Matt Cutts, head of the Google's web spam fighting team, has gone on record by saying Google does not consider SEO to be spam. Matt said outright, "We don't consider SEO to be spam," and added that SEO is "a valid way to help people find what they're looking for via search engines." He did add that there are bad SEOs out there, typically known as black hat SEOs that can produce web spam. But in general, SEO is not spam and there are plenty of good SEOs out there. Matt has said several times at conferences that SEO is not spam, but this is the first time he devoted a video to it. He [...]

Related Topics: Google: SEO | Google: Webmaster Central | SEM Industry: General | SEM Industry: Outsourcing

Yesterday SEMPO and Econsultancy released the 2011 "State of Search Marketing Report" featuring attitudes and spending behaviors of 920 survey respondents (agencies, advertisers) from more than 60 countries. The full report is over 130 pages. The report came out on the same day that the IAB released its full-year 2010 online ad revenue figures. Interestingly, there's a $4 billion dollar discrepancy between the IAB paid-search figures ($12 billion) and the SEMPO estimate ($16.6 billion) for 2010. The SEMPO estimate is for "North America" while the IAB numbers are US only. The IAB estimated t [...]

Related Topics: Search Marketing: General | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing | SEM Industry: General | SEM Industry: Outsourcing | SEM Industry: Stats

Trada announced a $5.75 million "C" round this morning. It was led by Google Ventures and early investor Foundry Group. Trada CEO Niel Robertson told me yesterday that the money will be used for to get into display (and eventually video and mobile), as well as to expand into non-US markets and develop new tools for agencies. What is Trada? you ask. Trada is a relatively new "crowdsourced search marketplace." It brings together freelance search marketers and advertiser campaigns and gets multiple people to work on those campaigns. In fact the company says that it has an average of 24 search [...]

Related Topics: Search Marketing: General | SEM Industry: Community | SEM Industry: General | SEM Industry: Outsourcing

You have probably heard multiple pitches from advertising agencies and SEM firms looking to take over the search engine marketing campaign for your company. When was the last time one of these firms offered to pay for all of the ads up-front and be paid only for the sales and leads generated? Not too often, I suspect. Performance SEM agencies are out there building, managing and funding large scale search campaigns for companies that pay them a pre-negotiated rate for the sales and leads generated. Working with a performance SEM agency is a great way to take advantage of paid search whil [...]

Related Topics: How To: PPC | Search Ads: General | SEM Industry: Outsourcing

Hiring the right PPC agency requires knowing what your firm wants out of paid search and finding a firm with the roots and tools to do that job well. One size does not fit all.

Related Topics: Paid Search | SEM Industry: Outsourcing