Everyone wants a quick and easy way of doing things these days. And who can blame them? In a world where you can find your friend’s location via their iPhone while talking to your wife and ordering a pizza on the same device, coming up against something that doesn’t offer an immediate gratification is something of an oddity. Add to that the prevelance of the use of the words “SEO software,” it’s no wonder people are put off when I say “there isn’t any.”

So, maybe I should clear this up a bit, and offer something of a solution for those looking for the real SEO software.

My common “no” response is to the most literal question. There isn’t an effective software that you can set, forget then rank. There’s no magic application to build quality content or links to your site. And you will be hard pressed to find an executable to convince Digg users to promote your submission.

No, sir. When we say “SEO software,” we are talking about applications that make quick work of the common tasks we need to complete in order to gain insight to a page and it’s elements, which will in turn help us to decide on our SEO tactics moving forward.

Effective SEO Software Resources

I’ll be happy to point you in the direction of a few of the more common tools of the trade. Please note that I don’t necessarily put the SEO Factor Seal of Approval on any one of these, but have used them in the past. I’m saying they are effective, but I’m not saying they are 100% accurate.

Instead of writing reviews on any of these, I’ll point you to other lists of tools from sources that I can at least say I trust. There are a ton of reviews out there, so I would suggest that before you put too much faith in any of them, do a few searches yourself and see what others have to say.

http://tools.seobook.com/
http://www.seomoz.org/dp/the-internet-marketing-handbook

I would also like to point you to a “tool professional.” If you need software to complete some SEO task, Ann Smarty probably has a solution. Even further, she has probably tested a solution and several other options and written a review herself. You should really be reading her posts at Search Engine Journal.

But today, we get to see something even more interesting. Not only did our subject have a bad experience, he had such without even getting scammed. Nope, this isn’t a case of someone getting ripped off, instead it’s a case of someone who has no business eating at the big boy’s SEO table, playing with URL structures on his site.

So let’s talk about the ignorance of John Dvorak from PC Mag, and see where he went wrong.

Let’s start with my biggest beef. This is one I implemented on my own blog and now regret: the long URL. One of my friends (an SEO maven) had suggested during an IM chat that I was losing a lot of page views on the blog because I wasn’t using long URLs. “What’s that?” I asked.

I’m not sure who the hell suggested “long URLs,” but either Mr. Dvorak completely misunderstood what was being told to him, or he was talking to someone who didn’t know themselves (with reading some of his other stuff, my vote is on the prior, but I could be wrong).

My blog had typical, efficient WordPress default URLs, such as http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=3100 or some such thing. Now on my current blog, that particular URL—which used the simple story ID number to access the post—has been supposedly SEO-optimized behind this URL: http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2005/10/20/hollywood-unions-want-cut-of-itunes-pie/.

I ask you, what is more efficient and reader-friendly:
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=3100
or
http://www.dvorak.org/hollywood-unions-want-cut-of-itunes-pie/

Just because you don’t know what you’re doing, you kept dates in there.

With the new long URL you get the date and the headline of the post. In some instances with a long headline it’s ridiculous. Besides, the second URL is cumbersome, long-winded, and impossible to type by hand. It is supposed to be search-engine friendly and more likely to get the attention of Google. Check out the fact that 90 percent of the blogs and major Web sites all use this supposed trick to get attention.

It does nothing.

Supposed trick? You just stated that “90% of the blogs and major websites” do this. So, what does that tell you? It’s not a trick, you just need to learn a thing or 2 about usability.

Sigh. It seems like you were given a nugget of knowledge that you should probably take note of, but IM chat is not conducive to explaining the caveats and proper implementation of changing URL structure. It sounds like your friend was trying to get you to get more definition with your URLs (which would help) and you jumped at adding the dates (I have no idea why).

This is apparent when you compare the numbers on my blog. In fact, my total page views actually declined when I implemented this stupid practice. At first I thought it was a seasonal anomaly until I had a chat with a developer who was pitching me some new product she was doing. The developer mentioned that she was just recently at Google and involved in the search-engine strategy team in some way. She said she knew about SEO. I mentioned this trick, the long URL, and I swear she almost laughed in my face. She told me the idea was bogus, period.

