Those of you familiar with my scratchpad articles know that this is informal, braindump writing.

Yes, the formatting and grammar sucks and it’s in note form.

But the substance will kick your ass across the Channel, Matilda.

Social

Wayne Liew explained that he’s now more focused on using Twitter to build relationships. He noticed a sub 1% CTR on his links, which lead him partly to realize that his follower count was pretty meaningless. It’s engaged followers that matter.

To the same effect, a recent blog post about tweeting = speaking in a void:

It’s unsurprising then that TwitterBFFs (Best Friends Forever) recently came out, showing who you tweet with most. I expect that within 18 months, we’ll have the first true social media analytics.

Selling

“Always be selling” doesn’t mean always be asking 4 the sale. Depends where u are in the funnel.

Socializing, mentioning what u do=selling

Hence Tweeting can = selling. And hence the need for true social media analytics.

These will take TwitterBFFs type technology and help you measure the strength of your relationships and need for followup.

Plugins

Based on some WordPress and Ecommerce SEO strategy I shared, I had a new plugin idea.

Make a plugin that takes selected posts and copies their content into another post, 301s the selected posts URLs, and adds a table of contents and subheaders with the appropriate titles.
You end up with
- an authoritative, in-depth topic page a la Wikipedia; aka linkbait
- more content combinations for SEs to send you longtail traffic on,
- linkjuice being more concentrated in fewer pages, so you rank better as explained here

Another plugin idea: Integrate commenting with facebook and add a little ’3 Benefits of registering’ box – see wireframe sent to indians

Ads

Google’s Display Ad Strategy – From The Horse’s Mouth

http://google360.client.shareholder.com/eventdetail.cfm?eventid=75613

Notes on this.
Majority of publishers in Google Content have opted into running display ads; majority are serving those, not text ads. Unclear if by choice or based on yield optimization.

Need to watch the whole thing…

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• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

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.

Ian Lurie has a new, open-source script for fixing broken links on your site en masse.

Via SEO Smarty, here’s a new keyword research tool that mass-scrapes suggestions for you.

John McElborough shares some brilliant tactics to hide your backlink trail. I giggled out loud at some of it, it was that clever. Last guy who made me giggle like that was a certain shady character.

Alan Bleiweiss knocks it out the park with these tips on hiring an apprentice. Reminds me of something I saw via Problogger.com, Outsourced My Life.

Mr Green shares an interesting case study about FB ads and using two famous copywriters’ styles for inspiration. Here’s part 1 (hypothesis) and part 2 (results).

Long advocated by the likes of Diorex, exact match domains now have a study to prove that they boost CTR. Probably the simplest answer as to why Google boosts them in organic results, too.

A great item on longtail content types you can develop as an ecommerce affiliate.

I like that he emphasizes listening as a keyword research tactic. That was a big focus of my SMX Advanced 2009 preso, and the specific applications shared in that post are excellent. Combine that with crowd-sourcing your content (Mechanical Turk?) and you’ve got a winner…

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• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

While googling around to help my sister Dahlia because her Gateway PC broke down (again … I think she got that 1/1,000,000 that makes it through QC when it’s a lemon), I saw the following search result. It’s entirely made up of forums, which is the first time I’ve ever seen such a thing (at least, when not searching for forums or info about them).  Screenshot after the jump.

A few thoughts come to mind.

1) This is a response to longtail queries. Forums have traditionally been a great place to learn subjects in depth, online. The first social media I really got into were forums around 2002-2003, when I was really into hiphop and Counter-Strike. Both had some amazing forums around where you could soak up information to your heart’s content.

2) I think this is part of the May Day update. It’s interesting to see how effective the update probably is in some cases, as I explained in point 1.

It’s also interesting how ineffective it can be.

- I still have no idea what the hell a RAID access failure is, except that it’s something to do with the motherboard, graphics card, or hard drive. And that’s virtually the whole computer, so not narrowing things down much.

- I’m also not sure really how to fix it. I got some idea it’s to do with the drivers, so I had my sister get the latest ones, but the other points were about reconnecting SATA cables etc.

- All these forums are by techies – for techies.

It’s like expecting my mom to come here and understand this post.

I don’t blame the forums mind you – they claim to be for an advanced audience and that’s fine.

- Any search engine that directs a non-techie to them, however, has some important questions to ask.

“How technical is a particular page?”

“Does this query need a more technical or more generalist response?”

3) I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that Nvidia’s #1 ranking is [mostly] because they have the most posts/authors and thus the richest discussion. By extension, that would often make it the most authoritative thread.

Two arguments suggest that other ranking factors may be predominant, here.

a. From reading other forums, I think this is something that specifically has to do with Nvidia hardware, so it may be some kind of brand association. I could be totally wrong on that – please correct me in the comments if I am wrong.

b. The PC Help Forum has more posts and authors than HP’s forum – yet it ranks lower.

(The counter argument to “b” is that HP.com has both a load of link juice and brand factors pulling for it, which overcomes the lower post/author count.)

3.2) Recency also does  not seem to be the driving factor in rankings here, though Google does seem to find it important enough to display.

