Archive for January, 2007
Monday, January 22nd, 2007
While walking down Broad Street in Philadelphia on a Sunday during the playoffs I noticed how fluid the merchandise market can be when a playoff game hits home. I first noticed a shirt on a mannequin that read “Giants Suck”. I was later approached by a street vendor with shirts that preemptively proclaimed an Eagles victory. These are both items created on a whim, that sell overwhelmingly based solely on a single game. Two weeks prior not even NFL officials were 100% sure that the match up in this game would happen, or that both teams would even make the playoffs.
If it is profitable to manufacture merchandise to satiate this sudden impulsive demand, it should also be profitable to explore the parallel impulse market that is being simultaneously created online. The objective here is to capture the eyes of the increased search volume around game day. This increase in search volume for a focused set of terms over an even more focused time frame will be based on what teams make the playoffs, and their geographical homes. Here it is still entirely about concentrating on the customer, in this case, the fans of away teams. The next game is coming up in a few days, and they need find a place to stay for game night. In fact, they may be visiting for a day before or after the game takes place.
Keywords revolving around tourism, especially terms that mention the city’s name with hotels, flights, restaurants, sight seeing, etc., would be searched much more when a sporting event is about to take place. This means that our target sellers are hotels, and other groups that can capitalize on tourism. A marketer should also consider that these fans are less interested in researching and bargain hunting; they are more interested in getting the details settled so they can enjoy the game. This, paired with the brief window between announcement of games and game time, should be what implies the sense of urgency to marketers.
(more…)
Posted in PPC, tools | 1 Comment »
Sunday, January 21st, 2007
Haven’t worked out in 2 weeks. Finally, at a conference in Vegas, I got a second to hit the Gym (only at hotels in Sin City would you have to PAY additional to do something healthy). On my way back from the Gym, I bumped into Kris Jones of PepperJam who was recently voted an Inc 500 fastest growing company. I was on a panel with Kris a year or so ago and was very happy to see him in the lobby and congratulate him on this achievement. He briefly introduced me to shoemoney, who I never met but I read his blog all the time!
That got me thinking about something… new entrepreneurs are different. We actually congratulate our competitors from time to time (Kris – I hope to make it on the list too, buddy). Today, there is all this talk of web 2.0 (since when has making things valuable and easy to use been a REVOLUTION? But that is a different post).
Lets talk about the new entrepreneur and what they often look like. Now of course before this there are a slew of characteristics like focus on profitability, cash flows, etc.
But I want to focus on the other things. And may I say that the inspiration from this post comes from 2 events:
1) Meeting Rand Fishkin, the founder of SEOmoz, who I aspire to have SEER emulate in SO many ways, but he takes some of his openness to an extreme I just can’t do yet but wholly respect!! His posts on hiring people, revenues, etc. are just amazing and well VERY open. Not to mention his answer to someone on Online Reputation Management showed his true ethics to everyone at a panel he was on at Pubcon. I wish there was a video of that snippet.
2) Craig Newmark of Craigslist (Missed the Stern event) who is totally fine with not making Craigslist more profitable by adding things to the site that could earn even more revenue. Wall Street’s collective jaw dropped when their CEO told them “Nah, maximizing revenues isn’t part of our equation!” That’s a tough pill to swallow.
(more…)
Posted in business thoughts | No Comments »
Sunday, January 21st, 2007
Haven’t worked out in 2 weeks. Finally, at a conference in Vegas, I got a second to hit the Gym (only at hotels in Sin City would you have to PAY additional to do something healthy). On my way back from the Gym, I bumped into Kris Jones of PepperJam who was recently voted an Inc 500 fastest growing company. I was on a panel with Kris a year or so ago and was very happy to see him in the lobby and congratulate him on this achievement. He briefly introduced me to shoemoney, who I never met but I read his blog all the time!
That got me thinking about something… new entrepreneurs are different. We actually congratulate our competitors from time to time (Kris – I hope to make it on the list too, buddy). Today, there is all this talk of web 2.0 (since when has making things valuable and easy to use been a REVOLUTION? But that is a different post).
