From: google.com

Posted by randfish

Thanks so much for all your votes and feedback on our PRO Webinar Series over the holiday weekend. We received 285 responses and we’re taking your suggestions very seriously and conducting the webinar as you’ve requested

Here are the stats from the questionairre/form (you can still fill it out if you’d like to give more input):

Will you be able to attend the PRO Webinar on Dec. 10th at 11am Pacific (2pm Eastern, 7pm London)?

• 74% - Yes, I’m planning to attend!
• 20% - I’m unsure if I can make it (but would like to)
• 6% - No, I’m busy at that time (but would like to join in others in the future)
• 0% - I’m not attending (because I’m not a fan of webinars or uninterested in the subject matter)

What topics most interest you for the webinar (check all that apply)?

• 79% - Link Building & Link Acquisition
• 51% SEO Metrics, Analytics and Key Performance Indicators
• 44% - Social Media Marketing for SEO
• 41% - Keyword Research Tools & Processes
• 40% - Navigation & Site Architecture for SEO
• 35% - Content Creation & Optimization
• 24% - Avoiding Spam, Penalties & Filters
• 20% - Incenting UGC & User Participation for SEO

What webinar format would you prefer?

• 47% - 45 min. presentation, 45 min. Q+A (90 min. total)
• 37% - 30 min. presentation, 30 min. Q+A (60 min. total)
• 12% - 30 min. presentation, 60 min. Q+A (90 min. total)
• 4% - All Q+A (60 min. total)

Based on this, we’re going to be running a 90 minute webinar, with a 45 minute slide deck presentation (and possibly video as well, though it will likely just be of me on the webcam) from 11am - 12:30pm Pacific (2pm - 3:30pm Eastern, 7pm-8:30pm London) on Thursday December 10th. The webinar will cover the following rough outline (obviously, in more detail):

• Link Building Strategies for 2010
• What Goals Can Link Building Help Us Achieve?
  • Bolster Individual Rankings
  • Improve a Domain’s Ability to Rank Pages
  • Achieve Full(er) Indexation
  • Drive Direct Traffic & Branding
• The 8 Basic Link Building Food Groups (with examples)
  • Manual Link Submissions/Requests
  • Competitive Link Research + Acquisition
  • Links via Embedded Content
  • Content Based, Linkbait & Viral Link Attraction
  • Content, Technology & API Licensing
  • Link Exchanges & Trades-in-Kind
  • Paid Links
  • Link Reclamation
• What are the Right Kinds of Links to Accomplish my Goals?
  • Links for Individual Rankings
  • Links for Domain “Authority”
  • Links for Indexation
  • Links for Traffic & Branding
• How to Use Tools & Processes to Make Link Building Easier
  • Tools for Competitive Link Research
  • Metrics for Evaluating a Link’s Value
  • Building a Link Acquisition Process (i.e. the “Link Conversion Funnel")
  • Making Processes Scalable
• Link Building Shortcuts to Take (and Avoid)
  • How to Get Your Community Link Building for You
  • How to Get the Anchor Text and Target You Want
  • How to Avoid Links that You Think Are Helping Your Competition (but really aren’t)
  • How to Spot Strategies that the Engines May Devalue
• Wrap-Up / Q+A

I’m certainly open to feedback about what you’d like to see in there, and happy to make some inclusions where possible. PRO members will receive an invite via email in the next 2-3 days with a link to register. You’ll be able to dial-in or hear the webinar via your computer speakers/headphone and ask questions via a chat interface. You can see an examples of a past presentation I’ve made below:

This lengthy one came from my HostingCon keynote and serves as a fun introduction to SEO (BTW - let me strongly recommend against creating slide decks using photos of a whiteboard; it’s fun and the audience likes it, but it took about 12 solid hours of surprisingly intensive whiteboard drawing and erasing, nevermind the editing, cropping and pasting):

<iframe class="embeddedvideo" src="http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=18498276&access_key=key-2n709fx2taky10eir9f5&page=1&version=1&viewMode=slideshow" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" name="doc_382011263739173_object" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" align="middle" height="500" width="600"></iframe>

I’m very much looking forward to spending the morning with our PRO members next week! If you’re not yet PRO, Scott’s got some pretty sweet offers still available including the SES Chicago ticket + 1 year of PRO for $799 (and you can trade in the Chicago pass for any SES event in 2010) and the Advanced Training DVD for PRO members at $199.

