Google is planning to test ultra-high speed broadband networks and is considering one or more trial locations across the country. Google Fiber, so you’re considering moving to Duluth.. Join the club. In 1982 I came to visit. After a decade-long love affair with the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) to the North, I finally made it here in 95’ and never left.

Google, over the coming days, we’ll be sharing aspects of our community and why aimClear, an internationally known search marketing agency, thrives here…

It’s remarkable really. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will take the stage for a “Fireside Chat” with Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of SearchEngineLand.com and conference co-chair, to kick off SMX West on March 2.  In his inaugural address directly to the search marketing community, Mr. Ballmer will discuss Microsoft’s evolution in search and his vision of the future.

Given the Microsoft/Yahoo search deal, his appearance is an especially notable gesture…

Though social media participation has exploded, we meet businesses nearly every day  that have barely, clumsily or not dipped their toes in the in the water.  They ask, “Should we have a Facebook page,“ “What about YouTube” or “Gee, should we be tweeting?”

These entrepreneurs are usually full of life, energy, present a history of offline success and have little idea what to do about social media…

Should direct marketers place Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and/or other buttons as part of the template for every email blast?   What about PPC landing pages? Should Twitter and Facebook be exit-options for every PPC landing page impression? How should advertisers think about socialization as either primary or secondary KPIs (key performance indicators A.K. A “goals.”)?

At first gape, these questions seem easy, yes?  “Of course, yes, socialize everything” you shout!”  “After all, isn’t the ‘net  all about social media these days?” How could it be wrong to ever consider omitting the all-powerful and ubiquitous social media click-me-now badges?

Caveat:  We understand that as social-trust augments and even partially supplants trust rank in how content is ranked by search engines, having influential tweeps and and wielding one’s own street cred’ is of paramount importance…

credit: rahady
We’ve reviewed many sites where supposed search engine optimization “experts” damaged a business with archaic techniques and/or outmoded business practices.  While it’s easy to spot most scumbags, it can be much harder for laypersons to sift out previously germane SEO dinosaurs– now dangerously out of step.

To fill the void, this post offers wary small business owners, CMOs and marketing managers a 30,000 guerrilla vendor gut-check litmus test…

I got a bit of push-back last year when I was quoted in the SEOmoz ranking factors survey  that Google might include things-associated-with Tweets as a ranking factor. Well read it and weep. Check out this Google search for our KnowEm friend Michael Streko.

Obviously Google is now cruising realtime search and Twitter for SERPs suggestions.

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Search moves at the speed of lightning, so staying current is crucial.  This list of over 1,500 search industry articles, ideas, tweets, tool reviews, notes and snippets was our 2009 internal agency-training library of  content. The aimClear team has embraced systemic review of this “Daily Training List” and contribute content.

This mutual commitment to reading helps our shop keep a fresh awareness of current developments and is an important component of our training…

To begin, this post is not a black hat tutorial teaching how to build spam-scraper-copyright-infringing websites. Rather we’ll highlight simple white hat techniques to successfully republish and rank “duplicate” content, all the while creating new value for users.  Please don’t use these methods for evil.

In my opinion the tactic outlined herein is one of the most fun white hat “give it up” tips we encountered in 2009…

We invite SES Chicago attendees to  join us today at 12:45PM. I’ll have the pleasure of moderating the Facebook Rockstars RoundTable: Marketing For the Other Internet session.  350 million fanatically engaged users in one place means understanding Facebook’s no-search-engines-allowed community walled garden system of “organic” and paid visibility is now essential. Shell-shocked brand managers unite! We’ll share how to plan, pilot and ramp successful Facebook programs…

Welcome to Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2009! The sun has not yet risen but excitement is palpable here at the ornate and venerable  Hilton hotel.

If you’re reading this post you should definitely be here. Nothing is as effective as gleaning first hand information from the best online marketers in the biz’ along with an incredible helping of camaraderie and business bonding. That said we’re stunned at the array of talent embodied in the correspondents conference organizers have assembled to document the proceedings…

Since the onset of personalized search, frustrated SEO sharpshooters have sought tactics to somehow get a grip on the ensuing chaos.  Now that most users on gets different customized search results, the days of search engine optimization measurable in the SERPs are long gone.

