The world of search has changed dramatically over the past year. Google introduced its Panda update which killed off a lot of websites. Social signals are playing a more important role in your rankings and how fast your website loads is also becoming more important. What’s going to happen in 2012? Here are the top 50 experts who will tell you want you need to know! If you are concerned about where your website ranks then you should definitely add these bloggers to your must-read list. Enjoy!

Danny Sullivan, Founder of Search Engine Land

1) Search Engine Land

http://searchengineland.com  -  Search Engine Land is a news web site that covers search engine marketing and search engine optimization. It was founded in 2006 by Danny Sullivan after he left Search Engine Watch. Search Engine Land stories have been cited numerous times by other media outlets.

2) SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog 

Rand Rishkin, Founder of SEOmoz

http://www.seomoz.org/blog  –  Rand Fishkin is the CEO & Co-Founder of the web’s most popular SEO Software provider SEOmoz. SEOmoz develops SEO software, provides a robust link intelligence API, and hosts the web’s most vibrant SEO community. We’re based in Seattle, but we’re often found traveling the globe to participate in marketing events and meetups. We’re also incredibly fortunate to have the most helpful and cuddly robot in the Solar System. Oh, and by the way, we’re hiring a few good people.

3) Emailwire.com

http://www.emailwire.com  –  EmailWire.com is a service of GroupWeb Media LLC, aba GroupWeb.Com. An online media company and specialize in press release distribution, newswire services, news aggregation and dissemination.

4) Search Engine Journal

http://www.searchenginejournal.com  –  Search Engine Journal, established in 2003, is a 7 year old publication of Alpha Brand Media, which specializes in a community approach to the reporting of search engine news and the sharing of Search Engine Marketing knowledge and tactics.

5) The KISSmetrics Marketing Blog

http://blog.kissmetrics.com  –  KISSmetrics is run by a team of designers, developers and entrepreneurs that are passionate about helping online businesses measure, grow and monetize. The team’s experience comes from previous ventures including ACS, Crazy Egg and Product Planner. As a result, the team has hands-on experience understanding and developing analytics solutions for high-end web properties. KISSmetrics is backed by well respected private and institutional investors including True Ventures, SoftTech VC, Felicis Ventures, Dave McClure, Shervin Pishevar and Bobby Yazdani.

6) Web Hosting Delhi

http://www.mychoicedelhi.blogspot.com  –  DLL Incorporation provides SEO In Delhi, Technology News, Ethical Hacking Tricks, SEO Tips, Blogging Tips and It is Delhi Based SEO, Web Promotion, Web Designing and Web Hosting Company.

7) Famous Bloggers

http://www.famousbloggers.net  -  Famous Bloggers is a multi-authors blog and Social Network platform for Making Money Online Tips built on the contributions of its authors. We are serious about creating a fun, safe, rewarding, and effective Social Network platform for SEO, Marketing, Traffic, Design, Social Networking and Making Money Online Tips!

Andy Beal, Marketing Pilgrim

8) Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com   -   MarketingPilgrim.com was launched by internet marketing consultant Andy Beal in September 2005. As a follow-up to Beal’s award-winning search marketing blog, Marketing Pilgrim expands its coverage to bring the latest news, rumors and reviews of all things related to internet marketing and online advertising. The site is constantly rated a top 10 media and marketing blog by Advertising Age.

9) Hitwise Intelligence

http://weblogs.hitwise.com  -  Hitwise Intelligence — Understanding online consumer behavior, beyond your own Website, is key to growing and retaining customer relationships. By having the insights necessary to identify your best customers and prospects, know where they spend time online and understand what motivates them to buy, you’re able to connect with customers and engage them on a much more meaningful level.By combining online insights with unique offline lifestyle and life stage information, Experian Hitwise helps companies build and optimize their online marketing campaigns for improved multichannel success. Clients rely on Experian Hitwise’s insights to improve the effectiveness of search, display, affiliate, email and social marketing campaigns.

10) Business 2 Community

http://www.business2community.com  -  Business 2 Community aims to provide a balanced view of the current business landscape based on industry news and trends, as well as real-life experiences. 

Lee Odden (Left) & Susan Misukanis (Right), Founders of TopRank

11) Online Marketing Blog

http://www.toprankblog.com  - TopRank Online Marketing is a digital marketing agency founded by Lee Odden and Susan Misukanis that helps companies increase sales, brand visibility online and develop better customer engagement. We specialize in content based customer acquisition and relationship programs that emphasize social media marketing, search engine optimization and email marketing. Companies hire us for consulting, training and implementation services.

12) 12 Most

http://12Most.com  -  12 Most is a dynamic community of influential, globally-renowned writers & business experts publishing THE BEST LIST POSTS on the web, period!

13) Reel SEO Video Marketing

http://www.reelseo.com  -  ReelSEO.com is The Online Video Marketer’s Guide – The world’s leading resource for news, analysis, tips and trends for the online video and internet marketing industries. Our videologists & columnists offer expert advice, guidance, and commentary about the world of online video in an effort to guide internet marketers and video content producers towards best practices and online video services that suit their needs. Our goal is to help evangelize for the industry, collect and disseminate best practices, and learn a little bit while doing it.

Kevin Gibbons, Founder of SEOptimise

14) SEOptimise 

http://www.seoptimise.com/blog  -  A leading light in the search industry, SEOptimise founder Kevin Gibbons has over 10 years’ web experience. He has specialised in the field of search engine marketing since 2003, advising a wide range of industry sectors on increasing their online visibility by using the latest search engine marketing techniques.

15) BizReport

http://www.bizreport.com  -  BizReport is recognized internationally as a leading source for Internet business and e-commerce news. Attracting a diverse and influential audience of business professionals, the BizReport website delivers breaking news, in-depth reports and interviews with industry leaders. BizReport is linked by a broad range of online finance and investment portals, technology companies and e-commerce sites. Industry CEOs and Executives around the world rely on BizReport.com for in-depth, up-to-the-minute coverage of the Internet industry.

