By Christine Churchill

I have some exciting news. Two people who I greatly admire are joining Jim, Mike, and the rest of the KeyRelevance team. The soft spoken and intellectual Bill Slawski and the energetic Li Evans are now on board and I’m extremely happy about it.

The travel and client schedule of the last summer convinced me it was time to make some changes. I like having a small company, but the workload was stressful. When your daughter looks in your eyes and says “Mom, you work too much” you know its time to hire.

Bill and Li are established search experts and are well known in the community. They are positively brilliant on search marketing and they are also a blast to work with. I’ve also know each of them for a long time. Years ago when I was on the SEMPO Board of Directors, I frequently used Bill as a sounding board. My position on the Board was to represent smaller SEMs and I would bounce ideas off Bill and always know we were mentally in-sync. I first met Li a few years ago through the High Rankings Forum where I am a moderator. Li was an active contributor and always impressed me with her original creative responses to discussions.

Okay, enough rambling. Here’s a little background on Li and Bill.

Liana (Li) Evans is well known in the search industry for her energy and creativity. Li specializes in social media marketing, blog optimization, link building and viral marketing. She has a background in both Public Relations and information technology and is a regular speaker at industry conferences including Search Engine Strategies and WebmasterWorld’s PubCon. Li also is the creator and main contributor to Search Marketing Gurus and writes for Search Engine Guide and InformIT.

William (Bill) Slawski is a much respected SEO who was one of the founders and administrators for the Cre8asite Forums with my dear friend Kim Krause Berg. Bill is also a featured columnist at Search Engine Land on search related patents and research and writes a monthly column on small business issues. Bill speaks regularly on search engine algorithms and search engine optimization at industry conferences such as Search Engine Strategies and Webmaster World’s PubCon. Bill has the gift of taking complex issues and explaining them in layman’s terms and is also the creative force behind the popular blog SEO By The Sea.

We’re thrilled to have Bill and Li as part of the company and now maybe with more help we’ll be able to post more on this much-neglected blog.

By Christine Churchill

June felt like one long road trip. I had three conferences in a four week period. All were absolutely fantastic and I wouldn’t have wanted to miss any of them, but I wished I could have stretched out the time between conferences.

The first week of June was Danny Sullivan’s new conference SMX Advanced in Seattle where I spoke on the Better Ways panel with Alex Bennert (Alex is a class act and I hope to be on another panel with her soon), Greg Boser (who never fails to make me smile with his quick quips), Jim Boykin (whose company WeBuildPages should rightfully be called We Build Links), Todd Friesen (Todd claims to have come over to the white hat side, but he’s not fooling anyone - we love him either way), Cameron Olthuis (Mr Social Search Extraordinaire), and Aaron Wall (SEObook himself). You can see Danny trying to keep this motley panel in check in the picture below.

There have been numerous articles covering it and the rest of the show, so I won’t cover the content of panels here. To me, the conference was a networker’s dream - the small size and relaxed feel made it a fabulous place to informally develop business relationships. With the web becoming more socially oriented, having a network of friends and business acquaintances to call on is growing in importance. That may not be the case for all, but I’m finding I’m working with more of my peers than ever before. I’ve included a few pictures below just for fun.

From Left to Right are Stephanie, Alex Bennert, Jane Copland and Christine Churchill

This is my all time favorite picture of Matt Cutts. It really shows his fun side and why he is loved by SEOs.

Did I mention the food at SMX was fantastic? It reminded me of food at SES in the early days when we still had hot meals. Here’s a picture after lunch - notice no box lunches! From the left are Jonathan Hochman, Stephan Spencer, Christine Churchill and Dave McClure.

Todd Malicoat after “yet another strike” during the bowling match at the SEOMOZ party.

The second week in June was SES Toronto hosted by Andrew Goodman and Chris Sherman. Andrew did a super job of planning out a phenomenal conference. He came up with some new sessions and elegantly mixed new with seasoned speakers to give the Conference a fresh feel. Andrew, pat yourself on the back because you pulled off a great conference! I also have to congratulate Incisive for moving the conference to June - the weather then was perfectly delightful. The only downside was I somehow managed to miss my friend Toronto native Brendan Kerin which bummed me out because I wanted to drop a baby gift by to his lovely wife. Sorry Brendan.

My third conference of the month was in Denver, one of my favorite cities in the world. I have fond memories of Colorado from my college days when I attended Colorado State University and from visiting my parents who lived in Estes Park, Colorado. The Denver conference was the High Rankings Seminar which I always enjoy because it’s an excuse to combine work with friendship. Jill Whalen, Scottie Claiborne, Karon Thackston, Jennifer Laycock, myself, and my charming husband Mike Churchill gave presentations on a variety of search related topics.

