Interview with Michel Leconte CEO of SEO Samba – Part I

Original Post: http://www.marketing-jive.com/2009/02/interview-with-michel-leconte-ceo-of.html
I had the chance to catch up with Michel Leconte, CEO of SEO Samba before he headed off to SMX West 2009 this week. Michel has a busy month of February so it was nice of him to take time out to chat with us. Michel is a great interview and provides some fascinating insight. So much so that we’ve broken up our interview into two parts. Enjoy!
[Jody]: Michel, can you start out by telling us a little more about yourself and how you got started in SEO and some of your motivations for creating SEO Samba?
[Michel Leconte]: [...]

Top 20 SEO Posts from ASK Enquiro in 2008

As the year nears its end, we thought that we would countdown our top 20 SEO posts from the past year of 2008 on ASK Enquiro.  We covered a number of topics from creating 404 error pages to on-page optimization factors.  Organic Search continues to remain one of the most cost effective forms of online marketing and markeitng in general that you can participate in.  Planning a strong SEO or Organic Search strategy can provide great return and do so with minimal cost depending on your needs.
We have also been fortunate enough to have a few of our posts be featured on Search Engine Land’s Best [...]

ASK Enquiro Year in Review 2008

Last year we featured our first ever ASK Enquiro Year in Review.  We thought that we wouild do the same thing for 2008 as there were a number of great discussions coming from the Enquiro-Dome.  As always we discussed topics such as SEO and PPC (as this is a large part of what we do at Enquiro).  We also talked about brand labelling, blended search and creating 404 error pages.  We talked about consumer life cycles and cognitive thinking.  We discussed website redesigns and SEO.  We like to discuss a lot of things that are on our minds.  The point is that we have [...]

SEO in 2009

There has been some great discussion about SEO and where it is going in 2009. I find this both interesting and amusing. For months there have been some that have said that SEO is dead. (I’d sure hate to be one of their clients…) Others have suggested that SEO is transforming into more of an "online marketing" role in that SEO is not simply about "manipulating" the Search Engine Results Pages.
For me, SEO has always been about marketing, or online marketing. It is not just about rankings (I’ll discuss my thoughts on rankings later in this series) but SEO is [...]

10 Areas Where SEO and PPC Can Work Together

SEO or SEM (PPC), organic vs. sponsored? Where should your online marketing budgets go? Well the answer is both. SEO and PPC can work very nicely together depending on where you are with your online marketing efforts. We came up with ten instances where SEO and PPC should be used together as an effective online marketing campaign.
 

Preparing for a Site Redesign – when planning a redesign and making sure that all of the SEO best practice are being put in place as you prepare to launch, you’ll want to bolster your online campaign with sponsored efforts as you transition your [...]

Static URLs beat Dynamic URLs

Google decided to be helpful on Monday and share a post called Dynamic URLs vs. static URLs. We’ve since received a number of questions from clients about this issue asking “should I change my site?” or “did I just waste thousands of dollars making my engineers implement a rewrite?” The answer is no.
We’ll continue to use properly implemented redirect strategies, where appropriate, as a part of a total search marketing campaign. In competitive verticals a website that correctly rewrites dynamic URLs to short, keyword rich static URLs will outperform those who don’t (ceteris paribus).
The [...]

How SEO and PPC Can Work Together as Part of an Effective Keyword Strategy

Ah SEO and PPC living together in perfect harmony.  Yeah right.  How many of you out there put as much effort into your SEO efforts as you do with your sponsored efforts?  We hear of all of this money being poured into sponsored spend yet when asked how much you spend monthly on SEO many will respond by scratching their heads and look back at you with a shrug of the shoulders implying "I don’t know exactly…".  Or even worse, others will state that they do not track what they are spending on SEO.
As you track the return of  your [...]

SAR-R: Search and Rescuing ROI

Over the past several months, in part due to increased economic pressures, we have seen an increase of importance placed on improving return on investment (ROI) from search-based activity, particularly from PPC campaigns. ROI attribution and measurement becomes especially important when justifying the cost of the online sponsored advertising and improving the return on advertising spend (ROAS). Here are some tips on improving your search performance and getting the best ROI possible.
1.      Know Your Analytics
This statement may seem fairly redundant, but all too often search marketers find themselves flying blind without proper analytics. Much of this article will focus on [...]

How to Develop a Stronger Search Marketing Training Program

Recently I have been involved in creating a search marketing training program which some very clear objectives: help new search marketing strategists get up to speed quicker, allow them to work on billable client work sooner/more efficiently and get them prepared to participate in high-level brainstorming strategies. As much as I can teach the new strategists, I have learned it’s as important to learn from them to continually tweak and improve the program. Below I have outlined 3 steps to creating a stronger search marketing training program.
 

Constantly Reading, Sucks: Providing course material to your trainees is important but don’t overload [...]

Website Redesign: Improving Website Usability and SEO

Every site owner and Webmaster has either contemplated or participated in a website redesign at some time in the history of their sites. Unfortunately the vast majority do not factor in the search engines and SEO when completing their website redesign. How many times have we seen people come to us after they have performed a site redesign only to see their search engine rankings tank? If I had a dollar for every time this has happened…
The question becomes why do so many site owners and Webmaster make this critical mistake when they redesign their sites? The fact is that most designers only look [...]