Dear Internet, Meet Facebook Status Optimizer (Boom, Mind Explodes)

Posted by Danny Dover Update: Happy April Fools day everyone! Thanks to all of those who played along and everyone who participated (willingly or not ;-p). Hopefully this made you or a friend smile as much as everyone here at the office. Until next year, Cheers!

Damballa Secures Third Round

The Internet security software startup, whose focus is on taking back resources from hackers who have broken into the enterprise, picks up a third round of funding.

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Damballa Secures Third Round

Meru Surges in Trade Debut

Heavily venture backed wireless technology startup gains 28 percent in first day of trading.

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Meru Surges in Trade Debut

The Demise of the Mad Men

I don't watch alot of TV, so I'm usually a late adopter when it comes to great television shows.  Mad Men is no exception.  Although the show is entering its fourth season, I'm just getting around to watching Season 1 and I am falling in love with the show.  It reminds me of the Sopranos – flawed characters that you at times root for, at times despise, interlocked in an entertaining drama that centers on the fundamental search for happiness and respect. So while I'm in the midst of enjoying Mad Men, it was with great amusement that I hosted a dinner with a dozen or so CEOs of advertising agencies and advertising technology start-ups the other night.  Last year, I blogged about how Madison Avenue was going tech (“Revenge of the Nerds”, I called it).  At the time, I thought there was hope that the big ad agencies would evolve to become techno-savvy nerds and help lead the innovation charge.  This year, it's a foregone conclusion in my mind that Madison Ave's Mad Men are doomed. With the rampant digitization of advertising and the explosive growth of performance-based marketing, the nerds are taking over advertising.  Advertising innovation is coming from technology-driven giants – like Google, Microsoft and now even Apple – as well as start-up companies that are nibbling away at the value-chain, including many of our own portfolio companies (e.g., DataXu , BzzAgent and  digital Arbor ). Although many of these technology-driven companies are partnering with the major advertising agencies today, the agency CEOs at my dinner with very bearish on what the future held for the agencies and whether they would survive the New World Order.  In their view, there are four reasons for this: Wall Street Pressure .  In talking to advertising agency executives, you can't help but be struck by how much their EPS targets affect their behavior – and hamstrings their ability to invest.  So long as they are slaves to Wall Street, the major advertising holding companies will be unable to undergo the necessary, wholesale transformation required to thrive in the digital age.  It reminded me of James Carville's famous quip that in another life, he hoped to be reincarnated as a bond trader so that he could wield some real power.  Agency CEOs seem to wish they were Wall St analysts or venture-backed CEOs rather than trapped as holding company leaders. CFO/Procurement.   Each of the agency CEOs at our dinner bemoaned the fact that “above the line” advertising budgets were now in the hands of the procurement officer and that the power pecking order has become CEO, CFO, CMO.  One of the CEOs at the dinner, Wayne Townsend of Click Squared , noted wryly that below-the-line marketing budgets has always been in the hands of the procurement officer.  Welcome to the club!  The problem for the agencies is that this trend means great creative (the Big Idea) and great relationships (three martini lunch) aren't important to the procurement officer, only hard ROI. Lack of Pay for Performance.  One agency CEO pointed out that if you look at the revenue per employee at the major agency holding companies, it's a fraction of what it is for premiere management consulting shops, like BCG and McKinsey.  In the absence of a pay for performance paradigm (akin to performance-based marketers like Google, who get paid per click or per acquisition), the agencies are forced to operate like a glorified body shop, whether their campaigns move the needle on the business or not.  This caps the upside and results in odd incentives, such as worrying more about getting fired than about delivering great work. Talent.   The best technology and business development talent is not flocking to advertising agencies.  They are flocking to advertising technology start-ups and Google, Microsoft and Apple.  Over time, the best talent wins in any industry.  By this reckoning, the advertising agencies are doomed. The advertising agencies are thus in a structural box, a classic case of Innovator's Dilemma.  Meanwhile, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs smell blood.  Young companies are going directly to CMOs to mine their marketing budgets.  And marketers are more aggressive about experimenting with new media, socu has Twitter and Facebook, with the help of niche consultants and technology providers. The only saving grace for the industry may be that their remains great power in the Big Idea.  Great creative can still move the needle and provides the direction for all that whiz bang, targeted, performance-based execution.  The success of creative boutiques like McGarry and Bowen suggests that niche is still a lucrative one. As for me, I'll keep enjoying “Mad Men” and continue to invest in nerdy, little technology companies to make them obsolete, historical relics.

