Search Marketing Thoughts

Some catching up to do...

2008-03-15T18:22:00.002-05:00

It's been a while but I have a few minutes before headed to a neighbor's St. patty's day party to send out some updates.

My family is beautiful. Our baby girl turns five months next week and Dixon will soon be three. How time flies...
Thanks a ton to the team from comScore markter, who hooked it up at SMX West and drew my card as the winner of a new iPod Touch 8GB. I am in fact just downloading the software now, and will be sporting it at SES next week. By the way, I had a chance to check out the new comScore Marketer thanks to meeting Brian Buroker at SES Chicago. Cool guy and definitely a neat product. I would compare it to a compete but with the data being more believable and substantial, in my opinion. Anyhow, make sure you check out their killer web competitive analysis tools sometime.
Thanks to Danny Sullivan and his crew for inviting me to SMX...it was t-awesome and I got a lot out of sharing opinions on SEM Standards with the gifted panelists and moderator I appeared with.
Thanks to Incisive Media for their continuing support. I have a fun new column with Frank Watson (see his new company Kangamurra) called SEM Crossfire. We take turns writing a column and providing our feedback on the other's. We also plan to leverage our networks and make sure to get other opinions on some hot topics in SEO and Paid Search. Also Kevin Ryan has placed a lot of trust in me and I appreciate his invitations to moderate panels at SES.
Most of all, my new job is KILLER. Brulant is a pretty formidable company and I see major growth for us over the next decade. Great team and I am looking for more people to join us...so let me know. (Paid, Display, and SEO this means YOU). ;)

K I hope to see you all at Search Engine Strategies next week! If I don't see you there...don't forget to reach out at Facebook or LinkedIn if you want.

New Column Suggestions Needed

2007-09-17T19:26:00.000-05:00

So work is doing great at the new job with Brulant in Cleveland. Solid team. I have to work on finding a house, since we got lucky and accepted and offer already on the house outside Philly.

I will be writing some more for Search Engine Watch, and was hoping for some column suggestions. What do people want to read about? The experts column that I have been writing will shift over to a new mystery author who will be announced next time in the Outsourced column.

Please post comments about topics of interest or even full column ideas. Chances are if you "win" I could hook up an SEW membership or something.

More to come soon, and reach out to me Chris Boggs at FaceBook or LinkedIn if you want to get back in touch. or share some column ideas in more detail.

Leaving Philadelphia...

2007-08-17T11:37:00.000-05:00

It has been a great 15 months with Avenue A Razorfish, but the time has come for me to say goodbye. Our family has been given the opportunity to relocate to the Cleveland area, just in time for baby #2 to come along in late October, and to be nearer to my wife’s family.

I had an amazing time here at AR, and worked with some really bright minds. I’ll not list many, so hopefully no one gets offended, but I want to give a special shout-out to the following folks: Rob Crigler who hired me (and works with Orkin now); Brad Aronson who has been an awesome sounding board and has driven me to think even more broadly than I did in the past; Matt Greitzer who is one of the smartest guys I have ever worked with; William Flaiz who as my very efficient superior has given me the ability to continue to grow while maintaining my community roots; the Chrises and the rest of the PT team for being my neighbors and keeping me always laughing or hitting the mute button while on phone calls; the greater-arching SEM community within AR offices across the globe – especially Lindsay Rinehart in the ATL, Nathan Levi in the UK and Guillaume and the others at Duke in Paris; and lastly the entire SEO team that I have had the honor and privilege to work with!

The super-exciting part of this move is that I have secured a position with eMergent Marketing, the Search Engine Marketing arm of the consultancy Brulant (http://www.brulant.com/). I will be the Manager of the Search Engine Optimization team. I don’t have many more details for now, except the fact that the team members that I met with during my interview process were obviously talented and eager to continue to provide leading SEO results for their clients. The company itself has done some great things, and the senior leadership that I have had the chance to meet personally, including Len Pagon, Brad Wertz, Paul Elliott and John Vojtush, are certainly gentlemen that I look forward to working and growing with.

I will be at SES next week, wearing my new name badge, so please feel free to look for me should you wish to chat about this move or search in general!

(Cat Post) Why are so many Americans racist?

2007-05-10T13:25:00.000-05:00

My good friend Marco Chipotle asked me to remove this post. He was later in line from the person I chose to target for starting the email. Sure, it is true she likely didn't start the email, but IMO anyone who forwards those types of crap are really guilty of it. Hmm I guess that includes Marco Stupotle. ;)

So anyway racism sucks.

Why I Blog - a "Tag" meme

2007-04-06T14:17:00.000-05:00

So my good friend Barry Schwartz tagged me (http://www.cartoonbarry.com/2007/04/why_i_blog.html) and I now am part of the "Why I Blog" meme. This is very exciting for me, since 3 years ago I barely knew what a blog was and certainly never figured I'd use the word meme (hopefully properly). So he we go:

"Why I Blog"

1. I like to write, and blogging allows me to convey my feelings to a variety of people that may or may not find them interesting.