John Jantsch, Founder of Ducttapemarketing

16) Ducttapemarketing

http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog  -  John Jantsch has been called the World’s Most Practical Small Business Expert for consistently delivering real-world, proven small business marketing ideas and strategies.  John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, award winning social media publisher and best selling author Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine .

17) Marketing Profs Daily Fix

http://mpdailyfix.com  -  The Internet is full of marketing tips, marketing advice, and marketing experts—but most of what is out there is either pure garbage or really confusing to figure out. Our editorial team cuts through all of this marketing noise to find the experts and in-the-trenches marketers who know what they are talking about. Then we take their know-how and mix it with our marketing smarts to turn it into practical advice that you can actually use through our newsletters, conferences, seminars, podcast, articles, and webcasts. We must be doing it right, because we’re a multi-million dollar company that serves a community of more than 418,000 entrepreneurs, small-business owners, and professional marketers at the world’s largest corporations.

18) Inkling Media

http://inklingmedia.net/  -  Inkling Media is an inbound marketing shop based in Lancaster, PA with an emphasis on social media. We provide consultation on utilizing social media as part of an overall marketing strategy. In addition to Social Media, we work with you to help implement a strong blogging plan, as well as organic search engine optimization. Our work includes the creation, and implementation of social media plans. A social networking media plan can be extremely simple and cost effective if done properly. We can work with you to find the best mix of social media to meet your needs, from broad-based social media branding, to smaller, more specific campaigns and events. We also will provide you and your staff with the knowledge and tools needed to effectively carry out your social media marketing plan. We’ll also help you navigate and understand the inherent differences between traditional media and social media, and how to use those differences to your benefit. We offer a personal, hands-on approach that gives you the education and tools necessary to create and manage a successful Internet marketing program.

19) For Bloggers by Bloggers

http://bestbloggingtipsonline.com/  -  For Bloggers, By Bloggers. Offers some of the best blogging tips online. Blogging advice on themes, platforms, design and more.

Matt Cutts, Gadgets, Google & SEO

20) Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog  -  Matt Cutts works for the Search Quality group in Google, specializing in search engine optimization issues. In an interview with USA Today in June 2008, Cutts provided advice on how to optimize search results on Google.

21) Brafton News

http://www.brafton.com  -  Brafton is an online news and content agency that offers integrated content marketing services.

22) Vandelay Design Blog

http://vandelaydesign.com/blog  -  Vandelay Website Design exists to help businesses and organizations build a stronger presence online. By working directly with our clients to identify and address areas of need we are able to provide a customized experience and an end product that will produce results and lead to increased profitability.

23) Sitemaps and SEO

http://www.sitemaps-xml.com  -  Sitemaps and SEO — We are all trying to discover phrases that pay. Finding the right key phrases for your business and placing them for best effect is the quest for the Search Engine Holy Grail.

24) FSMdotCOM

http://www.funkyspacemonkey.com  -  FSMdotCOM – a place for tips, how-tos and the latest information about what’s really important in the iPhone/iPad/jailbreak world.

25) Dan Zarrella

http://danzarrella.com  -  Dan Zarrella is the award-winning social media scientist at HubSpot and author of three books: “Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness,” “The Social Media Marketing Book” and The Facebook Marketing Book.

26) aimClear Search Marketing Blog

http://www.aimclearblog.com  -  aimClear® is an internationally respected 16 person boutique online marketing agency based in lovely Duluth, Minnesota with a 6 person satellite office in historic Lowertown St. Paul.  Having masterminded Facebook Ad campaigns since 2007 which generated over 10 billion impressions, aimClear is generally recognized as one of the top paid Facebook demographic research specialists in the world. Client Credits include Martha Stewart Omni, Siemens, Second Life,  Washington Post companies, AngiesList,  Budget Direct and other clients in Australia, UK, Germany and numerous others.CEO, Marty Weintraub, is author of “Killer Facebook Ads” (Wiley/Sybex 2011).

27) State of Search

http://www.stateofsearch.com  -  State of Search is one of the leading websites when it comes to search and social media. This website, founded by Bas van den Beld and co-founded by Lisa Myers, focusses on the next step in search marketing and social media. The web is changing and so is search. What consequenses do these changes have and how do we handle these? Those are questions answered on StateofSearch.com. StateofSearch also is the host of a weekly podcast broadcasted on Webmasterradio in which the state of the search market is discussed. The show-host Bas van den Beld and Roy Huiskes receive many guests from all over the world to discuss the latest developments.

Justin Germino, Dragon Blogger

28) Dragon Blogger

http://www.dragonblogger.com  -  Founded by Justin Germino, DragonBlogger is a Technology and Entertainment portal that in addition to featuring technology articles and product reviews, also has a section designed to provide tips to help bloggers earn more and improve in their online ventures.

29) Blazing Minds

http://blazingminds.co.uk   –  Blazing Minds is a blog of all sorts, but is best known for it’s honest and well-written reviews of gadgets, websites and other popular tech products.

30) Mark and Angel Hack Life

http://www.marcandangel.com  -  Here at “Marc and Angel Hack Life” we enjoy sharing practical thoughts on a broad range of topics pertaining to life, hacks, productivity, aspirations, health, work, tech and general self improvement. We promise you will not find a regurgitation of someone else’s point of view on our site. Regardless of the topic at hand, these views are our own.

Harsh Agrawal, ShouMeLoud

31) ShoutMeloud

http://www.shoutmeloud.com  -  Harsh Agrawal is a young Entrepreneur and professional blogger from New Delhi, India. He writes about Blogging, Social media, WordPress, SEO, Technology and Make money online. Apart from Blogging, he offers various  services like custom WordPress theme, WordPress set up, WordPress SEO, blogspot to wordpress migration, Thesis Theme customization.

32) BrandSavant

http://brandsavant.com  -  BrandSavant is a blog about making sense of the social web from the perspective of a professional researcher. Tom Webster is a 20-year veteran of opinion, media and marketing research, and the principal author of Twitter Users In America, The Social Habit, The Podcast Consumer Revealed and other widely-cited studies of consumer technology usage. He is currently Vice President, Strategy, for Edison Research, most widely-known as the sole providers of U.S. Election exit polling data to all major media outlets. 