Note that the other topics that received lots of votes - SEO Metrics & KPIs, Social Media Marketing, etc. will likely be the topics for webinars in January, February and March.

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Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/wcyCBcblGNs/90minute-pro-webinar-link-building-strategies-on-thursday-dec-10th

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From: sitepronews.com

Today Yahoo launched its 2009 Year in Review which features the top trends and web searches made on Yahoo for 2009.
Categories included in the Year in Review include: Top 10 Searches e.g. Twilight
Farewells e.g. Michael Jackson
Sudden Fame e.g. Susan Boyle
Mad Science e.g. Hubble Telescope
Obama in the House e.g. Health Care Plan
Market Darlings e.g. Twitter
Financial Hangovers e.g. [...]

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Yahoo Highlights Search Trends for 2009

Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/12/01/yahoo-highlights-search-trends-for-2009/

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From: sitepronews.com

PHP is a programming language that allows your website to go beyond a basic HTML document, and create an interactive experience. Open source means that the source code is available to someone with proper access to the site, so that they can easily make changes. When the Internet was first getting started, most of the [...]

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Ten Ways to Use PHP on your Website

Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/12/01/ten-ways-to-use-php-on-your-website/

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From: sitepronews.com

Wordpress STD’s (Security Transgression Defilements) are a common occurrence. WordPress-powered websites are far from being immune to hackers, although the latest release/s address many earlier security issues. WordPress, like other content management systems and forums such as phpBB, vBulletin, is a major target [...]

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

WordPress Security – An Ounce of Prevention is Better than a Pound of Cure

Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/12/01/wordpress-security-an-ounce-of-prevention-is-better-than-a-pound-of-cure/

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From: sitepronews.com

Wordpress STD’s (Security Transgression Defilements) are a common occurrence. WordPress-powered websites are far from being immune to hackers, although the latest release/s address many earlier security issues. WordPress, like other content management systems and forums such as phpBB, vBulletin, is a major target [...]

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

WordPress Security – An Ounce of Prevention is Better than a Pound of Cure

Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/12/01/wordpress-security-an-ounce-of-prevention-is-better-than-a-pound-of-cure/

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From: sitepronews.com

One of the most frustrating aspects to business is when you have all the marketing tools your business needs, perhaps even some your business does not need and yet you still see no results. You may even be spending time and effort marketing your business and yet conversion ratios and traffic remain constant or even [...]

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

The Reasons Why Marketing Plans Fail

Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/12/01/the-reasons-why-marketing-plans-fail/

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From: searchenginewatch.com

Yesterday, we learned Michael Jackson was Bing’s most popular search term of 2009. Today, Yahoo! revealed that the deceased pop star topped their list as well.

Unlike Bing’s list, which featured several other deceased celebrities, Yahoo! searchers were apparently jonesin’ for Vampires, Wrasslers, and tabloid starlets.

1. Michael Jackson
2. Twilight
3. WWE
4. Megan Fox
5. Britney Spears
6. Naruto
7. American Idol
8. Kim Kardashian
9. NASCAR
10. Runescape

For top searches on mobile devices, a certain Transformers 2 star took the top spot:

1. Megan Fox
2. Mobile Games
3. Michael Jackson
4. Movies
5. Rihanna
6. Mail
7. Lady Gaga
8. NFL
9. Ringtones
10. iPhone

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/IJ-P0zKsJP8/091201-005820

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From: searchenginewatch.com

SHOP.com has added a bunch of new features to enhance and encourage social sharing on the comparison shopping site.

The biggest announcement is a new social hub. It’s called SHOP.com Community and it features their Facebook and Twitter updates.

Shoppers can already share searches with their social networks, but now SHOP.com is making it rewarding to do so with their new SHOPstar networking program. Members of the program get a little kickback when they refer sales.

Let’s say you’ve come across the perfect snuggie for the LSU and you use a unique URL to Tweet it out to all of your friends - you’ll get a little commission on the sales that come in.

