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PubCon – AOL’s Melanie Mitchell

Lee Odden — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 21:01:29 +0000

I met Melanie Mitchell at last year’s Pubcon and was amazed at what a job being a Vice President of SEO/SEM at a company like AOL must be.

The insights she shared in a keynote presentation at the WebGuild’s Searchnomics conference were impressive so I was fortnuate to get a few minutes of her time to do a short video interview on what she does for AOL and what some of her challenges and accomplishments have been.

Be sure to check out the TopRank SEO video channel on YouTube for interviews from Pubcon and many other search marketing event.

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Speaking Publicly on Online Marketing

Lee Odden — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 03:25:54 +0000

They say you should face your greatest fears head on and public speaking has been one of mine since I was a kid. Being shy didn’t help during those school speech assignments one bit. Anyone with me on that one?

Having worked in the search marketing/web dev business since 1997, it was only 2 years ago or so that I began to speak at events about SEO, marketing with blogs and online public relations. I think there were 3 speaking events that first year. This year it looks like 16 and there are already 8 events booked for 2008. Things can change quickly in internet time.

My first presentation on SEO was in front of a local interactive marketing group (thanks to Kristina Halvorson) 2 1/2 years ago and now it’s a situation where decisions need to be made about which events to do and which to turn down. The number of paid speaking engagements has risen significantly as well.

Providing companies a 1/2 day workshop on search marketing and online PR is literally a brain dump of information. The goal is to give as much practical advice and value as possible. People often ask, “Why give so much away?”. First, that’s what they’re paying for and second, nearly every one of these situations has turned into a long term consulting engagement.

This good fortune can in part, be attributed to the kindness and risk taking by people like Heather Lloyd-Martin for including me in DMA events and Brett Tabke for Pubcon. Even Danny Sullivan warmed up after a few years. Peers and friends in the industry like Greg Jarboe, Jamie O’Donnell, David Berkowitz and Peter Himler nudged a few doors open as well.

Speaking publicly about various aspects of online marketing in combination with blogging, social networking and developing good distribution channels for messaging has been instrumental in building our credibility and visibility. This combined effort accelerated what might have otherwise take many years to achieve. That is the power of the web and social networking – both online and offline, something TopRank does both internally and for clients.

However, there’s still a ways to go. We have many goals to reach as an organization including staffing. Right now we’re hiring for several positions including an Online Marketing Manager, viral marketing specialists and a web designer/developer position. The way our teams are developing and stepping up to the plate when they need to is really amazing.

One of the exciting things in development is a project and contact management system for scaling search, PR and email marketing campaigns through a single application. No more about that – at least for now. There’s a lot changing in the way we do online marketing and that’s reflected in the systems we’re developing and the topics of the remaining conferences this year.

Speaking of conferences, coming up later in November and the first 2 weeks of December is a short marathon speaking run. Things start out with the Advanced PR Technology workshop in San Francisco on November 30th with a panel on driving search traffic to corporate web sites with myself and Bill Barnes from Enquiro. Then a session at the same conference with Jamie O’Donnell and Sally Falkow on press release optimization.

After San Francisco it will be Pubcon Dec 4-7 with the “Search and Blogging Reporters Forum” which includes Andy Beal, Michael McDonald, Rand Fishkin, Loren Baker and moi. Now THAT will be a fun session. This will be followed by the “Press and Public Relations Campaigns” session with Robin Liss and Joe Beaulaurier from PRWeb. Due to the time conflict I won’t be at SES Chicago, but many people will. In fact, there are quite a few people trying to go to BOTH!

Pubcon is a great way to end out the year but MediaPost is hosting the Search Insider Summit in Park City, Utah at the Stein Eriksen Lodge. Part conference, part networking event and part fun in the snow, I’m looking forward to doing a panel session on Universal/Unified Search. Lots of brands and top level agency execs at this event make it a perfect mix of smart networking and strategic insight.

Facing fears and taking risks is part of growing with your business and without that, there’s little reward. Being able to work in such a dynamic industry that keeps moving, changing and evolving is very satisfying especially with the new and interesting problems we get to solve for clients. Thanks to tackling the public speaking thing, (but certainly not mastering it) the rewards have been far more than I anticipated. Have you faced any fears in the search marketing biz and realized unanticipated rewards?

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Scientific Approach to Blog Ranking

Neville Hobson — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 20:31:25 +0000

If you had to pick just 100 blogs that would provide you with all the content you need to stay informed on everything that interests you, which 100 would you pick?