2. I blog for three different site: this one, Search Engine Roundtable, and Search Engine Watch. For each of the three I can have a slightly different attitude, which is nice. I really like the format at SER, because I can blog about what others are saying. I would almost call this the most "mindless" of my blogging duties, however I actually do spend a decent amount of time on the posts. Someday I will be like Barry the Jedi blogger and knock posts out at an inhuman rate.

3. I am in fact rather jealous of him and Danny Sullivan, both of whom seem to be able to put out so much valuable content in such short periods of time. Thus, I at least have a very basic reason to blog: that is to get better at blogging.

4. When I first started posting at Search Engine watch forums in 2004, I began to enjoy participating in virtual discussions. Although blogging often ends up being more of a one-way information flow, the idea of speaking my mind in a forum where literally anyone with Internet access can read it is still very compelling to me. To paraphrase a quote I recently heard but can't find the source of right now: "People enjoy interaction with other people, but the most joy that they get from it is in having someone listen to them."

5. I blog because I have a lot of friends and business associates that blog. I have so many friends and acquaintances, that I like to think that in some way my posts at the various blogs allow some of them to "keep in touch" until the next conference I see them at.

6. I blog because the word blog includes three letters from my last name, and it rhymes sort of.

OK so there we go, this is why I blog. Please feel free to pry more out of me in the comments section.

In turn, I now tag the following bloggers to let me know why they blog:

Arianna Huffington (http://www.huffintonpost.com/)
Loren Baker (http://www.searchenginejournal.com/)
Pete Prestipino (http://peteprestipino.info/blog/)
Frank Watson aka Aussiewebmaster (http://www.smart-keywords.com/blog.html)

Avenue A | Razorfish Launches “Search Marketing Trends” Web Site

2007-04-06T14:06:00.000-05:00

Kind of slightly old news (this site has been live for about 2 months now), but I wrote this a few weeks ago so here it is.

Since I joined AARF last year, one of my most rewarding tasks has been to edit a weekly newsletter which we started out of the Philadelphia office last summer: Search marketing Trends (SMTrends). For the first 30 issues, we kept the newsletter slightly hidden, since we planned on moving to a new domain with it. Naturally, with client and other PR work taking precedence, this took a while to accomplish. However, a few weeks ago, we finally did move to a new Web site: www.searchmarketingtrends.com.

SMTrends is a newsletter that features topics written by AARF search marketing and other related specialists across the globe. The company made some great acquisitions in 2006, in my opinion, and has kicked off 2007 with two more new international partnerships, in Japan with the formidable Dentsu, as well as just last week with the purchase of an outstanding French SEM firm, Duke Interactive. (Comme je parle en peu de Francais, j’espere de travailer avec notre nouveaux copains Francais bientot!)

We have already had some articles contributed by our UK office, DNA, and our German offices of Neue Digitale. Soon, we should have participation with our Australian company Amnesia, as well as our Honk Kong team at e-Crusade. I am sure we will get plenty of participation this year across the globe, which makes editing SMTrends even more exiting.

So I personally invite anyone that has not yet checked out SMTrends to do so, and please sign up for our newsletter so you will receive it weekly. We plan on instituting an RSS feed soon. I hope to see you there, and feel free to submit topic suggestions directly to me via the comments in this thread or via AARF.

SEMPO Secretary – 2007

2007-04-06T14:05:00.000-05:00

As many of the readers of this blog probably know, I was recently re-elected to serve a second term on the BOS of SEMPO - the Search Engine Marketing Professional’s Organization. I am thrilled to have been selected from a list of very qualified candidates that numbered 37 excellent choices. I hope that anyone out there that voted for me, or even those that didn’t, please comment to this post with your suggestions for SEMPO this year. I also want to thank everyone that did vote for me, and I promise to continue to work hard this year to promote search engine marketing as a whole.

SEMPO has now over 500 members, and the actual number of people involved within those memberships is probably close to 700 or 800. This is a guess, but I know personally of quite a few organizations that have multiple participants, including my employer, Circle-member Avenue A Razorfish.

I have also been named Secretary, per a BOD vote, and I look forward to another very productive year as a member of the board. I was very happy to learn that 7 other members from last year’s board are returning, and that I have already worked with two of the new members personally in a few initiatives: Massimo Burgio and Fionn Downhill. I am excited to meet and work with those board members that I do not yet know, and I am sure they will bring plenty of valuable experience to SEMPO’s leadership in 2007.

Tobacco Quitting Update

2007-04-06T14:03:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the many folks who linked to my SEM Tobacco quitting contest. It looks like so far it’s just me and Website Magazine’s Pete Prestepino, who happened to quit on the exact same day. I haven’t reached out to him yet, but I personally have been able to keep my end of the bargain – having quit now for (10+) weeks.

I had decided when not many people signed up by February first to make this an ongoing contest. So anyone in the industry that wants to quit and may like to have a little extra support from me and Pete are welcome to still join. The rules are the same: if you start smoking again you owe whoever remains in the contest a link to a page of their choice. The sooner you join the contest the more chances you have of getting links.

