Yup….I’ve been awaiting this one now for a few weeks, as it usually comes out in full summer and after a quick read of the TOC, I’m not going to be disappointed again this year! Again, the firm is using almost a couple of thousand different agencies, company, firms and SMBs to track just what the whole search marketing channel is all about – and the numbers are surprising in some areas for sure, eh!

The superb marketing mavens over at MarketingSherpa have again published their annual 2012 Search Marketing Report and it’s the kind of item you need to read if any of the following questions might be of help to you…

• What impact has social marketing had on SEO?
• How are marketers aligning their search marketing objectives and overcoming the most difficult SEO challenges?
• What is the usage, effectiveness and level of effort required for SEO tactics and content products?
• How are organizations allocating marketing dollars and where they are shifting their efforts?
• What are marketers doing to fare well in local and mobile search results?
• How do agencies view their clients’ SEO and inbound marketing efforts?

And yes, I know that for us SMB owners, one of the hardest things to do is to find the time to work “on” your business and and “in” it…and this is exactly the kind of curated material that can help you win that battle!

I’m still pouring over Chapter 7, that talks specifically on Local Search which is an education all in itself and then Chapter 8 deals with Mobile search…a new channel for many of our clients and well..there goes my long weekend, eh!

Give it a read, and a note once again, that the full report does have a cost…but this is exactly the kind of money that you spend to educate yourself on what the whole industry is up to…where the stats are and what tactics based on what strategy are for the best in Canadian online marketing, eh!

Well worth the click for an SMB owner/founder in my mind…

First up today, is Experian, the folks who run hitwise.com, the site that provides insight and tracks how millions of users use their 1 million website network and then provide cool stats and research on same….and for today, you might want to take a look/see over at this canuck URL. What impresses me, as usual I might add as I take this click at least a couple of times a month, is that over the past few months the type and timbre of the most used search engine keywords and phrases once again mirrors our common culture!

As you will note, the terms are pretty much what one would expect with the usual Facebook and youtube entries (are there really folks who do NOT know those sites and need to search for same is maybe the hidden question here???) but there are a couple of new ones that I especially like and can’t figure out why they’re so dang popular. Take “plenty of fish” for example…how did that make the list — does it relate to the dating site of the same name or what you friends counselled when you had that big breakup with your ex last week? Dunno…and there is no way to tell, either…but that’s an anomoly IMHO! And oh, “rbc online banking” made the top 10 list too…gee, I wonder what canuck demographic might have needed to look them up and how that might be date-stamped from the end of RRSP season about 8 weeks ago….

Very interestingly, you can also see the “fast moving” search terms too….and while I suspect it might be because I’m “out of the cultural” loop on many of same, I would also have to admit that I had no idea why “martha graham” would be gaining so much interest or “derek boogaard” is, was or were….dance and hockey nothwithstanding. Go. Take a look and bookmark same…pretty nifty canuck stats are compiled here all the time so kudos to Experian, eh!

Ian Lurie is pretty much the “SEO’s SEO!” So very well known by so many of us SEO types, his speaking at conferences is always sold out, his book has got to be a best seller and for the most part, I’d suspect that he’s constantly busy and about as harried as any SEO practitioner up at the top of their craft could ever be! That said, I read his blog daily and always find “nuggets” that I file away for further print/read/ponder status for my offline working hours (not that there are many of same, eh!). And this URL here, entitled “Log Files bring Sexy Back!” has been in my “to do” list for over a month and I just got to it this Tuesday past…and now am kicking myself for not reading it 10 weeks ago….sigh!

