luni, 10 octombrie 2011

What is a Reverse Proxy and How Can it Help My SEO?

What is a Reverse Proxy and How Can it Help My SEO?


What is a Reverse Proxy and How Can it Help My SEO?

Posted: 10 Oct 2011 04:25 AM PDT

Posted by Slingshot SEO

Subdomains! The bane of many SEO-conscious organizations, there is an easy solution right under your nose.

By using subfolders in place of subdomains, you can unite your content under one domain. But What if two sites exist on two different servers? A reverse proxy can make the technical implementation quite simple. With that one change, the URL http://blog.slingshotseo.com/ becomes http://www.slingshotseo.com/blog/. By acting as a content broker, your master server acts as a proxy to the content of your other servers. Multiple CMSs, databases and even platforms can be used, while all appearing to come from the same domain.

Check out this infographic to see how reverse proxy technology can relieve your subdomain woes.

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10 Reasons (in Pics) Why Distilled's SearchLove 2011 NYC is a Must Attend

Posted: 10 Oct 2011 01:04 AM PDT

Posted by randfish

For the last few years, our partners at Distilled have run some incredible conferences in London, New Orleans and Boston. This year, for the first time, they're coming to New York City and it's going to be an incredible experience.

Rather than pour over details of the event, I'll let some photos, images and screenshots do the talking.

#1: The Speakers are Unparalleled

Wil Reynolds

The team selecting speakers goes to dozens of events each year and we get to cherry-pick only those speakers we know can present exceptional quality material. Will, Duncan and Lynsey are religious about speaker quality and have a rigorous ratings system to make sure that only the best are invited back a second time. New York's SearchLove Lineup will be remarkable.

#2: Content Quality is Insanely Good

You will be amazed by this next screenshot. It's from the feedback forms Distilled collects from attendees and shows just how well they've done. Lynsey + Will didn't actually give me permission to share this... But I figure, ask forgiveness, right? :-)

Distilled Feedback Form

For context, until this year (2011), the scores for our annual event, Mozcon, were not as good as these numbers. I've also gotten to see aggregate feedback for several other major conferences in the search + marketing world, and they've never come close.

Typically, the folks filling out feedback forms pro-actively are going to be a mix of those who loved or hated the experience. The Distilled feedback suggests almost univeral happiness. In particular, the high proportion of attendees saying the content level was "just right" is unprecedented. Professionals in the Internet Marketing field are a demanding group and they've heard it all before. To show them something new, you need to have top notch content and that's what SearchLove has proven it can do.

#3: The Head to Head

Seatlle's Mozcon face-off ended in a mixed result. The on-site vote count suggested a win for me, making the score an even 3-3 over 6 battles. However, our follow-up survey revealed that Will had better scores, thus making the wins Will 4, Rand 2. Whatever; I'll get him this time.

Face Off

Though, probably not with an expression like that one.

Seriously, though, my slide decks have been getting tens of thousands of views on Slideshare. What's up Critchlow? Too tired after your Quidditch game to upload more than these 2 measly presentations? Yeah. That's what I thought. I've been practicing. And I'm not taking any more losses.

#4: Everything Around the Conference Rocks

What Your Ticket Gets You

Unlike Mozcon 2011 (where, for those who didn't attend, the hotel's wifi was largely broken until day 3), free wifi works. And like Mozcon, there's lots of awesome stuff surrounding the events including awesome afterparties, an SEO site clinic, great food, drinks and a terrific crowd for networking.

#5: New York City

New York City

One of my favorite parts of going to conferences in NYC is the city itself. For anyone with extra time, there's a million things to do and for those with a strictly business agenda, it's next-to-impossible to not have other business in the city. Just make sure you don't schedule it over the sessions :-)

#6: It's Only $899 for SEOmoz PRO Members

As in years past, Distilled's generously given PRO members a discount of $200 off the regular price (and if your organization would like to purchase multiple tickets, the discount can apply for them as well).

To find the discount code, just head to the bottom of the Moz PRO Discount Store page.

#7: Truly Exceptional People

On our anniversary this year, my wife and I had a conversation about our favorite people in the world and the people who we most wanted to get to know better. Nearly every one was connected to the world of search and marketing. That's the incredible thing about the field we've also chosen professionally. Sure, in some circles, SEO has a bad name. But it hides a collection of inspiring, exceptional, down-to-earth, generous, fun, heartwarmingly-authentic people.

Great People

It's folks like this that make me proud and humbled to be in the search world. I couldn't ask for better compatriots.

#8: Actionable Information

One of my least favorite experiences is sitting in a session where speakers talk about problems or challenges, but provide no actionable solutions. I want something I can write down, email to my team or implement that night (or the next day) and get a win. It doesn't have to be easy or quick, but it has to be real. Advice like "engage with your audience" is the bane of my conference-going existence.