My guess is because this is not a query that deserves freshness, though some people may have a slight preference for it.

Consider the low – and constant – search query numbers – a newsy item would have seen a spike in searches.

This also supports my earlier suggestion that this is to do with solving the constantly refreshing long tail …

Raid access failure doesn’t even chart on Google Trends…

What do you guys make of this search result?

Have you seen it before? If so, how long?

What explanations for it do you have, and do you think it ties into May Day?

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I recently spent $200+ testing out a text link ad broker who promised a big network of blogs, without footprints. This link broker sells on a monthly membership basis that ended up auto-renewing for a few months, partly because I was too busy to test immediately when I bought it. Lesson #1: Avoid buying on impulse.

This text link advertising network has a 3 step process.

1) Upload an article, and pick categories it fits under.
2) Add your text link in along with other innocent links.
3) Finally, the text link broker sends the article out to some blog they run.

When I finally got around to publishing some articles, I was in such a rush to see results already that I clean forgot step 2.

To keep itself discrete, this link broker doesn’t tell you what blogs the links are published on. So I couldn’t do a backlink lookup with a backlink research tool, nor could I get any reporting from this broker. (Except that the pieces were published, if memory serves.)

Forgetting to add in the links turned out to be a good thing, I saw later, because my article got posted on a wholly irrelevant blog. And not even an impressive one, that’s well maintained by humans etc. This was an obviously generic creation with no soul. “Take me to the Wizard for a new heart,” it whimpered tinnily.

(Lesson #2: If they sell text links based on automated distribution of articles, and you can’t see the broker’s inventory (to avoid Google smacking it all down), publish some articles with unique phrases in them.

Then Google it and see where it ended up.

Depending how relevant the resultant sites / pages are, you can decide whether to include your links in future articles.

[This is really just the grayhat parallel to the blackhat SEO's comment spam swing dance].)

Now, I know that my point about offtopic sites sounds contradictory to other advice I gave recently, about how it’s the page that matters. Isn’t it irrelevant what the site is about, and only the page relevance matters in determining the link’s value/relevance ?

It depends. It depends on some conditions. Imagine this as a spectrum of relevance.

- If the site is about nothing in particular, like a personal blog, news site or other generic publisher like About.com, then no, it doesn’t matter. The link counts if the page is topical.

- If the sites’ topics have 0 relation, but somehow the page manages to bridge that gap, it’s ok. SEO has no relation to dentistry, but it’s a clean link when I link to my dad’s dental related business from here, because he’s my dad – it’s normal and accepted that I should link to him. And before anyone jumps to conclusions, this text link broker trial was for an affiliate site of mine, not my dad’s business.

- If your site topics overlap and the page is offtopic, it’s not grand (both in terms of traffic and link value), but it won’t hurt.

- If the sites’ topics overlap and the page is relevant, it’s better, simply because the traffic quality will be better. Traffic I get from my guest-posts at Wolf-Howl is pretty good, because our audiences are mostly interested in the same thing.

- If the sites are exactly on the same topic and the page is relevant, it’s money.

- (i) Offtopic sites with (ii) offtopic pages that (iii) don’t bridge the topic gap with the site they’re linking to = Paid links that don’t count.

- Also, (i) Offtopic sites with (ii) relevant pages that (iii) don’t bridge the topic gap with the site they’re linking to = Paid links that don’t count.

The latter type is what I encountered with the text link broker, and it’s why I cancelled the subscription. I dipped my pinky toe in, saw there was an oil slick in the water, and called the President got out.

Finally,

- (i) Offtopic sites with (ii) relevant pages that (iii) DO bridge the topic gap with the site they’re linking to = Paid links that DO count.

So yes, links from offtopic sites do count, including paid links from offtopic sites.

It just depends…

As they say, the devil is in the details.

Liked this post on text link brokers? Check the pros and cons of buying links, pre-published vs post-published text links, 101 tips on discretion in paid link purchases.

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• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

I recently took my own endorsement advice and bought access to Spyfu for a PPC campaign I’m managing, which is having CTR trouble on some keywords.

Besides my use for my own campaign, the Spyfu membership – especially Domain Ad History tool – was useful in critically appraising this post from Epiphany, which discusses how Lego are apparently not buying keywords they’re targeting for SEO, an apparently obvious mistake. (Dofollow link because theirs was an honest mistake; I don’t think they deliberately made a silly mistake to linkbait.)

As I explained in a comment on that post, the problem with their criticism is that it’s based on their own searches for these terms. That ignores:

• Ads being run at different times of day, aka dayparting, because some times convert better than others
• Ads being run seasonally, for the same reason
• Geographic targeting that may have excluded their area

And those are just the PPC factors at play. Inventory levels, competing marketing priorities for budget and other business issues can also limit what people do with their PPC, in a way us consultants can never know.

Fortunately, at least the PPC factors can be clarified if you’re a member of Spyfu. While Spyfu’s main audience is people who need to find competitors’ keywords, they’re also useful for appraising PPC sales leads etc.

In the Lego case, I looked up Lego.com in Spyfu’s Domain Ad History tool. That shows you all the keywords and ads used by a particular website.

