The Fuzzy Ethics of Twitter Marketing

A few days back, there was somewhat of a mini-controversy regarding the purported Twitter account of Brian Burke (the General Manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs).

From the viewpoint of a Leafs fan, his Twitter posts (or Tweets) are quite hilarious (even if they are unfortunately true):


Of course, it's painfully obvious that this is NOT the real Brian Burke. Although Burke is not hesitant to call out his players, Twitter would not be the medium to do so. The hockey rumour site HockeyBuzz even want as far as to contact Burke himself to get his thoughts on the Twitter account, to which Burke said that he thinks the impostor is "scum".

So, what purpose does the "fake" Brian Burke Twitter account have? Well, it's run by the same guy who write the Leafs blog "Down Goes Brown", and by getting his name out there through these funny, well-written one-liners under the "Brian Burke" persona, he's attracted a whole bunch of new people to his blog.

In my opinion, this is an example of just one way to use Twitter correctly. Let's face it ... many Tweets out there are boring and often just a rehash of a site's RSS feed. This guy stands out by delivering constantly funny material that encourages the user to read more of his stuff (and yes, his longer blog posts are just as good a read as his Tweets).

While the Brian Burke Twitter profile clearly states that it is a parody (and parodies are allowed under the current Twitter Terms of Use), this whole "impostor" issue does bring up some questions about the ethics and standards of using Twitter (and any sort of online forum, really) as a marketing device.

Under the same vein as Brian Burke, there are also fake Twitter accounts for "Bryan Murray", "Bob Gainey", "John Tortorella", "Gary Bettman", and a whole slew of NHL players and management. While it's fairly obvious when somebody is faking a celebrity or sports personality, what happens if it's on a smaller scale? What happens if somebody creates an account under your business name and starts writing ridiculous (or even slanderous) things under your name? Now you can see why Burke says this guy is "scum".

It's a fine line, and like any sort of Web 2.0 application, it's hard to say how it will evolve and be used over time. With Twitter continuing to grow at an unbelievable pace, I'm sure we'll see more and more of these situations pop up. The only question is, will this practice be shunned, outlawed, or embraced?

We've Launched Our New Website!

Our new site has launched and is officially live at MarketingBreakthroughs.com. Visit it now; tell us what you think!

Thanks to the kind folks at Envision Online Media for all their helpful work.

The New Marketing Breakthroughs Recruiting Video!

Check it out, the new Marketing Breakthroughs recruiting video is up on YouTube. Very, very soon, it'll be up on our brand new website, too.

Shaquille O'Neal is, by far, the best Twitterer

I must admit that I didn't know anything about Shaquille O'Neal a few months ago other than that he was really tall, played basketball extremely well, and one time he was in this movie called Kazaam or Shazaam or something or other.

But I've been following him on Twitter. He really likes Twitter. And that led to this heartwarming story of Shaq, some other guys, a diner, and Twitter.

In short, you should follow Shaq on Twitter:


Shaq's name is THE_REAL_SHAQ, if you're searching for him. Oh, and mine's just a simple MikeLesiuk, if you want to follow my random tweets.

Matt Cutts speaks about SEO and Google

Matt Cutts recently gave a "State of the Index" talk on his blog in video format (think "State of the Union" for Google). It's quite long, at over 23 minutes, so make sure you have the time to absorb it all. Here's the video embedded right here, for the oh so lazy.



I found the video on Search Engine Journal, so kudos to them.

What I enjoy about the video is the fact that Matt Cutts makes it clear that Google is out to help webmasters as long as said webmasters produce "white hat" content. "Black Hat" content or Black Hat SEO are methods of SEO that are, basically, fraudulent and attempts to "fool" the search engines.

I think that when you see SEO from Google's point of view, you soon find that SEO is more about creating great content that users want to find. Everywhere you look on the net, researching SEO or what have you, you'll find "content content content" or "content is king."

Google's job is to provide its users with what they are looking for. Therefore, the job of an SEO firm or SEO specialist is to make it clear what their website is about, so that Google puts it in front of the eyes of the right people. Now, because we generally want to pick who sees our website (we want to show up for the right search engine keywords) this means that we don't produce content blindly or in a vacuum. We use keywords in our copy, in our headers, in our meta tags, etc. We aim to get links not just from every random site on the Internet but from relevant websites. And we link out to relevant websites.

