So, John: who are you and what do you do for a living?

I founded one of the first internet marketing agencies, called Multimedia Marketing Group (MMG) in 1994. Started in Portland, I moved it to Bend, Oregon in 1997 with seven employees. Of those seven, most are still active (and prominent) in the internet marketing world today: Marshall Simmonds, Derrick Wheeler, Adam Sherk, my son Adam Audette, Matt Hockin (and yours truly).

MMG moved steadily up-market and worked with many large-name enterprise clients. It grew to 85 employees and was sold to a London based agency in 2000 and was the foundation for an internet marketing roll-up for them. The roll-up is a significant player today and is called Outrider.

A number of other internet marketers got their start with MMG in Bend, including Bill Hunt, Disa Johnson, Jeremy Sanchez, Andre Jensen, and many others.

My most recent endeavor was to help my son Adam Audette launch AudetteMedia, a boutique SEO firm that has grown and moved up-market quickly over the past three years.

Rumor has it that you coined the phrase “search engine optimization.”

We started SEO before arriving in Bend, but we formalized it in early 1997. I paid Danny Sullivan’s way to Bend in ’97 to work with us and we subsequently strengthened our services. I coined the phrase “search engine optimization” in early 1997, which is documented by a copy of the MMG site in the Wayback Machine .

There is more discussion about this claim in a blog post that my son Adam Audette wrote for theAudetteMedia Blog.

Can you tell us about your recent business ventures?

I have recently left AudetteMedia for a new endeavor. My father once said to me, “you are so idealistic.” He was right. I was young and I was idealistic. The odd thing is that it has never gone away—it has pervaded every business venture that I have ever undertaken. Which brings us to the itch…

I have worked my entire life in marketing and sales, with some technology (systems integration) thrown in. Of course the object of that is to help folks sell more stuff. I’m pretty good at and I have especially enjoyed my time using the internet as my primary marketing channel. I gain satisfaction from helping folks sell their stuff, and it has been materially rewarding for me at times. But now, in my dottering old age, I’m looking for a little deeper satisfaction. I’d like to feed the idealistic streak that never went away.

I intend to start a new company, called 501 Strategies that will offer internet services to the non-profit sector. I have a junior partner, Tom Warton. Tom is a very bright MBA who shares my idealism. It’s kind of in his genes as his father, also a MBA (and an ordained minister), has applied his efforts over the years to build companies in third world nations in order to create jobs. His belief is that you need to feed their bodies before you feed their souls.

Our idea is to build a for-profit, employee-owned (I have always wanted to structure a company as employee owned—another aspect of the idealistic streak) company that works with non-profits, the type that is being referred today as “social enterprises.” I mentioned to someone who asked what we would be doing that we would be providing internet marketing to non-profits, and Tom corrected me, saying that we would be offering internet management to non-profits, a description I much prefer.

We think we can get pretty fired up helping social enterprises further causes that we ourselves are passionate about. We’re hoping to do well enough so that we can use a portion of our profits to enable some of our clients to start without paying a fee.

While I’m somewhat of a newbie to the non-profit world, it occurs to me that I will still be selling product. In the case of non-profits they are really seeking only three things that I can identify: a spreading of their message in order to build awareness and supporters; time from volunteers; and financial support. Of course the internet and particularly the rise of social media and mobile, are just perfect for this. My sense is that strategies and tactics used for non-profits will not differ all that much from those used working with the folks who sell widgets and time. As many of you know, my former company offered a full suite of internet services and I anticipate that 501 Strategies will do the same, as opposed to specializing in one area.

What specific challenges and opportunities do non-profits face with internet marketing?

Some challenges that come immediately to mind are at times a modest budget level and possibly a modest expertise level (with so much dependence on volunteers). We are hoping to help them with both. While 501 Strategies is being formed as a for-profit company, our hope is to start our fee structure at zero by using a portion of our profits to fund the marketing efforts of worthy non-profits. As to filling their expertise needs, I’m confident that my long experience in the industry, strong contacts within the industry, and a proven ability to build a world-class team will create a resource of value.

Opportunities are vast. Social media marketing is just a natural for non-profits. What a powerful tool to increase and enhance communications among those who share a passion in a cause. Plus many non-profit websites are pretty primitive and do a poor job of converting their call to actions. And very few have a mobile-friendly version of their website. I envision as being just huge for non-profits. Plus the entire area is under-served for one reason or another.

At the Bend WebCam, you made the following statement: “SEO turned ADD from a negative to a positive.” Can you explain this further?

