Search Engine Diva

Things you need at PubCon Las Vegas

WebHandler — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:57:55 +0000

Since I live in Las Vegas going to PubCon is just a short drive. Those of you traveling from afar may not know some of the items you will need to bring to make your stay comfortable.

1. It will be windy and warm during the day- so a light jacket is advised, especially since they seem to keep the convention area as a ice box.

2. Nasal mist – The air is very dry here and if you are not used to the total lack of humidity you may experience a nose bleed.

3. Throat spray or lozenges. – Again the lack of humidity will impact your voice. Singers in Las Vegas insist on humidifiers backstage to prevent “Desert Throat” from striking. If you are a Event Speaker or want to network at all, pack these items to ensure your voice will stay in tune.

4. Antacids and The Pink Stuff- You insurance policy for trying out the interesting looking decorative eating choices at the parties- ah I meant networking events.

5. A Backpack- to put all the stuff you know won’t fit in the goody bag.

6. If you want party favors for your room might I suggest you tell the cab to take you to Lee’s Liquor ( Flamingo and Pecos Mcleod). Best prices and they have everything!

Got anything to add to the shopping list?

Free Webinar – Top 10 Steps To Get Visibility On Google

admin — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:46:58 +0000

Free Webinar – Top 10 Steps To Get Visibility On Google

On October 20th come join us live on-screen for a brand new free public Webinar where Search Engine Academy Trainer Thomas W. Petty of the
Bay Area Search Engine Academy will be revealing his Top 10 List for Getting Exposure on Google.

This is a special free live Webinar open to anyone who wishes to
watch on-screen and listen in. There is no charge or fee.
Space is limited.
Reserve your free Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/362502339

Important:
While everyone is free to join, there is limited seating so please
register early to ensure you get a spot if you wish to attend. These public Webinars tend to fill fairly quick, but once you register, then your seat will be held for you.

If you miss this free Webinar in October, we hope to be able to
present another of the most requested topics in November.

Date: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at:
11:00 AM EDT
or
10:00AM CST

Cost to attend: $0 Free

Top 10 List for Getting Exposure on Google.
Space is limited.

Reserve your free Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/362502339

Highest regards,
John Alexander
http://www.Searchengineworkshops.com
http://www.SearchEngineAcademy.com
http://www.SEW-WRC.com

Like the only REAL magic – the magic of knowledge!

Las Vegas SEO Mastery Workshop -Sept 21-25, 2009

admin — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:44:42 +0000

Learn top search engine optimization skills :

Choose your workshop: a 2-day Beginners Workshop;
a 3-day Advanced Workshop; or a 5-day All-Inclusive Workshop, each tailored to fit your unique needs!

This is a hands on SEO Workshop I recommend to any Web Designer, Internet Marketing company or consultant. The skills and techniques are taught by people who work hands on with clients. You get real world answers to your questions and insight on proven strategies from pioneers in the industry John Alexander, Robin Nobles and Michael Marshall Plus I come to hang out with everyone and answer questions too.

Warm Regards

Ginette

Join us at the Workshop- click here

Unofficial AdWords Quick Start Guide

WebHandler — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:38:18 +0000

Adwords can be a intimidating to most advertisers. There are so many options and little gotchas that most people lose money on PPC advertising. You can turn it around though. Chuck Mullaney has created an “Unofficial AdWords Quick Start Guide” that will get you on the track to a profitable PPC campaign.

You don’t have to give your email, name or hard earned cash to get it, Chuck gave me permission to post the download link for you to enjoy.

Get the ”Unofficial AdWords Quick Start Guide“

Microsoft’s Adcenter – Keyword Tools

admin — Fri, 01 May 2009 02:41:09 +0000

AdCenter has an area to help you figure out the commercial intent of a word or website:
This tool can be used to find keywords that are commercial but have low ad coverage. From a SEM point of view, it is useful to find these keywords as they have low bid density (low price), but high commercial value. Similarly, for an advertizing engine, this can help increase ad relevancy by displaying fewer ads if a keyword has low online commercial intent.
Commercial Intent Tool

Demographics Prediction
This tool predicts a user’s age, gender, and other demographic information, based on their online behavior, such as what queries they search online and what web sites they visit. It lets merchants learn more about their customers before bidding for keywords.

http://adlab.msn.com/Demographics-Prediction/

More about LSI and SEO

admin — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:59:41 +0000

Marie-Claire Jenkins (a.k.a CJ), the Author of Science for SEO has an excellent article How does a search engine know what words mean?

My favorite section from CJ’s post is:

“Language is very ambiguous (meaning can be misleading – more than one meaning) and so are the senses used by different people. It is not always possible for the machine to give a very precise solution because of this variance. In fact humans have been shown to be about 90% accurate. ”

It fascinates me as an SEO how contextual words can completely change the meaning of a single word. How human perspective can completely change a definition for a word.

CJ was also interviewed by Joe Hall at Marketing Pilgrim Where she explains Natural Language Processing in-depth for the layman. I didn’t realize search engines were using NLP since the 1950’s or how integrated it is in our everyday lives. Read the interview Understanding Natural Language Processing for SEO

What words are you missing?

admin — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 21:46:19 +0000

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP )is a very large part of how search engines work today. Wait! Don’t let your eyes glaze over just yet I am not going to engage in tech babble. My own explanation of LSI / NLPand its use in search engines:

As our language changes and slangs are added into the mix it is difficult to determine the relevancy and meaning of a word without the context it is used in. As an example take the reference ”911″ before 2001 we related to word to emergency phone numbers- police and fire fighters. Now it has a whole different meaning in our common language. So how is “911″ to be indexed? What search results should appear? This is where LSI and NLP technology shines.