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The Demise of the Mad Men

KPI’s and Monthly Objective Metrics for People Who Do SEO

Posted by richardbaxterseo Today’s post is inspired by a brilliant question that came up recently in Q&A. The question was based on targets and objective setting for SEO’s and it went something like this: “What metrics should an SEO’s monthly objectives be based on?” Having spent a good portion of my SEO career managing SEO teams in-house, this question really reminded me how interesting the topic of organisational SEO can be, and how underserved it is on all but a few SEO industry blogs. In this in-house SEO focused post, let’s take a look at general KPIs for people and teams who do SEO. Search Engine Visibility (Rankings) While the value of measuring individual search engine rankings is a topic under frequent debate in our community, achieving consistently high rankings for target keywords is ultimately the reason we’re all doing SEO. In competitive markets, particularly, there will be key phrases that SEO teams will be expected to show progress towards gaining rankings for. Making search engine visibility a targeted metric provides a way for the SEO team to focus on the overall performance of the site in question. There are, however, two problems to solve with search engine visibility as a metric, the measurement of rankings and choice of keywords to be monitored. In my previous in-house role we developed a keyword selection methodology based on data from Hitwise UK , our own analytics platform and the Google Keyword Tool. As travel SEO’s, we knew that demand would change seasonally for certain destinations and their corresponding keywords. Using a little historical knowledge of our industry and plenty of data, we would always have a clear idea of seasonal demand for the top 200 industry terms. Measuring rankings on a daily basis allowed us to calculate a percentage based visibility score. What was really fascinating about the whole process was that because the keyword selection methodology remained consistent over a long period of time, we were able to compare visibility scores in year on year increments. As the activities of the SEO team continued to succeed, overall visibility increased from around 60% to 85% over a few years. If you’re interested in developing a similar methodology, you could consider using Advanced Web Ranking to capture rankings data and calculate the visibility score . The beauty of having a search engine visibility score as a KPI is that the metric acts as a key driver for all SEO based activity. Ultimately, as an SEO Manager you have to evaluate how all of your actions contribute to improved visibility, and therefore traffic. Search Engine Traffic Many companies in competitive niches will make use of models to predict traffic levels for the coming year. If you’re lucky, a business analyst will take care of the production of the model itself, leaning on your SEO expertise to help predict how forthcoming trends and planned initiatives may impact overall traffic levels on the site. Your role, as an SEO Manager or in-house SEO is to achieve those traffic levels through maintaining and growing search engine visibility, deploying technical SEO enhancements to grow all important traffic in the long tail and of course, building links! Link Building There’s no doubt that link building is critical to search engine visibility and traffic levels on your site, so it might make sense to create volume targets for a link builder. Unfortunately, deciding exactly how many links a link builder can build is a complex and frequently restrictive process because output depends on the person, the market and the method of link acquisition chosen. In my last in-house role, I found that creating small, seasonal link building projects for my team based on a few key phrases per person worked extremely well. Giving your link builders the creative freedom to design their own strategies based on their own projects and the resources available to them can yield far more valuable results in the long term. The KPI, therefore, may be measured on our new friend search engine visibility on the terms selected by the link building project. Conversion Getting the opportunity to have an input on your site’s conversion rate is a wonderful opportunity to learn a new skill, or improve an existing one! A word of caution, though – only sign up for KPI’s that you can control or heavily influence. In the case of conversion you’ll need a lot of business wide buy in and commitment to conversion rate optimisation projects. If you don’t have the tools or support for that, conversion might not be a great primary KPI to be assigned. Personal Development Goals As a search engine optimisation practitioner, you’ll have spent a fair amount of time learning your trade and perfecting your skills. When you’re managing an SEO team, don’t forget that it’s a good thing to assign some personal development time for each of your staff. I used to set a target of one presentation a quarter on a subject of choice (SEO related, of course). I still think the personal development targets are the best KPI’s of all. If you’re learning, you’re having fun. Of course, every organisation is slightly different and you may have different KPI’s to the ones above. Tell us about them in the comments below! This is a post by Richard Baxter, Founder and SEO Consultant at SEOgadget.co.uk – a niche UK SEO Agency specialising in helping people and organisations succeed in search. Follow him on Twitter and Google Buzz . Do you like this post? Yes No

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KPI’s and Monthly Objective Metrics for People Who Do SEO

