According to Google Analytics, here are the top ten keywords that brought people to this site in October 2008.

Over the past 31 days, 72.83% of visitors to this site came via a search engine. 90.8% of those searchers come from Google. By a pretty good margin, the Google search to bring the most visitors to this site is a search for wedding songs.

That's right, I'm #1 in Google for wedding songs, a rather popular search term, as you can imagine. Now excuse me, I have money to count.

1. wedding songs
2. george carlin quotes
3. roger rick and marilyn
4. rick hodge
5. prima tv
6. stu jeffries
7. hockey songs
8. wedding songs 2008
9. big shiny tunes 5
10. big shiny tunes 2

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According to Google Analytics, here are the top ten keywords that brought people to this site in September 2008. Sixty percent of this list is radio-related. The Rick Hodge inspired searches are particularly high with 1,143 people hitting my site up after googling his name.

1. wedding songs
2. rick hodge
3. roger rick and marilyn
4. stu jeffries
5. wedding songs 2008
6. george carlin quotes
7. virgin 999
8. roger, rick and marilyn
9. big shiny tunes 2
10. roger rick marilyn

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According to Google Analytics, here are the top ten keywords that brought people to this site in August 2008. There's still a lot of Toronto radio morning show searches taking place and the debut of Igor Kenk.

1. wedding songs
2. rick hodge
3. roger rick and marilyn
4. george carlin quotes
5. big shiny tunes 2
6. igor kenk
7. stu jefferies
8. wedding playlist
9. mike boon
10. prima tv

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According to Google Analytics, here are the top ten keywords that brought people to this site in July 2008. As you'll see, Rick Hodge dominates the top ten, but he couldn't match the 4,828 people who searched for info on the HMS Ontario.

1. hms ontario found
2. rick hodge
3. roger rick and marilyn
4. rick hodge chum fm
5. edgefest 2008
6. george carlin quotes
7. roger, rick and marilyn
8. "rick hodge"
9. wedding playlist
10. brad giffen

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I do a lot of email marketing. I use a tool called Constant Contact to manage my lists, send my HTML marketing messages and ensure I stay CAN-SPAM Act compliant.

Constant Contact hosted a free email marketing seminar this morning at the Sheraton Toronto on Queen Street near Bay. My fear going to these things is that they become a long product demo intended to sell their email distribution solution but this one did a good job of keeping to best practices.

It confirmed a great deal I always knew, but there were a few good tips, even for a guy like me who has already sent 33 HTML blasts in 2008 alone.

• Don't forget to build your prospect list in the offline world. Put out a guest book at trade shows where visitors to your booth can write their email address to be added to your email list.
• Remind recipients to add the email address you send from to their contacts so your blasts find their inbox and not their bulk or spam folders.
• Take that open rate with a big ol' grain of salt. They measure opens by placing a 1x1 .gif file in the email and when that file is called from the server it tallies a "read". Today, many don't download the images or read their email on text-only mobile devices.
• The sender and subject line determines whether your email is read or deleted. Get that right or your call to action in the email won't matter.
• Create quality content and send when your message is most likely to be read.

Nothing ground breaking there, just good tips to keep in mind. I recently analyzed the cost per name with a direct mail campaign vs. an email campaign and there was no comparison. Direct mail is dead. Long live email marketing with CAN-SPAM Act compliancy.

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I'm going to do this a little differently for June. In Google Analytics I see the vast majority of traffic to this site comes via organic Google search results. I can then break that down and learn that 7,977 keywords account for that traffic. Here are the top ten keywords that brought people to this site in June 2008.

1. george carlin quotes
2. mike boon
3. wedding playlist
4. luke schenn
5. big shiny tunes 2
6. edge 102
7. cool wedding songs
8. big shiny tunes 3
9. wedding playlists
10. wedding song playlist

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Yesterday, I attended sessions entitled "What's Different About B2B?", "SEM Toolkit", and "Web 2.0 and Search Engines". Here are some final thoughts from the Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo Toronto 2008.