The weekend after the conference I played hostess to my friends and gave them a tour of some of my favorite Colorado places - Boulder, Estes Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Trail Ridge Road over the Continental Divide and then through parts of ski country. It was a thoroughly enjoyable trip and it was great to be able to share places I love with people I care about. The gorgeous picture below was taken at Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. In the picture from left to right are Christine Churchill, Scottie Claiborne, Lee Laughlin, Kaitlin, and Jill Whalen (in the back - yes, the one putting rabbit ears on Lee).

by Jim Gilbert

Rumor has it that new Yahoo executives are running around the trough asking other Yahooers about the direction of the company and what needs to be done. Ain’t that a laugh!

From my experience with the Yahooers I’m allowed to interact with they are part of the problem — not part of the solution.

Many recommendations have been forwared to Yahoo (from little ole me) regarding their PPC systems and to date NOT ONE has ever been implemented. But then, what do I know since I’ve only used PPC systems for years to manage many, many client accounts? A couple of these recommendations were almost guaranteed to put lots of $$$$ in Yahoo’s pockets.

So Yahoo… this is an open challenge to see if your new executives are serious about making improvements and money! Talk to the “right” people — yes, I’m one of them and not that hard to find.

You might even want to keep in mind that at least one high level executive on “Wall Street” values my opinon. That’s kind of funny… Wall Street wants my opinons on Yahoo, but Yahoo doesn’t.

Jim Gilbert

“Stumbled” across a post at “Stuntdubl’s” blog today ( Confessions of an Advertising Man ) and feel everybody should read it! By the way it was originally written by David Ogilvy whom I do not know personally but gained a lot of respect for.

I mean, just consider some of the quotes from his book:

• The creative process requires more than reason. Most original thinking isn’t even verbal. It requires “a groping experimentation with ideas, governed by intuitive hunches and inspired by the unconcious.”
  Strong statement… it can be learned (if you have what it takes), but nobody can teach it to you.
• They copied all they could follow, but they couldn’t copy my mind,
  And I left ‘em sweating and stealing, a year and a half behind.
  I’m telling you all… the best Internet Marketing tool on earth is still the BRAIN!

Of course there are a few good ole East Texas common sense quotes that were possibly missed, but unless you are from Texas you probably will not notice. Like these that tend to get handed down from father’s to son’s (Hey… it’s a guy thing):

• Damn Son! If you don’t have time to do it right the first time, when the hell do you think you’ll have time to do it over again?
• Hey Boy! Quit thinking so much of yourself…… even blind hogs find acorns ocassionally.

There are a few more REAL good ones, but I’ll reserve them for the next meeting in the bar.

Oh how we “loved” Firefox! They seemed to do EVERYTHING right with each new update and version………. Until Now!

With Version 1.5.0.12 we began encountering “strange” things:

* Can’t seem to get complete control of the tabbing. Acts like it has a mind of its own.

* Slow? Seems slower than ever.

All of a sudden ( and I really hate to admit this ) we switched our default browser back to I.E. 6. Not 7 though — we are not that crazy.

If you knew us (me) you would really understand what a drastic change this is (moving back to I.E.).

Please… somebody tell me it’s an isolated issue.

by Christine Churchill

I’m just now back from SES after long delays due to bad weather in Dallas (again). This trip I actually used my camera, but I still didn’t get as many pictures as I hoped. Anyway, I posted them up on Flickr at http://flickr.com/photos/16766902@N00/sets/72157600075874262/ tagged sesny07

I also managed to cover one session - the Robots.txt Summit.

By Jim Gilbert

If you are a Firefox user you may be able to visit Microsoft’s Live.com and find the following pop-up when you click in the search box:

Pew Center study finds that most Hispanic Americans "remain largely disconnected from the Internet."

By Larisa Thomason

Hispanic Americans are the fastest growing minority group in the United States, but they don’t access the Internet in numbers equal to their size. A joint study titled “Latinos Online” by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that only 56% of Latinos regularly use the Internet. Comparatively, 71% of non-Hispanic white Americans are regular users.

The study also found that length of residence, education, and language largely determines Internet use among Latinos. For example, the summary section notes the following statistics:

• 78% of Latinos who are English-dominant and 76% of bilingual Latinos use the Internet, compared with 32% of Spanish-dominant Hispanic adults.
• 80% of second-generation Latinos, the sons and daughters of immigrants, go online, as do 71% of third-generation Latinos.
• 89% of Latinos who have a college degree, 70% of Latinos who completed high school, and 31% of Latinos who did not complete high school go online.

So, does this mean that Web site owners who spent time and money creating good, usable Spanish language pages and Hispanic-oriented content to their Web sites have wasted the effort? No.

They should probably congratulate themselves for being ahead of the curve. The Hispanic population is growing rapidly, which means an increase in absolute numbers of users - even if the percentage remains the same.

However, the statistics cited in the Pew survey lead me to believe that the current 56% overall total should rise sharply in the next decade (or sooner). If for no other reason than the population of second and third-generation Latino Americans will increase as the current generation raises families.

As a relatively youthful, fast-growing segment of the population, Hispanic Americans are an attractive demographic segment. As you develop new content for your Web site, maybe it’s time to consider appealing to this market.

That doesn’t mean you have to start developing a complete Spanish-language mirror of your site. Instead, review culturally relevant ways you can appeal to the market. Maybe that does mean offering some Spanish-language pages, acknowledging more diverse holidays, or modifying your merchandise offerings. It depends on your target audience and their preferences.