I haven’t reached out to any search engine reps about this, but would hope that they do not take any offense to the idea of using links as a reward for such a contest. Please feel free to join the movement by commenting here or within the original post, and I’ll be back in a month or so with another update. I am keeping my fingers crossed for SES NYC next week – since I am sure I may be tempted during the many after hours events.

Fantasy Baseball for SEMs

2007-03-30T15:57:00.000-05:00

Hey if you happen to see this in time, I have a fantasy baseball league with some AARF folks along with Loren Baker from the Search Engine Journal.

Please join in order to fill out the league. :) More SEO/SEM related posts coming, btw. :p

Fantasy Baseball draft tomorrow at 10:45am EST. JOIN!

Draft is live but you can pre-rank players and have the system pick for you…

If you know anyone else, feel free to pass along…

Go to Yahoo Baseball (with a yahoo ID) http://baseball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/b1
Sign up for a team
>Custom league
>League ID: 281345
Password: baseball

Time to Bring out the SEO "Slapping Glove."

2007-02-10T15:48:00.000-05:00

The SEO community has been taking some heat recently, and it is time to pull out the slapping glove. For those of you unfamiliar, there is an excellent Simpsons episode which features Homer going around and slapping people with a glove. Thus, I want to make it clear that the title of this post is based on humor.

Hopefully that has everyone relaxed. However, this subject is very serious. This subject is "I have to feed my kids" serious. Oops there I go again with the jokes, this time harking back to good old Terell Owens. There are people out there that are tarnishing the reputation of SEO. Although the primary buffoon in this case has been an industry "insider" who is starting to sound like a broken record - sadly - the other guilty party comes in the form of the SEO underbelly. I am talking about shady manipulators who from their basements or strip mall offices are selling SEO that is completely useless to the buyer.

I have to say that I work for a large agency and this in no way represents what they feel about the situation, officially. However, I know some senior search folks that feel the same way that I do when it comes to protecting the reputation of SEO. Hopefully I'll be back soon to link to a such a declaration as blessed by the top.

First of all, the whole Dave Pasternack thing is getting me sick. Sorry for not posting to any of those vying for his name and 1K, although that is pretty funny. The whole thing is just kind of nauseating, and I can't bring myself to join the game. At first, I started a thread at SEW that led to some of the feelings I had about the initial claims being posted by many other well respected SEO experts. Then Mr Dumbass (as I have decided to now refer to him as, just because I can - since he keeps using the "SEO isn't rocket science" jab) kept going and going.

I spoke with a person I still consider a good friend (Mr D's partner I guess you could call him) Kevin Lee, in November at Pubcon at the awesome Yahoo thing. I left feeling with a "hey its just fun" kind of feeling. Unfortunately I no longer feel the same (about the topic that is - still like Kevin but really have to have a long talk with him about it). I wrote an article for Search Marketing Standard that comes out this month about looking at search holistically. I reach out constantly to the paid teams at AR and they reciprocate as we work together. Yes I am hooked on search, and I will not throw jabs at any part of it: Paid, feeds, local, social, etc..). The Mr D takes his high visibility platform and keeps going there, like a little punk - each time with a dumber analogy. Yech.

Part deux of my current urge to speak out about SEO has to do with the slim shadys. The fools who make videos while running out of breath. The guys who go door-to-door selling SEO to small businesses. The high volume, low quality hucksters that cause Calcanis to talk smack, and fortunately bring heroes to the rescue like Danny and Greg, and many others. I chose to link to their posts cause everyone else seems to be and as usual Danny has created a monster of a SEO argument (probably within an hour or so of writing) and greg will follow up with Todd's help on the air of their search marketing radio show. I am very happy with D and G's points of view on this, but the young guys are really warming my heart too.

Loren "i-just-moved-to-tampa-beeotch" Baker's team member Carsten who I have yet to meet, has a great post I read today advising experts to add to the SEO Wikipedia page, and Neil "me-and-my-cool-mofo-wingman-cameron-no-on-can-pronounce-my-last-name-and-we-are-hustling-for-tla-now" Patel put Calcanis up to a SEO that works challenge that we'll love to follow.

The war has truly begun, no matter how funny I am trying to make this. I was in Artillery - the King of Battle - and am available when the ground troops need reinforcements. More to come certainly on this topic...

Also thanks to many other points of view I have read on this from too many places to list. Here's one though: WebProNews which has been really stepping it up with their Search Engine News.

New SEM Contest: Quit Tobacco

2007-01-23T11:54:00.000-05:00

OK so I quit smoking and Copenhagen on Saturday. It's Tuesday and I hate life, but fortunately I am using the patch to keep most of the hatred inside. :)

I propose a contest if any other SEM's want to join in on the fun.

Rules:

1. The one who quits the longest wins. This is an honor system but don't think we can't find spies. ;)

2. You may use assistance of patches, gum, hypnosis, or any other non-tobacco "maintenance" assistance.

3. You may not be "that person" that becomes vehemently anti-smoking, and you may not push your ideals onto others. In other words, don't say "that's gross" at SES NYC if you see a friend smoking.