Remember the back in the day when the name of the SEO game was how many times and ways you could insert a word. Now it is called keyword stuffing and can get you hit with the ban stick! And if you don’t remember those days then pay attention young grasshopper.

It takes a combination of words to equal relevance to a single term or phrase. But what if you don’t know which words on your page you are missing to be relevant for the term you are aiming for? You could spend hours sifting and comparing the words on competitor pages to yours, combing Dictionary.com for the synonymous words and phrases or you could have SEM Scout.

Michael Marshall has created SEM Scout, a desktop application that will show you what words you are missing using a very powerful (well tested) method among the many approaches of NLP. I have had so many AH HA moments using Scout I cannot imagine not having it at my fingertips for my next set of articles or SEO challenge. SEMScout is a tool that utilizes a unique approach to help SEO’s focus our pages to ensure the right context is in place to define our pages.

Our language constantly evolves even more so with the social media explosion and blending of cultures encourages by the ability the internet gives us to communicate across the globe instantly. We add new words to our dictionary every year. In 2008 the words added were: W00t, fanboy, webinar, netroots, and pretexting. What words do you think will be added in 2009?

Article Marketing

admin — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:12:17 +0000

I have always been an advocate of Article Marketing for SEO and PR purposes. The toughest part for many is creating content. Robin Nobles, a celebrated author and one of the founders of Search Engine Workshops created an ebook: “Content Challenged No More“. It was designed to help you come up with ideas for articles, content for websites, newsletters, blogs and even affiliate marketing ventures.

The next challenge is getting more mileage from your articles. There are only so many hours I am willing to be chained to my desk writing articles and rewriting articles. I have tried software and scripts that scrambled the article contents in a feeble attempt to rewrite an article or make it unique. I was never satisfied with the results. The truth is no piece of software or scripting is ever going to be able to rewrite an article and preserve human readability.

I did find a free article tool that does not promise rewrite your articles all by itself, but it DOES help you create totally UNIQUE articles with intuitive tools like a thesaurus, an originality check, suggestions for alternate phrases or words, a quote library and much more.

Try the Article Spinner for Free. You just have to opt in but it is worth it.

Costly PPC Mistakes

admin — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 05:18:52 +0000

Yahoo and Google both offer pay per click advertising across content, search partner networks and search engine page results. There are distinct differences between each and not knowing the difference can syphon cash from your bank account.

Search Networks for Google examples include AOL.com, Ask.com, CNN. your ads will appear in search result pages on those networks.

Partner/Publisher Network examples for Yahoo! include iVilliage, USA Today, NBC your ads will appear in search result pages on those networks.

The advantages of having your PPC ads appear in the partner networks is the immediate increase in reach for your ads.

Content partners usually offer contextual ads. Your ads appear on a page with a story or content, not search results. In this setting the search engine determines if the content of the page is relevant to your ad and keywords. The user is not necessarily in “shop mode” when viewing contextual ads.

The worst example of this type of advertising gone wrong was where an advertisement for a fast food chain appeared on the same page as an article about an e.coli meat recall. When shown to a room full of internet users for 30 seconds they all thought the meat recall had something to do with the fast food chain. This is where negative words in your ppc campaigns can save you a lot of PR headaches.

Contextual/Content partner ads and Search Network Partner ads should be turned off when starting a new campaign. Until you have a defined set of keywords producing a positive return on investment for your ppc campaign keep your testing limited to the search engine page results.

When you are ready to expand your ads, set up separate campaigns.

To Maintain A Healthy Level Of Insanity

admin — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:15:54 +0000

To Maintain A Healthy Level Of Insanity

1. At Lunch Time, Sit In Your Parked Car With Sunglasses on and point a Hair Dryer At Passing Cars. See If They Slow Down.

2. Page Yourself Over The Intercom. Don’t Disguise Your Voice!

3. Every Time Someone Asks You To Do Something, ask If They Want Fries with that.

4. Put Decaf In The Coffee Maker For 3 Weeks . Once Everyone has Gotten Over Their Caffeine Addictions, Switch to Espresso.

5. In the Memo Field Of All Your Checks, Write ‘ For Marijuana.

6. Skip down the hall Rather Than Walk and see how many looks you get.

7. Order a Diet Water whenever you go out to eat, with a serious face.

8. Specify That Your Drive-through Order Is ‘To Go’.

9. Sing Along At The Opera.

10. Five Days In Advance, Tell Your Friends You Can’t Attend Their Party Because You have a headache.

11. When The Money Comes Out The ATM, Scream ‘I Won! I Won!’

12. When Leaving the Zoo, Start Running towards the Parking lot, Yelling ‘Run For Your Lives! They’re Loose!’

13. Tell Your Children Over Dinner, ‘Due To The Economy, We Are Going To Have To Let One Of You Go.’

And The Final Way To Keep A Healthy Level Of Insanity
14. PICK UP A BOX OF CONDOMS AT THE PHARMACY, GO TO THE COUNTER AND ASK WHERE THE FITTING ROOM IS.

Thank you Gail for sending this along.