33) Online Journalism Blog

http://onlinejournalismblog.com  -  The Online Journalism Blog publishes comment and analysis on developments in online journalism and online news, data journalism, citizen journalism, blogging, vlogging, podcasts, interactive storytelling, publishing, Computer Assisted Reporting, User Generated Content, searching, online communities, mobile phone journalism, social media and all things internet. It tends to go through phases based on the current interests and activities of the contributors.

Daniel Scocco, Daily Blog Tips

34) Daily Blog Tips

http://www.dailyblogtips.com  -  Daniel Scocco has lived and studied in several places around the world, including Italy, Chile and Brazil. After receiving a degree in International Economics and working for one year in a multinational company, he decided to pursue entrepreneurial projects on the Internet.

Christian Hollingsworth, Smart Boy Designs

35) Smart Boy Designs

http://smartboydesigns.com  -  Christian Hollingsworth is an online entrepreneur, blogger and digital marketing consultant with ten years experience in the industry.

Brian Hawkins, Hot Blog Tips

36) Hot Blog Tips

http://hotblogtips.com/  -  My name is Brian D. Hawkins, the admin of several blogs and many websites. I have well over twelve years of online experience, as well as earning a steady online income for over ten years. Hot Blog Tips offer quality tips to help bloggers with everything from designing their blogs to building traffic, from monetizing to branding, marketing to search engine optimization. If it will improve your blog we want to discuss it here.

37) Econsultancy

http://econsultancy.com/blog  -  Econsultancy is a community where the world’s digital marketing and ecommerce professionals meet to sharpen their strategy, source suppliers, get quick answers, compare notes, help each other out and discover how to do everything better online.

38) Success is A Choice

http://www.andrewsegawa.com  -  Success, Blogging, SEO, Make Money Online, and Personal development.

39) SEO.com Blog

http://www.seo.com  -  With SEO.com on your side, the best geeks in the biz are in your corner – geeks who get all jazzed about search rankings and search marketing. We do fist bumps when our clients reach the first page of the search results. We brag about our new tools and strategies. We stay ahead of new trends and changes in the industry. We drool over every nugget of search news. We geek out about search marketing because we love it – and that’s why we get top rankings. And that’s what delivers a big ROI.

40) Van SEO Design Blog

http://www.vanseodesign.com  -  VanSEODesignBlog specialize in building usable and search engine friendly websites so whether it’s a living breating person or search engine spider that’s visiting, both will have an enjoyable experience on your site.

41) Makobi Scribe’s Product Reviews

http://www.makobiscribe.com  -  Makobi Scribe is a go-to-resource for Product Reviews, Giveaways ending near-daily, and Resources for fellow bloggers. Makobi Scribe is mainly operated by Jennifer, who does the bulk of the reviews and blogging tips; but has recently welcomed new members to the team. 

42) Lunametrics

http://www.lunametrics.com/blog  -  LunaMetrics is a Google Analytics Certified Partner, and the same for Google Analytics Training, Google Website Optimizer and Google AdWords. We also specialize in Social Media, Search Engine Optimization and Pay Per Click Advertising. Our work often falls on these three areas: traffic, analysis and action. 

43) Social Media Encyclopedia

http://buzzom.com/  -  Buzzom is a platform to explore and share the what, why and how of social media marketing. Get insight into latest social media trends, tips on using social media tools like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and learn from experts about what it takes to build a buzz around your brand.

Roger Johansson

44) 456 Berea Street

http://www.456bereastreet.com  -  This site is developed and authored by  Roger Johansson. A Swedish web professional who has been working with the web and other interactive media since 1994.

45) Noobpreneur Business Blog

http://www.noobpreneur.com  -  Noobpreneur is a business blog offering tips and ideas for small business owners and those who want to enter entrepreneurship with the right mindset.

46) SEO Best Tips

http://www.seobesttips.com  -SEO Influence’s technique involves a mix of the most powerful SEO strategies employed by any firm in the country. On page SEO, social media, content syndication and online reputation are what affect a sites ability to rank on the search engines. Detailed information about a search engine’s algorithm is rarely disclosed, so using any one method alone will likely fail to produce results. SEO Influence is constantly researching and testing every known method of internet marketing. Google, Yahoo and Bing regularly change and alter their ranking algorithms, meaning a method that works today may not work tomorrow. For this reason, SEO Influence utilizes diverse and flexible forms of search engine optimization, to ensure that the desired results are achieved.

Patrick Altoft

47) Blogstorm SEO blog

http://www.blogstorm.co.uk  -  Blogstorm is the UK’s largest blog discussing internet marketing and search engine optimisation news & strategies. Owned by Patrick Altoft. Patrick is Director of Search at Branded3, a Leeds based digital marketing agency specialising in search engine optimisation & social media marketing as well as building and designing websites and applications.

48) tripwire magazine

http://www.tripwiremagazine.com  -  Tripwire magazine — Web professionals have to master many skills and technologies to create the modern, effective web applications that clients demand these days. It can be hard to stay at the top in the web field – it’s a never-ending task!

49) All About Content – SEO Blog

http://www.all-about-content.com  -  All about Content — Online marketing professional with expertise in search engine optimization (SEO). Currently at PBS. Previously worked as an in-house SEO for one of the top 5 e-commerce electronics sites in the world.

50) SEO Complete Solution

http://www.seocompletesolution.com/seo  -  SEO Complete Solution is one of the few sites on the internet that is merchant-certified. From a 10 person company in 2009 to a 150 person workforce in 2011, SEO Complete Solution, is globally recognized as one of the leading link building and SEO companies. Our website optimization firm has deeply rooted values and is a website that strongly believes in white hat SEO techniques, we believe that there is no room for error in today’s competitive SEO world. The fact that, not a single site we have ever optimized has ever been reported or blacklisted is a strong testimonial to our techniques and methodologies. SEO Complete Solution has a dedicated team for each service it offers, that, coupled with our innovative and creative search engine optimization methods, is the reason for our proven track record.

