The kind folks at internet marketing company IM Ninjas (formerly We Build Pages) sent me some nice clothes including a tshirt, polo and sweater (can’t show pics since they went to my address in Canada and I’m living in Israel) and to Dixon Jones of Majestic SEO link tools and Receptional SEO for treating myself and a number of other SEOs to dinner during last week’s SMX Israel show.

Want to know what I read? Here’s a partial blogroll, focused mostly on local SEO, advanced SEO, conversion, and friends. I’ve also long linked out to a variety of other sites in my blogroll posts category.

If I’ve overlooked you, and you should be on there, leave a comment. I’ll most likely add you to my RSS first, but it’s a way to get links and eventually be added to the blogroll possibly later.

Web Pro News reports that Yahoo is modifying Bing search results, and discusses Bing serving ads on Yahoo.

Wayne Liew writes an excellent article on what the ideal strategy is for Twitter – and no, it isn’t mass following. The brilliance in this article is that it recognizes that social media is, first of all, a social tool.
(more…)

First, get familiar with the board. The dutch LinkBuilding.nl outfit have the link building board clearly laid out for your benefit.

Sebastian is the technical genius and SEO behind Sebastian’s Pamphlets. This warm fellow’s well-known avatar is rather ironic – a crab! (more…)

It’s sad in a way, but one of the biggest businesses online is charity. Numerous sites out there will handle payment processing etc. for charities for ‘only’ about 3% of donations (the same as Paypal or any credit card processing company). I’m trying to set something up with student union of my university and accepting donations online is proving to be a challenge. For those who qualify in the UK, however, I’ve found one site that does this for free : (more…)

The following is my favoured reading list when it comes to search marketing, especially on the SEO side. It includes PPC and usability/conversion optimization stuff too, because you can’t really become advanced in this field without focusing on the bottom line. Check out my description of each blog to see if it fits your interests. (more…)

Templates and Themes

Scriptorium Fonts, Art and Design

Landing Page Directory (more…)

One is at Search Engine Journal: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-mythbusters-content/12810/

The other is at Blogue Marketing Interactif: http://www.bloguemarketinginteractif.com/flogue-collette-judy/ (in French)

In June I spoke at SMX Advanced. Earlier this week I spoke at Affiliate Summit East. Time to show some love to the folks I met! Here they are,  in no particular order: (more…)

Is where fools rush away their gold for domain names.

Hello, and welcome to scratchpad! This is (more…)

I’ve got a new piece up over at Michael Gray’s Wolf Howl, rebutting Seth Godin on why journalists should or should not get paid. (more…)

… posted at Search Engine Journal: Landing Pages On A SMB Budget.

De-Fense! [Thump Thump] De-Fense! [Clap Clap]:

Alex Chudnovsky killed it (more…)

Nick Carr: Google is getting a little carried away with self-importance, maybe? (more…)

Been doing some local events lately. Last night I had the pleasure of meeting… (more…)

Some awesome reading on conversion and time management: (more…)

I’m currently being worn out by a confluence of taxes, client work, personal projects and preparations for SMX Advanced. So please excuse the disorganization of this blogrolling post. Consider it a scratchpad link love post, if you will.

Is your site a one-visit wonder? by Ben McKay, UK SEO Consultant. See also SEP’s 3 Ways to Get PPL Talking About You – by Cindy Alvarez, product manager and user experience pro. (more…)

You NEED to attend SMX Advanced. It’s that simple. The single best investment you can make in your search education and professional life this year will be happening in Seattle, June 2-3, 2009. Here are 5 sweet reasons to attend. (more…)

Thinking and Ideas:

Jimmy Wales is a big thinker, and I give him a lot of respect. The founder of Wikipedia recently did some great interviews: (more…)

Bruce Clay scooped a great link building ‘crm’ or perhaps more accurately, ‘prospect relationship manager’. Sphinn it like it’s hot! (more…)

SMX West was great, folks liked my presentation on what’s new in social media marketing (though they said I spoke too fast) and I met a whole load of awesome people, (more…)

Since the first time he impressed me with his SEO experiments, Marios Alexandrou of All Things SEM has consistently been one of the people whose blogging I most respect for being original and intelligent. He won’t rehash old stuff everyone’s said… he’ll make a statistical analysis of what topics come up most frequently, tie it to Matt’s blog posts, and thus prove that Matt is really the center of the [SEO] universe ;D. Unfortunately I’m lazy about using my Feedreader, so I don’t get to enjoy his writing as often as I should. But I got into it today and found these little gems: (more…)

More on Trust Agents – This great post by fellow Montrealer Julien Smith is quite related to my ideas on social media analytics – I strongly encourage you to read it! Julien’s also got an intro on social capital which I’m hoping to listen to soon, but which I’m linking to now because the Trust Agents post impressed me so much. (more…)

I’ve been bookmarking and saving a whole bunch of things and figured it’s about time to start sharing the link love. For some reason these are StumbleUpon sourced only… I can’t seem to access my regular bookmarks library in FFX anymore. There’s still a whole whack of awesome tools, tips, news and resources here. (more…)

Ranking for the four words at the start of the title. If I rank for “SEOmoz Page Strength – What,” does that mean anything? No, because we don’t have a gauge of the keyword’s competitiveness. Cross-referencing your keyword difficulty tool, or at least the volume numbers from AdWords, would be pretty valuable here. Alternately, just having the user type what keyword is targeted and on what engine would let you cross-reference your rank checker.