Here’s what it looks like for Lego.com, after I filtered by keyword phrases that include the word ‘educational. Click to enlarge, click back to return here.

Quick explanations of Spyfu charts:

1) When you click a keyword in the left-hand column, it brings up the window towards the bottom that shows you the ads run on that keyword.

2) Clicking any of the coloured boxes in the chart will also bring up that window.

3) The default sorting option is best keywords. Anyone with a brand will have these brand terms show up first; retailers who distribute merchants’ products can use these for inspiration. You can also sort by keyword, but then you get alphabetically-sorted data, as above.

4) Note the different options to export the data

5) The longer they bid on a keyword (e.g. the longer and more unbroken the row of coloured boxes), the more likely that keyword is profitable. Here are some broken and unbroken lines to compare what great keywords (brand terms, in this case) look like vs non-brand terms.

The problem is that there’s a cutoff after 50 keywords, and it looks like you can’t see more! What can do you?

Spyfu’s tech support pointed me in the right direction, with three options:

[...]

You: Oh, i have to keep clicking next?

Steve: Yes

Steve: We don’t have a good way to export the history yet

Steve: So you can export everything from spreadsheet view

Steve: Or click through the ad history … if there is a specific keyword you are wondering about … you can search for that in term ad history

Steve: And then scroll down to this domain again

[...]

Steve: The issue is that the gantt chart is a flash control … and we couldn’t have it keep going further and further down the page. It would cut off in the flash. So we had to make pages

Steve: Once you click “next” once …

Steve: Then you can see in the url num=50 or something like that

Steve: You can change that manually to jump down a few pages

Steve: For example num=500 … but that is more of a hack then a support way of using the UI

You: Ooooh neat – that’s valuable

You: it’s pleasant dealing with support staff who are knowledgeable !

Steve: sure thing, thanks for using SpyFu

Steve: have a good day, let us know if you have more questions

Notice the little text link that reads “Next,” above the upper-right corner of the chart, now? That’s how you see more.

So voila – take my advice and check out Spyfu for some valuable insights into competitors’ keywords, ad copy etc.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

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• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

Jimmy writes,

“I saw someone write to be careful or use the ilb in moderation to avoid getting penalized or something like that.

What are your thoughts on best practices?”

I think penalization due to overuse of my WordPress plugin, Internal Link Building (ILB) is a mis-expression of a user design concern.

The consequences of overusing ILB is just that your audience may feel a bit overwhelmed if the same words are linked 5 times in one post. Bing and Google will not penalize you for that.

That said, you can have multiple different words linked in a single post.

Imagine you write about laptops. Your latest post is about a new laptop bag you bought.

‘Laptop accessories’ is mentioned and links to that category on your blog.
‘IBM laptop’ links to your review post
‘TigerDirect’ is an affiliate link
‘Add my rss feed to your reader‘ links to your feed.

Bang – 4 links, 1 post, and it’s just fine.

If you thought this SEO FAQ for using my internal link building plugin was useful, add my rss feed to your reader.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

This is a guest post by Troy Redington. Find him on Twitter @TroyRedington !

I’ve been into web development since 1995. I started dabbling in high school and just couldn’t stop. I felt comforted, and challenged by the vast sea of knowledge that I could learn. Plus, since the languages, technologies, and trends were always changing – I knew I wouldn’t get bored with it.

In the year 1999 I scored my first real, full-time web development job for an audio company. My boss was a man named Tim Storm. I learned a LOT working for Tim. I went from dabbling and hacking, to actually producing and innovating. Tim started Fatwallet.com (a coupon site) as his hobby while we were still working together. I felt honored to be a part of its community development in the first couple years. Tim quit his day job and went full-time on Fatwallet.com shortly after.

Fast forward to 2006. I was a web developer for Fatwallet, on a team of 4 or 5. I had been dabbling in SEO on the side for the last two years, mainly for my wife’s [former] online scrapbook store. I was incredibly passionate about Fatwallet. Tim, and his company, had both done great things for my career. Knowing some SEO basics, and seeing the major SEO problems and HUGE search traffic potentials of the site, I went to Tim and told him that the company needs to spend some time on SEO.

Maybe I wasn’t clear with my intentions since Tim transitioned a different coworker to SEO. The next six months were miserable as I was the developer in charge of implementing the new SEO’s techniques. I watched and fought tooth and nail as the SEO spent countless hours on extinct techniques like meta keywords. After several arguments with the SEO, and whiny complaints to the man in charge, old SEO out, Troy in.

I was given 3 months to see if I could make an impact on traffic. Tim and I both agreed that we needed a kickass metric system for measuring the efforts and results – so I spent the next 2 months doing nothing but writing a new search traffic analytic tracking system. I used it to monitor the current search traffic, and find opportunities for easy optimization.  I quickly found terms like GoDaddy coupon that were driving some traffic to pages that were NOT optimized (and quite unfriendly to search engines).

I rewrote URLs throughout the site, changed paging systems, implemented dynamic cross linking systems, cleaned piles of dirty, messy, pathetic code (that I had written in years past). Once the site was search engine friendly, and KINDA optimized, we watched the traffic increase day after day. After a few months, search traffic had doubled. Hell yeah, I felt like a winner.

