Author Archives: ghotchkiss

BusinessWeek Dissing Paid Search (Again)

Okay, BusinessWeek is beginning to get a little obvious in its campaign against paid search. In my books, they just received their third strike.

Strike One

An “expose” on the SEM Sweat Shop floor that showed a remarkable ignorance for the diversity of the industry. I responded to this little journalistic gem in a SearchInsider column last May. In it, search marketers were called “digital bricklayers”. Here was one quote:

“The work ranges from the slightly creative, such as … crafting sentences for ads to snag search traffic, to the rote — typing in descriptions of hamburgers for online menus.”

It was not wrong so much as one dimensional. BusinessWeek shows a tendency to paint the entire industry with a single brush.

Strike Two

This time BusinessWeek took on click fraud, with a similarly one sided perspective. They approached it focusing on the most egregious cases of click fraud, with examples of both perpetrators and victims. This is fine to draw attention, but they should also provide an accurate assessment of the overall problem. They used numbers that came from faulty research, like Outsell’s much quoted study and passed it off as an accurate assessment of the scope of click fraud with the slippery qualifier, “most experts believe”. They virtually ignored the balancing viewpoint of the engines themselves. Again, I dealt with this in another SearchInsider column and a follow up post. This is just one of many articles from BusinessWeek pumping up concern about click fraud. And most imply that the majority of the problem lies with Google and Yahoo.

Strike Three

The latest one indicates that advertisers are souring on search ads because of rising click costs and decreasing ROI. Again, they’ve taken a few cases and given the impression that it represents the entire industry. So, let me dive in again. Yes, PPC costs are rising. And yes, if you’re not tweaking your campaigns, you could find your ROI dropping. But here’s the thing. The advertisers finding this are the direct marketers. And as I’ve said over and over, there’s an inherent disconnect here. Direct marketers are looking at selling something..now. And their ads say as much. One of the advertisers quoted as complaining about the ineffectiveness of paid search in the articles was eBags.com

Okay, let’s say I search for “best luggage” on Yahoo. Here are the ads that come up:

luggageexample

Hmm..apparently eBags isn’t that turned off sponsored. But let’s get to the disconnect. What are the chances that if I search for “best luggage”, I’m looking to buy right now? How interested am I in saving 60%? I’ll tell you, based on past research. Less than 1 in 10.  In fact, it’s probably less than 1 in 20. I’m looking to see what the best luggage is. I’m researching. And where will I click? Well, let me show you the number one organic result for the same search in Yahoo.

luggageorganic

This is where I’m going to click, because it’s a much better match to my intent.

So, for those advertisers hell bent on jamming a purchase down a consumer’s throat, I have three pieces of advice:

  • Get to know how search works better
  • Get to know your consumers better
  • Get to know how your consumers use search better

If you do those 3 things, you’ll get a much better return than you will from desperately steering budget into different channels without putting some solid strategy and understanding behind your campaigns. The problem is not that search is getting less effective, it’s that marketers using it aren’t getting any smarter.

From the “Living in Glass Houses” Category

And finally, when I went to try to read this article on BusinessWeek, I had to click through an interstitial. When the hell will online publishers learn that these are incredibly annoying and detract significantly from the user experience? Give me a bushel of paid search ads, aligned with my intent, any day over one interstitial.

New Microsoft Eye Tracking Study

Microsoft has just released the results of an internal eye tracking study that looked at the impact of snippet length. For more detail, visit Marina Garrison’s blog where she looks at the notable findings.

msheatmapm

A few quick ones and some comments:

Snippet length doesn’t seem to impact people’s search strategies.

This makes sense to us. We found scanning for word patterns rather than actual reading. In fact, a longer snippet may actually detract from the user experience in certain scenarios, such as navigational search. It makes it more difficult to pick up information scent quickly. Remember, we’re on and off the search page as quickly as possible.

People scan 4 listings regardless

This is definitely aligned with the Rule of 3 (or 4) we found in our eye tracking study. We found, however, that this isn’t a hard and fast rule, but rather a pretty common tendency. It changes depending on whether top sponsored ads appeared, how closely aligned the top result was to intent and other factors. But in general, we would agree that most people tend to scan 3 or 4 listings before clicking on one.

Scenario Success Rates Dropped Dramatically as the “Best” Listing Moved Down the Page

No big surprise here. This was referred to in our first study as the “Google” Effect, and it comes from our being trained that best result should show up on top. I actually co-authored a paper with Dr. Bajaj and Dr. Wood at the University of Tulsa about this very topic. By the way, it was Dr. Bajaj that called it the “Google” Effect, not me, so please Yahoo and Microsoft, don’t beat me up on this one.