As Ian points out –

“None of this stuff is sexy. No one’s going to call you an SEO ninja for doing it. But SEO is about lots of little details. You win at SEO with a tool belt, not a black belt. So put in the time to figure this stuff out. Or, end up on the asphalt…”

– and he’s exactly right, eh! This is truly slogging thru line after line…but as I got to this first thing this Wednesday past for a couple of our client’s site logs and then pounded away at the various filtering of that data – it has become apparent to me, that this “log based research” can be truly invaluble. That and the notation that he believes that Excel “chokes” at around 70k worth of lines is nice to see…in that I always thought some of our logs suicided at around 55k…so I must be doing something else wrong, eh…sigh…

And finally today, is the link over to a new blogger that I’ve discovered only recently, Brian Clark over at copyblogger.com…and great find it is too, eh! Brian and this URL click, on “The Ultimate Guide to Twitter” came to me just last week, and I would like one and all to know that this is a real boon for those of us who’ve clients who need help and support on their social media campaigns and Twitter. This piece was written by Gabrielle Conde as a guest post, and yes here’s the link to her own very social media on-point blog at missionengage.com too…. This piece is a great place to start, to vet your campaign goals, to get tools to help and viewpoints to ponder as you work your magic on the “Twitter-verse” and I’m like only about 30% thru these dozens and dozens and dozens of links and my notes are already totalling over  9 pages of tips and best-practices….

So give this one a whirl you DIY SEO types…but do clear your schedule…as it takes time to ponder these items!

Yup, this new program, just launched,  offers up to any Canadian business the opportunity to get a free website, a free hosting deal, free tools to help build that site and a dot.ca domain address…and who’s footing the bill for this? Ah….well…it appears that this is from Google, RBC bank, Rogers Communications, the Globe & Mail, CIRA and a Toronto based firm called Silver Lining Ltd.

This is interesting….and as you’ve most likely alredy clicked on this link, and read the whole ITBusiness Canada story on same, you should have noted the following items….especially from a Canadian SEO point of view.

That CIRA, our  non-profit authority governing dot-ca domain names in Canada says that they’re not giving away a single .ca domain…but that Google is buying each and every one of them on behalf of the up to 1,000,000 Canadian businesses who dont have a website. With only about 1.5 million .ca sites created since the start of the internet, this kind of a new domain creating initiative would be a real boon for those of us who love our .ca’s….and specially good for those of us who market to just that kind of an audience for all things SEO! Good news, eh!

That other discounted Web and business services are being tossed into Google’s CIRA program by it’s partners. Silver Lining is offering its business planning software up for a free month, and then a discounted price of $365 for a year – the software typically costs $1,000 per year, sure they’ll attempt to latch onto some of the program members, but that’s not a bad thing, IMHO. And yes, there’s other deals available from various partners and some AdSense offers too….you do need to go and take a look/see….honest!

But to really see what’s offered – at least what is planned at this point, you need to go to the “Get your Business Online” site here…and see and read and learn….and here’s what the partners have to say about their goals for this program –

“The Internet is where the majority of Canadians go to find what they want and where more Canadians are buying what they want. Businesses without an online presence are missing out on a huge opportunity to find new customers, and to have new customers find them. We believe that any business, no matter how big or small, can grow and succeed online…”

Terrific deal in our mind…as “free” is always good, eh! We’ve signed up to be a full supporter of this and I’d hope that if you’ve a .ca of your own – or if you’re looking for a free one, that you’ll take the plunge to get online now — for free!

Awhile back, they added a UK version which has been very well received, and as of today, there is a brand spanking-new Canadian version here too!

News about same via David’s blog at the site can be found here….and I can assure you that this was NO  SMALL task…adding in a brand new country with our own specialized citations and listing services, databases and sites was I’m postive a very detail-oriented and heavy task, so right up front, thanks David! And I’m told that they are currently working on a French Canadian language version too, due later this spring.

Oh, and yes, I feel priviliged to have been asked to BETA test this for David along with the rest of our BETA team who can be found here on the site too!

