10/28/2005 12:50:00 AM|W|P|Sage|W|P|I've been looking for just this stat. These are numbers from 2003, so the change is probably quite significant now. But it is still pretty interesting: Internet Use by State|W|P|113047860274387004|W|P|Internet Use by State|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/26/2005 11:30:00 AM|W|P|Sage|W|P|OK. For those of you who are watching this sort of thing, we are now in Stage 2 of the Jagger, October Update. There is supposed to be a third and probably final update in another week. You can read what Google engineer, Matt Cutts has to say: Matt Cutts: Jagger 2 Update Info|W|P|113034425654197143|W|P|Matt Cutts: - Jagger 2 Update Info|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/31/2005 09:26:00 AM|W|P|

Heather|W|P|I never saw a Stage 2 of this. Just Stage 1 followed by some sort of rollback. YMMV.10/24/2005 12:47:00 PM|W|P|Sage|W|P|Joel Cheesman has a link to Skaffe.com, a directory that's having a $2 listing sale. It's a good deal and worth the time and 2 bucks. Check it out: Cheesman's Online Recruitment Blog: no-brainer, $2 backlink|W|P|113017602566504764|W|P|$2 Directory Listing|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/22/2005 08:46:00 AM|W|P|Sage|W|P|If you haven't heard, Adwords has a new keyword popularity tool. I wanted to give you some links to content about it. Today is Rocky's birthday, so I've been really busy setting up some fun things setup for her and haven't had a chance to check out the tool in detail. But it looks promising. Here are some links: Search Engine Watch Forum: New Keyword Popularity Tool Debuts in Adwords Accounts a href="http://toprank.blogspot.com/2005/10/google-updates-adwords-keyword-tool.html">Online Marketing Blog: Google Updates AdWords Keyword Tool screen shots Google Adds New Keyword Research Tool at Search Engine Guide That'll get you started.|W|P|112998877019163040|W|P|New Keyword Popularity Tool Debuts in Adwords Accounts|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/22/2005 09:34:00 PM|W|P|

Bobby Blogger|W|P|Nice site. Check out my Google Adwords Site.10/22/2005 08:38:00 AM|W|P|Sage|W|P|Check out this article about getting content on your site: Free Content for Your Small Business Site Jennifer has some good ideas here as how to quickly add content to your site. I'm all for it. But keep in mind that this is not going to be a tremendous asset as far as search engines are concerned. They are continually beefing up their algorithm to remove duplicate content from their listings of popular key phrases. If you want good search listings, original content is the name of the game. It always has been and always will be. But if you are looking to be a super resource for your visitors, then you should consider Jennifer's recommendations.|W|P|112998832463758370|W|P|Free Content for Your Small Business Site|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/21/2005 09:04:00 AM|W|P|Sage|W|P|I feel it's important to discuss this current Google Update. It is turning into a major shift in the Google listings... at least at this point. You might check your log files for the last couple days and see if your Google traffic has changed substantially. As an example, SageRock.com is currently getting almost no traffic from Google. On Friday, October 14 it was our number 1 referrer and now it is not on the list. I will say that we are still getting traffic from the Google Blog search but that's about it right now. There is no official word as of yet, as to why this is happening. The only semi-official word is coming from Matt Cutts who feels that this update will happen over several weeks. Many, many sites are experiencing this drop in Google. If it is happening to you I currently recommend that you do nothing. I repeat, do nothing at this point. The feeling is that there will be a correction at Google. We'll just have to wait and see. In many ways, this is a good thing. If you currently rely on Google for most of your business, now is the time to start thinking of other ways to diversify your traffic. Look to getting more traffic on Yahoo and MSN. Look to get links on respected vertical portals in your market. Become a respected vertical portal in your market. Relying on the free traffic of Google for all of your business is highly risky. I'll keep an eye on this update and let you know if we find out anything new. If you are interested in all of the details, there's a good analysis and speculation by Michael Martinez here: Notes On October 2005 Google Update -> High Rankings? Search Engine Optimization Forum Matt Cutts, a Google engineer has a couple posts here: Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO � More weather reporting Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO � Update Jagger: Contacting Google To make matters worse (in a the-world-must-be-ending kind of way) Webmasterworld is done and has been down for some time. That's unfortunate being that they get the naming rights to each of these updates. Fortunately, you can get to WMW here: Google Update Jagger Continues|W|P|112990346137046185|W|P|October 2005 Google Update - Jagger|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/21/2005 09:00:00 AM|W|P|Sage|W|P|Well that's nice to hear. Yahoo Drops $20 Monthly Minimum Spend Requirement|W|P|112990320855471266|W|P|Yahoo Drops $20 Monthly Minimum Spend Requirement|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/19/2005 02:37:00 PM|W|P|Sage|W|P|This is great! If you are a blogger run right over here and read all about blog usability... Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)|W|P|112975064131844240|W|P|Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/19/2005 01:53:00 PM|W|P|Sage|W|P|This is about as official as it comes. There's a new Google Update... Update Jagger and here's Matt Cutts' take on it. He's a Google engineer: Matt Cutts - Update Jagger|W|P|112974803610852364|W|P|Matt Cutts - Update Jagger|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/19/2005 01:50:00 PM|W|P|Sage|W|P|For some reason, this is interesting to me. Jottings.com - 100 oldest dot com domains|W|P|112974781258853327|W|P|Jottings.com - 100 oldest dot com domains|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/17/2005 02:57:00 PM|W|P|Sage|W|P|This is not specifically about web marketing. But I wanted to talk a minute about branding. This article from Fast Company really helped clarify branding for me: Obsessive Branding Disorder Here are some of the more interesting snippets from the article:

"Branding doesn't mean you have to be flashy or loud or scream your value proposition, but you have to know who you are," Remove the hype, and branding is just commonsense strategy, rebranded. To successfully build a brand, says INSEAD marketing professor Amitava Chattopadhyay, "is to communicate your key value proposition to the key customer segment, and do so in an integrated and consistent way." In other words, Business 101. Run a good business, and your brand will follow.

I feel that we all are being hoodwinked by branding experts a bit on this. I would like to boil this down a bit. First, in English, what is branding? It's a brand... that's all. It's Tide, Wal-Mart, Harley Davidson, Coke. It makes you feel something. Everything that you have an emotional connection to is branded. It has a brand. People's names have a brand. Some names people love. Some names people hate. If something makes you feel a certain way before you know anything about it, it's been branded to you. Branding is people's perception. The reason I'm telling you this is that a marketing agency can't brand you. You have already been branded. If you are mean, and grumpy... not even the most flashy, happiest web site, brochure or anything is going to change that. Further, you don't need some expensive agency to tell you what your brand is. In fact, they probably shouldn't. If you are warm and heartfelt and that's how you treat your customers... tell them you are warm and heartfelt. Tell them of things you did that were warm and heartfelt. You are just confirming what is already there. If you want to be something you are not, then I guess I don't know what to tell you. Just stop it and be who you are. You can't make yourself into a brand because that's what people want. It will never work. Everyone will see right through it. Does this all make sense? If Harley Davidson was run by buttoned up tight asses, they would be a failure. Harley Davidson is run by people who love Harley Davidson's and everything that it's about. If you don't know who you are, start asking people. Ask your customers, employees, friends. Ask them all why they continue to hang around you. Poof. There's your brand. Now I've just saved you a minimum of $10,000. |W|P|112957904774581620|W|P|Obsessive Branding Disorder|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/15/2005 07:51:00 PM|W|P|Sage|W|P|Matt Cutts blog has really been great in varifying things I have said before. Matt is an engineer from Google. When he says something about the technicality of Google, you can pretty much hang your hat on it. This post is about moving your site from one web host to another. It's fairly technical, but here's the jist:

Put your site up on the other server.
Keep your other site online
Change your domain name to the new server.
Watch your logs to see watch Googlebot and all other spiders.
Don't take down your site until they start spidering the new domain.
Then you can take down the other site.

