ve set your robots.txt to disallow the search engines from entering your site, you can’t complain when they follow your command. Go check out your robots.txt file and make sure you’re allowing the spiders into your site. If you’re finding that your site has 0 pages indexed, do yourself a favor and go check out that robots.txt file. If it looks like the one below, you have a problem:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Your server is too slow: Google’s not going to directly penalize you for running on the slowest server ever, but it may occur indirectly. If Googlebot notices that your site is having a hard time keeping up with their request for information, they’re going to hand it a cookie (the chocolate chip kind) and some juice and let it rest while they go spend time with someone else. This means they’re not going to get through your entire site before they stop crawling pages, which in turn means fewer pages for you in the index. You can’t fault Google. They don’t want to be responsible for crashing your site. So instead, they’ll just go on their merry Google way, leaving your site still standing but not fully spidered. They’ll pick up the rest of your subject’s information over at your competitors.

They think you’re a spammer: If Google has decided that you’re engaging in some bad behavior and are trying to deceive them or their users, they’re not going to index your Web site. And if you’re spamming and spending your days getting some color on that white hat of yours, you’re probably aware of what you’re doing. So stop it. Fix up your site and submit a reinclusion request to Google. They’ll take a look and if they decide you’ve pulled a Todd Friesen they’ll let you back into the index and start indexing your site again.

There’s another side to this. If you’re having trouble getting the domain you just bought 3 months ago to rank, it could be that you’re feeling the wrath of someone else’s penalty. Take a spin through the Wayback Machine and discover what your site looked like before you took control over it. If it was touting the non-friendly variety of PPC, you may be in for a hard time.

Bad Navigation: Is your navigation designed in all Flash? Does it consist of 90 percent broken links? Yeah? Well, then the spiders probably aren’t going to be able to access it, let alone index it. Way to go, genius.

Spider Traps Galore: Spider traps come in many different flavors and varieties. It could be that your JavaScript is taking up the first 2,000 lines of code, that you require cookies or some other user dependant action for entrance, that you’re sporting some seriously crazy dynamic URLs, that your home page is redirecting 7 times before finally hitting something, etc. All of these things are huge roadblocks for a hungry spider trying to get to your content. Remove them and give the search engines easy access. Otherwise, start putting your dollars back into advertising in your Sunday circular again because that Web site isn’t going to do you a hell of a lot of good.

Site's down/Too many 500 errors: If the search engines keep trying to visit your site to no avail, eventually they may stop trying. They don’t want to index a site that isn’t going to load when users trying to access it. Returning these sites makes Google look like Yahoo’s confused cousin. Make sure your Web site is free of hosting issues and sits on a fast server. If you want to run a quick diagnostic on your site, I’d recommend the Check Server tool located on our free SEO tools page. We have lots of great stuff on that page, but the Check Server will help you identify most of the indexing obstacles your site may be facing.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 02/12/08 at 4:31 PM | Comments (3)

February 7, 2008

Charity Contest, Microsoft’s SEO Program & More PageRank Talk

Hi. No, I haven’t vanished. I’ve just been in SEO training for the past two days. I’m wicked smart now. Here’s what’s been happening while you were missing me and I was hoarding training’s chocolate chip cookies.

Countdown: 4 Days Left!

As our totally sexy SEO Contest countdown in the blog sidebar has already alerted you, there are just four days left for you to get in your site submissions for our SEO Charity contest, the only contest that will send you to SES NY and through our SEOToolSet and Advanced Certification Course for free. For free!

If you want to get in on the fun, we’ll need you to pair up a nonprofit and tell us in 1,000 words why that site would benefit from an organic search engine optimization campaign and what you would to fix the site. Your submissions must be in my inbox no later than end of day Monday, February 11th. The winner will be revealed on the 15th. Get crackin’, kids, time is a wastin’!

Microsoft + SEOmoz = BFF4Eva?

As I mentioned, I was bunkered down in SEO training for the past two days. Imagine my surprise when I headed back into the office stumbled across this post by Dave Harry entitled: Microsoft and Rand Team up to Squash the SEO Industry. In it, Dave mentions that Microsoft has started offering SEO services. Okay, another engine offering search engine optimization services is creepy; however, what really made the little hairs on my arms stand up is when I got to the part about how if you sign up for Microsoft’s search engine optimization services you also get a free 3 month SEOmoz membership. Mmm incest.

Rand’s forced to be tightlipped on the whole scenario due to NDA restraints (otherwise I’m sure we would have received a delicious linkbait-filled entry), but my guess is that SEOmoz won’t have a hand in the actual SEO aspect and have instead just signed a partnership with Microsoft. Or at least that’s what I’m hoping. Still, definitely something to be aware of for lots of juicy and scandalous reasons.

SEOmoz issues aside, you have to wonder if it’s smart for Microsoft to be encroaching on the SEO space and why they’re doing it. Let’s be realistic here. Google is offering a similar program, right? If you had to choose who to trust your search engine optimization campaign to, would you pick Google or Microsoft? If the choice of who to do your SEO was your new Boxer puppy or Microsoft, you still probably wouldn’t pick the boys from Redmond, right? Microsoft has plenty of other things to be focusing on and strengthening right now, trying to add an SEO component probably isn’t smart. Plus, it freaks people out because we don’t really know what they’re offering. Is it basic search engine optimization advice? Is it more of a paid placement program? Is it going to only include MSN-friendly tips? We have no idea.

PageRank is Not Meaningless

Tamar Weinberg is over at Search Engine Roundtable crying that PageRank means nothing. I heart my BFF, but I’m going to have to majorly disagree here.

As I commented over at Search Engine Roundtable, PageRank doesn’t mean “nothing”, in fact, it means a lot. It’s Toolbar PageRank that means nothing, and there is a huge, huge difference between the amount of juice flowing through your site and the amount of green pixie dust in your Google Toolbar. People should stop getting them confused.

Real PageRank matters. I’m not saying you should obsess over it, but it’s definitely something to be aware of when optimizing your search engine optimization campaign. PageRank is Google’s automated way of figuring out which pages are most important on the Web. Search engine optimization is about making your pages the most relevant on the Web. See how they kind of go hand in hand? It’s important that site owners take advantage of all their available PageRank by implementing search engine optimization techniques like siloing. You want to create a hierarchical site architecture that passes juice to the most important pages on your site. This will help focus your internal linking and allow these relevant pages to rank higher and attract more visitors.

It’s unfortunate that the idea of PageRank has evolved into some sort of advertising metric, because the real concept is so much more than that.

Microsoft launches Smart Web Ads

Has anyone else noticed all the sweet Microsoft/advertising related stories popping up lately? The latest one reveals that Microsoft is touting some awesome new ad options like demographic targeting, placing ads around subject themes not keywords, and using speech recognition software to create video transcripts and better match ads. Um, hi, Google called and they’d like for you to stop kicking their ass.

Seriously, people, Microsoft is taking names with all their new ventures. If they end up buying Yahoo, dropping the crappy MSN index and introducing the Yahoo audience to adCenter that could be one profitable venture. AdCenter would finally get the traffic and eyeballs it seems to deserve.

Fun Finds

Bill Slawski tells us that Microsoft may start reranking search results based upon your calendar.

Ask.com launched BigNews, a lovely Google News/Digg hybrid. Is it pretty? Yup. Will I use it? Probably never.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 02/ 7/08 at 12:52 PM | Comments (0)

December 6, 2007

Effective Action Based Copywriting

Seated at the Effective Action-Based Copywriting session with speakers Brain Clark (I will admit to being a huge Brian fangirl), Heather Lloyd-Martin and Jill Whalen. I’ll be sure to take extra careful notes today to prove to Jill that not all liveblogging is inaccurate. ;)

Heather says today is going to be a different format. It’s not going to be a lot of talking heads. This session is going to be very PowerPoint light. Most of the session will be Q&A and site reviews.

Heather is not only acting as moderator, she’s also our first speaker!

Content is not only important for search engine purposes, it’s also a must for users. The way you write your copy can make the difference between getting a so-so sale or having tremendous success.

~~Five~~ Six Tips:

Learning to love key phrases: Optimize for three related key phrase per page. Chances are you’re going to be focused on one key phrase per page with tertiary terms thrown in their, as well. That’s okay. It’s only natural for one term to be your money maker. How you focus your key phrases depends on the page type (Home, product, resource). As you get into the inner pages of your site, your key phrases will become more specific. Don’t fear key phrase overlap, it’s a good thing!

Work with your word count: Words are wonderful because that’s what the search engines are indexing. It’s good to be able to provide information. Heather recommends using about 250 words per page. If it’s a product page, you can write less. If it’s an ecommerce site, you can write more. Heather doesn’t believe in key phrase density. As long as you can look at a page and see that it’s relevant for those phrases, you’re cool.

Power key phrase positions: Put keywords in the main body text copy, top to bottom, headlines and sub headlines, and in your hyperlinks.
Pen tantalizing titles: The first opportunity for conversions is the on the SERP. When writing titles, think clickability, create unique titles for every page, include each page’s main key phrases, don’t necessarily target your company name (that’s something to test for clickthrough) and write each title to be between 50-75 characters. Heather says that key phrase rich content + Key phrase rich titles = search engine love.

Mastering Google snippet trick: Place your benefit statements near your main key phrases. When Google takes your snippet for the SERP, the description will boost your benefits. It lets you control the description as much as you can. Google won’t always use the description that you wrote. This gives you another opportunity to make sure your benefits are front and center.

Leverage lots of content opportunities: Content is not just your blog or product copy. It can be reviews. It’s anything you want to write about a product or service. Help people find you in a lot of different places. It helps to brand you as an expert.

Remember what search engine optimization copywriting is and isn’t: Adding key phrases into content isn’t that big of a thing. Search engine optimization copywriting is the same as direct response copywriting. It makes arguments so convincing that customers can’t help but want to buy the product being advertised. It’s not the Easy Bake Oven approach where you throw in some key phrases and call it good. You write for you customers, not the search engines.

Jill Whalen is next.

Jill says this topic is near and dear to her heart. Back in 1994-6 people were talking about how to put the words on the page and trying to hide them. She used to see that all the time. She says she was the first person really talking about getting words on the page in a way that helps users.

What is Good Content?

It’s the regular pages on your site. It’s not mysterious. Every page should have content. It should speak to your target audience and describe what you do. It solves problems, answers questions and provides information. People are at your Web site because they’re looking for something, especially if they came from a search engine.

Content that is king is content that is written for your users, while keeping the search engines in mind. It’s all about balance, much like the see-saw image Jill’s is touting on her PowerPoint slide.

Good content starts with keyword research. You have to find the key words that people are using to try and find a site like yours. Base your copywriting around those words. Answer their search on your Web page.

Choose Keyword Phrases

For the home page, use the more general terms. The ones that describe your whole business in general. These are the more competitive phrases. As you get deeper into the site, use the more specific terms.

The engines have to be able to see your content. You don’t want to hide it. Avoid graphic headlines, all Flash or all graphic sites, and using technical programming that traps spiders. She uses the Web site for her son’s school as an example of how pretty, all graphical sites are nice, but Google can’t see them.

Search engine optimization writing tips:

Be descriptive: Not “our product” or “our service”. Use keyword phrases like “our Toronto event planning services”.
Edit your current text: Find generic words and replace them with descriptive ones.
Don’t optimize for single words: Expand into phrases. “Marketing’ can become “Internet marketing strategy”, “Marketing your business”, “opt-in email marketing”, etc.
Fix your Site: You don’t need to add useless articles. Write clearly and descriptively to target your audience.

Content is indeed king. It brings highly targeted visitors that want exactly what your offer and converts them into customers.

Copyblogger’s Brian Clark is next.

Brian says he’s a lot like us. He builds Web sites. He’s not a professional copywriter.

