Google just completed a PagePank on April 3rd 2010

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#10 - Targeting Unmonetized Searches

• Ingredients: KW research tools like Yahoo!'s KW Selector Tool, Wordtracker & KWDiscovery + Overture's View Bids Tool and Google's KW Tool
• Process: Identify some relatively high-traffic search terms or phrases that have a very rough relationship with your industry, business or site but have little to no advertisers buying keyword advertising. For $0.10 a click (sometimes less), you can build your branding and your site's visibility. Make sure to serve up great content that targets exactly what the searchers want - a list of resources, an informational how-to article or the like. If you deliver great results in a search where you're the only advertiser, searchers will remember you, re-visit you and, occassionaly, write about and link to you.
• Results: Campaigns of this size can be anywhere from a few dozen to a few thousand visitors per day depending on your budget. In either case, be sure to have some action items for visitors to follow and watch your analytics like a hawk to ensure that you're bringing in real value with the terms you've chosen (i.e. if your abandonment rate is 75%+, you need to tweak something).
• Examples: On this one, its very hard to give examples without giving away clients or potentially spoiling opportunities, but luckily, Graywolf has a perfect example in his Pirates of the Caribbean post, where there's a lot of searches trending that way and no advertisers - a perfect opportunity for the right player to get in the game (pun intended).

Note the lack of ads...

#9 - Creating Controversy

• Ingredients: A passionate audience or community with strong (and hopefully misguided) feelings about a subject, person, company, etc.
• Process: Create content through a blog, article, report or statistics that challenges commonly-held beliefs or assumptions or specifically challenges the views of a very popular person or organization. Be prepared to defend your positions, write about them in comments on blogs, in forums, chatrooms, online groups and wherever appropriate. Sometimes, you can even leverage the editorial section of a newspaper and re-print online.
• Results: Heavy traffic levels come through multiple channels, but your biggest source is often the direct response of the disagreeing party. Be sure you're handling the dispute in a professional and even-handed manner and you can earn a respectable following. It's all dependent on industry and size, but a between a few hundred and a few thousand RSS subscriptions are usually on the table.
• Examples: Dead2.0 (who I posted about earlier today) makes a great example, and Danny's post at SEW about his Google hates also follows along this tradition.

Dead 2.0 combines controversy and a Top 11 List

#8 - Maps & Mashups

• Ingredients: Google Maps, Yahoo! Beta Maps, MSN Virtual Earth, etc. + some good geographic data
• Process: This doesn't neccessarily require a map mashup, but they do make a compelling and timely example. Utilizing geographic data and a maps API system, you can create a very cool tool on your site that combines the two in a graphical, fun-to-use and highly-linkable way. Even sites in the most boring of sectors can employ this strategy by mapping things like their own industry's stats from census data or concentrations of relevant physical locations. If you're an optomotrist, why not map all the optometrists in your state/country (using a directory of some kind that you re-write into XML or tabular data) and mash it up with areas of high-tech concentrations (attempting to prove/disprove that techies who stare at their monitors all day need vision care).
• Results: Getting picked up by some of the major map mashup reporting blogs like Ajaxian (if you employ it well) or Maps Mania can bring many thousands of visitors in a say. Longer tail traffic sources often feed off these and send additional visitors over time. The holy grail here is to be mentioned on the example pages by the sources (the map API folks or directory/data source) which can bring a constant stream of thousands each day.
• Examples: Matt's IP to Location tool is a good one, as is Geology.com's Meteor Map, the famous HousingMaps and the hypercool FlickrMaps.

Flickr Maps Mashup - Showing Photos from San Francisco

#7 - Event Coverage

• Ingredients: A popular, well-attended event with a particular industry theme and a passionate writer who makes friends wherever they go.
• Process: Go to the event, cover as best you can - make friends, take copious, detailed notes, go to the bars afterwards, shoot photos and videos and, most importantly, let everyone there know that you'll have the coverage on your site in the next few days. Time is of the essence here, but once you've got a great writeup (with photos!), send emails to your event contacts to help boost the buzz.
• Results: Depending on the size of the event and the people you form connections with, this can drive thousands or even tens of thousands to the site. Covering something private (with permission), exclusive or underground can be even more rewarding, though big, public events often make an easier starting point.
• Examples: We covered the SES NYC 2005 show to great effect and the Washington Post currently has a terrific blog covering tech shows and events.