And that's the official word on moving to another domain. There's also a DNS easter egg in this post too. If you are in charge of people's hosting please read this post: Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO ? Moving to a new web host|W|P|112942386509335993|W|P|Matt Cutts - Moving to a new web host|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/15/2005 07:31:00 PM|W|P|Sage|W|P|Take a look at this recommended links page that Jim suggests. Really good: Jim Boykin�s SEO Thoughts ? Blog Archive ? Link Pages are Dead - Long Live Content Pages.|W|P|112942271567502753|W|P|Jim Boykin - Link Pages are Dead - Long Live Content Pages.|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/15/2005 07:24:00 PM|W|P|Sage|W|P|Here's an interesting post from Giovanni Gallucci on seo friendly content management systems and shopping carts. He promises to write more on this topic. I'm looking forward to it. The Agency Blog: A Plethora of SEO-Friendly Options for Internet Retailers|W|P|112942227941322933|W|P|SEO-Friendly Options for Internet Retailers|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/15/2005 05:11:00 PM|W|P|Sage|W|P|The class I'm teaching asked about having a list of some free search engine optimization tools. Lucky for me, Search Engine Guide put just such a list together: Free SEO Tools|W|P|112941429529863716|W|P|Free SEO Tools|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/14/2005 12:15:00 PM|W|P|Sage|W|P|

