The I's have it

The letter "i" is hot in search. Loads of firms want to be i-this and i-that. Sounds easy... but is it? Let's try ranking agencies by the number of times they manage to use the letter I.

Five Is

1. Site Visibility
   

Three Is

1. Netizen Digital
2. Vivid Lime
3. Efficient Frontier
   

Two Is

1. Bigmouthmedia
2. iCrossing
   
3. Equi-Media
4. Euston Digital
5. Golley Slater Digital
6. Resolution Media
7. Altogether Digital

One I

1. Latitude
2. Media Contacts
3. Zed Media
4. Greenlight
5. DBD Media
6. Net Media Planet
7. Stickyeyes
8. Sitelynx
9. MediaCo
10. Click Consult
11. Harvest Digital
12. Clicks2customers
13. Strange Corporation
14. Coolpink
15. iProspect
16. Rusty Brick
17. I-Spy
18. iLevel
    

No Is

1. The Search Works
2. Steak
3. Cheeze
   
4. Guava
   
5. VCCP Search
6. Propellernet
7. Profero
   
8. TBG London
9. Tamar
   
10. 77Agency
11. Ambergreen
    
12. Netrank
13. AccuraCast
14. NetBooster
15. Bruce Clay

So! Well done to Site Visibility and their mad collection of Is!

Disclaimer: This list is very British cos I put it together at about midnight and used the NMA list as inspiration. Plenty of Is in inspiration.

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Cristina Hoole leaves PayPal for LinkedIn

I don't usually cover moves but this one looks interesting.

Cristina Hoole was once Head of Retail and Consumer PR at Visa Europe. She then then moved onto PayPal.

I know this is an HR role but we can see the 'new media' trend there; from the credit card to the dotcom.

She's moved again. I'm not sure what her job title at LinkedIn is (I assume Head of PR) but Clare O'Conner from Haymarket points out she's been given a clear European brief.

The other interesting thing to note that that Hoole will be working with LinkedIn's PR agency Chameleon PR. Chaemeleon won the LinkedIn work after it was decided the previous PR agency - Bite - had a conflict of interest. Bite was working with Facebook too.

It's a small world, isn't it?

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Thanks

It's been a good day.

First I noticed that the Mercurythread blog liked the new bigmouthmedia 'top secret' PDFs. That's important to me because Mercurythread has worked at a competing local search agency.

Sometimes. Not always but sometimes you can get the most insightful comments from people operate in the same space as you. I'm sure Mercurythread has observations on what we're doing wrong too but it's nice to see what we might be doing right.

Next up! Google is in the news again here in the UK because it's won first place in the Great Place to Work Institute. Here's the good news - bigmouthmedia also made the list. What the Institute does is rank the top 10 and then put the next 40 companies in the general 'Top 50 list'. That's where we are - and for the second year in a row.

Guess we have to work out what to do better next year!

It's also graduate night here in Edinburgh. We've an office full of job seekers (people we've invited in after talent scouting at some trade fairs) and we've got loads of hopefuls.

I handed out a questionnaire to the grads and look forward to tallying up the results!

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The NMA Marketing Services Guide

The NMA have released their marketing services guide for 2008. The list charts the largest search agencies in the land. Once again The Search Works tops the list - congratulations guys. We came third.

The NMA list is a bit of a vanity exercise. The size of an agency is their total turnover - and this includes pass through revenue. Pass through revenue includes the money that simply comes in from clients and goes out to Google (or Yahoo or MSN).

In the US you'd never include pass through revenue as a meaningful measurement metric.

As a result PPC agencies (The Search Works) have a much higher turnover because the're passing client money on to Google. As I glance down the list and spy the likes of iCrossing (8th), Propellernet (15th), Tamar (18th), Neutralize (28th) or Site Visiblity (34th) I think to myself… wait a minute, these guys all have significant influence in the UK search marketing scene. I'm just naming a few too as there are other agencies in the list who "move the needle" in my opinion.

I should note too that the NMA points out that Efficient Frontier and Site Visibility exclude search spend from their figures and I respect that.