Pro Tips

Which is why I love SearchLove. Will Critchlow has personal calls with every speaker. In those calls, he informs us that we have to make presentations that would impress him and show him something he's never seen before. No one gets up on stage without being through the rigors of Will's crucible (which also often involves an outline and slide review), and that makes for a list of tips, tools, examples and recommendations that will make you a better marketer and earn your site better traffic.

#9: The Parties

Networking is fun. Networking with fire-breathers, acrobats and magicians is way more fun.

Fire Breather

This year, SearchLove NYC falls on Halloween, and that Monday night, Distilled's holding a bash that will rival anything they've ever done. I've got my costume all picked out, too (OK, technically, Geraldine made it for me).

#10: The Format

The SearchLove format isn't for everyone, but for me, it's heaven. I dislike most panels - I've gone on the record many times as saying I think the content that can be delivered in 10-15 minutes tends to be shallow and unactionable. I dislike what panel formats do for speakers, i.e. make it not worth the time for great speakers to attend. If you're a talented, keynote-quality presenter, why would you go to a show where you only get 15 minutes on stage next to 2-3 other folks on the same subject. It's tough to make sure there's no overlap, impossible to be comprehensive and the focus isn't on your material.

SearchLove is different. A single track and 30-60 minute talks per speaker means it is worth the time of folks like Mat Clayton, Mike King, Bob Rains or Wil Reynolds to come and deliver their best material. It means that after the sessions, the networking is easier because we've all seen the same material and can discuss our thoughts on it. It means there's no weak links in the conference.

I've attended a few other events with this format and from a personal perspective, it's how I get the most value. If you feel the same way, you should give SearchLove a try. From what I've seen in the feedback forms and my experience at prior events, I think you'll find it to be one of the best professional events you've ever attended. 

SearchLove

You can get tickets here. Hope to see you on Halloween!

p.s. My understanding is that the London show (which happens a week before) is nearly sold-out - if you're hoping to come, you'd better book your place. NYC will likely be getting full soon.


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5 Content Management CMS Tips for Large Enterprises

Posted: 09 Oct 2011 01:46 PM PDT

Posted by Stephanie Chang

At Distilled, we've recently acquired clients that would be categorized as large enterprises. Some of the challenges of working with large enterprises revolve around the complexity of how the company is internally organized. For instance, many large enterprise are comprised of several different departments that may or may not have existing relationships. In such circumstances, our roles as SEOs become more complicated as our task as SEOs oftentimes becomes that of a project manager, while we simultaneously develop strategies on how to implement strong internal processes that are ideally somewhat automated.

One of our clients is in an industry where new content is continuously being generated. Multiple entities contribute to the site's new content and because these contributors manage many responsibilities, implementing SEO best practices are rarely a priority. The development team wanted us to come up with CMS recommendations that will help to automate and consequently, improve the SEO on their sites. Below are 5 of the recommendations we suggested that could benefit anyone who is working or will work with a large enterprise client.

1) SEO Score Sheet

A method of effectively optimizing the site for SEO is to create an SEO score sheet. Any new content in the CMS must meet a minimum requirement for SEO optimization before it can go live. This score could then be translated into a grade. For example, following only the minimum requirements of the score sheet would result in a C grade.

Below is a sample of what the specs of the SEO checklist might include. Obviously these requirements are based on the individual realities of each company and thus, would need to be modified as such. In this example, the content must meet all the criteria listed under the "Required" section and any 3 items listed under the "Recommended" section before the content can be published. You can use this full technical site audit checklist to get ideas about what your SEO score sheet should include.

Required

  • Include a meta description that is less than 155 characters
  • Content must contain a minimum of 80 words of unique content
  • Content must contain a unique headline
  • Images must contain an alt tag

Recommended

Our client responded positively with this suggestion and even came up with their own ideas. For instance, they declared that this would work perfectly as an internal departmental competition to see which departments received the highest SEO grades each quarter. In addition, the client even suggested that this score sheet could work well as an internal SEO report card.

Overall, this type of system could also become a useful internal analytical tool to see which departments have trouble meeting the requirement and thus might benefit from additional internal SEO training.

2) Alerts

Alerts can be bothersome, but a well-engineered alert is also really appreciated. For instance, I really like this Gmail alert which asks if you had forgotten to attach the files. This has saved me from resending countless emails.

 Gmail attachment alert

Alerts can either be used alongside or independently from the SEO score sheet. These could be used to make sure that any article contains a minimum of 80 words before it can be published or in other scenarios, such as when articles contain the same title as another live article. This would require content writers to edit their title to something more unique, which would eliminate duplicate title issues.

For sites that have issues with having tons of different tags (some of which are heavily utilized, while others are rarely used) like blogs, consider implementing an "Are you sure?" alert that would allow individuals to reconsider whether the tag should be created.  For a more detailed and actionable tag, consider implementing a "Did you mean _____ tag?" that would include suggestions from existing utilized tags based on the tag that was about to be added. For example, if a "content management system" tag was about to be added, a "Did you mean CMS?" alert would appear. This would help to eliminate variations of similar types of tags from the CMS.