The report is available for download.

Privacy Vs a Better Online Experience

A couple months ago I wrote a column about a potential showdown between privacy advocates and Web 2.0 supporters. I identified a crisis point being reached as behavioral targeting became more common and began influencing our search results. Of course, a large part of the functionality touted in Web 2.0 plans depends on the surrender of a certain degree of privacy.

My prediction was that it would case a temporary fuss, which would be picked up by some, but that for the vast majority of us, we would put aside our concerns when we realized the benefits of a better online experience:

“More and more consumer groups will launch protests. Politicians will sense opportunity and jump on their soapboxes. There will be a very vocal minority that will rail against this “Big Brotherism.” There will also be a group of advertisers that will continue to step way beyond the acceptable, using targeting to subvert the user experience, rather than enhance it, hijacking the user and taking them to places they never intended. This will add fuel to the fire. And because they’re the most visible target, the search engines will bear the brunt of the attack.

In the end, we’ll realize there’s much more pro than con here. Effective targeting will generally add to our experience, not take away from it. We’ll toy with trying to use a third-party privacy filter, but in the end, most of us won’t be willing to give up the additional functionality in return for maintaining an illusion of anonymity online. Much of the usefulness of Web 2.0 (I know, I hate the term too, but at least it’s commonly understood) will be dependent on capturing personal and click-stream data. We’ll give in, and the storm will gradually fade away on the horizon.”

Indeed, it seems that while the danger is certainly in the minds of privacy advocates and some legislators, most consumers don’t really care, despite the occassional horror story like the recent AOL debacle. Privacy Advocate Mike Valentine posted this comment after the column ran:

“I’ve been predicting the same approaching privacy storm for about 5 years now. After each breach of data in hack attacks, after ChoicePoint sold data to bad guys posing as customers (hmmm), after VA laptops are lost exposing veterans to identity theft, after AOL exposed private users search queries, and on and on and on. The storms never come, the public doesn’t care, the media reports the hacks, breaches, thefts, criminal activity and identity thefts and moves on because consumers simply don’t care until identity theft or public embarassment happens to them.”

Now, a new study from Choicestream seems to indicate I was on the right track. The number of respondents willing to share some information in return for a better experience rose fairly dramatically, from 46% last year to 57% this year.

graph1privacy

The number willing to let a website track their clicks and purchases in return for personalized content climbed from 32% to 43%.

graph2privacy

What’s interesting about this is that these numbers returned to the levels seen in the 2004 survey. 2005 definitely saw a heightened awareness to privacy issues that seems to be abating somewhat. But although consumers seem to be willing to trade off privacy, they do so grudgingly and with some concern. 63% of them are still worried about the security of their personal data.

I believe it’s a combination of convenience and blissful ignorance that’s keeping the privacy storm clouds from coming to a head. The reality is, like most things, we won’t impact the smooth sailing of our day-to-day lives unless we get burned. And then, we’ll be looking for someone to blame.

The Ultimate Market Research Technique?

sharingbrainThis is kind of cool, in a really creepy way. According to a recent study, Scientists can now tap into the brain and predict whether you’re going to buy something or not. Not to get all scientific on you, but apparently a portion of the brain called the nucleus accumbens “lights up” on a brain scan if you’re ready to whip out the plastic. But, if the price tag is out of your budget range, another region of the brain called the insula is activated and the mesial prefrontal cortex is deactivated. Dr. Brian Knutson of Stanford and his team are doing the research.

So, think of this future scenario:

Google gets wind of this and brings this into the Google Labs. They work with Intel to develop a small implantable chip that constantly monitors this part of the brain. Through a secret agreement with the U.S. Government, giving the Homeland Security teamaccess to everyone’s online history, Google gets the right to implant the chip in every new child born in the U.S. The chips are connected through wi-fi, so that Google can monitor everyone’s inclination to make a purchase. You can now test your Google campaigns right down to the purchase, setting up A/B tests with the ultimate feedback loop.

Mmm..the mind boggles with the possibilities here….

SEM’s Seven Year Itch, Part One

First published January 11, 2007 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

There’s been a lot of speculation lately about the future of Matt Cutts. A few of Cutts’ posts and a recent interview have dropped the odd hint that the world of Google and the world of Mr. Cutts may not always be one and the same. While this is certainly noteworthy on many levels, it’s only one symptom of a much bigger issue, and one that will change the search landscape dramatically.

