Archive for December, 2006

Happy Holidays from TopRank!

Friday, December 22nd, 2006

What a year 2006 has been and I would like to thank all the amazing people who have taken part in our firms’ success and especially the readers of TopRank’s Online Marketing blog.
After updating the design, covering happenings in the search marketing industry, publishing numerous text and video interviews and blogging most SES, Pubcon and […]

digg Spam Policy Roundup

Friday, December 22nd, 2006

I wasn’t sure about posting about getting the nix from digg earlier this week, but apparently it was on many people’s minds. The response has been pretty amazing. Note, it was a blog domain name, not a user account that was added to the digg banned submission list.
Here’s a list of blogs/sites that have been […]

Small Business Public Relations

Thursday, December 21st, 2006

Earlier this week Matt McGee of Small Business SEM blog did an interview with me about public relations for small businesses. Matt has had a lot of marketing experience so he asked some great questions that I think businesses small and large will benefit from.
Here are a few sample questions:
Are press releases better for traditional […]

Pre Holiday Search Blogs Roundup

Thursday, December 21st, 2006

A bit of a short week this week and I’ve come across a nice collection of search marketing blogs as well as one very good journalist blog. Enjoy!
Optimize and Prophesize - SEM goodness from Jonathan Mendez. I bet as many times as I’ve greeted Jonathan with “hey man” and “what’s up guy?”, he probably thought […]

Vote for your favorite search blogs

Wednesday, December 20th, 2006

Loren Baker over at Search Engine Journal has published the final lists of nominees for the 2006 Search Blog Awards. You can preview the lists at Search Engine Journal and you can vote here. (Hopefully for TopRank!)
Categories include:
SEO Blog of the Year
Search News Blog
Best Search Marketing / Contextual Ad Blog
Best Link Building Blog
Best Search Agency […]

The hypocrisy of digg and spam

Wednesday, December 20th, 2006

More aggressive SMO marketers often talk about being careful not to get user accounts banned on digg. But what about the domain name? Banning user accounts has to do with the actions of the user. That is, behaviors and actions the user can control.
However, a domain name brings into other considerations. For example, […]

10 things to keep in mind when changing a site design.

Wednesday, December 20th, 2006

When you create a new site design, you should always remember a few key points. If you don’t, not only is it bad for search engines, but also visitors.

Consider keeping the same file naming structure so that it will be easier for spiders to re-crawl the new site and peoples bookmarks don’t return 404 […]

Jake Baillie to Leave TrueLocal

Wednesday, December 20th, 2006

Photo thanks to webmoxy
Internet marketing guru Jake Baillie has announced that he will be leaving TrueLocal to start a new internet fund and small business incubator:

I’m both pleased and saddened to announce my departure from TrueLocal to you. Last week the opportunity to do something that I’ve always wanted to do was presented to me […]

TopRank Moves to the Lake

Tuesday, December 19th, 2006

Front door view
I am very happy to say that thanks to the hard work of my partner, Susan Misukanis, TopRank now has a new address on beautiful Lake Minnetonka, just west of Minneapolis. We’ve been looking for a new office space for nearly a year to accommodate our growth and unique style and finally […]

The Lame PPC and SEO Debate

Tuesday, December 19th, 2006

In yesterday’s interview with Andy Beal, I made reference to comments in a DM News article that cited SEO as on the way out and that SEO is “simple”, positioning PPC as “better” etc. Andy’s response, which I think was not entirely without a sense of humor, invited an interesting response from Richard Ball.
You don’t […]