And by which criteria would you determine that 100?

Some clever researchers at the Carnegie Mellon University in the USA have done the work for you with the publication of a ranked listing of 100 blogs.

This is not just any old list – it’s been arrived at through a complex scientific analysis involving outbreak detection, submodularity, node selections and sensor placements among many other things.

If that and the image above – taken from a presentation the researchers prepared – don’t give you a sense of the complexity of the research, how the abstract in the published research paper (PDF) begins ought to:

Given a water distribution network, where should we place sensors to quickly detect contaminants? Or, which blogs should we read to avoid missing important stories?

The 10-page paper, entitled “Cost-effective Outbreak Detection in Networks,” is a detailed reporting of what the research aimed to achieve, the methodologies employed and the findings that resulted.

Here’s the researchers’ rationale:

[…] Our goal is to select a small set of blogs which “catch” as many cascades (stories) as possible. A naive, intuitive solution would be to select the big, well-known blogs. However, these usually have a large number of posts, and are time-consuming to read. We show, that, perhaps counterintuitively, a more cost-effective solution can be obtained, by reading smaller, but higher quality, blogs, which our algorithm can find.

A very long tail approach.

I should mention at this point that my blog is in this list, at number 84. Actually, as far as I can tell (I haven’t checked every single blog), only one other UK blogger is in this US-focused list: Hugh MacLeod, at number 76.

So two Brits cut the mustard of blog indispensability

Here’s the complete list:

Make of it what you will!

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Google Docs Has Privacy Problems

Navneet Kaushal — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 20:24:53 +0000

Just 2 days ago, Google Docs’s Presentation functionality was launched.

Philip Lenssen through a post called “Google Privacy Problems Introduced Through Presentations” says that this feature “introduced a privacy vulnerability for Google Accounts”.

"Using a straightforward hack discovered by TomHTML (which I can detail once Google security got some time to tackle the message they got from us, if they consider it a problem indeed), you can use Google’s Presentations service to grab the name/ Gmail email address of people visiting your website… without them confirming that they want to share their name/ email with you, or share the fact they’re visiting your site! Note this only works when the visitor is also signed in to their Google Account, but other than that requires no special programming capabilities (it may or may not work in every context/ with every browser)."

Another funny complaint was posted by Achille who said:

"I emailed mysef a PowerPoint file this morning, every 30 minutes I keep getting the same document added to my account, it’s stuck in a loop of some kind and it’s broken."

Anyway, after all the problems, the same discussion group posted a message saying,

"Update: Google informed me that the bug is fixed. My tests show this seems to be the case indeed – I can’t reproduce the privacy vulnerability anymore."

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Google Reader Leaves Labs, Learns Languages

Doug Caverly — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 17:08:53 +0000

Google’s known for leaving “beta” tags hanging about for long periods of time, but today, the company pulled one of its products out of testing. Behold: Google Reader is no longer in Labs, and it’s also gained support for a number of new languages.

I’ll let you count the languages for yourself; Google sort of goes overboard, in my opinion, by listing “English (UK),” but “Chinese (Traditional and Simplified)” probably could have been classified as two separate tongues. Anyway, the other languages involved are German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and French.

As for the Google Labs development, Kevin Systrom, a product marketing manager, admits on the Official Google Blog, “It’s a small textual change, but we believe it solidifies our commitment to make reading blogs and news sites easier than ever.”

Also, the Official Google Reader Blog produced a strange sort of breakup letter to announce the adjustment . . . I’m not at all sure what to make of it.

In any event, these occurrences come not long after Google Reader (finally) gained a search function, and, following a leaked presentation, there’s been a lot of discussion about what else may be in store for the software.

Google Presents PowerPoint Alternative

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 11:07:19 +0000

The rumored arrival of a Google option for creating and viewing slide-based presentations became fact with the debut of its newest feature on Google Docs.

Google Presents PowerPoint Alternative

You’ll see something different when clicking New in Google Docs. The option to create a presentation with Google’s online suite has been on the radar since Google disclosed it in April 2007, confirming an earlier rumor about it posted to Google Operating System.

People have the option of creating new presentations with the slide editor in Google Docs. The technology comes from a blend of companies Google acquired for their slide-based innovations.

As noted on the official Google blog, presentations and collaboration go hand in hand with this new product:

When it’s time to present, participants can simply click a link to follow along as the presenter takes the audience through the slideshow. Participants are connected through Google Talk and can chat about the presentation as they’re watching.

