Thursday, March 4, 2010
SEO Wins and SEO Sins
I was interviewed about SEO by Search Engine Journal. They asked me about common SEO mistakes and other Search Marketing topics. Check out Joe Laratro's Interview.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
University of San Francisco's Advanced Web Analytics Course
A video of me (Joe Laratro) discussing the University of San Francisco's new Advanced Web Analytics Certificate Program
Monday, November 2, 2009
Local Businesses are not using Social Media
The social media conundrum is an interesting one. Should you do it? How much resources should you allocate to it? Does it pay off?
Mediapost put out this article today: Small Business not into social media for leads
In my opinion Social Media Marketing (SMM) is more for branding and reputation management that direct lead generation. That being said, I have seen very creative ways for Social Media to promote leads / sales.
Look up the Blendtec. Checkout what they did on a shoestring budget to create a Youtube Sensation.
On Facebook, I follow a former SEO workshop attendee who designs jewelry. She posts her new designs for all her followers to see (and buy!).
Social media really cannot be ignored because it covers so many sites! Yelp is a form of Social media, and you better believe people use it to research your company.
Mediapost put out this article today: Small Business not into social media for leads
In my opinion Social Media Marketing (SMM) is more for branding and reputation management that direct lead generation. That being said, I have seen very creative ways for Social Media to promote leads / sales.
Look up the Blendtec. Checkout what they did on a shoestring budget to create a Youtube Sensation.
On Facebook, I follow a former SEO workshop attendee who designs jewelry. She posts her new designs for all her followers to see (and buy!).
Social media really cannot be ignored because it covers so many sites! Yelp is a form of Social media, and you better believe people use it to research your company.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Why You Should Not Hire a Cold Calling SEO Company
This is a great article on why not to hire a cold calling SEO company.
I would go a step further and not even take their call. Nothing is more annoying that when one of my clients calls me after being ear banged by a moron about how bad their site is. Then I have to explain why cloaking or link farms will get them banned in Google. Even worse is when someone sells hard that they have backend access to "Inktomi" to change the rank of the site. Seriously? Inktomi has been gone for years!
Work with someone you trust and build a relationship with for SEO services. And make sure you keep ongoing communication happening to ensure the long term success of the relationship.
I would go a step further and not even take their call. Nothing is more annoying that when one of my clients calls me after being ear banged by a moron about how bad their site is. Then I have to explain why cloaking or link farms will get them banned in Google. Even worse is when someone sells hard that they have backend access to "Inktomi" to change the rank of the site. Seriously? Inktomi has been gone for years!
Work with someone you trust and build a relationship with for SEO services. And make sure you keep ongoing communication happening to ensure the long term success of the relationship.
Monday, October 26, 2009
A Blog A Day - Yahoo Shutters XML Feed
I am going to try to write a Blog a day. I keep reading about Twitter killing blogging. Twitter is awesome, but Blogging still had its place so here we go.
Yahoo announced they are shuttering the Search Submit and Search Submit Pro programs by the end of the year (2009). It is the end of an era in SEO. I grew up on Inktomi trusted feed and value of the XML feeds. For those of you who were not familiar with the program, it was a direct feed of a Web site to the backend of a Search Engine. It was treated as "trusted" content and could be manipulated for search rankings. It was a great achievement in the SEO world. Early spiders sometimes had difficulty crawling sites. This feed resolved that issue.
In the end, the Yahoo spider was certainly good enough of a crawler to make the Search Submit program obsolete. They did not stop it, because it was a money maker. Now that we know the end of life date it does present a few interesting points:
1. Google was right, we don't need "trusted spam"
2. SEO companies that depended on this need to find a new sales pitch and source of revenue
3. Looks like the press releases were correct and Yahoo really is going to can Inktomi search technology for Bing
4. Looks like the timeline of the Yahoo / Bing integration may be sooner that we were first told (Summer of 2010)
Yahoo announced they are shuttering the Search Submit and Search Submit Pro programs by the end of the year (2009). It is the end of an era in SEO. I grew up on Inktomi trusted feed and value of the XML feeds. For those of you who were not familiar with the program, it was a direct feed of a Web site to the backend of a Search Engine. It was treated as "trusted" content and could be manipulated for search rankings. It was a great achievement in the SEO world. Early spiders sometimes had difficulty crawling sites. This feed resolved that issue.
In the end, the Yahoo spider was certainly good enough of a crawler to make the Search Submit program obsolete. They did not stop it, because it was a money maker. Now that we know the end of life date it does present a few interesting points:
1. Google was right, we don't need "trusted spam"
2. SEO companies that depended on this need to find a new sales pitch and source of revenue
3. Looks like the press releases were correct and Yahoo really is going to can Inktomi search technology for Bing
4. Looks like the timeline of the Yahoo / Bing integration may be sooner that we were first told (Summer of 2010)
Thursday, September 24, 2009
The Guilty Pleasures of Social Media
My buddy Owen Weed put this on his Facebook and I had to share!
Great work Bud with Lime!
Great work Bud with Lime!
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Go Canes! Back in the top 25
I only had the chance to watch the first quarter and a half from the President's Club in Tocumen Airport, Panama, but it was great! I asked the custom's agent if Miami won when I landed and received a play by play breakdown of the best game of the year! Glad the Canes won and look forward to a challenging Georgia Tech game. I have a few Blog posts coming up: University of San Francisco's Advanced Analytics and Measurement course, Copa Airlines Training, my Flight on Copa (Wow), My local move with All My Sons, and more!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)