With SearchMonkey, site owners create “applications” for Yahoo search that can be installed by users in the same sense that Facebook applications can be installed.

Instead of search results consisting of a simple title, abstract and URL, for the first time users will see rich results that incorporate the massive amount of information buried in websites — reviews, images, deep links, and all other kinds of other useful data — directly on the Yahoo! Search results page.

Here is a before and after example of a modified search result for a listing in Yelp.

The service was until recently in private beta and users had to install the add-ons to see enhanced search results. The majority of users don’t take the time to customize aspects of their browser and search options for google or yahoo so the appeal of this beyond developers was pretty limited

Yahoo! recently turned on several of those applications (Yahoo! Local, Yelp, and LinkedIn) for all searchers by default.

Now anyone can customize their Linkedin and Facebook results to appear like mine below hopefully in the near future more services are turned on by default enabling a better search experience for all users

Tags: yahoo, search monkey, southwestseo, seo, linkedin, facebook, yelp

Post from: SouthwestSEO.com

Search Engine Optimization will run you $25 a month and include

• Profile creation tool with unlimited updates
• Profile Distribution to major search engines and online Yellow page directories
• Hand submission of your website url

Pay for performance will start at $50 and include

• Campaign setup in google and/or yahoo
• Ad creation
• Targeted number of qualified consumers sent to your website each month

No other real specifics besides the above unless you fill out a form or call a toll free number. Looks like its outsourced and doesn’t mention if you have to be a sam’s club member to participate.

While I don’t see this as a bad thing for the industry if small businesses sign up for this thinking they’re getting a great deal only to find out it cost far more than this to run SEO,SEM campaigns or have other bad experiences it makes small business owners less likely to hire firms in the future

Tags, SEO,SEM, Sam’s Club

Technorati Tags: sem, seo

Post from: SouthwestSEO.com

Data from MarketingSherpa’s Search Marketing 2007 Benchmark guide finds that SEM professional with zero to one year of experience can command $55-75,000 a year and those with more than three years can command $80-100,000

Further analysis indicated recruiters are having a hard time finding anyone with more than six months of experience working with google and running ad campaigns

I found 6 job boards directly related to SEO

jobs.marketingpilgrim.com- strictly internet marketing jobs from across the country awesome site!
sempo.org/jobs- offers seo related job listings
realityseo.com/seo-job-search.html- a custom google co-op search engine focusing on seo job search really nice!
revenuetoday.com- from revenue magazine
onlinemarketingjobs.com-international SEO jobs
jobsinsearch.com- basically same as onlinemarketingjobs.com- same layout slight differences

Most of these boards post new jobs daily.. You can even set up to receive the new listings as rss feeds further easing your search efforts. If there are other great boards out there that I missed or don’t know about please let me know

Technorati Tags: blogger jobs, sem, seo, southwest seo

Post from: SouthwestSEO.com

User-agent:Googlebot
Disallow: /*/feed/$
Disallow: /*/feed/rss/$
Disallow: /*/trackback/$

This got me thinking what else am I missing from my robot.txt file and what are the bigger more successful blogs utilizing? Here’s the trick: Go to any blog you follow or like and enter the url/robots.txt and that file will appear on your screen for analyzing and inspection. Once you understand how the file works you’ll see how other sites are using their robots.txt file and hopefully incorporate some of the tricks of the trade into your site

Technorati Tags: blogger, google, seo, southwest seo

Post from: SouthwestSEO.com

This knocks the price of the subscriptions to

• Monthly Subscription $38.50 becomes $19.25
• 3 day Subscription $6.75 becomes $3.37
• Annual Subscription-auto renewing $296 becomes $148
• Annual subscription- manual renewing $308 becomes $154

If your interested in checking out Spyfu or signing up for the year and you were not a beta tester find a beta tester to share one of their unique codes. It’s unclear if you can reuse your unique code for the 3 day subscription or monthly plans I would guess these are one time use codes

I think this is a great way to reward the beta users. It’s interesting they offer a 3 day subscription- Wordtracker recently discontinued their one day subscription. There are several great new keyword solutions out there like Spyfu, Keycompete, Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery and Nichebot. to name a few who’s to say you don’t sign up to each for 1-3 days complete all your keyword research for the sites you plan to build for the month then wait until the following month saving $$$. Good idea in theory but most web site development doesn’t happen along a strict schedule

Tags:southwest seo, spyfu, keycompete, keyword research

Technorati Tags: keycompete, ppc, seo, southwest seo, spyfu

Post from: SouthwestSEO.com

Spyfu is primarily for keyword research- keyword research on your competitors and their keywords.
You can search for three types of things- terms, domains and company names.

From there you can drill down into Avg. Cost per click, Average cost per day and Estimated clicks per day. You can see additional information related to the search such as top advertisers of that keyword, list of other keywords bought by competitors, related terms and related concepts. You can also drill down into additional domain and company information

I was interested in Spyfu and the beta and I dug a little deeper to find out how Spyfu works

Spyfu is basically a scraper of keyword related data. This isn’t your ordinary scraper nothing you could run yourself. There is some serious hardware and bandwidth behind this project. I’ve included a quote below from the spyfu forums from the administrator that talks about the beta process and data collection.