4. If you join the contest, and you lose, you will immediately (within a few weeks) pay all other contestants in the form of one relevant link. It's up to you if you use the [nofollow], but ideally you wouldn't unless there will be nice traffic involved.

5. This contest is limited to anyone that works in SEM (SEO, Paid, Analytics, Webmasters)

This is a contest I am hoping to use for support from other friends in this close community. We'll probably setup a Group at Google.

I hope to have this completely kicked and forgotten about by SES NYC.

To join please add a comment or email me and I'll add you to the list of contestants. The deadline for submission is January 31, 2007.

***NOTE: this is not designed to be "link bait" or "linkbait." But please let others know about it. I am switching to a new URL soon anyway and don't even know if one can 301 from blogger...

5 things you may not know about me

2006-12-21T15:30:00.000-05:00

OK I have been sucked into this Blog Tagging game and I better do this before even more people pick me. Seriously though thanks for thinking of me. :) I was asked first by Adam (ShandyKing) , then Caydel , then Ben Pfeiffer (with two f’s), . So here we go…

1. “I was born a poor black child…”
.
.
.
.
.
.
...is my favorite movie line (Steve Martin in The Jerk) after about a dozen lines from Caddy Shack. I was actually born in Leuven (or Liege if you lean that way) which is sorta near Brussels in Belgium. And yes, like Notorious B.I.G., I have eaten the clams and mussels… My mom is Belgian and my dad was a US Diplomat so I grew up all over the place including Bordeaux France, Canberra Australia, Washington DC, The Hague Holland, Hamilton Bermuda, and then onto High School in Washington DC at a School called St. Alban’s. I speak French fairly well when I get back into it, and Dutch OK for an ugly American. Since HS I have lived in Georgia (Athens), California, Maryland, and now Jersey outside of Philly.

2. I was a US Marine for 4 years. Oo-rah! I was an Artillery Section Chief as a Non-Commissioned Officer, and was very good at accurately blowing up dirt that was far away. I served primarily at Camp Pendleton in CA, with a couple trips to Okinawa (Camp Hansen in case anyone knows) and was involved in a little thing called Desert Fox which occurred during the Clinton impeachment so not many people heard about it. We were bombing Iraq for a couple weeks at the end of 1998 and they had my unit along with the Army in a defensive position of Kuwait.

3. I play soccer in “Over 35” leagues. I just finished an outdoor season and got on to an Indoor team in South Jersey. Over the past few years I played in leagues in Maryland and San Diego. I rule (for an older fatter guy).

4. I play Fantasy Sports to the point of obsession. I play in a few “super leagues” that consist of random players that have gathered over the years from all over the world. I think it would be really cool to start a major Web 2.0ish community for Fantasy Sports. The following are sports that I am involved in: Golf, baseball, Hockey, Football. You can actually see one of my Fantasy Profiles at Yahoo! here: http://profiles.sports.yahoo.com/boggscd68

5. I love most pro sports, but primarily Football. Huge Redskins fan, been suffering for a while but I do have 3 Superbowl victories to fall back on that I can clearly remember shedding tears of joy over. I like the Washington Capitals as well – not much playoff joy there. Began liking the LA Dodgers as a kid when I lived in Australia and they stuck since DC didn’t have a team forever. Also a former Lakers Season ticket holder when I was living in San Diego (we split the tickets so I went to about a dozen game a year. Was at all three game 1’s during the Lakers’ three-peat). I also like DC United and was a fan of the old Washington Diplomats.

K Now I will call out some folks:

Frank Watson aka Aussiewebmaster http://www.smart-keywords.com/blog.html

Greg Boser aka WebGuerilla http://www.webguerrilla.com/

Jennifer Slegg aka JenSense http://www.jensense.com/

Rocco Albano http://lookin2theweb.com/

Gregory Isaacs http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=37546169

Up and running on all cylinders

2006-08-24T09:40:00.001-05:00

Hello to anyone who hasn't seen a ping from this blog in a while. It has been a busy few months, but things are coming along very nicely at AARF. Along with some really cool as well as talented people that were already here, Sean Stahlman joined us from New York. Unfortunately, the guy who helped to hire me on, Rob Crigler, left. But I am happy for him as he is now back with his family and working in a cushy in-house job. ;)

So my goal when I started at AARF on May 15 was to get my family up as soon as June 15. We closed on a house outside of Philly in Jersey on June 16. Not bad eh? My little baby boy is growing (16 months is a couple days), and so am I. haha I have actually been on a diet and already lost some serious poundage since SES San Jose. I need to slim down to be able to keep up with the little guy. Our house in Maryland sold, and fortunately we "got out" just before the recent housing dip, it seems. We only had to keep it one extra month.

I just got back from SES last week. It was a great show where I met so many wonderful people and rekindled some SES friendships as usual. I do not want to name a single person for fear of forgetting someone. :P So Barry, Ben, and Lee blogged the show with me for Barry's Search Engine roundtable. Awesome SES coverage by all of us if I don't say so myself. For a through recap of most of the coverage, see Danny's uber-SES coverage list.