Grab the Badge

With EvanCarmichael.com author John Alexander before he began his session at SES Toronto.

Today was Day 1 of SES Toronto and it was a lot of fun being surrounded by people who are all talking about their rankings and what they’re doing to drive traffic to their websites.

Check out all the photos from Day 1 here.

I wanted to highlight some of the takeaways from three of the sessions I went to today.

Content marketing optimization with Lee Odden

Lee Odden (@leeodden) is the CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, a digital marketing and public relations firm specializing in strategic Internet marketing consulting, training, and implementation services, including online PR, SEM, and social media marketing. A veteran Internet marketer, Odden has consulted for clients such as HP, McKesson, Northwest Airlines, PRWeb, and the national PRSA.

• The big lie about content strategy is:  Build it and they will come.
• Search is becoming social. You need to have a presence in all the major social media sites to have greater influence with your audience.
• If something can be searched on then it can be optimized.
• Make it easy for customers to discover consume and share your content, products and services.
• Create content that educates and makes it easy to follow a logical conclusion to buy.
• Blend content creation with curation. You don’t have to create everything from scratch as long as there is value to your audience.
• Build customer profiles. Who are they? What are they looking for? What type of content should you create and share to attract them?
• Pay attention to what people are saying about you on Social Mention.
• Create an editorial calendar for what content you’re going to create and how you’re going to share it.
• Always include an image or video. Your message will travel further.
• Search in your Analytics for a “?” to get a sense of the questions people are using to find your site.
• For content curation, don’t just copy and paste or Google will drop the page via their Panda update.
• Try to add your own commentary on the content to avoid duplicate content penalties.
• Also do what you can to get links to your curated content.

Information architecture for the modern website with Shari Thurow

Shari Thurow is the founder and search engine optimization (SEO) director at Omni Marketing Interactive, a full-service SEO, Web site usability, information architecture (IA), and Web design firm.

• Why should website owners care about information architecture? You lose customers when they can’t find your content.
• Information architecture also impacts your crawability and indexation. If Google has a hard time finding your content it won’t get ranked.
• Websites which are great examples for information architecture: Mayo Clinic, MedicineNet and National Cancer Institute.
• Every website needs a taxonomy, a hierarchical structure to organize your content.
• Rethink your top navigation. Ask yourself does it serve our readers as best it can?
• Use embedded text links from content to other content on the same site. It serves as a label to tell search engines what the content is about.
• A blog to look at as a best practice in information architecture is Matt Cutts.
• Create author pages to show all the posts by an author.
• Navigation labels need to be scannable, unique, and clear to readers.
• Stick between 4 and 10 links in your primary navigation.
• For user generated content look at at viewpoints as best practice example. Lead by example, show them what a good article looks like.
• Reward good behavior, you’ll get better results.
• Link to content vertical and horizontal. From parent to child and sibling to sibling.

Managing your online reputation with Ezra Silverton

What to do when you’ve been smeared in public:

• Request removal
• Review clients own web properties
• Optimize existing web properties
• Setup new profiles
• Link building

5 things to enhance your online reputation:

• Claim your name – Domain name and social networks.
• Brag. Write content about what you’re doing and share it.
• Request feedback. Reviews, testimonials. People are less likely to leave positive feedback so you have to ask.
• Belong to your community. Become a member and get involved.
• Monitor. Use Google Alerts, Social Mention both are free.

I’m looking forward to Day 2! I’ll post again after tomorrow’s sessions.

The SES Conference and Expo has jumped to a great start here in Toronto!  This is my first year attending the SES Conference with Evan; it has been an exciting day learning about trends, techniques and tips from the SEO Guru’s themselves!

Below I have listed my favorite highlights and tips I have learned from Day 1.

Is Retargeting/Remarketing Right for You?

“Research shows that as many as 90% of the people who visit a website leave without completing any action that online marketers intend them to take, such as making a purchase.”  Chris Sukornyk the CEO of Chango Inc, a Retargeting platform talked about the most effective ways for website owners to become engaging with their audience.

• 7 Types of Effective Retargeting, which consist of on-site and off-site engagements with your audience.  Examples include targeting individuals based on the specific products viewed, actions taken or actions not taken, or even targeting individual’s based on searches they conducted on Google, Yahoo and Bing.
• The “leaky” SEM Marketing Funnel – which includes visitors clicking on your competitors ad through your website, or visitors searching through SEO websites and going through review sites instead of going directly to your website.
• 5% of Internet use is researching which gives limited amount of time for marketing online due to the lack of amount of searches being conducted.

Dan Taylor from Google Display Network went more in depth to talk about “delivering the right ad at the right time”.  He believes that audience and contextual marketing should be a great layer for your marketing efforts.  A great example he used for retargeting is Expedia.com; a prospect searches for an Alaska Cruise, does not purchase the package and leaves the site.  Next time they visit the site an advertisement will pop-up with “Our New Great Deals On Alaska Cruises! – Click here to learn more” sign, motivating them to make the purchase.

SEO 101

Considering my lack of knowledge pertaining to SEO and optimizing a website Bruce Clay, president of Bruce Clay Inc. did a tremendous job presenting a ton of useful information for the non-techies like myself!

• Use clarification words for your content to help the crawlers understand what your website is about and what you are trying to rank for.  Write in a natural way for your audience (do not use language your audience would not use themselves or else they will have difficulties finding you through search engines).
• To get your site spidered more often you should add new content as frequently as possible, the recommended amount is on a daily bases.  Bruce gave an example of a very popular website CNN which gets spidered every 2 minutes due to the amount of changes the website undergoes, they have one million articles added every month!
• What is natural ranking?  Placing the keyword blank amount of times, but not to the extent to be considered as a spammer.  Top 50 sites were analyzed and they all used the keyword every 7 words in the content.  Which brings me to a story the audience was told about a camping trip.  Two friends decided to go camping; while they were making bbq a bear approached them.  The two friends decided to start running, now as the first guy running you don’t have to be an Olympic racer; you just have to beat the guy behind you – that is SEO!  Beating your competitors not the search engines.

