Archive for the ‘search marketing’ Category

The most underused tool in the marketing toolbox – Linking?

August 26th, 2010 by Rand Schulman

Sometimes I don’t understand things - including the inner workings of marketing professionals. Yet I’ve tried to tackle this challenge and have been building and selling marketing applications for marketing folk for decades. I know that working complex web analytics products can be daunting. Marketing automation even more so. How does one create and allocate lead scoring and attribution? What is the LTV of a customer?

But linking?  Gosh, don’t we all know the value of inbound links? Don’t we know how search engines work, for God’s sake? Well, apparently no. This knowledge is not as universal as one would think (Hope! Assume!).

A few months ago we released Linker which, in short, is a dating site for sharing and creating links. A Match.com for SEO link building. The good news? We’ve had thousands of people start to take advantage of the service. The bad news? Only five percent of them have ANY links on their site! This data floored me.

So we took matters into our own hands and today released our findings as well as made our link building tool FREE . We understand that linking takes time, which could explain the incredible low rate, but with our Linker product it should be much easier. At least that’s our hope. So, world, let’s get found. Let’s use the product and link away. I would be happy to hear from any of you!


Who’s Been in Search the Longest - Results

August 25th, 2010 by Richard Zwicky

Last week at SES San Francisco / Connected Marketing Week, I had the pleasure of introducing Bruce Clay for the SEO 101 session.  I’ve known Bruce for many years now, and since people often ask me “how long has Bruce Clay really been involved in search,” I thought I’d turn that question into some audience participation with a poll: Who’s been in Search Longer?  Forty-two (42) people in the room responded!  Once again, Al Gore just missed the win;

Who’s been in Search Longer?

36.73%      Bruce Clay

34.69%      Al Gore (He invented search too!)

20.41%      Bono (He still hasn’t found what he’s looking for)

8.16%       Marco Polo

Thanks for all who participated, I hope you enjoyed the session!


Who’s Been in Search Longer?

August 18th, 2010 by Richard Zwicky

I’m at SES San Francisco, part of Connected Marketing Week. This morning, I have the pleasure of introducing Bruce Clay for the session “Search 101.” It thought I would have a little fun with Bruce, and ask the audience:


If you have any comments, ping me during the session - @rzwicky


Should You Consider “Author Authority”?

August 6th, 2010 by Richard Zwicky

Search marketers are familiar with signals. One of the truisms is the logic: if no one links to your site, it can’t be considered important, therefore why should it appear in the search results? The more quality links referencing your website or web pages, the better.

A lot of signals or factors behind links can affect the quality, relevance, and value of these citations. Perhaps there’s another signal to consider: Author.

If you’re interested in learning more, earlier today Search Engine Watch published an article I submitted on the topic of Author Authority. The idea came to me while reading a recent patent which was issued and assigned to Google. I’d love to get your thoughts and feedback!

Thanks!

Richard / @rzwicky


Bing Growing, Yahoo Steady - Search Engine Market Share Update

July 28th, 2010 by Richard Zwicky


It’s been almost seven months since I last provided insight into the search engine market shares based on click through activity. After holding relatively steady for months, this latest update shows Bing has grown by 2.0%. Perhaps most interestingly, it’s no longer growing at the expense of Yahoo, which was previously the case.

Here’s the raw numbers:

Google Yahoo Bing Other
September 7 78.68% 11.51% 6.80% 3.01%
September 14 78.35% 11.13% 6.50% 4.02%
September 21 77.43% 11.35% 7.11% 4.11%
September 28 77.65% 10.80% 7.27% 4.28%
October 4 77.78% 10.66% 7.23% 4.33%
October 12 77.78% 10.66% 7.21% 4.35%
October 18 77.89% 10.65% 7.29% 4.17%
October 25 77.83% 10.56% 7.56% 4.05%
November 1 77.75% 10.46% 7.66% 4.12%
November 8 77.96% 10.21% 7.75% 4.08%
November 15 77.60% 10.39% 7.59% 4.42%
November 22 77.59% 10.41% 7.67% 4.37%
December 22 78.43% 9.73% 7.86% 3.97%
Month of June 2010 75.93% 9.94% 9.82% 3.83%

Eightfold Logic collects data from a network of web sites distributed globally. The data used in this reports represents web sites distributed globally, accessed by searchers located in the U.S., and reflects click-through activity data.


List of Amazing Cross Channel Contributors

July 28th, 2010 by Richard Zwicky

Over the last few days I’ve been publishing lists of people I read or whose online marketing comments I find useful / interesting.  I hope you’ll add all these individuals to your bookmark list of people to turn to when you need advice across various search and online marketing disciplines. 

The challenge with putting together any of these lists is to make sure that you don’t forget anyone.  I have missed some along the way, and once I realized the error I added them to the appropriate list after publication.

There’s also some great contributors I wanted to note who write scant amounts themselves, but rather highlight great resources for others to read. Finally, there are some individuals who mainly contribute via public speaking engagements; they’re perhaps the most difficult to reference, as it’s hard for non-attendees to understand the context of the contributions.

On each of the earlier lists, I’ve had comments from people about why “XYZ” wasn’t on the list.  In some cases it was an obvious error, in others, it’s because they fit on so many lists that I was saving them for this final one. The most obvious name in this category was Danny Sullivan. As I wrote in my first post, he really should be on everyone’s reading list!  He contributes across so many areas, I could have included him throughout, so instead of listing him five times, I saved him for this list.

