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The Truth About Search Engine Optimization: An Interview with Rebecca Lieb

Bryan Eisenberg — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:47:13 +0000

Rebecca Lieb knows about creating content that engages visitors. There are few people I respect in the industry the way I do Rebecca. She was the VP and Editor-in-Chief at the ClickZ Network (editing hundreds of my column) and Search Engine Watch for over 7 years. As a journalist, Rebecca has written on media for numerous publications, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and spent five years as Variety’s Berlin-based German/Eastern European bureau chief. Until recently, she was a member of the graduate faculty at New York University’s Center for Publishing, where she also served on the Electronic Publishing Advisory Group.

I recently had the pleasure to ask Rebecca about her new book, The Truth About Search Search Engine Optimization.

1. With so many SEO books out there, why is this one different different than all others?

Most of the books dealing with search engine optimization cover the topic from a pretty geeky, practical aspect. They’re written for coders, developers, webmasters and other technical types who are up to their elbows in the plumbing, so to speak, of web sites. I wrote “The Truth About Search Engine Optimization” for the rest of us right-brained people. We’re marketers, advertisers, bloggers, small business owners, publishers and business people who don’t necessarily build and maintain complex web sites, or write code, or any of that other geeky stuff. What we do want to be able to do is wrap our heads around the ideas and concepts behind SEO — many of which are not technical in the least. If you’re running your own site, this book will help you to understand how to make it more ‘findable’ on the web. If you’re running a marketing program, or have hired an outside agency to manage SEO for your site, the book will help you understand what your role should be in the process, and how to have meaningful conversations with your vendors or SEO staff. In fact, a bunch of my SEO friends have told me they’re buying this book for their clients!

And finally, the book isn’t intended to be a dry, instructional manual, but a pretty good read as well. It won’t hurt a bit to read it — and you may just learn a thing or two! Moreover, it’s not written to be read in a linear fashion. You can dip in and out, and skip around the short, bite-sized chapters to easily get to the bits you want (or need) to read. Someone told me it makes for a great bathroom book. I’m gonna choose to take that as a compliment!

2. The majority of books are by SEO practitioners. This one isn’t, so why is it such a critical read?

There are plenty of good SEO books out there by practitioners, but they aren’t necessarily for everyone. First, these can tend toward the technical and tactical, rather than the conceptual. Second, it’s important to bear in mind that a book by a practitioner could very well be by someone with a certain agenda. They’re likely trying to sell you something, right?

As an editor and journalist, it’s part of my DNA to present a broad palette of information on SEO objectively, but with a bent for best practices. And these are gleaned from the dozens and dozens of SEO practitioners I’ve dealt with over the years (and count among my friends) while I was running both the largest marketing, and the largest search, news and information sites on the web. This fairly unique perspective has also put me in unusually close proximity to every development in search, major and minor, of the past 10 years.

On top of that, I am a practitioner of sorts. I run web sites and I certainly do have occasion to practice what I preach. In fact, I’ve been accountable for the findability of some pretty major web sites!

Finally, and as a writer/editor (albeit one with a pretty deep background in marketing), what most attracts me to search is that in the end, it really does all come down to the content, more specifically, to the written word. That’s something I definitely have a pretty darn deep affinity with.

3. What are some takeaways people will get from the book? What priorities do they need to focus on for the next quarter?

Content, content, and yet again, content. You want to get found? Think like an editor and a publisher. You need a strong content strategy to run and maintain a findable web site. What kind of content can you get onto your site? How often, because the more frequently you update, the more often you’ll be visited by search engine spiders. What kind of editorial calendar can you design to keep content — relevant content — flowing through the pipelines? And I’m not just talking written copy here, though that’s certainly the most important thing. Links are content, too. So are images, videos, audio streams, and auxiliary supplements to your site, such as a social media presence. What’s going to be important in the next quarter is the same thing that’s been important since Creation: In the beginning was the Word!