Lets talk about the new entrepreneur and what they often look like. Now of course before this there are a slew of characteristics like focus on profitability, cash flows, etc.
But I want to focus on the other things. And may I say that the inspiration from this post comes from 2 events:
1) Meeting Rand Fishkin, the founder of SEOmoz, who I aspire to have SEER emulate in SO many ways, but he takes some of his openness to an extreme I just can’t do yet but wholly respect!! His posts on hiring people, revenues, etc. are just amazing and well VERY open. Not to mention his answer to someone on Online Reputation Management showed his true ethics to everyone at a panel he was on at Pubcon. I wish there was a video of that snippet.
2) Craig Newmark of Craigslist (Missed the Stern event) who is totally fine with not making Craigslist more profitable by adding things to the site that could earn even more revenue. Wall Street’s collective jaw dropped when their CEO told them “Nah, maximizing revenues isn’t part of our equation!” That’s a tough pill to swallow.
(more…)
Posted in business thoughts | No Comments »
Friday, January 19th, 2007
I am 25 (ok, 26 in a couple weeks) â and finally, I feel old.
I just found out that MTV is likely canceling Total Request Live. As Lauren Gitlin points out in her Rolling Stone article, TRL is almost the last bastion of music programming on MTV. I, like many others, have long been wondering what happened to my MTV. Where did the music go? I remember when MTV used to be good, when I used to come home from school and turn it on for hours. I grew up with MTV. And when reality TV was born with The Real World, I remember watching religiously; it was new, unique. Puck and Pedro they were the original reality TV stars, way before Nick, Jessica and Paris.
So TRL viewership is down. What happened? Tom Anderson, one of the co-founders of MySpace, says, “I think we have replaced MTV. MySpace is more convenient. You can search for things, while MTV is just delivering things to you⦠That’s why TV viewership is dropping among the MySpace generation.”
I think Mr. Anderson is absolutely right, but needs to widen his scope just a bit. I’m not sure that it’s only MySpace that has replaced MTV, but social media, and even more broadly, technology as a whole has caused its downfall.
Videos: Not Just for TV
Video ipod. Need I say more?
What? You don’t have one? Ok, neither do I. But my point â music videos aren’t made to be shown only on MTV. They can be downloaded through iTunes and other similar applications. Many artists show music videos on their websites. Then, there is the monster known as YouTube. (more…)
Posted in social media | No Comments »
Thursday, January 18th, 2007
Episode 2
After watching the second episode I got this one easily figured out. My Buddy Carey got fired because he didn’t look outside of his own bias to properly develop a product that would appeal to all. He made a swimsuit that appealed strongly to VERY in shape gay men. Even Derek who admitted he was gay as well, thought that swimsuit was a little over the top. (did you see it? Straight or Gay that swimsuit was shorter than my underwear).
Carey’s desire to develop a swimsuit for men who were in shape and able to pull off what looked more like underwear got in the way of LISTENING and UNDERSTANDING who his target market was. He was all about fashion and strutting his stuff, and not the task! It wasn’t his fault, he was just too close to the task to take an objective look.
On the website when asked why he should be the next apprentice his response was “I should be the next Apprentice because I am a marketing guru, and that’s what this show is all about!” what guru calls themselves a guru, that’s lame.
Anyway
The lesson to be learned is simple…to target the right keywords (use tools like Google suggest , Quintura, Keycompete, and a slew of others) you need to check your search baggage at the door. The hardest part about keyword research is that most people bring their biases into keyword research. Which ultimately leads to a too narrow view of keywords to target for a campaign. We recently reviewed a few tools which may help with your SEO competitive research, take a gander.
So if you want to keep your job in SEO and not hear “Your Fired” then make sure you are targeting a wide array of terms that are developed to target users in different steps of the conversion process, research through to purchase.
Carey’s mistake is that because he is a gay male, when given the chance to develop a swimsuit for all males (both gay and straight) he insisted on targeting the minority which was a risk and ended up losing for his team and getting himself fired. Had the judging panel of buyers been mostly gay males in great shape he would have scored big points.