3) Help Center

To help content writers understand and implement different SEO practices, incorporate more information about SEO in the CMS. Some CMS systems already provide additional information for other sections via the question mark, such as on how to set time/date like in the example below. Consider adding this feature for other sections that are particularly important for SEO, such as title and description fields. These sections should provide very brief, but explicit instructions (such as specific word counts) on how they should be utilized.

Help Alert

4) Adding Canonical and 301 Redirect Fields

Adding rel canonical for cross-domain canonicalization and 301 redirect fields on every page within the CMS would allow sites to better manage their content and actively optimize for SEO. Although this field might not be used regularly, its purpose is to act as an insurance mechanism in case of any major future changes or implementations, such as a site redesign. This field should have limited access to those who would know how to properly use it.

The SEOmoz blog actually incorporates this feature as shown in the screenshot below.

Canonical and Redirect Fields

5) Incorporating Keyword Research

To improve and encourage the use of targeted keywords, create a tool that would provide keyword suggestions based on the content. Ideally, this type of implementation would be used primarily for landing or category pages, where the targeted keyword list has already been compiled and approved. For example, if the content was written about "selling cars", the keyword tool might suggest including terms, such as "cars for sale."

I would love to hear about how other SEOs in the community handle content management for large enterprises in the comments section below. What has been effective or what problems are you struggling with?


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SerpIQ Interview Graywolf's SEO Blog

SerpIQ Interview Graywolf's SEO Blog


SerpIQ Interview

Posted: 10 Oct 2011 10:01 AM PDT

Post image for SerpIQ Interview

The following is a sponsored post for SerpIQ.

For today's post we're going to be talking to Pasha Stewart and Darrin Demchuk of SerpIQ, Hi Pasha and Darrin, for my readers who don't know you can you tell us a little about yourselves and experience in the world of internet marketing.

Pasha: Thanks Michael, I’ve been doing internet marketing since 2004, SEO since 2005. Started out getting a crash course in buying google clicks from a friend, sold a ton of products but when I did the books, I realized that the $10,000 I just did that month in gross revenue didn’t look so good with a $6000 net and $4000 ad spend. Decided I was going to learn how the guys on the left hand (organic) of the front page did it. Started me down the long strange journey that is SEO. Figured some things out along the way, got a reputation as the guy to hire for “tough to rank” terms and now I split my SEO time between testing new link targets/structures, maintaining the rankings (and conversion testing, never ends) on my sites and fitting in some high end client work when time allows.

Darrin: Thanks for having us Michael. I’ve been professionally coding since I graduated high school and have spent the last 5 years doing client development work. I got involved with SEO (and specifically automation and SEO software development) about 3 years ago now and was taught by a great group of Internet Marketers so I learned a lot of the lesser known and discussed techniques about building and ranking sites. Pasha and I met through our mutual participation in a popular Internet Marketing forum and started working together privately together on internal tools. Our first publicly available collaborative project was a link building service that was powered by a custom built control panel by me that has done very well for us for about 18 months now.

Lets start out talking about client-side SEO, a lot of companies are starting to develop in-house SEO assets, do you think client SEO is going to grow or contract in the next few years?

Darrin: I think we’re really at the beginning of a big growth period for in-house SEO assets as both reputation management and traditional SEO becomes more and more prevalent. This growth of in-house SEO assets is actually a good thing for SEO consultants, as they’ll find clients both in those who aren’t able to hire their own SEOs and those who are in over their heads regarding their rankings and organic traffic. Just like with Interactive Agencies having both in house coding talent as well as outsourced consultants, we’re going to start seeing the same arrangement for SEOs and consultants.

Pasha: I think client side SEO will grow. I agree that the number of companies moving to an in-house SEO plan will also grow, but many companies will realize that they’re core competency is not in doing online marketing, it’s in whatever brings in cash flow. As a former brick and mortar owner, I’m all too familiar with how many hats the small to medium business owner has to wear to get through the day, adding in marketing, especially marketing that they have to learn on the fly, just isn’t a possibility for most situations. With the advent of mobile internet, it will only be more important for companies to establish solid online brands and positioning.

I know you worked in client-side SEO for a number of years what do you think are some of most important aspects of those type of business relationships.

Pasha: I think the most important element of client/SEO relationships is that the SEO has to provide a positive ROI on the client’s investment. The ROI should be of a monetary sort, but in some cases, specifically consulting, the ROI could be measured in client dollars saved down the road via their increased understanding and knowledge of upper level SEO concepts and implementation planning. I meet a lot of aspiring SEOs who ask me how to make money doing client SEO and my answer is always short and simple: Provide more value than you charge. And as you get better at what you do, charge more because the amount of value you provide increases exponentially.

