Internet user behavior is always changing, but recent surveys by Nielsen and Pew show a significant shift underway. The average amount of time an individual spent online dropped from 57 hours in April to 54 hours in May, marking the second consecutive month-to-month decline. The number of Web pages a user visited also dropped, however the number of sessions per person held steady and the number of domains visited per person increased. As for how users are spending their time online, video viewing continues to rise, as does time spent on social networks or blogs. Almost one quarter of the time an average user is online is spent on social sites. Bruce, Susan and Virginia hypothesize what’s at the root of the behavioral changes and what that means for businesses online.


Considering the way users are dividing their time between numerous digital platforms of varying levels of engagement, it’s important that businesses consider how to optimize a range of digital assets. Steve Plunkett, director of search for advertising and PR agency M/C/C, shares a synergistic digital asset optimization strategy, including optimization of media sometimes overlooked. He talks to Virginia about PDF optimization, television interview optimization and press release optimization. He also shares a recommendation on using location-based services like Foursquare as a marketing channel for businesses.

Then Jessica, Susan and Virginia take a closer look at location-based services — how they’re used and the opportunities for marketers. At the SMX Advanced Seattle session Location Services: The New Local Search?, tactics for marketing on Foursquare, Yelp, Gowalla, BrightKite and other popular check-in services were explained. Speaker Will Scott pointed out that coupon offers on these services often come from competitors or nearby locations, so don’t feel limited to building loyalty when you can also create lures. The location-based services space is expected to be a $12 billion industry by 2014, but it’s still a good time for marketers to get in early.

Last week’s SMX Advanced Seattle was the stage for announcements and knowledge sharing of a premium level. Bruce, Susan and Virginia review some of the major news from the search engines and the advice shared at the SEO veterans Q&A panel. Bruce explains his strategy for SEO in the era of Caffeine, including increased opportunity for testing and a greater instance of result personalization and an improved ability to recognize semantic connections by Google. Bruce also considers the possible effects of the confirmed Mayday update on SEO efforts.

Kate Gardiner, social media director of the television show PBS NewsHour, has found success using social media to engage online with a TV audience. Since the inception of a formal social media program earlier this year, Facebook has been a platform that’s created big wins, often generating thousands of clicks on links shared on the fan page. Widgets, which generate inbound links and the resulting PageRank value, as well as a sense of interaction and authority for the organization, are another important facet of the online social strategy. Kate also shares her experience with being a personal brand ambassador and the metrics she pays attention to on various social networks.

Susan, Paula and Virginia round out the show with a look at search industry headlines. Even though summer has just arrived, it’s already time for paid search managers to start planning and executing a back-to-school season strategy. Searches for “back to school” are 15 percent above last year. Bing has released a software developer kit that will let developers create apps and overlays for Bing Maps. And the U.S. Department of Labor has begun an initiative to classify search marketers, based on the input of seasoned professionals. If you met the criteria and contribute to the survey, you are eligible for a $40 compensation.

On location at SMX West in Santa Clara, Virginia interviews three prominent personalities in the search world: Ian Lurie, Marshall Simmonds and Scott Garell.

Ian Lurie, president of Portent Interactive and co-author of Web Marketing All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies, kicks off the show. Ian is a presenter during the session Analytics Action Plans for SEO & PPC, and he explains how to predict and pick what terms and pages to optimize for based on analytics data. He also talks about how his agency establishes trust and introduces his services to clients with his 10things small business program.

Then Marshall Simmonds, chief search strategist at the New York Times and co-founder of Define Search Strategies, then talks to Virginia about the topic of his Ignite SMX West presentation, where he muses on how history would have been different if major figures had the Internet at their disposal. He also shares a preview of his presentation on the Industrial Strength SEO panel and the challenges of enterprise search.


Finally, Scott Garell, president of Ask Networks, joins the show. As the number one brand charged with answering questions on the Web, Scott explains that Ask.com is a strong platform for advertisers. He also hints at the Q&A social community that Ask.com will be launching in the second quarter of the year. The community aims to connect experts with searchers, pointing to the abundance of information that hasn’t been published on the Web. Combining innovative technology and connections between people is Ask.com’s strategy.