So why is everyone doing it, and why does everyone think it works? I have stat packages on the blog and a million page views per month. I have enough traffic to see a difference when there is one. I had a run rate closing in on 1.2 million page views per month when I turned on this supposed SEO trick. Boom! I dropped to 900,000 instantly. It’s taken my site months to recover.

Oh, I see now. Looks like our new dunce changed URLs without telling Google. When you make such a change, you need to properly plan and implement as according to what Google needs you to do. (perfect plug for Google Advises on Moving Your Domain).

I think it’s because these long URLs are just crap and stupid. They are impossible to post anywhere or send in an e-mail because they get concatenated. You have to know to snip them with tinyURL or snurl. This stinks. I am going to turn them off and mock anyone using them and anyone who tells me to use them. And if you look around today, that means just about everyone!

So a guy that writes for PC Mag is having a hard time pasting a URL into an email without it concatenating? What in the hell are you using for a client?

Yeah they are crap and stupid (very professional, by the way). I would much rather share seo-factor.com/lkajsdnsdnf?=skdjf than seo-factor.com/dvorak-is-ignorant. When I see the first style in an email (assuming the people you email are anything like you) I’m not even going to click on it. I’ll be scared that the Interwebs will steal my credit card information.

And before you start mocking anyone, please note that you were the guy that decided to make a major change in your site’s structure without any previous knowledge or experience; and you did so at the advice over an instant message.

Moving on, you really have to read the rest of the post. He continues with a gross mis-use of the word “tags.” Apparently “tags” were used in the 90s to help rankings. That’s kinda true. But then he explains that he tagged categories of his own posts. Now it seems as if he’s talking about tags in the more recent form. It’s a little confusing, but makes for a good laugh.

While you’re there, go ahead and leave a response. Be sure to tag it with the word “ignorance.”

Look, let’s just wrap this up. I have a lot to do today.

John, there’s a reason guys and gals like me charge a lot of money. It’s because some of this stuff is pretty tricky (I hear it’s also tricky to rock a rhyme), and if you haven’t the experience then you’ll end up in the same spot you always do. Sure, there are plenty of firms out there that do this stuff on the cheap, but they don’t actually know any more than you do.

I admit very openly that SEO seems very mysterious at first. But if you spend some time getting into it, you’ll find the mystery fades and turns into “confusing and tedious.” That’s better than mysterious as you will soon see how real SEO is, and what it takes to be efficient and successful.

Again, it’s expensive for a reason. If it were really so easy as to make a quick URL change (even a properly planned one) don’t you think everyone would be successful? There’s a playing field out here, John, and it isn’t level. It takes a lot of hard work and experience.

Oh and hey, do something about those URLs on your blog, will ya? They are horrible.

It seems a lot of my co-workers think I look like an NFL kicker; John Carney. He played for the Jacksonville Jaguars for a bit, and I guess went somewhere else (check my facts on that, I’m obviously not a fan of football).

Let’s put us side-by-side:

Pfft…not even close, I say. He is obviously older, and I am much prettier.

Ok, the pics are much different, let’s add my famous hat:

Again, not even close. You guys are crazy. Let’s go ahead and even everything out and add the sunglasses:

You’re all nuts. I look nothing like this guy. But it doesn’t matter what I think. What do you think?

n

I’ve gone from only 1 (extremely large client) to 19 (which were nothing more than audits and keyword research).

So my question. Let’s play in a hypothetical world where you cater to small to medium business websites, which will generally be local-focused, how many of those sites do you think you can handle at one time without sacrificing quality or integrity?

I did approach the idea for this post in order to review Trackur, but found that I liked it a lot right off. Instead, I’ll briefly go over a quick setup, then discuss a few reasons why you would want to use it.

What Is Trackur?
Taken directly from their site:

“Trackur is an online reputation monitoring tool designed to assist you in tracking what is said about you on the internet. Trackur scans hundreds of millions of web pages–including news, blogs, video, images, and forums–and lets you know if it discovers anything that matches the keywords that interest you.”

Basically, Trackur will scan the Interwebs to find any mentions of the keywords you select. This way, you won’t have to rely on Google alerts or basic searching on your own time.

