Minnesota based Search Engine Optimization agency TopRank Online Marketing has been asked by Microsoft Advertising Community to write a monthly column on Search, Social and PR topics. Posts will begin in November and continue about once per month. Microsoft is keen on being a great resource for online marketers and is walking the talk by providing the Advertising Community site."The point of our

Optimizing web pages alone, is simply not enough in competitive categories. Increasing numbers of companies and SEO consulting companies have realized this and are adopting more formal holistic content optimization strategies. Digital Asset Optimization is a SEO Point of View that TopRank started developing in early 2007.Managing a textbook search engine optimization program for a complex website

For BtoB or BtoC companies that want to make smart decisions about their search marketing strategy based on research and case studies, then buy Marketing Sherpa's 2009 Search Marketing Guide.I downloaded the Executive Summary and it's pretty good. I'd say if you're a client side web marketer or working for an agency and you're asking yourself any of the following questions, this year's SEM Guide

When you search on Google for phrases like "SEO Minneapolis" there are approximately 373,000 search results. That's pretty amazing considering there are so few search engine optimization blogs being published in the Twin Cities.A search for "SEO Minneapolis" on Google Blog search returns over 4,000 results but most of them are scraped content from a much smaller number of actual blogs about

Here's an article on link building that originally ran over 3 years ago. It's amazing how much has changed since then. Enjoy:Link BuildingHere are tips for effective link building:Reasons to link:a) To drive traffic directly to your siteb) For search engine rankingsA) Linking to drive traffic to your siteLocation Location LocationIdentify high traffic sites that would be visited by your target

This SEO blog is retired. Be sure to subscribe to the new feed at:http://feeds.feedburner.com/onlinemarketingseoblogFor daily updates on search marketing industry events, interviews, tips, tactics and the most comprehensive list of SEO blogs on the web, be sure to visit Online Marketing Blog!Need SEO in Minneapolis? Contact TopRank at 1-877-872-6628.

What's a "clean crawlable link"? It's one that is not blocked with Robots NoIndex meta tag, JavaScript redirect, blocked with robots.txt or a NoFollow tag.If you in the business of SEO and still involved with begging for links, article submissions or other high labor, low impact tactics, then you'll want to make sure the links you actually do get are good.Here are a few things to check for:1. To

While I was at the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York, the Minneapolis Star Tribune published a profile of our companies, TopRank Online Marketing and Misukanis Odden Public Relations. The story, "Learning how to climb the web" was written by the very talented Jenna Ross.Like the coverage we received in The Economist, "Dancing with Google's Spiders" treatment of TopRank was very

A client's site is being completely overhauled by a new web dev agency from scratch because the existing agency has locked down the CMS as proprietary. These are questions put to the new agency web dev team:1. "Can we manually or dynamically populate the title tags so they're not all the same?" No2. "If we map the old urls to the new urls with 301 redirects can you implement on the server?"

Last week I was a speaker at SES New York on a panel called "Bookmarking Strategies". I was tasked fairly specifically, to talk about the very basics of social bookmarking. On the panel with me were Todd Malicoat, Michael Gray and Neil Patel. Alex Bennert was moderator.It was a particularly niche topic for an entire session, but I was glad and appreciative that Danny Sullivan asked me to do a

So, apparently Digg unbanned certain domains from having stories submitted but feedback I've been getting and direct observations show that any stories submitted from these allegedly non-banned sites are quickly "buried".Connected Internet shows how the "Digg mafia" buried a story within minutes from their site. Pronet Advertising found evidence of a Digg "bury brigade". It's all childish

Today I noticed on a trackback link from Pronet Advertising that Digg has decided to un-ban a number of domain names. Neil Patel's name is listed as the author of the blog post and he lists Online Marketing Blog at the top. I appreciate the heads up.I suspect there are people wondering what the owners of the sites that are not on Digg have to say about this. Here's my reply: Sigh.We weren't

Singing the "SEO is dead" song is nothing new for Dave Pasternack, despite all the recent rounds of impotent cliches. I came across the article linked above over at SEO Today from Oct 11, 2005 where he talks about Yahoo Search Subscriptions and proclaims the following pearls:"Yahoo!’s new Search Subscriptions, now in beta, means two things for SEO. The first thing it means is that organic search

Larry Chase has published Web Digest for Marketers for a very, very long time. What amazes me is that he still finds great online marketing resources to share. His latest newsletter shares 12 Insider SEO Tools & Tactics.HitTail - This tool reveals in real time the most promising yet least utilized keywords that drive traffic to your site organically.Link Hub Finder Tool - This tool will help you

Extra, Extra, Read All About It! High Rankings Search Engine Marketing seminar is coming to Minneapolis March 15 & 16. More info hereJill Whalen is a pioneer in the SEO world and I am very honored that she has asked me to join her and the excellent group of SEO and PPC experts she’s gathered to do this seminar.My session is called, “UnGoogle Your Search Marketing - Alternative ways to drive

It has been an interesting Monday to say the least. Our main company blog, toprankblog.com has been hit with a Denial of Service attack or something similar. I guess we found out how good or not so good the tech support was at our host. I should say our "old" host.After 5 hours offline and no action (the led to a resolution) I decided to move hosting of toprankblog.com to a new hosting company.

Here is a list of the week's blog posts over at Online Marketing Blog focusing on SEO, blogging and business of search marketing.SEMPO Board of Directors Nominees - LeeSearch Marketing Blogs Update 012607 - Friday Search News 012507 - Content vs Links - The Lowdown on Web Designers and SEO - Recommendations for Collaboration SoftwareBlogging in Different LanguagesYahoo Adds Quality Index to

Here is a question about changing URLs that I recently received that I thought would be of use to others considering a similar situation:"We are considering changing our policy regarding URLs for sites. Right now each one has its own URL, i.e., domainname.com. We are considering changing them to: www.ourbrandname.com/olddomainname/. There are strong business reasons to do so. Are there any

A public relations associate recently shared the persistent question of a client that I thought I would provide an answer to here.Q: XYZ person and ABC company keeps talking about Page Rank. I have told him that we do not look at Page Rank in that way. Do you have a good explanation of why Page Rank is not worth obsessing over?A: The data that supplies Google toolbar PageRank scores (the

KBCafe is running their annual blog awards with quite a few categories to choose from ranging from best Web 2.0 blog to best basketball blog.Category #11 is for SEO Blog and Online Marketing Blog has been included in the running. I hope you like the work we do and vote for us!