Do it right, and everyone wins.

From AdRants: Facebook begs users to stay

Adrants has noticed that when users try to delete their account, they get a little "please stay" message. The Facebook Blog has more about issues regarding the Terms of Services.

Is it just me, or does Facebook not really understand where it's going? How is it going to monetize itself? What's it's role in the future of social networking?

I heard from a friend that Mark Zuckerberg has actually stated he doesn't intend to have a formal business plan for Facebook for three years. I guess for now he's just winging it.

Will investors still be around in three years?

On the one hand, I like the idea of Facebook only monetizing in a way that provides value to its users. On the other hand, I haven't seen a lot of evidence that this will happen. Facebook's greatest asset is the information it collects, but, because of the Terms of Service, there's only so much they can do with that information.

Then again, there is quite a bit of info out there that can be merged with Facebook. Dave here at the office found a Facebook app for doing criminal record checks (at least in the US). What we've found so far is that basically everyone has a record for driving without a seatbelt or speeding or something.

The Internet opens up a whole whack of privacy issues, mostly because people don't understand what's private and what's public (which isn't always their fault). Social networks are going to have to be very careful going forward how they treat their users. I suspect that people will start to show their appreciation for those platforms that clearly demonstrate that they respect the rights of their registered users.

For now, it does appear that Facebook is trying to do this, while they balance it with where the website will go in the future.

SEO Book Releases New SEO Competitive Research Tool

SEO Book's new Competitive Research Tool looks pretty darn good.

The main advantage of it I can see is that it shows the positioning of your SEO competitor for each individual keyword. This makes it very easy to tell where the SEO keyword opportunities/openings are.

I'm already imagining easy-to-make Excel charts with a column for the keyword, and the search engine positioning of every competitor. We already do this at MB, but this tool will make the creation of such a chart much, much easier.

Checking Our Own Most Valuable SEO Backlinks

In doing some search engine optimization (SEO) homework before the launch of MB's hip new website (shh!) I was checking out our backlinks to see if we had any especially valuable ones that pointed to specific URL that would soon be out of date.

The most valuable SEO back links were from websites we'd helped clients to build, and which had then gone on to the top of the Google search results for their own keywords (keywords which aren't that valuable to us). Clients who've just had their websites launched in the last week or so obviously didn't provide as valuable a back link.

It just goes to show that doing good work for clients pays off for you too. It's also why I'm convinced that in the long run, proper SEO will be synonymous with high web standards.

Rush Hour Traffic: Why haven't we dealt with this?

Rush hour traffic is something I think we should have "solved" long ago. (You know, like the weather.)

I spend a lot of time in traffic because I live in East Ottawa and work in West Ottawa... and Ottawa is an East/West city. There are a lot of jammed spots, and it's always the same ones.

For example, going Eastbound just before the Nicholas exit on the way home is always jammed. Why? Because right before the Nicholas off ramp is a two lane on ramp. Everyone has to slow down to sort themselves out. That seems like poor planning, but I have no idea how to fix it, since I would imagine that both lanes are now necessary (or maybe they aren't).

But aside from that one exit, traffic jams are terrible, terrible things. How can we get rid of them?

It seems to me there are only a few ways to fix traffic jams:

1. Much better public transportation; subways, tonnes of express buses, etc.
2. More highways.
3. Less cars.

I think option 1 takes care of 2 and 3 pretty well. It's also good for the environment. If everyone used public transportation, there would be a lot more focus (and money) put into making public transportation better.

When I look at everyone in their cars, sitting idle, not getting anything done, using up gas... I can't help but wonder how much raw money and and human resources are lost each day in traffic jams. I would think it would be in most cities' best interests to spend a couple million to improve roadways or public transportation in some way. But then again I don't have access to the budgets, so I can't really say.

Did anyone ever see Minority Report? Now there was a futuristic society with great public transportation.

Recession Strategies, A boom industry in 2009

During a recession it may be tough to find a job, sales, a loan, new business opportunities, market confidence, a dot.com boom, and so on.

One thing that you can find in abundance is free advice.

A quick search on google for: “Recession Strategies” 2009, returned over 6000+ results. A few clicks into the results and you will find links providing: 3 Recession Strategies, 5 Recession Strategies, 7 Recession Strategies, and 10 Recession Strategies.