How can you create a piece of content that attracts links and encourages conversions? No one is going to link to your sales page because a sales pitch has very little independent value.

Attention and Persuasion Checklist

Independent Value: What can you offer customers to make yourself valuable? He mentions How To or tutorial content. This approach allows you to naturally create a story that leads to the action you want people to take.

Headline and Hook: The headline is the title. The hook is the angle. It’s the beginning of what kind of story you’re going to tell. You have to create content that engages people, gets their attention and gets them to read. If you’re on the first page of Google, you’re competing with 9 people. There has to be more there than just repeating keywords.

Scannable Content: People run their eyes right down a page. You need to chunk up your content in ways that allows you to communication your story even if people aren’t ready every word.

What’s the Story: Ties everything together.

Example: You want to sell a product or something to that relates to people who want to sell ebooks. You find out your most relevant keywords are [create ebook] or [sell ebook]. He uses an article about ebooks that he wrote for Copyblogger as the example.

It’s hard to get people’s attention. He breaks down his content to show how it uses the Attention and Persuasion checklist he outlined above.

Selling Tips from Aristotle

Opening: You’re trying to structure a story that has an opening statement. This is where your hook is.
Empathy: You have to show people you understand their pain.
Solution: The solution appears. You tell people what it takes to solve the problem.
Action: You present your call to action.

It’s very hard to get people to link to something that’s selling something else. But it can be done. You just have to show that the value is there. It’s almost helpful to think of yourself as an affiliate marketer even if you’re selling your own stuff. It keeps your from touting your own horn. Look at is as a pre-sale.

Heather stresses the importance of the emotional component. You have to find people’s emotional button. Know what they like about working with you and what they don’t like about working with you.

Heather: When writing content, don’t be a bad date. If you’re always talking about yourself and telling people that you’re the best and the greatest, you’re going to push people away. Back it up with facts that show your expertise.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 12/ 6/07 at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2007

You Can’t Automate Search Engine Optimization

Susan likes to try and pretend that the world doesn’t actually revolve around me, but I know better. How else can you explain Loren Baker’s post about Commerce360’s attempt to automate search engine optimization? Clearly, all this talk about automating SEO campaigns was designed to get me all riled up, right? I mean, it had to be.

In his post, Loren talks about Commerce360’s plan to develop automated SEO software, software of the future. You see, these days search is “just too complex for humans to effectively grasp” and an “automated search optimizer” is the way to go. Making the situation even crazier is that according to Commerce360, they’ve actually raised venture capital to support this idea. That means there are people out there even crazier than the folks working at Commerce360 – the people who have decided to fund it.

I’m kidding. Sort of.

Now, I know that I’m still somewhat new to this space and that back in the day automated SEO was as popular as Bruce’s mustache (hi, Bruce!), but is Commerce360 really serious about this? Don’t we already have an automated version of search engine optimization? It’s called spam, right?

I’m sure there are parts of the SEO process that can be automated, but the bread and butter of your search engine optimization campaign has to be human engineered. Automated systems may help you to get the bleeding to stop, but if you want to be at all competitive, you need more than fancy computers and tools. You need brains and creativity and relationships and people capable thinking outside the (computer) box.

Anyone who’s been in this industry for awhile will tell you that SEO has never been about simply creating a page that’s technically sound, there are tons of human factors that go into it as well. This is especially true today when the engines are starting to focus on things like user intent and personalization. To be successful you can’t just create a page that’s better in the eyes of the engines, it also has to please your users. Your users who are human. An automated process isn’t going to be able to help you do that. I don’t care how smart you think it is.

One of my favorite parts about Commerce360’s spiel on why automated SEO is the way to go is when they state that “the typical paid search campaign is run by an English major with a spreadsheet”. Surely, they say, there has to be a better way.

First of all, hiss!

Second, I’d be much more inclined to trust an English major to write my ad copy than I would a machine. An English major has a brain; they have a strong understanding of the language and will be able to pick up on subtle language nuances that a machine will miss. I have never been a fan of computer generated content.