Then I met with Tim again. Tim wanted to know which terms were converting, and how much traffic has increased to the terms that are the highest converting. It took another couple of months to tweak the system and start producing metrics that prove ROI. And then I became the full-time, in-house SEO for FatWallet.

The next couple years were brutal, as I fought many challenges. FatWallet’s search traffic is incredibly long-tailed, with a million plus members in the forums, the site is loaded with rich user generated content – and we all know how search engines love UGC. However the terms I was expected to target were far from long-tail, and often far from reality. Most people in the company didn’t really know what I was doing, hell sometimes *I* didn’t really know what I was doing.

I kept trying and kept learning…and more importantly, I kept finding search traffic opportunities that could align with our content. My passion for the company, and now for the industry, fueled debates with sales managers, designers, developers, and sysadmins. In the end, our results have made it all totally worth it.

My responsibilities, and respect for what I do, are higher than ever at Fatwallet. I’m producing results, getting involved with big projects, and even driving big projects.

Tim continues to inspire us, and is currently a finalist in the Entrepreneur of the Year contest.

My career has been created by passion and a strong desire to learn and succeed. What drives you guys in your search careers?

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For those of you who don’t know, my name’s Gab Goldenberg and I run SEO ROI Services. There are a few practices that I’d like to share, which give me both pleasure and pride in running this business.

1) Donating 10% of profits to charity. While occasionally I have forgotten and missed a payment, by and large my track record is good in this regard.

Some charities I give to serve the needs of:

• The Jewish community
• The poor
• Those needing education
• Smokers trying to quit

2) Fair payment. I pay people I work with – regardless of their location around the world, in Europe, the Phillipines or here in Canada – fair wages. I also seek to recognize them for taking the initiative and also for being exceptionally reliable.

Some things I’ve done in this respect include sending [unsolicited] chocolates, and other times cash bonuses.

My experience with this has been that people appreciate you making the effort to think of them and it’s a positive cycle – you do extra for them, they do more for you. It also reduces turnover, which is a big time saver.

3) Overdelivering. I admit that in the past, I sometimes met deliverables late or exactly in quantity, the past few months have seen a big improvement.

These past few months, on link building deliverables, SEO ROI Services exceeded requirements by numbers varying between 15% and 60%! And on time as well as commitments for redesign and other projects, I’ve bitten the bullet when things took longer or cost more than anticipated. It’s my quote, and I’ll stick by it.

4) Our online reporting makes life hassle-free for everyone – clients, myself and my team.

Before, updates on link building projects were handled by email. Wanted to know where we’re at on deliverables? You’d email me.

What did I do next?

Email the bloggers or blog editors I work with.

- “How’re we doing?” I’d ask.

- “The editor’s been on a Caribbean cruise for a month,” my blogger would casually respond. “We’re waiting for his return to get the posts published.”

- “But I’m shvitzing this deadline and we still need 7 links to make quota,” I’d cry girlishly, paling light-green. “What’s he think he’s doing in the Caribbean??”

- “Continuing Castro’s Bolshevik revolution? [Vacation, duh, you idiot.]” came the languid reply.

- “Since when is he allowed on vacation?” I’d silently sigh to myself.

Next I’d unceremoniously inform the client that a tornado had tragically killed half our staff and made the rest homeless. Obviously, we’d need more time…

Nowadays, we handle it with BasecampHQ. Bloggers post the URLs as they go live. Clients and I can login to track progress any day, any time.

Around mid-month I can see where we’re at and make adjustments if we need to do more.

(I’ve also solved the problem of bloggers/editors going MIA by aiming to have more bloggers and blogs than strictly necessary to meet deliverables. Worst case, we meet exactly our promise. Best case we overdeliver. Hence #3 above.)

5) Because I love you guys too! Look at all the posts in my blogroll category and how much I link out .

Heck, I’m going to make this a meme. Those tagged have to write their own version with 5 reasons to love their company and pass it on!

(*Shouts:*) “Tag! You’re it:

Outspoken Media

San Diego SEO (Check out his great link tunnelling tip btw.)

Wiep / LinkBuilding.nl

Wordstream Internet Marketing Blog

Rimm Kaufmann

Red Fly Marketing

Tamar’s Social Media Marketing

RustyBrick / SERoundtable

Julien Smith

SEO Dojo / Dave Harry

Aimclear

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• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

Back when I used to do hotel SEO for the Hotel de Paris, one of the things that regularly came up in my competitive research was the importance of conference and convention hall facilities and networking in that field.

Why does having conference facilities help hotels with their SEO?

For the simple reason that convention organizers typically have a website. One trusted by search engines at that.

And therefore when those convention organizers mention the location of their event, they typically link to the hotel hosting their show.

Furthermore, they’re often encouraging attendees to book a room at the hotel.

Search engines ranks web pages in its search results based on the quality and quantity of links those pages have.

Guess what such a juicy endorsement tells Bing and Google?

“Rank this big, fancy hotel higher in the search results!”

