Search Engine Marketing Blog Posts

Today Google announced it has opened up its Google Friend Connect service to anyone willing to give it a shot. It joins every other Google service in having the “beta” tag, so use at your own risk, but there could be some real benefit for bloggers and even eCommerce stores.

It seems Google will soon be making yet another change to their AdWords Algorithm. On their Inside AdWords blog they detail the changes, and make one somewhat surprising comment.

Introducing a brand new feature to the Groove eCommerce Blog: Free Link Friday! Free Link Friday is named after one of the best employee perks of Groove Commerce, Free Lunch Friday. FLF will be a weekly installment of some of the most important and thought provoking links from around the web in the field of SEO/SEM (and maybe a few wildcards!) Read on for the inaugural edition.

Last month, Google announced that they’d be making some changes to the algorithm that calculates ad positioning for its advertisers using the Adwords program.  Because of the insane level of detail with which many search marketers delve into their adwords’ campaigns, even the slightest change in the algorithm doesn’t go unnoticed in the SEM field.  This change, however, appears significant enough that it may have an effect on even the casual search marketer.

It is no secret that running a succesful AdWords campaign requires plenty of time and effort.  In the early stages, keyword research is done in order to discover which terms see the most traffic, and which are most likely to convert users to buyers.  The search engine marketer wants to make sure that their ads appear for as many relevant queries that they can afford, while filtering out any queries that might be from a user that’s not in “buy” mode.  For many online marketers, a great tool to apply this filter is through negative keywords.

After nearly 4 years in the “lab”, Google Suggest has graduated.  For those unfamiliar, Google Suggest is a service not unlike Yahoo! Search Assist, which offers to complete a user’s query in real time based on some of the most popular searches.  The change could have more of an effect on some eCommerce Sites than they’d think:

Early Sunday morning (post Raven’s game – ouch) I hit the tarmac, heading out to San Jose for the Search Engine Strategies Conference. Without a doubt, San Jose in August is one of my favorite places. Maybe it’s that desert climate.

Well, after some major taxi issues and a computer crash while checking in I finally made it here. I will be staying at The Fairmont, down the street from the convention center, through Wednesday.

I have a pretty busy schedule:

Sunday Night – It’s looking like Blowfish Sushi at Santana Row.

Monday Night – I will be at the IMCharity Party for the The Leukemia and Lymphoma Foundation and the Children’s Hospital.

Tuesday Night – It’s the Google Dance with the Ad.com crew.

Hit me up on Twitter or Facebook if you want to catch up. I would love to meet you.

Have plans November 11th through 14th? Then join me in Las Vegas for PubCon at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The final speakers have been chosen and I am excited to announce that I will be speaking on two eCommerce related panels.

eCommerce and Shopping Cart Optimization – An informative session with one of my favorite panelists, Rob Snell, and Jimmy from Yahoo. This session will take a look specifically at eCommerce sites designed to sell products. Topics include optimization, shopping cart issues, monetary, presentation, and traffic issues.

and

 Interactive Site Reviews : Focus on eCommerce – A very interactive session where Rob Snell and I will beat up your site and try to make you cry, all for the price of admission – no extra charge involved. As the site says… “Anything goes in this session.” If you’ve never been, PubCon is a great show, with great content. Plus what else beats Vegas?

Each day I browse through blogs about eCommerce Web Design, SEO, and Pay-Per-Click advertising, and what I find most surprising is that many continue to believe the best way to maximize their traffic and conversion is to hire two separate companies! Many believe they need a Design and Development firm to build their website

Clients and friends alike are always asking me what blogs and sites I am reading to stay above the fold in the world of Search.

Within such a fast-paced industry, one of the most important things you need to do is keep up to date on new information. Here’s a list of some of the industry’s top bloggers, providing some of the best resources and information about search engine optimization, web marketing, and industry news.

So without further adieu, here is my list… Presented in random order