Get really good at this stuff and you’ll be in the top 80% of your field.  After that, say good bye to Mr. IT.  Today, you’ve got a date at the cool kids table.  Print it out here.

Google SEO starter guide saves you from the bad man is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

You don’t want to go too over-the-top and keeping it believable and relevant could be something to consider, but I’d be interested to hear how a 1st-person text ad like the samples below perform against similar ads.

Using 1st-Person Quotes in Your Ad Text is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

Don’t have $3MM to spend on a 30-second Super Bowl commercial? Take advantage of your competitors deep pockets by bidding on long-tail memorable ad keywords that your competition may have missed. For example, Career Builder put out a series of spots during last year’s game that focused on “Follow Your Heart.” Users who searched on the “follow your heart” terms most likely didn’t remember the brand behind the commercial.  Monster.com took advantage of Career Builder’s publicity by bidding on their tagline and directing a large amount of focused traffic right to their site.

NEW: Here’s how to get started.  AdAge has a list of 2010 Super Bowl commercials and the creative behind them.  First, take a look at your competitors and see if you can find any holes or key terms from their spots that may stand out in a user’s mind.

Results from Google keyword tool

Next, drop on over to SpyFu and input your findings from above.  So for example, I’m a competitor to Dockers and I see that they’re running an ad with the song “I Wear No Pants.”  From what I’ve found via SpyFu and cross-referenced through Google Adwords tool, I see there isn’t much bidding going on for the term.  There isn’t a lot of search volume on this term either, but that could change.  Again, we’re really just trying to find a small niche of long-tail terms.  The likelihood that you get rich on these is slim to none.  Heck, you may even want to go as far as registering a keyword happy domain and using it for a landing page.  I hear that www.I-wear-no-pants.com is available.

Lesson: If you’re the guy paying $3MM for a single TV commercial, make sure you have a little extra left over for other channels as well. If you’re the guy who can’t afford the budget, riding your competitors coat tails, doing a little recon and spending a few hours setting up a landing page could turn you into the MVP.

Hack Your Competitors Super Bowl Advertising is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

• 35 Beautiful and Effective E-commerce Sites. One of my predictions for 2010 is that “experience” will be the big web buzzword.  Smashing Magazine has put together a set of attractive online stores that try to do just that by creating an eye-catching look and also focusing on usability.
• Google SEO Resource for Beginners.  Straight from the mouth of the 800lb gorilla, Google hands out SEO bananas for you to make your site leaner and meaner in 2010.
• Posterous taps Post.ly to help share your media via Twitter. Attach photos, music, videos and docs to your tweets.  Post.ly takes care of the rest.
• Chris Guillebeau over at The Art of Non-Conformity kicks off his $100 business forum.  The premise being to teach individuals to start small businesses on a budget of less than $100.  I was lucky enough to get into the first class beginning in February.  I’ll keep you updated on how it works out.
• Microsoft makes learning Office fun (yes, you read that right).  Microsoft turns learning Office into a game where participants score points for unlocking challenges and achievements. Badges can then be shown off via Facebook.
• How to create custom YouTube, Twitter and MySpace backgrounds

If you’re interested in seeing more, check out my Google Reader Shared Items.

What are you reading this weekend? Let me know in the comments below.

Here’s What I’m Reading This Weekend is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

Mark Robertson of ReelSEO caught up with YouTube’s Matthew Liu to get some insight on best practices for optimizing your videos. Here’s what he had to say.

Content

• Creative should be engaging and compelling enough for users to comment, rate and ultimately share.
• Shorter videos (2-3 min) perform better than longer (~10 min) videos.
• Learn from your video Insights.  If your viewers are engaged better than other videos, you’re going to be rewarded in search rankings.

Community

• Clear and concise tags, description and title.  Use complete sentences when you can.  Tags should be relevant, don’t try to play off of popular terms if your video isn’t related to that particular subject.
• Keep embeds on, the more links or times your video is embedded on outside pages, the better ranking you’ll get.
• Videos with more ratings, comments and views typically get better rankings.
• Use annotations to link multiple videos together.  Don’t forget to add date and location to your video’s description.

Found a YouTube tip that’s helped you achieve better rankings? Share it in the comments below.

Get More Video Views With These Optimization Tips From YouTube is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

Step 1 – Attract the Right Audience
Target keyword searches in which users are looking to find out more or discover information related to your product or industry.

Step 2 – Deliver Compelling Landing Pages
Build your credibility right off the bat by providing guides, data points, reports and interesting blog posts directly related to the search terms the user found your site with.

Step 3 – Offer Something Awesome (and even Free)
Increase your signup rate by offering an extended report or content relevant to your user’s needs.

Step 4 – Deliver Non-commercial Messages First
Don’t try to sell the user something in their first e-mail message.  Fulfill expectations, grow trust and build great relationships before anything.

Step 5 – Iterate
Repeat your actions.  Keep getting better and improving on your results.  Tweak and test.

Integrating SEO Into Your E-Mail Marketing is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

Putting it all together, SEO 2.0 is about changing the factors that currently impact what influences a site and relies more on community and trust.  SEO 2.0 also takes into account other mediums much more, such as video, maps, books and looks to makes results more personal to the user. Here is the full SEO 2.0 article.

What is SEO 2.0? is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

SEOMoz yammers it up during Whiteboard Friday to talk about visualization.  I think visualization is one of those new and sexy fields that you’ll hear more and more about in the near future.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Visualization from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

12seconds is updating their iPhone app to take advantage of the new OS 3.0.  The app, which should be available soon, will allow you to send short video messages directly to your friends via twitter.

Back ‘dat thing up and pick up some great tips about landing page design through CopyBlogger’s Landing Page Makeover.  Their most recent tutorial covers CarsHelpingAmerica.org.

If you’re a fan of Indie Rock, I highly recommend The Veils – Sun Gangs. Rock out this weekend.

Facebook Universal Search, Visualization, 12Seconds and Landing Page Design is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

The fine folks at the Red Cross are working diligently on crafting a Social Media Policy Handbook.  They’ve got a great start and are light years ahead of even most for-profit businesses. As it should, its available online for your viewing pleasure.

Staying with the non-profit side of things, NPR has a great feature of The Extraordinaries.  Its a micro volunteering iPhone app that allows people to give small blocks of time (< 5 min) and knowledge to a non-profit. Some of the first tasks available are tagging images for the Brooklyn Museum building a map of childhood playgrounds.  It’s a beautiful concept.

SEOMoz updated their SEO Best Practices to account for new industry data.  They clear the air and a lot of confusion in regards to new search engine optimization standards.  The synopsis is H1 tags are not all that necessary anymore, stop trying to sculpt PageRank with nofollow, use footer links, java and flash sparingly, traffic to a site doesn’t determine its ranking and quite a bit more.

Smashing Magazine compiled a great list of web design checklists and resources that will help improve your writing skills.

Rumor has it that Google is experimenting with product ads that would would work very similar to AdWords, but display an image ad along the right hand side of the SERP when the user searches on a particular term.  These ads would run on a pay-per-action basis rather than a pay-per-click (PPC) basis.

Non-Profits Kicking Butt, New SEO Best Practices, Web Design Checklists and Google Advertising Rumors is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!

Search Engine Marketing Basics – How the Google Ad Auction Works is a post from Bob Hazlett, a digital marketer who writes at One Half Amazing!