Be an Internet Glass Chewer, not a Glass Jaw

July 15, 2008 By 17 Comments

This post will seem like a rant in spots, but if you stick with it I think some of you will be inspired enough in your efforts to fill your pockets with a little extra coin; the only result that matters in our industry.

I read a post by Lisa Barone at BruceClay.com entitled Don’t Be Popular. Be Useful. , and got to thinking about how some of those same concepts translate past blogging into the actual fabric of the industry.

The ratio of self-promoting perpetrators in our industry to actual talent seems to be ever increasing.

The former is soft and glass jawed, the later is a mean spirited glass chewer.

The former has a limited value based mostly on a segmented time line, the later will be an innovator in our industry as long as there is one.

You shouldn’t really need to have me tell you which one of these two schools you fall into, but I love allegory so let me tell you a tale to help you understand what the heart of a glass chewer is made of.

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Filed Under: Analytics, Copy and Content, Search Engines, Search Marketing, SEO, Social Media, Tools and Tips, Uncategorized

The Six Ladies of SEO I Would Want to Be Stuck Next to on a Cross Country Flight

July 10, 2008 By 17 Comments

Maybe this will become all that Snydey Sense is. One list after another of people I like.

If that happens someone put a pillow over my face while I’m sleeping.

The reality of the situation is that I wrote the last piece with six specific individuals in mind, and none of them happened to be women. There was an obvious backlash to that, and now I must defend myself against sexist allegations, even though I am actually a misogynistic (or is it masochist? I don’t remember.)

There are a plethora of brilliant women in search, but once again, and specifically for the people that bitched about certain people being left off the last list, these are people that I not only respect for their offerings to our industry, but also for who they are.

The situation this time?

We are on a flight from my home town of Ft.Lauderdale to San Jose for SES. I can think of no more uncomfortable situation for a human than sitting next to my big ass on a cross country flight, except perhaps being stuck with my big ass in an elevator.

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Filed Under: Search Marketing, SEO, Social Media

The Six SEOs I Would Want to Be Stuck in an Elevator With

July 7, 2008 By 25 Comments

I am not a people person.

It is nothing personal against individuals, I just detest the B.S. most people spit.

The problem; I am in an industry full of people that spit B.S. on a daily, if not momentary basis.

Despite this fact there are a ton of people in the industry I would love to meet and talk to. Although I dislike empty conversations with most people I understand the value that they have, and I love learning everything someone is willing to teach me.

With SES San Jose coming up at the end of the Summer, I got to thinking who the people I would like to meet most would be. Then I realized that list would be too extensive, and that if I blogged about it, it would be too much of a Sphinn bait piece. Since I hate those kind of posts (Jesus I am filled with hate) I decided to go a less douchey route.

So instead I thought I would write about the SEOs I would most like to share an uncomfortable and time consuming event with. This really narrows down my list, to not only people I respect, but also the kind of people I find personally satisfying. An empty conversation in a stuck elevator would be the worst kind of torture, so in choosing the SEOs I would share the experience with it is important to  choose not only on the basis of respect for what they have to teach me, but also someone that wouldn’t make the event more torturous.

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Filed Under: SEO, Social Media

The Usability of SEO

June 27, 2008 By 71 Comments

It is the chicken before the egg of the online industry.

Which comes first usability or SEO?

Designers and developers often take one stance on the issue, and SEOs another. I am not sure there is a right or wrong answer. Despite how many in our industry present information the only way we can quantify any degree of success in what we do is by measuring how profitable a web property is (I know not all websites operate for revenue, but who cares about them?).

Profitable sites have been built without sound search engine optimization.

Profitable sites have been built with poor usability.

Neither of these points can be argued.

But in a fantasy land of project perfection, sound SEO can lead to high quality usability. Here the two concepts can dance in a green meadow beneath a candy rainbow; also known as Canada (SES Toronto trip showed me how majestic it is North of border)

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Filed Under: Search Engines, Search Marketing, SEO

Clean Up Your Rankings for Conversion

June 25, 2008 By 1 Comment

I am a slave to writing about things that I see and do in my everyday SEO efforts or searching.

To me theory often fails to show value in terms of dollars. And I am in this business to make dollars.

I have been doing a lot of eCommerce searching lately since my birthday is coming up next weekend, and I need to figure out what I want. What I have found are a ton of search results that are too specific. They go beyond the generic term I am looking for, and send me to pages with very specific products that are not what I am looking for. This fact can mean death for an eCommerce site, which should be leading generic terms to non-product, more category oriented terms.

Let’s use the example of a website that sells televisions.

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Filed Under: Search Engines, Search Marketing, SEO

Link Lust: A Lesson in .Edu Link Building

June 4, 2008 By 12 Comments

It has long been held in the SEO industry that .edu links can be the key to developing quality link equity when utilizing purely white hat optimization techniques. These links represent such high quality that they can often add more equity than even multiple high authority sites.

The reason for the weight given to .edu sites has nothing to do with their TLD, but is in the difficulty in obtaining, and thus manipulating them for search ranking benefit.

Finding methods to achieve sustainable .edu links can be difficult. One method often used by SEOs is the utilization of college job boards for finding not only talented prospective employees, but also high quality links.

In obtaining high quality authoritative links, I often find that being transparent and working with a sense of building a lasting relationship can benefit both parties.

Coming from a background in education I have been able to develop a link building technique that not only serves my purposes as an SEO, but also the educational community I am looking to gain links from.

By building educational lessons and units around concepts central to your market, you can create viral link bait that can lead to long lasting linking relationships with .edu sources.

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Filed Under: Link Lust, SEO

Beyond Keyword Research: Heuristic Evaluations

May 23, 2008 By 5 Comments

So far in our trip Beyond Keyword Research, we have looked at all of the data available to us on the web, both competitive and from our site.

We have utilized on-site analytics, Google Trends, Seodigger.com, and hitwise tools to collect a wealth of data about terms on our market and traffic approximations related to those keywords.

The next step is to look at heuristic evaluations of the site. This step will allow us to get a look at which of the 25% of daily search terms that are completely original queries we can capture to our competitive advantage.

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Filed Under: Analytics, Beyond Keyword Research, Copy and Content, Search Engines, Search Marketing, SEO, Social Media

The SEO Apocolypse, More Theory than Substance

May 16, 2008 By 2 Comments

I could have also titled this entry, “More miscommunication than finality.”

Digging through my feed reader today I was blown away by the number of posts Shoemoney, Jeremy Schoemaker, had incited from his, “SEO has no future” post.

Yesterday he updated his thoughts in a new post:

The death of SEO is not going to happen overnight but it is close. I personally believe that Google will achieve their original goals and not allow humans to influence its algorithms. I know it sounds like SEO… well actually the definitions are the same thing. The difference between SEO and spam is what Google allows. There is no future in SEO and we will very soon all go back to being spammers. There is no black or white there is only SEO.

Shoemoney’s concept is based on the idea that data has replaced much of Google’s original reliance on providing webmasters with beneficial information on how to get their sites ranked better. This data comes from places like Google Analytics and its toolbar.

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Filed Under: Search Engines, SEO
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