Over on Sphinn, Michael Dorausch makes a good point, suggesting that perhaps the automation process could be beneficial for a small mom and pop shop who can’t afford a traditional search engine optimization campaign. I hear what Michael is saying, but I still wouldn’t feel comfortable doing it. It doesn’t matter how big or small your site is, if you’re going to do SEO, you should put your energy into doing it right. SEO isn’t about the formulas. It’s about crafting your site to reflect the intent of your users. You just can’t train an automated system to do that.

Don’t get me wrong, we have an entire ToolSet filled with automated SEO tools that help us perform our day-to-day activities. The thing is, we complement those tools with trained SEO analysts. Analysts who are able to look at the data they’ve received and decide whether the changes the tools recommend are accurate or not. No tool is going to give you 100 percent accurate information all of the time. They’re only as smart as you programmed them to be when you programmed them to be it. Hell, if Google has to hire human engineers to monitor its own system, why in the world would you think you wouldn’t have to?

And, really, why would you want to? The overhead of having to create an automation system and then continually updating it to reflect the changes in the search engines algorithm will surely end up costing you more than a traditional SEO campaign ever would. And I’m assuming you’re going to create a different automation system for each engine right? You’re not?

The fact of the matter is, as search engine optimization evolves and becomes more complicated, we need SEO to become more human-oriented not less. We need campaigns to be designed to meet actual user needs, not scientific formulas. If you want to automate your optimization efforts, go for it. Who cares about those users and their needs anyway?

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/19/07 at 4:45 PM | Comments (19)

June 13, 2007

Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training Hits the UK

Bruce Clay’s SEO training course has officially taken over London in our effort to deliver top notch best practice search engine optimization training to UK search marketers. The UK training class will be in session until Friday, then its back to the States for Bruce to relive the whole thing here in California. I hope he’s mastered sleeping on planes, trains and automobiles.

Everyone wave to our fearless leader. [Hi Bruce! We miss you. I have shoes on.]

Bruce Clay Europe’s own Rory De Niro and Marie Howell are both attending this week’s UK SEO training and have assured me that though while some attendees are experiencing a mild “brain ache” from information overload, their heads haven’t completely exploded yet; they’re just a tad swollen. That’s good to hear because there are still two days of SEO training left and this ain’t no bodge job! UK search marketers are going to be stuffed to the brim with search engine optimization methodologies, tips, tricks and best practices.

UK SEO training is being held at the Radisson Edwardian Marlborough Hotel, which I hear comes complete with a three-course buffet lunch and all the desserts and chocolates you can handle. I want chocolate!

The UK is just Bruce’s first stop on this summer’s international tour of search engine optimization training. Bruce will be back in the States for California training June 26-28, and then he’s off to ~~Cape Town~~ Sandton, Johannesburg for South African SEO training on 9-11 July, before Australian SEO training hits Sydney on 6-8 August.

We’re very excited to be able to offer opportunities for SEO training in countries and regions where search engine optimization is just becoming a priority. Better training breeds better SEOs and I think that’s something everyone can get behind. Now if only we could get Bruce to take me along on his international sojourns. Who here thinks Lisa should be flown to South Africa and/or Australia so that she can better fill you in all the international search happenings? Hands? Please?

Fine.

To stay on top of Bruce’s touring, er, training schedule, keep your eyes on the blog or subscribe to our SEO Newsletter. As soon as new dates are set, you’ll be the first to know.

Cheers.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 06/13/07 at 4:19 PM | Comments (4)

May 2, 2007

SEO Contest: Help People, Get Training, Go to SMX

The first-ever Search Marketing Expo conference takes place early next month in Seattle and we’re giving you a chance to be there. As we told you back in December, as a premiere sponsor we've been given five passes to the event and we’d like to give one of those to a deserving reader. Since we’re also still holding on to the Cre8asite scholarship money we were awarded, we’re going to combine both offers to create one extraordinary opportunity.

