What’s Fresh?

…..people are staring to officially retire from it.  Public retirement announcements are usually focused on athletes, musicians, CEOs, and actors.  These announcements are also generally followed up by the “coming out of retirement” press conference (see: Brett Favre….TWICE).  The “coming out of retirement” press conference basically chalks up the intent to retire as being nothing but a marketing ploy.

Well today the blogger probably best known for marketing ploys, Jason Calacanis, officially retired from blogging.  He claims that it “came with a heavy heart” and “he will not return to blogging” and “he will replace it with a more intimate email list.”  Wow, maybe he called Brett before he made this announcement.

So do we think that this is a genuine retirement or is this simply a blogger getting in on the marketing power of retirement?  I am writing about it.  It is already working.  Any thoughts?

Note:  No Cheeseheads were harmed in the writing of this blog.

A joint press conference is set between the top two search firms and speculation about the announcement is abuzz around the net. An insider at one of the companies is saying that they will be announcing an official search partnership and the departure of a top Yahoo! executive. The partnership will have Yahoo! outsourcing possible all of its search marketing (and maybe search) to Google.

What does this mean for the internet as we know it? Does Google really need control?

Any thoughts?

UPDATE: 3:26  Yahoo!  announces a non-exclusive online advertising agreement with Google

Do you have a Facebook profile? A MySpace page? A Twitter Account? A blog? A YouTube Channel? A personal Wiki?  Chances are that almost every person can answer yes to at least one of, if not all, of the previous questions.

The internet has become a haven for personal publishing and information sharing.  People freely offer opinions, ideas, photos, videos, likes, dislikes, and everything in-between.  However, how cautious are people about the lasting effect their information may have on the company they work for?

This question is something I ponder and am reminded of daily with the things I find online.  Using Twitter as an example, I follow roughly 125 people that are affiliated with SEO or Social Media Marketing.  Numerous people use this site to push out content they have written or are reading that help to show them as industry thought leaders.  When these type of people are free with their company affiliation this can positively effect how the industry views the person and their company.  Yet, some people are not as strategic with the information they share.  When people that associate themselves with their company tweet information about “giving the finger to a client” or “our blog is run by suits” or “my boss doesn’t know bleep” I have to question if these people really care about the work they are doing, who they are doing it for, or what external people think of them?  My opinion has been changed about numerous companies this way, be it fair or not.

To some extent, freedom of speech has to be protected and people should be able to post whatever type of content they please.  Yet, at some point common sense should kick in and say maybe I shouldn’t tell the world that “i hate ABC co-worker” in an open forum setting.

Does it seem fair to judge a company based upon the actions of the people who work there?  Can this really be patrolled?  Should it be?  What are your thoughts?

Bankrate is a great illustration of the good that can come of maintaining budgets for organic and paid search marketing — even in a recession.

As the subprime crisis hit in the third quarter of 2007, Bankrate’s advertisers faced hard times.

Even during that difficult quarter, organic traffic accounted for 75% of Bankrate’s traffic. Meanwhile, paid search brought in 14% of traffic, and partner traffic brought in the remaining 11%.

In the face of the recession, Tom Evans, Bankrate’s CEO, didn’t just maintain his company’s search engine budget — he increased it. And he’s laughing all the way to the bank.

“We believe that organic traffic is less susceptible to competitive market dynamics, and is reflected in driving higher margins to our bottom line,” Evans explained. “Organic traffic continues to grow at double digits …[unique visits] for every single month this year have been higher than the same month last year.”

Furthermore, Evans remarked, “I think the reason we do so well in SEO is we have an enormous amount of content. We have an enormous amount of tools and calculators, and I think we have done a good job from SEO with, we have got literally millions of links into the site and out of the site, and I think that it really helps.”

In other words, rather than gaming the system, Evans recognizes the value of giving searchers — and search engines — lots of great content that naturally attracts incoming links. With its wealth of interactive content, Bankrate is in a great position to continue capturing a superior share of search traffic and qualified leads.

Even in a recession, sites like Bankrate can capture search engine marketing leads at a relatively low cost per acquisition. Realizing this fact is helping Bankrate survive and even thrive during the subprime crisis.

For more about Tom Evans’ take on the value of search engine marketing, visit SearchEngineWatch.

Geary Interactive continues to prove it’s ability to provide digital marketing solutions for a wide variety of clients. Geary Interactive was named one of the top agencies offering services to B-2-B clients by B2B Magazine, and our newly acquired search marketing firm Fathom Online was also named a top search engine marketing vendor.

With our announcement yesterday about our acquisition of Fathom Online, we at Geary Interactive thought we would share the top five reasons why excited about joining forces. 

1. Search engine marketing is growing part of the online marketing mix, and Fathom has industry-leading expertise in this field.

2. Fathom has well-established relationships with all the biggies:  Google, Yahoo! and MSN.  Additionally, they have developed proprietary tools to help track and forecast market trends (Fathom Analytics and Keyword Price Index).

3. With this merger we are undeniably one of the few indepedent, integrated digital advertising agencies.

4.  We now have an full-service office in San Francisco which expands our national reach.

5. Fathom Online is as equally excited as Geary Interactive to capitalize on the projected growth of the interactive industry.

To put it lightly, we are ecstatic about this new partnership, and we cannot wait to move forward and utilize our combined industry know-how to maximize our clients’ campaigns.

By Andreas Roell 

Are your videos optimized for search engines? Now that search engines crawl for video content, the same rules that apply to optimizing Web site text now apply to video content. Key words, tags, and content are all a part of the equation that search engines will use to rank your video.

The importance of SEO for video can be summed up in one word: revenue. Most online video advertisements don’t generate direct revenue on their own like pay-per-view, pay-to-own, or subscription video services. Their purpose is to be “propagated across as many services and viewers as possible,” and to do that, videos must be search-engine friendly, according to video search engine Blinkx.

Marketers also need to keep close tabs on how and where their videos are posted. When a video is picked up by an aggregator, the file name, descriptions, tags, and titles should be monitored, and possibly changed, to ensure that every site displaying your video content will drive the most traffic and business to your Web site.

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Article published by ClickZ on February 5, 2008