This post offers a useful method to optimize for micro-demographics in a way that, not only neutralizes, but also ruthlessly exploits personalized search to the SEO’s benefit, one user at a time…

It’s our privilege to share this Thanksgiving gift of song and perspective with our community.

If there is justice my friend Pamela McNeill will experience fame and fortune to match years of critical acclaim for her music from media and fans.  The story of how her latest album, “Heartaches and Miracles,” came to be is truly the stuff of  Thanksgiving and inspiration.

Pamela’s credits range from stadium performances with Rick Astley and gigging London’s storied underground to writing movie soundtrack songs with Yanni…and lots in between…

I’ve been watching TweetDeck all morning  for the real-time search “thankful.” Feeling extremely grateful, I asked a couple a’  thousand of our closest friends what exactly they were thankful for. Some of the answers from tweeps were warm and touching. We found some  snarky-ass results in Twitter search segment SERPs, which we grabbed to RT-share here.

ummm…

With more than 70 sessions covering PPC management, demographic research, SEO, social media, link building, mobile, duplicate content, SearchEngineStrategies Chicago is an annual techno-pilgrimage for fortunate attendees. We’re stoked because December 7-11th is coming up fast!

aimClear will be at SES (as always) in full blogging regalia covering sessions, speaking and hanging out with ya’ll…

Dear Facebook Ads,
Thank you for the amazing new Ad Platform. It’s groundbreaking,  heart-pounding, a lot like Google’s Content Network and with even more intriguing targeting options on the grid.  It’s been a love affair for aimClear, starting in the academic lead generation sector years ago when ‘Ads first launched. I’m sorry to say that Facebook’s inability to grow customer service at the same prodigal rate is extremely disappointing…

Whatever business you’re in, dealing with customers is where earth moving boots crunch deep gravel roads. Part of my job is training marketers committed to becoming self-contained entrepreneurs over the long haul. Relatively early in their development we start them interacting directly with name-brand clients, to our mind a necessary stop for building “complete” marketers.

At morning meetings we discuss each other’s jobs, progress, ongoing client dynamics, priorities, coordinate production and critique correspondences…

PubCon is a whirling dervish, a collage of kindred spirits, sites, sounds, intensive learning and hyper-techno-geeks. All of this is a hyperbolic stew mashed up with a healthy heaping of Las Vegas kitsch & killer eats.  Here are some a snapshots to capture a portion of the frenetic ultra-vibe.

The boys from seOverflow: Yes, tell your boss that there is ROI for the sweet shirts…

Ah PubCon, jewel of the Nevada desert.  The sun has barely risen here but I’ve been up for hours working,  thinking, tripping about the amazingly massive search marketing day ahead. 

Dude the energy here is unreal. Here’s the obligatory true-must-attend conferences of the year thing…so much more powerful when fully authentic.   In a minute I’ll be pycho-trawling the eye candy people-watching Hilton halls in a minute tunes cranking in noise canceling headset…

photo credit: craigCloutier

Most large Internet marketing agencies and in-house shops are configured as departments of specialists. It’s no wonder! In today’s complicated world PPC, ORM, social media, link building, affiliate networks, analytics, content creation, video, public relations, SEO, coding, server administration, vendor management and account management all require experienced and nuanced practitioners…

Rand Fishkin is a singular personality and, to those in the SEO industry,  needs little  introduction.  Having “started playing” with Microsoft FrontPage WYSIWYG web page software in 1993 as a high school student, he’s grown his company SEOmoz to take its place amongst the most recognized brands in search.

Rand worked his way to thought-leadership by classic pathways: speaking engagements at early Danny Sullivan/Chris Sherman Search Engine Strategies conferences, tackling ambitious data-driven research projects, ahead of its time tool-making, endless sharing, participation and blogging…

The wind whistles howling, this blustery Canal Park morning, 7:20 AM.  The water churns brown, surface licking little whitecaps, tinted iron ore agitated by waves. There’s going to be snow south of us by the Shores of Lake Superior today, hazardous travel they say.  It’s about 43 degrees Fahrenheit outside but I’m good.