Around here we’re passionate about two things: Search engine optimization training and helping non-profit organizations succeed on the Internet. This contest will combine both passions.

Our goal for this contest is to create something worthwhile. We want to give a search marketer an opportunity to sponsor a cause s/he believes in and feel deserves more visibility. In return for your time and effort, you’ll be given a free full-conference pass to SMX in Seattle (valued at $1395) and a free seat in our SEO Training ($1450) and Advanced Certification course ($995). This comes to almost $4000 in "prizes" which will benefit not only you but your charity partner as well. (Transportation and lodging are not provided.)

For the next two weeks, we're inviting search engine marketers to contact a non-profit organization that you’re passionate about and whose Web site you feel could benefit from an organic search engine optimization campaign.

If the non-profit agrees to partner with you for this contest, conduct a preliminary analysis of their site. Use what you already know about search engine optimization to pinpoint what they’re doing well and where they are faltering. Then, tell us in 1000 words or less how their Web site could benefit from an organic SEO campaign and what edits you would make to improve their site. The winner of this contest is promising to attend both SMX and our July SEO training course with an eye toward implementing the techniques learned to improve the Web site of his/her chosen non-profit.

We do have a few requirements: We'd like, if at all possible, for these to be community-based charities. They should already have a Web site and should use that Web site as part of their outreach. You should be passionate about this cause -- this is going to require the investment of a fairly large chunk of your time and the charity must accept your offer for optimization.

That’s the first part.

Ninety days after attending the SEOToolSet training course, the winner will be asked to write a review on the search engine optimization campaign that s/he conducted. Tell us, and our readers, what you did and what you learned from this optimization project. Our team will conduct an independent review of the site.

Submit your site review to Susan or Lisa by May 11th. The winner of the contest will be announced on the blog and via our SEO Newsletter on the 15th.

We realize this is a big commitment, but there’s also a large reward. The winner is looking at investing his or her time for four days in Simi Valley for training, three days in Seattle for SMX and supplying consulting hours over the course of at least 3 months dedicated to their non-profit. In return for your effort, you’re being handed not just an amazing training opportunity, but also the chance to help a deserving organization.

Our goal is not to just make this a one time thing either. We're looking at this at a test run, something that we can do a few times a year--for SES San Jose, for SES New York, for SMX next year. We want to give local charities a boost and we'd like your help in doing so.

Got questions? Ask in the comments or drop us an email.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 05/ 2/07 at 3:57 PM | Comments (10)

February 1, 2007

Help Us Spend Our Scholarship Money!

Okay, loyal blog readers, we need your help.

Last month, Bruce Clay’s SEOToolSet training course was named one of the five winners of the Cre8asiteforms Education Scholarship and was generously awarded $400 to put towards furthering search marketing education. Because we’ve always supported opportunities for search engine optimization education, we’ve decided to match the money awarded to us in order to create an even greater opportunity for one deserving group or individual.

Internally, we’ve been throwing around ideas, trying to come up with a worthwhile and exciting use for the scholarship money. We think we’ve thought up some great stuff (only some of which is mentioned below), but now we’re asking you for suggestions as well.

How do you think we should spend our scholarship money?

We’re asking you to put your thinking caps on and dream up the most fun, exciting and rewarding ways you can think of to promote search marketing education. If you had been awarded funds to give back to search, how would you use it?

Is there someone you think would benefit from education in search engine optimization and search marketing? One individual who, if taught, could put the knowledge to good use and possibly even use it to help educate others?

It’s important to us that we not waste this opportunity. We realize this industry is filled with self-starters, small businesses, people who work from home and site owners who would see a night and day difference in profit if they knew how to optimize their site. We want to make sure we award this money to someone who will truly benefit from it and someone who really needs it.

We thought about offering the money to a charity organization with the hope that if they learned trusted methods of search engine optimization that it would help them to further their own cause. At the same time, we quickly realized that any charity that we could immediately think of probably didn’t need the money for search engine optimization since they would be already fairly well known.