4. What other books should they be reading now?

I’m going to go out on a limb here. Yes there are plenty of other good SEO books out there, and I don’t hesitate to recommend them. But this is a conceptual book, so I’m going to recommend conceptual reading. Bone up on reading about digital marketing in general. Understand what you’re doing. In addition to that, immerse yourself in books, articles and ideas about your particular subject matter. That’s where you’re going to get ideas and inspiration for all the content you’re going to have to generate to make your site fresh, updated and findable going forward. Really, SEO is more about strong ideas and communication than about coding and building web sites. Keep those ideas coming and you’ll be on the right track.

I know we are all busy out there, but I can’t think of a reason you wouldn’t benefit from picking up a copy of The Truth About Search Search Engine Marketing.

Avinash Kaushik & Bryan Eisenberg Discuss Testing

Bryan Eisenberg — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 09:37:52 +0000

As part of the research for our latest book, Always Be Testing, I had the pleasure to chat with several people about testing and how testing lives in their corporate culture. This one, with Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist for Google, blogger at Occam’s Razor and author of the incredibly popular Web Analytics an Hour a Day is not to be missed. Take some time to listen to my interview with Avinash.

Click here to listen to Bryan Eisenberg chat with Avinash Kaushik

(To download the interview for use on your ipod, etc., right-click here and “save as”.)

In case you missed it, our first podcast in the series is with Bernardo de Albergaria, VP & GM of eCommerce, Citrix Online. We’ve also recorded two “Always Be Testing” monthly webinars so far, the archived versions are now available.

If you had your copy of Always Be Testing, you’d know all about the “stinky” image in this post.

Video: How to Do A/B Split-Testing on Lower Traffic Sites

John Quarto-vonTivadar — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:00:17 +0000

Dr. Ralph Wilson of Web Marketing Today spent a few minutes interviewing FutureNow’s Bryan Eisenberg about testing on sites that have little traffic. You can view the video below. You may also be interested in reading more about the hierarchy of optimization when you are done viewing the video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bryan and I have co-authored a new book all about testing and helping you figure out what to test. It’s called Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Webiste Optimizer (published by Sysbex/Wiley) and we’re expecting it out next month; you can pre-order it now on Amazon.

Podcast Interview: Forrester’s Josh Bernoff on How to Profit from the Social Media Groundswell

Robert Gorell — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:43:29 +0000

Social technologies have changed much more than our marketing strategies; they’ve changed us.

Social technologies have changed how we gather and share information. They’ve changed who we meet, where we meet, and, sometimes, how we meet. They’ve changed how we buy, what we buy, and where we buy. They’ve changed what, how, and how much we know about the people around us. And while social technologies may not have changed what it essentially means to be human, they’ve certainly amplified, at once, our voices, our influence, and our need to be heard.

Right now, a brand — possibly yours — is experiencing a public relations mini-disaster thanks to a comment left on a message board; a university student is recommending a movie to 372 people at once via Facebook; Barack Obama’s social media-driven campaign is beating the odds (and the Clintons).

Welcome to the groundswell.

Josh Bernoff, Vice President & Principal Analyst at Forrester Research joined us recently to discuss the soon-to-be-bestseller he’s co-authored with Forrester’s Charlene Li, Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. The book is a brief history of social media — fully seasoned with research and anecdotes from the most notable triumphs and failures of the so-called “Web 2.0″ era — that explains how to thrive now that customers and clients own your brand.

Click here for the Groundswell podcast

Of course you’ll buy the book, but here’s a 15-minute interview you can download (by right-clicking) while you wait for your copy to be delivered.

POST (not haste)

As Josh explains the paradigm of Groundswell thinking, don’t forget POST:

• People – What are your customers ready for? What do they want? What’s motivating them?

• Objectives – What are your goals?

• Strategy – How do you want relationships with your customers to change?

• Technology – Swap “tactics” for “technology” and the same is true. The people, objectives, and strategy must come before your choice of technology/tactics.

Want to find your customers’ social technographics profile?

. .