Of course, there are solutions for smaller hotels to fight the rankings battle, too. Get my new posts by rss or email and find out more when I publish parts 2 and 3 of this series.

And for those more advanced SEOs among you, check out my advanced SEO book.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

Guides

http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/designing-for-mobile-web
http://mashable.com/2009/11/26/mobile-web-design/
http://abduzeedo.com/mobile-web-design
http://www.scribd.com/doc/20946338/Great-Mobile-Landing-Pages – A useful presentation for beginners. The authors created Movitas, which has the most affordable WYSIWYG mobile page creator I found. (Besides the free, uber-basic Movylo.)

Mobile Web Design Galleries
http://www.mobileawesomeness.com/mobile-web-resources/ – A blog and design gallery with useful resources linked
http://www.mobisitegalore.com/index.html – Another gallery

WYSIWYGs

https://movitas.com/Movitas/pricingComparison.aspx
http://www.tekora.com/en/ – Another mobile WYSIWYG
Very basic: http://www.movylo.com/
Really pricey: http://mobify.me/features/

Slice Shops Turn PSD and AI Graphics Into XHTML, WML etc

http://www.mobilizetoday.com/xhtml-conversion – Seemed to have pretty affordable pricing for slicing up graphics into mobile landers, but it wasn’t clear if they’d do WML either…
https://w3-markup.com/ – A site that will slice your graphics into a working lander, but they don’t do WML. Use them if your target is newer devices that can support 320px wide graphics etc.
http://www.zestadz.com/help/help_landing_page_tool – Unclear if you need to use Zestadz to get their tool, however.

If you liked this post on mobile tools and resources, add my rss feed to your reader!

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• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

Mixergy.com is one of my new faourite sites, because it’s got a huge archive of high quality interviews with fascinating people! The guy making it happen first and foremost is Andrew Warner, whom I got to interview. Here’s what we discussed.

1) Which interview have you most enjoyed doing and why?

I knew I wanted to do interviews with entrepreneurs after I interviewed my friend Rosalind Resnick. She built a company from her house with no outside money and took it public. It was an inspiring story about what could be done in business. Even though I knew her for years, it wasn’t until I interviewed her that I learned the full story. I learned that interviewing will make me aware of just how much I don’t know and help me fill in those knowledge gaps.

2) What feedback have people given you in terms of the value they get from you site?

In many of my interviews, I say, “I’m doing this so you, the listener, could learn how to build a business from those who’ve done it. My goal is for you to take as much as you can from these programs and go out there and build something incredible. Then, hopefully, you’ll come back and do an interview with me and teach others.” I’m finally starting to see that happen. If you listen to many of my latest interviews with successful entrepreneurs, you’ll hear them say that they’ve been listening and now want to give back by helping others.

3) If you could improve 2 things about Mixergy, what would they be?

A. I’d like to find a way to have the audience pull out the key points from each interview. Hidden in those hour-long interviews are simple, usable insights. I need help highlighting them, but I haven’t figured out how to do that yet.

B. I’d like to write better headlines. Each interview is thousands of words long, but the 7 to 10 words in the headline will decide if all those others will get noticed.

4) You’re really energetic in videos and engaging; is that a TV personality that you find necessary to keep people’s attention, or do you interact with people like that normally?

I’m more energetic in real life. I haven’t figured out how to bring my personal energy to the interviews and make it feel natural. In my old videos, when I tried being my high-energy-self, I sounded like a mental patient who had too much Red Bull. So I’ve slowed down.

5) What’s your vision for what you’d like to be doing over the next 12 months?

I’d like to pull out more key ideas from my interviews and make each one more useful.

6) How about the next 3 years?

Not sure.

7) I’ve noticed you have various collaborators who help with the site; how do you draw talented people to work with you and motivate them to keep working with you?

They’re all volunteers who’ve heard my work and offered to help. I’m very lucky to have their support and do whatever I can to make sure they get more value from the work than they put into it.

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Let’s start with some notes and free-association thoughts on the text of Ontolo’s link building book:

A – The first chapter got off to a good start with some clever tips.

1) See how building links can support various departments. Makes me think of the interaction between links and sales (e.g. rank the lead gen whitepaper page) or links and PR (linkbait, publicity stunts, contests…).

2) In large organizations, you may need sign-off from multiple departments. That slows the campaign. So keep your activity within the scope of a single department to speed things up.

B – One thing I disagreed with in the next chapter was:

“You’ll have little to no ability to guide the keyword impact of these kinds of links (unless you’re buying the links or you’ve developed clever campaigns).”

Garrett and Ben at Ontolo are experienced enough to know that the name you give your content impacts how it’ll be linked to. My Internal Link Building plugin got loads of links that mostly use the name as anchor text.

That’s probably what was meant by clever campaigns, but given that that’s the case, why say you’ll have ‘little to no ability’…? Perhaps because some existing internal linkable assets can’t have their names changed for political reasons?

Ontolo and I are probably thinking the same thing but in different words, but I think the book could be clearer here.

Update: Garrett followed up with me and recognized this was just a little oversight. They certainly do recognize that names play an important part in determining anchor text.