The Washington Post's Technology Blog on Events

#6 - Top Ten Lists

• Ingredients: A great idea and ten little numbers.
• Process: This might be the easiest of the bunch, but it's also the hardest to make work consistently. Top ten lists are everywhere and unless yours is particularly well-targeted, well-timed and well-marketed, it might end-up fizzling. The keys to great lists are - knowing your audience, knowing your subject matter (and writing as an expert) and presentation (the right content at the right time read by the right people). Tricky? Yes. Worthwhile? Absolutely.
• Results: We've seen top 10, 5 and 20 lists make it onto Digg, Slashdot and even into the mainstream press. While tens or hundreds of thousands of visitors certainly isn't the norm, it can definitely be your goal.
• Examples: Letterman's Top Ten might be the most famous, but on the web, Nielsen's Top Ten Web Design Mistakes and the recent Top 10 Unintentionally Worst Company URLs (that made both del.icio.us/popular and Digg) are good examples.

The Late Show's Top Ten Lists Online

#5 - Online Tools

• Ingredients: A service that you can code into a tool to save someone time, effort, money or, alternatively, provide entertainment (plus a solid developer, preferrably skilled in AJAX).
• Process: Tools aren't always able to attract visitors independently, so much like mashups, you'll need to do some promotion. Fortunately, there are dozens of online tool lists and plenty of folks blogging about their creation (like the aforementioned Ajaxian). The tool itself needs to serve a real purpose (or make people laugh) and it needs to be unique. If you're in the retail industry, imagine a tool that could be used to help visitors custom create a product, or organize a set of products in a useful, humorous or fun way. For B2B, cost calculators for customers can be useful, but are often un-exciting. Imagine how you can expand the use of your services to fit a wide audience, then make it fun and interactive.
• Results: Tools can generate traffic slowly over time, or they can have huge bursts. Often, they spread virally through email and social networks if they're built right (and look great - so pay attention to #4, too).
• Examples: SEOmoz's page strength tool got a bit too popular last week and crashed our server. It threatened to do it again yesterday. Some other great tools include this activity/calorie calculator from the Fitness Jumpsite and the website Hipcal, an online calendar tool.

SEOmoz's Page Strength Tool from Last Week

#4- Graphic & Web Design

• Ingredients: A useful site, a talented CSS designer and a list of design portal sites (this one and this one come in handy).
• Process: Re-design your existing site to the best of your ability. Use pure CSS, graphics, color and layout that mesh well and make it not only easy to use your site, but aesthetically remarkable, too. If you're struggling for inspiration, look at the sites that make it to the front page of this site.
• Results: The design portals themselves can send 1-2 thousand uniques per day if you make their front pages, but the additional value you'll get from other bloggers and sites picking you up once you make it there is also worthwhile.
• Examples: There are thousands - as I noted before, just look at CSS Thesis or CSSBeauty to get the idea. Even a dentist's office site or a manufacturer of toilet seats can get traffic here.

CSS Thesis from Veracon.net

#3 - Leveraging Social Networks

• Ingredients: Solid, targeted content, a writer who can create compelling titles and descriptions and this list of social sharing sites (from Ekstreme's Socializer Tool).
• Process: Create great content (from one of the ideas here or something totally unique), then submit it to the major social bookmarking and link sharing services. You can also use this tactic in a long-tail fashion by tagging many small pieces of solid, but unremarkable content to services like del.icio.us, technorati, etc. with regularity.
• Results: Digg's traffic effect is well known, as is Slashdot's, but even the smaller services like Reddit, Furl, Shadows and StumbleUpon can send several thousand visitors to the site.

Rand's StumbleUpon Profile

#2 - Blogging & Blog Comments

• Ingredients: A blog, some elbow grease and a tactful, savvy, industry writer.
• Process: Regularly blogging about your industry, passion or profession can have enormous payoff if done properly. There's a host of considerations, but for the purposes of this short list, it's enough to simply blog well and take advantage of the inherent traffic provided by blog & RSS feed directories, tagging your posts at Technorati and commenting thoughfully and intelligently around the blogosphere. Even though those links don't get link credit (due to nofollow), you'll get clicks and attention if your comments are intelligent and provocative.
• Results: A successful blog can be the biggest marketing tool and online traffic source for many small and medium business websites. But, be prepared to giving it love and attention, as the value may be best felt after months or years of writing.
• Examples: There are tens of thousands of great blogs, but a few non  sequiter favorites include Better Living through Design, Montreal Food, Re-Imagineering and Creating Passionate Users.