Setup
Once you sign up for your free trial of Trackur, you will be presented a simple form where you will input a keyword, filters, excluded words and excluded domains.

Look, there are much better walkthroughs than what I could provide. I will link to the areas of Trackur’s site at the end of this post, along with some other reviews.

So, let’s look at a quick real-world use.

I’m Wal-Mart. I know that there are a ton of stories out there about the way I treat my employees and suppliers. This negative perception of my business is starting to get a lot of attention, and as a smart company I want to take action to help clear it up.

I’ll look for mentions of my name, and include some filters to look for some related words. I’ll also exclude mentions of these words and names from within my own domain. Like so:

We will be presented a number of results that match my search criteria:

By clicking on one of these results, I can get a snippet of the story, see the date that it was posted and view the original story as needed (this is important, so remember that).

So, let’s say I see a ton of stories relating to a topic that I’ve already taken care of. In this hypothetical case, I see the $54+ million settlement story all over the place (remember this too).

I took care of that and I don’t want to see those stories right now. Also, there are some mentions of positive information that I’m not concerned with on this go-around. Let us now make use of some of the exclusion words.

Running this again, I am now left with just a few negative mentions that I will want to take care of.

Now, let’s save this run so that we can keep up and track trends related to this search.

I named this ‘Personal/Personnel’ because I want to watch any personal blogs/stories out there about personnel (catchy).

Very Interesting Update:
So, along with setting up the saved tracking, you can also setup alerts via email or RSS. Obviously Andy Beal (creator of Trackur) would keep tabs on one of his own products. He notified me via Twitter that he got the alert. It was seriously within 30 minutes of posting this. How’s that for real-time monitoring?

Ok, so that is a quick and dirty setup. You can get a lot more involved and really get some good information about your company or brand and manage your online reputation. Now, let’s talk about some reasons someone like Wal-Mart would want to use this tool.

The Why

Let’s imagine for just a moment that I was really involved in managing my reputation. The example above returned several complaints about employees for my stores using their phones and texting while ringing my customers up.

This was mentioned too many times. Perhaps I would want to initiate a company wide policy that cell phones are prohibited from certain areas or that certain uses would be grounds for disciplinary action (no…not Wal-Mart).

On a grander scale, do you remember all those posts and stories about the $54 million settlement? Of course you do, I asked you to remember. It’s safe to say that those stories give the option for their visitors to leave comments. Those are going to be pretty bad. That’s OK.

Get with legal, tell them to draft a response. Then get with someone with a brain, and tell them to make the response caring and friendly. You can quickly access a ton of those stories through Trackur and leave a nice comment to set things at ease. You may be surprised the impact a simple official response can have on your reputation. It let’s people know that you are at least listening.

Finally, there are still a ton of people that see my company as the “nice, saving you money” kind of place. I would like to keep it that way. A big reason they see this is due to the millions of dollars I put into branding in the form of a simple smiley face. I need to protect that little face thingy.

With this search alone, I would have seen a ton of uses of that face that are very obviously in violation of the law. Some of them I’m not so sure about, but I should at least take a look at it. Actually, instead of looking at it that way, I should probably take part in the making fun of myself. This would help to restore that “hey, we are cool people just like you” perception my company used to have.

So there you have it. I set this up and ran a report in just under 10 minutes. Give me a few hours and just a bit of time every week, and I could really get a detailed look at mentions of my name, brand and reputation online.

Resources
You won’t find any better resources than those available on the Trackur website. Videos and turorials galore:

• FAQ
• Video Tour
• Blog

There are also several reviews online that all say the same thing, mostly. Get Trackur. I can’t wait to really get into it. As a matter of fact, I’m discussing it’s use for all of my clients to enhance the value I give them.

Oh and a disclaimer: I mentioned previously that I was going to gradually monetize this site. I have strong opinions about blindly taking money for reviews, so I won’t do that. Instead, I’ll review things and if I like it enough to warrant a promotion, I’ll do that. If they have an affiliate, I’ll put some links in that manner in there. Warning though, if I don’t like your stuff, not only will I say so, but any links will be nofollowed; so don’t email me with junk….or else.