The fact is, those of us in the search space who have been doing it for a while (in my case, dabbling for 11 years, dedicated for eight now) are getting tired. We’re becoming burnt-out. As exciting as the ride has been since 2000, we’re beginning to realize that there is a life beyond search, or at least, the seat that we’re currently sitting in. There are a number of individual issues emerging that signal a significant change coming, and the time is now. We are succumbing to our own version of the 7-Year Itch.

A Case of Google-itis

First, let’s look at what will be happening with the engines themselves:

Google was recently recognized by Fortune as the best place in America to work. Tales of perks beyond the imagination of most poor working stiffs emerged from the Mountain View Shangri-La. Those of us who have visited the Google campus knew about a lot of these, but you could hear the rest of America’s jaw drop. Oh my God, they said collectively, what a place to work!

Well, yes… and no. The things that make Google great also make it a meat grinder. When you sign your life over at Google, you’re entering yourself in a sprint without a defined finish line, against thousands of other people determined and capable of getting there first. That’s okay when you’re young (as everyone at Google is), but at some point, life edges in on the dream. People get married, people have babies, parents age and require care. Somehow, a $500 subsidy for take-out food or on-site dry cleaning can’t make the realities of that life go away. There’s no rule saying you have to work zillions of hours at Google, but when everyone else is doing it, especially the two founders, are you the one that’s going to slow down? Either you keep racing, or you drop out. There’s little middle ground here.

And My Option is…?

Combine that with the fact that most of Google’s old guard are sitting on stock options that make them multimillionaires. Matt’s a wonderful guy and I’d like to count him as one of the friends I’ve made in the industry, but it’s got to be tough to motivate yourself everyday to put in the hours it takes to be Matt Cutts when there’s the substantial carrot of a very early and very lush retirement constantly hanging just above your head.

Matt’s not alone. That’s why one-third of the first 300 employees are no longer with Google. A story in the Houston Chronicle relates how 16 Google insiders cashed in more that $3.7 billion in stock last year (half of this coming from Larry and Sergey themselves), filling California’s tax coffers. And there’s more to come. By 2008, the state is counting on a cumulative $1 billion in state income tax from the sale of Google stock as the early guard cashes in. That represents 1% of the state’s entire annual general fund budget.

Changing of the Guard

Somehow, staying in the race becomes less compelling when the alternative is so damned attractive. It’s a testament to Google’s culture that more haven’t taken Door Number Two yet. But as the old guard moves on, that culture is shifting. Again, this is not unique to Google. Startups everywhere go through this, but few have been as successful or watched as closely as Google. A San Francisco Chronicle article looked at the shift of Google from a highly democratic family to a more conservative bureaucracy: “The feeling of ownership among employees, a natural when a company has 100 workers, was nearly impossible to maintain after the workforce grew into the thousands.”

Google’s not alone in this. Just a few weeks ago, I wrote about Tim Converse’s departure from Yahoo. Yahoo has seen several move on, some voluntarily, some not, due to a series of reorgs. Yahoo is a perfect case study of the tempestuous nature of the Web. Once sitting on the top of the search heap, Yahoo has felt a series of very painful bumps on the way down. It is now reinventing itself so it can turn around its market-share slide. Yahoo is a curious mix of old guard and new saviors, as its culture becomes redefined, for different but no less effective reasons than Google.

And finally, there’s Microsoft, unique amongst the three. Being late into the search game might actually benefit the monolithic giant here. Most of the recently assembled search team still feels the motivation that comes from the promise of a new endeavor. Microsoft is in the unaccustomed position of being the startup, the new kid on the block. Their legs are still fresh.

Today, I looked at the effect of the 7-Year Itch on the engines, but the impact is also affecting hundreds of search marketing companies. Stay tuned for next week!

The SEO Debate Continues

My earlier post about the future of SEO caught Jason Lee Miller’s attention over at Webpronews. So far, Jason is one of the few to grasp the Richter Scale implications of this shift in the SEM landscape. Danny Sullivan saw the danger signs some time ago. I traded a few emails with Danny on this and his response was:

“I did a lot of writing about personalized search about two years ago sounding the same alarm. Then it never really happened, the personal results that is. They’ll come, of course.”

