How to Have a Crappie Spring

I saw this title on one of my favorite websites and I knew that I would have to blog about it. Some of my favorite fishing memories are of being a child and my stepfather waking me and my sister up early in the morning and stopping at McDonald's on our way to go fishing in the rain. Anyone that is interested in fishing, definitely needs to check out www.fishny.com!

Can Hulu Sustain Its Success Without Engaging Community?

Mar 26, 2009 at 7:00am ET by Eric Papczun
At first, online video service Hulu appeared to be a futile response to the rising tide of online user uploaded and user generated content—after all, Hulu is a group of major broadcasting networks backing a platform to publish their content online and regain control of their distribution networks. Hulu was declared doomed, and bound to fail.
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In A Down Economy, Engagement Matters: 4 Tips To Boost Your Efforts

Mar 25, 2009 at 8:00am ET by Andrew Wheeler
Better. Faster. Cheaper. That seems to be the mantra of senior management as they pressure marketers to do more with less during these trying economic times. But B2B marketers aren’t the only ones feeling the squeeze. Many of your customers and prospects are facing similar challenges. But what can you do about it? A lot actually.
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Utica Tattoo Fest

Great event in Utica, New York and I can't wait! Eternal Images rocks! Everybody knows how much I love tattoos. I'm known for the tattoo on my upper right arm that says "Fear is temporary, regret is permanent". That's how I try to live my life. I just got another tattoo, this time from Dylan at Eternal Images. It's part of my mother's tattoo that he recreated on my back. I love it and I scheduled my next tattoo for May 7!

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March Madness Strategies For Small Businesses

Mar 26, 2009 at 9:00am ET by David Mihm
Some of you may know that around this time every year, I come down with a serious case of NCAA Tournament fever. During the month of March, when people ask for my phone number, I respond "65-32-16-8-4-2-1." Assuming clients are able to get a hold of me somehow, all of my doodles during phone calls somehow turn into brackets. I find myself buying lottery tickets with the numbers 8-9, 7-10, 6-11. An unseen force compels me to blurt out "5-12 upset!" every so often on the street, drawing stares from my fellow Portlanders.
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Search In Pictures: St. Patrick’s Day, Mozilla With Google & Schmidt With Charlie Rose

Mar 20, 2009 at 12:12pm ET by Barry Schwartz
In this week's Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more.
Eric Schmidt with Charlie Rose:

Google & Mozilla:

St Patrick's Day at Yahoo:

PHP Stuffed Animal at Yahoo! Dome in Japan:

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Search Biz: Google News Courting Legal Trouble?, Bold Predictions About Behavioral Ad Targeting & More

Feb 27, 2009 at 4:04pm ET by Matt McGee
Will the recent introduction of paid ads on Google News lead to legal issues for Google? That question is discussed today on ClickZ, where Sandra Baron of the Media Law Resource Center says publishers will be looking at what Google is doing:

"A significant issue for content providers is whether or not what Google provides becomes a substitute for going to the actual content providers site. When that tension becomes too great, people seek legal solutions to it."

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Google Analytics Blog: Web Analytics Tips & Tricks

Great article! Using Google Analytics to Create an Optimization Plan.

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Evaluating Paid Search Performance In A Down Economy

Mar 16, 2009 at 8:00am ET by George Michie
Is it time to fire your paid search managers?
Many online advertisers are seeing their first-ever year-over-year declines in PPC performance. Because of this, and the general need to find something, anything that will generate more sales cost effectively, PPC programs are coming under serious scrutiny from corner offices. We welcome this scrutiny, and hope to provide some useful guidance on how to measure success in PPC in a tough economy.
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New Add-On for my Blog - Tweet & Track

Make it easy for your readers to share links to your content on Twitter and track who clicks them.
Copy these two lines into the head tag of your HTML page:

<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8" src="http://bit.ly/javascript-api.js?version=latest&login=tweettrackjs&apiKey=R_7e9987b2fd13d7e4e881f9cbb168f523">
<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8" src="http://s.bit.ly/TweetAndTrack.js?v=1.01"></script>

Then, add this with each item on your blog or content site:

<a href="#" onclick="return TweetAndTrack.open(this, '{Permalink}');"><span style="display:none;">Your custom message - {block:PostSummary}{PostSummary}{/block:PostSummary}</span>Tweet & Track</a>

Substitute whatever template tag or variable you use for permalinks for {Permalink} and your Post Title template tag for {block:PostSummary}{PostSummary}{/block:PostSummary}. You can also add a common custom message where it says "Your custom message - ".
Make sure that you convert each < to <>.

Savvy Advertisers Get Vertical For Local Results

Mar 23, 2009 at 7:00am ET by Scott Greenberg
In a struggling economy, there is even greater competition among businesses for the almighty dollar. It is the epitome of the expression "survival of the fittest" when you see which businesses will close shop and which will find ways to succeed. What ultimately separates the two is the ability to see the opportunity in an otherwise difficult situation.
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FEEDJIT real-time blog traffic feeds

I found this great little free widget while I was visiting another blog and I just had to have it. Then I found out that it's FREE! Fun, cool and free - it doesn't get any better than that.
According to their website:

Get a cool widget and get local visitors for your blog. Blogs that install our widgets are also included in the Geoblogosphere and are featured to local readers. Read the Geoblogosphere FAQ for more info.

I installed it on the sidebar of my blog so people can see what search terms other visitors used to end up on my blog and what geo-location they are from.