Darrin: When I started working on more SEO projects in the agency setting a few years back, I quickly discovered the importance of managing your client’s expectations and making sure you establish your ROI metric points before embarking on a campaign. A client who is trained to only watch their rankings is going to be a major headache for you because every time they change (and with Google, we’re seeing this more and more frequently) you’re going to get a panicked/angry/upset phone call telling you to fix everything or else you’re fired. I’ve found the most success with teaching my clients what we’re really trying to accomplish, whether that be encouraging more call-ins from a trackable phone number, more form submissions, more sales, etc. If you can get your clients to focus on the aggregate business growth rather than the individual ranking fluctuations, you’ll have much more success when consulting.

Everyone involved in SEO directly or from a consulting perspective uses tools, what are some of your favorites?

Darrin: I’m very much a fan of high power scraping and bulk analysis tools, so I’ve used Scrapebox and Xenu Link Sleuth quite a bit to find good commenting targets on large sites. I use SEScout.com to automatically track my own rankings because I can’t be bothered to either build my own rank tracker or remember to check them frequently enough. I used Market Samurai for quite a while but it just got to be so slow and really slowed down my ability to just get stuff done. In my darker days, I’ve used quite a few of the automated link building tools, as well as a large amount of my own bots.

Pasha: Great question. Safe to say I’ve either trialed or bought every SEO tool available over the last 5 years. Some of my favorite tools for processing data are scrapebox (+ scalc + textpad), Best Seo Suite, hrefer and of course, the Google Adwords keyword tool. For tracking rankings, the aptly named Rank Tracker from SEO Powersuite (editors note see Rank Tracker Review) seems as reliable as any while being relatively quick. I actually feel like the industry could really use a high quality rank tracking tool but that’s another story completely.

You’re involved with SerpIQ can you tell my readers what that tool is about, and what problems it solves.

Pasha: Well, like I mentioned above, we’ve used all the tools. And as SEOs who routinely got to battle in competitive high dollar niches, we were tired of competing using what was publicly available for keyword research and SEO competition analysis. We jokingly talked about building a better mousetrap for a couple years, but time never allowed. Then we teamed up on a couple projects where we needed to crunch a ridiculous amount of SERP data. Darrin just happens to be an amazing coder and when we worked out the timeline for the project, it made more sense for him to take the outline of our dream SEO tool and build the framework for our own internal use. Couple rough patches later, we had the keys to a super powerful SEO competition analysis tool capable of compiling 4 hours (at least) worth of manual data collection in under a minute. Extrapolate that times 1000 keywords and you can see how much time it saved us over the long haul. It was then a logical leap, especially when all our SEO friends were hassling us for access to it, to put a pretty face on it and a make it publicly available.

Time is the #1 problem serpIQ solves, allowing you to scale your SEO research and anlysis beyond anything you’ve seen before. Honestly, I can’t even begin to explain how much better the workflow inside serpIQ is compared to anything else. That’s why we decided to offer a free full featured trial, so people could see for themselves and we wouldn’t have to write a bunch of copy convincing them to try it.

Then, it lays it all out for you in a super easy to digest format that’s both stimulating to the left and right brain. No excel files here. So you’ve got all the pertinent SERP data in front of you, laid out in a way that an experienced SEO can easily spot the holes in any page 1 SERP and focus their gameplan on matching and exceeding the weak link to frontpage their site as quickly as possible.

Next, we added the Keyword Discovery module, as we got tired of bouncing in and out of serpIQ to do keyword research. Now you can search keyword volumes, see any exact match (.com, .net, .org) domains available and one click send them to the Competition Analyzer. This part is actually really dangerous if you’re not diligent with your time. It’d be easy to spend an afternoon in the Keyword Discovery and find more profitable projects than you can complete in a year. Trust me, I’ve done it too many times already.

Finally, we wanted to help our subscribers that do client work make more money faster. We just launched our agency plan, which allows for white labeled PDF report generation. It only takes about 45 seconds to generate the report, and you can upload a logo for the front page and the footer of each page has the contact info that the subscriber uploads (Company name, address, phone #, website, etc..). This basically allows our subscribers to produce a report that looks like it took days of research and construction in under a few minutes. I’m not saying they should sell it to their clients like they spent two days on it, but they could.

Darrin: Pasha really hit on the major main points for why we built serpIQ, but I’ll just add one more thing. When you’re learning how to be a good SEO, it’s really important to manually find each data point that matters for a ranking site so that you can see where everything is coming from and can start to understand how the puzzle pieces all fit together. However, once you’ve progressed to the point where you understand all of the important data points, the value you derive from manually collecting all of that data DRASTICALLY decreases, to the point where you’re literally wasting your time copying and pasting data into a spreadsheet to generate a report.

That is one of the major reasons we built serpIQ, it gives you back your time and helps you make money faster. There’s no value in manually compiling data once you understand it, you’re actually costing yourself money by doing it by hand. We want to fix that for a few bucks a day.

What do you feel are the best ways that people can use your tools to get the most out of them?

Pasha: There’s two distinct workflows for serpIQ. If you know the keyword you want to analyze the front page for, just type it into the Competition Analyzer, add your URL to compare against the top 10 (optional) and give it 20-60 seconds. This is good for client work, or if you’re focusing on a niche you’re already familiar with.