This was a little tongue in cheek, but not entirely. I have always had a short attention span, which is a fault in most lines of work. However, in the early days of the internet, things were moving so fast that it was imperative to adopt an approach of “ready, aim, fire,” which is what comes naturally to me. Unlike most corporate settings, there was no time to aim and aim and aim. You had to move, innovate, create—and do it all quickly. Remember, we were making it up as we went along.

How do you see SEO and social media working together?

Search marketing is a great way to provide content and links that help an SEO cause. Oddly, though, I don’t think that SEO is as important to non-profits as to many other organizations. The reason is that so many non-profits are local in nature and the local innovations that are currently occurring in search really help those locally focused.

What advice would you offer to new people just getting into SEO?

Be careful about being a one-trick pony. Things change fast with the internet and there is a great deal of added safety in mastering and/or offering more than one area of expertise. For example, mobile search at Google has increased 10x in the just the past year and that has many implications. It’s a bit of a challenge: while it’s important to have specialized expertise in a medium that is becoming ever more complex, it’s also important to maintain flexibility as things can change right out from under you practically overnight.

John, thank you very much.

Twitter is a simple web application that asks the following question: What are you doing?

You get 140 characters to answer.

In Twitter: More Than Messaging, It Can Generate Traffic and Twitter Useless For Driving Traffic? Think Again, Neil Patel runs through the basics of Twitter and how it’s useful for search marketers.

But what about the question, which is, after all, the heart of Twitter?

I wasn’t a Twitter early adopter, so I really don´t know how people tweeted early on, but certainly amongst the people I currently follow (most of whom are in some facet of online marketing), Twitter is more often not used to answer the question, “What are you doing?” but instead to answer the question “What are you thinking?”

Below a recap of how Twitterers are really answering the question. If you’re thinking of joining the ranks of Twitter, maybe you’ll get ideas on how Twitter can best work for you.

The 4 Types of Tweets

1) What are you doing? Amongst the people I follow, these twitters are only about 5-8% of all tweeting.

… picks up phone books left at door…walks over to recycle bin…deposits phone books in recycle bin … 10:51 AM January 10, 2008 from web

2) What are you sharing? Dropping a link to something and either describing the linked content or offering the reader a reason to click the link. On the continuum between “Doing” and “Thinking,” “Sharing” falls somewhere in the middle…you think that the link will offer value to your followers, so you drop it for their benefit.

SEMpdx Searchfest Tickets On Sale: 3/10/08 Portland, OR http://tinyurl.com/2dcxzm 09:05 AM January 09, 2008 from web

3) The conversation. I’ve been on Twitter for three months and the volume of conversations amongst the people I follow has exponentially increased. Early on, most everyone I followed talked to themselves, hoping others would notice. Now, people seem to be much more comfortable @ing somebody, and more often than not, the @ is acknowledged. (To reply to someone, you place a @ before their username.) Frequently, you can reach a prominent industry person easier via Twitter than via any other medium. Twitter is a 21st century version of the 1950´s “Party Line,” where anybody with an internet connection can “listen in” and participate.

@kentjlewis So should they be called out on the SEMpdx blog? Be glad to… 10:30 AM January 12, 2008 from web in reply to kentjlewis

4) What are you thinking? In my Twitter neighborhood, I see many more “thinking” tweets than “doing” tweets, and I view “thinking” tweets as much more interesting and valuable to the reader. I follow many SEM Twitterers because I hope to get additional insights from them above and beyond their blogging & article writing. Also, their non-industry related thinking tweets are great in getting to know them better as individuals…people frequently mute their personality in blog posts, whereas they usually tweet in a much more uncensored manner.

Were any male babies named “Dirk” after “Boogie Nights” was released? I think that name had to be retired… 03:36 PM January 11, 2008

Why do I tweet?

I tend to have a lot of random thoughts while I´m working at the computer (most of them totally irrelevant to what I´m working on), and Twitter offers me a place to record and share them. Some use Twitter as an extension of their professional communications, while I use it to take a break from them.

It´s a real art for one person balance the personal, professional, and informational tweets. Though it might be heresy within some SEO circles to say something positive about Jason Calacanis (@JasonCalacanis) , I believe that nobody that I follow on Twitter uses the medium more effectively than he does.

Feel free to follow me @toddmintz on twitter and I´ll be glad to reciprocate.

Todd Mintz is the Director of Internet Marketing & Information Systems for S.R. Clarke Inc., a Real Estate Development and Residential / Commercial Construction Executive Search / Recruiting Firm headquartered in Fairfax, VA with offices nationwide. He is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association.