The debut of presentations gives Google another point on which they and Capgemini can compete with Microsoft for certain segments of enterprise workers. Google’s deal with Capgemini gives it access to a lot of people working for units managed by the IT outsourcer.

Matt Cutts pointed out a discovery he and others discovered while chatting about Nathan Weinberg’s experiments with the new presentation software.

“We figured out that you can embed a presentation on a web page using an iframe,” said Matt. “I have no idea what the security implications are, so don

Google Presently – Presentation App

Chris Smith — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 19:49:30 +0000

The Inquirer reports that Google may soon deploy slideshow presentation creation and display software which they’ll call “Presently”. This application was apparently developed out of code that Google got with their acquisition of Zenter and Tonic Systems earlier this year.

The new presentation software will join the other Google Apps suite of products which include Google Spreadsheets, Google Write, and Gmail.

This is an interesting development…

I previously reported about how the Google Apps for Education program was set to ramp up adoption of Google’s thin client applications by seducing colleges and universities into using their free and cheap levels of services. Google has also recently signed on CapGemini as a distribution partner in a deal which Microsoft has sharply Google+Apps/2100-1012_3-6207581.html”>criticized by saying that the Google Apps are not sufficiently robust to support the needs of many businesses.

Zenter Application Screen
(click to enlarge)

I know that the application will not have nearly the amount of bells and whistles found in PowerPoint, but it could be “good enough” for the purposes of many lower-level users who don’t have the know-how or time to learn how to use the extensive features in Microsoft PowerPoint.

Microsoft’s criticism is going to be blunted a bit, though, when Presently is finally released, because the suite of apps will be that much more solid.

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Google Optimizes Website Optimizer

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 16:50:09 +0000

A handful of tweaks to Google’s Website Optimizer tool have arrived as the product’s first major update, based on user feedback.

Bloggers at Inside AdWords touted three updates to Website Optimizer. These additions have been driven by requests from advertisers and ad agencies, Google said.

“We’ve added the ability to create A/B split experiments. This new feature is designed to make it faster and easier to optimize your website, and improve conversion rates,” they said. A/B testing allows the marketer to tryout ideas like different page layouts, to see if one work better than another.

Once one has finished with an experiment, those experiments can be deleted. Google said this little fix was its most requested feature. That experiment list will be automatically sorted to show the most recent experiments conducted by the ad client.

Agencies handling multiple AdWords accounts with Google’s My Client Center will be able to get to the Website Optimizer directly from that interface.

Those who may not be familiar with Website Optimizer can learn more about it directly from Google. An online presentation steps through the features and capabilities of the service.

Cutts: I’d Still Pick Dashes

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 12:09:46 +0000

Matt Cutts posted several pointers from his WordCamp 2007 talk, including some more commentary about underscores versus dashes for URL formats.

Cutts: I’d Still Pick Dashes

Once the PR types at Google finished giving Matt’s presentation slides a review, he posted the WordCamp 2007 presentation to his blog. His discussion listed a few SEO tips for bloggers to consider.

Matt doesn’t just toss out the PowerPoint slides for one’s review. He’s got video of his talk. He’s got a lengthy transcript. He’s got links to a trio of summaries of his presentation.

All that’s missing are paparazzi photos of Matt drinking a Diet Sprite while surfing the web.

He brought up the topic of underscores in URLs again. It seems his earlier points about them need some clarification, which he duly blogged about in his post:

If you read Stephan Spencer

Google’s Search Developments Explained

Andy Beal — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 17:01:16 +0000

Sean Ammirati has a good summary of Google VP Udi Manber’s presentation at Supernova. Here’s what caught my attention…

20-25% of all search queries seen by Google, have never been seen before!

They’re getting better at semantics. They know that ‘GM’ stands for ‘General Motors’, while ‘GM foods’ is actually ‘genetically modified.’

They’re getting better at helping you refine your search. For example, if you query ‘Types of dogs’ it will give results, but also suggests ‘breeds of dogs’ as a better search.

They’re getting better at learning search intent. When you search for ‘bellagio pool pictures’, they know you really do want more images in the results.

They’re also getting better at language translation.

Some interesting stuff – especially the part about 25% of all search queries being new. I wonder if that number is increasing – due to more uses – or decreasing – as Google sees more and more queries.

Hat-tip.

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