If you’re more in the affiliate space, or somebody new to the whole “make money online” game, you would start in the Keyword Discovery by entering either broad (how I start, personally) or specific keywords, allowing the tool to pull in relevant info. At this point you’d see all the keywords with exact match domains available, for the low hanging fruit, and then you can quickly click on keywords that look promising to see how difficult the front page will be to achieve. I made a video showing how I found a potentially profitable niche with easy to rank buying keywords in less than 5 minutes, I’ll apologize in advance for the video quality, I’m no guru, rather more an in the trenches type of guy. You can see it on Youtube

Click here to view the embedded video.

For the SEO agencies and SEOs doing client work out there, I’ve attached a PDF report for this site, based on the keyword in your meta title, SEO Blog (I’m assuming you don’t need to optimize for Michael Gray or Graywolf). <PDF Attachment>

I don’t do a lot of client work anymore but if this was available 2 years ago, I’d have done backflips to have access to something like this. Again, it goes back to providing value. I know one of our beta testers landed a $20,000 SEO contract utilizing screenshots from serpIQ (pre-pdf report days) and I’ve heard numerous other stories about 4 and 5 figure contracts gained from the first impression they made with our tool and reporting.

Darrin: When brainstorming features, since we both come from the Internet Marketing side of things, I wanted to make sure serpIQ was useful for both Affiliates and Internet Marketers as well as SEO Consultants and Agencies. We think the Keyword Discoveries tool is great for people looking for new niches to attack, but it can also be used by agencies and consultants to help laser focus a client’s campaign on the more attainable, profitable keywords.

And if you’re a consultant or agency, the PDF reports will simply blow away your clients. Each report rings in at about 12-15 pages long, and takes about a minute from initial keyword entry to clicking the PDF button to get one, all with your own logo on them (if you have the Agency account, otherwise it will have the serpIQ logo on it). Literally no other tool will give you so much detail, so fast, so professionally done, at our price points. One new client landed with a serpIQ report should pay for at least a year of our service.

Whenever a tool gets released to the public, it gets used in unexpected ways, or people ask for new features you didn’t think of, did that happen for you?

Darrin: I definitely underestimated the amount of international users we would have. I’m pretty sure we now have users in every major timezone in the world (which makes for fun times when scheduling webinars) and because of that, the demand for international Google support and competition analysis is high. Luckily we’ve been able to account for that very well and our international users have been quite happy with it.

As a developer, you can only test your own software so well before you reach your own limits, so when we clicked “go” and set things live, it was interesting to see the edge cases of users breaking things or trying things I would have never thought of trying. Our users are really responsive though and have been super helpful in helping us sort through any bugs and we’ve hardened the software quite a bit since launch. We’re now approaching about 45,000 keywords analyzed which is a crazy amount of data we’ve pulled in considering we’re analyzing the top ten results for each keyword, so we’re well over 400,000 sites analyzed now. It’s been a lot of fun.

When we were talking offline you mentioned you said you had some interesting data about the length of content, and it’s correlation to rankings, lets talk about that a bit.

Darrin: One of the benefits of running a web based service like serpIQ is that we’re able to anonymously aggregate user data to put together some pretty amazing histograms and statistical analyses of all of our data that has consistently flipped a lot of SEO maxims on their heads. As Pasha will go into more detail in a second, one of the most eye opening discoveries we found was with Content Length on #1 ranking sites. We’ve found that 75% of sites have at least 600-800 words on the front page (which means only 25% of #1 results are there with less than 600 words of content).

Click to Enlarge - Total Words and Rankings Graph

Pasha: Thank you for using correlation and not causation. As you can see here, http://blog.serpiq.com/pages/serpiq-snapshots we’ve pulled some average data for different metrics out of serpIQ and content length on the front page is substantially longer than the conventional wisdom that SEOs have been spouting for years, ie 500 words is sufficient. One thing about averages, is that the outliers really effect it and the 60,000 word Wikipedia page ranking front page is more than an outlier than the 200 word thin product site ranking front page. All things considered though, the median content length of a front page result in our dataset is ~1500 words. Needless to say, after seeing this data for the first time, I went back and buffed out a bunch of sites with an extra 1000 words or so of unique quality content and yes, the results were favorable. Obviously, there’s a lot more to the picture than content length than that but it’s interesting to see SEO urban myths debunked right before our eyes.

Let's switch gears and look into the future, what do you think are some things that are on the horizon that will have a big effect on the internet marketing industry and people should be paying attention to?

