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The Best SEO Video Ever?

posted on February 21, 2007

If you’ve been following Gareth Davies ECommerce Rocks video series, you’ll already know that he produces some fantastic stuff.

I recently worked with Gareth on a new video that has just launched. In it, I discuss recent developments with keyword suggestion tools and then discuss some basics of keyword research.

Now, I may be biased, but wouldn’t you agree this is one of the best produced SEO tutorial videos ever? (emphasis on the “produced”).

Enjoy and please share.

BTW, Gareth’s looking for more experts to join him on future videos and is also providing his video producing talents to clients, looking to “jazz-up” their content. Contact him, if you’re interested.

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Blogger deleting blogs from Google’s index

posted on February 20, 2007

A few Blogger bloggers have noticed their SERPs acting funny lately—they’re not there. Of course, the first hypothesis is that they’ve incurred some penalty from the search engines. But SEOptimise.com, one of the affected Blogger blogs, thought to check their code.

A little background: Blogger has made up a bunch of really ugly generic code so they can create generic templates that work for all their blogs without every blogger having to go through the code and insert their blog’s name, meta data, posts, etc. This makes it easy on new bloggers—until Blogger starts inserting unwelcome code into your blog.

The offending line this time was Blogger’s <$BlogMetaData$> element. Blogger Help says that this element should generate the following code, for example, when your blog loads:

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Mobile Search Battle Heating Up

posted on February 20, 2007

Business Week looks at the battle to dominate the mobile search space and its estimated $11.4 billion ad spend by 2011.

While Google has the lead, Yahoo is making a strong challenge and there are a many white-label providers out there.

Regardless of who is leading at the moment, the mobile search field is wide open. What’s more, though brand matters to mobile users, it seems that service matters even more. “To think that you have a straight line from Internet success over to mobile is missing what is happening in the marketplace,” says M:Metric senior analyst Mark Donovan. “This market is up for grabs.”

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Google’s YouTube Losing Viacom Deal to Joost.com?

posted on February 20, 2007

We should have suspected YouTube’s chances of signing a deal with Viacom were nil, when the cable company demanded more than 100,000 video clips be removed from the Google-owned video site.

Now comes news that Viacom is about to sign a distribution deal with the up-and-coming video site Joost.com.

Viacom will provide Joost hundreds of hours of licensed programming from Viacom cable networks such as MTV and Comedy Central as well as movies from Viacom-owned Paramount studios. Unlike YouTube which features short-length, relatively low quality clips, Joost plans to run full episodes with high-quality resolution, creating a ‘real TV experience online’ according to founder Janus Friis.

No confirmation on the terms of the deal, but expect Viacom to get as much as two thirds of the advertising revenue from their content.

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Google’s PageRank Developed "Completely Randomly"

posted on February 20, 2007

Google’s Larry Page finally helps marketers realize that it’s pretty futile to try and figure out the components of PageRank, when the inventor didn’t exactly have a plan when he created it. CNN reports from Page’s visit with the American Association for the Advancement of Science:

As a computer science graduate student 11 years ago at Stanford University, Page said he came up the with idea of “page rank” — weighing the relative importance of hyperlinks to improve the relevancy of Web searches — completely randomly.

Of course, he’s not actually saying that PageRank wasn’t given much thought, he’s actually trying to encourage other scientists to think more like entrepreneurs and look for ways to solve the world’s problems.

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Contextual Advertising Comes to Print Books?

posted on February 20, 2007

A little off topic, but it’s still interesting to note that book authors are starting to learn a trick or two from marketers. The WP looks at a new book that includes a contextual ad for Lexus…

The Lexus loaner turned out to be a GS Hybrid. To say it was an upgrade from the battered Crown Vic I’d driven with the LAPD would be an understatement. For one, you don’t need a key. You keep the remote control thing in your pocket and to start the car you just push a button on the dash. Like on a computer. In fact the car’s more like a super-powered laptop on wheels than anything else.

Call it a fictomercial, a literatisement, branded entertainment. Lexus doesn’t really care. As long as it makes people lust after its new top-of-the-line car.

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Odeo Hopes to Avoid Dead Pool, Up for Sale

posted on February 20, 2007

When Evan Williams bought back Odeo in October, it looked like the newly formed Obvious Corp, would keep growing the podcasting site. Since then Obvious’ other property, Twttr, has taken-off, so Williams has decided Odeo would be better off in someone else’s hands.

It seems likely Odeo is worth more to someone else than it is to us at this point, so we’re looking for a new home for it. We’ve been having some conversations with potential buyers, and this is our attempt to put the word out more widely in the most expeditious way (and without involving investment bankers and the like). If we don’t get any attractive offers, we’ll continue to run it.

Williams is open to cash or equity deals and is selling off odeo.com, studio.odeo.com and all of the code etc.