Read more about the phenomenology of social tech at the Groundswell blog, or any of these other great blogs.

Interview on Persuasion Architecture, Personas and ROI

Holly Buchanan — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:19:05 +0000

In case you weren’t able to join me today at the King Conversion: Websites that Sell conference in Erie, PA — put on by the fabulous folks at eBizITPA — I at least wanted to share a recent interview on personas and persuasive planning.

I had a chance to sit down with Cathy von Birgelen to talk about what’s on the mind of Pennsylvania business owners, and what they want to know about improving their websites and other online marketing efforts. You probably have a lot of the same questions and I think I may have some answers for you.

You can either download the interview (by right-clicking here) or just listen to it streaming below:

Click here for Holly’s interview

Hot Topics

Need to bookmark this for the next time you’ve got a few minutes? No problem. I’ll be going into more detail in the actual presentation, but…

Here’s what’s covered in the interview:

• How to start a meaningful relationship with Customers. (Hint: don’t ask them to marry you on the first date.)

• The four buying modes — Spontaneous, Competitive, Humanistic and Methodical — and how to increase conversion based on understanding what information each type wants and how they want that information presented. (There’s no such thing as an average customer.)

• How to use personas to create persuasive messages that speak to people in their language about what they care about. (Because it can’t always be about you.)

• The real purpose of your homepage and how to reduce those nasty battles over that prime real estate. (I know, I’ve seen the scars and bruises.)

• Common conversion mistakes and how to make simple changes that can have a big impact on your bottom line. (Seriously, you’ll be smacking your head and going, “duh” — here’s how Amazon does it.)

• Content for search engines vs. content for customers (Who said you had to choose?)

• What analytics to focus on that can actually tell you something about your site and where it’s most broken. (Hey, if you want to go ahead and read those 20 page analytics reports,knock yourself out. But if you want to know 5 specific metrics to look at, let’s talk.)

. .

About the Author: Holly Buchanan is co-author of The Soccer Mom Myth — Today’s Female Consumer: Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys; and co-instructor of FutureNow’s Persuasive Online Copywriting seminar, June 2nd in Manhattan.

Bryan Eisenberg on Using Personas to Improve Sales

Robert Gorell — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:59:41 +0000

Got eight and a half minutes to learn about how customer personas boost sales?

In this interview from London’s recent Search Engine Strategies conference, Bryan sits down with Ralph Wilson — in what appears to be either an airplane hanger, a convention hall, or a school gymnasium — to discuss how planning websites with personas will increase revenue and ROI . . . for a few reasons:

Personas show copywriters and designers who they’re writing and designing for.
Personas allow customers to choose their own buying experience.
Personas prevent customers from being stereotyped.

(If video doesn’t load, click here.)

Want to learn more about Persuasion Architecture? It’s how our clients get results with personas.

Bryan Eisenberg on Why People Buy Online

The Grok — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 14:19:26 +0000

In a recent interview with e-consultancy’s Richard Maven, Bryan discusses the dos and don’ts of persuading customers to take action online.

The best part: I’m pretty sure we can track him down to answer your questions…

Mike Grehan on SEO Reform

Robert Gorell — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 18:06:43 +0000

Over at Lee Odden’s Online Marketing Blog, ClickZ columnist, Bruce Clay VP International Business Development, and SEO thought-leader/soothsayer-of-doom Mike Grehan laments the lack of shared vision among marketers and SEO “geeks”.

This is still a rising medium with a long way to go. An emerging industry with, seemingly, a lot of people who can’t deal very well with change. Just when they’ve set their stall up to sell one thing, the search engines get a little more clever with information retrieval techniques and then their optimization methods become less effective. But because they’ve invested time (and money, probably) into developing a system that seems plausible, they’ll carry on selling it. And if that’s the case, the last thing they want to hear is someone like me saying in public that we’ve moved on a tad since SEO circa 1999.

