Interview: Chris Silver Smith

Ash: How and when did you get into Local Search? What is your current role in your business? Tell us a little about the typical challenges you face in your work.

Chris Silver SmithI first got into local search while in 1996-97 working for Verizon’s Superpages.com (actually, this was before Verizon — it was GTE Directories Corporation back then), when I was asked by one of our business development people to look into ways to increase the site’s organic search traffic. I was the site’s Analyst back then, and I noticed that people didn’t just arrive on the site’s homepage, but that they also could arrive via other site pages which got indexed in search engines. It didn’t take long to figure that if we built pages targeting consumers’ keyword phrases, such as “boston seafood restaurants” or “hotels, miami, fl”, we might be able to get more traffic than just trying to target “yellow pages”. So, I put together a pilot test involving some dozens of pages engineered to target business categories or geographic areas or combinations of both, and the limited research experiment showed a clear advantage. Read the rest of this entry »

Twitter unhappy with Google’s personalised search plans

Twitter is always on the forefront of breaking news. As soon as anything happens, it spreads over Twitter like wildfire. Twitter is often the first place check to find the most recent links, discussions etc.

In the past Google actually had an agreement with Twitter to have a real-time feed of related tweets appearing in the search results, but that expired in July 2011. These Tweets were often the most relevant search results.

Now though Google is trying to make its search engine more personalised for people logged into Google+, where results that your friends may have +1’d or images they’ve uploaded to their profile from a particular travel destination might start popping up in among the image search. They call this update “Search Plus Your World” (SPY World?). Read the rest of this entry »

Basic Malware Advice

Malware and hacked sites are more common than you might think. According to Matt Cutts’ recent video even people like Donald Trump and Al Gore have had their websites hacked.

“Malware” can be any kind of malicious code that is designed to cause problems for a computer or network. Examples of this include spyware, Trojans, viruses and worms. It could also include a hacker making changes to the site adding extra pages designed to phish customers. This means tricking them into giving out personal or credit card information. Malware may change/steal your passwords, access your credit card details or other personal information, hijack or lock you out of your computer and much more. Read the rest of this entry »

Prominent Search Marketer Ted Ulle Joins TrainSEM

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Leading Boston search marketer Ted Ulle joins teaching faculty of TrainSEM

Ted UlleBoston, MA, January 9, 2012 — Well-known search marketer Ted Ulle, who is better known as “tedster” in online circles, is bringing his vast knowledge and experience to the search marketing training curriculum at TrainSEM.com, which is based in Melbourne, Australia.

With over 30,000 quality posts at webmasterworld.com since 2000 and numerous public-speaking engagements each year, Ted is best known for his helpful responses to search engine optimization questions.

TrainSEM CEO Ash Nallawalla quit his day job in 2007 to start Australia’s first classroom-based courses in search engine optimization (SEO). Says Nallawalla, “Owing to a scarcity of reputable SEO training, anyone can offer SEO services. Unfortunately, some so-called SEOs have not updated their knowledge for many years and do not deliver what their clients expect. We do not perform SEO tasks, so we do not compete with our students, unlike some others. We train and we advise.” says Ash.

“With Ted’s help, TrainSEM will offer its training classes in North America in the coming months. Search engines keep their ranking algorithms a secret, so SEO experts have to reverse-engineer these constantly changing secrets”, he added. “We could not think of a better qualified expert than Ted to join our teaching faculty.”

TrainSEM also offers courses online at http://www.trainsem.com.

About Ted Ulle

Read the rest of this entry »

The best of the WordPress 3.3.1 update

I just installed the 3.3.1 WordPress update for my personal blog and I’m pretty happy with it. There are quite a few new features but the ones that stand out most are these:

File Type Detection – Now instead of clicking on a particular icon for the file type you are going to upload you just press the 1 button and upload whatever media file you want and WordPress will work it out and then display the appropriate fields for you to fill out based on the file type.

Drag-and-Drop Media Uploader – Many websites have allowed this for quite some time, it’s a great time saver. Dragging files from your desktop or a folder on your computer right into the browser is much faster than searching through folders to find things, especially if you are do not store your files in a neat and organised fashion.


Here you can see a photo being dragged into the file uploader.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some notes from Pubcon

The TrainSEM team went to Pubcon a couple of weeks ago.

Katrina Klier spoke about how your fans need to trust your brand and find your interactions online to be authentic and personal. Have your Facebook / Twitter accounts appear to be an actual person not just a brand and people will trust what you say more. Be conversational with your community and get them talking and make sure you respond back. People like knowing they are being listened to.

Sanjay Sabnani talked about the importance of forums. He said that forums are 7-8 times bigger than the blogosphere and yet we do not talk about them. We end up there via search engines then move on. He mentioned some interesting strategies to actually use forums to sell your products without getting seen as spam.

These are his 11 golden rules for forums:
Read the rest of this entry »

Will Siri cause problems for Google local search?

I was recently in Las Vegas for Pubcon 2011, where there were a lot of discussions about how social media and other new technologies are changing the way people search for information. One of the big threats currently is Siri. It could be some time before Siri could be a serious threat, but the possibility is out there.

Since Siri is only available for the Iphone 4S and not everyone has one, there isn’t too much to worry about right now, but what if Apple licenses it out to other developers for their own apps or if Siri gets licensed to other platforms? I can’t imagine Apple actually letting anyone else use Siri, but if suddenly everyone was using it, would many people still bother with doing a Google search on their mobile? Read the rest of this entry »

Is classroom training preferred for online marketing?

When entering any professional industry, you will generally enter with some form of certification, such as a diploma or a degree.  When entering the search marketing industry it can be very hard to get the required or recognised training to break into the industry. In Australia this kind of training is not available in universities or other recognised learning environments. Online marketing is perhaps one of the most important types of marketing in today’s society, but in most IT and Marketing courses the topics are either very brief or hardly even mentioned.

Interview: Bill Slawski

I met Bill Slawski when the two of us were on an SEO 101 panel at Pubcon a few years ago along with Bruce Clay and Jill Whalen.

L to R: Bill Slawski and Ash Nallawalla, Pubcon 2007

Ash: How and when did you get into SEO? What is your current role in your business? Tell us a little about the typical challenges you face in your work. Read the rest of this entry »

Interview: Brad Geddes

Brad Geddes is known to Webmasterworld members as eWhisper and on Twitter as @bgtheory. He kindly shared some of his insights with us.

Ash: How and when did you get into PPC? What is your current role in your business? Tell us a little about the typical challenges you face in your work.

Brad GeddesI started my first PPC campaign with GoTo.com in 1999. I’m currently the founder of Certified Knowledge, a PPC training & toolset company.

My challenges are extremely varied. We work with a large number of advertisers and agencies to help train their staff, design tests, and work through their bigger problems. So, the largest pains for advertisers and agencies become my challenges to help them solve.

The biggest challenge overall is determining how money flows through a business. Many companies want to set bids based upon revenue or profit targets. But determining revenue when there are phone calls, margins, long b2b sales cycles, free trials to paid accounts, lifetime visitor values, etc can be a huge challenge to overcome. Often once these issues become trackable; the PPC campaigns become easier to manage. Read the rest of this entry »

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