Here is an example of a particularly egregious corporate domain name foul-up:

Torrent Pharma, an Indian pharmaceutical company, recently sent out a press release announcing that they are bringing to market Rimoslim, a generic version of the very popular weight loss drug Acomplia. I first learned of Rimoslim while reading the release and as a domainer (domain speculator)-in-training, I immediately searched to see whether the .com domain name was available. Shockingly, it was. I did not buy it because I believed that I would be setting myself up for a future conflict with Torrent, thinking that they would likely respond with considerable fury if they ever became aware of the gravity of their error.

Sure enough, Rimoslim.com was quickly purchased by a “resident of France” known as “Dave the Red Frog” (at least some domainers have a good sense of humor). Instead of spending $10 to purchase their branded domain, Torrent either must spend a considerable amount of energy and resources chasing down “Dave the Red Frog” who has parked the page for ad revenue or accept that they have lost their branded .com domain name.

Also, as I write this, a very large U.S. Commercial Real Estate Company has announced the name of a major Southeastern development but hasn´t forked over the $10 necessary to secure its .com domain name. These examples are only the tip of the iceberg…

Keep these examples in mind as I present some best practices for Corporate Domain Name Management:

Buy first, publicize later. (The Torrent Rule) Before publicizing a new product, business, service or project, purchase the relevant .com domain name. Also, strongly consider purchasing the .net, .org & any relevant country-specific domain names as well. If  “The Torrent Rule” isn´t followed, a smart domainer can register the intended domain name within minutes of a public announcement. Ideally, purchase the domain names while the idea is in its “conceptualization/development” phase and if multiple “brand” names are being considered, buy the .com domain names for all of them (because they could vanish at any time). You can discard the ones that don´t get used simply by allowing their registrations to lapse.

Register misspelt variants. Once you have purchased your relevant domain names, determine the most common misspellings and purchase the .com domain names of each. Redirect these URL´s to your primary site. From my own experience, I know that “Acomplia” is frequently spelled “Accomplia” and the drug manufacturer smartly has purchased both .com domain names (though curiously hasn ´t used them to help educate consumers about the drug). Domainers will capture the most prominent misspellings of any brand if not secured.

Register generic variants. Task several members of the team with the following creative exercise: if a prospect were searching for your product or business but didn´t know what it was called, what generic words or phrases might they use to describe it? Once a final list is created, buy each available .com domain name on the list and redirect each of these URLs to your primary website. This exercise will allow the capture of “type-in traffic” (the traffic generated from people typing the word/phrase directly into the browser address bar without spaces followed by .com). Depending on the terms involved, this could be a substantial number of visitors. In my most recent Search Engine Guide article, I told the story of how I permanently poached some generic type-in traffic that the manufacturers of Lybrel failed to protect. A domainer will see your publicity as an opportunity to purchase domain(s) that will not only permanently capture your type-in traffic but potentially acquire an asset that can be sold for a premium price in the future.

Protect your domains. Make sure that your domain registrar login information is secure, that your domains are set to “auto renew”, that your WHOIS information is accurate and that a non-expired credit card is setup in the account. Losing domain names to an administrative foul-up would be a bitter pill to swallow.

There are quasi-legal administrative actions available that can help a business potentially recapture a trademarked (or close variant of a trademarked) domain name. However, following proper domain name management best practices will enable businesses to avoid wasting resources needlessly.

For Search Engine Land readers who want to learn more about domaining, I strongly recommend the blogs of Frank Schilling and Jay Westerdahl.

Todd Mintz is the Director of Internet Marketing & Information Systems for S.R. Clarke Inc., a Real Estate Development and Residential / Commercial Construction Executive Search / Recruiting Firm headquartered in Fairfax, VA with offices nationwide. He is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon´s Search Engine Marketing Association.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest barriers to affiliate sales is having a mindset that is locked into routine and closed to possibility—a sin of which I have been (and probably will continue to be) guilty. Fortunately, there are many Search Engine Experts that I read regularly in my feed reader who inspire me to break out of any temporary rut that I might be in. Their regular postings push me to experiment, innovate and strategize. Each time I’m truly attuned to their wise counsel and put their advice into action, I always end up making more sales.

Jeremy Schoemaker aka ShoeMoney is one such expert who I read on a regular basis. ShoeMoney is best known in the SEM community for his ability to hyper-monetize websites through large volume affiliate sales funded by PPC minimum bids. I’ve been reading his blog for about 9 months, initially more for entertainment than education. I was hooked by his engaging writing style and his ability to come across as both a normal guy and a tremendous entrepreneur. By contrast, my “much more modest” personal affiliate marketing successes have been through natural search—I had never paid for ads to make affiliate sales.