Analytics 101

This was a very informative and energetic presentation done by Matt Bailey, SES Advisory Board and President of Site Logic Marketing.  Notifying the audience that “big numbers lie” especially in analytics was noted at the start of the presentation; furthermore Matt provided in-depth information how to work Google Analytics to your favor.

• Big numbers lie because they are a set of data – data cannot be good or bad, it is just classified as data.  However, if you do not ask good questions about the numbers you receive from your analytics you cannot go in-depth to figure out which data is good from the bad, and use the analytics to figure out more information.
• When data is complex, understanding is easy.  First thing you need to do is list the goals of your website.  The first goal should be how to make money; you have to understand the value of your leads.  The second goal contains segments, which are the intentions people have when they are on your site.
• 3 C’s of Analytics:
  Context – create a segment
  Contrast – contracts and compare your different segments/personas
  Comparison – by comparing you can create a story from the analytics data to help you get more leads!
• Did you know the Segmentation feature on Google Analytics are the hardest features to use?  However, it is the most important because this is the set of information that will differ from the monthly data you copy and paste into your spreadsheet.   Using Segmentation will provide you with more complex data however, it will allow you to understand your visitors more and understand how to get them to make that purchase.  It also helps distinguish which pages on your site rank better for your keywords so you know where to work harder.

More Data = More Comparison

More Comparison = More Relationships

More Relationships = More Answers

Which brings you to more leads!

I’m looking forward to Day 2 of the SES Conference, don’t miss the second post!

As part of SES Toronto 2011, I’m doing a series of interviews with some of the expert panelists to get some insider advice to help improve your SEO efforts.

Last month I interviewed Terry Van Horne (7 Answers to Google Panda Questions with Terry Van Horne – SES Toronto) and today I’m pleased to connect with Matt McGowan. Matt joined Incisive Media in 2006 and is responsible for the North American business in addition to overseeing all marketing, sales, editorial and operations for ClickZ.com, ClickZ.asia, SearchEngineWatch.com, and the multinational SES Conference and Exposition series. You can find him on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Here are my questions for Matt and his answers.

Matt, I’m wondering if you can give my readers your best advice on what’s changing in the world of email marketing, online publishing, online advertising, and social media marketing and how they can leverage those changes to grow their businesses this year? Perhaps you could give an example of someone who’s doing it right as a best practice to follow?

Evan, thank you for this opportunity and I look forward to seeing you at SES Toronto.  Jumping right in…

1) Email Marketing

Email is critical and by far the most powerful tool in a marketers arsenal. Originally email enabled a marketer to communicate a single message to many customers and today many still use it that way.  However, the companies on the cutting edge are using email more and more as a tool to have many individual conversations with their customers; one on one. I am not talking transactional based emails here. In this vein and as ClickZ published earlier this month many advanced email marketers are looking at new metrics, above and beyond the tradition delivered, open, click and conversion metrics of old.  I will list them here but for those who want more detail on them I recommend reading the article.  They are: Advocacy Scores, Frequency Factors and Device Preferences.

2) Online Publishing

Online publishing is changing so fast that I fear by the time your readers read this it will be out of date =) Seriously though, very much in the same vein as email, media companies are experimenting with how they can customize their publications to their readers individual preferences.  This factor alone is why we have witnessed so many general news publications fail while the more vertical publications have held their ground and grown. Think about it, is any one reader really interested in everything in the New York Times or Globe and Mail? Probably not. When a reader hits one of their sites wouldn’t it be nice if the home page customized based on your reading habits and interests? I like business and technology news and don’t ever read sports or life news, therefore business and technology news would propagate the homepage and recommending reading sections for someone like me.

This takes me to the second thing online publishers are working on which is reader profiles, both public and private.  If I take the time to write thoughtful and intelligent comments on certain subjects wouldn’t it be nice if I could show off my expertise by linking to my profile? A portfolio so to speak.

3) Online Advertising

Other than Privacy, which is probably the biggest issue on the horizon (we can get into that another time if you like), the biggest issue we deal with when it comes to Online Advertising is its effectiveness. In order for online advertising to scale the industry needed consistency, hence the IAB Ad Unit Guidelines.  Now that most online ads have the same general shape, look and feel problems like low click through rates and banner blindness abound.  So, publishers have begun to innovate and introduced increasingly impactful (think HTML5, pushdowns and peels) and social advertisements, including a few that have begun to cross the line between editorial and paid advertorials.  Couple this with the recent surge in exchange traded media, many worry that the “art” of advertising is losing out to the “quants”.  Are we commoditizing advertising is a question that comes up often.

As a publisher the most common discussion I have with marketers is how do we do something special because the box isn’t working for me.

4) Social Media Marketing

The biggest thing most companies are still dealing with here is grappling with the sheer amount of resource impactful social media marketing consumes.  More and more automation solutions are hitting the market and I do believe marketers are finding automation much more acceptable today than they did just a year ago (I have moderated a session for the last few years on this at SES Conferences globally –next one will be held at SES San Francisco this August). That said, automation solutions only really help with the top of the funnel, at some point human contact is still a necessity.

Another equally pressing issue is that social media marketing is leaving the “testing” line and starting to get allocated its own budget.  What sort of returns should marketers expect/plan for? Should a dollar spent on Social get you a higher or lower return (ROI) then Search? Display?

5) For SES Toronto, what are some high level points you’re going to be discussing in your session on Display Network Ads and ROI?

Display has evolved. The CPM while still prevalent is not the only game in town.  For those marketers who have become addicted to the accountability of Paid Search Advertising (PPC), Display now offers a similar model which in many cases can return a higher ROI.  This session will focus on the conversions and lift Search advertisers are missing that are not also buying Display.

6) For SES Toronto, what session are you most interested in attending and why?

As part of SES Toronto 2011, I’m doing a series of interviews with some of the expert panelists to get some insider advice to help improve your SEO efforts.

Up first is Terry Van Horne. Terry is currently a partner with David Harry in Reliable SEO, a Search and Social Media Marketing Agency, and the award winning SEO Training Dojo, a learning community as well as three other marketing and industry news sites

He’s going to be talking at SES Toronto about a timely topic: the Google Panda Update

Here are my questions for Terry and his answers.