TopSEOs.com – A Review of the Top SEOs Paid Rating Service

Who is going to pay to tell people that they are good enough and their lives are fine as they are? A fundamental truth of advertising is that advertising the truth usually isn’t very profitable – which is why there is lead generation, affiliate programs, public relations, negative billing options, small print, bogus medical research, and so on… Ever wonder how an SEO professional can charge first world rates to do do third rate, third world work and still get a top rating from a heavily advertised SEO rating website? Edward Lewis has the lowdown on Top SEOs , including TopSEOs complaints . A big part of the problem with the affiliate business model is when people offer fake rankings / ratings and only promote whoever pays them the most. The person/company which can afford to pay the most for leads often can only afford to because there is hidden risk or hidden cost in the service, or because they don’t deliver on their promises. An analogy here is those AAA rated mortgage backed securities where an S&P employee explained, “We rate every deal. It could be structured by cows and we would rate it.” The biggest brands don’t pay as much per lead because they don’t have to. They invest in brand and quality of customer service. The best service-based companies don’t need to pay cut-rate ad prices to advertise. The best SEO companies have far more demand for their time than time to pay to hunt for customers. I remember back in 2006 when one of the currently “top rated SEOs” did work for my wife’s website (before she met me). That SEO firm did nothing but outsource overseas irrelevant reciprocal link exchanges and her website *would not rank* for any semi-competitive keywords until *after* the reciprocal links page was removed from her site. After we took down those reciprocal links and built some quality links the site started to rank. We changed the FTP details as well because that guy’s services were not only not worth paying for…the reciprocal links were proved to be damaging, and we didn’t want him to put them back up. And in spite of not doing any services for months (and certainly no services worth paying for), this person wanted ensure they got paid for 12 months of service. And they didn’t want to let the contract end when it was supposed to either. They were all sales all the time. What eventually stopped the credit card charges was when I wrote him via email “If her credit card is charged again we will be doing a reverse charge and a full writeup on the service.” He responded to that with the following: I would watch your comments and threats my friend as you have no idea of what I am capable of or who I am – this is a small industry and if you are trying to be a an up an coming player in it this is not the way to do it by bashing your competition. A simple email professionally stating that you were unhappy with the service would have sufficed and I would have looked into to make sure Giovanna got what she paid for. I have run 2 optimization companies and have been in this business for 12 years now. With my contacts at Google and the other main engines I can get your ebook website banned within 1-2 days if this is how you do business – with threats and slander – keep it up. The funny thing is all I said was that if he tried charging again (past the contract) that we would reverse charges. And yet the sleazeball told me to “watch your comments and threats” and that he could use “contacts at Google and other main engines” to get my website banned. What a jerk. I have always had contempt for blowhards, and for pure hard-sales salesmen who put sales first and are willfully ignorant of their trade and/or who are willing to sell garbage product without any concern for the customer’s welfare. I am grateful that the above mentioned person sucked at what they did & ripped people off back then. If they were not out scamming people and actually provided a useful service then my wife wouldn’t have had a reason to contact me and meet me and marry me. I let it go for over 3 years, but if they are still scamming people then that needs to stop. I figure its only right that I write this post as a fair warning. All good things must come to an end. And so should bad things. Hopefully these clowns quite scamming people. Enough is enough.

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TopSEOs.com – A Review of the Top SEOs Paid Rating Service

Determining Whether a Page/Site Passes Link Juice (and How Much)

Posted by randfish We’ve been hearing some requests lately for some really advanced, expert-level content, and this post is here to deliver. I’ve built up a short list of topics that deal with more cutting edge SEO, and if there’s interest in this series, I’ll try to make it a regular part of the blog. These tactics aren’t black or gray hat (we’re not advocates of that kind of thing), but they’re very specific in use and tend to be at the opposite end of the “low-hanging fruit” basket. The first in the series touches on a common SEO

Where In the World is SEOmoz – April-May 2010

Posted by jennita Whew! The Spring conference season is in full swing, and the mozzers are coming soon to a city near you. You’ll find us anywhere from Charlotte, NC to Munich to Singapore in the next couple months. The coolest part is that we’re attending and speaking at some conferences for the very first time. It feels good to get out and stretch a bit! Plus, the developer in us will be attending conferences like Chirp and CCGrid 2010 which will both enhance our geek factor! As always, if you’re attending any of these events, please say hello! We may never get to know you if you don’t wave, nudge, or kick us. Ok, you really shouldn’t kick Joanna, she’d probably pull a ninja move on you. Included in the list below are both SEOmoz employees as well as associates. Come… take a peek and join us! SMX Toronto – April 8-9 You definitely don’t want to miss SMX Toronto ! Not only will Gillian be moderating several panels, but she is also organizing a Search Spam Party (of PubCon notoriety). RSVP now ! April 8 1:50pm – 2:40pm Link Building Strategies and Ranking Tactics

Investors Bet $110 Million on Clouds

Hostway, a cloud computing services and Web hosting concern, pockets debt and equity financing from a group of investors, a move that comes as Microsoft nears the launch of its online-delivered Office suite.

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Investors Bet $110 Million on Clouds

Diagnosing Google Crawl Allowance Using Webmaster Tools & Excel

Posted by Tom_C There’s been some talk recently in the SEO industry about ‘crawl allowance’ – it’s not a new concept but Matt Cutts recently talked about it openly with Eric Enge at StoneTemple (and you can see Rand’s illustrated guide too). One big question however is how do you understand how Google is crawling your site? While there are a variety of different ways of measuring this (log files is one obvious solution) the process I’m outlining in this post can be done with no technical knowledge – all you need is: A verified Google webmaster central account Google Analytics Excel If you want to go down the log-file route then these two posts from Ian Lurie on how to read log files &