A long time ago, I got certified by John Alexander and Robin Nobles from Search Engine Workshops in the advanced Search Engine Optimization (SEO) course. That was in 2004. I have been receiving their newsletters for as long as I can remember and I strongly recommend everyone that gets started in the Search Marketing field to start reading their material. Here is the latest from John Alexander on how you pinpoint the real SEO experts.

Here is a short list of 6 Tips to help you build your career in SEO.

1. You MUST be able to “deliver” and make a difference to your
clients. Do whatever it takes to get your SEO skills and lateral
thinking skills up to speed.

2. Consider taking a live SEO workshop which can kick start your
professional SEO career in just a few days of hands-on
training followed my a 6 month mentoring program.

3. Run a balanced business. Are you charging for what your
services are worth? There are some folks who charge steeply
and don’t even know how to get the results.

If you’re good at what you do, make sure you are charging
well for your services. You DESERVE fair reward if your
considerable SEO skills are helping other business owners
to prosper. (Some folks are afraid to charge for their work)

Note:
The ones that charge steeply but DON’T know how to deliver may
make a few dollars initially, but they won’t enjoy the
customer loyalty, the referral business, and the repeat
business that you do. They won’t have a “customer life” like
you will because you took time to actually build your skills.

4. Don’t forget to recognize and be thankful for the progress
you’ve already made. Be sure to benchmark your victories
but even more important, celebrate your client’s victories
too! After all, you helped bring it about for them.

5. Give something back to your community (with gladness.)
Look for opportunities to help others who genuinely need help
and avoid those who are only after your talents to exploit them.
(Trust me, when your SEO talents and success stories increase,
you’ll have strangers coming out of the woodwork to take you
to dinner and pick your brain). Proceed with wisdom.

6. You must be willing to continually grow and take action!
Performing the way you perform now has delivered a certain
result, right? So if you’re happy with this result, carry on
exactly the same way and you should get very similar results.

However, if you are NOT happy with your results now, then
you must change the way you do things.

You need to take new action!

Some people go all their life complaining that they would like a better
career or a better position in life and yet they continue taking the same
actions and getting the same results year after year.

Think of it like this…

Same action = same result
Different action = new results

So are you ready to take your SEO career to the next step?

Here is the complete SEO Workshop Agenda.

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I have seen this kind of situation many times over the years but this one is perfect. 2 weeks go, Gord Hotchkiss, the most renowned search expert in Canada made a blunt statement saying that Canadian advertisers have their heads up their ass and that Canada is clueless about search marketing. In his article, Gord explains that he was in an hotel room during Search Engine Strategies in Toronto and made a few obvious searches such as Ontario vacations, Ontario resorts, Toronto vacations, Ontario getaways and Ontario holidays in an attempt to see if Ontario Tourism would appear on the radar. Zip. According to Google Trends’ keyword research tool, these are the most common searches for Ontario, by a substantial margin. Any half-decent search marketer would conclude based on this 30 second experiment that a major chunk of the search marketing opportunity is wasted and that Ontario Tourism is clueless. 

Now, Ontario Tourism defends itself and they are saying that Gord’s claim was “wildly inaccurate” and that Ontario Tourism does in fact have “an extensive search program.” Really? According to the most recent article on this episode that is called “ ‘Doing Search’ Only Counts If You’re Seen” it’s one thing to say “we’re doing search” internally—and it’s a totally different thing to have the searcher realize that yes, you’re doing search. There is a fundamental disconnect there which is why most Canadian search experts agree that Canadian advertisers aren’t clueing into the power of search. They are missing out on obvious opportunities and they don’t factor in searcher behaviors.

Maybe the budget was limited which is why they could not include head terms (aka. heavily searched key phrases). A little more digging in the way their advertising budget is used allowed to discover that most of the advertising dollars go to TV and print (loads of it apparently) and the goal of this campaign is to drive traffic to the site. Yes, you read it right. What a waste! Here is the quote on how the budget is used:

But in this case, are budgets really limited? Let me share some things I was able to dig up on Ontario Tourism’s site. First of all, the tourist bureau is doing print (lots of print) and TV (lots of TV). The goal? To drive people to its Web site. Full-page 4-color ads are running multiple times in over 70 dailies and weekly newspapers and 9 magazines. One 4-color full-page ad in the Toronto Star would run about $54,000 (there’s a certain amount of guessing here, as print rate cards are really a mathematical exercise in confusion and frustration). Circulation of the Toronto Star is 350,000 (on an average day). An excellent conversion rate for a newspaper ad would be 0.5% That means, ideally, 1,750 people would actually visit the Ontario Tourism website. Now, I have never in my life seen a newspaper ad convert this well, but even if it did, that would be a cost per visitor of $30.85. If the ad doesn’t work that well, the average cost climbs dramatically. And you pay whether or not the ad works.