I’m not sure if more is better, but after reading through the numbers, it seems to me that the strategies for surviving a recession are mostly just good overall business principles. If you’re afraid of how your business is going to survive, here’s what you need to know:

- Be proactive with your market, get out and meet people.

- Provide above and beyond service to win customers over and beat out the competition.

- Work with your partners to develop new opportunities.

- Focus on your core business, don’t waste time spinning your wheels on activities outside your expertise.

- Treat every lead like gold.

If you are not afraid of the recession, then my guess is that you already know this.

Good "Grammar" Matters

We here at Marketing Breakthroughs value good grammar. We have a strict copyediting process to ensure that we catch any grammatical errors. We ensure that at least two sets of eyes go over each draft that we prepare for a client. We understand that proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation is essential if you want people to respect your work and believe in your expertise. 

Here's another reason to take that extra minute to double-check or triple-check your work: A blog that ridicules the overuse of quotation marks. It's pretty funny. Clearly someone had had enough of their pet peeve and wanted to share their annoyance with the world. Wikipedia explains that it is a common mistake to use quotation marks for emphasis, in lieu of underlining or italics. This can be confusing and/or funny for the reader. Below is my favourite photo from the Unnecessary Quotes blog. Apparently this restaurant serves something called "real food"... I must try it!

Ottawa Football vs. Soccer...What Google Says

Have you noticed a rise in the volume of Ottawa sports fans recently?

No, I'm not talking about the Senators 3 game winning streak. What I am hearing is Ottawa football fans and Ottawa Soccer fans coming out of the woodwork to cheer for their sport, or at least the possible future existence of their sport in Ottawa.

Why can't both teams survive in one market? That's a good question that I am not hear to answer. Instead I am curious about what the pulse of the city is really feeling. And instead of basing the feeling of fans to the limited phone ins and email to talk radio and the papers, I thought I'd turn to a completely unbiased observer. Google.

Below are the average number of monthly searches on Google for various search terms related to the debate. Assuming that these terms are mostly entered by adults (age 18-55), it may provide some additional insight:

Ottawa Football - 5400
Ottawa Football Team - 210
Ottawa CFL Team - 91


Ottawa Soccer - 12,100
Ottawa Soccer Team - 480
Ottawa MLS Team - Not Enough Data

What does this indicate? I suppose one could say that overall, there is more general interest in Soccer than Football, however, when it comes to interest about a future franchise, football wins.

Just out of curiosity I performed one more search:

Ottawa Senators - 135,000

Just to put it all in perspective.

Want to do your own searches, simply go to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Enjoy!

SEO Tip Posted on Search Engine Journal

Just posting to say that today Search Engine Journal posted a tip I submitted to Daily SEO Tip.

Check it out: Use Excel to Plan Meta Tags, Titles and URLs for SEO

Come for the Coffee, Stay for the Dinosaurs

I know it's been a couple of years since they introduced their new logo, and maybe this is old news, but I'm not a coffee drinker, so I never really noticed this before. However, while sitting in a meeting with a client the other day, I noticed something rather peculiar about the Second Cup logo ...

Take a look:


That's right. The Second Cup logo is the Jurassic Park logo.

Sure, it's a great movie, and it's special effects still hold up quite nicely to this day, but to rip-off the logo completely? Really? For a coffee chain? Seriously? Ah well. What's done is done, and I suppose there are worse logos to copy.

Hmmmm ... I wonder if they have a T-Rex.

Top Ten things to do on FAMILY DAY!

This being the second year Ontarians celebrate Family Day, many people are unfamiliar as how to use this holiday. I thought I would help! I have put together a list of family related activities that I recommend to help you enjoy time together with your family this holiday. Every family is unique and different so please see these only as suggestions. The government claims, "Ontarians work very hard and they deserve more time to spend with the people they love." So ENJOY your holiday and your FAMILY!

1. Archive original photos of each family member. Be prepared to laugh at yourself.

2. Have a big family thanksgiving-style dinner with all the fixings. Try and make a verbal list of some unique traits specific to only your family.

3. Locate extended family in different countries and plan a trip to where they live. Archive their number. Who knows, they may be gracious enough to be your personal tour guide or host. If you're feeling really adventurous book a last minute weekend vacation to see them!

