Title says it all. As I become more and more immersed in the world of SEO and search marketing I am noticing that it is creeping into every aspect of my life. The following are by no means comprehensive of search taking over your life but they are the most common and prevalent signals that you may be living the life of a Search Geek.

1. You look for and point out the SEO mistakes on every site you visit.
2. Your friends and family have stopped sending you forwarded chain emails because they are tired of being accused of spamming.
3. You use acronyms for everything even if there is no reason to.
4. You forget that phone directories still exist until you see the new one on your doorstep once a year.
5. Your 8 year old daughter will only use Firefox and tells her friends exactly why it is better than IE.
6. Your friends and family have stopped asking about your work since they don’t understand what the hell you are talking about anyway.
7. You get upset when people use Google as a verb.
8. When you go out to eat you look for user reviews on the menu and can’t believe that restaurants have not embraced user generated content.
9. You are always trying to figure out a way to copy and paste when writing with pen and paper.
10. You start referring to telemarketers as Phone SPAM and junk mail as Mail SPAM.

©2009 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

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Unless you don’t read, listen to, or watch the news (or talk to anyone at all) you are probably aware that the economy has been in the shitter for a while. Since we are repeatedly reminded of this fact it’s kind of hard to ignore it. Some may argue that the constant focus on the economy by the media is contributing to the continued malaise but that is a discussion for a different article. I am interested in discussing how the economy is affecting search engine marketing. More specifically I want to explore how it is affecting SEO and the way search engine optimization professionals are changing the value associated with the services they offer. For the most part traditional publications as well as digital media and search marketing blogs are extolling the virtues of search engine marketing but there are still issues with some in the industry devaluing their services in an attempt to gain new clients.

SEO is extremely valuable, especially in a recession

I have read countless articles that promote search marketing as an alternative to other online (and offline) marketing initiatives, especially in a recession. While I would argue that search engine optimization should be included in any marketing budget the point is that many marketers are realizing that it can provide positive long term ROI at a fraction of the cost of other digital marketing and traditional media. With SEO there is no media cost, you are simply paying for the knowledge of the search professional. Now some marketers have a hard time wrapping their heads around search engine optimization because of the fact that there is no media to buy. The somewhat abstract nature of SEO is sometimes confusing and even scary. This leads many marketers to devalue the worth of SEO and in turn leads many search professionals to lower their price just to win new clients. In the current economy this ends up hurting all of us and lowering the perceived value of SEO. Search engine optimization is extremely valuable and can benefit all websites in both the short and long term. Unlike other marketing efforts which stop delivering results when the budget is spent, SEO continues to deliver benefits long after the engagement is over.

SEO Whores devalue the worth of all SEOs

Too many SEOs are looking at the current economic environment and lowering the price of their service in an attempt ton win more clients. In doing so they lower the perceived value of their services and this hurts everyone in the industry. Quality search engine optimization requires deep specialized knowledge and a significant amount of time consuming research. Each engagement is going to be different so it’s not something that can be replicated from client to client. By lowering their prices these SEOs are saying that their specialized knowledge and time is not worthwhile and in a sense whoring themselves out to anyone with a few bucks. Search engine optimization is a knowledge based industry and that knowledge can provide a significant positive impact on businesses who utilize it. If you are a shitty SEO by all means be an whore because your services are not useful. Quality SEOs need to understand the value of the services they offer and price them accordingly. Don’t be a whore to compete with the bottom feeders or to combat the battered economy, charge what you are worth and prove your value to your clients. If you are good at what you do your clients will see the value of your service for a long time.

©2009 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

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©2009 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

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A recent post at SearchViews about the Twitter and Whoopi Goldberg dustup got some decent exposure, which included a link from the Larry King Live blog at CNN. The link itself sent some traffic which is always a good thing but there was some rumbling because there was no attribution to the original post, just a link that said Read More (nice anchor text BTW). The blog did not even mention where the story originated. Oh well, at least SearchViews got some free traffic and some link juice from a fairly big blog. Oh, wait that didn’t happen either.