Measure Everything, But Don't Forget to Act - Bryan Eisenberg referred to the abundance of data we record as data diarrhea in his keynote presentation. It sure can seem that way. We're measuring everything, as we should, and we're trying to analyze all this data, but if there's not action to improve matters, it's all one huge waste of time. We should measure, analyze, report and act, in that order. Acting upon analysis is the entire raison d'être, and we shouldn't forget it.

Blog! - Starting a blog will do wonders for your search engine rankings. The long tail is fed by your entries, and whether you're selling books, software, widgets or simply passionate about a hobby, if you don't have one you're missing the boat. Blog!

Web 2.0 Means Something - Many will argue it's a bullshit term. In a sense, these people are exactly right. Just try and define Web 2.0 without stumbling, it means different things to different people. It might be a bullshit buzzword, but it means something. The web is now collaborative. There's interaction, and real change will come from online discussions. If Prima sells you a crap television and provides abhorrent customer service, you have a voice.

SEO 2.0? - One of my favourite speakers yesterday was Ambles from Yahoo!. Ambles spoke about Yahoo!'s Search Monkey, their new opt-in search strategy that allows web authors to give their content context. That's the essence of the semantic web, and Ambles believes it's the future of search. In a nutshell, this involves those who write for the web, like me, adding microformats to my content, which actually gives my words meanings when they're indexed by search bots and non-human devices. This may be the future, but it's not here now. So long as it's an opt-in function of Yahoo! search I doubt many web authors will bother implementing this new code.

They gave us all a hardcover copy of Seth Godin's Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync? and the Search Monkey guys were handing out bananas. Nothing beats a meatball sundae with bananas.

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I mentioned I'm attending the Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo Toronto 2008 today and tomorrow, and that's where I've been all day. I'm throwing down a quick entry with some thoughts about search engine marketing and e-marketing in general, and then we in Raging Storm have a double header to play.

They call this expo Search Engine Strategies, but it may as well be Google Strategies. Even though a primary sponsor is Yahoo! Canada and their logo appears on the main banner, it's all about The Google. Almost 70% of all North American searches now happen in Google. Overseas, that figure rises dramatically. Google's slice of the search pie is only increasing as more and more of us pad their coffers with AdWord accounts and try to get a little back with AdSense. Yahoo! and MSN are becoming less and less significant in the search marketing game.

Today I attended four sessions. Here are some quick thoughts on each one.

Opening Keynote: Fredrick Marckini - Fredrick's a great speaker who mixes in just the right amount of humour. He emphasized the ubiquitous nature of search - it's everywhere. We're searching YouTube, blogs, IMDB.com, BestBuy.com, Flickr, our PVRs, MySpace, Facebook, and a bunch of different search engines. It's all about the search, and if you're not in the first three pages of results, you're invisible. It's truly akin to putting up a billboard behind a very large and dense bush. It's there, but nobody will see it. SEO must be administered to everything you place online.

Universal and Blended Search with Mike Grehan, Mitch Joel, Dustin Rideout and Andy Renieris - I'm old enough to remember a time when SEO was all about text. HTML text that was indexed, and if you put the right keywords in the right place and carried some weight with the Google bots, you ranked highly for those targeted keywords. This session suggested that SEO was being replaced by DAO: Digital Asset Optimization.

The consensus was that, as Google integrates it's image search results, it's YouTube video results, it's maps and it's news results into the main search results feed, it's becoming just as important to target these Google databases as well as the universal search. I've long believed in leaning on the power of YouTube and Flickr for emarketing purposes, but I haven't drank the Kool-Aid yet that suggests on-site textual optimization no longer matters. Google SES Toronto and see what I mean.

Orion Panel: Measuring Success in a 2.0 World with Kevin Ryan, Andrew Goodman, Heather Dougherty, Bret Grinslade, Adam S. Goldberg and Mike Grehan - Our 2.0 World seems to be all about social media sites and blogs, and it's what we don't know that's most alarming. Kevin Ryan did a great job as moderator pressing the panel to specifically site a Web 2.0 marketing campaign that worked and explain why it worked. This is all so new, it seems few marketers are really sure why Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and YouTube matter. There was an entire session today devoted to Twitter and whether it's a great marketing tool or a gigantic waste of time. If I took anything away from this session it's validation that everything that can be measured should be measured and numbers don't mean shit if you can't apply what you know to your marketing strategy.