Links are crucial to the Web economy today, conducting traffic, visibility, and trust to sites and pages. On today’s show, Bruce, Susan and Virginia start by considering link marketing, not only as it contributes to SEO, but also as it fits into overarching marketing goals. Bruce looks at what makes a quality link, with converting traffic being key, and explains the need to look at links from a holistic point of view rather than an SEO-minded one. Links are just one factor for Universalized, personalized search engine rankings, and balance and synergy are effective underlying marketing strategies.


Eric Ward, a link marketing specialist with a reputation as Link Moses, joins Virginia to talk about link building in 2010. Eric explains his recommended approach for link marketing this year. He talks about the effect of personalization and whether or not that changes the link marketing approach. He also contributes his two cents to the results of a recent survey collected on the Bruce Clay, Inc. blog. Survey participants felt that link buying was not very important while creating link magnet content was important. Tune in to the show to find out what Eric thought about the results.

Then Susan, Virginia and SEO analyst Maryann Robbins talks about the SEO community’s priorities, based on the results of the informal survey on the blog. Optimized site architecture, new audience targeting and link buying were at the bottom of the list, while optimizing for local search, link building through strong content, and on-site optimization led the pack in SEO priorities.

With Bruce presenting SEOToolSet Training this week, Susan, Virginia and Bradley host a show focused on speed on the Web. From Google’s recent push for site speed to the speed and dexterity required of communicating on the real-time, social Web, speed is becoming an increasingly important factor for Internet marketers and businesses online. Read Internet marketer Eric Enge post Will Google make page speed a ranking factor? for an overview of the many areas where Google has been promoting the need for speed, including the tools the search engine has provided to webmasters to help make Web sites faster.


Tamar Weinberg, a writer and consultant specializing in social media marketing, then talks to Virginia about her book The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web. Tamar’s lauded book guides readers to develop a social media marketing strategy and then details the specific tools and platforms. She explains that the etiquette of social media marketing is just like social etiquette offline, and she also talks about the role of content and customer service within social media marketing. Her final recommendation is that businesses enter the social media space as soon as possible, though the effort can be gradual and cautious if bureaucracy and red tape stand in the way.

Susan and Bradley join Virginia in exploring the contents of The New Community Rules, focusing in on the appendix The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook. Originally published by Tamar on her blog, Techipedia.com, the popular post was included in her book because it accurately and succinctly stands as a social media marketer’s rule book for marketing through social media platforms. Community rules for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, social news sites, FriendFeed, YouTube, StumbleUpon, blogs and blog comments are all included in this definitive guide.

With Bruce Clay presenting SEOToolSet Training, Susan Esparza, Virginia Nussey and Maryann Robbins take over hosting duties to discuss some of the latest search industry headlines. Google Caffeine, an improved indexing infrastructure for the search engine, will be rolled out in full after holidays. Until then, one data center is live with Caffeine. Resisting the search giant, Rupert Murdoch says he’ll keep Google from indexing News Corp. sites once the media company starts charging for content — an exclamation met with much controversy. And across the Atlantic, the European Union has agreed on telecom reforms ensuring stronger consumer rights and high-speed Internet connections for all citizens.


Continuing the conversation about European markets, multinational search marketing expert and co-host of the WebmasterRadio podcast Bas van den Beld talks to Virginia about understanding the search economy in light of historical events. In his article SEM Lessons from the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Bas explains how an expanded market size, the cross-country regulations of the European Union, and a common currency have shaped the environment in which marketers work today. Bas is an historian and the editor of Europe’s most popular search marketing blog, SearchCowboys.com. The SearchCowboys podcast airs live on Tuesdays at 2 pm EST.

Then Susan, Virginia and Maryann consider SEO for multimedia and rich media content. The topic was the focus of a PubCon session and is highly relevant following the increase of rich Web experiences being created by brands and organizations today. Bruce Clay has encouraged the integration of engagement objects — interactive elements of a Web site — both because they can engage the audience and because they may come with search engine ranking benefits. On-site features should not significantly interfere with load speed, and any non-textual site elements should be surrounded with appropriate contextual text and Meta data.

Tune in to this episode of SEM Synergy Wednesday at 3 pm EST/12 pm PST on WebmasterRadio.fm.

Real-time search is a buzzword that’s been getting a lot of action in the search industry lately. Bruce, Susan and Virginia discuss what real-time search is, how it can be used as a tool, and whether or not a real-time search optimization strategy exists. They also look at real-time search in the spectrum of search engines and whether or not Web search might be influenced by real-time search.