Here's the challenge. Is there a better metric? Up here in the North the media magazine The Drum had a go. First they required agencies to get enough recommendations from clients to qualify in the first place. Then they looked at revenue divided by staff - so an agency that made £10m a year with 50 staff was doing better than an agency that made £10m a year with 100 staff.

There's a problem with that too. What about those agencies who outsource? Do you count the outsourced staff (are they cheaper?) and how do you do it? If the £10m agency with 50 staff outsource to 150 people as well then perhaps they're not so good.

Perhaps profit is a better metric? After all; you can have a huge turnover (especially if you include pass through revenue) but do you manage to keep any of it? I've seen rival agencies drop their knickers when it comes to prices just to win a contract. I doubt they make a profit.

Agencies aren't going to share their profit figures though. The only time you get to peak at them is when the agency goes on the market and you're large enough to buy them. Even then it's pretty dull reading.

I think a much better way to 'measure' agencies is simply to talk to them. Meet the staff. Visit the office. Go listen to them speak at SMX or SES. Do you like what you hear?

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How big? (mouth media)

One of the 'wows' I got at SES London this year was at how large bigmouthmedia had become. Gosh. We were just a small company back when I started. How we've grown!

I was very aware of the fact that I was to do a case study for my session and in my experience SES audiences don't really come to listen to rivals go on about how well they've done. I wanted to share a little something else - so I touched on some of the challenges of working with large clients and working in a large company.

Remember; this my personal blog so when I use expressions like "big enough to cope, small enough to care" that's not an official bigmouthmedia strapline or boiler plate. That's me being as cheesy as I like! (I like to be cheesy.)

What "big enough to cope, small enough to care" means to me is good communication and a real desire to learn. Every day we have bigmouths who read SEOMoz, SEOBook, Search Engine Land, WebProNews as well as Brand Republic, SEO Chicks, New Media Age, etc. Every day we dig up a whole host of blog posts or news articles that'll interest others elsewhere in the agency. The trick is to be able to share this information as widely as possible... without spamming people.

Here are some of the tricks we use

• Email groups - we've one just for sharing breaking news
• Intranet - can't stress how important a company wide intranet is, you need a place to store, sort and coordinate information. We began with a wiki and have grown into something rather more hardcore!
• Teams - we operate in teams. You've got to have people close to your work who can brain storm with you
• Skype or VOIP - The image with this blog post is my Skype. I need to make good use of groups with sensible names. I also don't put every bigmouth into my Skype (I'd be swamped if I did!) people who I'm working with currently stay in the connected panel. I'm afraid I'm especially good at pruning 'external contacts' to keep that list down
• Internal conferences - it is very good practise to, once and a while, collect up all your affiliate managers from around the world and run an internal conference. Certainly make a point of regular meetings of departments within the same country (so that means London, Manchester and Edinburgh for bigmouthmedia UK)
• Knowledge Bank - make sure there's a central pool for people to collate intelligence. When I download SES or SMX presentations they go into the Knowledge Bank. The bigmouths who attended the conference then produce a summary of which presentations/PDFs are worth reading if time is short - and why
• RSS - bigmouths use Google Reader's Share feature to easily swap stories with one another

Once the infrastructure is in place to help facilitate good communication and if you've hired the right people - you'll find that communication/information exchanges then happen naturally.

Bigmouths gain notice and credit for finding interesting stories and sharing with the right people and teams. This encourages people to do it. You also gain notice for querying whether the blog post/news article/forum discussion might be wrong or right. However, it takes experience to know how to pace a conversation.

For example, I recently sent around a screen grab of a really bad (I thought) PPC Creative. It looked like pigeon English was being used to promote a big pan-European brand. Other bigmouths disagreed, though, and some wondered whether the choice of wording was to tie in with an offline marketing campaign. There was a quick exchange of ideas over email but that then quickly moved to a Skype text group chat between the key debators (as there was no reason to 'spam' everyone else).

I still can't fathom why the (rival) PPC agency choice that particular phrase but what I am certain about was that the screen grab of 'quirky' ad was shown to the right people and then the correct, select group, debated it further. It takes infrastructure and processes to allow for the possibility of the debate but then it takes experience to know how to conduct it. The debates themselves are very good - this is how agencies stay ahead of the game and experts stay experts.