[...] I write an opinion column at ClickZ. And I feel that I’ve been around long enough in the business to provide fairly well informed comment. I get extremely positive feedback from the audience of online marketers I write for. But sometimes, from the pimply geek squad, if I dare to suggest that SEO as we know it just ain’t cutting it like it used to…Bang! It’s that heretic Grehan again. And out come the cries to have me dragged into Times Square for a public flogging.

There’s a bunch of people out there who come at the industry from more a of a technical/webmaster background and begin to feel a little alienated when industry pundits and observers start talking more about online marketing strategy and less about tags and server issues. You know, I get completely dumbfounded at conferences sometimes when webmasters ask me things like: “Can Google read my CSS?” I’m like, who gives a shit? Shouldn’t you be more concerned about finding ways to get end users to interact with your web pages, rather than losing sleep over whether a bot can read a little bit of your gobbledygook.

Cheers to that, Mike! No wonder they voted you chairman of next year’s Search Engine Strategies in London.

Grokcast: David Meerman Scott on Turning PR into Thought Leadership (Part 2)

The Grok — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 17:13:49 +0000

In Part 2 of the interview — here’s Part 1 if you missed it — David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR, speaks with Robert Gorell about how marketing and public relations needs to be a real interaction with not only your customers, but the people who move your industry. Real thought leadership doesn’t happen in a vacuum and, especially today, it’s important for your organization to tell its story–far beyond boring people with never-ending talk about your glorious products & services.

In the new world of marketing and PR, understanding customer motivations is essential. You might say David’s on a mission to help companies stop talking about their “flexible, scalable, interoperable solutions for improving business practices” and start getting real.

In Part 2 of the interview, David & Robert discuss:

Why PR departments no longer control the message, and why that’s nothing to fear.
That public relations doesn’t just mean “media relations.”
How to avoid what we at GrokDotCom call the “Business Prevention Unit” (lawyers, PR bureaucracy, etc.) from keeping you from being influential in your industry.
Why “thought leadership” goes beyond commissioning a white paper.
How “buyer personas” can help you understand your customers, and speak their language.
How to craft News Releases that work smarter (not harder) across channels.

Click here to listen to Part 2 of David Meerman Scott and Robert Gorell

To download this podcast for your next flight, car ride, or trip to the beach, right-click here

For info on David Meerman Scott, and to get the freshest in marketing & PR insight, visit WebInkNow.com.

UPDATE: For the full scoop on how David used link love to help spread the word about New Rules, listen to the podcast. And when you’re done, browse some of the great blogs on his “thank you” list:

Robert Scoble Scobleizer
Adele Revella Buyer Persona Blog
Joe Wikert Publishing 2020 blog
Steve Johnson
David McInnis
Mark Levy
David Hamm
Mike Levin
Colin Delaney epolitics
Steve Goldstein Alacrablog
Todd Van Hoosear
George L Smyth Eclectic Mix
Mark Effinger
Michelle Manafy EContent magazine
Kevin Rose Diggnation
Grub Street Writers
Dave Armon
Britton Manasco
Jordan Behan
Nettie Hartsock
John Havens
John Blossom ContentBlogger
Larry Schwartz Newstex
Steve Smith
Melanie Surplice
Nate Wilcox
Ian Wilker
Cody Baker
Dianna Huff
Brian Carroll
Ken Doctor
Jonathan Kranz
Barry Graubart
Steve O’Keefe
Ted Demopoulos
Debbie Weil
Paul Gillin
Matt Lohman
Seth Godin
Rob O’ Regan
Steve Rubel Micro Persuasion
Paul Gillin
Joan Stewart The Publicity Hound
Dave Schmidt Word Currency
Glenn Nicholas Small Business Inspiration
Mac McIntosh B2B Sales Lead Expert
Jill Konrath Selling to Big Companies
Guy Kawasaki How to Change the World
Court Bovée and John Thill Business Communication Headline News
Grant D. Griffiths Kansas Family Law Blog
Robin Crumby The Melcrum Blog
Jim Peake My Success Gateway
Eli Singer Refreshing the Daily Grind
Duane Brown Imagination+Innovation
Scott Monty The Social Media Marketing Blog
Ian Lamont
Blog Campaigning
Rich at Copywrite Ink
John Lustina SEO Speedwagon
Adam Tinworth OneMan+HisBlog
Dave Schmidt Word Currency
Scott Clark Finding the Sweet Spot
Amanda Chapel Strumpette
Jennifer Veitenheimer reinventjen
Morty Schiller Wordrider
Matthias Hoffmann the power of news
Erin Caldwell’s PRblog
Ferrell Kramer Talking Communications
Anita Campbell Selling to Small Businesses
Rugjeff
Karl Ribas’ Search Engine Marketing Blog
Tony D. Baker Advanced Marketing Techniques
Tom Pick The WebMarketCentral Blog
Tina Lang-Stuart
Bryan Eisenberg, Jeffrey Eisenberg , Robert Gorell and the rest of the team at GrokDotCom
Michele Miller WonderBranding
Publicity Ship Blog
The Media Slut
Brad Shorr Word Sell
Sasha Where Business Meets the Web
Ellee Seymour ProActivePR
Chris Kenton The Marketers’ Consortium
Paul Young Product Beautiful
By Ron Miller
Michael Morton
James D. Brausch
Janet Meiners Newspapergrl
Andrew B. Smith The New View From Object Towers
Cristian Mezei SeoPedia
Jim Nail Cymfony’s influence 2.0
Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff The Blog Squad
Forward Blog
Ben Argov
Zane Safrit Duct Tape Marketing—Business Life
Will McInnes Online Marketing Guide
Robbin Steif LunaMetrics
Mike Boss
Marc Gunn Music Promo Blog
Nancy E. Schwartz Getting Attention
Kami Watson Huyse Communications Overtones
Todd Defren PR Squared
Michael Stelzner Writing White Papers
Dee Rambeau Adventures in Business Communications
Glenn Fannick Read Between the Mines
Owen Lystrup Into PR
Morgan McLintic
Mark Batterson Evotional
Jay Coffelt
John Richardson
Robin Good MasterNewMedia
Shel Israel Naked Conversations
Robert J. Ricci Son-of-a-Pitch
Mike Sigers Simplenomics
Dan Greenfield Bernaisesource
Brian Clark copyblogger
Lee Odden TopRank Online Marketing Blog
David Weinberger
Carson McComas
The FutureLab blog
John Bradley Jackson Be First Best or Different
Wired PR Works by Barbara Rozgonyi
Mark Goren Transmission
John Wall Ronin Marketer
MarketingProfs Daily Fix Blog
John Koetsier bizhack
Steve Kayser Squareballs Entertainment
James Robertson’s Smalltalk Blog
Linas Simonis
Dale Wolf The Perfect Customer Experience
Eric Mattson Marketing Monger
Scott Sehlhorst Tyner Blain
Seeds of Growth blog
Hugo E. Martin
David Phillips leverwealth
Terry Affiliate Marketing Blog
Gavin Heaton Servant of Chaos
Mark White Better Business Blogging
Eric Eggertson Common Sense PR
Michelle Golden Golden Practices
Liz Strauss
Tony Valle Small Business Radio
Chris Heuer’s Idea Engine
David Evans The Progress Bar
Todd Andrlik The Power to Connect
The New PR Wiki
NewPR
Pelle Braendgaard Stake Ventures
Lisa Banks Search Engine Optimization Eblog
Chris Brown Branding & Marketing
Graeme Thickins Tech-Surf-Blog
Ardath Albee Marketing Interactions
Lauren Vargas Communicators Anonymous
Lori Smart Lemming
Dane Morgan
Jason Leister Computer Super Guy
Bill Trippe
Jason Eiseman Jason the Content Librarian
Reuben Steiger Millions of Us
Taran Rampersad Know Prose
John Richardson Success Begins Today
Valentin Pertsiya Brand Aid
Bill Belew Rising Sun of Nihon
Joe Beaulaurier An Ongoing Press Release
David Koopmans Business of Marketing and Branding
Chris Anderson The Long Tail
Roger C. Parker Design to Sell

Grokcast: David Meerman Scott on the New Rules of Marketing & PR (Part 1)

The Grok — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 16:06:04 +0000

In today’s edition of Grokcast, David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly, speaks with Robert Gorell about how marketing and public relations have become more conversational than ever, and how to not let these new opportunities to relate to customers slip by your company’s radar.