Today’s final list in this series is about amazing cross-channel contributors; I’ve tried to include mostly people who didn’t fit the other lists. Being on any of these lists reflects a very broad range of contributions to the industry.  This list in particular is of people who have made contributions spanning multiple areas of online marketing.  These people write authoritatively, OR, they provide commentary about areas of interest and point their listeners or readers in the direction of great, meaningful content.  In the latter case, they’re like great filters for all of us, pointing people to the essential nuggets they should keep track of, but sometimes miss.

As this is the last list in the series, I’ll be closing voting on all the lists within a week, and then getting around to publishing some interesting results, with links to the places to find the best contributor’s content.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me: Richard Zwicky - zwicky@, tweet me @rzwicky, or leave a comment below.

If you’ve missed them, please read further down the blog for the prior lists of great online marketing contributors across SEO, PPC, SMM, and link-building!

Thanks again for participating!

Richard Zwicky


Whose Advice Works Best for Link Building?

July 27th, 2010 by Richard Zwicky

Over the last four work days, I’ve been publishing lists of people, broken out by online marketing disciplines.  These are individuals whose writings or commentaries I recommend that people should read to keep abreast of the industry.  I’ve broken them into areas of expertise as I saw fit - SEO thought-leaders, PPC experts, and strategic and tactical SMM thinkers.  I have two more groups I want to reference in this series: 1) Link-Building masters, and; 2) Cross-Channel contributors. Then I will start compiling the data for publication.

Today, it’s the link-builder’s turn.  These are all people I’ve read, and whose work I recommend you look at for link-building advice.  Some is tactical, some strategic, but it all has its place.  Presuming you already look at some, I’d like to know which 5 are the ones you reference the most often?

If you haven’t looked at the earlier lists, I’d suggest you look at them now.  For the Search Engine Optimization Experts list: SEO; For the list of PPC Experts, PPC; and for the list of top Social Media Marketers, SMM.


Whose Writings / Comments assist you the most with your Paid Search Marketing work?

July 23rd, 2010 by Richard Zwicky

Yesterday, I started a series of posts to answer a question I keep getting asked by people who are entering the industry, attending conferences, or even veterans looking for new sources of information: Whose writings I have found useful, by discipline?  Yesterday I posted about SEO writers

It’s easy for everyone to list off a few names, but there’s an incredible span of knowledge out there and experts in many different areas.  Unless you read a good, broad sampling, and not just the few same ones every day, you’re not going to become truly proficient in any one domain.  That’s because there’s always cross-over.  If you think that you can succeed as an SEO without properly understanding the fundamentals of the other disciplines, good luck to you.

Everyday, there is great new content being published, but these lists are about who do you find provides the most useful information for putting skills into practice?  The people whose contributions I find the most valuable may not publish daily or even weekly, but when they do, what they share is practical and either makes you consider something new, or provides you insights as to how to do something ever better!  Some will mostly use Twitter to highlight other people’s articles of interest for their own readers [or polls  ].

The list of people I know whose contributions I value is so large that I found that it was easier to create lists around themes, or concept groups.  Some people are better known than others, but that doesn’t mean their writings are more helpful: The reality is, some people are incredibly knowledgeable, and while they don’t write a lot, or do so with flair, what they write matters.

If there’s someone you think I’ve missed, send me a comment - I’m trying to recognize people by discipline, and it’s possibly I see them more in one concept group than another.  If you’re not on this list, perhaps you’ll be on one for another discipline, or perhaps your knowledge is so broad it’s hard to pin you into any one group! There’s also a few people who fit into two or more categories.

There is one person not on any of the lists on purpose:  Danny Sullivan.  I like him personally, and value and enjoy what he writes.  But, let’s face it, he’s on everyone’s reading list.

Top 5 Results will be published at a later date.

And if you haven’t looked at the list of SEO’s I’ve regularly turned to, please do so.


Whose writings / comments assist you the most with your SEO work?

July 22nd, 2010 by Richard Zwicky

I thought it would be interesting to put together lists of people, by discipline, whose writings I have found useful, and ask you: Who are your top 5?

Every time I tell someone what I do, and at every conference I go to, people ask me: what resources should I read to learn more about online marketing?  It’s easy to whip off a few good resources, but what about particular writers?  There’s tons of great content being generated all the time, but who provides the most useful information for putting skills into practice?  Lots of people publish articles, blogs and  tidbits to share knowledge and wisdom with others.  Some will also balance out original contributions by using Twitter to highlight other people’s articles of interest for their readers.  That’s a tougher question.

When I started trying to put together a list recently, I found that it was easier to create lists around themes, not just “search.”  There are some great online marketers whose knowledge spans multiple disciplines, like paid and organic; social marketers v. search marketers; or organic and link-building (yes I consider that separate!). So why not break them down into concept groups accordingly?  Some people are better known than others, but that doesn’t mean their writings are more (or less) helpful. Conversely, some people are incredibly knowledgeable, and while they don’t write a lot, or do so with flair, what they write matters.

If there’s someone you think I’ve missed, send me a comment.  If you’re not on this list, perhaps you’ll be on one for another discipline, or perhaps your knowledge is so broad it’s hard to pin you into any one group!  There are two people I’ve not included on purpose:  Danny Sullivan and Matt Cutts.  I like both of them personally, and enjoy what they write.  But, let’s face it, they’re on everyone’s reading list.  I’ll be running more polls across more of the disciplines in the coming days.

Top 5 Results will be published at a later date.