You might be hearing a lot of stuff about this Internet marketing, or SEO or even website promotion. Maybe you’ve heard the term “social media.” Well, be warned. These people are just trying to take your money. There is no need to take it seriously.

This is an open letter to all business owners. I am asking, no pleading with you not to take you online marketing seriously.

It’s a waste of time and money, it won’t get you anywhere and nobody else is using or paying attention to this stuff. It’s just not worth it. Please don’t waste your time or money on the Internet.

Don’t Blog Properly
Please, don’t setup a blog for your company. If you do, please don’t take the time to post relevant content in any consistent manner, or promote it properly. Don’t listen to those guys that tell you that you have to dedicate any time or attention to it. Don’t involve yourself in the avenues available to promote your blog, or take proper note of the focus of its existence.

Instead, if you have to have a blog, please use it solely for newsletters or salespitches. And do me a favor, only post once a month or so, and never reply to any comments. And disregard those ideas that you will want to use the online community to help spread the word of your blog.

Don’t Optimize Your Website
If you have a website (and I don’t know why you would need one anyway), please don’t have a professional optimize it for the search engines. Please don’t fall into the thought that getting relevant rankings for relevant traffic would benefit you in any way.

If you do fall victim to this thought, the least you could do is limit your budget to $90 a month, and preferably make use of a company that will submit your website to thousands of search engines.

Please Ignore Social Media
Listen, MySpace is for teenage girls, and Facebook is for college students. Twitter is for people that have too much time on their hands, and LinkedIn is for blow-hards. Whatever you do, don’t sign up for any of these.

If you must have a social profile, please just sign up, and forget it. Don’t pursue any relationships that could prove mutually beneficial, and don’t make use of the extremely popular mediums in an effort to connect with your customers or potential customers. Just set it and forget it.

Whatever You Do, Don’t Listen To The Community
Whatever you do, don’t listen to the people talking about you, to you or in regard of you. Don’t waste your time responding to silly comments online about your business. Don’t belittle yourself by even giving them attention.

Instead, just know that those comments are on the Internet, and they will go away soon anyway. Besides, nobody reads that stuff.

Why Not Do These Things?

Because you have a competitor - perhaps many of them. And they are doing these things. And if they aren’t, they will. And do you know who will help them? I will. At least, someone in my industry will. And when someone like me notes their competitors, it’s really nice to see that you aren’t taking your online presence seriously. This helps to ensure my clients’ and thus my success.

We love it when you don’t do these things. We look a lot better when our clients find exponentially better results than you do, and it pays a lot better when we return those results.

So please, don’t take your online presence seriously. Don’t waste your time and money. My clients and I will thank you. And this could be returned by offering you a job when you need it.

The advent of blogger firings was only a short few years ago, but seems to have been all but forgotten (it’s not juicy anymore), and though I haven’t heard too many stories, I do see it as something that will happen to Twitter users in the future.

Take some of this advice, and be mindful of the comments you make on Twitter.

Don’t Share Confidential Information
It’s probably common sense that confidential information about your company shouldn’t be shared with your Twitter followers. This was probably the number one reason for blogger firings when that was hot news. Telling the world about a new cost saving, proprietary process could easily be picked up by a competitor, and for some reason employers don’t like that. Pfft…employers.

Censor Internal Gripes
Aside from confidential stuff, companies also don’t like it when you complain about internal policies, people, etc. I know we do it on our smoke breaks and at lunches, but news travels fast on the Interwebs and it is usually within a companies legal rights to terminate an employee in order to protect it’s reputation. Complaining employees can easily be seen as a reflection of a companies internal instability. For some reason employers don’t like that either. They are a fickle bunch, yeah?

Bad-Mouthing The Competition
This one is tricky. Especially in a market dealing with Internet services, it’s easy to cross paths with a competitor, client of a competitor or potential client of a competitor. Do yourself a favor and try not to speak with ill regard to said competitor. It may be the truth, your boss may even agree, but it looks unprofessional and can indeed lead to legal problems down the road. Why employers don’t like being sued is beyond me.