4. Go on a roadtrip to the first house you lived in as a family. If you're brave enough, knock on the door (with cookies) and ask for an inprompt to tour.

5. Pack the entire family into the van (or other mode of transportation) and drive with the windows down to the country. Blast some Phil Collins. Who knows you might end up finding some really ecelctic, cozy country restaurant to dine at.

6. Surprise an extended family member with a giant platter of a platter of homemade gourmet food items. Use the 'large group' surprise tactic.

7. For one day, reverse all the roles in your family's household. Ie. Have Dad prepare a gourmet meal and dust every visible surface and have Mom shovel the driveway and take out the garbage (or vice versa if that's how your family operates).

8. Plan an epic family trip the entire family will take in the year 2020. Need suggestions? Try an African safari or an adventure down under!

9. Sit down with a white bristle board and coloured markers and write out your entire family tree going back at least 4 generations. You'll learn a lot!

10. Spend some time doing nothing with your family, something is bound to happen.

If this coming Monday you're far from your family and can't see them, call them or think of them regularly. Enjoy this great new holiday!

The identities of the people in the photos have been preserved as to prevent my family from being exposed to the world wide web. Thank you for your understanding.

Daily SEO Tip - A Great New SEO Blog

Daily SEO Tips was recently launched by the good people behind Search Engine Journal.

The premise of the website is exactly what you'd expect, given its title: every day they will post one SEO tip. What's cool, though, is that at the top of the page they have a link to "Contribute an SEO Tip." The link takes you to a simple form where anyone is able to contribute to the blog. The blog isn't as radically trusting as Wikipedia, however, as they do screen tips to weed out the good from the bad. I contributed a tip myself, and I was pleased to get a personal email from Ann Smarty thanking me for the tip.

I think it's a great idea for an SEO blog because content is literally being written for it. I don't think this would work for a new blog, but as an extension of an already popular SEO blog like Search Engine Journal, it works wonders. And so far, judging from the first two posts and some comments, the authors are not abandoning the site just to let guests do all the work for them - the SEO tips they give out are useful.

Of note is how active the comments section is for their posts so far. In fact, their mission statement comes straight from a comment: "Bitesized daily tips to help keep your SEO knowledge fresh without cluttering up your feed-reader."

They acknowledge where the mission statement came from in their footer, an SEO blogger named Ken Jones. It's a nice gesture and definitely promotes commenting. If you check out the comments so far, you'll see that the authors are actively participating in the discussion. The people who do give a tip also get a link back, obviously, when their tip is posted. The blog has created a true win-win situation.

Although I'm getting more and more reserved with adding yet more blogs to my RSS feeder, I will definitely be subcribing to Daily SEO Tips.

Ottawa Marketing Blogs and Ottawa Business News

If you're looking for Ottawa marketing blogs, there aren't a lot of them out there. Marketing blogs in Ottawa tend to edge more towards technology news than marketing itself. This lack of marketing-oriented blogs in Ottawa is, in fact, why the Daily Breakthrough was born. We're hoping to fill a gap, because there's a lot that goes on in this city.

As an Ottawa marketing firm, there are a few blogs in Ottawa we do like to read to keep up with marketing news in our fair capital city. Of course, these blogs make up only a percentage of the marketing blogs we're subscribed to - obviously a lot of what works in other cities works in Ottawa.

There are two main Ottawa marketing blogs I read:

Techvibes: Technology News in Ottawa

Techvibes is an international blog, but it has a section dedicated solely to the Ottawa region. The blog is called "Technology News in Ottawa," but there's a fair amount of marketing information you'll find within it. Unlike many blogs, there aren't a lot of how-to posts, but you can pick up a lot from their more opinionated posts.

Mike Kujawski's Blog

Mike Kujawski specializes in public sector and non-profit marketing, and his blog reflects that. Ottawa's a government city, so obviously that's a big part of the marketing that goes on here.

Other Ottawa Blogs:

Ottawa Start has a massive list of Ottawa blogs. Rather than simply copying the list they have, which wouldn't help anyone, I'll go over what I occasionally read.

I like to check out SEO Education just to see what sort of tips they come up with. This SEO blog is a lot like the Daily Breakthrough in that there are a lot of introductory and how-to posts which would be super beneficial for clients. It's interesting to see what tips they come up with and think are valuable for someone learning SEO.