Disney & Pixar's Re-Imagineering Blog

#1 - Reporting Remarkable News

• Ingredients: A story that's so big, everyone will be writing about it and a talented writer who can passionately and effectively cover it.
• Process: This is the same process that sells newspapers and makes journalists. But, in the case of the web, the news can be smaller, as long as it's deeply tied to your industry or sector. Being the first to report is good, but by also being the best report on the subject, you firmly establish yourself as an excellent source for the current news and the future.
• Results: Some of the highest traffic boosts possible come from news reports as thousands of popular sites write about their own experience or opinion with the story and credit you, sending what can often be tens or even hundreds of thousands of visitors over a few days.
• Examples: Techcrunch has a remarkable reputation and ability to get news before anyone else, and some specific reports, including Henk Van Ess's SearchBistro post on Google's human-reviewed SERPs and Slyck's coverage of torrent-favorite Pirate Bay's servers being snatched by police.

TechCrunch Leaking News of Google Calendar

#0 - Offering Something Incredible

• Ingredients: An idea whose time has come.
• Process: We're cheating by putting a #0, and cheating again because there's no set formula for this one - it's a build-it-and-they-will-come product. If you launch a site with goods, services or a gimmick that is simply irressistable, massively useful, universally appealing and hard to live without once you've tried it, rest assured that the Internet will respond by sending you appropriately stratospheric levels of traffic.
• Results: These are the sites generating millions of uniques each day - traffic that borders on the insane.
• Examples: Think Zillow, Flickr, Craigslist, Kayak. In a smaller way, our Web2.0Awards met some of these criteria and received a few hundred thousand visitors as a reward.

Zillow.com's Home Price Valuation System

These tactics can very easily fit under the umbrella-term "linkbait," though not all of them are as useful for the purpose of link growth as brand awareness. If you've got stategies of your own to share or insights about how these can be tweaked and optimized, please do share.


Courtesy of SEOmoz

The software behind our search technology conducts a series of simultaneous calculations requiring only a fraction of a second. Traditional search engines rely heavily on how often a word appears on a web page. We use more than 200 signals, including our patented PageRank™ algorithm, to examine the entire link structure of the web and determine which pages are most important. We then conduct hypertext-matching analysis to determine which pages are relevant to the specific search being conducted. By combining overall importance and query-specific relevance, we're able to put the most relevant and reliable results first.

• PageRank Technology: PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

  PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance.

• Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Our search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), our technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. We also analyze the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user's query.

Our innovations don't stop at the desktop. To give people access to the information they need, whenever and wherever they need it, we continue to develop new mobile applications and services that are more accessible and customizable. And we're partnering with industry-leading carriers and device manufacturers to deliver these innovative services globally. We're working with many of these industry leaders through the Open Handset Alliance to develop Android, the first complete, open, and free mobile platform, which will offer people a less expensive and better mobile experience.


Courtesy of Google

Here's an interesting question worth a minute of pondering for any SEO practitioner:

"[I]s it now a necessity for an SEO to have practical social media skills?"

James Duthie posed the head tickler in a post on SEO Scoop last week called "Is social now a compulsory SEO skill?"

The question came out of discussions he's had with other members of the Internet marketing community, and he and his friends aren't the only ones thinking it over and forming their opinions. So since James has opened the discussion up to everyone, I'm gonna go ahead and share my answer to the question.

I say no.

One of the most important qualities of a successful SEO is a drive and ability to keep up with the ever-changing search space. Knowing the guidelines set by the engines, the technologies available, and searchers' changing behaviors requires that the search marketing professional update their understanding on a regular basis.

Accepting that an SEO's knowledge base is constantly growing translates to keeping up with new trends, technologies and opportunities. So when social media marketing came along, it was easily rolled in to the domain of search engine optimization. And maybe, unhelpfully so.

Adding to the confusion, the distinction between search and social media marketing is further blurred by the search engines' mad rush to become the social search destination. (In case you're wondering, Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan spells out what Google Social Search and Bing Twitter Search are in necessary detail.)

But when it comes down to it, despite any overlap, the needs and goals of search engine optimization are different than the needs and goals of social media marketing. One can effectively perform both SMM and SEO, and most of us do both daily, though there's a difference in how each is approached. So here's a breakdown of how they differ and distinct the needs of each.

Unique Audiences

If you look at the intended audience of SEO and SMM efforts, you'll find a pretty clear difference. As James points out, "One aims to satisfy robots (SEO). The other aims to satisfy humans (social)."

Step one of content development and design: know your audience. If your primary audience is Googlebot, get to know Googlebot and his likes and dislikes inside and out. Have an audience of middle school teachers in the American Midwest? Know their needs, the issues on their plates, and what pushes their buttons.

Similar rules for very different audiences. Keeping search and social separate helps professionals focus their efforts on the right audience.

