Welcome to Natural Search Blog
Natural Search Blog provides articles on search engine optimization including keyword reasearch, on-page factors, link-building, social media optimization, local search optimization, image search optimization, and mobile SEO.
In addition to natural search optimization topics, we also cover internet marketing, ecommerce, web design, usability, and technology.
Recent Entries
Texas Stadium Demolition Case Study – YouTube Still Tops For Video Promotion
Whenever I know I’ll be near some major spectacle, I try to photograph it or video it. Not only are such events great practice for a search marketer, the content is great for getting links from individuals and from newspapers. So, when I heard about the scheduled Texas Stadium Demolition, I couldn’t resist, even though it was painfully early in the morning (7:00 a.m.).
I’ve written here before on how Flickr introduced videos in order to compete with the popular YouTube. Flickr’s owned by Yahoo, while Google owns YouTube.
Both services have a huge usership, however, (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 04/11/2010
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Filed under: Image Optimization, SEO, Video Optimization Dallas Cowboys, flickr, image SEO, image-search, Texas Stadium, video search, video seo, videos, YouTube
Top In-House SEOs – Where Are They Now?
There’s been a lot of buzz lately criticizing TopSEOs, a business which purports to rate Search Engine Optimization experts, though ratings are influenced by payments. Both Aaron Wall and Edward Lewis skewered the service with pretty convincing points.
The rating service and talk about it reminded me that I actually did a sort of rating via a blog post here back in 2007 entitled “Some Top In-House SEOs“. In that post I sought to list out the cream-of-the-crop of search engine optimization experts working within major companies.
The main difficulty of attempting to rate SEOs is that it’s quite hard to know precisely what they’ve recommended or done to optimize a company’s websites. For instance, you could be an absolute genius at SEO, but if the company is lethargic or incompetent programmers oversee their sites, none of the SEO expert’s talent might be reflected in the actual site. That’s an extreme example, and in most cases some degree of the expert’s recommendations will be properly implemented. But the point is that site configuration may not really be used to reflect an expert’s actual ability, particularly if compared with other colleagues.
Back when I wrote “Some Top In-House SEOs”, I wasn’t really prepared for the large amount of attention it received. I was immediately pressured by a lot of people who wanted to be added to the list, but didn’t meet the criteria I was using. Quite a few people asked me to update the list over time as well, and I quickly saw that it would be necessary if this was done ongoing to be open about the rating criteria I was using — else people would question why so-and-so was listed while so-and-so was not.
The criteria I used back then was very basic. I wanted to list only people who were employees of top companies that performed organic search optimization of one sort or another for those company’s websites. I wanted companies which were readily-identifiable by a majority of people in the U.S., so they had to be MAJOR brand names: top-50 websites, Fortune 500 companies, and Internet Retailer 500 companies. Finally, I had to be able to find/identify the SEOs who worked for those companies, which usually meant that they’d have to self-disclose what they did (many SEOs operated somewhat anonymously behind corporate walls). So, the SEO needed to blog or speak at conferences, and disclose who they worked for. In one or two cases, I discovered individual’s names through news interviews or press releases. I also mined the list of top-linked SEOs from LinkedIn (apparently no longer in operation? formerly: http://www.linkedseo.com/).
I made a number of mistakes, of course. I didn’t feel I had time to write to and receive confirmation from each person. In some cases I just “outed” people from behind the corporate curtain for the first time!
For the most part, people loved the attention and recognition! I felt a bit stressed from those who clamored to get in, and I pretty much stated that I wouldn’t add any until I updated a year down the road. In quite a lot of cases, I think that headhunters mined the list in order to lure people away to other companies, so many benefited from the exposure.
