Aug 7, 2012 at 5:09pm ET by Search Engine Land Infographics

Want to rank better in Google? If you're an individual, you could build your own site and hope it does well. But you might have more success by creating a page for yourself on a social media site like LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. Ranking On Google: The SEO Way For those unfamiliar, the process of trying to rank better on Google and search engines in general is called search engine optimization. We've even got a short SEO video that explains it: [youtube width="560" height="315"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF515-0Tduk[/youtube] Success with SEO depends on a range of signals th [...]

Why Does Microsoft’s Bing Search Engine Hate Rick Santorum?

Feb 8, 2012 at 12:14pm ET by Danny Sullivan

US presidential candidate Rick Santorum pulled off a surprise last night, winning caucuses and primaries in three states. So what's with Bing listing an anti-Santorum web site first in its results in a search for his last name? Does Microsoft have some type of liberal agenda! Wait, you didn't realize Rick Santorum has a "Bing problem" that's exactly the same as his well-documented "Google problem," where a search for "santorum" lists a web page defining that word as the by-product of anal sex above Santorum's official web site? He does. In fact, Santorum's had his Bing problem for months [...]

Should Rick Santorum’s “Google Problem” Be Fixed?

Sep 21, 2011 at 8:00am ET by Danny Sullivan

Is Google (and Bing, by the way) not being "responsible" by failing to remove an anti-Rick Santorum web site? The Republican presidential candidate believes so, speaking out this week against an unfavorable listing for his name. But "fixing" Santorum's "Google problem" isn't as easy as it sounds. Defining Santorum For those who aren't familiar with Santorum's situation, back in 2003, the former US Senator angered gay columnist Dan Savage, not to mention some in the lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender community, with several anti-homosexual comments during an interview with the Associated [...]

Presidential Hopeful Rick Santorum Stymied By Search Problem

Feb 17, 2011 at 10:21am ET by Pamela Parker

As former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum sets his sights on the White House, he has a lot of awareness-raising to do, and he desperately needs some help with search, a Roll Call piece this week shows. Currently, when you search for Santorum, the first result is a blog apparently started by gay syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage, who masterminded a successful campaign to associate the Senator's name with anal sex -- on Google and Bing, at least. Savage, and other like-minded folks, launched and supported the site against Santorum back in 2003, after the Senator made comments against hom [...]

And Now, Google Itself Runs Oil Spill Ads

Jun 15, 2010 at 5:33pm ET by Barry Schwartz

We've covered earlier how both BP and legal firms are advertising on Google. Now Google itself is targeting oil spill related terms to drive people to its "Crisis Response" page. A search for [gulf oil spill] returns an ad from Google that reads "Latest Oil Spill Update: Watch live video of the oil spill cleanup effort." Here is a picture of the ad: And here it it is in context with the search results page, the second ad in the right column: Google often advertises its own products and services, but I believe this may be the first time they have advertised their oil spill "Cr [...]

Fighting The Oil Spill On Google: BP Versus The Lawyers

Jun 4, 2010 at 3:41pm ET by John Ellis

As oil-poisoned pelicans are found on Gulf shorelines, lawyers and British Petroleum are looking to Google for help gaining public awareness. Attorneys are primed and ready to line up plaintiffs who were harmed by the oil spill that killed 11 people and threatens the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem. BP is reaching out, as well. Ambulance Chasing, Google-Style Lawyers are using Google, Bing and Yahoo to actively bid on oil spill-related terms such as bp oil spill claim, oil spill sue and bp lawsuit: Oil Spill: The New Mesothelioma It feels similar to the competition on search engines [...]

Link Building With Interviews: How Thought Leadership Builds Links & Leads

Jan 12, 2010 at 9:00am ET by Garrett French

In 2009 we found that visitors from our two blog interviews converted to inquiries 3X more than visitors from our SEL articles. We also discovered, in the link building query group interview we conducted with 21 link builders, the "share-power" that interviews can have. That piece received 443 tweets, 238 Delicious saves and over 4k links. Our second most-popular article at SEL received 161 tweets, 126 Delicious saves and 301 links. So. Do you interview others or try to get others to interview you? Either way, the queries are the same to find your prospects. Here are query ideas to get y [...]