Obviously not a blog, but I have the Ottawa Citizen in my RSS reader (Vienna, becaue it's awesome). I don't subscribe to the Ottawa Sun, because we get a hard copy here at the office. The other newspaper I read online is the Ottawa Business Journal. It's the best source for Ottawa business news (not necessarily related to marketing, though).

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As you can see, there's not a whole lot of Ottawa marketing blogs or websites I read. A lot of the marketing information I get comes from blogs in the United States - it's as applicable here as anywhere else. For Ottawa marketing news, I tend to get a pretty good insight working at an Ottawa marketing firm, but I still like to see what a few other marketers in Ottawa are saying or thinking.

Of course, for Ottawa marketing news, it's my professional marketing opinion that you should really be subscribing to the Daily Breakthrough blog. That big RSS link is just over yonder, to the right.

Six Questions to Ask Before Your Build Your Website

When you build a website, or when you begin any traditional or web marketing campaign, you should carefully consider what your end goals are. Who is your website targeted towards? How do you position yourself against your competitors? You should know the answers to these questions like the back of your hand before you begin building any section of your website.

1. What are my competitors doing?

Take a look around the web for your competitors. What are their websites like? How can you stand above them and really blow them out of the water? What elements do all your competitors' websites have in common that you'll need to incorporate as an industry standard? You should know exactly what your competitors are doing, and how you'll be positioning your site against theirs upon launch.

2. What's my Unique Selling Proposition (USP)?

Your website USP might be different from your regular USP. What does your company offer online that no one else does? Carefully consider your positioning before you start writing the web copy for your website. Do you offer a best-in-class solution? A low price? Unbeatable customer service in an industry filled with faceless corporate entities?

3. Who will be updating the website?

If you're building a website for a client that doesn't know much about website design or coding, you'll no doubt want to hand them a Content Management System, or CMS. This lets them edit their own content in a WYSIWYG editor, without worrying about breaking the website. Blogging software such as wordpress is an example of a CMS, and many non-blogging websites are designed using this high-powered software.

4. What are my website SEO plans?

Beyond just dumping a bunch of keywords into your meta tags and creating a site map link off the home page, you need to know what your "go-forward" SEO plans are. How will you get link backs? Is there a section of your website to load on keyword-dense SEO articles? A section for linkbait?

5. Who are my website User Groups?

Before you begin planning your website, you should understand who exactly will be using the website. What are they using the website for? What information do they want? How much do they know about your products and services? Are they technologically savvy?

6. Where will my call to actions be, and how will users "buy"?

It's important for the user to be able to buy (or contact you) from every page on the website. How will this be done? Where will the call to action take them? If you sell one product, that's easy. If you sell a variety of products, you should have a "Your cart" and a "Checkout" option located conveniently for the user (see Amazon.com for an example). If you don't sell anything online, a call to action might be a button that says, "Contact Us Now."

Firebug Extension for Firefox

I just downloaded the Firebug Extension for Firefox on my work computer (I downloaded Firebug at home a few days ago and I've been loving it). You can see the Firebug homepage here. Unlike a lot of extensions and widgets, which are mostly useless, Firefox has had a lot of great extensions developed for it.

At first glance Firebug isn't completely overwhelmingly amazing. I mean, yeah, viewing the source code is useful, but that comes standard in ever web browser. But the Firebug extension also lets you view the CSS in a convenient way. Again, this is doable without the extension (look in the page's source code to find the CSS stylesheet link file - it's usually styles.css or something). But the Firebug extension makes it really, really convenient.

With Firebug installed, you can view the source code of the page and the style sheet side by side in the bottom of your Firefox browser window.

My favourite part, however, is the "Inspect" feature. When you click "Inspect" in Firebug, you can then hover your mouse over any part of the page and the HTML and CSS at the bottom of the page will show the relevant code. In this image, the Firefox logo has the mouse over it:


At the bottom, you can see Firebug showing the HTML code on the left, and the CSS styles on the right. Firebug highlights the relevant portions.

Why do I like this? Well, if you're new to web design, or if you're just dabbling in it (perhaps you're editing a Wordpress theme or blogger template) Firebug let's you find out how others are coding any features you want to incorporate.

