I just received a very strange email asking if we have any Adwords accounts for sale. The buyer was willing to pay “$300″ for any old accounts that filled his requirements.

This is probably a scheme to purchase accounts with some history and no red flags for Quality Score purposes. But why would someone want so many? What’s the point? @TheDaveCollins pointed out on Twitter that it could be an attempt to capture valuable keyword and conversion data, but it seems like an awful lot to spend for that information. Tools like SEM Rush, MSN Adcenter and Google’s own Traffic Estimator and Compete work fairly well already. And using them is either free or significantly …

The following post is based on a presentation I did recently at SMX West (here it is on SlideShare). The topic was SEO for ecommerce sites, and I used my experiences working with Zappos to create a short (but hopefully useful) set of tips. Overall, my presentation was less focused on practical tips and more on the overall advantages and challenges large ecommerce sites face. (Here’s a review of my panel at MarketingPilgrim: Ecommerce Search Marketing Tactics.)

With that in mind, I thought it would be helpful to give some practical tips here on the blog. Search engine optimization is most certainly different depending on the site and industry you’re working on and in, and ecommerce is no …

It’s SEO geek accessory time again! Remember our fancy-dancy t-shirts we gave away a few months back? Well, we’ve gone a step further this time. The shirts were so popular that we ended up doing two large orders, and have given all of them away. It’s time to up the ante…

Desk Holders with SEO Flair

We took counsel with our in-house adept, cardboard Yoda, and came up with a desk widget that’s sure to please. The general design is for a business card holder, but we made the shelf wider so it will hold cell phones too, or iPods, or your wallet. Let your imagination be your guide, and use the Force.

From a flat piece of plated aluminum…

…

What do you hope to accomplish with your internet marketing campaign? In what time frame? Are you looking for short-term profits with little persistency, similar to what a direct marketing campaign such as an infomercial might generate? Sell someone something and sell it soon? Or are you looking to build a long-term presence with attendant relationships and a slower time to profits? The internet offers the potential to do both with the quant qual continuum.

At one end of the continuum, dominated by quantitative analysts (quants), internet marketing can be effectively used for pure direct marketing (short-term profits). And at the other end, dominated by qualitative specialists, it can be designed for pure branding (relationship building). Discussing these two as …

I’ll be hitting the road quite a bit over the next couple of months. My schedule is below; it would be fun to connect with other like-minded SEO geeks, so give me a shout here or on Twitter (where I’m @audette) if you’ll be nearby.

In Las Vegas February 2-4: This is my regular twice- to thrice-monthly trip to Zappos, a company I’ve worked with since 2001. I oversee SEO efforts at Zappos along with Aaron Shear, a seasoned SEO who’s worked on some of the biggest ecommerce sites in the world (heard of eBay?). It’s incredibly fun working at Zappos and I always look forward to my time there. Zappos recently made “Fortune’s 100 Best …

How To Bet on #8 in Vegas?

Carefully. Vegas preys on the reptilian part of our brain, which can be dangerous. To overcome it requires understanding and the application of probability and statistics.

The advance determination of the odds of a defined outcome happening is the realm of probability. Much of probability is absolutely counter-intuitive to the auto-response (reptilian) part of our brains. Fortunately, it is possible to establish accurate data by using the more advanced, analytic part of our brains.

Measuring and tracking results after an event occurs is the realm of statistics.

Which brings us to Las Vegas and betting on #8 …

But it’s perfect timing to find yourself in Vegas. You have a sense the number 8 is really …

Frank Zappa wrote:
Information is not knowledge,
Knowledge is not wisdom,
Wisdom is not truth,
Truth is not beauty,
Beauty is not love,
Love is not music,
and Music is THE BEST.

The Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom (DIKW) curve, which has been extensively written about by poets, musicians and academics, is more pertinent in an internet environment than ever before. Before the internet (anyone remember that far back?), it was possible to live at the lower end of the DIKW curve and still realize value for data and information. The internet changed all that. It gave everyone a printing press and the ability to gather data and information and to deliver it to millions of people quickly and cheaply.

At which point the Economy 101 …

Bottom Line First

What’s most important to you in your Internet marketing campaign? Quick results? Long lasting results? High ROI? Use the AudetteMedia Marketing Cube to identify what tactics to use:

The AM Cube Live - Try It Yourself !

 
Then head back here for more detailed information on what went in to building Da’ Cube.

Behind the Building of the Cube

Internet marketing offers a number of powerful tactics that can be employed to maximize the attainment of campaign goals. To use them most effectively, it’s important to develop an integrated strategy in advance that does the following:

1. Defines specific goals
2. Establishes a baseline
3. Defines specific tactics
4. Defines budget allocation
5. Defines implementation milestones, metrics …

We recently had a small batch of t-shirts made and sent them out to our SEO friends. Here are some of the pictures we got back!

The t-shirt was accompanied with a letter asking for a photo of the recipient wearing it. Not everyone replied, but here are the ones that did.

Want an SEO Geek Shirt?

If you want a shirt do the following:

1. Follow me on twitter: @audette

2. Subscribe to our blog: http://www.audettemedia.com/feed

3. Comment here on the blog or send me a reply on twitter.

4. We’ll send you a shirt!

The SEO Geeks

The awesome Bruce Clay team

The classy Lee Odden…

Does the history of search engine optimization (SEO) even matter? I believe it does. In an industry that suffers from lack of structure and standardization, having a fuzzy history only turns the blinds another notch dimmer. Without having a clear frame of reference for where we originated, it makes it more difficult to chart progress and locate the path to where we’re going.

SEO as an industry has a lot of growing up to do, surely. It’s partly the reflection of the wild west mentality that permeates the early days of the Internet, and partly the result of a lot of geeks with keys to the castle. SEO can make companies a lot of money, and with no real law in …