OK so about the move to my searchevangelist.com domain. Soon, real soon Daniel-San...

I know I am slow, but gotta join Technorati

2006-08-24T08:58:00.000-05:00

Technorati Profile

Moving On

2006-05-01T10:20:00.000-05:00

I apologize to any “regular” readers of this blog for the lack of new content since February. I have been very busy with my duties at G3 group, including spending very educational week at the Search Engine Strategies show in New York City, where I spoke and blogged for the Search Engine Roundtable (SER). Since then, I have worked with a variety of G3 clients towards their SEO and SEM goals.

Today, I’d like to announce that I have decided to leave G3 Group. The decision was very difficult for me, since I have learned so much and made so many great friends while with the G3 Group. Having been very impressed with the G3 properties, including Instant Position, as well as the quality of the senior management and staff, I came onboard in 2004. I quickly began to learn a great deal about SEO-friendly site design, as well as advanced competition analysis methodology, from the president of G3: Anita Schott. I will be forever indebted to her for this mentoring, and will continue to recommend her as being one of the brightest search engine friendly web developers/analysts in the world. I also learned a lot from David Carberry (who is now with Advertising.com) about sales and business development, and continue to learn from Dan Appleget and the rest of the sales and support team here at G3.

I have made a decision to move to a larger interactive agency: Avenue A Razorfish, which is owned by aQuantive, also the Parent of Atlas and DRIVEpm. I will be working in their Philadelphia, PA offices in a new position titled “Search Strategist.” In a nutshell, “Search Strategists are responsible for assisting with SEO and SEM (paid search) strategy development across multiple teams. This position focuses on managing strategy, SEO results, and analyses of the P&L for the SEO clients…” Essentially, I will work with AA RF Senior Analysts to identify and dissect key performance indicators, in order to help ensure the best possible results for AA RF clients. I am very excited about this role, and I will be working with some very bright minds. Not to get into the whole history, but AA RF has been around for a long time in the form of its “assimilated” companies, especially iFrontier, which was arguably one of the first leading SEM companies in the world.

Another great feature of my new role is that I will be free to continue to participate actively in the online and offline search communities that I belong to. My voluntary duties as Associate Editor of SER and Moderator at Search Engine Watch Forums will continue, and I will continue to attend SES and other conferences. Also, my participation level as an elected member of the Board of Directors of SEMPO will not be affected by this move. As I alluded-to before, I will be working with some very talented people at AA RF. I see an excellent opportunity for personal growth with them, and I want to thank G3 Group for understanding my decision. I will continue to highly recommend the SEO Tools and tutorials found at Instantposition.com, which recently underwent a complete makeover. This is one of the top resources out there for inexpensive resources for the SEM “do-it-yourselfers.”

I will keep my networking database and will contact everyone with my new information as soon as it is available. Feel free to post a comment on this blog if you feel I may forget you, or if you have any questions.

Chris Boggs

This Blog Will Move Soon

2006-05-01T10:19:00.000-05:00

Just a quick post before my next one, but I have recently secured "searchevangelist.com" and plan on moving my blog over there within the next few weeks.

SEO solicitations to an SEO.

2006-02-21T18:14:00.000-05:00

The following is an email we received. We do this stuff, so why did I get this? Maybe it was meant to happen so I could dissect it and warn others...

"Hello Sir/Ma'amHope you are doing fine. This is (removed). We are a Microsoft
Certified Partner and a professionally managed IS0 9001:2000 Web Design and
Internet Marketing Company with 6 offices in 3 continents. We have over 5+ years
of experience under our belts and have been Service Providers for Fortune 500
companies like (removed) to name a few.We can offer you visually appealing and
marketing savvy solutions which would ensure that your site gets highly
qualified focused traffic that leads to higher conversions."

Whoa who can ensure that?

"We would like to inform you that we have partnered various Web Design, SEO and
Link Building Companies. They have been regularly outsourcing work to us and
assure you that we are the Best SEO Outsourcing Partners that your company can
have. To provide a perfect solution we offer you three most effective tools to
increase traffic to a site, SEO(Search Engine Marketing), Link Building and PPC
( Pay Per Click)."

Another person that thinks SEO = SEM

"SEO can be broken into two distinct methodologies – "on-page" factors and
"off-page" factors. On-page factors like optimization include anything that you
can affect on the page itself, such as the title tag, body copy, H1 heading
tags, image “alt” attributes etc. On the other hand off-page factors like link
building encompass things that influence rankings but are not on the page
itself. "

Wow something relatively true!...but then they have to go and ruin it with this “fact”...

"The latest news in the SEM world is that Google has updated its algorithm and
their new evaluation criterion (after Google Jagger Update) is that links have
become 70-80% important in Search Engine Optimization. Standard search engine
optimization constitutes only 30% criteria to get top ranks/higher page ranks.
Similar evaluation criteria are being used by other search engines also."