From there we thought about creating an essay contest where readers could tell us in 1000 words or less why they need to take our SEOToolSet training course. We’d even offer to fly them out to California and upgrade them to the Advanced class at no cost.

Or maybe we should select one random name from those already slated to attend our class and give the money to them? Did I mention if you happen to take the SEOToolSet class scheduled for March 19-22 you’ll be sitting next to your favorite SEO blogger? No, NOT Rebecca, me!

Or what if we went really crazy and auctioned off one our five golden tickets to Danny’s Search Marketing Expo in Seattle? We’ll give you a free pass and then give you the $400 for spending money. That could be a once in a lifetime opportunity for someone to learn the ins and outs of the industry from an elite crowd.

I very seriously suggested using the money to fly David Pasternack to Southern California and give him a free pass to our full training course. If taught, I think David could be an asset to this community. I’d love to invite him to experience real best practice SEO training, meet with our analysts, and encourage him to finish his latest SEO series by commenting on what he took away from his experience. And if he finishes our course even more certain that SEO is PPC’s ugly red-headed stepchild, that’s fine with us. At least he would have learned the right way to do it and seen the effort that goes into a real search engine optimization campaign.. What do you think? Am I crazy?

Those are some of our ideas, now we want to hear yours. How would you like to see this money used?

If there’s a person or group you think deserves it, please tell us. If you don’t want to publicly name-drop, send me an email. If you’re the one in need of search marketing education, tell us why. If you have a fun way you think we can spend this money, we’d really love to hear it.

We want to see this money use wisely and we’re asking for your suggestions to help us do that.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 02/ 1/07 at 12:07 PM | Comments (4)

October 5, 2006

Online Ad Spend up 40 percent in the UK

PricewaterhouseCoopers and Internet Advertising Bureau report that online advertising in the United Kingdom exceeded $1.72 billion for the first half of 2006 -- a 40.3 percent increase over this time last year. With the surge, Internet advertising has become the UK's fastest-growing advertising medium, accounting for 10.5 percent of the U.K's total ad spend.

At present, PPC appears to be the UK's online advertising method of choice, making up almost 58 percent of the market -- a 60 percent increase over the last year. Online display advertising is also on the rise, up 32.2 percent.

The latest numbers reaffirm the Internet's importance for UK business owners. The days of relying solely on traditional media are gone. Today, if you want to reach your customers, the way to do that is by advertising online.

Experts attribute Internet advertising's rapid growth to several factors:

The UK's Rapid Broadband Adoption -- The Office of National Statistics recently released figures stating that nearly three quarters of all connections to the Internet were on broadband, about 10 million users in all. This represents an almost 20 percent jump from 2005. Faster Internet means more pages viewed, which means more chances to for customers to come across your ad.

Backed by Big Brands – Back in March, ClickZ reported that one reason online advertising was more prevalent in the United States than in the UK was because of the willingness big U.S. brands to move their offline budgets offline. Well, it seems big UK brands have woken up to the power of online advertising. Maybe it was that stat that the average user spends 23 hours of a week online that did it.

Smaller Companies See Potential – The Internet remains a relatively cheap way for small business to effectively target niche markets. As a result, more and more small companies are moving their advertising budgets online. Instead of shelling out thousands to launch ignored billboard campaigns, they're implementing trackable PPC campaigns and using other online display advertising tactics. As a result, Internet ad spend is now double the market share of outdoor advertising and consumer magazines, and triple that of radio advertising.

The Blog Boom – With the increased number of blogs, podcasts and social networking cluttering up the UKs Web space, brings more opportunity for companies to advertise online. Marketers know that just because Brits don't understand geekspeak, it doesn't mean they're not using the technology. If you want to find your audience, targeting them on the sites they frequent daily is the way to do it.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/ 5/06 at 11:48 AM | TrackBack

December 23, 2005

Newsletter and News

Happy Holidays to everyone! We're sending out our SEOToolSet Newsletter a little early this month because we here at Bruce Clay, Inc are shut down next week. But before we sign off for the year, we'd like to wish you all the best.