So…so what you ask? Here’s a test for you to do. Go to the new canuck getlisted.org URL and plug in your own business name and postal code (yes, it’s that easy and yes it’s a free service!!!) and what do you see? Here’s a screenshot of my own local Chamber of Commerce for you to see what I see…

As you can see the website app finds the business, and then runs down the right hand side, a list of the best places that you can list your business “with” to increase your stature in Canadian search engines and increase your SEO rankings too. You will also note that there is a % showing as a Listing Score that evaluates where you are already listed and where you’re not listed to give you a ranking according to their algo, to allow you “see” the increases that will be achieved when you do go on to get further listings. And while this business is not an online selling a product site like an e-Commerce site or a services site but a community site….if you think about it, is there any better way to get “higher” in your Canadian SEO rankings than to follow this advice?

Answer is – nope! The getlisted.org site uses the best, most updated series of lists to gain traction for us SEO practitioners and if you’re a DIY SEO business, this is a totally-free service to help you gain the same advantages that we already know about, eh!

How’s that for a great new tool for Canucks, eh!

Similar posts on this can be found here too….

• http://jacksonlo.com/getlisted-org-comes-to-canada-eh/
• http://www.smallbusinessonlinecoach.com/blog/im-news/getlisted-org-gets-all-canadian-on-us/

And, yes I’m ready and chomping at the bit to get at some new SEO tactics I’ve been reading about testing; ready to try a new strategy for a non-profit we just added to our pro-bono client listings; ready to get out to network with some of those new MeetUp types of business groups too…in fact, I’m about as ready as one can be, eh!

So….why this post? And the Mountie calendar showing him getting his dog team ready for a sled trip? ….ahh…glad you asked, eh!

You see, from my POV, the running of an SEO practice “IS” a team effort….tons of juice and power and enthusiasm from the whole team drives us and our clients forward towards our destination…better serp rankings with increased new traffic that leads to conversions and new revenues, eh! A true dog-team and sled approach, in our mind….and as the guy who get’s to yell MUSH I love what I do….but I never ever forget both the team and how and where we find news and tactics and analytics to test on too, eh!

Well, I wanted to say thanks first of all to the 9 blog guest posts that we had up on our site last year. They were all “spot-on” and aimed at our Canuck readers and every single one of them passed on a new tactic or opinion on our own brand of SEO up here and did so with distinction too, eh!

So thanks one and all who contributed to our Canadian SEO blog!

Next, I also thought that I’d add the following 3 items too…from what we’ve gathered over the past 10 days or so on various “new” happenings and notices about SEO for both us SEO types and clients too, to read and learn from and to try to explain what it is we “find” and get some traction on for all of our SEO Campaigns!

One of the biggest Canadian newspapers, our famous Globe & Mail in Toronto has some very interesting stats and forcasts based on their own surveys about Canadians and our online imprint and usage…..so you might want to drop by this URL here to take a look at just how “wired” we all are, eh! A great read and still some surprising Facebook info there on us Canucks too! And yes, this is the kind of info we find daily to update our own knowledge of what drives a client site “UP” in their SEO Campaign serp rankings….we thought you’d want to know that, eh!

So, what about SPAM? Yup, heard about this too, that our vow for 2011, will be that in September 2011, we will begin to fight SPAM….sigh…at least that’s what our Parliament passed as law just a few days ago, eh! At least that’s what the “Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act” or FISA bill states we’ll be doing then. Of course, there’s a lot of other items listed too….some of which IMHO are far overdue…like prohibiting websites, emails and other offers from installing software, plugins or toolbars without permission. Whether or not the “teeth” for this Bill are going to be used (up to a $1 million dollar fine can be levied it appears) remains to be seen…and for those of us  who “receive” the SPAM emails etc, we can file against the SPAMMERs it appears for up to $200 per infraction – up to a maximum of that $1 million dollars a day! Uh-huh…and this I just gotta sit back and watch, eh….sound’s of thousands of lawyers shoes hitting the floor is what I hear, eh!