If you're learning web design, the Firebug extension gives you a good idea how the best designs are created, and it saves you a tonne of time going through the code to find the portions you're interested in learning about.

Of course, I'm still getting into Firebug. Looking at its homepage, I can see a few features I haven't tried. Visualizing the CSS looks really useful. You can see the layout of the border, margins, and padding. And if you "Inspect" a section and then mouseover the layout, you can see rulers and guidelines right on the page. These screen shots are from one of the actual Firebug extension pages:

From the bottom right layout view of Firebug:

The actual page with its rulers and guidelines:

(This is the Firebug page I was viewing)

Neat, eh?

Thankfully, there are a bunch of resources to get your started with the Firebug extension. The Firebug page I just linked to as an example has a bunch of links to Firebug resources.

• Introduction to Firebug
• 10 Things You Didn't Know About Firebug
• Video: Editing HTML Live with Firebug

Again, I would start with the list of resources from the Firebug extension's development website.

Christian Bale Rant - A Case Study in Viral Marketing?

By now pretty much everybody on the Internet has heard Christian Bale's expletive-filled rant from the set of Terminator Salvation, where the Dark Knight actor delivers a four-minute verbal beat down on the Director of Photography for being a distraction during a take.

Want proof that everybody and their mother has heard the Christian Bale rant?


The above chart was taken using Google Trends. Marker "A" is the People's Choice Award, which took place on January 8, where Bale took home an award for his work in the latest Batman flick. Marker "B" is February 3, the date the rant was leaked onto the Internet. See that spike? That's 10X the normal search volume for the term "Christian Bale", all because of one profanity-laced tirade.

Of course, there are some crackpot theorists that claim this is all some elaborate

viral marketing campaign

for the new Terminator movie. Given the nature of the audio clip, this is rather unlikely (but of course, not impossible). It does, however, show you just how quickly an idea can spread like wildfire across the Internet. You just have to get a few people talking, and then BAM! That's viral, baby.

Twitter grows by 752% in 2008!

You heard me: Twitter had 752% growth in 2008.

(Personally, I attribute all of this to Shaquille O'Neal being on Twitter.)

What's also of note is that Facebook is quickly closing the gap between itself and Myspace. Myspace seemed to be all the rage down south of the 49th Parallel, but it never caught on as much here in Canada. For example, I've never owned a Myspace account, but I've been on Facebook since it was only available to university students. I think the only time I've used Myspace was when I was told to check out some indie bands' page to demo some of their music.

It appears that now, the social media tide is turning even in the United States. I think I can attribute this to Facebook not being as ugly as Myspace. I've seen some pretty dreadful Myspace accounts in my day.

Back to Twitter...

I think it's pretty neat that Twitter has grown so much. But now people are really going to have to be smart about how they use it. There's just so much junk tweets that clog up and obscure the useful and insightful ones. I recently stopped following a friend because he'd set up his X-Box with Twitter or something and every time he played a video game I got an update. It was annoying, and he rarely updated with anything else. (Sorry, Dominic.)

But Twitter can be really, really useful... if a lot of your friends are using it, and they know how to use it. I have some friends who live way off in faraway lands (Vancouver) who are on Twitter with a hundred of their friends, coworkers and relatives. They can check Twitter for any important update. Phones? Thing of the past! Whereas over here, I am only following and being followed by about a dozen regular Twitterers, and I never go there for truly critical information.

Of course, now Twitter just has to monetize its platform.

The Ultimate Introduction to SEO Resources List

Awhile back I wrote a post which was basically an introduction to link building, which is the process of getting back links from other websites pointing to yours, in order to increase your Page Rank and authority in the eyes of Search Engines.

I've since realized that I probably should have begun with an introduction to Search Engine Optimization, instead of an introduction to a single SEO strategy. So, that being said, this post details a pretty good introduction to SEO.

Even if it won't make you an SEO specialist, by reading this post and browsing some of the resources here, you'll have a solid understanding of what exactly SEO specialists are talking about when they mention things like Deep Links and Link Back Campaigns and so forth. If you're a small to mid sized business owner looking to hire an SEO specialist, this post will give you enough of an understanding of SEO to know when the specialist know what they're talking about and when they don't.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Search Engine Optimization - Wikipedia

Wikipedia defines SEO as "the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results." It's a good definition, and it also comes from Wikipedia, a website who just happens to rank in the top results for a heck of a lot of search terms.