Only morbid curiosity kept me reading further

"Please see below the details of our services:
LINK BUILDING SERVICES Link Building is one of the STRONGEST off-page factors to improve rankings and declare one’s web presence. Building links to one’s website is of huge importance and something that should be focused upon significantly if getting ranked high in
the search engine results is important to a webmaster. The amount of link-backs
to one’s website ultimately determines a website’s popularity with many search
engines. The core benefits and objectives of Link Building are -a) To improve
chances of deepest possible indexing of a web siteb) To improve rankings of very
targeted keywords on GOOGLE, YAHOO!, and MSNc) To increase the PR of the website in the long run and turn the web site into an authoritative web site"

They must have copied that part from someone, OK back to the BS…

"Also reaching these links will give you breakthrough in the following ways:1)
Top Ranking for keywords that are promoted in titles and descriptions of these
links.2) Chances of Search Engine Crawlers coming to your sites from relevant
links and indexing and ranking your sites.3) Google's new evaluation criteria
(after Google Jagger Update) is that links have become 70-80% important in
Search Engine Optimization.4) All Search Engines regard SEO and submissions as
self-advertising but if someone is recommending then they regard it as positive
vote/reference for your site. Hence Links are critical to website’s success on
the net by getting top ranks, promotion specific keywords, getting targeted
traffic, deep indexing etc. "

OK:
1. Guaranteed? gets one HA
2. This would probably sound good to someone just learning about, SEO, but c’mon… Gets two HA’s: HA HA
3. HA HA HA HA HA etc…
4. HA HA HA (GASP just choked on my coffe) HA HA

"We are offering 20% discount on the entire Link Building projects and our
revised discounted rates for 100 Inbound and Reciprocal links are as
follows:INBOUND LINKS Link PagePR 2 $1000(i.e. $10.00 per link) PR 3
$1500(i.e. $15.00 per link) PR 4 $2000(i.e. $20.00 per link)PR 5 $3500(i.e.
$35.00 per link)HomepagePR 2 $500(i.e. $5.00 per link) PR 3 $1000(i.e.
$10.00 per link) PR $1500(i.e. $15.00 per link)PR 5 $2000(i.e. $20.00 per
link)RECIPROCAL LINKS PR 1 $250(i.e. 2.50 per link) PR 2 $375(i.e. 3.75 per
link) PR 3 $500(i.e. 5.00 per link) PR 4 $750(i.e. 7.50 per link) PR 5 $990(i.e. 9.90 per link)Links are obtained manually by doing correspondence with the relevant sites by our link building resources."

Well some would argue this is legitimate, but pricing links based solely on PR has always been about twenty HA’s to me.

"PPC SERVICES:Our PPC Campaign is highly client oriented. (REMOVED) specializes
in addressing the various facets of a PPC program, which include, Managing ad
campaigns, selecting the relevant keywords with high quality score and setting
the right bid to ensure not only a high click through rate, but also ensures
high conversion rate which further provides great ROI .We analyze the needs of
the visitor and recommend changes in the landing pages for rich user experience
and thus maximum conversions. We are Yahoo Ambassador for Search Marketing and Google Adwords certified Professional (logos displayed on our website REMOVED ) which will provide access to effective Marketing Tools that will help in promoting your website."

sounds good…once again probably stolen from another site, but wait…

"Extensive and keen keyword research is a necessity for pay-per-click campaigns.
The first step in our research will be to expand your list of keywords to those
most used in web searches plus with the keywords having high quality score.
After the initial research you will be provided a list of keywords. You will use
this list to choose those keywords that have the most relevance for your
business. This shortened list will be the keywords we use in our competition and
pay-per-click competition research. "

hmm I guess the long tail kw’s must stink, and the client always should pick the only kw’s that are relevant…

"The most crucial aspect of a PPC campaign is that once a thorough initial
research is completed and the campaign is setup, one constantly needs to monitor
and make changes to derive the maximum ROI over PPC campaign duration.CHARGES FOR PPC: We will charge $800 initially for the first month for setting up the PPC Campaign. FOR ONGOING PPC CAMPAIGN: We will charge $800 per month for PPC Campaign per site. "

this company works with Fortune 500? do they know what kind of PPC proposals they will be competing against? Also it must be that tracking is an unimportant aspect of paid search, and obviously needn't be mentioned..."one's monitoring" will be enough...