Ah….last one today is on Brand Mentions…and what I mean by that is how do you track where your brand is mentionned online? You know the kind of posting that a user — either happy or sad or ranting or raving makes about your brand online at any of the social media sites? We already track same for many clients and provide both reports as well as ORM (online reputation management) for same…but what if you’re just thinking about this for the first time? A fellow blogger, Anne Smarty approached this whole topic over at blueglass.com via a mid December posting you can find here. The ones we use for our clients include two of these, but I should add that we also use a paid service too…but the best part of this blog piece is that all 3 that she outlines for you are FREE! Can’t get a better price than that, eh!

So…to close today, the dogs are all hooked up, the sled’s full of this information and many other tactics for 2011…..and yes…we’re off on a whole New Year of SEO sledding for our clients….if you want to come along, just drop by regularily and we’ll try to help, eh!

Now….dogs…let’s GO….MUSH!

That said, and yes, this is a bit outside the norm I’d admit — the newly combined index/algo that runs both BING and Yahoo, is an opportunity waiting to be siezed and this was brought to our own attention from the folks over at Chitika!

What’re we talking about here? Well, as you know most likely already, Google commands (numbers are always in flux and no one can definitively report on any validity here!) about say 70% of the searches done daily, which runs in various online numbers at say something around 3.5 billion a day. That’s the total market size for each and every single search engine and that remember is a daily number!

So, if Google gets say it’s 70% of that 3.5 billion, then that means that Google gets approximately 2.45 billion searches a day. This then leaves about 1 billion or so searches spread out among all the other search engines, of which the BING/Yahoo engine takes approximately 25% — or about 250 million searches a day. Read that? About 250 million searches a day go through the BING/Yahoo index and get reported using their own algo to filter same…and yes, that’s STILL a lot of searches….

Searches it appears that many many many SEO practitioners don’t bother to even optimize for — hence my piece here today and it’s really something to think about, eh!

Chitika reports that from their own network which of course, they monitor closely the following numbers –

That’s  a real  whack of their own network sites that are not optimizing for BING/Yahoo…think about that for a moment….those sites are by default, not even trying to gain traffic from 250 million searches…so what can you take away from this kind of “non-action?”

That they just don’t care. They don’t need the traffic. Their revenues are fine….they ignore new business!

If that sounds like a place that you too, might be in…AND you’d like some new traffic and revenues….then here’s a short list of URLs to go and see what’s involved in adding understanding of  BING/Yahoo optimizations where necessary, to your own sites –

• BING Webmaster Toolbox
• Tim Grice on same with some tips…
• And Rand’s Analysis on this at seomoz is great….

In thinking about this new Google Blend or PlaceSearch, I’ve run hundreds of keywords thru the g.ca index. One such just a few minutes ago was surprising, in that here in Canada, we’re “known” for having better beer that our Yankee friends. Least that’s what my tastebuds have always told me…and I’d think that most Yankees would agree…so I ran “canadian beer” and then “american beer” thru google.ca…and guess what I found?

Yup, strange serps…IMHO!

First, the “canadian beer” serps. This was a bit surprising…in that the full Web Results for this search, showed 1.1 million hits and NOT a single sponsored advert. No top mounted lavendar background ones, no right-hand-sidebar ones either…and not a single Place icon marker in any of the top 10 ranked hits. Molson’s of course, dominated the page and the top image gallery too…this is to be expected I’d surmise….

But a click on Places, to show the new combined/merged LOCAL and Web Results algo, was surprising to me! Give that a try and what do you see? Yup, here’s a screenshot – remembering that my own IP shows Google that I’m a canuck in the Toronto area of Ontario….

The total serp numbers have dropped to 2900+ and that’s a lie as the page shows 4 – and the second and ONLY following page has 1. That’s right, Canada with it’s famous beers and craft brewers now has only 5 beers listed in google.ca…..and even more surprisingly to me, there is a single LOCAL  or Places icon for Molsons…and the 3 links below point to Wikipedia, Molsons and the third points to a simple directory listing. Not a single LOCAL or Places link to any of our countries proud craft brewers, not a single link to any of our huge domestic brewers…

So to me, this shows that google.ca’s new PlaceSearch/Blend has filtered out those breweries, their sites too and as well, more of those many many directories that list hundreds and hundreds of craft brewers who all fought to get some serp rankings over the past decade or so.