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Jobs in Search

Heh. One of the best things about being at the start of the year is being able to look forward to all the interesting people you're going to meet. The start of the year also tends to have people looking to new horizons - ie, starting new jobs. I've had a quick peek at our training schedule and I think we've a truck load of new starts coming in this week and next week.

It seems good timing that JobsInSearch published their interview with me today.

{Psst. The bigmouthmedia vacancy page for UK and US is here and there seems to be some sort of running joke about banking going on in the jobs' criteria. I don't know - so don't ask! :) }

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$16,000 for an SMO campaign with no authority and three fans

I _think_ it was Darren Jamieson, aka the Unluckiest Man In Search, aka Mr Daz who alerted me to Real Estate Hyperlinks. I can't find his original post, though.

I think my favourite aspect of this site, a site with no authority on Technorati and only three fans is that they charge $16,000 with no refund for a link baiting campaign.

I'm sure they're very good. Really. I just wonder whether the rest of us should be increasing our prices.

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HMV moving into social media

Early next year (or thereabouts) we'll see HMV launch a social media site.

We have some clues from HMV's e-commerce director Gideon Lask

We've been in extensive dialogue with our core music and film suppliers, to identify cool and exciting content that we hope to include when we launch next year.

The way people discover and consume music and film is changing, and we need to reflect this in what we do.

HMV staff will be the first to explore and report on the site, along with a small number of hand-picked public users who will be identified by Cake.

Agencies LBi and Cake have helped develop the site. I've had one journalist ring me up and really wanted me to dismiss this as another "me too" project. I didn't agree. I suspect that line of questioning comes from Lask saying;

There are so many details we're still finalising - we're not even sure how best to describe the concept, and we haven't settled on a final name.

Although it remains to be seen whether the social media site is successful I wouldn't dismiss this as a "me too". HMV needs to look at the way people find and discuss music these days and this is exactly how they do it. I'd love to see it. I don't think I know anyone in Cake otherwise I'd be pestering them!

If the site is successful then it should help offset HMV's poor PPC strategy which is heavily reliant on burning through tokens and database queries to update bids in line with their inventory. That's a short term strategy and means HMV's clicks are more expensive than competitors. It also means they don't get to use current hits (inventory pending) to drive traffic to the site. A better strategy would be landing pages which cross-sold should the keyword title not be currently available. Not only would that let HMV benefit from the fickle fashion in music but would allow them to bid more cheaply.

So, we've got HMV making a stab at social (there's an irony in a company called His Master's Voice engaging with the voice of the socialnet) but doing badly in PPC. We also have Zavvi (ex-Virgin Megastories) leaving themselves open for annihilation on the SEO front. 2008 will be an interesting year for Entertainment retailers and affiliates!

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Ask.com gets new digital advertising agency

What did you make of Ask.com's "Information Revolution" ad campaign? It was put together and promoted by Fallon and Profero.

Ask.com has given the digital brief to Grand Union now. According to Kate Nettleton of Campaign (sub needed), Profero, who worked on the guerrilla campaign and had Ask.com's business for five years, politely declined to repitch for the work. It isn't uncommon for an agency to refuse to pitch but whenever it happens I certainly take notice.

I gather Hyper (which is the digital arm of Fallon), Agency Republic and Glue (sister agency to iProspect via Aegis parents) did take part in the pitch.

So what's the challenge that Grand Union now faces? It's Google. Search marketing is worth about £1.2 billion in the UK (with current exchange rates that's about a trillion billion* US dollars). Of course, the first step isn't to attract in search marketing agencies but to get users to the search engine. The search agencies will put money where the searchers are. Given that Ask.com (which is how Ask.co.uk is branded) still leans heavily on Google for revenue share on paid search adverts Grand Union will have to drive in the traffic while Ask.com decides on the best way to make money from it.


*Slight exaggeration.