SHOP.com is also adding a new lists feature. You can create a list of any type and share it with friends and family.

Launched right at the heart of the holiday shopping season, SHOP.com hopes to develop a few new shopping habits at a critical time.

“With SHOP.COM’s new community enhancements and the SHOPstar program, we hope to harness the power of social media and help shoppers with their purchasing decisions in a relevant way,” said Mondy Beller, senior vice president of marketing for SHOP.COM.

Happy shopping and sharing!

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/SJAKF9eEbsk/091201-002905

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From: google.com

You should be careful about headlines.

It’s pretty easy to write a headline that will get someone to forgive your spam, and perhaps even to open your note (CyberMonday! 85% off...). It’s pretty easy to write a headline that will get someone to click through on their RSS reader. It’s even easy to write a tweet that will get a click through.

But is it better to get a click and then annoy someone, or better to only reach the people who care?

The mindset of the brazen copywriter is, “well, even if only 1% of the people I trick are actually interested in the content, that’s worthwhile. After all, there are a lot of people out there, and offending 99 to get one subscriber or one sale is good math.”

The word I use for people like is ‘spammer’.

The mindset of the modern marketer is, “I can build a reputation in everything I do. If I teach people to trust me, then over time, I’ll conserve their attention and build permission. That’s priceless, particularly in a world that’s getting more skeptical by the minute.”

Of course, the best thing of all is to have content that deserves a great headline. If you can’t do that, though, I think you should forgo the headline.

Fore!

Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/sethsmainblog/~3/YT7wk0Jfnq4/shocking-tiger-woods-video-exclusive.html

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From: google.com

Right on the heals of last Google PR update which happened on 31st October 2009 we can see another Google Toolbar PR update happening right now.



This should be the fastest update ever or very much possible an additional update to the 31st October update. Most of our clients site gained PR. How has the update been for you?



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Tag: Google Pagerank



Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl

Have a bookmark! -

Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/searchnewzlatestnews/~3/MoJbnIqpUcI/sn-4-20091116GoogleSurprisePageRankUpdate.html

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From: google.com

For those of you not yet aware, Google has been testing a new algo/infrastructure nicknamed Caffeine. Until a few days ago the general public had a location to go to to watch and monitor how their sites would fare on the Caffeine system.

That location has been pulled and it’s been announced that the new system is tested, working, and will be rolled out - though not until after the holidays.



While the fine folks at Google have tested Caffeine, they obviously don’t want to be subjected to the same kind of backlash they received in the Florida update of 2003 when sites and pages were dropped from the index and spam ruled the results right through the holiday season.



In a few days time they will roll out Caffeine on a single datacenter and pull data and stats from a small percentage of the general public. The full launch will occur sometime in early 2010. When we have the location of the datacenter we’ll be sure to let you know.



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Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/searchnewzlatestnews/~3/-hHVjUn_--8/sn-4-20091113ReadyForCaffeine.html

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From: google.com

Posted by randfish

Over the past 2 years, SEOmoz has worked with quite a number of websites whose primary goal (or primary problem) in SEO has been indexation - getting more of their pages included in Google’s index so they have the opportunity to rank well. These are, obviously, long tail focused sites that earn the vast majority of their visits from queries that bring in 5 or fewer searches each day. In this post, I’m going to tackle the question of how Google determines the quantity of pages to index on a site and how sites can go about improving these metric.

First, a quick introduction to a truth that I’m not sure Google’s shared very publicly (though they may have discussed it on panels or formally on the web somewhere I haven’t seen) - that is - the concept that there’s an “indexation cap” on the number of URLs from a website that Google will maintain in their main index. I was skeptical about this until I heard it firsthand from a Googler being described to a webmaster. Even then, I didn’t feel like the principle was “confirmed,” but after talking to a lot of SEOs working at very large companies, some of whom have more direct interactions with the search quality team, this is, apparently, a common point of discussion and something Google’s been more open about recently.