Here it is, about three years after the fact, and I thought it’d be interesting to see where are they all now? So, here’s the list once again, with individual’s former companies listed from back then, and who they work for now. Nothing scientific – I merely base this on what their LinkedIn resume or website states. It’s been neat for me to revisit this list! So many of these folks became friends and close acquaintances since I wrote this up! It’s also fascinating to see how many of them have moved on to advanced titles and to owning their own companies. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 04/08/2010
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Filed under: General, Reference Material, SEO, Search Engine Optimization experts, in-house, in-house-seos, pros, search marketing professionals, SEO, Top SEOs
Check Out New Google Maps Labs Features
Many Google Maps users may have missed the recently added button, allowing users to opt-in to try out some of the Google Maps Labs beta features. The Labs options can be accessed via the new little icon button found in the upper right of the user-interface, if you’re logged-in to your Google account:
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The new features might also reveal some secrets of Google Maps ranking factors. It’s definitely a space that’s well worth watching for local search marketing experts.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 03/26/2010
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Filed under: Google, Local Search, Local Search Optimization, Maps, Research and Development, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Tools, Tricks beta testing, Google Labs, Google-Maps, Local Search, local-SEO
New Personal Blog Launched – Nodal Bits
For those of you who are long-term readers of mine, you may be interested to know that I’ve now launched a new personal blog, Nodal Bits.
In its inaugural post, I describe how I first came to do blogging here at Natural Search Blog at the invite of Stephan Spencer, and how I believe blogging is likely more important than a resume in this day and age – at least, it is for a great many industries.
Will I continue to blog here at Natural Search Blog? Well, I intend to do so. I further intent to step up my pace again in posts everywhere I publish.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 03/24/2010
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Filed under: General blogging, blogs, Chris Silver Smith, employee blogs
Are you an SEO Superhero?
I was tickled to see these SEO Superhero t-shirts that Covario was giving away to attendees of the SMX West conference in Santa Clara this week:
Naturally, I got my t-shirt sporting the SEO Superman-esque logo! I don’t wear t-shirts a whole lot, but this is one I’ll definitely wear sometimes.
It felt odd not to see Stephan Spencer, VP at Covario, at the SMX conference, since he’s been such a search marketing juggernaut over the past few years and his book, The Art of SEO, just came out. But, I understand that he may be hitting some other conferences, and these speaking gigs can sap the energy out of one really quickly.
There’s not a lot of companies that could pair themselves up with an SEO superhero promotion and still be taken seriously, but I think Covario can do it. I know from formerly working with Netconcepts that their automated SEO solution, GravityStream, is an awesome service, and pairing it up with Covario’s analytics makes for a very strong combination. As a technologist, I certainly think it’s best to simply program a site to have excellent optimization for search rankings, but I’ve seen time and again when large companies are unable to get past bureaucratic IT development processes to roll something out in a timely fashion. For those companies, GravityStream is a really good solution.
For all of you who also attended the SMX West conference, did you get your SEO superhero t-shirts? How often will you wear them?
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 03/05/2010
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Filed under: Conferences, SEO, Search Engine Optimization Covario, Netconcepts, SEO Superhero, SMX, SMX West, t-shirts
Guerilla Marketing & Google Maps
My article on “Six Odd Tactics For Getting Ads Into Google Maps” posted today on Search Engine Land, and I believe many of my regular readers should find it moderately entertaining. The piece covers how some elements of guerrilla marketing have found their way into some Google Maps advertising patents, and also how some others have used creative means to get messages into Maps via “roofvertising”, “skywriting” and more.
Those familiar with Natural Search Blog may remember some of my similar past work here outlining laser graffiti ads on buildings, roofvertising, marriage proposals in Google Maps, “earth art” geoglyph ads, and sponsoring town names as an Ultimate Local SEO tactic.
It’s not surprising to see guerilla marketing tactics finding their way into Google Maps. Not only does Google itself seek to introduce disruptive technology innovations, but I expect that as Satellite and Aerial photos may get more frequently updated in such interfaces we’ll be bound to see a whole lot more efforts from people trying to get messages conveyed through the Maps interfaces.
The real question I’m left with, is if Google resells ad space on pictures of people’s rooftops and billboards, would they owe anything back to the original property owners?!?