An Excellent Intro to SEO - Search Engine Watch

Search Engine Watch has a number of good articles on SEO you might want to check out. I like this intro because it breaks down the important aspects of SEO pretty well, and gives you the background you need. (For example, they don't go into link building before they get into "How Search Engines Work," as I did.)

SEO Terms and Definitions - Marketing Breakthroughs

This is an article from our parent website, Marketing Breakthroughs. Before moving on to the nitty gritty, I think it's always good to have a resource nearby that can give you a definition for any new SEO terms you come across.

Optimizing Your Website Navigation for Search Engines

Definition of a Web Crawler - Wikipedia

Again, this is from Wikipedia. The sections on search engines in the Search Engine Watch article is pretty good, but I think we can focus on web crawlers or "spiders" for now. Understanding how a web crawler works will help you to build more search engine friendly websites with site maps, deep linking, and intuitive navigation.

Ingredients of a Search Engine Friendly Website - Search Engine Guide

Pay special attention to the "Is Your Site Crawlable?" Section. It will help you make sure that your links are set up in a way that leads Search Engines to all of your content, and helps ensure that your website gets indexed (the process by which a search engine "remembers" and stores everything on your website).

Keywords and Keyword Density

Introduction to Choosing Keywords - SEO Zombie

This is a basic introduction that gives you a pretty good overview. What it could use more of is competitor research. It's always important to know what you're competitors are ranking well for, what they're going after, and where the SEO opportunities are.

Effective Keyword SEO Research Part 1 - Clickz.com
Effective Keyword SEO Research Part 2 - Clickz.com

This two part article gives a good background into finding and selecting keywords. There are several more tools and methods we use at Marketing Breakthroughs, but the background is all in the article above. I enjoy SEO keyword research and trimming because it's where the real fun and strategy is. Which keywords are you competitors ranking for? Which low-competition long-tail keywords are going to convert buyers? Which keywords by themselves will help out solidify my position with my long-tail selections?

Keyword Density Tool - KeywordDensity.com

This tool looks at all the scannable content on a web page and determins what the density is for a given keyword. I prefer to use Word, because generally I'm targetting a keyword density goal within the main copy or article, and not the whole page (navigation, any links in your footer, etc.).

The Next Step: SEO Courses and SEO Certifications

If you are looking for a really good understanding, I suggest enrolling in some SEO courses. The fact is, a lot of SEO secrets are withheld from the general public unless you flat out are willing to pay for them.

SEMPO Institute

SEMPO offers the most in depth course I've found with the Advanced Search Engine Optimization course. They also have other internet marketing and an "Insider's Guide" to Search Engine Optimization. The courses are at your own pace, at your computer, and can be completed anywhere.

SEOBook.com Training - SEO Book

SEO Book offers a membership for $100 USD per month. With this, you get access to their tutorials, videos, and their forum. It's a pretty low cost investment if you think you can absorb most of it in a single month.

Link Building

Link Building is the process by which you get links from other website to point to your own. It gives the impression that your website is more popular and that more people find it useful. As such, search engines will rank your website higher.

11 Awesome Link Building Resources. - The Daily Breakthrough

This is an earlier post of mine with links to some of the most popular link building resources on the net. Based on a comment on this post, I would also add:

The Link Building Cookbook - ColinLahay.com

Again, this was recommended by a commentor on this blog. The amount of link building resources on this site is phenomenal. At this point, it's up to 52 different link building techniques.

SEO Blogs

This is pretty much just a quick list I pulled from my RSS reader:

SEO Book - A lot of free training and SEO news. They are trying to convince you to go for the paid training, but it's not in any way obtrusive with the free SEO advice they do provide.

Ranked Hard SEO Comics - These SEO comics are good for a laugh. I admit that, uh, they won't teach you much about SEO.

Search Engine Journal - I regularly read this, and it's a good blog to go through the archives of because there's a lot of good stuff buried back there.

Occam's Razor - I don't read this as much as I should. It's a little more advanced, but the insights it provides are always top-notch. The author also wrote, "Web Analytics: An Hour A Day."