The “indexation cap” makes sense, particularly as the web is growing exponentially in size every few years, often due to the production of spam and more legitimate, but no less index-worthy content on sites of all sizes and shapes. I believe that many site owners started noticing that the more pages they produced, even with very little “unique” content, the more traffic Google would send and thus, abuse was born. As an example, try searching using Google’s “last 24 hours” function:

Seriously, go have a look; the quantity of “junk” you wouldn’t want in your search engine’s index is remarkable

Since Tom published the post on Xenu’s Link Sleuth last night, Google’s already discovered more than 250 pages around the web that include that content or mentions of it. If, according to Technorati, the blogosphere is still producing 1.5 million+ posts each week, that’s conservatively growing the web by ~20 billion pages each year. It should come as no surprise that Google, along with every other search engine, has absolutely no desire to keep more than, possibly, 10-20% of this type of content (and anyone who’s tried re-publishing in this fashion for SEO has likely felt that effect). Claiming to have the biggest index size may actually be a strike against relevancy in this world (according to Danny Sullivan, it’s been a dead metric for a long time).

So - long story short - Google (very likely) has a limit it places on the number of URLs it will keep in its main index and potentially return in the search results for domains.

The interesting part is that, in the past 3 months, the number of big websites (I’ll use that to refer to sites with an excess of 1 million unique pages) we’ve talked to, helped through Q+A or consulted with that have lost wide swaths of indexation has skyrocketed, and we’re not alone. The pattern is usually the same:

• One morning, you wake up, and 40% of your search traffic is gone with no signal as to what’s happened
• Queue panicking executives, investors and employees (oh, and usually the poor SEO team, too)
• Enter statistics data, showing that rankings for big terms aren’t down (or, maybe down a little), but that the long tail has gotten a lot shorter
• Re-consideration request goes to Google
• Somewhere between 10 to 40 days later, a message arrives saying:

We’ve processed your reconsideration request for http://xyz.com.

We received a request from a site owner to reconsider how we index the following site: http://xyz.com

We’ve now reviewed your site. When we review a site, we check to see if it’s in violation of our Webmaster Guidelines. If we don’t find any problems, we’ll reconsider our indexing of your site. If your site still doesn’t appear in our search results, check our Help Center for steps you can take.

• This email, soon to be recognized by the Academy of Nonsense for its pre-eminent place among the least helpful collection of words ever assembled, spurs bouts of cursing and sometimes, tragically, termination of SEO or marketing managers. Hence, we at SEOmoz take it pretty personally (as this group includes many close friends & colleagues).
• Calls go out to the Google AdWords reps, typically consisting of a conversation that goes something like:
  Exec: “We spent $10 million @#$%ing dollars with you last month and you can’t help?”
  AdWords Rep: “I’m sorry. We wish we could help. We just don’t have any influence on that side of the business. We don’t know anyone there or talk to anyone there.”
  Exec: “Get me your boss on the phone. Now.”
  Repeat ad nauseum until you reach level of management commensurate with spend of the exec’s company (or their connections)
  Exec: “Can you get me some answers?”
  AdWords Boss: “They won’t tell me much, but apparently they’re not keeping as many pages in the index from your site as they were before.”
  Exec: “Yeah, we kind figured that part out. Are they going to put us back in.”
  AdWords Boss: “My understanding is no.”
  Exec: “So what am I supposed to do? We’re not going to have money to buy those $10 million in ads next month, you know.”
  AdWords Boss: “You might try talking to someone who does SEO.”
• At this point, consultants receive desperate email or phone messages

To help site owners facing these problems, let’s examine some of the potential metrics Google looks at to determine indexation (note that these are my opinions, and I don’t have statistical or quantitative data to back them up at this time):

