by Stoney deGeyter Some time ago, we brought on a client in a pretty competitive field that had a limited budget. Our proposal outlined what we could do and also noted the limitations they would have with the budget they were willing to spend. Rankings could be achieved, but growth would be slow. It wasn't long before the client started noting the "slow growth" of their pet keywords and wanted to know what else could be done about that.

by Mike Fleming Possibly the biggest mistake you can make when analyzing your own web data or reporting other people's data to them is stopping at what happened . Here's an example.... "Search Engine traffic rose 20% in the last 3 months." Sweet. So, let's everybody meet at Outback for an awesome blossom with some extra awesome, right? Not so fast my friend. Let's add a little context to that little observation we made above. So,

by Mike Moran Image by Joelk75 via Flickr I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about Google's Farming update and why it has caused such angst among search marketers. Part of that answer is simple-a lot of sites with high rankings suddenly saw them plunge. That will cause some angst, for sure. But I think there is something deeper going on here. I think part of what is upsetting everyone is that we are feeling overwhelmed at what is expected of us.

by Stoney deGeyter Search engine marketing is an intense game of strategy, analysis, and patience. But, it's also a game with multiple, sometimes even conflicting, goals. Depending on who you talk to you, some will tell you SEO is about rankings, while others will tell you it's about conversions. It's a classic political struggle trying to answer the question, "what will bring in the greatest profits?" You need exposure to get the traffic that leads to new business. But,

by Mike Moran It was not a pretty sight. I watched the look in his face as he was shown a page from his domain that should not have been there. Precisely how it got there, no one knows, but it was clearly placed on his site by search spammers, out to get an advantage for some of their Web sites. It was a lovely little page about prescription drugs chock full of links to other places. How could that page have gotten there? And what was it there for?

by Stoney deGeyter Engaging in competitive research before and during your SEO, PPC, Social Media, and Link Building campaigns is smart business. As they say, "information is power." But, too much information can also cause a handicap. It's not too difficult to be so inundated with info. that you get information overload or conflicting advice. That leads to decision paralysis. You don't know the right course of action to take,

by Mike Moran I was at the Boston SEO Meetup last night talking about why white hat SEO is the way to go. )Slides are here , if you are interested.( The attendees were a mix of newbies )trying to find people to help them with SEO( and a number of us grizzled veterans. )I am not sure what it means to be grizzled, but it just sounded right.( But I was surprised that many )both veteran and newbie( wanted to talk about the same thing: content farming.

by Mike Fleming Chad Summerhill wrote a nice post recently about something you should be doing if you manage your own PPC account and something you should be showing your clients if you manage accounts for others - visual statistically significant ad test results by time period . Check out the "how-to" in that post. I did this exercise and can see how important it is to look at your ad test segmented out by time period )day or week, whatever is most appropriate(.

by Mike Moran You can't look up without reading about another link between social media and search engine optimization . Bing is now integrating Facebook "Like" data into its rankings and Google has just started integrating activity from Twitter, Quora, and FlickR. So the question is starting to be asked, "How do you leverage social media for SEO?" Last week, I challenged folks to stop ignoring social media for SEO ,

by Stoney deGeyter We live in a digital age, but haven't quite gotten to that mythical paperless society that we've been reading about for the past couple of decades. Those of us that make our living via websites still rely on good old fashioned compressed wood to fulfill a number of our daily tasks. One of those tasks that often takes us away from our computer monitors and into the world of post-its, index cards,

by Stoney deGeyter As much as the title is vastly overstated, these questions will at the very least help you ponder SEO in a way you hadn't pondered before. At least that's my theory. Question 11. How much time should I spend getting my SEO perfect? Tough question to answer. You really have to weigh the cost/benefit ratio. Many small business owners want to do SEO themselves because it saves them money. But, at some point,

by Mike Moran OK, OK, maybe it stopped working a while ago. Maybe you thought it stopped working when Google debuted Universal search. Or maybe you thought it stopped working when Bing hooked up with Facebook. But if you were hanging on and saying, "Google doesn't personalize THAT may results," then this wakeup call is for you. If you think nothing matters until Google does it, well, Google did it.

by Stoney deGeyter Below is the second set of questions from an interview I had given late last year. If you started this series with the introduction , you already know that the answers here differ from the answers given in the interview. One of the reasons I like written interviews is that it gives you a better opportunity to provide a more thorough and thought-filled answer. While these may not be life-changing questions,

by Mike Fleming Check out some of the latest news and notes in the world of the PPC advertiser... Twitter's New Ad Platform Although in beta and only open to VIP advertisers that are invited, Twitter has finally released their ad platform called Promoted Tweets . The general format is that you can use tweets you've created or that have been retweeted by someone else as "ads" that are promoted in certain environments.

by Stone Reuning Let's face it, a lot of us can get lazy sometimes. When it comes to keyword research, a lot of times we just take a brief look at our favorite keyword research tool and go with whatever looks good and in high demand. If a phrase has strong demand, we naturally think this is what our prospects are trying to find, learn or buy. When searchers though begin searching, they don't always know what they're looking for.

by Mike Moran There are some topics in search marketing that you can revisit every couple of years and write about all over again, because they never stop changing. Paid search trademark policies is one of those, because search engines never stop toying with their policies, which are often influenced by changes in case law within the various countries in which the search engines operate. If you use paid search just within the U.S., you need to know U.S. policies,

by Mike Fleming Last week, we talked about PPC trick #1 to building your online business for the long-term - using keywords correctly . This week, let's talk about another "trick of the trade" that will also help on the way to this goal. Trick #2 - Using Campaigns Correctly As the number of targeting options for PPC increases, so do the creative ways in which you can organize your campaigns to get the maximum effectiveness out of them. As I mentioned last week, for example,

by Stoney deGeyter All right, I'll admit, the title is somewhat over dramatic. But, when you don't have much to offer, hype it up anyway! Kinda like the movies! This post started from talking about How NOT To Do An Interview: The Basics . What was originally going to be an intro paragraph, turned into a full post. When this happens, I just do what I often do... take one idea and make multiple posts out of it. Love it!

by Stoney deGeyter A while back, I was asked to participate in an over-the-phone interview that would be later broadcast online. This is one of those interviews where they ask you to provide a list of questions up front so they know what to ask. Sadly, I don't even remember who it was or where the interview ran. But, what I do remember is my faltering missteps during the interview. Yeah, don't pretend it's never happened to you!

by Mike Moran I was talking to a veteran SEO consultant the other day about all the things I am seeing about how social media activity affects organic search. After listening for a few minutes, he abruptly stated, "SEO and social are separate. A lot of people say they do both, but it is too complicated to be good at both. I do SEO and that's all I need to do." I agree that it is complicated, maybe too complicated for any single person to do well.