C – Back to positive things:

- The point in chapter 2 about links having a brand impact is very true – assuming you’re doing quality content distribution. E.g. Guest posts, expert interviews etc – as Ontolo advocate. Directory submissions may boost rankings, but they don’t build your brand and do leave you vulnerable to the next algo shift.

- I find chapter 3′s idea of considering staff members as linkable assets a fresh idea. Likewise the notion that inventorying your linkable assets leads to figuring what link opportunities are available …

D – Their link opportunities section introduced me to something new… I won’t share what because at this point I’d get to spoiling the book.

The bottom line is this:

1) Beginner and intermediate SEOs, and especially inhouse SEOs, will get A LOT of value from the book. There’s a lofty breadth to the book that means you can quickly learn a lot of what is essential to quality link building campaigns.
2) Advanced SEOs and advanced link builders will get less from the book, because you know a fair amount of what’s there. But there are still a large number of actionable nuggets! If you’re at this level, the links you can build are worth $100 – $1000 a pop… so the value of a single of these ideas is ridiculous. The ROI is definitely positive.
3) Inhouse SEOs in particular will benefit, as a lot of the book is written with them in mind. There are considerations of working with different teams, getting help from the C-level execs etc.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

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• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

Just saw this piece via the ever-industrious Bill Slawski: Google’s Acquisition of MetaWeb & its Named Entities technology.

Myself and others have noted how exact match domain names were getting impressive boosts just for being exact matches.

I asked Aaron Wall about it, and apparently their SEO Book private forum’s got some good discussions on it. One idea Aaron favoured from those discussions was the idea that Google has trouble distinguishing between legit brands and entities with generic names. Hence boosting exact matches, to help small brands out.

From what I understood of Bill Slawski’s overview, a Named Entity is basically a proper noun.

Remember Grade 2 English class? Yep, the interweb’s g33k3d out proper nouns with full-on algos to better index data about them and so forth. Check out Bill’s post for more, and share your thoughts there or here on what this acquisition means for future ranking fluctuations.

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I’ve been reading up on the Content Network before launching a first campaign there in years. The following’s a list of posts I’ve found useful and the key takeaways. They may repeat and overlap in some ways. That repetition is summarized below. The links are accompanied by notes on what’s unique in that guide.

Google AdSense unit image courtesy of Frank O’Dwyer.

All these guides broadly suggest:

1) Don’t just copy search network campaigns to the content network

2) Your content network adgroups should be formed with modifers added to you base keyword/phrase. E.g. Air Jordan Basketball shoes | Nike basketball shoes | Nike high-top Basketball shoes

3) The ads have to shout, not speak politely. This is because people are in info-gathering mode, not search mode. You need to INTERRUPT!

4) Content quality score = CTR

5) Individual keywords don’t trigger ads, it’s the adgroup theme that determines where ads are syndicated.

6) The corrolary to #5 is that tracking happens at the adgroup level. If your campaign is small in keyword #s, you can have 1 keyword per group to see what keywords perform best.

7) Run placement reports regularly to see where ads showed up. Cut the low CTR and low conversion rate sites.

Use negatives liberally, but be careful not to misapply them in the wrong context. Should the negative be at an adgroup or campaign level?

http://www.pointit.com/blog/10-ways-with-google-content-network/ – Several unique keyword research tips there, as well bidding advice. “Don’t be a wimp!” [regarding bids].

http://www.adhustler.com/google-content-network-strategy/ – His last point on pruning and reviewing sites from the placement report is juicy.

http://www.ppce.net/ppc-management-google-content-network.html – Clever point on bid management for content towards the end, regarding placement targeting (aka site match).

http://www.webrageous.com/ppc/contentnetwork – Section on multimedia ads and what niches they work for makes sense.

http://tommiepowers.com/the-importance-of-placement-targeting-research-for-your-adwords-content-network-campaigns/ – Couple of tool links, including a free one, w0000t!

http://sites.google.com/site/gcreativebrief/google-content-network/gcn-case-studies – Case studies I found around

This wouldn’t be a valuable bit on content network ads without linking to Dave Szetela’s articles, free book etc.

I also found this SEW article useful for having some nice tool links at the end, though I haven’t tested or compared vs the free one listed by Tommie.

Lastly, I’m currently trying out PPC Blog’s private community and getting some great, fast responses.

If you liked this post on PPC, add my rss feed to your reader for more!

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• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

“One way to fight this sort of strategy [Google's strategy of playing in every market] is Yahoo!’s sell or outsource everything but the logo strategy.” (-Google As A Publisher)

Amongst other moves listed there are the closing/selling of the Yahoo Publisher Network, Yahoo’s answer to AdSense, and the outsourcing of Yahoo shopping to PriceGrabber. If you take that along with Yahoo’s failure to ever take the analytics company it acquired out of beta, you see a pattern emerging:

Yahoo doesn’t stick by its products.

It launches divisions only to let them die later. It buys companies and does squat with them.

It’s well known in sales that large companies like dealing with large companies because they’re associated with greater stability. Stability is code for reliability / trustworthiness.

If you see the above pattern, and Yahoo offers to buy your company or partner with you… what’s your response going to be like?