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 02/01/2010
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Filed under: Advertising, Futurism, Local Search, Maps, Marketing Billboards, Google-Maps, Guerilla-Advertising, Guerilla-Marketing, guerrilla advertising, guerrilla marketing, Map-Ads, Roofvertising, skywriting
Exciting News — Netconcepts Acquired by Covario
Happy New Year Natural Search Geeks!
As some of you know, for the past five years I’ve worked with Stephan Spencer building up the Netconcepts‘ search marketing and SEO technology business. Today it gives me great pleasure to announce a very special event: Netconcepts is merging, through acquisition, with the leading search marketing software company – Covario!
As part of Covario, I’m very excited for our people and our clients to be part of what is the leading search marketing software and services organization. Together, we have nearly 100 combined clients in key industries, including high-tech, ecommerce, consumer electronics, financial services, media and consumer packages goods, with many Fortune 500 brands.
Our combined SEO technologies, which include Organic Search Insight and GravityStream, promise advertisers the first end-to-end industry solution that spans the entire search optimization process: keyword research, recommendations, execution, and ongoing reporting. GravityStream is a pioneering technology for automating the execution piece. And now even more is possible.
Analysts expect marketers to increase their SEO spend by 100% over the next 5 years, to $5.0 billion by 2014. By leveraging our leading technologies and world-class SEO expertise, we will continue to improve performance and ROI for leading brands across organic and paid search, on a global scale.
(And on balmy, single-digit temperature days like today in Madison, I’m also excited to spend a bit more time out at the new San Diego headquarters)
As the world of search continues to evolve, these are exciting times indeed!
Brian Klais
Chief Operating Officer
Netconcepts
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Posted by Brian of Brian on 01/12/2010
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Filed under: General
Increasing The Scope Of Existing PPC Campaigns Effectively
The complexity of Google Adwords is always on the rise and it takes time, skill and effort to achieve good results with PPC campaigns in terms of finding the sweet medium of increased conversions and reduced costs.
If you have an existing PPC campaign and it is performing decently, you can still increase its scope and hence improve its performance by targeting more keywords in the niche you are running your campaigns in.
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Posted by Ravi of Netconcepts Ltd. on 12/13/2009
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Filed under: Paid Search adwords account history, Adwords Opportunities tab, auckland ppc services, increased keyword targeting, increasing keyword scope, Keyword opportunities, opportunities keyword tool, ppc, ppc campaigns, SEO
LinkedIn, But NoFollow Link Love
We all knew it was only a matter of time, but still secretly hoped that the honeymoon would last forever. It does appear that LinkedIn has started nofollowing public profile links…but with a strange twist.
I’ve been so heads down in client audits that I didn’t discover this until, ironically, doing another audit for another client. However, I also don’t recall seeing many blog headlines in my Netvibes, so perhaps this one has rather floated under the radar a bit. Even a quick scan in Google doesn’t turn up much beyond this post, ‘Linkedin adds rel=”Nofollow” to profile links‘ over at Kingpin SEO, which dates this change around early-mid November. Based on my recent audit schedule, would make this about right.
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Posted by Brian R. Brown of Netconcepts on 12/08/2009
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Filed under: Link Building, Social Media Optimization Link Building, linkedin, nofollow, Social-Media
Relationship Between Link Growth And Indexation
With every passing day, the number of websites and hence the number of web pages are growing at an explosive rate on the internet. This can cause a major headache to the search engines as they gear up to meet the challenge of crawling and subsequently indexing the new sites popping up everywhere in the cybersphere.
Today, when a new web site is launched, it will take a while before its pages get crawled and indexed in Google. With the increasing strain on hardware and resources due to the rapid growth of new sites, Google has become very strict in its policy of admitting sites and retaining web pages of sites in its index. It is a case of survival of the fittest in cyberspace.
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Posted by Ravi of Netconcepts Ltd. on 11/29/2009
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Filed under: Link Building, PageRank, SEO, Search Engine Optimization Add new tag, auckland seo firm, baclinks, crawling, directory submission, editorial links, external linking profile, google index, indexation, link growth, link growth patterns, linkbait, linkerati, natural link building, Netconcepts, PageRank, ppc services, search engine optimisation, value of deep links, virtual real estate