ProBlogger Blog Tips - This blog is not pure SEO. But it does have a few SEO tips in there, and reading it will give you a good idea of integrating your SEO with a larger web marketing strategy, which is always important. Nothing should be done in a vacuum.

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I would also add that there is a bunch of SEO software out there available for building links. I'd check out Link Assistant (especially if you use a Mac! A lot of SEO software appears to be PC only). Search Optimization Marketing also has a pretty decent list of SEO software and SEO tools.

OC Transpo Strike: Looking at the Effects of the Ottawa Bus Strike

The OC Transpo strike is just about over, folks.

The OC Transpo strike started way back on December 10th, 2008. The big issue seemed to be the driver and bus work scheduling. After fifty-one days of debating work scheduling, on Friday, January 30th, both parties (represented by Mayor Larry O'Brien from the City and André Cornellier from the Union) agreed to go to binding arbitration and end the 7 week long Ottawa bus strike.

But of course, the bus strike ain't quite over. Although a good number of Ottawa buses are soon returning, it appears that much of the bus fleet won't be returning for quite awhile yet; up to 10 weeks. There's now a message on OC Transpo's website about post-strike bus schedules. (Note to future generations: It appears as though the OC Transpo website uses frames. I apologize if that link only leads to the main page in a few years.)

It was a long, long haul. To put it simply, the city of Ottawa relies on OC Transpo. Want proof?

Ottawa has the highest bus ridership during rush hours in North America, with transit ferrying 45 to 48 per cent of workers. A quarter of Ottawa's 450,000 jobs are downtown, with many workers living in the surrounding suburbs.

Here at Marketing Breakthroughs, we weren't affected too hugely. There was a little bit of carpooling, but it wasn't nearly as rough for us as it was for some other Ottawa businesses. The OC Transit Strike put a pretty big dent in Ottawa's business, and it's worth looking into some of the effects.

The Effects of the Ottawa Bus Strike on Local Businesses

The cost to Ottawa of the OC Transpo strike can be calculated in the millions. As it was predicted, the biggest loss went to the retail sector. Let's look at the numbers:

• Approximately a loss of $280 million to the city (another article puts it at $408 million);
• $8 million per day in lost retail revenue, wages, and productivity;
• $3.3 million per day in retail revenue alone;
• A loss of 5,200 jobs in Ottawa-Gatineau in December;
• A loss of 6% of Ottawa's total economic power;
• An estimated approximately 500 Algonquin College students have been forced to drop out of school because of the Ottawa transit strike.

But aside from the numbers, it was the individual stories that are the most compelling. Everywhere you go, someone has a friend or a relative being incredibly inconvenienced by the strike. Maybe they lost a job or spend 4 hours in the car every day. Many students haven't gone home, but have stayed at a friend's house closer to campus.

A Subway restaurant near MB has been closed - none of its employees can get to work. Foot traffic in Rideau Centre was down 40% because of the bus strike. Many of the small convenience stores whose target markets were OC Transpo users were gravely affected. Of course, anyone whose target market relies on taking the bus would be hugely affected. So stores catering to students, especially those downtown, were in a very tough spot.

I also noticed, just today, someone using PPC ads if you searched for "OC Transpo strike" on Google. The ad offered t-shirts. I've seen several t-shirts in shopping malls with a "NOC-Transpo" logo and a tagline along the lines of "Not serving the city of Ottawa since December 10." I can't find the ad now, so my guess is he hit his PPC budget. It could very well be a young entrepreneur who doesn't have a lot of cash to back his little venture.

Back to Normal: Getting OC Transpo Buses Running Again

As of right now, Ottawa buses are set to return Saturday, February 7th. Initially they were going to return on Monday, the 9th. But they moved it to Saturday.

But now, the Ottawa transit faces a PR nightmare because of the strike:

It is expected to take months before the city’s mothballed transit system is back to full service, but getting riders on board when it is could take much longer.

Another quote:

Public-relations executive Bernie Gauthier doesn’t envy bus drivers and said many could face grumpy passengers when the buses start rolling again.

Bus fees will be free until February 15th. Which doesn't really make up for it, when you think about it.

It remains to be seen who Ottawa bus riders will respond to the end of the strike. No doubt there will be more stories of hardship because of the bus strike in the days and weeks to come.

One thing is pretty clear: the city has a whole lot of recovering to do.