How To Avoid The Link Vacuum Effect

Mar 24, 2009 at 7:00am ET by Julie Joyce
I recently came across a post explaining why Twitter isn’t great for SEO. This quote in particular really got to me:
"In addition to being a nofollow vacuum, Twitter has the danger of becoming a linking vacuum. In the ideal scenario, people will find a link on Twitter and then link the post in their own blog – page rank gold. But Twitter is becoming a kind of fishbowl where people merely link to a site from their Twitter account, not from their personal site. It's just easier and users can still feel as if they’re part of a viral meme."
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Free ASP script: Learn how to display RSS/XML feed

This page provides quick guide for displaying of RSS/XML feed using free RSS2HTML ASP script in ASP or ASP.NET environment. This script can be used free of charge on any ASP or ASP.NET web-server and generate HTML from RSS feed.

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Despite The Hype, Twitter Isn’t A Mainstream Social Marketing Tool

Mar 17, 2009 at 7:00am ET by Ciarán Norris
Every so often a site comes along that, in the amount of hype it generates, blows away everything that has come before it. Not so long ago it was Second Life, then Facebook came along and now Twitter is scattering all before it in a blizzard of press-coverage that many of its start-ups peers would give their trendy offices & table-football sets for.
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The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

The failed bankers on Wall Street have been whining that if they have to cut bonuses and salaries dramatically, they'll be unable to recruit great talent, and they need great talent to fix the situation...

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Can Reading Online Be As Rewarding As Curling Up With A Good Book?

Mar 27, 2009 at 8:00am ET by Kim Krause Berg
Have you ever considered how different the experience of online reading is compared to scanning words printed on a dead tree? To me, the experiences are worlds apart.
My life as an avid reader began with cereal boxes in the 1960's. In those days, there was typically a small toy inside the box. The back of the box might have a game, or something to cut out or tell a story. Once I got a 45 RPM record from a cereal box. I think it was a song by The Partridge Family. I learned early on that reading while eating Captain Crunch led to some kind of reward.
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ReputationDefender Blog : Twitter Becomes SEO Friendly

Twitter, it seems, has optimized its title tags. This could turn out to make Twitter an instant SEO tool, launching people to the top of Google.

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An Insider’s Look At Google’s Search Based Keyword Tool

Mar 13, 2009 at 12:14pm ET by Josh Dreller
Google’s free search based keyword tool has given advertisers access to Google's data to help leverage the relationship between organic and paid search campaigns. Last year, before the release of Google's search-based keyword tool, my Google rep sent me a very insightful report on one of my clients. It compared, side by side, the keywords that had high organic rankings alongside the keywords in the client's AdWords campaign. All in all, it gave me a couple hundred new terms to consider adding to the AdWords account which already had around ten thousand keywords. It seemed pretty clear that a good Quality Score should be easy to attain with these new suggested keywords as the landing page relevance for the keywords was already established. "Great tool," I said. "I wish Google would release it to the public."
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How I Got a Link from CNN

1. Build Relationships
2. Stay Top of Mind
3. Offer an Insider's View
4. Position Yourself as an Industry Expert
5. Be Accessible
6. Never Miss a Deadline
7. Ask for the Link

Shocking, I know. But, unless you ask, you could miss this golden opportunity. I usually say "In closing, I have a small request. I'd really appreciate a link directly to Voices.com. If you can swing it, that would be great!" Consider adding this as a P.S., as if it was an afterthought and not your modus operandi. The lesson here is you'll never know unless you ask.

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How To Prioritize Search Marketing Work At A Large Company

Mar 18, 2009 at 12:34pm ET by Duane Forrester
Although it’s rarely discussed, a huge part of an in-house search marketer’s job is setting priorities on work items. In an even broader sense, this role expands out to encompass staffing, budgeting, content planning, infrastructure management and more. But fundamentally, setting priorities is a crucial part of assuring your internal search marketing activities are successful.
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SEOmoz Tools - Top Pages on Domain Kick Ass

Where this tool really adds value is the ability it gives you to investigate old domains and their previously indexed (and linked to) pages. Take the example above. This old domain is 301 redirecting somewhere else, but the following URL in the list, with another 3 links, leads us to a 404 error page.

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How We Manage SEM Budgets (And Expectations) At Yahoo

Mar 9, 2009 at 7:06am ET by David Roth
If you’re like me, you spent most of Q4 last year planning out SEM budgets for 2009. Perhaps you even changed your entire SEM strategy from last year to this year due to the economic downturn, and now you’re optimizing to different metrics. Planning meant accounting for seasonality, negotiating with different groups around the organization and finally, finally, sometime between last December and now, you unveiled The Plan. It’s your SEM plan of record for 2009, and it includes spend, clicks, CPC, conversion rate and ROI by search engine, for all products and services you’re going to market with SEM this year.
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Don’t Damage Your Brand With The Wrong Keywords!

Mar 11, 2009 at 12:15pm ET by Laura Centore
In search, keyword selection is paramount as it can help drive the right audience to your door. Choosing the right keywords can also enhance brand awareness. But despite the importance of keyword selection—and the fact that it helps lay the groundwork for every paid or organic search campaign—marketers commonly make mistakes with the process.
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twitterfeed.com : feed your blog to twitter - post RSS to twitter automatically

I'm testing out this new website but it hasn't worked for me yet. I'm not giving up!

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