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Ian McAnerin on SEMPO

Ian McAnerin has an interesting post today. He's noticed that SEMPO are now insisting that their members are White Hat. He writes;

Interesting. Not that I have any objection (I think it's great!) but I distinctly remember there being a fair amount of controversy about SEMPO not requiring it's members to agree to not be spammers. It was one of the main reasons I help found the SMA-NA.

Heh - maybe I *can* work with these guys. It's certainly a step in the right direction. There is no indication of any kind of enforcement, so it's not perfect, but a couple of years ago you would not have seen this, and it would have created a huge controversy if you had. Maybe our little industry really is starting to grow up.

I would echo his thoughts. Interestingly, one of my first concerns with SMA-UK was that its first draft of members included a notorious doorway page SEO firm.

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Everyclick hires agencies

Everyclick is a UK based search engine that shares its money with charities. The deal is simple; when people click on the (Ask powered) sponsored links alongside the organic listings, Everyclick gives a portion of that revenue to charities.

They've given £250,000 already to charities and are the UK's eighth largest search engine. I've had noodles with Polly Gowers, Everyclick's CEO and founder, and she's a great laugh - which counts for a lot in my book!

Anyway!

Everyclick have appointed Edelman and Geronimo to make more people aware of Everyclick. This can only be a good thing? They're going to target print and web.

I have to wonder (and hope) that Everyclick run a "feel good" campaign. I think that will contrast sharply against Ask's more gloomy and spooky campaign. I think Everyclick will be more successful.

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IAB's Search Marketing Code of Conduct

Here in the UK the Internet Advertising Bureau has published their first Search Marketing Code of Conduct.

The plan is to expand on it. Right now the Code has four main points. The IAB have given firms until the end of the year to meet each one of them (if they don’t then they don’t get to display the IAB’s Search Marketing Code of Conduct badge).

The agency must have two or more dedicated employees for search marketing and they must have Google Professional Accreditation.

The agency must have been trading for six months and be a member of one of the following: IAB UK, IAB Europe, the Direct Marketing Association, the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organisation or the Association of Business to Business Agencies.

In addition to expanding the Search Code of Conduct the IAB have plans to extend this to affiliate marketers and trademarketing issues in search marketing.

There is news coverage at Brand Republic and I expect NMA will get it in print shortly. I expect Search Engine Land and WebProNews will pick this up too. I'll add the hyperlinks as/when that happens.

So, what do you think? Will search agencies rush to qualify for the IAB's new logo? Is this a boost for SEMPO?

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Find the agency

BlueBoomerang have put together a rather addictive work out the agency game.

It took us a little while in the office to guess them all. The good news is that we're lucky enough to be featured. I'd say that along with Chemistry, Inferno, Wheel and Circus Communications that bigmouthmedia are one of the easiest to guess! So there's no excuse in getting us wrong!

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Another super merger coming?

Aegis and their Isobar group must be one of Google's biggest customers. They may be Google's biggest.

Aegis is one of those marketing superbrands that own a enviable collection of other agencies. They own the search firm iprospect and acclaimed agency Glue.

Companies similar to Aegis would be Omnicom, Havas and WPP (who bought the Search firm 24/7 Real Media).

Times have been... interesting for Aegis recently. One of their key share holders in a chap called Vincent Bollore. I think he has about 25%~29% of Aegis. Bollore, doesn't, however have any presence on Aegis' board.

Is that a bit odd?

There's a reason for it - Bollore also owns Havas. Havas is a serious competitor to Aegis. Aegis' current board reckon there's a serious conflict of interest there. However, while Bollore has these shares we tends to petition for board access. Let's not use phrases like "civil war" as that's far too dramatic but there are certainly hugely significant votes on the subject.

As you might expect there has been the natural speculation that Aegis and Havas might merge [free sub required].

They might. I don't think that's the mega merger the market has in mind, though.

Partly due to these difficulties and also due to the decline of traditional media (against the rise of digital media spend (yay, go team digital)) Aegis' shares have been under performer. They should be higher than they are.

In other words; it's a good time to buy shares in Aegis.

The City reckons it's such a good time to buy shares in Aegis that someone might buy the whole company.

Likely buyers would have to be agencies like Publicis or WPP. If WPP buy Aegis then 24/7 and iProspect would be brothers. If Publicis buy Aegis then Starcom, Isobar and iProspect will be brothers.

