Microsoft and Yahoo signed a 10 year deal this week which has many people asking, how will the search engine landscape change over the duration of their agreement.

10 years is an extremely long time in Internet years.  10 years ago, Google was in its infancy and the PPC game was just taking shape with GoTo.com (which eventually became Overture, which eventually was bought by Yahoo).

We all know that Microsoft is notoriously late to the game when it comes to the Internet.  We also know that, with their abundant resources, they can certainly make an impact once they do decide to start playing.  We saw that first hand with Netscape and Internet Explorer in 1995 (or so).  Albeit, Google is probably better positioned for a full frontal attack than Netscape was.

I think that the immediate opportunity for Microsoft/Yahoo will be on the paid search side of the equation.  They have been working on this deal for quite some time now.

Who dominates the natural search side in the next 10 years will be the company that best embraces the convergence of social media and search.  Search relevancy will be more and more determined by users' preferences and the search engine's ability to personalize search results to an individual's location, interests, values etc.

What do you think of the Microsoft & Yahoo deal? 

How will this change the search engine landscape over the next 10 years?

Brent Csutoras recently posted a link to an article on investintech.com that outlines a bunch of free tools that can help you with your SEO, social media and web development. 

Check it out. 

Are there any other free tools that you use that aren't on this list?

This is a pretty funny video that my friend Michael Chait from Greenway Print Solutions sent me.  It is a little parody of every day consumers using the same sort of negotiating tactics that are commonly used in the business-to-business world.




How many times have you been on either side of this type of negotiation?

What tactics have you employed to overcome this type of negotiation, or use it to your advantage?

I just read an article at SEO Traffic Spider about the strategy of building backlinks for your website.  The article does a good job of identifying the difference between legitimate and illegitimate practices of acquiring external links to your website. 

The practice of getting other sites to llink to your website is the cornerstone of what is known as "Off-Page SEO" and, some argue, contributes to upwards of 75% of where your site will rank in the search engine results pages (SERP's).

The aforementioned article talks about ways of developing links in very general terms and lists ideas such as directory submissions and creating quality content.  I personally like to offer more concrete ideas. 

As such, one piece of advice that I would offer for obtaining quality backlinks to your website is to do a search on Google to see who is linking to your competitors' sites.  This can be done by typing - link:competitordomain.com - into the search field on Google (no spaces).  By looking through the list of sites that are linking to your competitors with similar content, you can find some websites (ideally .org, .edu and .gov) that might also be willing to link to your site if you have quality content for them to link to.

If you want more specific information on any of the ideas in this list, let me know.

What other ways have you found to effectively acquire links to your website? 

This is a pretty funny parody from Kevin Nalty (aka nalts). Reminds me a little of George Costanza's rules for looking busy.

I just read an article - http://bit.ly/3hBhya - on B to B online about Microsoft's new search engine Bing. What I find most interesting is that Bing has started incorporating Twitter Posts into their search results. I had predicted a while back that we will start to see a shift in search to more "real time" results and that personalization of search results will start to play a larger role as well.  Could this be the beginning?

What do you think the future of search and social media will look like?

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Lots of search engine marketing experts have been throwing around the term "long tail" for a while now. However, I have rarely seen or heard of anyone accurately explaining what they mean by "long tail" and how to use it to your benefit in search engine marketing campaigns.

I have to admit that I was not sure at first what was meant by long tail. I thought, as it seems many others also do, that the term referred to long keyword phrases consisting of 3+ words. While this may be true, it is not necessarily always the case.

"Long Tail" is actually a statistical term that describes a business strategy like Amazon's that sells a large number of unique items each in relatively small quantities.

When it comes to search engine marketing, this same idea of long tail has been applied to keyword analysis. Most websites, when they analyze their traffic reports will see that they get a good number of visits from branded and generic terms.  For example, a website might see that 60% of its traffic comes from 10 keyword phrases that include the company name and its branded products.

The additional 40% of the website traffic may come from 90 other keywords that are more specific, and in a lot of cases, contain more words.

The following chart from Search Engine People does a good job of illustrating what I mean:

From a search engine marketing strategic standpoint, this type of analysis can be very beneficial.  The generic, branded, or the head, terms should be the area where you focus your organic SEO efforts. These are terms that get lots of searches and produce the most qualified visitors.

The more specific, or the long tail, terms are less searched but are typically conducted by people that are further along in the buying process and therefore have a higher conversion rate. They also generally have lower cost per click (CPC) bids which makes them great targets for your PPC campaigns.

What are some examples of you effectively using a long tail strategy in your search engine marketing efforts?

What other Internet marketing terms do you find confusing?

Let me know...

I encountered an example of great customer service in the grocery store the other day.  I was in line behind an elderly woman who, when she got to the clerk, explained that she had been in a week before and had asked for a book of stamps that she claimed she did not receive.  She had a receipt that showed that she had indeed been charged for stamps.

Now, there is no way of knowing whether or not she actually received her stamps.  So, the clerk called the manager over and he immediately, without looking at her receipt or requiring any further explanation, gave her a book of stamps and apologized about the inconvenience.

The manager could have easily said to her that he had no way of knowing whether or not she really got the stamps and that she should be more careful in the future.  However, the store manager understood a few things about good cutomer service:

1) The lifetime value of that customer is considerably more valuable than the 8 or 9 bucks for a book of stamps.

2) Not only did he leave the woman with a good impresion of the store and its management, but everyone else that witnessed the scene also walked away with the same impression (including me).

3) People that have negative experiences are much more likely to share their experiences with other customers.

I think this is a great example of how going a little out of the way and suspending disbelief (the customer is always right) for a minute will lead to greater customer loyalty.  Make the customer happy and the payoff will be greater in the long run.