Meanwhile, Kevin Lee continues to poke away at the SEM-SEO controversy that his partner David Pasternack started. There are those suggesting that this is an elaborate link baiting scheme on Kevin’s part. While his speculating on the future of SEO is certainly generating lots of controversy, and hence, links out there in the blogosphere, the cynics are missing the point that all those links are pointing to Kevin’s Clickz column, not his corporate online properties. No, I suspect Kevin’s motivation in this case is his self professed tendency to be a intellectual shit disturber. He likes to stir up polarized discussion, because if you know Kevin, there’s nothing he likes better than a good debate.

As you know from the previous post, I have a slightly different take (and I use the word slightly deliberately, I happen to agree with a lot of what Kevin said in his last column) on the debate than does Kevin. His point is that SEO can be brought in-house because for a lot of websites, you just have to do the basics right and they’ll get a huge lift. Couple this with the desire, expressed in the latest SEMPO survey, of a lot of companies to handle all this SEO in-house because there’s a lack of a recognized and trusted leader in the SEO Marketplace and it’s not that hard to see Kevin’s point. To be fair, Kevin also pointed out that a lot of companies want to bring their paid search in-house as well.

But here’s the thing. SEO is going to get a lot harder, not easier. And that increasing difficulty is going to be in area that today’s crop of SEO’s have next to no experience in: knowing the end user. And that get’s back to Jason’s story in Webpronews. He states:

“While focus on keywords has been the law of the searchland, SEO professionals will have to more diligently and acutely focus on the end user – every unique end user – mulling scenarios, personalities, and motivations, which makes SEO more akin to traditional marketing, where a firm grasp of psychological concepts is as necessary as the technical acuity of keyword targeting.”

Exactly, but in that paragraph lies a world of adjustment, and I’m not sure most SEO’s are up to the challenge.

Here are some things to think about:

As results become more personalized, the work ranking ceases to have meaning. Just a few months ago the question of ranking reporting came up in an analytics session I was participating in. This has been part of SEO since the beginning and has been an ongoing sore spot between the engines and the SEO community. I mentioned that ranking reporting might soon become irrelevant, expecting it to generate a bit of controversy (in that, I do share Kevin’s delight in stirring the pot sometimes). To my surprise, nobody picked up on it. Fellow SEO’s on the panel even failed to take the bait. I felt like screaming “The whole world is about to change as you know it!” but I chose instead to go to the exhibit hall for the free drink. It was the end of the day and I was tired.

SEO’s are all about controlled experimentation. We live to tally up suspected algorithmic factors and test, tweak and twiddle. We reverse engineer the algorithms. Say what you want, that’s basically what SEO is. It’s all about tactical maneuvering. I’ve been bemoaning the lack of strategic thinking, based on what users are actually doing, for years now, but the industry hasn’t changed much. To reverse engineer, you need a control to test against. You need at least one fixed target. Up to now, the universal page of results was that fixed target. How do you reverse engineer when you have nothing to set your bearings against?

As Jason so rightly points out, this new world of SEO is much more about marketing than it is a technical skill set. It’s about knowing your user intimately and where they tend to hang out, given a specific intent. It’s about staking out the most traveled intersections and gaining some presence there. It’s about knowing how they’ll use the new version of search to navigate the online landscape. And it’s about accepting, once and for all, that you really can’t control your presence on the search results page, however it appears.

And it’s here where Kevin’s view and mine coincide. In a lot of cases, it will be about doing the fundamentals right. If you have a site that has an established presence, then this is often enough. Make sure you connect the spider with the content. Make sure the content and your target customer share the same vocabulary. Make sure you’re not throwing any road blocks between your site and the search index. Do that, and accept the fact that your control pretty much ends there. That’s not to downplay the importance of this knowledge. I agree with Danny Sullivan that SEO skills are not nearly as common as David Pasternack seems to indicate. But I believe the days of the SEO hacker/hired gun are numbered. Personalized search may be what finally kills black hat SEO.

With that, organic optimization returns to its roots, and what the word organic should have meant in the first place. It’s about working with the client to help them understand how consumers use online to research and to help them turn their organization into an organic content factory. Help them use online to provide multiple and useful touchpoints for the potential consumer. Extend your presence into the well travelled online intersections. Establish best practices for SEO, and let the rest take care of itself. As Kevin rightly points out in his column:

“Alternatively, one could simply focus on producing great content and take whatever links occur naturally (the way Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page intended in the original PageRank system).”

It’s here where SEO’s have their biggest challenge. Can they transition from a technical experimenter to a trusted guide to online traffic patterns? I have my doubts. I have seen little evidence of this in the past. SEM’s tend to be further ahead in this regard, because of the targeting opportunities that the back end platforms provide. Ironically, this is where interactive and traditional agencies could regain a foothold, but in the later case at least, they’re still struggling with the whole concept of an empowered online consumer, and until this paradigm shifts for them, they have a huge blind spot when it comes to online strategy.