“From a hardware perspective, we spent a lot of time waiting for disks. The good news is, we just bought $10k worth of new 15k SCSI hard drives, so I am hoping to improve the time very significantly. I believe we will be able to start a run on Feb 15 and complete it by Mar 15. If we can get that done, we will come out of beta. 30 days start to finish is our goal, and we will not start charging for SpyFu until we are there.”

So a full data run takes 30 days. Data is compiled every month and made available to users. This is a very powerful tool but other bloggers and websites have reported inaccuracies in the data. I guess this is to be expected and it was in beta so it will be interesting to see how the data progresses after the launch.

This is a tool that can be of great use but by itself to the average user or beginner isn’t a magic silver bullet.
You need to use several tools to help you succeed the big question is which tools and how do I use them the most productively

Additional features available to subscribers with the launch include:

• Advanced Search (Search keywords and domains by budget, clicks, cost/click, etc)
• Full Keyword and Domain Lists.
• Domain
• Subdomain
• Path
• Page
• Full Url search and browse.
• Export to Excel or CSV

Subscription options:

• 3 day subscription: $6.75
• Monthly Subscription: $38.50
• Annual Subscription: 296 (auto-renewing) $308 (manual-renewing)

tags:southwest seo, spyfu, seo, adwords, ppc

Technorati Tags: adwords, ppc, spyfu, seo, southwest seo

Post from: SouthwestSEO.com

I found the answer on the zoomzoom online marketing blog. The below is the information they received back from Google regarding the program

Thank you for your interest in becoming a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant. The following is an overview of the requirements of the Google Analytics Authorized Consultant program; other conditions may apply.

* Proven background in Analytics and Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
* In business for 1 year
* At least one dedicated person for Google Analytics support
* Must provide full service i.e. setup, support, training, and consultation for Google Analytics
* Must have an online ticketing system that Google can access
* Must provide support for both Google Analytics and Urchin software
* Must have a web site of sufficient Google Analytics/Urchin content and quality
* Must have at least one Google AdWords Certified employee
* Must attend training sessions at a Google office - usually once per year.

From reading the above list the only item that sticks out is providing a online ticketing system accessible by Google. There are plenty of solutions for online ticketing systems that integrate with online lead systems.

This is something I will definitely be working towards.

Tags: SEO, Southwest Seo, Google analytics, consultant

Technorati Tags: google, seo, southwest seo

Post from: SouthwestSEO.com

This combined with other analytics and heat maps could just be the perfect combination for winning websites and pay per click campaigns

For the first time see your website or landing page through the users eyes, where they click, where they hover the mouse and read, how they fill out forms- see user hesitation and choices

All this from one line of code added to your website. The beta is open and free I suggest you sign up and check it out

Tags: southwest seo, seo, ppc, affiliate marketing, web analytics

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, pay per click, seo, southwest seo

Post from: SouthwestSEO.com

I like the disclaimer and the declaration of not being a black hat.

Disclaimer: this is not a search engine but only a simple, creative curriculum vitae. Every marks were nominated only for the writing of curriculum vitae. For example, If you want visit Google you have to go on www.google.com, if you want to visit Yahoo! you have to go on www.yahoo.com, and if you want to visit MSN go on www.msn.com. This is only a play. I don’t like and I don’t use any black hat techniques. I only ever use Web Marketing Strategies, PPC, SEO friendly techniques in order to achieve good search engine rankings. Company’s image and Client’s, User’s and Search Engine’s respect are very important value for me.

Tags: SEO, Southwest SEO, resume

Technorati Tags: seo, southwest seo

Post from: SouthwestSEO.com

How important is it how your name is ranked or seen?

If you have a common name it can be very difficult to even come up in google at all plus most people want to fly under the radar and never come up on the internet.

This is a debate I’ve had for quite a while with friends and colleagues. It’s not uncommon for anyone from future employers to friends to long lost friends and relatives to enter your name into Google, Yahoo or MSN trying to find something of interest on you. This could be good or could be bad depending on how you look at it. How many times have you googled someone? Did you like what you found?

I could write ten pages either for or against this but I think I can sum it up in two basic scenarios.

Scenario 1:
Your a consultant involved with the internet looking for potential clients and to establish yourself within the internet professional community

This gets tricky for a lot of people. Everyone wants to see your body of work but most internet professionals hold their sites near and dear almost like intellectual property. So the question is how much to release? That’s what blogs are for thats what this blog is primarily about. Writing about the internet and the value you add building a name for yourself.

Scenario 2:

A professional looking for work or future career opportunities. I’m a firm believer in guerilla marketing and a big fan of Jay Conrad Levinson. Anything that sets you apart from the competition and gives you a bump. Most people don’t have their own web sites? Most people don’t own their own name on the internet. It took me three years to acquire my name as a dotcom and I have a unique if not unusual last name go figure?

I tend to believe if you are a professional involved with the internet you should want your name to come up at the top of google listings. Look at the success LinkedIn has had signing up millions of people to their service creating individual profiles. Linkedin gives you the opportunity to make your profile into your own URL.

Technorati Tags: adwords, google, pay per click, search engine marketing, sem, seo

Post from: SouthwestSEO.com