Opinions vs. Official Stance
I recently consulted with an attorney making use of Twitter. And she is really working it. Tons of followers, it gets tons of her attention and she is getting a ton of rewards. The very first thing I noticed about her account was the way in which she connected with people. She was very personal and easy to approach. She responded to people consistently and held great conversations. “awesome” I said. “But stop doing that.”

Obviously I didn’t want her to stop completely, but we had to define some lines. When you are speaking as a lawyer, personally or not, your opinions could be construed as official stance. No matter your industry, take care to note your opinions vs. advice and define them clearly.

Don’t Get Too Personal
If you are working with a company’s Twitter account it’s important that you come across as a person and not a sales pitch. This is the essence of social media. However, it’s not a good idea to share those intimate pictures of you and your boyfriend while Tweeting on your employer’s profile. Rule of thumb: if you wouldn’t show your mother, don’t show your followers.

I’m sure that’s not it, but that should get you going. In the end, use your noggin. That’s the best tool we have anyway, might as well put it to work.

Keep in mind that these aren’t really reasons that I am a jerk. Rather they are things that most people look at, and what each point reflects about your Twitter account. This should help you get those that you are following to return the favor.

All images are taken from a real account, but the identity is hidden to protect the spammer individual.

1. No Picture

This is the first thing I look at. Mostly because it’s the first thing anybody would notice about your Twitter account when they view it. This tells me that you aren’t taking this seriously at all. Maybe you’re even a spammer, and I would be better to not follow you in return.

Fixes
Put a picture up. Anything at all will do. It doesn’t have to be a pic of you if you’re uncomfortable with that, but at least get a logo or something.

2. No Activity For Weeks

Again, this tells me that you aren’t taking it seriously. I’m not looking for 50 Tweets a minute, but some activity is a good sign. It should be noted that a few days of inactivity is no big deal. Sometimes you have to actually get some work done, yeah?

Fixes
At least say hi. I would say an average of 3 tweets a day is my minimum.

3. No Bio

Along with the picture, if I don’t see a bio I think “spammer” right from the start.

Fixes
Got a site? Put it up there. Got a short bio? Put it up there. Really, anything to tell me anything at all about you shows me that you gave it some attention.

4. Extremely Low ‘Following’ In Relation To Your ‘Followers’

I’m not talking about the “A-Listers” that have 50,000 followers but only follow 2,000. I’m talking about the guys that have 5,000 followers and only follow 20. This tells me that you once followed them to get them to follow you, and then unfollowed them.

Fixes
This is a conversation. Take part. Surely with every 5 followers one of them has something interesting to say. check them out.

5. Excessive Self Promotion

We all share out sites and posts from our own blogs. That’s OK. The problem comes in when I look at the last 10 tweets and only see links to your blog. This means that, again, you are talking but not listening.

Fixes
ReTweet something interesting. Help some of your followers promote themselves by tweeting something they posted. Talk about something other than your own blog all the time. Whatever it is, don’t just get on Twitter to push yourself.

In the end, again, it’s about the conversation. I want to feel that we will be able to share with each other. And believe you me, I’m not alone. If you do want to converse, by all means, follow me on Twitter.

You see, for the last few years I’ve been involved in larger, corporate sites. These are directed by people that have a much greater understanding of marketing overall than your average small business, and they know fully the power of a proper online marketing campaign. They have likely gone through the “pfft..SEO” phase, and understand and agree with the need for optimization and promotion of their site. But that isn’t the norm.

It seems as though I’ve forgotten what it was like to speak with people that weren’t convinced that an optmization strategy was needed. As I’m jumping back into the small business game, it was really nice to be reminded that there is a whole group of business owners out there that aren’t as likely to have heard of SEO before, much less pick it up just from my explanation. So, it makes good sense to have answers to some common questions.

You’ve probably already heard the common questions before, so we won’t go over them here. I’ll post on them as time goes on. Instead, here are some tips on answering the concerns of a small business owner without losing your mind.

1. Be Confident
When you offer your services to a small business owner, they will have a lot of questions. As unwitting as they may sound when talking Internet stuff, don’t be fooled. Small or big, these are still business owners. They want the best for their business and the last thing they want to hear when discussing a topic that is already so mysterious to a person that doesn’t speak with confidence.

