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Internet Marketing in the Movies: Are People Starting to "Get" It?
Rebecca Kelley

Internet Marketing in the Movies: Are People Starting to "Get" It?

Online Advertising

Since I'm a movie buff and an Internet marketing nerd, I often notice Internet marketing and search mentions in various movies, and I always pay attention to the movie URL shown in trailers (my two recent favorites: the URL for Sacha Baron Cohen's upcoming Bruno film was www.meinspace.com/bruno, but it looks like now it's redirecting to MySpace.com, and the URL for I Love You, Beth Cooper is www.iloveyoubethcoopermovie.com, making me wonder why they had to append "movie" to such a specific URL). Recently I came across two examples where the movie industry referenced or directly utilized Internet marketing/social media marketing, and it got me wondering if Internet marketing is finally starting to become more mainstream (meaning fewer people will look at you with blank faces as you try to describe what you do for a living).

Do Twitter Accounts Need Scale?
David Iwanow

Do Twitter Accounts Need Scale?

Social Media

My Twitter account has close to 1000 followers, which is not an amazing number but still a decent enough to have an effect on referral traffic patterns (and it's a nice, even figure). So what benefit is 1000 followers to your site if you don't tweet or promote your site directly? I'm not a full-time Twitter guru, and have other accounts that I manage on behalf of clients that generate more interest, so my thought is with my own account how much traffic would I get out of people visiting my site via my profile link because they wanted to learn more about my agency? This is different to a number of Twitter accounts who actively tweet and encourage people to visit their website. I need to know the value of that profile URL for my agency.

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Lessons Learned from 3 Years of Blogging
Rebecca Kelley

Lessons Learned from 3 Years of Blogging

Content Marketing

The beginning of this month (May 2nd, to be exact) marked my 3 year anniversary as a blogger. My first post on SEOmoz was a paragraph long and consisted of asking our readers if they know of any Spanish-language SEO blogs. It attracted 18 comments. Huzzah! Since then, I've published 241 more posts, with this one being #243. I thought I'd reflect back on my three years of blogging and share the good, the bad, the downright ugly, and the lessons I've learned along the way.

URL Rewriting: Increase Organic Traffic By Using Dynamic URLs That Look Static
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URL Rewriting: Increase Organic Traffic By Using Dynamic URLs That Look Static

Online Advertising

If you haven't noticed URL rewriting, you haven't been thinking like a search engine optimizer. More and more sites are using this technology to create human-readable (and SEO-friendly) URLs. If your site is one of them, good for you. Read on and you might find some reassuring data to back up your excellent decision. If you are not familiar with how URL rewriting will improve organic search ranking and traffic to your site, I don't blame you. It's not a hard concept to grasp, but it's rarely covered well in SEO publications. Few sites are using it, and this creates an opportunity for you to get ahead in ranking. If you have any search competition, you should already be thinking about how to improve the way you present data to engines.

GFGI
S

GFGI

Digital PR

A note to all new and learning online marketers, I have been reading SEO & PPC resources, blogs and forums for much longer then I have been contributing to them. In fact, it is only in the last year, and more seriously in the last 6 months, that I have spent any real time in the online SEO communities. So I don't know how some who have been around for much longer have managed to stick around without killing someone. No wonder Darren sometimes comes across as cranky!

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Headsmacking Tip #13: Don't Accidentally Block Link Juice with Robots.txt
Rand Fishkin

Headsmacking Tip #13: Don't Accidentally Block Link Juice with Robots.txt

On-page SEO

A very simple return to the headsmacking series this week (as it's late here in London and I've been up my usual 40+ hours traveling). We've been noticing that a number of websites seeking to block bot access to pages on their domain have been employing robots.txt to do so. While this is certainly a fine practice, the questions we've been getting show that there's a few misunderstanding...

Weekend Roundup for the Week of 5/10/09
Rebecca Kelley

Weekend Roundup for the Week of 5/10/09

SEO Events

Stories, news, and other notable items from the past week: Google crashed between 8:40 and 9:55 ET yesterday, preventing people from Googling to find out why Google wasn't working. Oh noes! Speaking of Google, they recently overhauled Google News as well as updated their blog search algorithm, and they're allowing trademarks to be used in US Adwords copy. Geez, no wonder there was downtime. Methinks Google needs a little R&R.

Whiteboard Friday - Link Farming
Scott Willoughby

Whiteboard Friday - Link Farming

"Old McSpammer had a farm, e-i-e-i-oh, And on that farm he built some links, e-i-e-i-oh With a backlink here, and a backlink there, Here a link, there a link, Everywhere a link, link..." You get the idea. Back in the day, building your own network of sites designed to link to each other and build link popularity was an easy way to help b...

Upcoming Spring 2009 Search Conferences
Rebecca Kelley

Upcoming Spring 2009 Search Conferences

SEO Events

The weather's getting nicer, the days are getting longer and Rand's barely in the office. You know what that means: it's conference season! Since there are so many conferences right around the corner, I thought I'd list some upcoming events in case you're thinking of attending a show but aren't sure which one to book. SMX London in London, UK: May 18-19, 2009...