1.6 Million Reasons To Start A Search Marketing Business…
by Bernard Ablola
Mar 28, 2007 Bernard, Google, Internet Marketing, MSN, Microsoft, Networking, Search Engine Marketing, Seattle
Congratulations to Tim and Zak. Earlier this month they announced the sale of 51% of the Found Agency to Photon Group of just over $1.6 million. (…champagne glasses are overflowing in Australia) Can’t wait to see you guys in Vegas this year. Congratulations.
Zak, many thanks for helping me get into the Search Marketing Industry. You have helped me tremendously. Loving every minute of it.
Here is a link to the news article on Search Engine Room.
Congratulations!
Bernard
Microsoft Interview Process - cont’
by Bernard Ablola
Dec 30, 2006 Bernard, MSN, Microsoft, Networking
Here are a few steps I took to prepare for the Microsoft interview.
Seek Expert Advice
I prepared myself for the interview through voracious reading. I set aside two to four hours daily to study every book, magazine, and article about the Microsoft Corporation and the search marketing industry. After reading the books, I contacted each author by email and asked to meet them in person or by phone. Make sure to prepare a list of questions and be mindful of the other person’s time. I was surprised to acquire so much expert advice about the search marketing industry from these published authors. And make sure to keep in touch. Many are friends and colleagues to this day.
A special thanks to:
- Zak Asani, Director of Search at The Found Agency
- Aaron Wall, author of SEO Book. (Important book on Search Engine Optimization)
- Catherine Seda of sedacommunication.com, author of “Search Engine Advertising“
- Andrew Goodman of pagezero.com, Author of “Winning Results with Google Adwords“
- Francis Ablola, of ablola.com (thanks for the portfolio idea below)
Practice Your Interviewing Skills:
If you were like me and a bit rusty at the interview process ask your friends and family to interview and provide feedback. This helped me tremendously to quickly formulate my thoughts and ideas. If you have time, apply to different companies in order to practice your interviewing skills.
Bring a Portfolio of Your Work:
Since my background is in web development, I provided the interviewers with printed copies of my work. Each portfolio included high resolution color photos and was professionally bound and printed on resume paper. This gave me talking points to reference to during the interview process. Make sure to bring enough copies for everyone including you. It may be a bit pricey, but worth the extra edge.
Start Building Testimonials of Your Work:
Ask previous employers, clients, and professors for a testimonial in writing. Place these testimonials in the front of your portfolio. This adds credibility to your work and provides the interviewer with references.
Helpful links:
My friend Tejas’s blog about his Microsoft Interview experience. And a link to Microsoft Careers for MBA’s:
I hope this helps. To a great year. See you in 2007!
Bernard R. Ablola
P.S. A few photos of Life at Microsoft
Optimizing for Blog and Feed Engines – Part 2
by Bernard Ablola
Dec 18, 2006 Bernard, Conferences, Direct Response Marketing, Internet Marketing, MSN, Marketing, Microsoft, Networking, Search Engine Marketing
Here is part 2 of my SES Chicago recap. These are my top ten “take-aways” from Stephen Spencer’s presentation on “Optimizing for Blog and Feed Engines”. His entire presentation is one hour and can be found on the Netconcepts’s website under “Blog and Feed SEO”. It is definitely worth viewing. If you are pressed for time, here are my notes.
Blog and Feed SEO – 10 Things to do to:
- Change URLs to include important keywords. Remember to use hyphens not underscores in your title tags. A more detailed explanation is found on my previous post - part 1 “Optimizing Your Blog.”
- Don’t put tracking codes into the URLs (e.g. &source=rss). This confuses the search engines.
- Older posts have a disadvantage with the search engines because they are archived. Place a “Top Ten Post” or “Most Viewed” post on your homepage to keep your best articles in circulation. See problogger.net for examples.
- Develop a robust internal linking structure by placing ‘tag clouds’ on bottom of your homepage, add ‘next and previous’ post links below your articles, and remove the ‘permalink’ links and rewrite them to actual keyword links.
- If you are using WordPress as your blog editor, change the “tagline” under the options tag from “Just another WordPress weblog” to a specific description of your website.
- If your website loads without a ‘www’ and it appears in a browser, make sure to use a 301 redirect from yourblog.com to www.yourblog.com. By using a 301 redirect, search engines will not have to re-index another website.
- Download and use the “SEO Title Tag” plug-in for WordPress. This allows you to define a custom home page title for your pages.
- Create separate RSS feeds for each category on your blog. This gives your readers options to subscribe to certain topics.
- Use the Neat-o-tool to look for opportunities to request revisions in your anchor text and inbound links.
- When creating internal links to old post, don’t use the phrase ‘click here’ or ‘previous’, use descriptive keyword links.
I hope this list helps in your search optimization efforts. I have plenty to tackle myself and will report my results to you soon. Have fun!
To your success!
Bernard Ablola
Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2006 – Recap Part 1 “Optimizing Your Blog”
by Bernard Ablola
Dec 11, 2006 Bernard, Conferences, Direct Response Marketing, Google, Internet Marketing, Microsoft, Networking, Search Engine Marketing
Okay, I just got back from my first Search Engine Strategies Conference in Chicago. It was wonderful to see some old friends and meet some new ones. My top “takeaway” from SES Chicago was Stephen Spencer’s presentation “Optimizing Your Blog”. Spencer is the president of the web design and search marketing firm, Netconcepts. Spencer offered extensive “behind the closed door” advice. The following are the top 3 key insights from his presentation.
1. Using Word Press and other blog tools to create a dynamic website
2. Optimizing Your Blog/Website for SEO
3. Building Inbound Links
Using Word Press and other blog tools to create a dynamic website
Netconcepts.com recently redesigned their site using the Word Press platform. The website includes various plug-ins, such as Ultimate Tag Warrior, rss, tag clouds and related posts. Most websites are not developed using a blog platform. However, after they redesigned the site, the amount of traffic dramatically increased. Due to this restructuring, netconcepts.com became digg and del.cio.us friendly, enabling the users to tag specific pages and create a robust social networking experience. This also allowed for the site to exponentially grow in size. Each post, entry and testimonial became a separate page, thus creating more pages for the search engines to crawl.
Optimizing Your Blog/Website for SEO
When structuring your blog/website, keep it SEO friendly by being aware of the internal hierarchical linking structure and utilizing keywords in your title tags. Find a balance between writing creative titles and creating titles that users will most likely search for. Keep pages close to the root folder. For example, www.yourdomain.com/category/page.html. When creating titles for your pages, include keywords in your URLs and use hyphens not underscores. Including a “Top Ten Post” as seen in www.problogger.net makes popular content available to new readers. Also, make use of “previous” and “next” links to insure optimal navigation.
Building Inbound Links
When building inbound links don’t just rely on the web and email for communication. Meet influential bloggers in person. Many bloggers attend SES, Pubcon, Blog on, and Business Blog Summit conferences. If you are the introverted type, use my networking tips from my previous post. Also, read and comment on other blogs and become active in these communities.
SES Chicago, in general, and Spencer’s presentation, in particular, was worth surviving the Chicago Airport and the below freezing weather. I look forward to implementing these changes on this blog and other web properties. I highly suggest attending the Search Engine Strategies Conference and expediting the implementation of these tips to increase your traffic.
To your success on the web!
Bernard Ablola
P.S. Here are my photos from SES Chicago 2006
Tags: Search Engine Strategies