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Women of Internet Marketing Wednesday Part 19

By Li Evans

Women of Internet Marketing is back from its summer break.  Just under the wire (it is still Wednesday here on the East Coast), and after coming back from a business trip to Dallas, TX tonight, I'm setting my keyboard on fire to bring you the latest edition of Women of Internet Marketing.

After a summer chalk full of conferences, events, vacations and life changing decisions, I’m geared up and ready to roll with new women to interview in the next coming weeks. The women that will be letting us into their lives are industry veterans, newbies, in-house, agency, and particular to certain segments of the industry and even some that are on the cusp of internet marketing.

This week I've got a woman who has been in the industry quite a while and if you are a forum goer, you certainly know her by her handle.  What I didn't know is that she's in a unique position of being both an in-house SEO and has her own consultancy in her "off hours".  I got to know her a little better while I was out at Search Engine Strategies, in San Jose this past August.  Today, let me introduce you to Diane Aull, more affectionately known know “Torka” to us forum goers.

Diane "Torka" Aull
Diana Aull, more affectionately known to us as "Torka" from High Rankings and the Search Engine Guide forums, has been in the search marketing and web development industry since about 1995.  Currently she serves as the in-house search marketer for AcroPrint, and at night she runs her own consultancy called NineYards, she also has her own blog of great articles on Search Engine Guide.

When I asked Diane what she considered her specialty she responded, "Well, to be honest, I'm something of a generalist, with a bit of knowledge about a lot of things. I guess if I have to pick one or two things I like best, though, it would be site usability and content development/copywriting."

So, after I re-read Diane's bio on Search Engine Guide, I ventured some more questions, in my usual interviewing fashion.

Q: So Torka, tell me what brought you into the Search Marketing Industry?

Using Facebook: Uploading Your Original Content Automatically Grants Them License to Use It

By Li Evans

While attending this year's Philly Podcamp at Drexel University this past weekend, I attended a session on Social Networking.  Even though I know a heck of a lot about the inner workings of a lot of social networking sites, one site I'm still learning a lot about is Facebook.

Rae had a very interesting post about the privacy issues of one of those plugins (thankfully one I didn't install and won't after reading what she pointed out).  While in this sessions, Chris Penn, one of the originators of the podcamp idea, pointed out something else about Facebook that immediately got my attention.  Both of these issues really have me questioning how to effectively utilize Facebook and the 3rd party plugins for both clients and myself.

You know those Terms of Service agreements we all are suppose to read thoroughly and commit to memory before agreeing to utilize Facebook's services.  Well, if you read them as well as I, you likely missed out on one itzy bitzy section of those ToS that if you are a creator of original content (i.e. a blog, photos, artwork such as graphics and 'real art') you might want to go back and re-read this section.  After re-reading you might want to think about pulling down your original work.

Philly Podcamp 2007 - Saturday Wrapup

By Li Evans

Philly Podcamp was held at Drexel University this weekend.  I got to attend and present during yesterday's (Saturday) presentation.  I've never been to any of the type of unconferences before, so this was definitely a great experience for me.  I tell you, the folks that organized Philly Podcamp deserve to great props - Whitney, Jen, Melissa, Chris, Drew and the rest of the team put together an amazing time.

I wasn't even aware that there was a philly podcamp until Corey (and Jen), from the Bucket Podcast, Twittered about needing camping gear for going to Podcamp.  I went and checked out the site and was amazed at what had been set up.  So I pinged Christine and Bill and said "What do you think?  Worth out time?", of course my mind had already been made up, and they both agreed and Bill was going to tag along to attend, too.

Are Your Images Optimized for Search Engines?

By Li Evans

Have you noticed the changes that have been happening in the search results lately?  I'm not just talking about Google and it's implementation of Universal Search.  Have you stopped to look at Ask and it's "3d" search, and Yahoo's blended results, they too, are incorporating images in new ways for searches.

Image search continually tops all over vertical searches, however, with the advent of incorporating all types of content into search results, optimizing your images for the search engines has now taken on a new role of importance.  Not only does it matter for image search, but optimizing your images has become more of a priority because the greater role they are playing in defining exactly what "Content" is.

Take a look at a search for "Weird Al Yankovic" in Google, Yahoo!, and Ask.

Google Search Results: "Weird Al Yankovic"

Ask Search Results: "Weird Al Yankovic"

Yahoo! Search Results: "Weird Al Yankovic"

 

At SES in San Jose, I gave a presentation about this topic, and showed just how fast results are changing, especially when it comes to images.  This also plays into the role of reputation management with companies, employees, products and services.  In less than 24 hours, when Greg Jarboe first showed the Hurricane Dean search results weren't showing images, I did another search and up popped a picture with the news listings.

This just goes to show, "content" is no longer just characters that form words, sentences and paragraphs.  If you aren't optimizing your images currently, you should be.  If you'd like 5 Tips for Optimizing Your Images for Search Engines, check out my piece over at Search Engine Guide.