Use Transient PPC Campaigns To Support Branding Efforts

Oct 28, 2009 at 12:30pm ET by Marty Weintraub

In today’s real-time brand management world, separate teams often control strategy and channel tactics for SEO, PPC, public relations, online reputation management and social media. In many cases, however, out-of-box thinking and creative silo-breaking to cross traditional boundaries can yield sweet marketing fruit. Today I'm going to explore the systematic use of paid channels like AdWords and Facebook ads as channels for intervening in quickly moving public relations incidents. Ads can play an important role as powerful tools for supporting the usual tactics of social media and reputat [...]

Obama Vs. McCain: Paid Search Keywords

Sep 19, 2008 at 1:58pm ET by Greg Sterling

Valleywag (using data from Hitwise) posts about the paid search campaigns of the two major US presidential candidates, over the past 12 weeks. The post shows a list of the actual keywords being used by the campaigns. It's a fascinating look into their "offensive" and "defensive" strategies concerning paid search. Meanwhile earlier this month SEM agency, Did-It, issued the report "2008 Search Engines and Politics: A Study of Attitudes and Influence." The study tries to measure the relationship between search behavior, political attitudes and likely voting behavior. There are still a meaning [...]

Nine Essential Tactics For Reputation Management In Social Media

Mar 13, 2008 at 2:51pm ET by Marty Weintraub

On Monday I had the distinct pleasure of speaking to a crowd of about 250 local search marketers at SEMpdx Searchfest in Portland. The audience reaction to my session, entitled "The Dark Side of Reputation Management," highlighting a stark reality out there in the corporate trenches. While nearly every hand in the room enthusiastically shot straight up when asked if they "believed their company should be leveraging social channels," fewer than 10 were actually engaged in social media marketing—let alone proactive reputation management. Many were concerned with potentially negative re [...]

Reputation Monitoring Made Easy, And Free!

Mar 13, 2008 at 8:54am ET by Aaron Wall

A wide array of paid and free tools make it both cheap and easy to track your online reputation. The first point of contact is typically via customer emails, comments on your own site, or web analytics data. But not everyone who complains about you brings the complaints directly to you or links to your site, instead choosing to post comments on blogs, forums, or elsewhere on the web. How do you track the rest of the conversation going on online? Here's a set of tools and services that are easy to use, and best of all, many are free. Tracking the wild west web Andy Beal recently launched [...]

Andy Beal Launches Trackur For Monitoring Online Reputation

Feb 25, 2008 at 9:45pm ET by Vanessa Fox

When monitoring what people are saying about you and your brand online, you have two main choices. You can use Google Alerts as well as search a variety of social media and social networking sites manually, or you can pay a reputation management firm to do expensive monitoring for you. Now you have a third choice. Andy Beal, who specializes in online reputation management, has launched a site called Trackur that enables you to set up monitoring across a variety of sites on a set of keywords at a much lower price than reputation management firms generally charge. Trackur has three packages [...]

B2B Blogging: Using Thought Leadership To Drive Positioning & Sales

Feb 13, 2008 at 11:54am ET by Galen DeYoung

The B2B world is wrestling with how to effectively harness "word of blog" marketing—let alone the glittery new world of social media marketing. How can we use social media sites to create that viral buzz that sends awareness and sales soaring? We see what occasionally happens in the consumer market, and we want some of that. Let’s be real, though. While that’s a great objective, the B2B world is still struggling with basic blogging, let alone creating something that goes viral on some social media site. Last year, Forrester Research found that only 29 of the Fortune 500 firms spo [...]

