Two days ago Google announced “Instant Search”, which was made to optimize the searching habits of its users, but what does it really change – or maybe I should ask: will it change anything ? (more…)
State of Search
SEW Labs: a new session format at SES San Francisco
Search Engine Watch Labs (SEW Labs) is a new format session for SES. It combines the popular site clinic approach with a crowdsourcing aspect. Each lab session is preceded by a primer session to prepare the attendees for the event.Today I visited the first PPC Lab. Well, to be honest, I didn’t go to the Primer session, but I went to the crowdsourcing part. (more…)
Deep link ratio: what makes a backlink profile look natural?
Hanns Kronenberg started an interesting discussion in Germany about the deep link ratio as a quality signal. Reason for this discussion is a remark of Professor Dr. Mario Fischer in his new magazine “Website Boosting”. According to Mario at least 50% of the inbound links should go to the site’s front page.
I think we all agree on one thing: making a link profile look natural is link builder’s core mission. But is it possible to develop such a rule on natural link profiling?
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International Search Summit Berlin: laws of international search marketing, KLM and international video
To be honest, I was a bit shocked, when I entered the room for the first International Search Summit in Berlin this Monday. About 10 attendees were waiting for Webcertain‘s boss Andy Atkins-Krüger to launch the conference. The lack of local publicity for the conference, which isn’t known in Germany, probably caused this low attendance. Maybe also the combination with the “Localization World” didn’t work out. Translators and Search Marketers are two different species as Isabella Ballanti impressively showed in her presentation later on the day.
Calijn van Lennep, member of the E-Commerce team at KLM, was the first speaker of the day. She talked about how to manage a brand on global websites. Although this topic isn’t really search related, Calijn showed some interesting insights how KLM deals with global and local content on their 116 websites. Another interesting point was Social Media. Calijn said that KLM doesn’t have a real social media strategy, but they just try out things. During the ash cloud problems Twitter and Facebook were the most important communication channels though! (more…)
Best Practices with Link Research Tools
When it comes to link building I use a lot of different tools you’ve probably heard of. To manage links I use the Raven Link Manager and Buzzstream. To find backlinks I use Majesticseo, Linkscape, Sistrix and of course Yahoo Site Explorer. But there’s one other tool I tried about 6 months ago for the first time. I’m talking about Christoph Cemper’s Link Research Tools. To be honest with you I wasn’t convinced about the toolbox in that period. I was struck by the difficult abbreviations Cemper uses and the amount of data I got. But last month I decided to give the Link Research Tools another try, knowing Christoph made a lot of improvements. And I’ve to admit: now I love it. By the way, if you want to try the toolbox, grab your free day pass code from the comments!
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Brand bidding & Ad-Hijacking insights – Part 2
Yesterday I wrote about the definition of brand bidding and ad-hijacking, on how to prevent it and what „evil“ affiliates do to book trademarks that are „protected“ by Google’s complaint form.
As promised, today I will talk about the methods these affiliates use to hide their strategies and how you can monitor your brand to find out if your brand gets hijacked.
Affiliates have several possibilities to hide their strategies when they are abusing trademarks and hijack ad copies. First of all, most of them will use geo-targeting for their campaigns. When they know that the trademarkowner’s office is for example in Munich and the agency is in Berlin, they will cover other cities then Munich and Berlin, to prevent them to see the hijacked ads. (more…)
Brand bidding & Ad-Hijacking insights – Part 1
Editorial note: This post is not meant to give tips and tricks on how to do Brand Bidding and Ad-Hijacking, its meant to give insights on what is done and what is going on.
Two weeks ago, at SMX Munich, I was invited to speak on the blackhat PPC panel. I covered the exciting topic of brand bidding & ad-hijacking in Google Adwords. The topic is pretty actual at the moment, because of the decision of the European Court of Law of March 23 2010.
So what are brand bidding & ad-hijacking? The term Brand bidding is probably pretty clear for most: the use of brands as keywords in Google Adwords. Normally this is done not only by affiliates, but also by competitors, e-commerce shops, auction platforms, price comparison sites etc. (more…)
SES Amsterdam: Link Building with Dixon Jones
At the SES Amsterdam Receptional and MajesticSEO Marketing chief Dixon Jones talked about Link Building. After talking about the basics only a few minutes, he gave the audience some actionable insights in link building.
The basics of link building
First of all you have to decide if you need links for traffic or for seo. Social media are very good links, no matter if they are nofollowed or not. The best link for SEO is: (more…)
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