"SEO SERVICESWe provide a host SEO solutions to meet the varied needs of our
clients. The client's needs are strategically addressed through in-depth market
research, code analysis, study and revision of keywords, content enhancement,
suitable website design, and strategic search engine submission to ensure the
presence of your website on the Internet. We are a leading SEO Service Provider
and strongly believe that marketing an idea is as important as developing it so
we will provide you our complete SEO Platinum Package WORTH $1500 at a
DISCOUNTED PRICE of $800. Our SEO Platinum services include the following SEO phases: 1) Client Interaction: Study of existing site, Q&A Session, Initial
questionnaire, Target Audience, etc2) Keyword Research: Collection of keywords
based on initial questionnaire, site Research.3) Site Optimization: Optimization
of the website based on the keywords, editing Meta Tags, and other Optimization
as required.4) Submission to Search Engines 5) Submission Report: Submission
report to be provided to the client HIGHLIGHTS/FEATURES OF SEO PLATINUM PACKAGE
1) Optimizing your website for 100+ relevant keywords, 2) Manually submitting it
to 300+ Search Engines, 3) Guarantee of more than 10% keywords on top, 4) FREE
1.5 months maintenance, 5) FREE paid submissions at MSN Please refer to the
following link to have an idea of our leadership in this domain: (removed the
link was broken anyway)Attached with this email are the following documents:1)
SEO Proposal Case Study: Introduction to general SEM and our SEM methodology.2)
PPC Proposal : Introduction to PPC.3) Keyword Ranking Report: This report
contains the High Ranks achieved for various keywords of the website optimized
by us.4) SEO_intmktg.pdf: (removed) SEO Brochure explaining our SEO Expertise.
Our payment terms are 30% upfront, 25% on 55% project completion, 25% on 80%
project completion and remaining on final project delivery.Please fill up the
attached SEO Questionnaire, so that we can prioritize your project and can make
you customized and professional recommendations relating to the project.Please
feel free to contact me at (removed) any time for further queries. Please also
provide me with your phone number as it will help me in explaining you our Link
Building methodology more properly."

After re-reading this, thinking I must have missed something... that for $800? Where's my...

"BUT WAIT, get one site free!"

Anyone wonder why SEO’s are getting a bad name? I could spend a while on this last part...but I'll leave that up to anyone who wants to comment.

My plans for SES NYC 2006

2006-02-21T18:05:00.000-05:00

Just a quick post to inform anyone who doesn't already know that I will be attending the Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo in New York next week. Danny has asked me back to speak at my usual session: Linking Strategies. I will also be very busy covering other sessions for the Search Engine Roundtable Blog.

Please feel free to post questions in advance or after the conference as a comment to this post or to the recaps post I will write then.

I also plan on helping to cover the SEMPO booth on Wednesday and maybe a little on Tuesday, so keep an eye out for me if you are going!

Valentines Day PPC Battles

2006-02-08T15:43:00.000-05:00

So we have a few clients that are bidding on V-Day terms, and I still have some old consulting clients doing the same. Is it just me or are there about a million more competitors this year than last?

I have one client in San Diego bidding locally on terms in AdWords and the min bid to show up consistently against the national competitors is $6.00! CPC is obviously a little lower, but this is just a sign of things to come. I better start prepping clients for Easter budgets now...I can't imagine what next Christmas is going to be like.

The worst thing about it is that more and more competitors now actually seem to know what they are doing...must sharpen my sabre!

The “Artiste” In Me

2006-02-07T18:22:00.000-05:00

I guess I should have said “L’artiste,” sorry to any Frenchies reading this. J

I recently spoke to someone who expressed frustration in the past with trying to get developers to commit to and meet deadlines. I told them that I felt this was the “nature of the beast.” Developers, much like artists, have to be “in the mood” to do seriously good work, in my opinion. I was fortunate in High School to have an art teacher that let us come in and work on our own time. Since I boarded, I was able to get my work done in the evenings and on weekends, when I felt more inspired. This actually led to a few awards in our annual art show.

It seems from my experience that many developers push work off until they are ready to accomplish it, and generally do pretty well when they get around to it. Of course, some programming jobs are not as creative, especially if adding mundane content to a huge site, which can be probably done half asleep. I am talking about actual creativity here, and I feel that SEO’s like artists, fall under the spell of “writers block.” I know most people have heard of writers block, and I think this applies to my work as an SEO.

Some days I cannot get myself to write content, other days I work on two or three projects over the course of the day. Some days are better days for working on linking, and some days are best for sales. That is what I enjoy the most about my job. I have such a variety of tasks that need to be accomplished, that I can always find something I feel like doing. For example, this evening I feel like blogging, et voila!

Of course, the end of the month brings reporting, and that is something that I have to do in a timely manner whether I feel like it or not. PPC management duties and responding to web forms are also “daily grind.” When it comes to creativity though, let me be “L’artiste!” I look forward to others’ comments…I am curious if any of you SEO’s out there or perhaps an occasional developer, feels this way too.

MSN AdCenter Invite

2006-02-07T18:07:00.000-05:00

So I finally got an Ad center invite. It was actually supposedly the second time they asked me to try it, but I don’t remember the last one. I look forward to setting up a couple of accounts in there and will come back to give a “from scratch” analysis of what I feel makes this a better/worse/equal system to the Google AdWords and Yahoo Search marketing systems. I feel that I have a pretty good handle on the other system, since we do a fair amount of PPC Management.

Fortunately, I have been following the thread at Search Engine watch about this topic, found here. Please feel free to post any advice in the comments, or shoot me an email if you have any secrets you wish to share with me.

Ahh...the dreaded "we only work with large agencies."

