View from our "boat" in Barcelona during Search Congress I'm about to go on stage at the Search Congress conference in Barcelona and I thought I'd share the presentation that I'll be giving. Don't worry, only the title page is in Spanish but all the photos are from my last trip to Barcelona. As a complement to the growing amount of Content and Social Media focused advice being given by traditional SEOs,

I've had people learn that I've recently written a book called Optimize and they ask what it's about. I say it's about optimizing customer discovery and engagement with content. The response I usually get is something like, "Oh, cool. I thought it was about SEO." Most people that have learned I've recently written a book called Optimize ask what it's about. I say it's about optimizing customer discovery and engagement with content.

How do you measure your online marketing performance? What are your goals, your KPIs and how do you measure ROI? These are pretty common questions in the world of social media marketing. As companies evolve their people, process and technology to attract, engage and inspire customers through content, I think attention on a broader view of the value that is created warrants consideration.

What good is great content optimization and social media promotion without meaningful measurement? This session at SES London focused on three different perspectives towards measuring performance which were as relevant to any online marketing as they were to Search Engine Optimization. In fact, that notion of "SEO is Marketing" lends really well with the trend a lot of people are talking about in the online marketing industry.

I really lucked out after moderating the morning session at SES London on Social Media Tools by joining the SEO Tools of the Trade session that followed. Both sessions had great speakers and I've decided to combine my notes for both into one post about social media automation tools and SEO tools. The sources for the SEO tool recommendations include: Richard Baxter of SEOGadget, Dave Naylor from Bronco, and Neil Walker from Just Search.

No SEO Migration Plan is much scarier than this pic of Big Ben. One of the classic scenarios for the intersection of web design/development and search engine optimization is when companies decide to update their web site's design and content management system. Companies that expect new business and continued visibility to various audiences through search need to manage their web site assets for more than just ease of back-end maintenance and customer user experience.

At the recent Online Marketing Summit in San Diego I caught up with Charlotte Blank , Manager of Social Media at General Motors to talk about digital marketing. In this short interview I asked Charlotte a few fundamental questions about digital and social media marketing related to customers: 1. How does GM segment digital marketing activities between customer acquisition and retention?

Attributes of a Socially Optimized Business - Dachis Group Add "social" to just about anything and you'll boost interest in your topic by at least 50%. While many consultants appear to be employing that tactic to boost their interesting-ness, it's not the case with the topic of social business. As companies work to figure out what role social media will play with external marketing and communications,

I'm headed to )hopefully( sunny San Diego today for the annual Online Marketing Summit conference where I'll get to present on one of my favorite topics: Optimization. Of course, if you read Online Marketing Blog very often, you'll know my definition of optimization is a bit different that traditional SEO. My post last Thursday " Are You Optimized ?" touched on this.

Is your company adaptable? Is your marketing optimized? I think most online marketers get the fact that marketing and communications on the web is a fast changing place and that most companies are structured to move at a slower pace than the digital world is evolving. Take for example, the notion of Search Engine Optimization )SEO(. It's been around for about 15 years or so and in just the past few months Google has made the most significant changes ever.

Is Your Blogger Relations Using Push & Pull PR Tactics? Yesterday digital PR maven Adam Vincenzini pinged me about a post he was researching on how brands could make it easier for bloggers to talk about them. It's a great question because mentions and links from influential content sources are priceless for credibility, awareness and in particular, social SEO.

Google+ Optimization or Community Building? Initially I looked at Google+ the same as other Google social projects like Wave and Orkut. But the more I use Google+ the more I like it. Maybe it's the network effect because others are using it more too. I often find content and insights shared on G+ that I don't find elsewhere. While the addition of Google Search Plus Your World )SPYW( has made a big splash in the digital community,

Content Marketing Not Performing? Troubleshoot SEO Basics. This post is a preview of a new downloadable guide I will be offering for those who pre-order Optimiz e by March 13,2012. The full guide will have screenshots, examples and "SEO Deep Dive" advice. If you want the full guide, watch the OptimizeBook.com site or sign up there to be notified.

Online Marketing is all about information. And people. Making connections that solve marketing problems in today's environment of social and technological innovation can be challenging. Like many readers of this blog, a big part of what I do as an Internet Marketer centers around being able to consume large amounts of information or better, the right information,

Being included on a popular list of credible resources like our own BIGLIST of top Marketing Blogs or one of the many other collections of useful resources posted online can feel pretty satisfying, validating the hard work many are putting in to their business blogs. Great lists get socially shared, linked, and emailed, giving those included quite a bit of valuable exposure. By association, the list publisher also gains value in terms of exposure, links,

Screenshot from Google's promo video Google Personalized Search rolled out yesterday revealing a change as significant as Universal Search in 2007. Unlike the major change that brought images, video thumbnails, news and blog posts within search results for all, the Google plus Your World changes are only visibile when logged into Google. There are many stories to be told here, from Google as a social network to the statements Google and Twitter are makin g.

This post is about Congratulations, Convergence and Content. First off, congrats to Aaron Kahlow on his great news , I'm sure UBM TechWeb will be pleased with OMS, it's an impressive event with a great following. Speaking of OMS, despite the wimpiest Minnesota Winter in years, February is a fine time to go somewhere warm and luckily, OMS and SES Search & Social Accelerator in San Diego are coming up fast Feb 6-9, 2012.

The business press is full of stories about how small companies are using social channels to attract and engage customers. But while there are plenty of individual success stories, the confidence in what to do specifically is not always clear for small business owners that are strapped for time and online marketing resources.

A recently post on PC World, "2011: The Year Facebook Killed Google" reflects a common mis-perception about the emerging role of search and social media for consumer information discovery. In the post, the author Dan Tynan shares that he's finding and consuming more information on social networks vs. Google during "moments of leisure". Citing unique visitor traffic and time on site statistics from Nielsen, Dan then makes the argument that Google is falling behind.

What does 2012 hold in store for online marketing? The acceleration of innovation in online technologies and the ways we can discover, consume and engage with information can be a challenge to keep up with. But as digital marketers that are more than shiny object opportunists, seeing future trends is exactly what we need to do in order to anticipate our place in the digital universe. It's not just about where you can sell stuff to people right now, but next month, next year,