Google “Online Marketing Challenge” Has 724 College Teams Signed Up To Be Local SEMs

Jan 16, 2008 at 10:32am ET by Greg Sterling

The Google Online Marketing challenge seeks to turn college and business school students into search marketers (in most cases local). We wrote about it when the program was announced. Google says that there are now 724 teams in the US (two weeks before the competition begins) and there appear to be many around the globe as well. This is a brilliant idea on many levels: It creates a local force of SEMs around the globe It generates buzz for search marketing and local search in particular It will create exposure for AdWords in local markets and a word-of-mouth "ripple effect" It will help ex [...]

Launching Organic Analytics & Buzz Monitoring In-House

Sep 12, 2007 at 7:49am ET by Paul Bruemmer

In previous articles, we covered Structuring an In-House Team and Creating the Search Engine Marketing Needs Assessment Report. So now your in-house search team is in place and the search department has gained insight into the key performance indicators (KPIs) they are responsible for influencing, as well as the resources available to accomplish search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing (SMM) objectives. After establishing these fundamental requirements, the in-house team and trainer will need to prove that SEO and SMM are driving an increase in the previously established [...]

CalTech Student Releases Tool For Hunting Wikipedia Spin Jobs

Aug 17, 2007 at 12:11pm ET by Jonathan Hochman

In Vote On the Most Shameful Wikipedia Spin Jobs, the Wired Blog Network reports that Virgil Griffin, a Caltech graduate student, has released a Wikipedia Scanner search tool that identifies edits by corporate IP block. Just type in the name of a corporation to see what sort of anonymous Wikipedia edits have been coming from their network. As I write this, Diebold, Scientology, Dow, ExxonMobil and Disney are the top rated spin jobs. What does this mean for search marketing professionals? If you are involved in reputation management, you'll want to make sure your clients aren't did [...]

Protect Your Employees, Online

Jul 18, 2007 at 9:24am ET by Jessica Bowman

Have you ever checked out what people are saying about your brand on blogs and on photo-sharing sites such as Yahoo's Flickr or Google's Picasa? Have you also taken the time to monitor what people are saying about your employees? You owe it to your employees to look out for their reputation online when it is associated with your brand, just as much as you ought to look out for your corporate reputation online. In today's Web 2.0 environment, people pour out to the world everything that happened in their day. They went to the car wash on 14th Street and had a great experience, they went to [...]

“Negative SEO” – Harming Your Competitors With SEO

Jun 29, 2007 at 9:14am ET by Barry Schwartz

The Saboteurs Of Search from Forbes has been getting some buzz from around the search industry. In short, the article interviews two SEOs about how they can potentially use "negative SEO" tactics to harm a site in Google. The other day, I reported at Search Engine Roundtable about companies offering to do this type of work. So the Forbes article is pretty timely. Google's Matt Cutts is quoted in the Forbes article, confirming that it is possible to hurt a site's ranking but says it's unlikely: "I won't go out on a limb and say it's impossible." The article details seven ways to "sabotage" [...]

What To Do When Your Company Wikipedia Page Goes Bad

Jun 27, 2007 at 9:46am ET by Jessica Bowman

It happens to many companies: their Wikipedia page evolves and starts reporting bad stats, inaccuracies, legal stories you thought were water under the bridge and more. Wikipedia is a web 2.0 success story, and almost always ranks on page one in Google search results for your brand. Anyone can make changes, and there is little you can do to keep the public from adding, expanding and telling your story, their way. While you can’t make it disappear, you there are things you can do to mitigate the visibility of any negative content on your company’s Wikipedia page. Wikipedia is a free-for [...]

Political Candidates Need Serious SEO Help

May 11, 2007 at 9:23am ET by Barry Schwartz

Whether DNC or RNC, Political Candidates need SEO from SEOmoz takes a look at the current political landscape in the search results. What we learned from this article is that the U.S. political candidates need some serious help with SEO and search marketing. For example, John McCain's web site currently ranks number 68 for a search on "John McCain" in Google. Plus none of the candidates rank in the top fifty at Google for keywords like "candidate," "2008 election," "united states presidential election," and "democratic candidates" or "republican candidates." [...]

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