1. Importance on the Web’s Link Graph
   We’ve talked previously about metrics like a domain-level calculation of PageRank (Domain mozRank is an example of this). It’s likely that Google would make this a backbone of the indexation cap estimate, as sites that tend to be more important and well-linked-to by other important sites tend to also have content worthy of being in the index.
2. Backlink Profile of the Domain
   The profile of a site’s links can look at metrics like where those links come from, the diversity of the different domains sending links (more is better) and why those links might exist (methods that violate guidelines are often getting caught and filtered so as not to provide value).
3. Trustworthiness of the Domain
   Calculations like TrustRank (or Domain mozTrust in Linkscape) may make their way into the determination. You may not have as many links, but if they come from sites and pages that Google trusts heavily, your chances for raising the indexation cap likely go up.
4. Rate of Growth in Pages vs. Backlinks
   If your site’s content is growing dramatically, but you’re not earning many new links, this can be a signal to the engine that your content isn’t “worthy” of ongoing attention and inclusion.
5. Depth & Frequency of Linking to Pages on the Domain
   If your home page and a few pieces of link-targeted content are earning external links while the rest of the site flounders in link poverty, that may be a signal to Google that although users like your site, they’re not particularly keen on the deep content - which is why the index may toss it out.
6. Content Uniqueness
   Uniqueness is a constantly moving target and hard to nail down, but basically, if you don’t have a solid chunk of words and images that are uniquely found on one URL (ignoring scrapers and spam publishers), you’re at risk. Google likely runs a number of sophisticated calculations to help determine uniqueness, and they’re also, in my experience, much tougher on pages and sites that don’t earn high quantities of external links to their deep content with this analysis.
7. Visitor, CTR and Usage Data Metrics
   If Google sees that clicks to your site frequently result in a click of a back button, a return to the SERPs and the selection of another result (or another query) in a very short time frame, that can be a negative signal. Likewise, metrics they gather from the Google toolbar, from ISP data and other web surfing analyses could enter into this mix. While CTR and usage metrics are noisy signals (one spammer with a Mechanical Turk account can swing the usage graph pretty significantly), they may be useful to decide which sites need higher levels of scrutiny.
8. Search Quality Rater Analysis + Manual Spam Reports
   If your content is consistently reported as being low value or spam by users and or quality raters, expect a visit from the low indexation cap fairy. This may even be done on a folder-by-folder basis if certain portions of your site are particularly egregious while other material is index-worthy (and that phenomenon probably holds true for all of the criteria above as well).

Now let’s talk about some leading indicators that can help to show if you’re at risk:

• Deep pages rarely receive external links - if you’re producing hundreds or thousands of pages of new content and fewer than “dozens” earn any external link at all, you’re in a sticky situation. Sites like Wikipedia, the NYTimes, About.com, Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo! have millions of pages, but they also have dozens to hundreds of millions of links, and relatively few pages that have no external links. Compare that against your 10 million page site with 400K pages in the index (which is more pages than what Google reports indexing on Adobe.com, one of the best linked-to domains on the web).
• Deep pages don’t appear in Google Alerts - if Google Alerts is consistently passing you by (not reporting, this can be (but isn’t universally) an indication that they’re not perceiving your pages as being unique or worthy enough of the main index in the long run.
• Rate of crawling is slow - if you’re updating content, links and launching new pages multiple times per day, and Google’s coming by every week, you’re likely in trouble. XML Sitemaps might help, but it’s likely you’re going to need to improve some of those factors described above to get in good graces for the long term.

There’s no doubt that indexation can be a vexing problem, and one that’s tremendously challenging to conquer. When the answer to the “how do we get those pages back?” is “make the content better, more unique, stickier and get a good number of diverse domains to link regularly to each of those millions of URLs,” there’s going to be resistance and a search for easier answers. But, like most things in life, what’s worth having is hard to get.

As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts (and your shared experiences) on this tough issue. I’m also hopeful that, at some point in the future, we’ll be able to run some correlations on sites that aren’t fully indexed to show how metrics like link counts or domain importance may relate to indexation numbers.

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Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/GhAmDMIjn_Y/googles-indexation-cap

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From: searchenginewatch.com

I’m back at my desk after an excellent SES conference in Berlin last week. This was the first time in Berlin and the feedback has been tremendous. But now it’s time to focus on SES, Chicago December 7 - 11. Fondly known as the freeze-your-ass-off SES, Chicago always attracts a great crowd ready for the final annual gathering of the search community.

The great thing about the show, is that, it’s not about reflecting on the past year, it’s all about looking forward to the New Year. So it kind of becomes the industry showcase for examining new and emerging trends as well as technologies. And this year is absolutely no different.

We recently started a new channel over at ClickZ called “Conference Call” which is a series of columns written by presenters and moderators giving an overview of their own sessions. This is a great way to get to know more about the sessions and the speakers before you get to the show.