Liked this post? Get a free chapter from my upcoming advanced SEO book.

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• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

Patrick Altoft directs search for Branded3, a Leeds-based full service digital agency. He also runs the popular Blogstorm SEO blog and is a pretty interesting guy to chat to overall! Hit him up if you’re looking for search services in the UK!

We’re continuing a series of interviews I conducted in 2008 with active Sphinners. You might also like to read the interviews with David ‘theGypsy’ Harry and ‘Sebastian‘.

1) What benefits have you seen from your activity at Sphinn?

I use my real name and people now associate my Sphinn profile with my blog. Any bit of publicity helps on the web.

2) Share 3 – 5 key elements of your success with Sphinn.

1. Use your face as your avatar
2. Use your real name
3. Only submit great stuff

3) What other social networks do you participate in? (E.g. Digg/clones, Facebook/LinkedIn/Myspace, Ning-type sites, forums, specific blogs you comment on a lot) Can you share your usernames there, and what type of content you’d consider sharing with the other members of those sites as well what you wouldn’t pass on?

I use Digg and StumbleUpon and used to be active on Digital Point until it was overrun by to much noise.

4) What features (besides those announced, like “Mark as spam/Bury”) would you like to see on Sphinn?

I would like to be able to subscribe to a feed that tells me when my blog posts get sphunn so I can go vote for them too.

5) Are you a socialist or a medium? [A weak attempt at humour playing on 'social media'....]

Neither.

6) Define the term: “Sphinn doctor.” [Ditto]

Somebody who can get to the front page of sphinn.

7) Besides only submitting their own stuff or only sphinning their own stuff, what are some common mistakes people make with social media?

Submitting content that is blatantly linkbait or content that is full of adverts.

Tell us a minimum 3 non-Sphinn items about yourself that people could use to catch your eye on Sphinn (i.e. to Sphinnbait you).

a. Mention my name or blog
b. Write something I’ve never read before
c. Give a real life example of making money from the web

9) Which of Cialdini’s 6 principles do you feel most important to gaining influence and why? Can you share some anecdotes?

I have never heard of Cialdini I’m afraid.

10) What is the future of social media?

Sites will try harder and harder to become spam free and probably ruin themselves while doing it. One persons spam is another persons clever marketing and it is a very tight balance.

Like I said, you might also like to read the interviews with David ‘theGypsy’ Harry and ‘Sebastian‘.

If you want to keep up with future interviews from this series, add my rss feed to your reader. You may also like my advanced SEO book.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
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• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

Sebastian is the technical genius and SEO behind Sebastian’s Pamphlets. This warm fellow’s well-known avatar is rather ironic – a crab! We’re continuing the Sphinner interview series that began with Dave ‘theGypsy’ Harry.

1) What benefits have you seen from your activity at Sphinn?

Sphinn is the best aggregator for SEM stuff (stories, links, discussions), ever. Despite the noise on the upcoming pages, Sphinn has all the news that matter. In other words Sphinn is a great time saver, although I didn’t dump my feedreader yet. Also I’ve met nice folks at Sphinn, people I wouldn’t know otherwise. Joining Sphinn was this decade’s best decision (besides moving my WebDev/SEO-pamphlets away from blogspot).

2) Share 3 – 5 key elements of your success with Sphinn.

Define success. I’m just a user, taking more than I can give back. Thanks to great Sphinners I’m pointed to interesting stuff, bookmark (sphinn) it, and every once in a while I submit a pamphlet and my fellow sphinners honor that with very nicely targeted traffic, thoughtful comments, and sometimes even links. I’ve no sphinny world SEM community domination plans.

3) What other social networks do you participate in (Digg/clones, Facebook/LinkedIn/Myspace, Ning-type sites, forums, specific blogs you comment on a lot)? Can you share your usernames there, and what type of content you’d consider sharing with the other members of those sites as well what you wouldn’t pass on?

I’ve spread my red-crab.ico under the “SebastianX” label everywhere, but besides Sphinn I use only Delicious and StumbleUpon as bookmarking tools, and Twitter for gossip and communication. Of course I vote elsewhere for a tiny fee when nicely asked, provided I like the content. I’m not in the social media game. I just use those services when they make sense for me. In my spare time I help out Google with Webmaster support.

4) What features (besides those announced, like “Mark as spam/Bury”) would you like to see on Sphinn?

On the submission form I miss the “bypass the new list” checkbox. Sometimes sphinn+save is not enough to praise an awesome piece, hence an easy way to manage a few dozens user profiles for power-voting would make sense.

5) Are you a socialist or a medium? [Me trying to be witty and failing miserably.]

I’m an anarchist. My code rules the chaos.

6) Define the term: “Sphinn doctor.” [Ditto.]

All sphinners properly feeding my ego deserve this title. Seriously, I nominate Michelle who keeps things running and makes Sphinn an even better hangout with every update. Having so many attention whores and probloggers in the community we tend to forget the seabees.

7) Besides only submitting their own stuff or only sphinning their own stuff, what are some common mistakes people make with social media?

Taking it too seriously.

Tell us a minimum 3 non-Sphinn items about yourself that people could use to catch your eye on Sphinn (i.e. to Sphinnbait you).