And the link at the bottom which shows Google with many more pages is also a faulty link, as when you click on same, you immediately get the normal Google notice that says ”

 In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 4 already displayed.

If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included… and click on the link shows the single Molsons Places icon site alone.

Yes, there are NO more Canadian brewers of Canadian beers listed…sigh….and not a single advertiser either…more surprises, eh!

Oh, the search for Web Results for “american beer” produced, as you can see here, 27 million serp hits, and when drilled down to Places, 290,000 hits with the normal resulting serp reports that we’re all used to…

So what you ask?

Well, I for one as a strong believer that Canuck beer IS beer….feel a bit betrayed by this new Google PlaceSearch/Blend layout & design/serp ranking Report….where did our beer go, eh? Google….please, bring back our beer!

Go to google.ca (note, .ca only…as I can not get this to display on google.com!!!) and then enter a search term. I used my SEO company name of KKT INTERACTIVE and then click on the search button!

What do you see over in the far left hand sidebar…does it look like this screen shot –

So, what’s that? Well, it appears that google is now adding a location modifier to the search engine results page display, that not only tells you where google “thinks” you are — but offers you the ability to change that location, by widening the search area. Here’s the page that google offers you more information on same, and it’s interesting to note this part of the rationale –

“The location used to customize your results is clearly indicated on the left side of your results page. Our location detection technology will automatically set a location for you, or you can easily specify an alternate location…”

Which is true from what I can see. They do know how to find you via your IP or you may have your Google toolbar My Location turned on…and that can be disabled too…ie you can prevent the Toolbar reporting but your IP never lies unless you’re using a proxy. If your IP tho is wrongly reporting your location that google page does have a link to report same (but in my case as you can see, it’s pretty darn close) and sometimes google notes that they cant’ show a location if they can’t determine one….good to know, I think.

That said, are you limited to the results for a web search of the google index, by the location shown? Not at all…as you merely need to enter a wider or narrower location and click on the SET button. For me,  both Ontario and Canada worked fine when I tried to widen the location based results and yes I could also “drill-down” to Waterdown too, my small community.

But what about “widening” the location based area say into North America, or the US, or England etc….all thru the google.ca index?

Nope, you cant do that!!!

Your results out of google.ca are for Canadian based locations only…ie you can’t find say KKT INTERACTIVE in the US. We of course are in the google.com index…but you can’t reach into that index via a search on the google.ca page….

This is new and this is somewhat “okay” with me on a personal level as search based results are so often more relevant when they’re location dependant.

But for our SEO clients up here in Canada…I’m still working on the testing for same — so far since early this am, we’re all okay…but still continuing to test….what do you think about this? Oh, one more point, google.ca does NOT allow you to turn this off….we’re all stuck with the localization of search!

My wife has a birthday coming up and we were watching tv just on the past Thanksgiving weekend….and we both saw the new Apple iPod Nano advert. You know the one with the little 1.5″ square sized iPod that holds like tons of tunes and you can clip it to just about anything? Well, the dang advert showed a hot pink model and my wife jumped at that “color bait” and said she’d absolutely love one. Point made hon….and I just nodded and said yeah, that as they’re so dang brand new, they’d be outta stock for months…and the subject dropped.

Till this am, and my determination to find one, only a pink iPod Nano for her — and that’s the crux of the whole matter, eh!

What I figured to do, was to google for same first — so “pink iPod Nano” went into the google.ca search field and I relied on both geo-targeting and instant to help me. As was expected, I got like almost 3 million hits, but it’s the first page that counts for me — just like the rest of the world. A study of same, showed many local retailers offering up links like Future Shop and ebay.ca and BestBuy and Vistek as well of course as Apple themselves. But I didn’t want to order online, I wanted to use the search engine results to drill down to local retailers, to call them directly by phone till I found a pick iPhone Nano locallly — and then go out and buy it in person.