Larry King is a Black Hole

So after some further examination I discovered that not only does the Larry King blog nofollow all external links, all internal links are nofollowed as well. On top of that the blog uses the noindex, nofollow meta-tag thus telling search engines to ignore everything on the blog. I did a very quick and dirty review of the other CNN blogs and noticed that old Larry’s blog looks to be the only black hole blog at CNN. Not sure why that is but apparently CNN does not want the additional page views or ad revenue that the Larry King blog could bring if search engines were allowed to index and rank it. Maybe Larry needs to look into why CNN hates him and his blog, of course since he probably has nothing to do with the blog other than letting it use his name he probably doesn’t care but CNN is making a huge mistake by not at least allowing search engines to index the content.

©2009 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

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Check out my latest post, SEO: Missing Out on Value by Obsessing About Cost, over at SearchViews.

©2009 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

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Last night kicked off one of the best times of the year for NHL fans. Spring is in the air and NHL playoffs have begun. The Red Wings second season starts tonight but last night was the first night of playoff hockey for a number of teams. To commemorate the beginning of the playoffs a few friends and I attended the NHLTweetup at the NHL store in NYC along with a 100+ other hockey loving tweeps, and at least one attendee who won’t follow me because I am an SEO . You can read her coverage of the event at Media Post.  Good times were had by all and best of all we got to hang out with the Stanley Cup.

So without further ado I present the awesomeness that is the Stanley Cup

Stanley Cup

97 Red Wings Cup Winners

98 Red Wings Cup Winners

Pilo with the Stanley Cup

Tony and Pilo with the Stanley Cup

Tony & Pilo with the Stanley Cup

©2009 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

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From nowhere on the list to number one in a matter of minutes (check out my sidebar).  I could say that it was a result of hard work and tireless dedication but that would be an outright lie. The truth is my colleague Dr. Naveel found a quick way to rise to the top of the list. Or at least make it appear that I am at the top of the list on my own blog. If you go to the AdAge Power 150 page you will see that Seth Godin is still firmly entrenched at number 1. I am not really number 1 nor am I even ranked in the top 377 or however many blogs are included in the Power 150. I simply grabbed the code that AdAge provides to those in the Hot 150 and put it on my blog using Seth Godin’s ID.

Just Having Some Fun But…

I did this as a joke but Ad Age should really fix their badge code so it is not so easy to manipulate. IMO it would reflect poorly on their brand if there were 100 blogs out there showing up as number 1. It should not be this easy to manipulate. I am going to remove the badge from my sidebar soon so I included a  screenshot for posterity. While I am just having some fun there is a real chance that other blogs could do the same thing and use the Ad Age Power 150 ranking as evidence of thought leadership to less savvy readers. This could have a negative effect on the Ad Age brand if they appear to endorse a less than scrupulous blogger/business. It’s probably a good idea to fix this today.

©2009 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

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After hearing and reading about how freakin awesome Ubuntu is from friends and all the fanboys on various tech sites I decided to give it a try. I have an older laptop that I thought would be a perfect candidate for exploring the world of Ubuntu. According to everything I have read Ubuntu is easy to use and is a perfect Linux distro to displace the Windows dominance in the desktop market. I figure I have nothing to lose so I decide to jump right in and load the OS to my laptop. Everything went well and I was up and running with Ubuntu. Nice. That’s when the anger and frustration set in.

Issue #1: Wireless

The first thing I attempted to do was get the wireless working. My previous experience with Windows made me believe this would be simple. Oh how wrong I was. I had to dive into the terminal and grab NDIS Wrapper and then run some commands to get this to work. With all of that done I tried again but I was still unable to connect to my wireless router. At this point I was ready to throw the laptop out the window. Off to the forums. After reading a number of forums I tried a few different solutions and finally found the one that worked. I lost count of how many hours I spent on this but I was finally able to download the correct files and after running some more commands in the terminal my wireless connection was up and running. Wooo-hoooo!