1) What are the main differences between the first and the second Panda update? The second was supposed to be the international rollout but a lot of US traffic fell for many sites as well.

One of the problems with Panda is that there were a number of changes over a very short period of time. The attribution and scraper update was released just before Panda. In fact this year has absolutely been the most volatile I have seen in my 15 years of doing SEO.

Part of the reason some may feel that they were adversely affected is that there is a suspicion in the SEO Dojo that Panda was accompanied by another unnamed update or other algo. Also consider that if you had links from properties affected by the second wave then your rankings would be affected a second time.

IMO, some of the shifts in rank are due to sites affected by panda passing less authority/link equity hence if you had a lot of incoming links from affected properties you are going to see hits to authority.

2) How much of the second update was related to Google user feedback in your opinion?

Zich… nada… more about them all being separate indexes. Google doesn’t really give SEO’s much more than lip service. Matt Cutts has stated quite emphatically that some sites are affected that shouldn’t be. These are being manually changed, but I doubt beyond “hand jobbing” the real collateral damage not much attention was paid to the complaints.

Much of what was affected was genuine low quality content with very low quality foundational linking and no “real” web promotion. IMO, this content is produced solely for Search Engines with little value elsewhere! However, I wouldn’t go as far as to call it spam. It’s what Google was giving up easily and an SEO should use as part of a diversified techniques approach.

Matt has been quite emphatic in that there is no getting up from Panda. Which IMO, means in the end it will be like the directories that were hit after the Florida update. Almost all of these have never regained the PR or value they had before the update. This has all the same kinds of “telltale” signs as that update. More interesting is that some directories (Buzzle) were also hit hard by Panda.

3) Recommendations that have been given for website owners hit by Panda have been: get rid of duplicate content, noindex low value content like tags pages, and remove / reduce the # of display ads. Would you agree with this advice?

Some yes, others no! I agree on reducing ads if you have more than 5 ad blocks on the page. I don’t believe that display ads or otherwise matter but the “number of” ad blocks is what I would pay heed to since Google AdSense uses a max of 3 ad blocks/page. However, they do allow some site ads beyond that.

One rule I use beyond Panda is ratio of copy/text to Link Text. I also look at the ratio minus the “most likely to be segmented” elements (mast, footer and left/right margins). It has always been a good idea to manage indexing of contact, privacy policy, TOS and disclaimers. You could see that some of the sites affected in the first list that appeared after the update definitely had high ratio of Link text to copy.

BTW not a big fan of the HTTP Index tags as effective ways to manage indexing, especially, when there is a multi-author blog/site scenario.

I also believe that by reviewing the flow of link equity from Home page to subsequent pages is a very good indication that Google doesn’t really see those pages as important. Of course I first check to be sure there isn’t another reason for the low flow of link equity. When you see the “juice” leave… can be pretty sure Google has lost that “luvin” feeling.

You need to either figure out why and chances are it isn’t as simple as adding more comments or pictures or videos. IMO, adding comments, vids and pics to posts is a short term fix. Kind of like the old “putting lipstick on a pig” scenario. It’s still a pig!

4) Is there any other advice you can give to entrepreneurs who have been hit by Panda?

Look at the patterns in your promotion and realistically assess your content for the role you want to play in the SERP it’s targeted at! eHow is the perfect site for some queries! Lastly, and most important is to keep your techniques and “audience types” diversified and varied!

Many SEO’s and businesses get enamored with one technique and audience and beat it to death. That results in a bad link profile with obvious signs of manipulation. Like your traffic sources try not to have one audience type or SEO technique driving all your business! The degree to which techniques “work” will fluctuate and audiences sometimes just go away.

5) Are there any examples you can think of (perhaps from your clients?) where they have successfully recovered from the Panda update? What did they do?

No examples we didn’t get hit! I think most of what got hit always have been lame tactics that worked, to some extent, but don’t drive sales or much traffic. Sorry, but I quit the article marketing in 98 and still see it as, at best, foundational links, but, even then it would be something I’d suggest as an almost last resort to get traction in a competitive SERP.

Often you end up getting outranked by your own article by some lame site that is scrapped and has a ton of crappy links pointed at it. There are lots of ways to get foundational links without going the offshore route churning out low quality content never intending it to be read just indexed and links attributed.

6) What do you think Google’s next big update is going to focus on?

Too far off to know exactly. I don’t think we’ll see another like this in years, but, it almost always is dampening links of some sort since that is the easiest way to manipulate the more competitive terms.

7) For SES Toronto, what are some high level points you’re going to be discussing in your session on the Panda-pocalypse Survival Guide For Canadian SMBs: A Search Engine Watch Round Table Special?

The signs that tell you a technique is susceptible to Panda and other calamitous events. The only one that has ever impacted me negatively is the introduction of Local Paks in the Universal SERP. Most of what I read closely will provide info that helps me to Future Proof my SEO. I am not an exploiter of the algorithm but rather I’m more interested in what it gives naturally as the Search Engines intended. Likely over 80% of all link building techniques fall directly in the not used as intended category so I tend to shy away from traditional link building and go more for the audience seeking links found more in the social web and relationship marketing.

8) For SES Toronto, what session are you most interested in attending and why?

OMI Workshop: Social Integration: Creating Interactive Conversations Across Channels

Clearly one of the future hurdles for Online marketing will be bridging the gaps between the Social Web and Search. IMO, determining where search is entering your conversion funnels with the highest chances of conversion will change how and why keyword research is being done and content created.

Is there anything else you would like to learn from Terry? Was your website impacted by the Panda update? Are you planning on going to SES Toronto 2011?

I’d love to hear your thoughts if you leave a comment below!

Algorithms, robots and cloaks got you confused? To make sure your customers are able to find your company’s website online, you need to master more than just the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) jargon. You need to understand how search engines work, and how to design your website in a way that will get it noticed. The good news is you don’t need to be a professional SEO marketer to get your website ranked high. Follow the tips on the blogs below and take yourself to the top!

