Salk Institute, by TheNose
A Quick and Effective Keyword Research Strategy for Small Businesses
Why you should do keyword research
Without doing keyword research, you might think that “office supply store” is the single most important keyword that you want to show up for in search engines, and that’s where you might throw all of your marketing efforts. [...]

I write this post with a heavy heart; one that has discouraged me from writing posts in the past week. But I thought I would pass along my experience, in case others have had, or want to avoid, similar experiences in the future.
Things that I hope will be made clear by this [...]

(N.B., if you’re not subscribed to Mike Blumenthal’s blog, you should be. Do it here.)
Mike Blumenthal’s been all over the recent experimentation with the Google Local OneBox Ten Pack, first made public by Paul Jahn, in the last several days. Mike accurately notes that while displaying a larger number of businesses seems [...]

The honor goes to this post by Tim Coleman of Convert Offline, a Boutique SEM for Local Service Businesses.
Tim lays out a VERY convincing argument for why certain businesses (and certain businesses’ reviews) show up at the top of the Google Local algorithm, and why others don’t. It’s the most salient, actionable piece of [...]

Gregory Markel:

Greg brought to everyone’s attention TubeMogul.com, a site that allows for one upload and automatic submission to 12 video search engines.  He still recommends that smaller sites with fewer videos submit on a manual basis to vary their titles and descriptions in order to rank for a broader range of keywords, but for sites [...]

Jim Boykin:

To analyze the effectiveness of a page you’re getting a link on, check Yahoo Site Explorer or use MSN’s tools to determine if there are any inbound links to the EXACT page you’re hoping to receive a link from.
Visit this site to find result volumes (and by implication, difficulty of ranking) for particular keywords.

Greg [...]

I recently updated a Flash portfolio for one of my clients, a local photographer. Now, before all my SEO buddies jump all over me for building a website entirely done in Flash, keep in mind that I advised the client of the advantages and disadvantages of Flash vs. HTML in advance of development and [...]

Nearly all of the Local Search Marketing experts agree that the problem with Local Search is that “It’s too fragmented and too complex.” This post examines why that’s only a part of the problem, and why Google and the other search engines actually WANT small businesses to succeed online.

Here’s a list of all of my SES San Jose 2007 recaps, for quicker reference:

Top Ten Small Business Takeaways
Linkbaiting and Viral Search Success
Local Search Marketing Techniques
The Paid Links Debate
Searcher Behavior Research Update
Universal and Blended Search
Personalization, User Data, and Search
B2B Search Marketing Tactics
Marissa Mayer’s Keynote Interview with Danny Sullivan
Social Scene Recap

Search Engine Guru Danny Sullivan sat down with Google’s Marissa Mayer for a relatively informal interview in front of several thousand folks at Wednesday’s keynote address.
Ms. Mayer seemed quite pleased with how Universal has turned out. In her words, Google’s idea is to move away from a “10 links” mentality and get the search [...]