Here in the UK (and elsewhere in the world) Google incentives media spenders to grow their AdWords and try new things. This incentive is a form of a rebate - money back from Google.

If there was a merger of, say, Aegis and Publicis then I would wager that Google UK would find themselves paying hundreds of thousands of pounds to the new company.

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LinkedSEO at LinkedIn

I was just updating my linkedin account (which I rarely find time to do - but should do more often) and was distracted by the "LinkedSEO" group. It's an invite only group for, you guessed it, SEO.

One of the features I like best about the web site is the ability to drill down to a geographic location (American city or country) and see who's the most linked in. Here's the top 15 connected SEOs in the United Kingdom. I know some of them!

Rank	Name	Connections	Recommendations	Title	Location
1	David Deutsch	500+	11	Online Marketing Professional (DD@2bc.us)	United Kingdom
2	Giotto De Filippi [giotto5@sardan.com]	500+	10	Search Engine Optimization	United Kingdom
3	David Rosam	500+	4	Search Engine Optimized Copywriting, Online Strategy and Pay Per Click specialist	United Kingdom
4	Mike Nott	500+	4	Head of Search Marketing at PartyGaming Plc	United Kingdom
5	Francesco Maugeri	500+	1	Sem, seo and digital marketing specialist	United Kingdom
6	Rob Kerry	324	3	evilgreenmonkey - SEO Consultant & Search Marketing Expert	United Kingdom
7	Gilles Bourdin	203	1	COO and partner at NetBooster Search Marketing	United Kingdom
8	James Sandoval	188	3	Technology & Analytics Director, Neo@Ogilvy (London)	United Kingdom
9	Jason Hall	162	0	Director, Search Engine Marketing at Shopzilla.com	United Kingdom
10	Aurelia Noel	156	8	Senior Manager, Strategic Marketing	United Kingdom
11	Alex Horstmann	125	7	Senior User Interface Engineer at Tideway Systems Ltd	United Kingdom
12	Rob Collyer	120	5	Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Specialist, Web Developer & Programmer	United Kingdom
13	Matt Peskett	119	5	Managing Director - Firetop Limited	United Kingdom
14	Andrew Girdwood	117	0	Head of Search at bigmouthmedia	United Kingdom
15	Jeremy Sulzmann	109	2	Content & SEO Lead - Social Media at AOL Europe	United Kingdom

Well done to David. If you're called David you've a 2/5 chance of being in the top 5 :)

On a more serious note it's good to see Rob Kerry/ evilgreenmoney from SEW's forums listed so high - shows that the voice of the forums is planted firmly in the middle of the SEO community.

The full list is here on LinkedSEO and if you know me at all then my profile is public too.

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iCrossing - not buying any more natural search agencies

I was lucky enough to go to a mini-conference on Mergers and Acquisitions of Digital Agencies this evening which was hosted by Results International.

Results International are the company which helped broker the Spannerworks and iCrossing deal. It was insightful to see how they calculated the worth of a digital agency. I'll have to try and reserve engineer around the amounts rumoured for the Spannerworks deal.

Don Scales from iCrossing was one of the key speakers (alongside Google, Profero and i-Level). He had some interesting comments. He said outright that iCrossing would not be buying another Natural Search company.

One of the key alignments in the Spannerworks deal was that Herzog got on well with Arjo of Spannerworks.

Scales stressed the importance of Analytics. I expect iCrossing will make one or two more acquisitions this year. Probably in Europe. If they're not going to be Natural Search then perhaps in data mining, analytics or perhaps even ad server technology.

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SEM agencies in the UK - A Google Bird's eye view

I'm drinking chili beer. This might be why I've decided to blog a "Google bird's" eye view of Search Marketing agency offices in the United Kingdom.

It's interesting to see who has offices where Google Maps has high resolution / close up images and who is yet to benefit from the close ups! It's also quirky to see just how nearby some agency's offices are!

I also have to say that the green arrow is often in the wrong place. Google gets near (ish) but its common for the wrong building or block to be selected.