And it goes on like this. The complete experiment, supported by key research and shopper behaviors, concludes that, according to 97 out of 100 people who are using search to find the official site for Ontario Tourism, the tourism bureau is not “doing search.” Read the full article here and please start making sense with your advertising budget. Otherwise don’t be surprised to make the headlines and potentially not in a flattering way. Make sure you blog about it so everybody knows.

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As I am cleaning my inbox today, I came across an old email that was coming from Fred, a talented blogger, where I was asking for advices for my blog. Here’s a partial answer of what he has to say when you just start blogging:

1. Use lists.
2. Be topical… write posts that need to be read right now.
3. Learn enough to become the expert in your field.
4. Break news.
5. Be timeless… write posts that will be readable in a year.
6. Be among the first with a great blog on your topic, then encourage others to blog on the same topic.
7. Share your expertise generously so people recognize it and depend on you.
8. Announce news.
9. Write short, pithy posts.
10. Encourage your readers to help you manipulate the technorati top blog list.
11. Don’t write about your cat, your boyfriend or your kids.
12. Write long, definitive posts.
13. Write about your kids.
14. Be snarky. Write nearly libelous things about fellow bloggers, daring them to respond (with links back to you) on their blog.
15. Be sycophantic. Share linklove and expect some back.
16. Include polls, meters and other eye candy.
17. Tag your posts. Use del.ico.us.
18. Coin a term or two.
19. Do email interviews with the well-known.
20. Answer your email.
21. Use photos. Salacious ones are best.
22. Be anonymous.
23. Encourage your readers to digg your posts. (and to use furl and reddit). Do it with every post.
24. Post your photos on flickr.
25. Encourage your readers to subscribe by RSS.
26. Start at the beginning and take your readers through a months-long education.
27. Include comments so your blog becomes a virtual water cooler that feeds itself.
28. Assume that every day is the beginning, because you always have new readers.
29. Highlight your best posts on your Squidoo lens.
30. Point to useful but little-known resources.
31. Write about stuff that appeals to the majority of current blog readers--like gadgets and web 2.0.
32. Write about Google.
33. Have relevant ads that are even better than your content.
34. Don’t include comments, people will cross post their responses.
35. Write posts that each include dozens of trackbacks to dozens of blog posts so that people will notice you.
36. Run no ads.
37. Keep tweaking your template to make it include every conceivable bell or whistle.
38. Write about blogging.
39. Digest the good ideas of other people, all day, every day.
40. Invent a whole new kind of art or interaction.
41. Post on weekdays, because there are more readers.
42. Write about a never-ending parade of different topics so you don’t bore your readers.
43. Post on weekends, because there are fewer new posts.
44. Don’t interrupt your writing with a lot of links.
45. Dress your blog (fonts and design) as well as you would dress yourself for a meeting with a stranger.
46. Edit yourself. Ruthlessly.
47. Don’t promote yourself and your business or your books or your projects at the expense of the reader’s attention.
48. Be patient.
49. Give credit to those that inspired, it makes your writing more useful.
50. Ping technorati. Or have someone smarter than me tell you how to do it automatically.
51. Write about only one thing, in ever-deepening detail, so you become definitive.
52. Write in English.
53. Better, write in Chinese.
54. Write about obscure stuff that appeals to an obsessed minority.
55. Don’t be boring.
56. Write stuff that people want to read and share.

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Mark your calendar! In 2 months, I will be attending a very interesting local event in Vancouver (BC) called BarCamp Vancouver 2007. BarCamp is an ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees.

All attendees are encouraged to give a demo, a session, a presentation, or help with one. All attendees are expected to be participants. All presentations are scheduled the day they happen. Prepare in advance, but come early to get a slot on the wall.

Presenters are responsible for making sure that notes/slides/audio/video of their presentations are published on the web for the benefit of all and those who can’t be present.

Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.

Attendees, register for BarCampVancouver by visiting the BarCamp Vancouver Registry and Attendees Page and adding your details. Only 120 participants can be accepted, unless things change from now until the event. 122 participants have signed up already.

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I have to admit, I have never been a big fan of SEO Tools because none of them can actually do the work for you. They help in some ways but since you have to write all your content yourself in most cases, these SEO tools can only help you identify what you already know (intuitively) or what you can find out from Google Analytics. Nevertheless, a few people have asked me to talk a little more about my SEO tools arsenal and what I like to use and I promised I will make an effort to find out more about SEO Tools what I think is worth your attention. The first one I want talk about is called Free Ranking Monitor for Google.

What I like about this tool is that it is intuitive, simple and very easy to use. And it is free. You include all the search terms you want to be found in SERPs (search Engine Result pages) in Google and it tells you from one round of report to the next if you have increased or decreased your position and which position you currently holds for each of your targeted search term. The software needs to be downloaded from cleverstat.com and I have not encountered any glitch yet. Try it and let me know what you think.

Here is what the interface looks like:

For those of you who likes to try (SEO) stuff, I am giving you THE link to ALL the 136 SEO Tools out there. Feel free to try some of them and give me your comment. I will try these SEO tools one at a time and post my comments here. If you agree or disagree, express yourself so everybody can learn. 

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No matter what everybody says, no matter who will be the next CEO of Yahoo and all the different excuses and challenges Microsoft and Yahoo are using to support their algorithm and strategy, the bottom line is that Google is nowhere near to face the next Google Killer. By the way, I hate that term and whoever pretends that have the next technology to beat Google should take a look at these Stats. Once again, Google climbs another percentage point last month. Oh yes! One percentage in one month. It is huge. Here is the full press release from comScore.

RESTON, Va., June 22, 2007 - comScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its monthly qSearch analysis of activity across competitive search engines.  In May 2007, Google Sites captured 50.7 percent of the U.S. search market, gaining one full share point from the previous month.  Yahoo! Sites maintained its second place ranking with 26.4 percent of U.S. searches, followed by Microsoft Sites (10.3 percent), Ask Network (5.0 percent) and Time Warner Network (4.6 percent).

Americans conducted 7.6 billion searches online in May, up 4 versus April and up 11 percent versus May 2006.

Google Sites led the pack with 3.9 billion search queries performed, followed by Yahoo Sites (2.0 billion), Microsoft Sites (782 million), Ask Network (384 million), and Time Warner Network (348 million).

What is interesting here is that in Canada, market share per search engine is very different. In Canada, Google has a market share of 80% with MSN and Yahoo way behind with 10% each. That being said, how’s your link building plan going?

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As part of the effort for revamping my business activities within eMarketing 101 on a full time basis, I need to relocate my old PC to my girlfriend’s place and take her laptop instead. Yes, she is in fact very kind. As such, please let me know if you would have an extra keyboard and mouse. I will pick it up anywhere. That would be appreciated.

Can you help me find the last few pieces that I need?

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C’est avec beaucoup d’enthousiasme que j’annonce que le Collège et Centre de Services en Français Éducacentre a choisi Alexandre Brabant de eMarketing 101 pour ses besoins en matières d’enseignement de la promotion de petites entreprises via les moteurs de recherche. En outre, la première session de 3 heures traitera du choix d’un bon nom de domaine, la compréhension et l’analyse de résultats statistiques avec Google Analytics ainsi que sur la recherche competitive de ses compétiteurs sur Internet. Nous analyserons l’ensemble des outils gratuits d’analyse de marché sur Internet qui sont à la disposition de tous ceux qui savent s’en servir adéquatement.  La première session aura lieu ce Lundi 25 Juin, ce qui veut dire que j’ai beaucoup de pain sur la planche. Je vous en reparlerai.

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Voici d’autres infos sur le spectacle de Francis Cabrel a Vancouver, le 11 juillet 2007:

Spectacle de Francis Cabrel a Vancouver
Tournée “L’essentiel 1977-2007”
Mercredi le 11 juillet 2007, 19:00.
Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage (Stanley Theater)
2750 rue Granville, Vancouver

Billets disponibles sur www.ticketmaster.ca. Les billets sont $60 chacun plus les frais de ticketmaster. Pour plus d’info, communiquez avec Eric Lenger ou Martin Talbot: Lenger Talbot Productions. On vous attend en grand nombre. 