Pasha: In a word, Facebook. In two words, Facebook and Bing. Obviously facebook has the userbase of all userbases, the only question is how they’ll respond to attempts to repurpose their time spent there. I know a lot of people who completely gave of advertising on Google to advertise on Facebook. And while Google has dominated the search landscape for a long time, change is on the wind. Google’s algorithm, quite frankly, doesn’t handle links very well. Even post Panda, it’s all too easy to linkspam your way above more high quality deserving sites. The average internet searcher, my Father In Law for example, is tired of wading throught the well SEO’d junk floating around the top of the Google SERPs, in fact I’ll quote him: “I use Bing because I can start on page 1, instead of page 3 or 4 to find what I want that isn’t crap.” Personally, I disagree, but I use Google for a lot more than just looking to buy stuff. I hope they get it straightened out but if they don’t, I look for Binghoo and Facebook to take enormous chunks of their virtual real estate in the next 12-24 months.

Darrin: I think mobile usage is going to continue to skyrocket which will start to shift a lot of things that have traditionally worked well online. Facebook is already seeing greater than 25% of their users are mobile, and I’m sure Google has comparable data. I also agree with Pasha that Facebook is going to start branching out more into the standard internet and away from their walled garden. They’re the ultimate retargeting machine, and with Like buttons on basically every site now, they have a HUGE amount of user data that can make for a very viable competitor to Adwords and Adsense. It could be really disruptive.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions today, since you've been kind enough to spend your time answering them, why don't you take this opportunity to tell people about your company, and the services you offer.

Darrin: If you work at an agency or as a consultant, you are selling your time. SerpIQ will cut down a process that would traditionally take you all day to something that will take less than 5 minutes, letting you do more in less time and make more money with less work.

Pasha: Elevator pitch time, huh? SerpIQ, the best competition analyzer you’ll ever use but don’t take my word for it, go try it for free (100%, no credit card, just an email) right now and decide for yourself at SerpIQ.com If you decide you like it, we’ve got plans with varying amounts of features and volumes ranging from $29/month to $149/month.

Thanks for taking the time to talk with us today, Michael.

The preceding has been a sponsored post. Find out more information about sponsored posts.

photo credit: Shutterstock/sellingpix

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SerpIQ Interview

Seth's Blog : Which are you?

Which are you?

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With all these remarkable, powerful, important options available to each of us, why do so many of us default to competent?

 

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duminică, 9 octombrie 2011

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Merkel Promises "Vision" by End of Month; US Futures Surge, Asia Flat, China Down Again

Posted: 09 Oct 2011 09:27 PM PDT

On news that Merkel and Sarkozy agree to agree (with details provided at the end of the month), US futures are in the green. Asia is pretty much flat. China is the interesting market.

The Chinese stock market had been closed for a week-long holiday. In that period there were significant rallies in Europe, US, and in general Asia-Pacific. China had some catching up to do. Instead it hit a new low for the move.

Asia Pacific Equities



click on chart for sharper image

All eyes are on Europe (as they should be) but China is slowing much more than anyone thinks for this reaction to take place.

Merkel Promises Plan by the "End of the Month"

Please consider Merkel, Sarkozy Pledge Bank Recapitalization
Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, racing to stamp out the euro debt crisis threatening to engulf the financial system, gave themselves three weeks to devise a plan to recapitalize banks, get Greece on the right track and fix Europe's economic governance.

"By the end of the month, we will have responded to the crisis issue and to the vision issue," the French president said in Berlin yesterday at a joint briefing with the German chancellor before they dined at her office.
Why the market would do anything but spit in Merkel's face over this silly announcement is somewhat a mystery. Regardless of the reason, (and most likely it is still technical), it's just another in a long series of patches that will not solve a thing.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List


Dexia Not Isolated Problem; Qatar No White Knight Savior; How Long will the EFSF Last?

Posted: 09 Oct 2011 09:48 AM PDT

The rumor mill is running this weekend, however Belgium and France still have not come to an agreement on exactly how to split the Dexia problem. The latest rumor is the Mideast country of Qatar is interested in buying Dexia.

It's certainly possible Qatar invests in some small piece of Dexia. However, neither Qatar nor China, nor any other country is going to save the insolvent European banking system.

Dexia is a symptom of a much larger problem. Moreover, on top of Belgium-France Dexia bickering, Germany and France are still bickering about how to use the EFSF.

It takes all 17 Eurozone nations all to agree on major changes, yet countries are still bickering over relatively minor issues.

Complex Problem Leads to Complex Bickering

Let's start this roundup with a look at Dexia Board Meets as France, Belgium Tussle Over Troubled Assets
Dexia SA (DEXB)'s board meets today to study options to dismantle the French-Belgian bank that has brought Europe's sovereign debt crisis to the heart of the region's financial system.

While France and Belgium have rushed to protect their local units, hurdles to an agreement remain as they wrestle over responsibility for assets hit by the crisis that has caused the bank's short-term funding to evaporate. Dexia's troubled assets are being folded into a "bad bank" and could amount to as much as 190 billion euros ($254 billion).

Dexia's balance sheet, with total assets of about 518 billion euros at the end of June, is about the size of the entire banking system in Greece and larger than the combined assets of financial institutions bailed out in Ireland in the last 2 1/2 years.

The board meeting, scheduled to start at 3 p.m. in Brussels, will be the third in less than a month, after those on Sept. 27 and Oct. 3. Among sticking points for Belgium and France may be which assets to put in the bad bank and what share of the lender's borrowings each government should guarantee.

"The situation is more complex than one where you have one bank, one country, one regulator," said Cor Kluis, an Utrecht, Netherlands-based analyst at Rabobank International with a "reduce" recommendation on Dexia. "The process will probably take longer than expected and I don't know if they'll be able to reach a solution this weekend."

Dexia said on Oct. 6 that an investor is interested in its profitable retail and private banking unit in Luxembourg. Belgian daily L'Echo reported that a Qatari sovereign wealth fund was in discussions to buy the unit, Dexia Banque Internationale a Luxembourg, for 900 million euros, without saying where it got the information.

That announcement set off concern that Dexia's most valuable assets will be sold at fire-sale prices to international buyers in response to a temporary funding squeeze.

Groep Arco, Dexia's second-biggest Belgian shareholder, said on Oct. 6 that it "opposes a forced sale of good units of the group at very low prices to foreign entities."
Qatar No White Knight Savior

Reuters reports Qatar unlikely to be white knight for Europe banks
Hopes may be disappointed for an influx of money from Qatar and other rich Gulf states into battered European banks, since Gulf investors are likely to see many of the banks as too risky and out of line with their investment strategies.

As Europe's banking system has weakened over the last several months, financial markets have been abuzz with rumors and media reports about possible investments from the Gulf -- particularly from cash-rich Qatar, which has been on an international acquisitions spree.

In June, Spanish bank Santander (SAN.MC) denied a report that it was in talks on Qatar buying a stake in it. Last month, France's BNP Paribas (BNPP.PA) denied a similar report. The latest speculation centers on assets of financial group Dexia (DEXI.BR); the prime ministers of France and Belgium were meeting on Sunday to discuss breaking up the group.

Analysts and bankers said it was possible that Qatar would make relatively small investments, perhaps of several hundred million euros, in European financial firms. Some European media reports last week said Qatar was part of an international consortium discussing a purchase of Dexia's Luxembourg arm, valued at some 900 million euros ($1.2 billion).

But analysts said Qatar and other Gulf states were unlikely to invest aggressively enough to make much difference to big European financial institutions.

"Not even Qatar's pockets are deep enough to really throw meaningful capital at the European financial system. They could participate in some of the capital raising that banks are doing, but ultimately, public multilateral support is needed," said Rachel Ziemba, director at Roubini Global Economics in London.
Sovereign wealth funds in the Mideast were burnt badly investing in Citigroup and other US banks at the height of the global financial crisis. I doubt they do much here except show signs of support.

Merkel, Sarkozy tackle differences over euro crisis

Please consider Merkel, Sarkozy tackle differences over euro crisis
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will thrash out differences with French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday over how to use the euro zone's financial firepower to counter a sovereign debt crisis threatening the global economy.

Sarkozy is due to arrive in Berlin late on Sunday afternoon and hold a meeting with Merkel followed by a working dinner. A news conference will take place at 1530 GMT.

Talks are continuing over a vital aid tranche for Greece, which could run out of cash as soon as mid-November. European finance ministers are considering making banks take bigger losses on Greek debt -- an issue that could be discussed at the Merkel-Sarkozy meeting.

"It is possible that we assumed in July a level of debt reduction that was too low," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble was cited as saying by a newspaper on Sunday.

Germany and France have so far been split over how to recapitalize Europe's banks, which Ireland estimated on Saturday may need more than 100 billion euros ($135 billion) to withstand the sovereign debt crisis, while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said the banks need 200 billion in additional funds.

Paris wants to tap the euro zone's 440 billion European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) to recapitalize its own banks, while Berlin is insisting the fund should be used as a last resort.

Another key dispute is how to use the EFSF to buy sovereign debt to prevent contagion of the crisis, particularly crucial if Greece fails to secure its next aid tranche.

France does not want to set guidelines for the EFSF on the matter, whereas Germany wants to limit the sum used for each member state and set a time limit for bond purchasing.

"Given that the EFSF is limited overall, it makes sense also to limit the purchases on the secondary market for each country," Michael Meister, deputy parliamentary leader of Merkel's conservatives, told Reuters.

There was a danger, otherwise, the funds could be quickly used up, he said.
Picture Says 1000 Words



French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel gesture as they address a news conference at the Chancellery in Berlin, June 17, 2011. Credit: Reuters/Fabrizio Bensch/Files

Does that look like "pleased cooperation" or does it look like "my foreign counterpart is clueless"?

Danger EFSF Used Up Too Quickly

France wants to use the EFSF right away to bail out the banks. Note that this would be throwing more taxpayer dollars right at undeserving bondholders who should be punished for making poor investment decisions.

Moreover, the EFSF is limited to 440 billion euros, and for Sarkozy to get his way, on top of more loans for Greece, Spain, and Portugal (or simply Spain and Portugal after Greece defaults), would quickly drain the fund.

