[Editor's note: We're excited to share this next guest post from David Alston of Radian6 . A fast emerging leader in the field of social media measurement, Radian6 )a TopRank client( provides social media monitoring tools to hundreds of leading PR firms, ad agencies and brand marketers.] David is VP Marketing at Radian6 in New Brunswick, Canada with previous experience at several tech startups in the interactive advertising and the video over IP space. Most recently,

Yesterday, Junta 42 announced their latest list of top content marketing focused blogs )Online Marketing Blog came in at #2 in between Copyblogger and PR 2.0( and it reminded me yet again of how important content is for SEO. It used to be when discussing search engine optimization services 5-6 years ago, we'd focus on keyword optimization of content and getting links as independent tactics. Today, it's a different story. Of course many of the basics of SEO still apply,

Right along with Facebook, YouTube and blogging, Twitter is one of the most often written about social media communication tools. )Follow me @leeodden ( We've run polls about how people use Twitter as well as aggregated tips from the Twitter community on how to get the most productivity out of it. This post shares a few new Twitter tools you may find useful. TweetWheel - You may have a 100 or even 1000 followers. Which of your followers know each other?

Going by the last month of updates, we're now updating the BIGLIST of SEO blogs every second Friday. That should give us more time to filter out the better sites for inclusion. Read on at the bottom as there are several reminders on how to get on the list as well as stay on. The Big Wave Blog - Vikram Singh, Ronnie Soud and Melanie Korn contribute their insights on everything from online branding to events to SEO/PPC/Social Media marketing.

It's a near nightmare situation really. A client sends an email on Friday saying, "We're launching a new web site on Monday, can you take a look at it to make sure our site optimization is ok?". The Account Manager asks for a URL and upon receiving, clicks to find a "pretty" home page with 90% images and/or Flash, "cool web 2.0″ navigation using Ajax and as a result of a new content management system, a URL syntax that is completely different than before. Oh,

Online Marketing Blog manages a list of over 500 search marketing blogs called the BIGLIST , but it's not ordered other than alphabetically. A year ago I took a sample of SEO and SEM blogs that were publishing Feedburner counts and posted a list ranked by the number of RSS subscribers.

Jeremiah Owyang posted recently asking his readers what conferences they would be attending in the coming months and I thought that would be a great question for Online Marketing Blog readers as well. Over the past 3 years we've become very much involved with conferences and even becoming the first blog to be an official media sponsor for SES. Our focus in the past has been with search marketing conferences but have expanded more into direct marketing, interactive and PR.

There are a few additional photos from Web 2.0 Expo that I wanted to share and so I took some creative license with the timing of some of the events to tell the story of a typical conference day.

One of the most entertaining keynote presentations at the Web 2.0 Expo by far was delivered by Forbes journalist, Dan Lyons. It's a 15 minute long story of how Dan came to start the Fake Steve Jobs blog, it's success and lessons learned. He also makes fun of EVERYONE. Enjoy: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3550977413365196450 Sponsored By : TopRank Internet Marketing Services SEO, Social Media, Online PR and Email Marketing Video Fake Steve Jobs Keynote - Web 2.

Social media evangelist Brian Solis of Future Works, PR2.0 blog and bub.blicio.us during the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. tooks a few minutes to share his insights into what's hot in Web 2.0 and the interplay of technology and communications. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7664387870231379089 Sponsored By : Start a Career in Search Marketing Announcing the best online SEM courses from SEMPO Institute. Web 2.

While in the blogtropol.us blogger lounge today, I caught up with a dapper Dave McClure who took a few minutes before a PayPal reunion dinner to talk about his work helping develop the Web 2.0 Expo event, a little something about "AARRR" and thoughts on marketing with Facebook. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7601563463451791714 Sponsored By : Follow TopRank on Twitter Get daily updates, insights and zero "cat" tweets! Web 2.

When registering for Web 2.0 Expo I ran into Robert Scoble whom I had just met 2 weeks ago in San Francisco at another conference. He a agreed to do a quick video interview on what's new in the Web 2.0 world and offered a few tips on how to get more out of attending conferences. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4044250035651101782 Sponsored By : SMX Social Media Long Beach 4/22-3 Get the lowdown on marketing with social media for your business at SMX Social. Web 2.

After finding out my new camera's SDHC card wasn't recognized by my Sony Vaio laptop, I was stuck taking lots of photos but not posting to Flickr as I normally would. After checking several stores I finally found a card reader and below are a few photos from the Web 2.0 Conference here in San Francisco this week. Dave aka "PayPal Mafia" McClure Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li of Forrester Geoff Livingston,

After the keynote frenzy this morning, the session that stood out for me was Facebook Marketing: Best Practices with Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester Research as moderator, Evan Mager from AKQA, Holly Liu from Watercooler, Brett Keintz of 750 Industries and Stanford GSB and Kevin Barenblat of Context Optional. Some of the key takeaways from this session were: Be clear with your objectives Test spending money on Facebook marketing even if you aren't sure about the return. Hey,

Nothing smacks more of ADD in a Web 2.0 world than micro blogging and microcontent. "Flow Apps" as Stowe Boyd calls them. As such, the last session I'm blogging on day two of Web 2.0 Expo is appropriately named: "Short Attention Span Theater: The Birth of Microblogging & Micromedia" The cast of characters in this session includes: Gregarious Narain of Blue Whale Labs who moderated, Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester Research, Brian Solis from Future Works and PR 2.

The first session for me on day two of Web 2.0, "Creating a Coherent Social Strategy for Business" with Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li of Forrester, was one I've been looking forward to since I first read Groundswell . See my previous interview with Charlene Li on Groundswell . In this session, both Li and Bernoff emphasize the importance of not jumping into social technologies and applications just because the competition does,

Sessions on day two begin at 8:30 PST and while I appreciate that, it's aggressive in my book. So, I'll be attending, Twittering and blogging the following sessions at Web 2.0 Expo today as well as visiting blogtropol.us: 9:40am Creating a Coherent Social Strategy for Business Charlene Li )Forrester Research(, Josh Bernoff )Forrester Research( 10:50am Consumer 2.0: How Web 2.0 is Changing Moods, Metrics, & Monetization Rafe Needleman )CNET(, Konrad Feldman )Quantcast(,

The second workshop of the day at Web 2.o Expo, " Startup Metrics 101: Product & Marketing Workshop " provided attendees a glimpse into the vast depth of knowledge from Dave McClure of 500 Hats who offered some pirate speak, "AARRR" to help delegates remember his model for building web businesses. Hiten Shah of CrazyEgg and KISSmetrics provided practical examples and Vanessa Fox of Ignition Partners and Nine By Blue offered a combination of SEO centric tips,

My first post from the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco is the second half of "Free Traffic: SEO/SMO 101 )Search Engine & Social Media Optimization( with Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts and Muhammad Saleem of Advantage Consulting Services. Unfortunately, I missed the SEO portion and gauging by the crowd around Stephan, it went quite well. Muhammad Saleem's portion of the presentation focuses on Social Media Optimization and Marketing 101.

The buzz about SEO in the public relations industry has grown tremendously over the past 2-3 years. Press releases in particular, have been the easy target for promotion as candidates for optimization. With the growing use of Google and Yahoo News, optimizing press releases have been an easy way to gain prominent visibility in the short term and in some cases, long term visibility in standard search engines.