2006-02-02T13:05:00.000-05:00

Just got off the phone with a prospect we had been working with last year. The contact was new, having taken over the role of "SEO-seeker." We had made a formal proposal last year and they never went with anything. So I got on the phone and was asked the usual due-diligence type questions. "Tell me about the company," etc... When we got to the fact that we only employ just over a dozen people, there was a noticeable shift in the conversation. This ended up with a "we prefer to only work with large agencies."

Now this is a legitimate top 5 business in a very competitive and popular industry, so I can sort of see why they may take such a stance in normal relations with an agency. SEO is not yet "normal" enough to be lumped into this, in my opinion. The majority of the "successful organizations" in this (SEO) business are probably less than 20 people, if not 10 or 5, working very personally with a client for about 6-12 months and then shifting into a maintenance mode thereafter. In my opinion and based on my experience, that is really what breeds success in this field, as many tasks are managed together by one to five people in order to ensure continuity in a project.

So really, if you are even a Fortune 100 company that is seeking SEO, I would have to highly recommend the established "boutiques" out there. I am not saying that some of the larger SEO firms are incapable of good results. They would not have grown to their size without success in the past. But I am speaking of agencies that are large but do not have their own established SEO departments yet. I feel what will happen is that many of these non-SEM or SEO-specialist agencies are simply going to outsource to a smaller firm, and the client is going to pay a hefty middleman fee in most cases.

As I said in the last post, we work with agencies in this manner, so I am speaking from experience. I wonder how many other SEO’s are out there that have experienced this same kind of “small-fry rejection?” If I was more insecure I would rush to jump to a large firm. It seems that many of the bigger SEO’s are in fact hiring at a rapid pace right now, perhaps partially because of this need for “size” (and also because of the increase in paid Search popularity – see below). I guess size does matter in the eyes of many organizations. Too bad for them, and good news for smaller SEM clients.

One more thing…I have recently noticed an obvious shift towards the popularity of paid Search. We have been getting far more leads this year for that than for SEO. Perhaps recent research and projections (buoyed by media cost included in the total anticipated spend in the field) have pushed SEO back a little, both in the eyes of marketers and the eyes of SEM’s that realize that good results are much easier to attain quickly with PPC. I am not saying that SEO is no longer the first proposal that comes out of my mind when dealing with most prospects, but I have been much more likely to highlight the merits of PPC lately.

Pardon me, but do you have any Grey Poupon?

Advertising Agency SEO Woes

2006-01-26T10:35:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I feel bad for advertising agencies. I met with a client of our yesterday that falls under that category, and I could see and feel the frustration as they began to realize that none of developers that they outsource to have ever even told them about search engine optimization factors. Sure, they had probably heard "we'll submit the site," and even had an occasional META tag added, but as anyone who has ever tried to rank for a competitive phrases knows, this isn't enough. This being our second 3 hour meeting, I could tell they were really starting to get it. Many of the sites they have worked with are not even close to "search friendly."

The client we were discussing is moving into a new territory, and beginning a branding effort in order to "familiarize the locals." They have a very aesthetically pleasing site but it is mostly text within images. It is so bad that the home page is indexed at Google with only the bottom navigation text. I am sure some reading this have seen this before. When looking through these image-laden pages, the links were even hidden in "attractive" boxes, leading us to wonder if any human has even seen most of the best content, which was thoroughly hidden from search engines.

Yup, I feel bad for these otherwise very talented agencies because many seem to be getting on the search engine bandwagon a little late. It is going to cost their clients lots of redevelopment time or lots of link-building time, which will in turn possibly shed a bad light on the agency themselves. f you are an SEM reading this I would highly recommend pitching as many agencies as you can find. This will help get the word out.

What is "Relevant" anyway?

2006-01-24T10:27:00.000-05:00

I am working on an article regarding "relevance" as discussed in terms of search engine optimization, specifically link building. Our President Anita and I are working on some research for the new version of our SEODoctor at Instant Position. Turns out so far that relevance is really a difficult idea to properly identify, when it comes to getting strong links from "related" sites.

In a nutshell, without going too far into the content of the forthcoming article, it seems that we as SEO's may sometimes cause people to focus too much on their specific niche in a far greater "relevancy pool." Early results indicate that high-performing sites for particularly competitive search terms (set at 5M+ exact returns) have a larger variety of inbound links than simply those specific to their particular sub industry. However, these powerful links can still be tied to the sub industry at least within a proverbial "six degrees of separation."

A good example would be for results of a search on a specific type of marketing. Instead of mostly links from other sites and directory categories related to that from of marketing, you should expect to find that the top results have strong links from more general marketing sites, as well as even other business operation-focused sites. I am not saying that it is no longer important to get as many specifically-related links as possible, but that this may be a good direction to start looking when well into the SEO/link building initiative process if you start “running out” of targeted links. As usual, high ranking competitors are the best place to start, and the use of tools available at Instant Position as well as webuildpages.com will help greatly in defining important links to seek.

I will post an update once the full article/case study is written.