1) The Official Google Blog

Search Engine Strategies Toronto Day 1 yesterday was jam packed with cutting edge tactics and great networking opportunities. Day 2 of the conference series was no different, opening with an interactive keynote from Maile Ohye of Google, followed by information sessions on Twitter automation, paid search, site clinic and more.

Day 2 Keynote with Google

Maile Ohye, Sr. Developer Programs Engineer of Google, talked about the recent Mayday update and its effect might be here to stay. For the future, Google also plans to have social search take properties from your social circle to make search results more personalized. However, the social graph is still in its early stages of development and its reach will not go beyond a user’s primary contacts just yet. Maile also says that soon, presence on social networks might play a vital role for your content distribution as real time search for media will take the popularity of your content into consideration.

Linkbuilding is always a popular subject with the public for Google, and the senior developer would like to see linking being thought of as a real business expansion. Google takes link quality very seriously and block-level link analysis will show that not all links on the same page is treated equally. There are hundreds of other components when it comes to search engine rankings and webmasters need to focus on effectively providing users what they want.

Google Webmaster Central is becoming increasingly versatile and will continue to develop into one of the most important tools for webmasters to communicate with Google. Maile confirms that speed is an important factor as slow websites hinder users’ search for the most relevant information. Last but not least, make your suggestions to Google Help Forums because Google listens!

Twitter Nation

Tracy Falke, Social Media Specialist of Freestyle Interactive and Paul Madden of Crea8 New Media gave a very interesting presentation on Twitter, everyone’s favorite micro-blogging platform.  The theme of the presentation was centralized around automation.  Bots can tweet and retweet valuable information but they could never engage in a meaningful conversation with a human being.  The wrong kind of automation could lead to a reputation crisis and perhaps even jeopardize brand equity like John Deere’s @DeereRobot.

Don’t be the loud drunk guy at the bar. Invest in content and not the platform.

Paul believes that to get a decent return on your investment in Twitter, you must engage as much as possible.  The follow-and-unfollow game still works but to do it correctly, you will need semi-intelligent tools.  Use Twitalyzer to analyze your Twitter presence and match your audience’s activity for the best return in investment.  While it is possible to code a bot, it is impossible to code a person.  Paul uses automated tweets but steps in for real human interaction when engagement happens.  One of his rules of thumb is to never post more than one link for every ten general tweets.  He had one of his bots follow someone from the room and it was amazingly hard to distinguish its behavior from a normal user.

It is social media.  Retweeting spam, using auto direct messages and asking for follow are bad behavior.  Don’t be anti-social.

Introduction to Paid Search

Matt Van Wagner, President of Find Me Faster holds a very informative session on paid placement as a form of search advertising. Pay-per-click and search engine optimization campaigns are complementary; while SEO will yield a good return on your investments in the long run, PPC will act as a insurance policy and gateway for secondary traffic. Matt briefly discusses important concepts such as keywords, ads, bids and landing pages and goes on to give great tips on time, geographic and demographic segmentation. It is important to target your audience not only to drive conversion but also to save on campaign costs. Also, expenditure on content network sites needs to be monitored for effectiveness; conversion might be low when users encounter ads in a passive browsing mode.

Since the competitive landscape of keyword research has changed, a lot of what used to be key information are now publicly available.  This makes it hard for anyone to hold a significant informational advantage over the rest of the playing field.  Matt addresses this by alluding to the story of two men’s encounter with a bear; you don’t have to outrun the bear, you just have to stay slightly ahead of your competition.

I asked Matt for some good books on paid search and he recommends Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing: An Hour a Day by David Szetela, Joseph Kerschbaum and Michael Flores, Winning Results with Google AdWords by Andrew Goodman, and Advanced Google AdWords by Brad Geddes.

Canada-Specific SEO & PPC Issues

The proximity and relationship of Canada with United States have created a unique problem for Canadian businesses on the internet.  Heather Dougherty of Hitwise, Ian McAnerin of McAnerin Networks Inc. and Guillaume Bouchard of NVI each gave their takes on what are some of the Canada-specific SEO / PPC issues and solutions.

Some statistics could provide companies with relevant insights.  For example, Yahoo and Bing have a stronger presence in French Canada in comparison with English Canada.  Queries with added Canada and Canadian geographical modifiers had higher click-through rates, likely due to the prevalence of U.S. results in searches.  Canadians also responded better to fact-based advertisements over emotionally charged commercials that work well in the U.S.

Also, be mindful of the difference in sentiments that exists in seemingly similar markets and try to avoid using alienating terms like ‘foreign’.

Tough Love: Get Your Site Tuned Up

Jonathan Allen of SearchEngineWatch and Dawn Wentzell of Outspoken Media provided some critiques, a few tricks and tips for those who were brave enough to offer up their sites for the site clinic.  Some of the suggestions include:

• get Google Rich Snippets
• use Cascading Style Sheets over Table tags to divide up content
• be descriptive with product page title tags
• create relevant tools for linking opportunities
• use iFrame to embed outside pages
• employ robot.txt to secured login pages and other sensitive areas
• stick with either with or without the www prefix to prevent diluting PageRank

The day ended with an Open Mic session on Black Hat vs. White Hat, where everyone just enjoyed themselves over conversations, drinks and cowboy hats.

The amount of knowledge and interactions makes it easy to see why this conference series garners so much attention from the industry leaders.  My experience with Search Engine Strategies Toronto 2010 has been an amazing one.

What are your most pressing SEO concerns? I would love to hear your thoughts if you leave a comment below!

Last year I covered a new keyword tool from WordStream (New Keyword Tool Better Than Google’s? – SEO University) which generated a lot of discussion. They have just launched a new product to help organic search marketers take their research to the next level and I thought I would update you on the new tool.

Here are the unedited details from WordStream:

WordStream Keyword Management for SEO is an advanced keyword research tool—think keyword research on steroids. It offers the same keyword suggestion capabilities as Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, and similar tools, but layers on keyword analytics, keyword grouping and organization, and integrated content authoring tools for roughly the same price (starting at $49/mo.) you’d expect to pay for traditional keyword research tools.

Rather than offering a static list of keyword suggestions along with a handful of related keyword suggestions, WordStream for SEO provides you with:

• Traditional Keyword Research: Not unlike existing keyword tools, WordStream offers keyword suggestions that the software pulls from a deep database of search queries.
• Personalized Keyword Suggestions: WordStream also goes a step further to mine your own site data to help surface relevant keyword ideas people are already using to find your site.
• Keyword Analytics: Instead of vague estimates based on popularity, WordStream provides accurate visit and goal data for keywords from your own site on an ongoing basis.
• Keyword Organization: WordStream has created very sophisticated grouping and organization capabilities. This means that you can effectively segment your keyword list to identify content suggestions, analyze your data in strategic clusters, and create an SEO-friendly information architecture.
• Content Authoring: The WordStream SEO for Firefox feature, which I’ll describe in more detail below, connects your keyword research with your content creation efforts to help you better focus your blog posts and product or sales pages.

The below chart details how WordStream Keyword Management for SEO compares to similar offerings from Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery:

The tool’s Discover Keywords tab is where you conduct traditional keyword research. This tab includes:

• A keyword suggestion tool (which leverages the same database as  WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool)
• A competitive keyword research tool
• The option to paste in or import keywords from a CSV file
• And the ability to analyze your own site’s data by importing server log files, or by syncing your Google Analytics account or using WordStream’s own custom package to continually discover, analyze, and organize keyword and search query data.

This allows you to aggregate data from a range of different sources.

From there you can organize your data into a taxonomy of tightly related groups and sub-groups; this resulting keyword structure is incredibly useful for SEO strategizing, setting content creation priorities and even planning your site’s information architecture. The software suggests potential keyword groups which you can review and create with the click of a button.

Now let’s take a closer look at the SEO for Firefox feature, which attempts to close the gap between keyword research and content authoring. WordStream SEO for Firefox is a plugin that you can use alongside blogging platforms such as WordPress, Blogger and Drupal.

Here’s how it works: Open the tool while your content management system is open. To research a new topic, use the “Enter a Keyword” tab—just enter a keyword to get organized suggestions. Let’s say you want to write an article about reusable plastic drinking bottles but need a little help narrowing that broad topic down to something more targeted.

Select a topic to see all the keywords in that group, or niche. You can view the results as phrases, single words or in question form.

As you can see the tool is great for generating more specific ideas around a general topic. However, to optimize your content for a given keyword niche, you need to actually use the suggested terms in the copy. The SEO for Firefox plugin also keeps a running count of how many keyword phrases you use as you type. This is great for keeping writers on track after the initial research stage.

In the My Keyword Research tab, you can log in to your WordStream account to use the private keyword data from your analytics in addition to the on-the-fly keyword suggestions.

There’s a lot to explore in WordStream for SEO. You can check out the full toolset yourself by signing up for a free trial.

What do you use for your keyword research? Do you think the WordStream tool will be popular for website owners who are trying to get their pages ranked for important keywords?

I’d love to hear your thoughts if you leave a comment below!

I’m often asked by entrepreneurs “How can I use Twitter for my business? It seems like such a waste of time!”

It’s easy to talk in generalities but I thought the best way to show you would be to give you three actual examples from how I’ve used Twitter in my business from the past week.

1) Generate Sales

I’ve set up alerts through Google News Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts) so that whenever someone talks about my business, I get an update. It’s easy to set up and it allows you to see what people are saying about it. Even if there are no results yet, as soon as someone does post something, you’ll know and you can respond.

Blogger Marc de Groot recently posted about my Entrepreneur Heroes Trading Cards (http://www.evancarmichael.com/Heroes/) so I thanked him for his post via Twitter.

He was shocked to receive a personal reply, let his Twitter list know about it, and then ordered from my website. A little recognition can go a long way!

2) Make A Customer Feel Better

We make a point of following the customers who give us their Twitter information and are always on the hunt for ways to help them. Sometimes it’s business related and sometimes it’s not. Ringo, my Marketing Manager, has set up a Twitter account @EvansAuthors just to follow our customers.

Here’s an example of how we do it. A customer recently mentioned on her Twitter account that she was sick so we decided to send her some brownies and a get well soon card.

She then sent out a message on her Twitter account to thank us.

3) Go Above And Beyond For A Customer

Like the last case, another one of our customers mentioned that her sister was going in for a cancer surgery and asked her Twitter followers to pray for her. This one was particularly tough because of how serious the situation was and our customer was also based in New Zealand which made it difficult to send her treats from our usual suppliers.

And what do you send? Brownies just didn’t seem right so we found a New Zealand based gift basket company and they had a get well soon care pack that we bought and sent to her to give to her sister.

The result? Another happy Tweet to her followers and she posted a picture as well!

The underlying theme here is connecting with your customers and potential customers on a personal level. We’ve had the best results from Twitter not by spamming promotional content to them but by listening to what they are saying and finding a way to get involved.

It can be business related which can lead to direct orders or it can be more personal and you can use Twitter as a way to connect in a meaningful way with your customers.

How have you used Twitter recently to grow your business?

I’ve love to hear your thoughts if you leave a comment below!

Photo Credit: HASH

This week I received a Valentine’s Day card… from Google!

I love the idea of sending out cards on offbeat holidays. Sometimes companies will take less celebrated occasions like Valentine’s or St. Patrick’s Day and I’ve also seen companies create their own holidays or recognize customers for special occasions (ie 1 year anniversary as a client).

It can be a great way to make your company stand out and not get lost in the usual bombardment of holiday season cards and gifts. At Christmas time you might be one of 50 cards to come in… but at Valentine’s day you should have very little competition.

In this case Google sent out the card to AdSense publishers – I’m not sure how many publishers were invited or what the qualifying criteria was but it certainly made my day!

Inside the card Google also offered their AdSense publishers a $100 coupon to use their Google AdWords service. I’ve blacked out the coupon code information so no one can steal my Valentine’s present!

Have you sent or received any cards or gifts on offbeat holidays to recognize your customers? I’d love to hear from you – please comment below!