A renowned online thought leadership and viral marketing strategist, David’s blog WebInkNow.com is invaluable for anyone who struggles with multi-channel communications (read: pretty much everyone in business). The New Rules… grew out of his popular e-book by the same name, which has been downloaded by some 250,000+ fans.

In Part 1 of the interview, David & Robert discuss:

How the advent of electronic content has changed publishing world for good.
Why “we are what we publish” on the Web.
How, after taking his own advice, his e-book turned into book deal in 20 minutes.
Why organizations’ fears of letting employees express themselves online (like blogging) are unfounded, and usually only considered dangerous by executives who don’t read blogs (for instance).
How he was able to blog his own book before publishing it–and how doing so made the book better.
The blogging tap-on-the-shoulder technique David used that led Robert to discover that GrokDotCom was included in the book.
How this strategy took on a viral life of it’s own, creating a lot of new fans in the process–and for free!

Click here to listen to Part 1 of David Meerman Scott and Robert Gorell

To download this podcast for your next flight, car or train ride, right-click here. And don’t forget to listen to Part 2 of the interview, where David discusses how to transform PR from just “media relations” to living, breathing thought leadership.

Grokcast: Loews CEO Jonathan Tisch – Part II

Robert Gorell — Wed, 23 May 2007 07:31:01 +0000

Jonathan Tisch, CEO of Lowes Hotels, has been doing a blog book tour this past week to promote his new book, Chocolates on the Pillow Aren’t Enough: Reinventing the Customer Experience. (In case you missed the first part of the interview, you can listen to it here.)

In Part II of Bryan’s interview with Tisch, the two discuss:

How to deal with difficult customers and turn them around
How to empower front line workers to delight customers
Stepping out of his role as CEO to train with other “co-workers” in the field
The value of embracing diversity
How the travel pricing engines changed the hotel industry and what what they did to adjust
What to do when you sell a commodity
Measuring and making customer experience accountable
Balancing hard financial metrics and softer experience metrics
The importance of listening to trends
What graduates just getting into the workforce should focus on

Click here to listen to Part 2 of Jonathan Tisch and Bryan Eisenberg

To download Part 2 of Jonathan Tisch and Bryan Eisenberg the MP3 click here.

If you want more of Jonathan you can catch him at:
This past Monday:
Experience Manifesto

Customers Rock!

This past Tuesday:
The Engaging Brand . They will be doing both a Q&A and podcast.

Wednesday:
Conversion Rate Marketing Blog – GrokDotCom by Future Now, Inc. Our Podcast.

Vacant Ready:: A hotel industry blog for hotel insiders

Thursday:
Lip-Sticking. They will also be doing a podcast.
Experience the Message

Friday:
Customer Experience Crossroads
Experienceology. They are also doing a podcast.

Grokcast: Loews Hotels’ Jonathan Tisch on Maximizing Customer Value

Robert Gorell — Wed, 23 May 2007 02:30:59 +0000

As Chairman & CEO of Loews Hotels, Jonathan Tisch has helped the luxury hotel chain to further its reputation as a premier brand in one of today’s most highly competitive markets: the hotel business. His new book, Chocolates on the Pillow Aren’t Enough: Reinventing the Customer Experience, isn’t just another wake-up call for businesses to address to the customer’s needs; it’s a lively account of the challenges and opportunities facing complex organizations in a fragmented, experience-driven world, where word-of-mouth is king, and customers play the cards you’ve deal them any which way they choose.