Each year it takes about a week of around-freezing weather to acclimate a soul and I’m there…

Google Insights For Search

What does it take to rank in Facebook’s newly enhanced internal search engine, which now spans the entire user base? This post offers results from aimClear’s study of Facebook search and offers SEO tips & tricks for getting keyword queries ranked in FB’s organic SERPs.

We also examine opportunities for savvy marketers to best exploit Facebook’s expanded social graph search to immediate advantage and share straight-up ranking-factors-advice…

photo credit: Rebecca Miller
Gazing out this Airbus A319’s window, dreamlike cirrus clouds expand towards the far horizon. I travel tens of thousands of miles each year, but some trips are special.  Others, like this week in New York for SMX, are pilgrimages.

I’m certain I’m not the only speaker, organizer or conference attendee who will look back on this year’s SMX East as subtle testimony to fantastic pivot points…

Good morning New York! The sun has not risen outside my Herald Square Mid-Town hotel, though the city’s morning energy radiates  outside for miles.  It’s autumn in New York and that means SMX East,  one of our favorite annual search marketing conferences.

Freshly recovered from last night’s Clix/aimClear SchmoozeFest (thanks to Dave & Buster’s),  this morning it’s time for serious business…2 speaking assignments on the Social Media Track…

photo credit: lorenzwalthert

In 1996 while employed as a CBS affiliate’s Creative Director, our team built the community’s first television station website and started publishing daily news show scripts. It was pretty amazing  stuff. My white paper to station management to procure the initiative’s budget, was that “broadcast television could become minimized or obsolete in light of changing publishing paradigms” and that the station should hedge our bet by “targeting newspaper’s customers” by early adoption of the Internet which was “going to become the millennial printing press…

I had a near out of body-real-time SMS/search/tweet experience last night interacting with our attorney, Laura.  (No, the picture’s not Laura.)  She’s in Manhattan to attend the Social Media Risks and Rewards legal conference, and pinged me to quick-search for information about a ruckus she was observing outside the famed Waldorf Astoria.

Our innocent little text exchange and my ensuing searches (illustrated later in this article) make it entirely clear there’s a radical new type of query intent (what users’ are looking for): situational…

photo credit: B Rosen

We’ve reviewed plenty of paid search accounts, where the supposed PPC expert literally destroyed a business. We know it’s difficult for non PPC professionals to vet vendors, giving the ever shifting best-practices landscape.  It’s no wonder there’s an icky underbelly to the PPC vendor scene.  Things change very quickly so it’s hard for anyone but the most committed practitioners to keep up…

The old reputation management adage is “want to know how to get 2 FDA.gov, 2 WashingtonPost.com, 1 CNN.com & 2389 blog links this week?” The answer (of course) is to accidentally injure people with your product.  Trust us, getting the ensuing horrible results pushed off search engine results pages (SERPs) will be much tougher that placing them in the first place.

Clients come to us wondering why they are unable to easily expunge negative search engine results for brand names, after PR debacles or other difficult incidents…

photo credit: sinisterbluebox

<rant> I was strolling along the lake towards our lovely Canal Park Office the morning, when my Blackberry (sonar sound) alerted me to an email. I was consumed noodling on possible blog topics for a today and weighing ideas against our team’s imposing schedule. The sound of an email spammer trying to buy doFollow content links in my blog jolted me a bit…

photo credit: photoaf

By design, in-house and advertising agency clients can successfully take over day to day account basics after working with us to pilot, heal or massively improve missing, average or terribly broken PPC.  Agencies & businesses just need support to fix existing accounts themselves…in as little as 4 intensive weeks.

Though most pedigreed PPC companies are reticent to accept an Advertising Agency’s client’s PPC “trainee-shadow,” confident ones will…