Texture design

There's a great article posted earlier today on the SiteProNews.com site. The article, written by Bill Platt, discussed the recent controversy surrounding paid links and some comments on them made by Matt Cutts. While you may not gain great insight into the buying or selling of paid links (it's not that kind of article) it does lend some interesting analysis of the issue and how the engines (mainly Design) are addressing it.

The article also provides some great links to forums posts discussions of the topic including forums that Matt himself is commenting in. You can read the article on the SiteProNews.com site at http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/articles/2007/0425.html. I'd put this article in the "recommended but not mandatory" category of reading. There aren't any "how to's" but if you're engaging in paid links as a buyer or a seller it's always good to know what the feelings of the engines are and what they can and cannot do.<

Posted by randfish

This morning I spent a half hour interviewing Danny Sullivan about the upcoming Search Marketing Expo in Seattle on June 4 and 5. We hashed through quite a bit of material and I learned a great deal about what the goals of the conference will be, who the target audience is and why there are so many changes from his successful SES conference series.

Size of Venue & Limited Crowd

With SMX, the crowd capacity iis 550 attendees, a far cry from the throngs of thousands in attendance at SES shows in San Jose or New York, but not neither the tiny size of exclusive events like DesignDays or Elite Retreat. Danny's hoping that by limiting the crowd size, he can do a few things:

• Create more one-on-one time for attendees with speakers and search engines reps
• Enable public parties rather than private, invite-only events after hours
• Cultivate the perfect size for networking
• Allow audience participation to be more egalitarian

Cliques & the Search World

I think Danny has recently felt the pain of the average conference attendee who has trouble getting time to talk to speakers, doesn't get invited to private parties, and may not even know anyone else at the show. As such, he's created built-in networking events on the night before the show (Sunday, June 2) and the first night of the show (Monday, June 3). The goal is to make sure that everyone has a chance of appearing in Rebecca's comic strips No, seriously, I think he's hoping that people who attend will have a much better opportunity to connect with the people they want without restriction. It's a noble goal, and I hope that it has success.

Change in Session Format

The sessions at SMX are nothing like what you'd see at SES. There are only two tracks per day, and even then, the late afternoon debates (one on Design, one on paid search) are all by themselves in their time slots. The content is radically different too, focusing much more on advanced strategies, working through search issues with people from the search engines and hearing about techniques and tactics that are typically never discussed during SES shows.

Focus on Advanced Marketers

Danny noted on the phone that while everyone is invited to attend, he hopes that this show will specifically provide very advanced search marketers with the kind of value they rarely get at conference sessions. The basics aren't provided here, and a high level of knowledge will be assumed, so the presentations from the speakers and the questions from the audience are expected to be of a different echelon than SES.

A Few Problems with the Show

It's hard to say anything negative about SMX - it's in Seattle (my favorite town,┬?hence the reason I live here), it's on advanced topics, it's smaller and more intimate and Matt Cutts will actually be there. ┬?The only struggles so far have been:

• Including Speakers - Danny mentioned that with hundreds of speaker applications and only a couple dozen slots, he's had to say no to many of the folks who are often fantastic speakers. I barely got a slot myself, having to fistfight Ken Jurina out back of a chicken farm in rural Alberta.
• Presenting Content - with only two days, you're limited in what you can focus on and how deeply. Hence, Danny's creation of some of the specialty SMX shows later in the year - Local & Mobile and Social Media (both in October)
• Lack of Press - As Danny and I both noted on the phone - it's impossible to compress complex search issues (like those he wants to address at SMX) in a mainstream journalism publication. The background necessary to understand the issues properly would take the entire article, so getting press coverage here will be tough. That said, the event is less for the media and more for the attendees - that might turn out to be a very good thing.
• Uncharted Waters - there's no real focus group or user testing on this, and while Danny has an incredible track record and a ton of experience, I think even he might be nervous about how the new format is received and covered.