Paid Search: Advanced Issues in PPC with Kevin Ryan, Mona Elesseily, Jeff Lancaster, Bill Tighe and Adam Muscott - Bill Tighe was the Google guy, so we peppered him with Adwords questions. I won't tell you exactly what I spend on Adwords each day (not for this site, I assure you), but it's a lot. Test your ad copy, ensure you're bidding on the right keywords and optimize your landing page. Those three tips are free, but the next one will cost ya.

I'm looking forward to day two. The search marketing world changes at a rapid pace and one company is controlling our universe. Thankfully, that company isn't Microsoft, but it's still scary to think one significant change to the Google algorithm could change everything.

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I'll be attending the Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo Toronto 2008 event next week from June 16-18 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. It's a good event for those looking to learn:

• How search engines list Web sites for free and through paid placements;
• How to get free "organic" traffic by building a site that pleases search engines and your visitors;
• How to efficiently purchase listings guaranteed to rank your company at the top of search engine results;
• How to calculate the ROI of your search marketing efforts by tracking your visitors from the time they hit your site until they buy? and get tips on improving conversion if they don't;
• How to build links that generate traffic to your Web site, and how to avoid the penalties of "spamming" the search engines;
• What's coming next in the constantly evolving world of Web search, and how you can profit from those changes.

I'm in the process of picking my tracks for what will be a couple of busy days next week. I'll go heavy on the advanced sessions, which includes topics like "Universal and Blended Search", "Paid Search: Advanced Issues in PPC", "Beyond Linkbait: Getting Authoritative Online Mentions", "Search User Behavior", "Web 2.0 & Search Engines" and, what should be most beneficial, "Giving Credit Where It's Due: Which Campaign Sold What?"

I'll blog about this event because that's what I do. Let me know if you're going to the show and I'll say hi. I'll be the guy wearing the #5 Bill Barilko jersey.

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If you use StatCounter to monitor traffic to your website, you likely noticed it was inaccessible all weekend. I'm a big fan of StatCounter and typically pop in once a day to see what's happening on this site. It's rarely offline, so when it disappeared for a few days, I knew something must have gone horribly wrong.

Here's what happend to The Planet datacenter in Houston.

Houston, TX (AHN) -- An explosion Saturday evening at a Texas-based, privately held server hosting provider has caused server outages effecting 9,000 servers and 7,500 customers.

According to The Planet's website, at about 5 p.m. Saturday electrical gear shorted, creating an explosion and fire that knocked down three walls surrounding their electrical equipment room.

No injuries were reported and no servers were damaged or lost.

The Houston company, which provides servers for small and medium sized companies, said it has its entire support team working around the clock to get the servers back on line.

For StatCounter users, the news is bad. 24 to 30 hours of stats have been lost. We'll never know how many unique visitors we had this weekend. And they say there were no injuries...

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These are the top searches that referred people to this site in May of 2008. I don't understand the Tie Domi resurgence either. Maybe he's in line for the Leafs GM gig?

1. ticket stubs
2. big shiny tunes 3
3. tie domi
4. big shiny tunes 2
5. ticket stub
6. big shiny tunes 4
7. big shiny tunes 5
8. toronto blog
9. bill barilko
10. big shiny tunes 7

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Back in January I updated you on my Toronto Blog Google Challenge. At that time I was 3rd when you Google toronto blog and I was gunning for first, despite the fact the blogs in 1st and 2nd were multi-authored and financed, in other words, professional blogs. I am but one man doing this for shits and giggles during coffee breaks, intermissions and commercials.

I just conducted the search and I'm pleased to report I've made further progress. I'm now ranking 2nd overall when you search for toronto blog in Google. That's out of 6,800,000 indexed sites, by the way.

I'll update this little challenge when I'm on top of the Toronto blog food chain.

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At some point this year, I'll complete my sixth year of blogging. These past few years, as my SEO skills improved and my Google-fu strengthened, I've had a few kicks over how highly I'd rank for certain keywords. I still think it's pretty cool that I rank #2 behind Wikipedia when people Google Bill Barilko.

Earlier today, while browsing the referral log, I saw a visitor dropping by after Googling Tom Henke. Tom Henke, beloved Blue Jay and dominant closer for so many wonderful years. I wondered where I ranked when people Google Tom Henke.

I'm currently ranked #3, just behind Wikipedia and baseball-reference.com, a couple of major league heavyweights.

If you had told me twenty years ago I'd one day rank third when people search for Tom Henke... I'd wonder what the hell you were talking about.

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These are the top searches that referred people to this site in March of 2008. That's some big shiny dominance!

1. wedding playlist
2. big shiny tunes 3
3. wedding playlists
4. big shiny tunes 2
5. big shiny tunes 4
6. big shiny tunes 5
7. big shiny tunes 7
8. bill barilko
9. torontomike.com
10. edgefest 2008

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These are the top searches that referred people to this site in February of 2008. The three wedding searches below all resolve at this entry. That's one of only a handful of entries on this site with "sponsored links" at the bottom. Move over Daddy Warbucks!

1. wedding playlist
2. wedding playlists
3. marge simpson nude
4. tie domi
5. big shiny tunes 3
6. toronto blog
7. big shiny tunes 4
8. big shiny tunes 7
9. i choo choo choose you
10. wedding song playlist

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These are the top searches that referred people to this site in January of 2008. Once again, this list is dominated by people looking for Ralph Wiggums' Valentine's Day card. "Choo choo" related searches hold down three of the top five spots. I'm pleased to see "toronto blog" breaking into the top four and surprised to see "saint ralph soundtrack" ranking. Apparently, a cable channel in the New York area is playing the heck out of that film and it's benefiting from the exposure.

1. i choo choo choose you
2. big shiny tunes 7
3. choo choo choose you
4. toronto blog
5. choo choo
6. saint ralph soundtrack
7. celebrity death watch
8. x games soundtrack
9. big shiny tunes 8
10. bill barilko

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Periodically I'll target certain keywords in Google just to test certain SEO techniques. When I picked up the domain name torontomike.com to complement mikeboon.com, I decided I should target the search toronto blog. This is, after all, a blog with a Toronto-centric angle.

With fairly little effort I started ranking in the top ten on Google, but I seem stuck in either the 3rd or 2nd spot. There are a couple of bigger boys targeting the same keywords and they're tough to catch. Quite simply, they have a helluva lot more inbound links with the anchor text toronto blog.

I just took the screen cap below that currently shows me in 3rd. I'll update this little challenge when I'm on top of the Toronto blog food chain.

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These are the top searches that referred people to this site in December of 2007. I'm still puzzled by all the people looking for Ralph Wiggums' Valentine's Day card. I would have guessed that's more of a February surge. And what's with people searching for nude pictures of Marge? Do they realize she's a cartoon character?

1. i choo choo choose you
2. big shiny tunes 4
3. big shiny tunes 7
4. marge simpson nude
5. christmas with a kick
6. torontomike.com
7. choo choo choose you
8. toronto blog
9. bill barilko
10. christmas with a kick ii

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These are the top searches that referred people to this site in November of 2007. What's with the surge in people looking for Ralph Wiggums' Valentine's Day card? Did they move Valentine's Day up this year?

1. wedding playlists
2. wedding playlist
3. barry bonds
4. bill barilko
5. big shiny tunes 2
6. tie domi
7. i choo choo choose you
8. big shiny tunes 4
9. jiri tlusty
10. big shiny tunes 3

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These are the top searches that referred people to this site in October of 2007. Were there a lot of weddings in September? The hockey hits, I understand.

1. wedding playlists
2. wedding playlist
3. toronto maple leafs
4. bill barilko
5. top new rock songs of 2007
6. wedding song playlist
7. barry bonds
8. celebrity death watch
9. marge simpson nude
10. saint ralph soundtrack

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