Unique Environments

Of course, all audiences have their unique preferences, and when it comes to search marketing and social marketing, some of these preferences are clearly spelled out in the form of terms of service. A marketer must remain familiar with the terms of service for the stated marketing platform, be aware of any updates or changes to policy, and learn how to achieve success with their goals while staying true to the rules set by the platform. Additionally, a marketer must be aware of the risks involved in marketing through those platforms.

Unique Goals

The goal of social media marketing is to communicate with a community of humans. Indirectly, the goal of SEO is the same. But with SEO the attention is focused at the search engines with the assumption that humans will be reached through the engines. So while the eventual goal is the same, the initial one is not and, as marketers know, that makes a difference when it comes to strategy and tactics.

Unique Tactics

Social media marketing dictates a familiar tone, a multi-directional conversation, quick response times, and a constant stream of content. The approach for social media marketing is to build community through genuine conversation.

Search engine marketing requires a character of authority, in-depth technical knowledge of how the Web works and renders, and heavy analytical monitoring. The approach for search engine marketing is to gain high search engine rankings through perceived Web site relevance and code crawlability.

The Intersection

Of course, there are a number of commonalities and complementary aspects of search engine marketing and social media marketing. Social media can be used as a tool to achieve a goal of search engine optimization, and vice versa. Regardless of who is in charge, the two must go hand in hand. This is true of all marketing mediums -- from traditional print ads or radio spots, to the latest opportunities for video overlays and social media contests.

Cooperation and communication are key to a holistic marketing strategy, but with differentiated and critical tasks occurring in both the search and social spaces, I say search marketing and social marketing are both worth representation, resources and responsibilities all their own.


Courtesy of Virgina Nussey

Internet marketing, also referred to as i-marketing, web marketing, online marketing, or eMarketing, is the marketing of products, or, services over the Internet.

The Internet has brought media to a global audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing, both, in terms of providing instant response and eliciting responses, is a unique quality of the medium. Internet marketing is sometimes considered to have a broader scope because it not only refers to, such as, the Internet, e-mail, and wireless media, but also it includes management of digital customer data and electronic customer relationship management (ECRM) systems.

Internet marketing ties together creative and technical aspects of the Internet including design, development, advertising, and sales.

Internet marketing also refers to the placement of media along different stages of the customer engagement cycle through search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), banner ads on specific websites, e-mail marketing and Web 2.0 strategies. In 2008 The New York Times, working with comScore, published an initial estimate to quantify the user data collected by large Internet-based companies. Counting four types of interactions with company websites in addition to the hits from advertisements served from advertising networks, the authors found the potential for collecting data upward of 2,500 times on average per user per month.

Business models

Internet marketing is associated with several business models:

• e-commerce — this is where goods are sold directly to consumers (B2C) or businesses (B2
• Publishing — this is the sale of advertising
• lead-based websites — this is an organization that generates value by acquiring sales leads from its website
• affiliate marketing — this is process in which a product or service developed by one person is sold by other active seller for a share of profits. The owner of the product normally provide some marketing material (sales letter, affiliate link, tracking facility).
• local internet marketing - this is the process of a locally based company traditionally selling belly to belly and utilizing the Internet to find and nurture relationships, later to take those relationships offline.

There are many other business models based on the specific needs of each person or the business that launches an Internet marketing campaign.

One-to-one approach

The targeted user is typically browsing the Internet alone therefore the marketing messages can reach them personally. This approach is used in search marketing, where the advertisements are based on search engine keywords entered by the user.

And now with the advent of Web 2.0 tools, many users can interconnect as "peers."

Appeal to specific interests

Internet marketing and geo marketing places an emphasis on marketing that appeals to a specific behaviour or interest, rather than reaching out to a broadly-defined demographic. "On- and Off-line" marketers typically segment their markets according to age group, gender, geography, and other general factors. Marketers have the luxury of targeting by activity and geolocation. For example, a kayak company can post advertisements on kayaking and canoeing websites with the full knowledge that the audience has a related interest.

Internet marketing differs from magazine advertisements, where the goal is to appeal to the projected demographic of the periodical, but rather the advertiser has knowledge of the target audience—people who engage in certain activities (e.g., uploading pictures, contributing to blogs)— so the company does not rely on the expectation that a certain group of people will be interested in its new product or service.

Advantages

Internet marketing is relatively inexpensive when compared to the ratio of cost against the reach of the target audience. Companies can reach a wide audience for a small fraction of traditional advertising budgets. The nature of the medium allows consumers to research and purchase products and services at their own convenience. Therefore, businesses have the advantage of appealing to consumers in a medium that can bring results quickly. The strategy and overall effectiveness of marketing campaigns depend on business goals and cost-volume-profit (CVP) analysis.

