Internet marketing made easy

Posted by randfishLet me just preface this post by saying that I hate management books, business theory books, success coaching and nearly everything that starts with the phrase "The XYZ Habits of Highly Effective…" That said, I got so many recommendations to read Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great, that I couldn’t resist. In particular, two people that I trust intensely - Gillian and Avinash Kaushik - said that they too, had a distaste for management theory diatribes, but loved this one. And now that I’ve finished it, I find myself thinking about it almost daily.

Posted by randfishLast week, the New York Times opened up their 13 million document archive and dropped their Times Select program (which allowed access in exchange for a fee). This move was covered extensively in the blogosphere and even influenced other giants in the online publishing world (like Murdoch on the WSJ) to question their own content strategies.
The Times’ decision wasn’t made by any single person, but certainly a driving force behind the questioning of the paid content strategy is Marshall Simmonds, chief search strategist for the New York Times and About.com, and the CEO & Co-Founder of Define Search Strategies. I interviewed Marshall about his role in the TimesSelect move, his company and his strategies for large media sites.

Posted by rebeccaEarlier this week I was in Las Vegas to attend and speak at the Shop.org Summit. While I was there I attended the "Web 2.0: Advanced Level" session. After some severe sound issues (think microphones cutting out and constant screechingly loud feedback) and my astonishment at how much wifi costs in the convention center,

Web analytics may not be for everyone in the high tech world, but those that are into it can really be passionate about it, if my experience this morning at SEMphonic’s X Change Web Analytics conference in Napa, Ca., is any indicator.

Posted by FluxxThis week on Whiteboard Friday, Rand talks about the "war"  that happens in the spam game.  He discusses how Google looks at link manipulation, how spammers combat this, and how webmasters should consider a link to be white or black hat.

Posted by randfishVery, very quick blog post filled with self-promotional material (I know, I never do these anymore, what’s up with that? It’s almost like I’m a dirty spammer, filling your feedreader with ads). And no complaining, because… well, because I’m grumpy - Mystery Guest had a rough night.
October 1st better find all of you hunkered down at desks, taking notes, learning more about search and search marketing. You’ve got two choices:

Posted by randfishI admit it - I struggle to understand patent applications (one of the big reasons that Si is part of our staff). However, Bill Slawski doesn’t and it’s made our collective lives in the SEO world (and the mozplex) considerably easier. Take, for example, his two incredibly fascinating posts collecting patent applications and speculating on how the engines might re-rank the results:

Investors may still hate the company, but AOL is steadily becoming Web’s top source of many things near and dear to advertisers’ hearts — search not included. Three days after forming its monster Platform A ad network unit, the company has signed a deal to carry ABC television content. Considering that AOL is a founding network partner to NBCU/News Corp’s Hulu online video network, the news means AOL will in short order have among the largest collections of premier video on the Web. Of course, syndication rights are cheaper by the minute. Audience is what counts.

FeedGhost contest winner

First off we have a winner for the years subscription to FeedGhost. The winner is Pierro Marie, congratulations Pierro who suggested I blog about how to add advertising into your RSS feed and how to protect RSS feeds.

Posted by randfishTwo weeks ago, Google took some severe action against a number of general topic web directories. There was the usual uproar on various forums, lots of blog posts from web directory owners and even a post on Sphinn that blamed me (which is hilariously awesome):