In this month's newsletter, we're taking a look back at the year in review and starting an indepth look at competitive research. Look for big changes coming to our newsletter in the new year. We're going to be starting a Question of the Month section. Got a good question? Send it in to Newsletter@BruceClay.com and we'll get you an answer. Ask us anything! If we don't know it, we'll find out.

Here's a sample (and a late introduction to yours truly):

What is your name?
I'm your intrepid reporter, Susan Esparza.

What is your quest?
I'm a technical writer here at Bruce Clay. I seek the news, rumors and tips to keep you up to date on the crazy world of search engine optimization.

What is the capital of Assyria?
Nineveh.

What the heck is up with the dispute over Dr. Kai Fu Lee these days?
MSN and Google reached a settlement in the case, according to Red Herring. No details of the deal have been released.

And that's it for today! Have a safe holiday, everyone and we'll see you next year.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 12/23/05 at 12:13 PM

December 5, 2005

Very Busy

Just like everyone else, things get the busiest here in the last quarter. With SES starting today, an update going on in Yahoo, the holiday season starting and of course, lots and lots of work to do, it's hard to keep up on all the news.

Luckily, that's why we have the newsletter. The November edition was published on the 30th and contains articles on conducting a successful link campaign as well as a look at the new 1st Certified email system. And of course, we always cover the news of the month, hitting the hot topics and dishing the dirt on who is teaming with whom these days.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 12/ 5/05 at 9:42 AM

October 4, 2005

Back from beyond.

It's been a busy couple of weeks here and so you all have noticed that the blog took a bit of a break. We were on our yearly retreat two weeks ago and last week was all about catching up. Some of the stories we missed covering were folded into this month's SEOToolSet newsletter and some have merely slipped through the cracks. I'll take a stab at picking the most important ones back up.

Stay tuned, true believers.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 10/ 4/05 at 10:12 AM

August 31, 2005

Extra, read all about it!

The SEOToolSet Newsletter is done for the month of August. Subscribers will receive their newsletters in their emails very soon to be read at their leisure. Everyone else can follow the link to the online version.

What's in this month's news? Well, we're going back to basics with a look at duplicate content and starting a short series of articles on client-SEO relationships. The news takes a look back at the months of August and catches up on the hot topics as well as some stories that slipped through the cracks.

If you'd like to subscribe, just drop us a line and we'll be happy to add you. Subscription is absolutely FREE which you have to admit is a pretty good price. Happy August, everyone. See you in September.

Posted by sesparza on 08/31/05 at 4:15 PM

June 30, 2005

Time flies

June was a very busy month and it hardly seems like it's been 30 days but here we are again, about to head into July. But before we bid the month a final farewell, take a look back with our June SEOToolset newsletter. Our feature article takes a look at the current search strategies of the top four search engines. Or go back to basics and take a look at the proper formatting of your head section. As well as all the usual news round-up.

Posted by sesparza on 06/30/05 at 11:19 AM

May 31, 2005

Extra! Extra!

Hurrah, it's the end of the month. That means it's time for our monthly newsletter. This month we're featuring how to deal with the problem of dynamic sites by implementing a mod rewrite. We're also getting back to basics with our look at building a theme via silos.

All this and the usual news wrap up too.

Happy May everyone. See you tomorrow in June.

Posted by sesparza on 05/31/05 at 5:41 PM

October 29, 2004

SEOToolSet Newsletter Launched

The inaugural edition of the SEOToolSet newsletter has been sent out. If you missed it, you can still read our October 2004 SEO newsletter online. Topics include:

If you would like to subscribe, contact us through our form and indicate that you are interested in the Newsletter.

Posted by on 10/29/04 at 3:42 PM

July 30, 2004

SEOToolSet.com Launches in Time for Search Engine Strategies!

Welcome to SEOToolSet.com! We finished just in time to pack up and head out to Jupiter Media's Search Engine Strategies in San Jose. Come visit us in Booth #301 and let us know what you think of the new website.

Posted by admin on 07/30/04 at 11:45 AM