This would be bad:

BizGuy: So what is the first thing you will be doing for us?
SEOGuy: Well, umm…we will have to resaerch your keywords.

BizGuy: My keywords?
SEOGuy: Yeah, uhh….these are ummm…the words that people will use in Google to find you. Umm…in the search engines I mean. All of them. Not just Google. Umm…Yahoo! too.

BizGuy: Ummm?
SEOGuy: I uhhhh…

BizGuy: You uhhh what?
SEOGuy: I mean ummm.

BizGuy: I ummm think I should just get a Yellow page listing.
SEOGuy: Ummm…hello?

2. Know Your Answers May Be Different
SEO is like a fine wine. No, wait. SEO is like a box of chocolates. Hmmm. SEO is…well…different. It’s different for everybody actually. Sure, there are some basic rules most of us follow, but after that we all have our own little processes and techniques. Be ready to explain that fact. If you are the third or fourth SEO a company has contacted, they will see the trend of slightly varying answers.

BizGuy: So you think we should add some pages? The last guy said my site was fine.
SEOGuy: Well, he was right. However, I prefer to categorize the content on a site to focus on a wide range of keyword types; both competitive and long-tail.

BizGuy: Wait, I was told we should only go for the long-tail because anything else would be too competitive.
SEOGuy: This isn’t incorrect, but wouldn’t you rather be afforded the luxury of both?

BizGuy: Sure, but the other guy seemed like a single focus is best.
SEOGuy: I would agree that a singe focus can be a great strategy, I just prefer to run a campaign this way for a wider range of visibility.

BizGuy: What’s the right way?
SEOGuy: There isn’t really a “right” way as long as you have a good SEO on your side. We all work differently towards the same goals.

BizGuy: I see. You mean like fine wine or a box of chocolates?
SEOGuy: Exactly.

3. Don’t Get Angry
Explaining the same thing over and over can be frustrating. It gets exhausting answering the exact same question every time you pick up the phone or have to write an email. But you have to remember, the person you are talking to is probably hearing this stuff for the very first time. This can all be very confusing, especially if you’ve heard a lot of horror stories. Add to that the fact that any good business owner knows to ask a lot of questions and fully understand what you are getting into before you make a commitment for your business. The last thing they want to hear is you getting angry or frustrated.

Take a deep breathe

This would be bad:

BizGuy: So wait, can you explain this whole link building thing again?
SEOGuy: Sigh, look you need links to your site.

BizGuy: But why?
SEOGuy: Because it will help you rank.

BizGuy: I don’t understand why that would be the thing to make my site rank.
SEOGuy: Dude, cus’ I say so.

BizGuy: Wow, I’m gonna go with the SEO that isn’t wearing cranky pants.
SEOGuy: Pfft, whatever.

4. Don’t Get Personal
It’s going to happen. You’re going to be approached buy a guy with a website built by his third cousin who is going to school for “computers.” It’s going to be bad. Really bad. You’re going to have to tell your potential client this. But beware, the last thing you want to advise is that his third cousin should consider chaning majors.

This would be good:

BizGuy: Yeah, I like my site. My third cousing built it. He’s going to school for computers.
SEOGuy: I see. Well, I really like th eheader image at the top. He’s on the path to becoming a good designer.

BizGuy: Really? Thanks!
SEOGuy: Keep in mind that design is a little different. The stuff we look at deals with the search engines in more detail.

BizGuy: I see. So he wouldn’t have done any of that stuff?
SEOGuy: Not so much as a designer, but if he would like to continue his education, he may want to hear about what you are going to learn.

BizGuy: So he won’t be the “smart computer guy” at this Christmas’ dinner?
SEOGuy: Not the only one at least.

BizGuy: Cool.
SEOGuy: Cool indeed.

5. Be Honest
Someting else about business owners. They are getting smarter and better by the minute. Communication is so open and information is so easy to get that lying to gain a client is becoming more difficult. Why not just tell the truth? If you don’t know something, it may be better to just come out and say it. This will help you set the right expectations in the beginning instead of taking on a designer’s site that claims to have a very old domain, making a statment over the phone, then finding later that “old” apparently means a few weeks.

