Welcome to SageRock.com Web Marketing Blog

Sorry for being remiss on getting videos up here. My computer died on me last week. It had 4 clips on it that I wanted to put up. But I’m happy to say that my computer is back and now so are the video.
This is a little old now. But it didn’t get as much play as it should. eMergent Marketing, a search engine optimization firm here in Cleveland recently got bought. Check out my thoughts:

I’ve got the opportunity to speak to an E-Business class on Wednesday at Lakeland Community College. It should be fun.

I wanted a place for my notes. So what better place than the SageRock blog. Here are the items I want to go over:

• bruceclay.com - Search Engine Relationship Chart® to go over where search engine listings come from.
• Nielsen NetRatings Search Engine Ratings to show how much reach each search engine has.
• Keyword Selector Tool to show how the count of a key phrase research strategy is created using the Inventory tool at Overture.
• Web Association Links to offer a nice set of interesting tools.
• Here’s a simple Keyword Frequency Counter by SageRock.com
• These are some resources that I put together for another class: » SEO Resources - SageRock Web Marketing Blog
• SEOmoz | Articles >> Search Engine Ranking Factors is a good list of important factors search engines look at to determine ranking.
• Yahoo! Site Explorer
• I’d like to show them the Google Sitemap tool: Google Webmaster Tools - Webmaster Tools
• Here’s a good rank checker that shows rank in Google, Yahoo and MSN, the number of back links and also domain age: We Build Pages Cool SEO Tool
• Then if we have time I want to look at actual sites to determine why they are doing so well for their particular phrase.

Depending on how time is, I’d like to check out:

• Google AdWords

and

• Google Analytics

Google 3rd Most Valuable Technology Company
“…ranked the 3rd most valuable technology company, behind Cisco and Microsoft”

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Seroundtable.com pointed out an interesting find that Google has removed a line that said don’t use “&id=” as a parameter. That’s interesting in itself:
Dynamic URLs? Google Is Officially ‘OK’ With Them

But I also wanted to point out a link in the Google Webmaster blog:
Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Update to our webmaster guidelines
That says:

so rewriting dynamic URLs into user-friendly versions is always a good practice when that option is available to you. If you can, keeping the number of URL parameters to one or two may make it more likely that search engines will crawl your dynamic urls.

So, keep working on your mod rewrites folks.

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A huge part of who SageRock is revolves around community involvement. As a portion of our professional growth, employees are given the opportunity to take two full work days each year to volunteer for an organization of their choice. I have worked closely with a local health care organization for the past six years. I have done everything from basic organizational help to counseling, and within the past two years have started to teach training classes for volunteers and grief counselors. I am very lucky to work for an organization that allows me to take a day to share with others my passion of caring.

This report doesn’t count paid search revenue. But it’s interesting just the same.

TNS Media Intelligence Forecasts 5.4 Percent Increase in U.S. Advertising Spending for 2006

2006 GROWTH ESTIMATES BY MEDIA
 

Merrill Trims Ad-Spend Forecasts

NEW YORK Merrill Lynch has downgraded its outlook for U.S. ad spending for 2006 and 2007, lowering its growth estimate this year to 4.7 percent from 5.1 percent and dropping its forecast for next year to 2.8 percent from 3.5 percent.

Merrill was optimistic about one sector in particular, characterizing the Internet and other digital platforms as bright spots in an otherwise underwhelming market.

The firm projected Internet ad growth to soar nearly 30 percent in 2006 and another 22 percent next year.

E-Commerce News: E-Marketing: Online Ad Spending Sets New Records

Internet advertising revenues reached record levels in the first half of 2006, with sales up some 37 percent over the same period last year, according to an industry group’s latest check on the booming sector.

In the first half of 2006, search advertising accounted for 40 percent of all Web-based marketing dollars spent, at $3.1 billion, up from $2.3 billion a year ago but holding at the same portion of overall spending.

2006 Online Ad Spend: 37% Increase in ‘06 & Search Remains Hot

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) in conjunction with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) released online ad revenue figures for the first two quarters of 2006, showing a 37% increase year-over-year for the same period. The first half of 2006, revenues from online ads were $7.9 billion. Search counted for approximately 40 percent of those figures, at $3,164 million.

Search Engine Marketers Spent $5.75 Billion in 2005 - SEMPO

January 9, 2006 – Advertisers in the U.S. and Canada spent $5.75 billion on Search Engine Marketing (SEM) in 2005, a 44 percent increase over 2004 spending, according to a report released today by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO),