Category Archives: SEO

New Blog on Successful Internet Start-Ups

Via Bill Slawski’s post, I came across a new blog called Startup Review that provides case studies about successful Internet Start-Ups. So far, the blog has profiled Home Gain, Rotten Tomatoes, Zappos, MySpace, Craigslist and many more successful online businesses.

The reviews are all very pedagogical and should make some good reading for people running an online business or those willing to start one.
Each case study seems to be divided in 7 parts:

– Why the start up has been profiled on Startup Review: the blog owner, Nisan Gabay, explains what were the factors that made him choose to review each startup;
– The Key Success Factors of the startup: in this part, the author outlines the key success factors that made the start-up business model unique;
– Its Launch Strategy: how the start-up was launched;
– An Exit Analysis: gives information on how the company was acquired;
– Food For Thought
– Reference Articles: links to useful articles about the start up;
– Questions for Startup Review Readers: StartUp Review incites people to leave comments and to contribute to the review.

One of the case studies talks about RottenTomatoes and is titled: Rotten Tomatoes Case Study: SEO drives traffic growth . The author explains that the owners of RottenTomatoes focused mainly on SEO to drive traffic to the site. They basically rely their SEO strategy on creativity and website architecture in order to obtain a search engine friendly website and gain lots of good links.

Thankfully, RottenTomatoes inhouse SEO team stopped by Startup Review and left several comments. Here’s a summary of the comments that I stole from Bill’s post 🙂 :

1. Movie and review sites were happy to link to them because their focus was upon linking out to other sites. A partnership, and hosting of, the Online Film Critics Society (and other offline critics groups) brought them visibility and positive relationships with related sites.

2. They’ve been active from the start in sending out links to directories like DMOZ and others, especially for new or upcoming movies and actors.

3. Page titles, alt tags, and good URL structures were thought about carefully, and set up so that that would get indexed well in search engines.

4. They shared information freely and built relationships with other sites like Netflix, and provided information about their ratings to others to publish via RSS feeds. Fans of their site, like Google engineers, integrated their site into prominent places, like Google’s Desktop Search v1, Gmail RSS Feeds v1.

According to one commenter, SEO traffic comprised up to 70% of RottenTomatoe’s traffic. Wow, that’s what I called a successful SEO strategy. Hard work , dedication, and creativity are the main factors that helped them build a strong SEO strategy. Nice job guys.

All about Accessible Tables

WebMasterWorld member DrDoc posted an excellent thread about accessible tables (subscription required). The thread is quite long but provides everything you need to know about tables from an accessibility standpoint.

If you use tables on your website and care about accessibility, you need to make sure people will be able to read them properly when they use a screen reader.

In the thread, DrDoc talks about all the elements that form an accessible table and how we should use them. This is definitely a post to put in your bookmarks.

DMA Offering Search Marketing Certification: That Just Sounds Wrong to Me…

Today, I heard that the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) announced their new Certifification Program in Search Engine Marketing. Basically, people will be able to be trained by Search Engine Marketers (who all have long years of experience, according to Lee Odden) and then pass a test in order to be “certified”…

From their press release:

Marketers seeking DMA certification will be required to apply to the program and gain acceptance, successfully complete coursework, pass an exam, and complete ongoing recertification.

DMA’s certification program is the first program developed by a major marketing association designed to train and certify the level of competency of in-house and agency marketers. Members of the DMA involved with program development include marketers, media properties, and search engines.

The program will include two levels of certification:

· Level 1: Designed for individuals able to work under the direction of an advanced search engine marketer. These individuals would know and be able to employ current best practices in organic or paid search marketing.

· Level 2: Designed for individuals who are capable of devising, creating, and managing effective search engine marketing programs within agencies or as lead members of in-house marketing teams. At this level, individuals can seek advanced certification in organic or paid search.

The word that bugs me here is “certification“. While I think that kind of program can help marketers get a better grasp of Search Engine Marketing, I do not support the certification process. SEM is still a very new field, and I do encourage the kind of education program provided by the DMA.

But I do no think anyone is able to give someone a certification in SEM. SEM is not like Management or Finance, it’s not a science that is constant in time and that has established principles accepted by many. SEM, and especially SEO, isn’t something that you can learn once, receive a certification or a degree, and then, that’s it, you become a topnotch SEO ready to triple the visibility and the revenue of any website.

SEO is not stable. What works today may not work tomorrow. SEO needs ongoing learning, testing, and research. That’s why nobody is able to learn SEO one day and then become good at it for the rest of his life. And that’s why nobody can claim to have a certification in SEO/M.

If I were a Director of Marketing looking to hire a SEO or PPC manager, I would not ask you if you have the DMA certification. I will want to hear what you have managed to achieve for your clients and I will ask how you think you can improve the visibility of my website.

That’s for these reasons that I cannot support the “Certification” process offered by the DMA. The education program is alright, but please, do not tell people that you will give them a certification. That just sounds wrong.

How to Attract Links and Increase Web Traffic: a Must Have List

If you haven’t bookmarked all the great articles you’ve read about link bait techniques, don’t worry. Brian Clark over at Copy Blogger came up with an excellent list of great articles about ways to drive traffic to your site.

Of course, the list includes articles from kick ass SEO’s such as Rand or Aaron.

I just saved the list to Delicious, don’t forget to do that too!

Web 2.0 Means Free Marketing

For basic internet users like us, Web 2.0 means fancy AJAX applications, big fonts, flashy colors but also the ability to use and share our own data .

For companies like Nintendo, it means free (or very cheap) marketing. In the last couple of days, I couldn’t help but realize how much money companies must be saving in advertising thanks to Web 2.0. With their new console called Wii that everyone’s waiting for (including me :)), Nintendo is showing us how a company can benefit from the power of Web 2.0 sites. They are advertising their new console to millions of people without any effort.

So, what’s the trick? Just come up with something truly unique and revolutionary, and Digg, Youtube, Engadget, Delicious or Techmeme will do the marketing job for you. For Nintendo, it means free links, millions of visits, and thousands of people who can’t wait about the new console to come out.

In Wii’s case, Delicious has more than 2055 links about it, Digg has hundreds of posts, and of course Youtube also has a lot of videos to please the eyes of every gamer.

So, what can any business learn from Nintendo’s example with Web 2.0 sites? If you too want to get natural links and hundreds of people promoting your services for free, come up with something truly unique, exciting or revolutionary; be the first to do it; build a search engine friendly page or website, and the Web 2.0 sphere will do the rest.

SEO Tip: Don’t Put a Link to your SEO Company on Your Clients’ Websites

As a SEO, when I visit a site that has a link to their SEO company, I will always spend a few minutes to analyze the site architecture, their incoming links, their content and other SEO indicators.
To me, adding a link to your company’s website on your clients’ sites is stupid for many reasons:

  • Any curious SEO will be able to spy theses sites and can try to “steal” your techniques if he understands why the sites rank well in the search engines. Also, if you added a link on every website you optimized, you don’t want people to find them all and see what you’ve done. If you use the same link on each website for example “SEO by XYZ company”, it will take only a few seconds to find your clients’ websites;
  • If you have tons of clients websites with a link to your website and all their pages, search engines will probably don’t give any value to these links as they don’t look natural;
  • If you didn’t ask the permission to put a link to your website, you just don’t deserve it 🙂

Note: I’m not turning paranoiac and saying that you should not link to your clients’s sites either, but I think that it can be a good idea to only present a few of your “best” clients on your website to appeal your visitors, rather than having a full client list so people can have a chance to analyze all your work.