Sounds like every business you know? Sure it does. And that’s why this book couldn’t have come at a better time.

In Part I of this two-part edition of Grokcast, Bryan Eisenberg explores Tisch’s thoughts on:

How to break through the clutter to make superb impressions on customers (or in has case, “guests”).
How the customer experience has/hasn’t changed in recent decades.
Distinguishing your brand, even in highly competitive markets.
How to engage employees (he calls them “co-workers”) to rally an organization to the same cause.
How myriad options have spoiled the customer, and what your business must do to adjust.
Using customer feedback to improve your business in real time.
Why transparency is vital in today’s economy.
How to defuse a negative situation, and turn it around–quickly.
Why unsavory customer feedback is so viral.
How to ensure that people have nice things to say about your brand.

Click here to listen to Part 1 of Jonathan Tisch and Bryan Eisenberg

To download Part 1 of Jonathan Tisch and Bryan Eisenberg the MP3 click here

Grokcast: Google’s Tom Leung on the Google Website Optimizer

Robert Gorell — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 16:08:30 +0000

Bryan Eisenberg spent some time chatting with Tom Leung, Business Product Manager for Google’s Website Optimizer–a breakthrough product which allows businesses of all sizes to optimize their sites through testing. In this two-part series, Bryan asks:

Part 1 Of Google Website Optimizer FAQ

What is the Google Optimizer?
Is Google analytics required to use Google optimizer?
Will it work with other analytics software?
Does A/B or multivariate testing affect your Google search ranking?
Why is Google offering the optimizer?
How does Google Optimizer compare to the other testing platforms available now?
How does Google Optimizer work with sites that are more dynamic in nature?
Can Google Optimizer be used to test Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or Pay Per Action (PPA) ad copy?

Part 2 Of Google Website Optimizer FAQ

What other resources do I need to be able to implement tests using Google Optimizer?
How long do I have to wait to see results testing with Google Optimizer?
Does hit and run testing work?
What future features are in the pipeline for Google optimizer?
How do you see more B2B or lead generation sites using Google Optimizer?
How would you encourage the average webmaster to get started with Google Optimizer?

Part 1

Click here to listen to Part 1 of Tom Leung, Google and Bryan

Part 2

Click here to listen to Part 2 of Tom Leung, Google and Bryan

To download Part 1 of Google Website Optimizer interview the MP3 click here

To download Part 2 of Google Website Optimizer interview the MP3 click here

Would you like to check out additional Google Website Optimizer resources?

Bryan Eisenberg on Persuasion & Customer Focus

Robert Gorell — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 08:57:57 +0000

Search Engine Watch’s Eric Enge recently interviewed our own Bryan Eisenberg about how we use Persuasion Architecture™ to plan, measure, and optimize the customer experience–online, offline, and across channels.

In the interview, Bryan talks about his past life as a social worker, founding Future Now when “accountable online marketing” was considered laughable, and how to speak to customers and online visitors on their own terms (the only terms they’ll accept).

WordTracker’s Mike Mindel with Perry Marshall

Bryan Eisenberg — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 22:27:45 +0000

Mike Mindel was recently interviewed by Perry Marshall. You can listen to the interview on the WordTracker blog or download it to your iPod for future listening. In this interview, they cover a broad range of topics including:

Why are keywords important?
How to mine under-rated keyword gems in the hyper-competitive Pay-Per-Click marketing space.
How Wordtracker generates their keyword data: Where it comes from and how to use it.
How to identify fast-moving opportunities using keyword trends.
What competition indicators like KEI mean – and what they don’t mean – when you’re researching keywords.
How to measure keyword competition. What do “allintitle,” “allinanchor,” “intitle” and “inanchor” mean and why should you care?
How to take advantage of the Long Tail.
A brief history of Wordtracker and the early days.

I hope you enjoy listening to it. I’ll take this opportunity to thank Mike for taking the time out to read Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? that he mentions during the interview.