A fellow member of the LinkedIn Social Media Marketing group posed a great question which he in turn took from Tom Raftery’s blog. Tom’s question was:
 
“Looking back at Social Media, we have had a significant advance (a ‘this year’s big thing’) every year since 2004. 

In 2004 - blogs started to really take off 

In 2005 - [...]

Consumer - or User - generated content (CGC / UGC) is becoming more and more important to the success of online retailers, and to businesses who rely on their website to drive brand exposure and generate contacts.
 
What is Consumer Generated Content?
 
It is content that users (or consumers) write and submit online and can be:
 
·         Product [...]

I was doing some research last week on online adspend… the gap between paid and display has grown increasingly over the last few months. The Wall Street Journal  issued a release just after Q2 stating that US spend on internet advertising grew 20% during that quarter, and that the gap between flashy display ads and [...]

 
I got a call a few weeks ago from an exceptionally talented woman I used to work with at a pretty big agency. She is a super hot account manager, and she had been getting some queries from clients through her team indicating interest in SEM services. She called me.
 
The gist of the call was [...]

There is so much misunderstanding of these two terms, how they relate to each other, and which to target. I’m going to try to diffuse that dichotomy. 
 
It’s not a case of the chicken-before-the-egg or vice versa. They are two completely different disciplines, though each can benefit from the other much as SEO and paid search [...]

I realize that spying on the competition may not seem to be of great importance when taken as a stand-alone SEO concept without understanding what you can actually glean from doing so, or knowing what insights the available tools can offer.
 
This post will try to demystify the issue.
 
Why Spying on the Online Competition Can Benefit [...]

This year has already resulted in numerous shifts in the search marketing space as we know it:
Trends From an Investors Perspective

Microsoft bid for Yahoo!, then withdrew the offer and Yahoo!’s shares dropped nearly 20%
Google and Yahoo! are still skirting around a search advertising partnership
Ask withdrew from main stream search to focus on women searchers
Google’s search [...]

I was interviewed today by Global TV News Calgary. It was a terrifying experience. I can only be thankful that it wasn’t live, and for the discretion of the both the cameraman Danny and the reporter himself.
After over an hour of interview time the actual live segment was less than 6 minutes long, but the [...]

1. Not implementing full non-disclosure for every client regardless of budget and size.
Specifically as regards SEO this might entail sharing keyword research data among same industry clients. For example, while many ‘life insurance companies’ may share many of the same terms, there are numerous issues to take into account that require specific client focused [...]

In a nutshell this post will discuss alternative revenue models for SEO services. Many clients and SEO agencies have vastly different expectations of any specific revenue model. They also have their own ideas as to which revenue model is most suitable.
From an agency perspective, there are a number of options that can be offered to clients:

Pay Per Hour
Pay Per Page (full page by [...]