SEO and social media marketer Dana Lookadoo then talks to Virginia about how to use real-time search as a marketing advantage. She explains the value of real-time search for individual users as well as businesses and gives her tips on how to optimize content for real-time search. Dana has also written about the usefulness of lifestreams on her blog. In a similar way, a lifestream is a window into the interests of an audience and can also help businesses attract engagement.

Along with real-time search making the news of late, some other headlines have also made a search splash. The FTC is modifying its guidelines to require bloggers to disclose any payment received. Yahoo’s new product Search Pad lets users take notes, save and share searches. And the announcement that several Google Apps were coming out of beta was the source of a few chuckles.

Last month a Microsoft executive made a prediction. “From a Microsoft view, we don’t believe budgets will go up any time soon, and I’m talking the next three years,” said John Mangelaars, vice president, EMEA, consumer and online, Microsoft. In deliberating this possibility, Bruce, Susan and Virginia agree that ad budgets are still in flux, however, they’re not convinced that online ad spend will drop over the long term. Giving Mangelaars the benefit of the doubt, the hosts concede his prediction may be possible if he’s speaking about one particular online channel. To gauge the direction of online ad budgets, they take a look at a report of expected ad budgets in the next year.

Colby Atwood, president of the media research company Borrell Associates, talks to Virginia about his organization’s findings the subject. Earlier this year, Colby wrote that local online ad spending is expected to “level off and then start declining.” But it’s not because businesses are abandoning in the medium. Marketers are still very interested in the online space, but advertising isn’t the only way to reach consumers. An ad can act like an initial introduction, so once both parties know each other, introductions aren’t needed. Relationship building and keeping customers happy remain the long-term areas of focus. Another report they review is Economics of Search Advertising, which examines how the search ad sales model can be improved.

From the Economics of Search Marketing

In all of this, it’s important to look at a metric that helps search marketers make informed decisions about ad spend: a customer’s lifetime value. Bruce Clay, Inc. SEM analyst Jim Stratton talks to Susan and Virginia about analyzing the lifetime value of pay per click (PPC) customers — a metric that can help a marketer optimize their search ad budget. If you know your average customer’s lifetime value for your business, you’ll know how much you can spend on an ad that caters to him. If a customer comes to your site from a search ad and leaves happy, there’s a good chance he’ll be back in the future.

In April 2009, search engine optimization professionals learned that a common tactic for directing link equity on a site had been more-or-less ineffective for more than a year. The technique, known as PageRank sculpting, relied on the rel=”nofollow” link element to keep PageRank value on pages targeted for SERP ranking. At SMX Advanced in Seattle, it became clear that the nofollow element had changed, no longer preserving PageRank on a page, but instead, causing PageRank to disappear.

There has been no shortage of coverage following Matt Cutts’s recommendations for nofollow use. At Bruce Clay, Inc., we have talked about it on the blog, in the newsletter, and now, on this week’s episode of SEM Synergy. Bruce sits down with Susan and Virginia for the whole show to give his input on what the new nofollow behavior means for SEO, siloing and search optimization practitioners. They discuss why SEOs and site managers should avoid overreacting, the remaining uses of the nofollow element, and alternate ways of directing PageRank flow.

Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine, was launched June 1, and in the weeks since its release, Bing has been the source of much discussion. Bruce, Susan and Virginia talk about Bing’s growing search share, findings of an eye tracking study on Bing results, and some initial analysis on the quality of Bing results. Based on Bruce, Susan and Virginia’s initial experiments, Bing results have improved since the days of Live Search. The name of the new engine also conjures up some interesting images and ideas from the hosts.

Bing director Stefan Weitz is today’s guest, and he talks to Virginia about how webmasters and SEOs can optimize for Bing, Microsoft’s strategy for growing search share, and why Bing was developed as a “decision engine.” Webmasters and SEOs will be pleased with the fact that sites have a better chance to rank for broad terms since Bing’s categorized results allow users to refine queries from the results page.

Then Susan, Michael and Virginia look at some news stories because Bing wasn’t the only thing making headlines in the search space. Google Squared gets a rather low review from the hosts, while Google Wave merely confuses them regarding what it will be used for. Then they discuss the newly reported behavior of the nofollow link element, the sole subject of next week’s episode, which premiers June 24.