What follows is a letter I wrote late one night out of anger, frustration, depression, pain and a desire to get my feelings off my chest so that I could finally fall asleep. I’ll be using it to illustrate and explain the two most important elements of human behaviour: motivation and influence.
The former is the explanation as to why someone behaves a certain way, and the latter explains (more…)

Formal writing is really frustrating because it requires you to dress up simple ideas in complete sentences, edit your work for grammar and spend an unholy amount of time writing what it would take you a few minutes to express verbally. When you come up with new ideas or discover new stuff as often as I do, that can get really frustrating.

So I’m hereby inaugurating what I hope will be a regular column here: Scratchpad (scratchpad picture courtesy of one eye fish). I’ll share my latest ideas, in a raw scratchpad type format and be paying even more attention than usual to your feedback. (The Post #88 reference was the pre-naming version of this post’s title and I found it quite appropriate to an informal column.)

For this first issue, I’ve got

1. New uses for Google’s Keyword Tool External,
2. Mined ideas from Google’s Press Days 06 and 07,
3. Revelations of what the PPC arbitrageurs (more…)

I’ve gotten two emails from a certain “RankRanker@gmail.com” (aka “webmaster@RankRanker.com”) trying to sell me their “Free SEO System and Link Exchange With Extra Earning”. While spam email pitches for terribly named, grammar-rule-flaunting, “get rich quick” systems (NEW: Now With An SEO Twist!) (more…)

The following are four cases involving reputation management. The paragraphs are long because (i) they were written that way and it felt natural (ii) I’m too lazy to edit (iii) most importantly, we’re all suffering from shorter attention spans. I promise you good content if you read on. Some definite lessons to be learned about proactive reputation management for those of you who are attentive to detail. (more…)

Google Maps has been doing a lot of testing and playing with its search engine results pages (SERPs) lately. I’ve seen the EarthBooker hotel booking engine tightly integrated with many hotels. At the same time, when I performed a longtail search for a hotel to stay at during the SMX West conference, I found some reviews (or other stuff Google seems to find relevant) folded directly into the SERPs (you used to have to click more info to see the reviews). And there’s also pictures being folded in from Google’s Panoramio.com. (more…)

Vanessa Fox and the team at Third Door Media have given me an incredible opportunity - the opportunity to speak at SMX. Following Danny’s great explanation of what they were looking for in terms of pitches, I thought about my experience and what I could share with attendees. I pitched some ideas for local and voila - I’m in for the local panel ! So Third Door: Thanks a lot for taking a chance on me. I can’t predict the reception, but I can promise you I’ll be working like mad to make that presentation worth it for your attendees.

I highly encourage you guys to grab the early-bird special before it expires - you save $400! (No, that’s not an affiliate link.) It’s THE search marketing conference, and besides, I’ll be there ;). Not to mention that you’ll be able to hear Eric Lander on the same panel as yours truly, plus three reps from the major (*cough incompetent cough*) SEs. Eric’s written at SEJ, SEG (does anyone else get them confused a lot too?), the ISEdb (hey, me too! :D) and SEO Today. SEO Today? You know the man’s an OG.

In the meantime, see my latest post on how Google Maps have updated their SERPs with a booking engine, pics from their Panoramio site, and inserted reviews directly below each listing. This item on local-oriented domaining with Google Trends might also appeal to you. Did I mention my old blog also covered local search, and that it ranked for ‘local seo,’ in the not too distant past (if you’re wondering, that’s a useless keyword traffic wise).

I was trying to figure out how to make this post more informative and share some tips, but I’d have to get more info from Vanessa and co. on what they liked about my pitch. Considering how busy they are with preparations and organizational work, I think that can be best left to asking at the conference, in person.

Besides that, I’d like to ask if any of you other internet marketers (*cough Sphinn/SU/Youmoz friends, commenters, etc…*) who are going might care to share a room? I may be speaking, but $200+ a night is still expensive for me. FYI: I’m a clean guy, sociable, won’t wake you up if you like to hit the sack early and we might even trade some good tips ;). (On a related note, my sister used to rent a 1 and a half apartment here in Montreal for $800 a month …

Please write me at gab at this domain if you’re interested in sharing a room.

P.S. A pisher is Yiddish for a [usually little] kid. “Hey pisher,” is a phrase my older sisters frequently use ;).

P.P.S. For those of you wondering why I haven’t posted lately, there are 2 answers.

One is that my site’s technology has a bug; it’s supposed to output on a /blog page but doesn’t. Only posts categorized a certain way show up here on the homepage, but if I want the permalink to use a different category, I have no choice but to leave the post off the homepage. Hopefully it’ll be resolved soon. In the meantime, see what these credibility failures taught me about linkworthiness/linkability.

The other answer is that I’m working on a large SEO audit that’s taking up most of my free time, and what little I have left is going into working on a longer, more value-added post on motivation and influence.

Update: Motivation and Influence aka Be Nice to the Loner Kid is posted. Also, I had a blast at SMX and met a bunch of people, largely thanks to SEOmoz.

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