However, I’d been working with some consumer products that had a solid 3-4 month “natural” run in search engine results before falling off due to increasing competition. I didn’t think that I would be able to regain that revenue stream naturally; hence, I turned to the “ShoeMoney Method” as a last chance effort to preserve what revenue stream I had. I figured that I’d invest a couple hundred bucks in low-bid PPC to see what would happen.

I am still kicking myself that I hadn’t tried this sooner. Almost every day, I’ve been making four to six times what I spent. I’ve been making way more money selling these products through PPC than I ever did through natural search and the basics of the process were so easy to set up. While I attribute part of my success to the narrowness of my keyword niche and the timeliness of my campaign, I believe that I’ve distilled some easy to follow rules that replicate the ShoeMoney method and will allow anyone to dabble in this exciting methodology of product sales.

Effective Low-Bid PPC Tactics

Target Minimum Bids (with exceptions). The core ShoeMoney philosophy is to bid the minimum for each of your campaign keywords. I’ll add some caveats: When setting up the campaign initially, make sure that the expected sales commission is at least 100 times the maximum starting bid(s). At the “100″ level, the break-even point is 1% conversion which is a reasonable initial benchmark conversion goal when sending the traffic directly to the merchant’s site (which is what most beginners should do). So, as an example, if the affiliate sales commission is $10, the initial bid should not exceed 10 cents. Once a baseline of earnings and conversion is established, adjust the bids in order to optimize revenue.

When setting up campaigns, make sure you have strict budget and performance requirements. If your campaign has 300-500+ visitors without any sales, consider making modifications or perhaps killing it and starting over. Several “failures” might be necessary before success happens.

Without straying too far from the minimum bid theory, try to get the core keyword(s) onto the first page of search results. It’s difficult to analyze results unless the campaign is generating a large enough volume of searches.

Max-Out On Misspellings. Aaron Wall’s Typo Generator is awesome and essential for any serious PPC effort. As an example, I can generate 158 misspellings of “widgets” that can be used for a “widgets” PPC campaign and my experience has been that just about any core keyword targeted will have several misspellings that will draw traffic. Bids on almost all misspelled words will be at or near the minimum for top placement.

Use The “Sideways Arrow” PPC Ad. On the ShoeMoney blog, Jeremy wrote that if the keywords in his PPC ads formed a “sideways arrow” (see the picture below), the ad CTR increased 25% regardless of the position of the ad. Read ShoeMoney’s post on the subject and follow what he says. This is tremendously powerful advice and, when combined with dynamic keyword insertion, should lead to higher CTR, lower minimum bids (for AdWords), and higher ROI.

Look to Europe. The European Union offers affiliate marketers tremendous opportunities to earn money, a fact often overlooked by North American search marketers. One of the principal reasons behind the formation of the European Union was the facilitation of commerce. I suggest that the profit potential is much greater in Europe or Asia where the bids are much lower, the marketplace is less saturated with affiliate programs and affiliate marketers, and the demand for products sold by affiliates is still quite high. If you work with an affiliate program in another country, make sure they are reliable, because you’re likely screwed if they refuse to pay you.

One more added benefit… many Europeans will search the web in English even if English isn’t their primary language. Logically, they will be more likely to misspell their search terms and if you are bidding on misspellings, you will be more likely to catch the traffic and make the sale.

I turned off my North American Google, Yahoo & MSN ads since I got little traffic from minimum bids and when I increased the bids high enough to draw traffic, my ROI was only a fraction of what I earned in Europe. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to sell my products into Asia. Asian affiliate programs seem to be the least developed… however, I think it’s just a matter of time before that changes.

Initially, all my ads have been in English no matter where in Europe the customer has been located. The vendors I’ve been working with have multiple languages on their website, which seems to be commonplace for European programs. I’ve just started testing non-English ads, using a combination of machine translation & lifting obvious phrases (e.g. “buy widgets”) from the product pages. So far, the CTR is super-excellent in some languages and terrible in others, though I don’t know yet if non-English ads will generate more revenue for me.

Advanced Topics ShoeMoney also is a big proponent of custom-developed product landing pages and he recommends Crazyegg’s page testing product to optimize their effectiveness. Also, day-parting, A/B Testing & Negative Keywords monitored closely by advanced web analytics are all absolutely necessary for any sophisticated PPC effort.

You can still be very successful at low-bid PPC without considering the advanced topics. If you just follow my Minimum Bid & Misspelling ideas + ShoeMoney’s Ad Creation advice, you can make excellent money if you are working with the right products at the right margins. You need not worry about the shifting natural search algorithms again.

Todd Mintz is the Director of Internet Marketing & Information Systems for S.R. Clarke Inc., a Real Estate Development and Residential / Commercial Construction Executive Search / Recruiting Firm headquartered in Fairfax, VA with offices nationwide. He is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association.