Issue #2: Connecting to a Windows Network

This one is still not resolved but apparently it is due to a bug in the Gnome Desktop Environment that is apparently not worth anyone’s time. I set up my Windows machine as a server and it was all set to share selected folders as well as the printer. So I go to my Ubuntu machine and attempt to access it. Of course it is not that simple so I had to download a number of packages and once again run commands in the terminal. With all of the steps completed I was able to browse to my Windows shares and everything seemed to be working perfectly. That is until I open the Windows workgroup and encountered an empty folder. I can get to it but none of the shared files appeared.

Once again it was off to the forums. All of them seemed to be full of people with this same issue and there were plenty of helpful experts there giving advice.  Everyone seemed to provide different advice and none of the recommendations actually worked. Following the links that were provided by different people invariably landed me on the same bug report page that informed me that this was a known bug in Gnome and that there was no fix as of yet. Sweet! In the meantime I was easily able to access my Linux machine from the Windows machine with a couple of clicks. Easy. This was not the last of the issues I encountered but the others were not as difficult to overcome. They were still annoying and would probably turn off the average user.

I Like Ubuntu But…

Honestly, I like Ubuntu. For simple every day tasks it is easy to use. Surfing the Internet and using Open Office is not a problem and not much different than using a Windows machine. I also love the fact that it is open and customizable. I can easily change the way my desktop looks and customize the way the system performs and functions to suit my needs. This is great. The problem is when it comes to more complex tasks (that are really not that complex) it becomes convoluted and aggravating. Things like setting up a network or simply accessing a Wireless connection become time consuming and require some knowledge that the average user simply does not have. With Windows these tasks are extremely easy. With Ubuntu it requires downloading a number of packages, unzipping them, running commands in terminal, and then searching through the various forums and blogs to get everything working correctly. The average user is never going to do this. They just want their computers to work and like it or not Windows (and Apple computers) work right out of the box and do everything an average user wants them to do.

I like the challenge that Ubuntu presents. It can be frustrating at times but when I am able to solve an issue I get a sense of satisfaction. I am also constantly customizing and tweaking the environment, which is limited or not possible in a Windows or Apple OS,  so I like that too. I am not an average user though. The average user wants to turn their computer on and get on with the task at hand. They don’t care about customizing their OS and they certainly don’t want to open up the terminal and enter command lines to get the Internet to work. Until Ubuntu and other Linux distributions are able to balance the open aspects of the OS with the needs of the average user who just wants it to work they will not gain a significant share of the desktop market. No matter how much the fanboys shout.

©2009 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

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Google just announced that they will be serving “interest-based advertising” to users by placing a cookie in your browser when you visit a Google partner or a Google site YouTube. This cookie will track the type of sites you visit and then use this data to determine what your interests are. With this data they believe they will be able to serve you content network ads that are more targeted and aligned with your interests. They also allow users to choose their interests as well as opt-out of the service. I will leave the privacy issues to others and I am sure it will be a hot topic in some circles. Instead I want to explore the potential SEO implications of interest based advertising.

Could Google Incorporate Interest Based Advertising Data Into Organic Search Results?

I am not sure how difficult it would be to incorporate the data into the organic SERPs but I am fairly certain that it is possible to do so. Google has provided personalized results to users logged into a Google account by tracking the sites they visit and attempting to provide search results that are similar to those sites. The fairly recent roll out of SearchWiki, which allows users to alter their own results and comment on sites in the SERPs, has furthered their personalization efforts. Interest based advertising data has the potential to create even more personalized results to all users even those who don’t have a Google account. This could be done by gathering data from the browser cookies and serving results based on the users interests. I have not seen many people talking about this but the potential to so is there and it aligns with their effort to provide personalized results perfectly.