Internet marketers also have the advantage of measuring statistics easily and inexpensively. Nearly all aspects of an Internet marketing campaign can be traced, measured, and tested. The advertisers can use a variety of methods: pay per impression, pay per click, pay per play, or pay per action. Therefore, marketers can determine which messages or offerings are more appealing to the audience. The results of campaigns can be measured and tracked immediately because online marketing initiatives usually require users to click on an advertisement, visit a website, and perform a targeted action. Such measurement cannot be achieved through billboard advertising, where an individual will at best be interested, then decide to obtain more information at a later time.

Internet marketing as of 2007 is growing faster than other types of media. Because exposure, response, and overall efficiency of Internet media are easier to track than traditional off-line media—through the use of web analytics for instance—Internet marketing can offer a greater sense of accountability for advertisers. Marketers and their clients are becoming aware of the need to measure the collaborative effects of marketing (i.e., how the Internet affects in-store sales) rather than siloing each advertising medium. The effects of multichannel marketing can be difficult to determine, but are an important part of ascertaining the value of media campaigns.

Limitations

Internet marketing requires customers to use newer technologies rather than traditional media. Low-speed Internet connections are another barrier. If companies build large or overly-complicated websites, individuals connected to the Internet via dial-up connections or mobile devices experience significant delays in content delivery.

From the buyer's perspective, the inability of shoppers to touch, smell, taste or "try on" tangible goods before making an online purchase can be limiting. However, there is an industry standard for e-commerce vendors to reassure customers by having liberal return policies as well as providing in-store pick-up services.

A survey of 410 marketing executives listed the following barriers to entry for large companies looking to market online: insufficient ability to measure impact, lack of internal capability, and difficulty convincing senior management.

Security concerns

Information security is important both to companies and consumers that participate in online business. Many consumers are hesitant to purchase items over the Internet because they do not trust that their personal information will remain private. Encryption is the primary method for implementing privacy policies.

Recently some companies that do business online have been caught giving away or selling information about their customers. Several of these companies provide guarantees on their websites, claiming that customer information will remain private. Some companies that purchase customer information offer the option for individuals to have their information removed from the database, also known as opting out. However, many customers are unaware if and when their information is being shared, and are unable to stop the transfer of their information between companies if such activity occurs.

Another major security concern that consumers have with e-commerce merchants is whether or not they will receive exactly what they purchase. Online merchants have attempted to address this concern by investing in and building strong consumer brands (e.g., Amazon.com, eBay, Overstock.com), and by leveraging merchant/feedback rating systems and e-commerce bonding solutions. All of these solutions attempt to assure consumers that their transactions will be free of problems because the merchants can be trusted to provide reliable products and services. Additionally, the major online payment mechanisms (credit cards, PayPal, Google Checkout, etc.) have also provided back-end buyer protection systems to address problems if they actually do occur.

Effects on industries

Internet marketing has had a large impact on several previously retail-oriented industries including music, film, pharmaceuticals, banking, flea markets, as well as the advertising industry itself. Internet marketing is now overtaking radio marketing in terms of market share. In the music industry, many consumers have been purchasing and downloading music over the Internet for several years in addition to purchasing compact discs. By 2008 Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store has become the largest music vendor in the United States^.

The number of banks offering the ability to perform banking tasks online has also increased. Online banking is believed to appeal to customers because it is more convenient than visiting bank branches. Currently over 150 million U.S. adults now bank online, with increasing Internet connection speed being the primary reason for fast growth in the online banking industry. Of those individuals who use the Internet, 44 percent now perform banking activities over the Internet.

Internet auctions have also gained popularity. Unique items that could only previously be found at flea markets are being sold on eBay. Specialized e-stores sell items ranging from antiques to movie props.  As the premier online reselling platform, eBay is often used as a price-basis for specialized items. Buyers and sellers often look at prices on the website before going to flea markets; the price shown on eBay often becomes the item's selling price. It is increasingly common for flea market vendors to place a targeted advertisement on the Internet for each item they are selling online, all while running their business out of their homes.

The effect on the advertising industry itself has been profound. In just a few years, online advertising has grown to be worth tens of billions of dollars annually. PricewaterhouseCoopers reported that US$16.9 billion was spent on Internet marketing in the U.S. in 2006.^[

This has had a growing impact on the electoral process. In 2008 candidates for President heavily utilized Internet marketing strategies to reach constituents. During the 2007 primaries candidates added, on average, over 500 social network supporters per day to help spread their message. President Barack Obama raised over US$1 million in a single day during his extensive Democratic candidacy campaign, largely due to online donors.

Courtesy of Wikipedia.