Sadly, that was not to be the case. While I’m a pretty good search engine user and understand all the vagaries of same, the fact that the iPod Nano is new and therefore must be in short supply somehow evaded my ken…and my calls were all unsuccessful. Lotsa blue ones, silver ones…even black, but not a pink one in stock at more than like 10 stores….I know cause I called ‘em all in the top 20 serps….no luck, sigh!

Then a brainwave…what about Apple themselves. Wouldn’t they have pinks in stock, and yeah, it’s online ordering, but maybe they had a deal…lemmee drill down and YUP! Pink iPod Nanos in stock with free engraving of my wife’s name and free shipping and I got the 16 GB one etc sent to me here for about $15 CDN more than it’d cost me driving say 25 kms to buy in person. I’m guaranteed delivery in days and my wife will be happy — so buying online worked fine…but that’s not the real point here.

What I mean is, I began to wonder afterwords, how “many” of us boomers in the “born-tween-1945-and-1960″ — or the “older” boomers would have done that…and that began research into same for me….and here’s what I found on just that topic, from AdAge’s recent report…

“Grandparent Marketing Group research notes that the boomer generation and millennials are strikingly similar demographic groups. Both number around 80 million and both grew up in some of the U.S.’s most prosperous eras (’50s/’60s and the ’90s).

So it should be no surprise that boomers’ internet behavior is more similar to millennials, according to Pew research. Both groups overwhelmingly use email (91% of boomers/94% of millennials), search engines (88%/89%), research health information (78%/85%), get news (74%/83%) and check out online ratings (30%/31%)…”

Pointedly, the piece goes on to say that us boomers use the internet as a way “to get things done” — which surely worked for my iPhone Nano purchase! Further study from localsearchstudy.com  shows that 56% of us older boomers go right to online searching first and 70% of all search survey respondents replied that they went online FIRST to find local business information, including as I well know on buying a birthday present, eh! Nice to know that I’m “in the pack.”

And, where are you is the question that springs to mind, eh?

Wait one second, first let me just remind you that I’m working in the Hamilton, Ontario, Canada area and yes, I’m logged into my browser using the static IP that I have from my local cable company. I ran this set of Suggest serps from a box using XPPro/SP3 and using IE8 to start with. I then switched over to Win7/Firefox and got the exact same results from, yes…the exact same static IP…and ALL serps were run with my NOT being logged into my account at Google.ca either…fyi….

Here’s the list I got first –

a – air canada
b – bmo
c – canadian tire
d – dictionary
e – ebay
f – facebook
g – gmail
h – hotmail
i – ikea
j – job bank
k – kijiji
l – lotto max
m – mapquest
n – nhl
o – osap
p – paypal
q – quotes
r – rogers
s – skype
t – tsn
u – utube
v – via rail
w – walmart
x – xbox
y – youtube
z – zellers

Pretty normal, I’d think….as I note, all are Canadian oriented items like “b – bm0″ which is our canuck Bank of Montreal (yes, I have accounts there) and “k – kijiji” a local classifieds site that I use daily in the am…so I’m not much surprised, really. Some of the terms however like “x – xbox” I’ve no idea on why that’d come up at all…but many/most of them I do recognize as both canuck oriented results as well as my own personal past google usage coming into play.

So what do I see? Hmm…well it appears that the Google Suggest algo, now ‘folded’ into the google.ca site, will produce Local based geotargeted serps…plain and simple, eh! Dunno if I like that…but what did you all find….give it a try and report same here too for us canucks in various locations to compare the Suggest algo tool!

Oh and yes, note the new Google logo via the cake painting to remind us all that September 27th is Google’s 12th birthday, eh….thanks Larry and Sergey….well done boys!