The agencies, off the top of my head, are listed in alphabetic order. If you want added to the list then give me a buzz!

Ambergreen - Edinburgh



bigmouthmedia - Edinburgh



bigmouthmedia - London



bigmouthmedia - Manchester



Greenlight - London



I Spy - London



Latitude - London



Latitude - Warrington



Neutralize (*\*) - Cornwall



Propellernet - Brighton



Spannerworks - Brighton




The Search Works - London



The Search Works - Shropshire



Weboptimiser Media - London

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Note to online brands: Don't let head-hunters jeopardise your SEM campaign

There is a lack of strong SEM professionals in the UK. There is a shortage of good PPC people and an even worse shortage of good SEO people. Gosh. If you're looking for someone savvy on both fronts then you are in for a search (oh, there's a touch of irony in there).

Imagine the scenario. You're a brand who lives or dies online. It might be that PPC is especially important to you. It may be that you've grown to the point where you do run the occasional TV campaign or direct marketing push but it is still largely Google who delivers you traffic.

You need to recruit. You may be after a Head of Search or some senior PPC or SEO role. You bring in the head-hunters. What will the head-hunters do?

The chances are high that the head-hunters will start to ring around the large and well known SEM agencies. These are the same agencies who might manage your rivals PPC or SEO campaigns. If head-hunters have the exclusive rights to your vacancy then they won't be shy in dropping your name in an attempt to lure in senior agency staff.

The attempt is likely to have unwelcome side-effects for you, though. Your head-hunters have just told the people tasked with matching and beating your online strategy that you are missing a key member of staff, are about to loose a key member of staff or are about to bring in a significant new member of staff.

Simple things like bidding technologies get reviewed when a new Head of Search arrives. If I discover that Brand X is looking for a new Head of Search then I'll put Brand X's search campaign on watch (if it's not on watch already). Let's see if they change from Atlas to Doubleclick, for example. That'll mean their AdWord campaign is likely to have to regain its history. Let's expect the new guy to try and make a strong start so let's watch out for new microsites, a new organic strategy or a review of affiliate networks.

Of course, all this applies to any other industry. If Brand X hires a new advertising agency then you know a new style of advert is likely. Old imagery, catchphrases or jingles may go. However, I argue the effect is even more extreme in the world of search. Why? There are fewer players and so head-hunters are much more likely to let the cat out of the bag and approach someone tasked to go against you. Tracking, bidding, linking, building, affiliations and copywriting are all externally measurable.

There are people out there watching you.

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Blogs, blogs, blogs

"Blogs, blogs, blogs" - haha, no - not trying to keyword stuff. This is an aggregate post on blogs.

I've re-jigged my blogroll (and called it a blogroll for the first time too). I still read the blogs I've taken off but just thought they were either inappropriate for this blog's blogroll or unnecessary for the blogroll. I don't need to recommend Google's main blog to you, do I?

I've added Hoachi's excellent Googlified, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim (and credit to Jordan McCollum's contributions too) and I've added SEO by the SEA too. One of the early "wins" from this blog has been my discovery of SEO by the SEA.

I've also added a link to e-Consultancy too. I tried to slyly make that blogroll point directly at my new expert blogger status there but just couldn't do it! It seemed too much like a cheap trick. I'm really pleased to be blogging at e-consultancy. The additional blog gives me the chance to talk more about SEM to an audience interested in learning about SEM or hearing what professional SEMers from agencies have to say.

Here's a recommendation for you. Andy Beal's hit on another clever idea and is asking for suggestions of RSS feeds worth subscribing too. This isn't re-hashing the 'A-list' of blogs but Andy's attempt to unearth blogs worth reading that aren't counted among the 'A-list'. I'm using the post to talent scout too!

The 'A-list'. Meh. What a horrible phrase. I remember clearly that one of the reasons I started this blog was because of frustration at the unhelpful cliques on the forums. Are people beginning to get annoyed at the blogging cliques now too? Yes - based on the grapevine today. Much of this started when Michael Gray asked 'non A-list' to stop blogging. I think this was un-intentional linkbait though I'm sure he'd argue it was intentional now!