I did a brief overview myself of a few sessions that I really want to be sure to see. And I think it’s worth a quick return, because as I think more and more about us beginning to move away from the general purpose search we’ve become used to and into a new era of what is largely being referred to as “suggested discovery” I think it’s worth a closer look.

To be clear, general purpose search has been based around the simple principle of you give us three words and we’ll give you a gazillion documents back (but you’ll only be interested in the top ten, of course). And so, search engines have been satisfying a short term information need on a repeated basis.

Now, if I was a baseball fan and the Yankees were my team, I’d probably do a lot of searching at search engines about my team. What’s the score? Did we buy a new player? When does the new stadium open? You get the idea. And each time my short term information need is satisfied. But here’s the thing, if the service delivering these results knows I need this stuff, why do I have to keep asking? Why don’t they just give it to me?

So satisfying your long term information need is very high on the search research agenda. And most certainly, one area this can happen already is in social search. In fact, in social search there are many times you’ll get the answer to a question before you’ve even asked it.

One guy who really gets the whole “suggested discovery” idea is Bill Scott. Bill created and led the IBM Digital Media Consulting & Systems Integration practice until he recently left to form his own company, Easel TV. He’ll be speaking on two panels at SES, Chicago. The first is Search on the Edge - From Search to discovery. During this session Bill will explain what his company is doing with suggested discovery on the television.

I asked Bill if he could give me broad brushstroke (pun intended) of what he’ll be covering.

This is what he told me:

First, I’ll be talking about the connected TV in general and how the TV will increasingly get content over broadband as well as over Cable, Satellite, Terrestrial and closed IPTV networks. I’ll also talk about why the TV is a very different environment to the PC and why just putting regular websites on the TV won’t work. This includes the fact that search on the television is the wrong model and that we need to move towards suggested discovery. No-one is going to type into a Google type search box on their TV when using just a remote control!

Then, I will explain what we’re doing with Suggested Discovery and how you can use more and more sophisticated technology to create a more and more simple experience that is appropriate for the television. I’ll cover how we aggregate data and results from multi-modal sources to offer consumers a range of appropriate and relevant content that retains the serendipity of television - “Beyond the recommendation engine.” And finally I’ll talk about how the same concepts can be used to enhance TV programme-making - so that the content itself can be dynamically tuned to the audience based on the audience’s response to it.

Yes, when Bill expanded for me on the idea of being able to monitor the audience viewing habits and then begin to create content specifically for that audience segment, you begin to see how beneficial this is to both audience and marketers.

Bill will also be on the “ Beyond Googling: 5 Years Later it’s a Different Audience” panel. Here he’ll give us even more insight to where he sees search going.

In particular he’ll be talking about “Relevance” - How will brands deliver a fresh and relevant experience to consumers, in whatever context and on whatever device?

Really, he says, the future of search, discovery or whatever it becomes is all about data, permission & trust and business rules. He also says we need to collect and maintain more data - preferences, behaviour, context, community - from more sources than ever before. This will happen naturally as both devices and the companies that provide services become ever more sophisticated. Of course the generic provider will evolve and become much more intelligent and will aggregate from multiple data sources - not just a crawl - however it is the combination of the two roles (maybe but not necessarily by the same organisation) that will deliver real value to the consumer.

Bill goes on to say that, the consumer is now in control: How do we reach them? How do we raise our proposition above all the others that are fighting to be in the consumers’ domain? How do we understand which rules our target market has defined? And how do we conform to those rules in order to reach our target? Can we identify the individuals at the hub of social groupings who have disproportionate influence? Can we offer them something extra in return for endorsement?

A whole bunch of extremely interesting questions to ponder.

I can tell you, after doing some checking around, this Chicago SES is about to be one of the best ever. And there’s already a great buzz going on. And BTW, a little birdie (no, not Twitter) told me that there are still some rooms available at the Hilton at this time.

Okay, let me go and cherry pick another session to highlight tomorrow.

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/3l4gN2eSxEo/091130-182647

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From: searchenginewatch.com

At SES Chicago 2009 on Wednesday, December 9, at 12:30 p.m., there will be a drawing to give away the “largest marketing library.” Attendees of Search Engine Strategies Chicago can enter their business cards up until just before the drawing.