77 percent of adults who research online before making a purchase decision use search engines.
40 percent of those conducting online research go to search engines first
57 percent use retailer Web sites to research products before making a decision.
81 percent of college students rated search engines as the best source of information
friends and family were rated best by 64 percent of students
while just 34 percent said traditional media was their best source of information.
New Research on How We Search|W|P|112931015550214563|W|P|New Research on How We Search|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/14/2005 08:27:00 AM|W|P|Sage|W|P|Jill Whalen has put up a nice top 10 list of things to do to get on top of the search engine results. You can find that here: New and Improved 10 Tips to the Top This list is of interest to me, because her number 1 tip is to not buy a new domain. The age of a domain is getting a lot of weight these days. This would have never been in a top 10 list such as this even a year ago.|W|P|112929647983339028|W|P|10 Tips To Get On Top Of The Engines|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/12/2005 08:24:00 PM|W|P|Sage|W|P|
Paul Bruemmer, a veteran search engine marketer known within the industry for his business knowledge and insight, has joined Bruce Clay, Inc. in the newly created position of Principal Business Analyst. Bruemmer held senior management positions in many well-known search engine marketing firms including TrademarkSEO, Web Ignite Corporation and WebSpecialist, LLC. Paul Bruemmer is widely known as an industry columnist, having written articles for ClickZ, Pandia, MarketingProfs, iMediaConnection, and SitePoint. Paul Bruemmer has also been a featured speaker at the Search Engine Strategies Conference, the industry's premier conference for search engine marketing and optimization.
The shifts going on in our industry are very interesting. Paul Bruemmer - Veteran Search Engine Marketer - Joins Bruce Clay, Inc. Thanks for the link, Andy.|W|P|112916667861552843|W|P|Paul Bruemmer - Veteran Search Engine Marketer - Joins Bruce Clay, Inc.|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/12/2005 08:12:00 PM|W|P|Sage|W|P|Jim Boykin's SEO Thoughts Blog is turning into my favorite search marketing blog. Check out this post on what to do when someone emails you to do a link request. It's a very direct, truthful how-to: Will the real link request please stand up?|W|P|112916593100944567|W|P|Jim Boykin - Will the real link request please stand up?|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/12/2005 06:41:00 AM|W|P|Sage|W|P|Here's another cool Google Map hack that overlays Census 2000 Report information on a Google Map: Google Maps Census|W|P|112911726555849524|W|P|Google Maps Census|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/11/2005 12:06:00 PM|W|P|Sage|W|P|I've been weeding through the SageRock Blog week after week trying to find the same articles to print of clients and prospects. These are a few articles that came out fairly recently that we've commented on. But I wanted to put them in one place (mostly for my handiness). But these are excellent articles to use if you are trying to validate doing any kind of search marketing: Search engine marketers tell all in a recent survey conducted by MarketingSherpa Study finds SEO produces better returns for more online marketers than PPC Internet ad revenue climbs 26 percent | Tech News on ZDNet Top Search Engines in September Are Your Competitors Making Better Use of the Web Than You?|W|P|112905041268032353|W|P|Search Marketing Statistics in September and October 2005|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/11/2005 08:01:00 AM|W|P|Sage|W|P|There are some interesting happenings going on at search marketing companies. And they're happening for "distinct philisophical differences". Top executives from Zunch have spun off into a new company called Kinetic Results. And Andy Beal (a bit of a star in the web marketing world) has moved from WebSourced to start his own firm: Fortune Interactive. I've followed the Zunch blog written by Giovanni Gallucci, Zunch's former president and COO here: The Agency Blog He discusses this shift a bit. He goes on to say that, "(http://www.kineticresults.com) is a full service interactive marketing agency with specialties in search engine optimization and placement, website design and Microsoft Certified application development. Kinetic Results also maintains offices in New York." You can read the entire Clickz article here: Zunch Execs Jump Ship, Join Together This industry is always moving. But with blogs, rss and vertical portals, there are a lot of different ways to go. All of these options are likely making people unsure if their company is choosing the right direction.|W|P|112903567417481913|W|P|Search Marketing Firms Restructuring|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/10/2005 11:56:00 AM|W|P|Sage|W|P|You should be aware that it appears Yahoo is changing ad copy without any approval from the advertiser. Keep an eye out for this sort of thing. It would not be difficult for Yahoo to misrepresent you: Yahoo! Search Marketing Changing Ad Copy|W|P|112896341136139669|W|P|Yahoo! Search Marketing Changing Ad Copy|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/08/2005 07:47:00 AM|W|P|Sage|W|P|Here's another list of the top search ranking factors. This one is put out by Rand Fiskin: Top Ten List Of Search Ranking Factors|W|P|112877566877553714|W|P|Top Ten List Of Search Ranking Factors|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/08/2005 07:43:00 AM|W|P|Sage|W|P|There are a lot tools for optimization. But Bill Hartzer just posted an article here about OptiSpider: Better Search Marketing Insight with OptiSpider The program gives you a clear view of what the search engines are seeing when they see your site. He makes is sound pretty interesting. It will run you $98, though. Take a look: OptiSpider� - Site Linking Analyzer|W|P|112877541375599915|W|P|OptiSpider� - Site Linking Analyzer|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/06/2005 12:30:00 PM|W|P|Sage|W|P|I'm seeing more and more hosting companies that are not opening up ftp access to the entire Internet. If you are using Blogger and your hosting company only allows specific ip addresses to ftp into their server, here's the info you need:
If you are using Blogger to publish to your own website and your host blocks by IP, you will need to allow through the IPs of the new Blogger pubishers. The IPs are 66.102.15.83 and 216.34.7.186.
Blogger Help : What are the IPs of the Blogger publisher?|W|P|112861985040337894|W|P|Blogger IP Address|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/05/2005 12:34:00 PM|W|P|Sage|W|P|This piece has been out for a couple weeks. But I wanted to give you a link to it, if you haven't seen it yet. This organizes factors search engines use to determine ranking. It's quite comprehensive. SEOmoz | Search Engine Ranking Factors|W|P|112853365333624079|W|P|SEOmoz | Search Engine Ranking Factors|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/05/2005 09:17:00 AM|W|P|Sage|W|P|
According to Interland's survey, 54% of small businesses are currently using search engine optimization, that's compared to 20% that are running pay-per-click campaigns.
There are more and more studies being put out that are showing how aggressive businesses are getting with search marketing. If you are the 46% that aren't doing search engine optimization, take a minute and ask yourself why. Are Your Competitors Making Better Use of the Web Than You?|W|P|112852184798775905|W|P|Are Your Competitors Making Better Use of the Web Than You?|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/03/2005 10:19:00 AM|W|P|Sage|W|P|In preparation for the Search Engine Optimization Class I'm putting on at Cleveland State, I've updated the SEO Resources links that I'll be using during the class. You can check them out here: SageRock: SEO Resources - Web Marketing Blog|W|P|112835274457339856|W|P|SageRock SEO Resources Updated|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com10/03/2005 10:16:00 AM|W|P|Sage|W|P|I'm happy to report that my search engine optimization class is full steam ahead for tomorrow night at Cleveland State. I would suspect you could still get in if you would like. There's information about it here: Ohio Web Marketing: Learn SEO at Cleveland State My hourly rate is $200 and this is going to be 4, 3 hour classes. The entire class is $300. You simply are not going to get this kind of exposure to seo at this kind of price. So, give it some thought and sign up. I'd love to have you there.|W|P|112835259647966090|W|P|SEO at Cleveland State is Full Go!|W|P|sagerock@gmail.com