How long the EFSF lasts depends on who wins the Merkel-Sarkozy Feud and to what extent taxpayers bail out bondholders yet again. Of course treasury secretary Tim Geithner wants to come out with guns blazing and use the whole thing with leverage to recapitalize banks.

In that scenario, the money will be gone in a month and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble would then start begging for more.

Breakup Talks Underway?

It is difficult to know for certain what talk is happening in closed circles behind the scenes, but if Germany is not discussing how to break away from the Eurozone (perhaps with Austria, the Netherlands, Finland, and a consortium of Northern Europe), they are making a huge mistake.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List


Confusing Array of Conflicting Same-Day Headlines About Greece, Troika, Defaults

Posted: 09 Oct 2011 12:03 AM PDT

Inquiring minds are amused over headlines regarding the mess in Greece, all from Saturday.

Significant progress recorded on Friday
Saturday October 8, 2011 (13:14)
Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos is having a new meeting with the troika on Saturday after significant progress was recorded in their talks on Friday evening, according to ministry sources.
The troika criticizes the lack of determination to implement the cuts Greek
8/10/2011 - 17:43
Members of the group of experts to examine the settings of Greece to continue receiving financial assistance have criticized the lack of determination to Athens for the haircuts, today moved the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag.

In an article published in full this morning newspaper, said that members of the "troika" consisting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Commission (EC) and European Central Bank (ECB) Hellenic openly criticize the government before completing his last report.
The head of the IMF delegation in Greece, the Dane Poul Thomsen Mathias believes that Athens should be implemented much more severe adjustment that has already executed.

"It is clear that the program will not succeed unless the authorities decide on the path of structural reforms much more strict than we have seen so far," said Thomsen, who said that "Greece is at the crossroads."
The troika is optimistic about the results of examination of the Greek accounts
8/10/2011 - 20:58
The troika, the creditors of Greece, estimated on Saturday that the outcome of the audit of the accounts of the country will be "positive" but "was more work to do."
"The talks continue (...) there is still work to do, but I think the result will be positive," said Poul Thomsen, head of delegation in Athens International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Greek public TV Net
Thomsen [IMF Representative to Troika] warns rescue plan could fail
Saturday October 8, 2011 (21:57)
"It is clear the program will not work if the authorities do not take the path that requires much stricter structural reforms than those that we have seen so far," said Poul Thomsen, the representative of the International Monetary Fund to the troika, in an interview to German Sunday paper Welt am Sonntag.
Greece must give up sovereignty to get more help
8 Oct 2011
Greece is near bankruptcy and must give up part of its sovereignty to obtain the large debt forgiveness it needs to survive, a leading conservative member of German parliament was quoted as saying on Saturday.

Michael Fuchs, a deputy parliamentary floor leader for Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), also told newspaper "Real News" that the debt-laden country might be better off outside the eurozone.

"You are very close to bankruptcy," Real News quoted Fuchs as saying in an interview. "We can not agree to a 'haircut' without terms and conditions and therefore, Greece must give up something, like some of its national sovereignty -- at least temporarily," added Fuchs, who is also the chair of the influential CDU small business group in parliament.

"I am personally not absolutely convinced that this (eurozone membership) is the best long-term solution for Greece to become quickly competitive," he added.
Bigger haircut needed say Schaeuble, El-Erian
8 Oct 2011
Europe perhaps underestimated how much it needed to reduce Greece's debt burden at its July summit, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble was cited as saying by Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

"It is possible that we assumed in July a level of debt reduction that was too low," Schaeuble was cited as saying.

Eurozone finance ministers are reviewing the size of the private sector's involvement in a second international bailout package for Greece, the chairman of the Eurogroup ministers Jean-Claude Juncker said earlier this week.

The reassessment could undermine Greece's aid program and hasten the threat of a Greek default.

"There is a high risk that this crisis further escalates and broadens," Schaeuble said.

Greece should ask its bondholders to accept bigger losses than the 21 percent write-down currently foreseen in a deal agreed by EU leaders on July 21, Pimco's co-chief investment officer Mohamed El-Erian told a Greek paper on Saturday.

"Greece must seek a much bigger 'haircut' than 21 percent," El-Erian was quoted as saying in an interview in weekly newspaper Kathimerini. Pimco, which manages $1.2 trillion in assets, is home to the world's largest bond fund.
IMF mission chief says Greece is at crossroads
8 Oct 2011
The gloomy comments suggested it was still unsure whether current talks on a vital aid tranche for Athens would conclude positively, given doubts over its willingness to reform and Greek strikes and riots.

"Greece is at a crossroads," Poul Thomsen was cited as saying by Welt am Sonntag. "It is clear the programme will not work if the authorities do not take the path that requires much stricter structural reforms than those that we have seen so far."

The IMF on Friday dismissed a statement by the Greek government that the deal on aid was already completed.
I am sure glad that's cleared up.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List


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"...but what really blew me away..."

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