Jeff Brooks (Donor Power Blog) had an interesting post a few days ago about the perils of using focus groups to inform marketing decisions. As Jeff rightly points out, “it’s not that people lie, it’s just that they don’t actually know what they think, so they try to help you out by making up [...]

Back in a former life, or at least that’s how long ago it seems, I was an object oriented programmer. Before your eyes glaze over, if they haven’t already, let me explain the basics before I get into how that’s relevant to SEO.
In an object oriented world everything is represented by an object, or [...]

Including Jonathan Nicolas Tabbal, brand new baby of our friend and client Jennifer Tabbal (SOS Children’s Villages).

Congratulations to Jen and Nick on their beautiful baby boy! (That is the smallest pair of red boots we could find…they look enormous but he’ll grow into them, no doubt!)

The last SES show run by Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman has finished. SES- San Jose closed out at 1.45pm PDT today, and most people have left town (there are training sessions tomorrow, but they’re an additional service beyond the main conference). I covered 12 sessions for this blog over the course of [...]

Continuing the live coverage of Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2007…
This is the last session of the last day, the topic is buzz monitoring, and the moderator is Chris Sherman.
The first presenter is Rob Key. Social Media is rapidly gaining SERP predominance, especially with blended / universal search. Search and social media [...]

 
…continuing the live RBDRodeo coverage of Search Engine Strategies – San Jose 2007.This session is all about the different issues with analytics, setup, challenges, etc, and is moderated by Alex Bennert.
The first speaker is John Marshall, with a presentation titled: The anatomy of a click – why tracking never matches”.
Assumptions

PPC ad with tracking parameters
Basically functional [...]

…continuing the live blogging from Search Engine Strategies – San Jose 2007.
The third session of the third day is on the topic of SEM pricing, and is moderated by Misty Locke.
First up is Rand Fishkin.
Pricing must take into account the fact that there are many different services:

Site auditing reports
Standard consulting
Keyword ranking
Keyword research reports
Content creation and [...]

Another live blogging report from Search Engine Strategies – San Jose 2007
This session is on what you need to know to be a search marketer, and is moderated by Misty Locke.
First up is Pradeep Chopra, talking about the opportunities that are available in the industry.
The internet has created a level playing field, independent of

time
distance
capital

The SEM [...]

Another live blogging post from Search Engine Strategies – San Jose.
This session is on blogs and RSS feeds, and is moderated by Rebecca Lieb.
The first presenter was Stephan Spencer.
Optimizing your RSS feeds

Full text feeds, not summaries
20 or more items
Multiple feeds – category, comments, comment by post, links, photos, etc
Keyword rich title
Brand name in the title
Your [...]

Continuing my live coverage of Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2007…
This session is on Images and Search Engines and is moderated by Anne Kennedy.
First up was Shari Thurow reviewing SEO techniques: Keywords, architecture, interface & Links.
All engines look at title tags, body copy, text at the top of the page, and in and around hypertext [...]