A key component of usability is readability and, by extension, the ability of your audience to understand the content offered. Make sure that you and your target market (literally) speak the same language!

I’ll be joining my good friends Jill Whalen, Lee Odden, Matt Bailey, Scottie Claiborne and Karon Thackston next week in the Twin Cities for another High Rankings Search Engine Marketing Seminar.

If you’ve never been to one of Jill’s seminars, they are an informal two day immersion into the world of search marketing. Another good friend Kim Krause Berg has joined us at several seminars and wrote about her experience in her article What a High Rankings Search Engine Marketing Seminar is Really Like
.

To register or to get more information on the Minneapolis seminar, go here. Hope to see you there.

- Christine Churchill

By Larisa Thomason

It almost seems comic now in 2007. But one of the big election stories in the 2000 campaign was John McCain’s decision to put his Web site address on his yard and rally signs. The Web site 4President.us has a screen shot and an accompanying article.

McCain noted on April 30, 1999 that:

“The Internet provides us with a new and exciting opportunity to communicate directly with voters,” said McCain. “Each of us can now become better informed and more closely involved with candidates and their positions on the issues. Using sites like mine, citizens young and old can find the information they need to make more educated choices about their leaders.”

A prescient statement, but - if anything - Senator McCain underestimated the impact of the Web on political campaigns. Changes have taken place at lightning speed. Here’s a quick timeline:

1996: The Dole/Kemp campaign announces the launch of the first customizable, interactive political Web site.

2000: John McCain puts his Web site address on signs and participates in online chats. The site also includes biographical videos.

2004: Howard Dean becomes the first true, Internet-powered candidate, raising an astonishing amount of cash online, organizing support via Meet-ups, and a chatty campaign blog.

By 2004, the coveted “grassroots support” factor had evolved to “netroots support” and everybody wanted some.

But even as candidates jumped on board with interactive sites, blogs, and custom tools, most completely ignored one of the most critical components of a successful Web site: getting people there in the first place!

Or, as we call it, Search Engine Marketing.

At least, they ignored the whole process until this past 2006 election cycle.

The Rimm Kaufman Group, an online marketing agency, conducted this study of paid search advertising during the 2006 election cycle.

The money quote (emphasis added):

“We conclude that paid political advertising on the search engines is still in its infancy. Note the cost of search advertising is a fraction of the cost of television advertising, yet often has comparable reach.
We anticipate search engine marketing will become increasingly prevalent to the American political process in coming elections. In the 2008 elections, we predict political advertisers will completely fill the paid search spots on the first page of Google search results pages; political advertisers will advertise heavily on Yahoo; political advertisers will use more video; and Democrats will increase spending to match Republicans. “

Some current trends tend to prove them right. Just do a search on Google for different candidate names and you see that not only have most candidates jumped into paid search, they’ve gotten canny about it too.

Republican candidate Mitt Romney is the leader so far. Search on “Rudy Giuliani,” “John McCain,” “Sam Brownback,” or “Tom Tancredo” (all rivals for the GOP nomination) and a link to Mitt Romney’s site appears in the AdWords results section.

In contrast, Bill Richardson, Wesley Clark, and Tom Vilsack are the only Democratic candidates running any paid ads at all - at this time.

That’s a surprise, given the preference of Democrats for news delivered via newspapers, magazines, and the Internet. The NewsCorpse Web site discusses a study of news preferences broken out by political preference published in Editor & Publisher, noting that Democrats preferred written and online news sources:

…breakdown by percentage of Dems vs. Repubs for each type of media:

Red Media:

Preferred by those inclined to vote Republican.

Blue Media:

Preferred by those inclined to vote Democratic.

So why aren’t the Democratic presidential candidates for 2008 jumping into the fray, and what’s up with those Republicans who also lag behind Mitt Romney?

Maybe they the need the guidance of professional search engine marketers! Too many campaigns are run by political science majors. Not that there’s anything wrong with that - except that not many are technologically literate.

I see this as a fertile field for search engine marketing professionals. Here, I’ve only discussed the declared presidential candidates, but there are numerous state races, local races, and all 435 members of the House of Representatives in contention in 2008.

Think of all those clients!

And remember, in most cases, we’re talking about opportunities in both the primaries and general elections.

In my opinion, most campaigns don’t have the time for a full SEO campaign to work. Some lucky campaigns will benefit from increased link popularity when plugged-in supporters add home page links to their blogs, sig lines, and other Web sites, but that’s for the major, highly visible campaigns.

The real opportunity here is in managing a paid search campaign. Think about the benefits: the campaign gets instant exposure - even when the searcher may be looking up a rival!

Political search engine marketing is potentially a lucrative sideline; it’s also a way for an SEO professional to do some pro bono work for causes that really matter to them personally.

It’s a win/win situation either way.

Keep this opportunity in mind as you consider what sign to put in your yard, what sticker to attach to your car, or where your carefully-considered contribution dollars will go this year.