Also, the Blog search links data function is broken. It cited you guys as having 0 links found in G’s blogsearch. I clicked and saw 29K. Obviously that makes a difference…

If you liked this post, get my rss feed!

Here’s just a partial rundown of the awesome folks I had the privilege of meeting and talking to at SMX Advanced! Once again, I also want to thank the wonderful people at Third Door Media for providing kosher lunches, for giving me the opportunity to speak at Search Marketing Expo and for being class acts generally. Big shout outs to Michelle Robbins and Claire Schoen especially. (more…)

Have a look – yours truly is in a Web Pro News video on buying sites, and at SEOmoz‘s Whiteboard Friday, where I shared some local search stuff!

You’re likely to see some of these in future posts here and aroud the various lovely places that take my stories. So check out as many of them as you have time for, cuz there are some real sweet ones in here.

Diorex doesn’t blog anymore, so Smaxor republished some of his classics. (more…)

Welcome Search Newz visitors! It seems that Search Newz’s syndicated version of my article, “If You Listened When Google Announced Submarine Crawling,” which follows up the one you’re seeing now, forgot to link to an important Matt Cutts video. So there’s the link to help you out. Anyways, on with the show – here’s what submarine crawling is all about, as interpreted from Matt Cutts’ explanations.

Matt Cutts’ post and this Webmaster Central post recently explained that “high quality” sites are being given special treatment – submarine crawling.

We all know that links from high quality sites are more valuable than those from average or mediocre sites. Now, Matt and Google have given us a new measurement for finding high quality sites – submarine crawling – and thus high quality link prospects.

Russian Submarine courtesy of Orpheus Grey.

So WHAT is Submarine Crawling? (more…)

I’m in a crap situation, and I need to learn to say no. First, because saying yes is eating into my own time and second because I’m embarassed to admit that I voted for friends’ submissions that were average and not really deserving of votes. (more…)

Here’s my effort to share original resources that haven’t received wide attention/link love on other blogs. Hence I haven’t shared Aaron Wall’s tools (how useful would one more mention be?), Xenu Link Sleuth or SEOmoz‘s tools (though I had to put them in the Friends section). Here is search marketing’s BIGGEST, BADDEST, RESOURCE BONANZA BAR NONE! (If you enjoy it, subscribe – there’s lots more where this came from .)

The SEO Business

What makes Web sites credible?

Proposal layout and design

Five Simple Ways to Make Your Proposal More Competitive

Canada Business – Starting a Consulting Business – Interesting item for my fellow SEO consultants here (more…)

Last month, I attended StartupCamp Montreal and Yulbiz, and I’ll be discussing the people from Montreal‘s business community whom I met below. You’ll recall that I spoke at FacebookCamp Montreal. Now, most of you reading this are not in Montreal (though considering the attention my competitors pay this blog, perhaps that’s not quite so) – so why should you care? Well, two reasons. (more…)

Here’s a refreshing interview with Kat French, well known in the SEOmoz and Sphinn community and certainly a person to keep an eye out for in search marketing. We cover online community moderation, the strength of social media and of personal networks, and much more. (more…)

Today’s scratchpad is going to cover some new how to ideas in link building, the ROI on Google’s user generated content (UGC) properties, influence and then do some linking oot n aboot. If you enjoy this, please subscribe. (more…)

I’ve decided to start a semi-regular link love thing sharing items I’ve recently come across that I’d like to share with you folks as being valuable resources. This “Linking Oot N Aboot” column name comes from David, who remarked to me upon seeing a picture of me in a suit with a poppy: “You’re a canuck too?!” Yep, sure am! And though I don’t have the maritime/Atlantic Canada pronunciation that we seem to be famous for, I’ll shamelessly use my country’s national slang for the hell of it. (more…)

Due to this blog’s buggy technology (as in, horse and buggy), my blog is hiding a post I think many of you will enjoy. That post is Whitepapers Are So ’07: MyVenturePad Gives Away Meatball Sundaes for Linkbait. It discusses MyVenturePad, their great linkbait as well as a related book I’m reading: 10 Reasons for Businesses to Blog. Besides that, I’m taking the opportunity with this little upkeep post to share some link love with recent commenters. (more…)

Here we are in 2008 and it’s time for another Carnival of the Capitalists! This is one of the longest-running carnivals in the blogosphere and it’s largely due to the great organizational skills and dedication of Jay, from the Business Sphere. (more…)

I’d like to share some quick news on the SEO ROI blog, its commenters and other stuff. (Update: If you saw this post already and are returning here for my latest posts, you can click here to skip to them.) (more…)

We’ve got an absolutely massive Carnival of the Capitalists this week, so fasten your belt because this is going to be one massive post! Also, just before we begin, thankyou to Jay of Biz O’ Sphere for letting me host. (more…)