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After Gord Hotchkiss article (rant) last week following SES Toronto, today Andrew Goodman from traffick.com is putting his 0.02 cents on the future of search Marketing in Canada and why advertisers are acting the way they do. Among other things, he talks about the search subculture and how it will eventually reach C-Level business people in major organizations and how search marketing budget will soon be proportionate to the hockey-stick growth of online usage in Canada. Future looks bright but we need to be patient. Read the full article here.

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It is with great pleasure and excitement that I announce a new Search Engine Marketing project for eMarketing 101. In the next few months, I will be working in Collaboration with Boxcar Marketing on GaleForce Solutions, a CRM Software for Financial Services to implement a full-scale Search Engine Marketing plan which includes Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Link Building and Paid Search.

As a result, I am very happy to continue working with James Sherrett, founder of Boxcar Marketing as I have lots of admiration for his work. The whole team is fantastic and I strongly suggest you get in touch with them to refocus your web strategy and implement a holistic approach for your web presence. 

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Please do yourself a favor and stop working for a second. Here is a common scenario I hear all the time regarding entry-level SEO (Search Engine Optimization) project. The way the project is presented clearly points out how unreasonable business owners can be when they lay out the web strategy for potential online success. Yes, I am talking to you and potentially a lot of people you know. I seriously don’t want you to lose your business and I really want to help you but please listen to me carefully. This information is free and can save you thousands.

Business owners come up to me and say: here is my site (in a very competitive market).
I am a small entrepreneur with no (or very small) budget. What can you do? How much would it cost so that I can rank higher up in search results? (at the top if possible) I am guessing they expect me to say, for $2,000 I can bring you to the top. I know that for $2,000, it will only scratch the surface and it won’t meet their expectations. Since $2,000 seems too much for them sometimes, what are the options?

What strikes me at first is that people start an online business without knowing the kind of forces they are up against. They count on me to explain the force and magnitude of the obstacles on their path and the likelihood they can succeed online. Some people call it market research. And please don’t shoot the messenger. They don’t seem to have a good understanding of their online competition and how much their competitors might have been investing to deserve the position they currently uphold at the top of search results. There are so many sites on the Internet, what makes you think that YOU deserve the right to be #1? If you think I am crazy, wait until you read about my vision for developing an online presence. In a nutshell, there are so many sites out there that it needs more and more resources to accomplish what used to be easier, years ago. Or if you prefer, what used to require $1,000 to get a decent position in search results, now needs more like $10,000. The intensity of the players is increasing. And, there are only 5 spots that matter in SERPs (Search Engine Results page) according to the latest study on the Golden Triangle. Do the math: thousands of competitors, 5 spots. Be serious.

Therefore, if you don’t have the funds to invest to earn your way to the top in your very competitive category, here are your options as far as I see them:

* Refocus your business on a very niche market (and niche search terms) within the global market
* Team up with your competitors (coopetition)
* Go for the top: invest heavily in your web strategy, site content, design and search marketing (organic, paid, link building) or
* Abandon your site! (and do something else)

I am saying all this because there is request that came to me today in the Ringtones business. I once promoted ringtonesusa.com from a previous job so I know first hand how difficult it is to promote a site in this category. You compete with giant carriers with behemoth budgets. There are thousands of players worldwide. There are thousands of entrepreneurs with more money to invest than you which would also be more knowledgeable on how to build an online business. Can you match that?

The bottom line is, since we do market research before you start a brick-and-mortar business, you also need to do market research before you commit your hard-earned money in an online business. Traffic is the crack-cocaine for an entrepreneur in the web world and it needs (way) more than $2,000 to get to the top. If you can’t match (or exceed!) the level of investment of your online competitors, team up with them or do something else.

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So you found yourself with a few minutes on your hands to optimize your site. Now, I honestly believe there are only two MAIN things which support the Search Engine Optimization process and reward your website with high rankings you desire. Put simply, these two things are Keyword Rich Content and Targeted Back Links (with proper anchor text). You have to do both in order to earn your way to the top.