SEO’s have to reinvent themselves, and soon. Some of the skills will be transferrable, but many new ones have to be acquired, and these are not usually skills that are found in the same place. I expect a shakeout, and soon. A lot of SEO’s have been doing this for a long time, and they’re getting a little tired. Reinventing themselves is probably the last thing they want to do. Cashing out was probably more in their anticipated plans.

So, how soon is this going to happen. Let’s get back to Danny’s point. Personalization is nothing new, but I think 2007 is the year where it will make a noticeable difference. There are a couple of indicators of that:

Google is already experimenting with Geo-targeting results based on IP identification. Those of you in the States probably haven’t noticed, because the online world is very US-centric, but those of us who live on the outside are already dealing with the effects. In Canada, there is a significant difference in results seen in the main Google index depending on whether the query is coming from the US or Canada. It’s a constant bain of our existence, being based in Canada but working primarily with US clients. So even in North America right now, there is no such thing as a universal set of Google results.

Personalized search that users opt in for is finally gaining significant traction. All the 3 engines offer this, and often the fact that you’re signed in is completely missed by the user. As adoption of other functionality offered by the engines increases, the odds of being signed in when you launch a search rises dramatically. And for the engines, search history is enough additional information to make them confident in presenting personalized results. It gives them another reference point in addition to the original query. The difficulty in disambiguating intent for a query was the sole reason results weren’t personalized up to now.

What does the future hold for SEO? Well, as long as users continue to want organic results (and I think personalization will make this more true, not less) there is a need to gain presence there. But the rules of the game are being rewritten. For those willing to retrench, there’s a golden opportunity to redefine marketing as we know it. But it requires looking at a big picture, and, more importantly, using a customer-centric lens to look at that picture. It means changing our approach dramatically. It means drawing back from some highly specialized skills that some have developed, and taking a more balanced approach. Personally, I’m very excited about the possibilities. A little tired, a little burnt out, but up for the challenge. But perhaps that’s because I saw it coming.

Will Wiki Whack Matt Cutts?

Danny Sullivan has an interesting post in Searchengineland about the virtual rumblings over at Wikipedia about removing Matt Cutts because he’s not notable. Say what?

You know, community is a wonderful thing, but there are community dynamics at play, no matter whether the community is based in the virtual world or the real one. There tend to be what I would call conscientious blockheads, strongly opinionated people with a lot of time on their hands that tend to have an undue influence on most forums and wiki’s, or, in traditional terms, volunteer organizations. It’s a bit of a love hate relationship, because they are, after all, volunteers and often are the sole reason that the organizations and volunteer initiatives can continue to survive. But they tend to bend the collective view to their own strongly held personal perspective. And often, they exert their own need for control and recognition in this relative vacuum. Think PTA’s, think the executive of service organizations, think strata councils, think churches. I’ll bet you’ve all already thought of a person just like I’m describing, right?

Well, this type of person, armed with an Internet connection, has now found a new home, and this is true wherever online communities are gathering. Wikipedia would be a case in point. I think any rational person who has a modicom of expertise in the search space would know that Matt Cutts is probably one of the 10 most notable people in search, for a number of reasons that Danny Sullivan outlines (and I think Danny is shortchanging his own notability, but that’s another post).

The beauty of online communities are that there is a certain degree of transparency. We can all participate, if we choose. And us voicing our (hopefully) informed opinion is enough to hold the conscientious blockheads in check. Danny is doing exactly what we should all do, voicing his opinion and filling the vacuum.

The Future of SEO in a Personalized Search Interface

This is a debate that seems to have legs. A few posts back, I came to the defense of SEO from the user’s perspective.

In catching up with a few articles and chatting with a few key people in the industry, I’ve got another perspective that I’d like to share.

First of all, Joe Laratro in last Friday’s SearchInsider debunked Three SEO Myths, one of which was “Natural Search is Dead”. In it, Joe correctly stated:

“Natural search engine optimization is still thriving. It is more difficult today than it was five or six years ago, but the core of search results are still free. Natural Search Engine Optimization being dead is a popular myth because of the standardization of methodology that is now used. Each of the major search engines has released guidelines for Webmasters that detail the dos and don’ts of Web site optimization. Since more of the online world is aware of successful optimization techniques, they do not work as well. In other words, there is more competition from knowledgeable optimizers armed with the same toolsets.”