So next time you get ready to do keyword research, step outside of your own search behavior, there’s a whole world of people out there searching for things that search in a different way than you even when looking for the same thing.
Lesson from episode 2 – Stay hired by developing comprehensive keyword lists
Posted in SEO | 1 Comment »
Thursday, January 18th, 2007
Episode 2
After watching the second episode I got this one easily figured out. My Buddy Carey got fired because he didn’t look outside of his own bias to properly develop a product that would appeal to all. He made a swimsuit that appealed strongly to VERY in shape gay men. Even Derek who admitted he was gay as well, thought that swimsuit was a little over the top. (did you see it? Straight or Gay that swimsuit was shorter than my underwear).
Carey’s desire to develop a swimsuit for men who were in shape and able to pull off what looked more like underwear got in the way of LISTENING and UNDERSTANDING who his target market was. He was all about fashion and strutting his stuff, and not the task! It wasn’t his fault, he was just too close to the task to take an objective look.
On the website when asked why he should be the next apprentice his response was “I should be the next Apprentice because I am a marketing guru, and that’s what this show is all about!” what guru calls themselves a guru, that’s lame.
Anyway
The lesson to be learned is simpleâ¦to target the right keywords (use tools like Google suggest , Quintura, Keycompete, and a slew of others) you need to check your search baggage at the door. The hardest part about keyword research is that most people bring their biases into keyword research. Which ultimately leads to a too narrow view of keywords to target for a campaign. We recently reviewed a few tools which may help with your SEO competitive research, take a gander.
So if you want to keep your job in SEO and not hear “Your Fired” then make sure you are targeting a wide array of terms that are developed to target users in different steps of the conversion process, research through to purchase.
Carey’s mistake is that because he is a gay male, when given the chance to develop a swimsuit for all males (both gay and straight) he insisted on targeting the minority which was a risk and ended up losing for his team and getting himself fired. Had the judging panel of buyers been mostly gay males in great shape he would have scored big points.
So next time you get ready to do keyword research, step outside of your own search behavior, there’s a whole world of people out there searching for things that search in a different way than you even when looking for the same thing.
Lesson from episode 2 – Stay hired by developing comprehensive keyword lists
Posted in SEO | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, January 17th, 2007
I am an avid fan of Donald Trump’s The Apprentice, and I think there are some lessons to be taken from the show that apply to SEO/SEM in some twisted way. So every week after I watch it, I’ll make some kind of crazy connection between The Apprentice and the crazy world of search marketing.
Episode 1 Lessons — Having Passion & SEO Training Courses
Ok, Ok – here goes the first guy to get “Fired.” Martin Han Clarke upon being asked why he should be the next apprentice said:
“As an attorney and professor, I have the experience, leadership and technical know-how to run any of Trump’s companies and projects.”
His African proverbs were long on theory and short on getting things done. He was all talk.
Notice, getting things done is not part of his self-described talents. Ultimately his inability to roll up his sleeves and do what needs to get done got him fired. He doesn’t mention drive, desire, or anything that shows passion. Get outta here, you’re FIRED! “Frankie Suits” has the fire and passion but seems a little overbearing; lets see how long he lasts. I have a blog post ready for his firing already.
In SEO, doing the dirty work is a part of “The Job.” Success in SEO is usually the result of the culmination of a bunch of small tasks done well. One of the things that makes a great SEO is passion for SEO. Without it, you are screwed. Lately there has been a lot of chatter on SEO certifications (Bruce Clay and SEMPO [no longer active] to name a few).
Unless someone taking a SEO Training course can take a session on Passion for SEO, the people that take them are doomed to be beginners in an industry where room for success is thin (top 20). The people who I look to as kind of leading this space Rand & Rebecca, Aaron, Danny, Stuntdbl, Shoemoney, Scott, and many many more are hard to compete with. If you are totally new with your certification in SEO, congrats. I hope your boss has realistic expectations. Because if your space is remotely competitive, the things you learned in class were WRITTEN / Authored by the people above and those like them. (more…)
Posted in SEO | 1 Comment »
Search our Blog
Get our Newsletter
Keep up-to-date search trends, latest blog posts and more.