Here are 7 powerful steps you can use to optimize your site (SEO) in order to reach (earn) high search engine rankings:

Step 1: Determine Highly Searched Keywords
Determine highly searched and targeted keywords/keyword phrases related to your site and put them into a list. Here are the free tools to use:
Google External Keyword Tool
Yahoo Keyword Inventory Tool
Wordtracker

Step 2: Register Keyword Rich Domain Names
While there have been contrasting arguments about whether having keywords in your domain helps, I strongly feel it does. The same goes for dashes between words in the domain. As long as you have a domain name that represents what you do, even partially, it will work.

Step 3: Use Your Targeted Keywords In Your Copy
Use the list of keywords in step 1 within your website copy, especially in the title, headline and first paragraph. The important thing is to make them flow smoothly within the context of the copy so prospects will not find it weird.

Step 4: Insert Keyword Rich Relevant Content
Next, build up your site’s content with relevant topics containing your keywords.

Step 5: Aggressively Acquire Targeted Back Links
This is the second most important (some say it’s the first) factor to note after targeted and relevant content. If you are not sure where to start there, I suggest you go here: 131 Legitimate Link Building Strategies

Step 6: Hand Submit Your Site To The Top Directories and Search Engines
There’s no point in using those ‘submit to millions’ services as only a few search engines really matter. Using those automatic services may actually cause your site to be penalized by these major engines. Do you really need a list of search engines to submit to? I suggest you start by Google Add URL page. Please note that as soon as you have a few links pointing to your site, Google will find your site anyway, so there is no point submitting it. This may speed up the indexing process though.

Step 7: Tune Your Site For Maximum Optimization
The final step would be to constantly monitor your traffic and analyze your website traffic against rankings. This assumes you have Google Analytics in place. If you don’t, you should. It is free. This is so you can review and tweak for further improvement in your rankings.  I found a great free tool to get this done and monitor your rankings: try Free Ranking Monitor For Google

Let me know if this process works for you. These are the same steps if you want to Optimize your blog and corresponding blog posts for search engines. 

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Something happened this week. I have been laid off from a major Canadian ad agency which was trying to clue in on Search. I have seen it dozens of times over the last 7 years but this group is especially resistant to change. Their advertising code of conduct does not leave room to question & reconsider their spending habits and underlying beliefs. And then, as I am reconnecting with my Small Search Marketing shop from my home office on a full time basis, the first article I read this morning is coming from Gord Hotchkiss who makes a blunt statement about the advertising industry saying that Canadian advertisers have their heads up their ass. This is not a typo! He goes on in the article by saying:

“By common consensus with most Canadian search marketers I’ve talked to, Toronto seems to be the epicenter of the orifice that Canadian advertisers have lodged their collective heads in. The city doesn’t get it, the province doesn’t get it, the country doesn’t get it. When it comes to search, Canada (with a few exceptions) is clueless.”

Unfortunately, I could not attend SES Toronto this week but I completely agree with this statement. Major Canadian Advertisers are not even close for getting it and they would do anything to avoid the confrontation. According to ComScore research, Canadians spend lots of time online: Canadians are top with 40 hours, followed by Israel with 37.4 and South Korea with 34. The U.S. is in 8th place with 29.4. Canada also leads the pack in online reach, with 70% of households wired. This time, the U.S. comes in second with 59%. Average pages viewed per visitor? Canada comes in tops with 3800. The U.K. is second with 3300 and the U.S. clicks in with 2500.

Want more numbers? Check this out:

* Canadians spend $28.05 in online advertising per Internet user. The US spends $71.43.
* 21% of Canadians media usage is online, but it gets 6% of the budget.
* In contrast, newspapers and magazines get a 7% share of total media usage, but capture 42% of Canadian ad budgets,
* The U.S. spends almost twice as Canada per capita on search marketing.

It is too bad I did not have a chance to go to SES Toronto and share this point of view with Gord. What I am most interested in at this point is what we could do to change this situation. If you have any ideas, please send them my way. Because, we are going to have to keep trying, collectively. Read the full article here.

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On ne savait plus si le spectacle de Francis Cabrel avait lieu ou non mais aujourd’hui, tout c’est finalement confirmé: Francis Cabrel sera à Vancouver le Mercredi 11 Juillet 2007 au Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage. Les billets sont en vente dès Vendredi 15 Juin sur ticketmaster.ca ou par téléphone au (604) 280-4444.

Le spectacle est organisé par Eric Lenger et Martin Talbot de Lenger-Talbot Production. On vous attend en grand nombre.

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