I'm not an A-list blogger. I only kick started this blog at the start of the year. I get more traffic to my Bom Chicka Wah Wah post than to my homepage at times. I don't really deserve to be an 'A-list' blogger either because I simply don't have the time to give to this blog. However I am aware of a real difference between 'A-list' bloggers and Search Marketing consultants with experience of, say, an annual $2,000,000 PPC campaign, or an SEO campaign across 20 countries, three creative agencies, four production teams, six project planners and co-ordination with a multi-million pound TV campaign.

I'm not saying that simply working at a large and successful Search agency makes you 'A-list' in anyway but there cannot be many marketing disciplines where the collective voice of so many SME's out weighs the reputation of the heavy-hitters.

In some ways this is a good thing. This innovation and transparency in the forefront. If Jo Blogger discovers a Google bug they'll blog about it and lap up the traffic. I won't do that. If I discover a Google bug then I'm emailing that off to contacts in Google. I reckon, since I started this blog, I've written two such emails that could have put this blog on the main news at Search Engine Land. I've been linked to by Techcrunch and ZDNet already this year. Rather than shouting; "Yay!" I winced and worried that I'd blogged too much detail!

I also sometimes wince at what is handed out as canon advice to people in search conferences. My Meta, meta, meta post at e-consultancy touches on that. I so often hear SME SEO dismiss the Robots meta tag. That's fair to a point but the larger the project then the more important future proofing becomes. This is sometimes an example of a so-called 'A-list' blogger not being able to translate their skills to an 'A-list' client roster.

Also on the negative side of having so many passionate, intelligent but relatively small consultancies and companies set the SEO agenda is that it keeps the industry feeling 'cottage' rather than looking like the multi-billion offering it is.

Lisa Barone, over at the Bruce Clay blog, is an example of someone who does really well at getting that mix right. She writes from one of the bigger SEO agencies, but writes in a style which captures the attention of the SEO blog community, she writes about issues appropriate to both a blog and a client-based readership and writes about them to an appropriate depth. The Bruce Clay blog does not feel cottage!

Do I have a conclusion? I do. I'm disagreeing with Gray. I don't want less famous search bloggers to stop writing. I want them to keep on writing. I also want to see more blog posts akin to what we get from The Lisa and Gord Hotchkiss. I want to see blog posts from bigger SEM agencies or full service agencies who try and offer SEO and PPC to their clients!

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Bom Chicka Wah Wah

There's a Lynx ad running on UK TV with the catch phrase "Bom Chicka Wah Wah". A guy introduces his sexy girlfriend to his parents. His father visits the loo and accidentally squirts himself with some of his son's Lynx. As a result the girlfriend rips the father's clothes off. This is a reason to buy Lynx.

The catch phrase "Bom Chicka Wah Wah" is uttered by the foxy girlfriend. I've preferred other Lynx ads but the special thing about this ad is that it creates a keyphrase. Bom Chicka Wah Wah would score about 50% in the phone test. If you have to spell a domain name or keyphrase out down the phone then the domain/phrase fails the phone test. Bom Chicka Wah Wah is pleasant on the ear but it doesn't translate so easily into a search term as, for example, "quote me happy" did.

Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) do the TV advert and, I think, the Flash website staring Kelly Brook, so I'm going to assume that they do the search too. BBH get some things right - they spell out "Bom Chicka Wah Wah" at the end of the TV advert so we can see how to spell it.

There's also a paid search campaign which not only picks up [Bom Chicka Wah Wah] but [Bom Chicka] too. Don't search and click (that's mean) you can find the flash site at Lynx Players.


Of course, it would be better if the site had organic rankings for the phrase too. That would have been easy enough to do. Lynx Players, being in Flash, will always struggle organically.

The analytics geek in me also hopes that the URL ?ref=index.php is there to allow deep linking into the Flash movie and not for the tracking. If you've visiting the site from this blog then you're not coming from index.php at all and that's exactly why tracking by URL is so prone to corruption.

Next time, hopefully, Lynx will have an organically search safe page in place to catch any of the traffic that [bom chicka wah wah] might create for them - and save themselves the PPC costs.

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