I'd love to hear what you think, not just about the new SMX series, but about the problems with conferences in the past and what you'd hope to see out of this new endeavor. If we're very, very lucky, Danny himself might even come by and leave a comment or answer a question.

Technorati Tags

smx, search marketing expo, danny sullivan

While I was at the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York, the Minneapolis Star Tribune published a profile of our companies, TopRank Online Marketing and Misukanis Odden Public Relations. The story, "Learning how to climb the web" was written by the very talented Jenna Ross.

Like the coverage we received in The Economist, "Dancing with Design's Spiders" treatment of TopRank was very generous. Besides giving examples of our own successful online marketing efforts and the types of clients we work with, there were very positive quotes from Design pioneer Jill Whalen and one of our big brand clients, Michael Brito of Hewlett Packard.

Most of our previous media coverage came as a result of journalists researching stories and finding TopRank on the web. However, this story is a result of our very persistent and enterprising media relations guy, William Arnovich. Bill's going to be writing for us over at Media Relations Blog.

Labels: lee odden, misukanis odden, star tribune, toprank

Posted by randfish

Today I'm very proud to announce that the Illustrated Guide to┬?Building a Search Friendly Website┬?is finally complete. I've personally been working on it for over a month - completely writing it from scratch and doing all the designs and illustrations. I'm incredibly happy with the results, and I think you will be, too. This guide is, in my opinion, one of the most valuable documents Designmoz has ever produced. It includes almost everything a web developer or publisher would need to know to build a site┬?that follows the best practices of optimizing for search engines. Plus, it includes tons of clever illustrations:

As I noted in the past, we only release premium articles when we've provided something free first. In this case, that was our search engine ranking factors V2, which is on par quality-wise. However, we are going down a bit of the corporate road and also launching ads on Designmoz. Don't worry, they're our ads, not anyone else's, and they only show for certain folks. For example, our "overlay" ad, the most intrusive (but also cool looking), only displays on your first visit to the site every two weeks (and only if you're not logged in as a member). Here's what you'll see:

See an example of this (even if you are logged in) here

We also have inline ads, ala Aaron Wall's suggestion (so blame him if you're angry ┬?), for the premium content, which displays to non-premium members and the general public.

We are seeking to ramp up premium membership and offer as much fantastic content as possible to you, both for free and in paid format. We love working on this kind of material and we think that it offers far greater access to the information we've collected (in a more egalatarian fashion) than our consulting services.

Speaking of consulting services, Gillian and I have recently made the decision to move to $1,000 an hour consulting prices. Yes, it's prohibitive, but we also think it accurately portrays the cost of time for our organization at this point. It also makes many of our recommended providers an even better choice.

p.s. Yes! I do plan to report back about the performance of these ads, and we certainly will be sharing lots of statistics from Designmoz that you can use as a case study for your own projects/clients.

Posted by randfish

Yesterday, one of the most popular web design portals, AListApart, unveiled their latest project - a survey for web designers and developers. Here's their pitch:

People who make websites have been at it for more than a dozen years, yet almost nothing is known, statistically, about our profession. Who are we? Where do we live? What are our titles, our skills, our educational backgrounds? Where and with whom do we work? What do we earn? What do we value?

The survey itself itself is here (and I'll probably take it myself). More relevant to this blog, however, would be learning more about our own industry - the search marketing field. Granted, Designmoz doesn't reach everyone in search the same way that ALA reaches almost everyone in webdev, but we've got about 12,000 feed readers (on a good day) and 10,000+ unique visitors (on weekdays), so there's at least a sizable audience. My question for you is - would you be willing to contribute in and see value in results from a "state of the search marketing profession" style survey?

If you are interested, please also leave comments below about the questions you'd like to see asked and the kinds of things you'd hope to learn from the study. My feeling is that if we could get 2-5,000 participants, the work would be both valuable and demographically representative.

p.s. Yes, yes, I know about the SEMPO studies and I've participated a couple time. Let's just say I'm not a fan, and the invite-only model has its advantages and drawbacks and is basically a different animal.

┬?