This would be good:

BizGuy: So, when can I expect to be on page 1? How much traffic will I get?
SEOGuy: Well, these are very broad questions and have no definite answers.

BizGuy: So you don’t know?
SEOGuy: Nope. Actually, nobody knows. But that’s what we do. We will research your site and industry as best we can, and implement the best strategy.

BizGuy: I like your honesty. This other guy made a few promises I wasn’t too sure of.
SEOGuy: Yeah, I think it would be better to build a long relationship on trust than just take your money and run.

Seriously Though
These example conversations are meant in fun, but I hope you see the points. A small business owner will have a ton of questions, and it’s best to learn to handle them before they are sprung on you. This will help to prove that you are the guy or gal for the job, and that you will handle the job professionally.

It’s Friday. Have a good day and safe weekend everyone.

A Fun Ride
With SEO Factor, I think I’ve gone through every phase of an SEO provider from offering services to consulting. Consulting was by far the most rewarding. A little more work than I thought it would be, but I was able to really get into some new territory. But these days, I think it’s time to get back to some roots.

When I was first introduced to SEO, it was in offerings to very small businesses. I mean really small. We are talking hamster groomers in small towns. Super small. However, I did get to talk to literally thousands of them. This helped me to hone a little skill, and move up into the big, national/international sites over time.

A few months ago, I was talking with some other SEOs about the small business landscape, and how difficult things seemed in the early years. How easy it would be to really rock a small business’ website with our knowledge. Then we started to remember how many small businesses are getting ripped off because they can’t afford a “real SEO” and have to make due with poor/scam services. This lead to a venture we are all very passionate about.

A New Route
I’ve recently opened One Time SEO for business. Basically, we are targeting those same small businesses we love. It also means we get to give in to the side of us that wants to smack all those snake oil SEOs around. So it’s a win-win.

I’ll still be in the SEO offering mix, but not with larger sites anymore. Mostly working with smaller sites and through our white label service with design firms and such.

And, As For The Factor
I still have a couple clients that I’m working on. I’ve gotten a few off the books and I’m actually kinda excited about leaving the last few with a real bang. There’s an International client I’m working with that simply isn’t taking my advice. I think I’m going to have to jump back into the ring for them. Though they don’t act on my advice, I still like to see websites do well. We’ll see if we can’t get their online visibility to kick up some.

As for the blog, I get to play again. I first started this site to play around and see what I could do. It’s gone through more changes than I can count. I’ve learned a lot about blogging and running a company site. I’ve felt the pain of losing hundreds of posts because I never backed anything up. I’ve learned how to post with a professional touch instead of off the cuff (though I’m still learning, obviously). And I’ve learned a lot about connecting with others through my blog. But I want to play again.

As a “company” blog, I’ve tried to be mindful that a potential client may read this. This prevented me from posting a lot of things I wanted to over the years in an unsubstantiated fear of seeming unprofessional. I also resisted putting ads on here because I didn’t want to be “that company.”

I’ve always wanted to try my hand at monetizing a blog. I’ve always admired Shoemoney, Chris Brogan, Brian Clark, Darren Rowse, etc. I’ve always wanted to know if I had what it took to get some residual income from this. I think I’m going to run a series about my adventure in doing so. I’ve always liked those types of posts, and I think I can bring an SEO spice to the table. Should be neat.

I also want to get back into WordPress. I’ve been so far up Drupal’s butt that I fully appreciate the ease of use WP provides (however lacking in full functionality we need).

Finally, I want to have fun again. We are really excited about the new business because it will give us a chance to play again. But I miss doing so on this blog. I’ve been holding a “corporate” position for a while, and I haven’t had a vent to complain about the amazing inability for some people the “get it.” I miss that. I miss the fun debates and comments from people that disagree with me. I miss the promoting a post I completely disagree with just for the fun of it.

I also miss giving advice I was good at. I never really gave any advice to freelance SEOs on here. Over the last few years, I think I learned a lot about writing your own checks, and I would really like to offer that advice to those of you just getting into it.

So, thank all of you who read my stuff. Let’s have some fun again, yeah?