Back to this in a minute. Also, in sorting through some old articles set aside, I ran across this one from Todd Friesen about Learning the New Rules of Search. It touched on the same topic, looking at what might happen when SEO’s no longer have access to the intelligence tools they use on their competitors, through some type of authentication requirement.

“A move like this, which would block our ability to do competitive research at that level, would be a setback, if not a crushing blow, to SEO as we know it. That got me thinking. Where would that leave all of us search engine optimizers? What research avenues would be left?”

Finally, in the last few weeks, I have talked to representatives from the usability teams at Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. I asked each what was the major challenge for search. The answer varied slightly, but it all went to providing better results, aligned to individual intent. (By the way, I’m currently working on a series of articles from these interviews..more about this to come later)

So, to go back to the orginal reason for the post. What is the future of SEO? Both Joe and Todd are looking at this assuming the current paradigm of one query, one page of 10 organic results holds. In fact, the entire SEO industry is hanging on this paradigm. Right now, link baiting/building, optimization, competitive intelligence and all the rest are aimed at securing a top spot in the organic results. But what happens when there no longer is a “top spot” because every result is personalized, based on your geographic origin, your past search history, your behavior or preferences you’ve shared with the engines. That’s where search is going, through a number of different initiatives, and if less transparency with access to tools would deal a “crushing blow to SEO” imagine what that would do.

Now, that doesn’t make organic any less important to the user. In fact, the increase in personal relevancy will make it more important than ever. So I still stand by my original thought that organic results, of some kind, will always be part of the results set presented. But from a tactical perspective, the disappearance of universal search results throws a King Kong sized monkey wrench in the SEO works. In Canada, we’re already dealing with this as Google experiments with re-ordering organic search results based on Geo-targeting of user IP’s. The same is true in the UK and other markets.

But how do you tactically deliver SEO services in this new environment? The word ranking ceases to have meaning. There will always be a hierarchy in the results, but it will be different for each person. The control of measuring progress by positions achieved will come to a crashing halt and with it, the SEO industry as we know it. If you thought SEO was a black box before, wait til you try it under these new rules.

Over 50% of CMOs aren’t looking for Big Agencies for Online

A new study has reaffirmed something I’m hearing more and more. Big agencies don’t get online.

Sapient, through Evalueserve, surveyed a number of CMO’s, and just over half of them believe that traditional, large ad agencies are “ill-suited to meet online marketing needs”. They believe that there’s too much invested in traditional models, and that agencies can’t think beyond these constraints.

The upshot? Fewer than 10% of those polled seek to partner with large agencies for online marketing. They instead look for partners with roots in technology, a high degree of creativity and traditional print expertise, or, even more common, to use multiple agencies.

It’s not that large agencies don’t have people capable of getting online. In many cases, they do. But they’re trapped in a rigid and bureaucratic structure that sucks the lifeblood out of the bold thinking and initiative essential for online. They spend more time fighting turf wars than they do providing value to clients, and it seems that the clients are getting tired of it.

Increasingly, large agencies are struggling to understand the shifting marketplace. They are fighting the idea of a participatory approach to branding, with a community of consumers at least as important in the process as the actual brand itself. They are far more comfortable with the more traditional, and much more profitable, command and controlled channel form of marketing that has been built over the last several decades. They’re struggling to win in a new game where they don’t know the rules, largely because they haven’t been written yet.

The big agencies are out there shopping right now. They’re looking to buy expertise needed. I wonder how successful this will be. It’s not just the expertise they’re lacking. It’s the environment needed to let their experts do their job. You can buy all the roses you want, but if you lock them in a dark basement, you’re not going to see much blooming.

Lee Odden’s Feed n Read List

In a brilliant example of win/win, Lee Odden has shared his OPML file for the 250 Must Read Blogs in the SEM space. Thanks for including me on the list Lee! As you may have noticed, I’m trying to be more diligent about posting this year (New Year’s Resolutions and all) so hopefully I can persuade you to remove the comment “posts about search marketing from time to time”.

But consider the win/win aspects of this:

  • Lee helps the community by sharing a great resource.
  • Those included on the list share the love by posting a link on their own blogs back to Lee’s post
  • Lee suddenly gets hundreds of links from the best blogs in the business
  • Lee’s authority goes up
  • Everybody wins!

For anyone looking at blog promotion, link baiting or just in how to align the online planets in your favor in general, this is a textbook example!