The drawing will take place in the Exhibition Hall, and the lucky winner must be present to claim the prize. (If you are a twin or triplet, use the canonical tag to show that you are the original winner, not a duplicate.)

Here is a partial list of the titles to be given away:

“World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories” by David Meerman Scott.

“Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time” by Joel Comm, Anthony Robbins and Ken Burge.

“Taming the Search-and-Switch Customer: Earning Customer Loyalty in a Compulsion-to-Compare World” by Jill Griffin.

“33 Million People in the Room: How to Create, Influence, and Run a Successful Business with Social Networking” by Juliette Powell.

“Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion” by Gary Vaynerchuck.

“Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers” by Seth Godin.

“Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone Is Connected. Connect Your Business to Everyone” by Mitch Joel.

“Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust” by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith.

“Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversion” by Tim Ash.

“Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online” by Andy Beal and Judy Strauss.

“Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results,” “Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing” and “Always be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer” by Bryan Eisenberg.

“eBoot Camp: Proven Internet Marketing Techniques to Grow Your Business” by Corey Perlman.

“Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business” by Erik Qualman.

“What Would Google Do?” by Jeff Jarvis.

“The Truth about Search Engine Optimization” by Rebecca Lieb.

If you read even a couple of these books, then you will be the smarter than a 5th grader. But wait! There’s more!

The day before the drawing, there will be Author Luncheon in the Expo Hall (rear right) on Tuesday, December 8, from 11:45 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

You can have lunch and network with your favorite author and/or SES speaker. This special event includes:

Andy Beal, CEO, Trackur, author of Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online.

Cindy Krum, Chief Executive Officer, Rank-Mobile, LLC, author (in February 2010) of “Mobile Marketing: Finding Your Customers No Matter Where They Are.”

Dennis R. Mortensen, Director of Data Insights, Yahoo!, author of “Yahoo! Web Analytics: Tracking, Reporting and Analyzing for Data-Driven Insights.”

Sally Falkow, President, PRESSfeed.

Andrew Goodman, SES Advisory Board & Principal, Page Zero Media, author of “Winning Results with Google AdWords.”

Bill Hunt, President, Back Azimuth Consulting, author of “Search Engine Marketing, Inc: Driving Search Traffic to Your Company’s Web Site.”

Greg Jarboe, President & Co-Founder, SEO-PR, author of “YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour A Day.”

Yes, yes, I should disclose that I’m the author listed above, but at least I’m listed last.

If this list looks long, it is—but these are only some of the authors who will be speaking at the event. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, there will be more than 22 authors speaking at SES Chicago 2009.

And this was just handed to me: It appears that The BuyerSphere Project is now available online!

What is The BuyerSphere Project? Well, if you didn’t attend SES San Jose 2009, then you missed the session about a major B2B research initiative, conducted by Enquiro with input from Google, Business.com, Covario, Marketo and DemandBase, that showed most marketers aren’t effectively leveraging online assets to their best potential.

Here’s my interview with Gord Hotchkiss, President and CEO of Enquiro and author of The BuyerSphere Project.

<iframe class="embeddedvideo" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/wwfT3aQgG5c&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="560" height="340"></iframe>

Gord Hotchkiss, Enquiro at SES San Jose 2009 discussing Buyersphere Project

This is, indeed, a ton of books. Perhaps, this is why Cyber Monday started on Black Friday for Amazon.com, as I reported this morning. Who knows.

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/_TuMQcmRy8o/091130-161816

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From: searchenginewatch.com

Keywords related to “black friday” increased by more than 20% on Google last week. The data was culled over a two-day period - Thanksgiving and Black Friday - and compared to the same two days last year.

Two terms, “black friday sales” and “black friday ads,” were up by over 50%.

Searchers narrowed their queries by adding a brand name to the keyword phrase. The fastest rising queries were:

• “Walmart Black Friday”
• “Kohls Black Friday Ad”
• “Sears Black Friday Sales”
• “Target Black Friday Deals Online”

Some terms pointed to the desire for more information on the in-store shopping experience, such as “Walmart Black Friday Store Map.”

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/wGLe1zSgKbM/091130-160929

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