Twisting the Knife Into the Barely Breathing Ranking Report

If Google were to begin incorporating the data gathered through the interest-based cookies it would strike another blow against the ranking report. We eschewed ranking reports as an SEO metric a while ago and instead report on meaningful metrics like relevant traffic, conversions, and real ROI metrics. Some SEOs still rely on ranking reports as a way to show that they are providing a useful service but with the rise of personalized results ranking reports are less useful and in many cases totally misleading. What I see as number 1 can be vastly different than what Web Position Gold sees and the client could be seeing yet another result. Personalized results are still somewhat limited because they tend to rely on users to be signed into their Google account. But if Google brings interest-based advertising cookie data into organic search they could provide personalized results to a much larger audience (those who don’t opt out). In fact since they allow user input they could provide results that align with exactly what the user tells them they like. IMO this would put the final nail in the ranking report coffin and it can’t come soon enough.

Just Conjecture…Right Now

At this point the idea that Google would incorporate interest-based data into the organic SERPs is just conjecture on my part. Nothing they have released has even hinted that they would do this but Google is not always totally forthcoming about what they are doing in the organic results. Will they do it? Who knows but I believe they have the potential to and if they believe that it would be useful to their users or their bottom line they will find a way to make it happen.

©2009 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

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After spending a lot of time at various  SEO forums and groups I am struck by how many beleaguered webmasters come for advice about why their site is penalized or not ranking well and simply dismiss the advice they get out of hand. It is especially prevalent in the Google Webmaster Help Forum. It has become almost comical in in some situations when EVERYONE in the forum is telling a webmaster the same damn thing and he/she refuses to believe what they are being told. I have resigned myself to the fact that they can’t be convinced so I just let them wallow in their own crapulence and continue to enjoy their crappy search engine presence. Others are more persistent but I refuse to exert any more effort for someone who refuses to accept reality.

This is how it usually goes

Clueless Webmaster: My website was ranking well for some obscure but semi-competitive keywords but they have disappeared and I can’t even rank for my own name.

SEO Guy #1: What is the URL? Have you made any changes to your site recently?

Clueless Webmaster: URL is mfa-spam.info. I have not made many changes to the site besides trying to build some links. I heard that you need a lot of links to rank well so I have spent a lot of time doing that.

SEO Guy #1: OK, I took a look at your site. Looks like you have a huge link exchange scheme. All you seem to have is a bunch of reciprocal links from questionable websites.

SEO Guy #2: Yeah, SEO Guy #1 is right. Also, it looks like you have some keyword stuffed hidden text in your footer. You should clean up the hidden text and get rid of the link scheme.

Clueless Webmaster: Well, that hidden text has been there for a while so that is not the problem. As far as the link exchange goes I have heard that you need links to rank well in Google and I see all kinds of  sites with link exchanges ranking for other semi-competitive terms. So I don’t think that is why I am having issues.

SEO Guy #2: Well Google updates their algorithms all the time and they may have just found the hidden text. It has always violated their guidelines but they have just caught you. I would clean it up right away and file a request for reconsideration.

SEO Guy #1: Yeah, and as far as the link exchange goes that may have also just been discovered. As far as other sites with reciprocal links still ranking well it could be a case where they have enough strong links outside of the exchange to keep their rankings for the semi-competitive terms they are targeting or Google simply has not discovered it yet. I would clean the links and the hidden text right away and file a request for reconsideration.

SEO Guy #3: I agree with SEO Guy#1 and SEO Guy #2. Clean that stuff up and file a request for reconsideration.

Clueless Webmaster: I don’t think that any of you know what you are talking about. I see that stuff all the time. I think that Google has it in for me and they downgraded my site manually to get back at me.

Google Employee: No, Google does not have it in for you. The advice you have been given is good. Please take the advice and clean up the hidden text and the link scheme and file a request for reconsideration.

Clueless Webmaster: No Google hates me and wants to ruin my business.

Don’t ask for advice if you don’t want it

In the end some of the agrieved webmasters look like they just come to forums to rant against Google and refuse to believe anything anybody tells them. No matter how many other SEOs and Googlers agree with the advice given. They simply refuse to believe that they are at fault for their shitty rankings and traffic. I simply refuse to participate in it anymore. If you want advice it makes sense to at least be open to the advice you are given, especially when everyone tells you the same thing. If you want to rant start a blog or hop on Twitter and rant away otherwise STFU and listen. You may actually learn something.

©2009 piloSEO. All Rights Reserved.

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