I won’t sphinn “how to get raped by aliens” items like “new version of MS Visual Studio is out” and crap like that. Titles like “Why TrustRank is way sexier than plain old PageRank”, “Increasing index penetration without abrading link condoms” or “Automating unpenalized paid link gangbangs” get my vote for sure, provided the article is geeky enough and makes sense. You see, sex sells, even to old farts crabs like me.

9) Which of Cialdini’s 6 principles do you feel most important to gaining influence and why? Can you share some anecdotes?

Social Proof. It might be wishful thinking, but I hope that applying a brutal zero-bullshit tolerance in combination with sharing knowledge and experiences can influence people and prevent them from crappy decisions.

10) What is the future of social media?

Getting plastered with so many ads that one can’t find the contents any more.

Thanks Gab!

Like I wrote above – this is part of a series of interviews with Sphinners. They were actually conducted years ago then left to rot in my inbox. Time to get ‘em out!

If you liked this, check out the interview with  Dave ‘theGypsy’ Harry, or get a free chapter from my advanced SEO book.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

Jake was a quick-witted entrepreneur oozing with creativity.

He made decent money working for others at the agency that employed him. Somewhere along the way, Jake decided that he should come up with his own product.

So he did. Jake spent all his free time for the better part of a summer in quiet isolation. While he kept up his day job, as soon as the clock struck 5:00 everyday, the fire in Jake’s seat at his desk burned him right out the door to his hatchback.

He sped home (always following the posted speed limits, naturally; his disposable income was for PPC testing, not speeding tickets) and cracked open the laptop.

‘Tippity-tap, tippity-tap’ he tippity-tapped at his keyboard. Slowly, slowly, a remarkable product emerged.

By the end of the summer, Jake’s product was done. He’d had a professional proofreader weed out the grammar mistakes, a humorist eliminated the worst jokes, and a friend informed he needed to shower. (Typing away like that one might get carried away…)

The big day finally came. Crossing his fingers, and tying his dog’s legs crooked for good measure (it was a stuffed puppy; Jake was no sadist… just a taxidermist) Jake launched his product!

“BOOOOOOM!” he announced as he lit his rocket, aiming for the stratosphere. The PPC ads were roaring, his copy was soaring and the Twitterverse was all… well, atwitter.

“fizzle-whimper,” answered the market, in energetic boredom.

“What’s the matter here?” asked Jake. “I’ve worked hard, see! You should be more compliant with what I’m trying to do, geez!”

“Did you ask me what I wanted?” quipped the market. “Why should I care about your product, when you don’t care what I need?”

“Cuz I’m motherf****** Jake with a motherf***** iFrame!” stomped Jake! (He thought he was the next motherf****** Jobs.)

Said the market, “Whatever, perv…”

Moral of the story: Ask what people want. Then develop. It’s funny how this is true in both SEO (keyword research first… building links backwards), product development, and the ways markets develop in general.

Here are some links to illustrate, and below that is a link to download a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced SEO. I’m asking my subscribers now for suggestions on what they’d like to see in it…

http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/interview-jakob-nielsen

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/build-links-backwards/21179/

http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/the-4-different-types-of-authority-links-and-11-ways-to-get-them/

http://www.thelaunchcoach.com/survey-tips

http://seoroi.com/keyword-research/buy-comes-before-sell/

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

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• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

The Sadly Short Story Of The Isolated Product Developer

]]> http://seoroi.com/seo-roi-quality/sad-story-no-research/feed/ 7 http://seoroi.com/seo-roi-quality/sphinn-interview-series-david-thegypsy-harry/ http://seoroi.com/seo-roi-quality/sphinn-interview-series-david-thegypsy-harry/#comments Wed, 23 Jun 2010 13:36:27 +0000 Gabriel Goldenberg http://seoroi.com/?p=1727 Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

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Sphinn Interview Series: David ‘theGypsy’ Harry

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A long, long time ago… almost 2 years to the month… I asked a bunch of cool Sphinners I was getting to know for their advice and insights on that great search marketing network we know as Sphinn. For various reasons, I never published those interviews – until now! (SEOptimise reminded me.) In light of Twitter and Facebook‘s exponential growth in the past 2 years, the changes in the link graph this has engendered, and related developments, these answers are pretty interesting.

Dave runs the seo training center known as the Dojo. He’s got some remarkable testimonials, not least of which because of who is giving them. I recognized 4-5 names.

“Well sheee-it there monsieur Gabs, not sure what use this will be but I said I would give ‘er a go and I shall…. Right away I just wanted to say that while I appreciate your kind words and invitation to get social, I spend as much time playing the devil’s advocate in the world of Social Media Marketing as I do supporting it. I am certainly not a social media darling ( almost a Social Media Ninja though….)

Without further ado… let’s get into it;

What benefits have you seen from your activity at Sphinn ?

Well, I suppose the real benefits have been;

1. Making new friends
2. Padding my address book
3. Maxing out my reader
4. Some increased visibility
5. And of course access to learning something new every day

I am old school Social Networking 1.0 also known as being a forum hound. I really look at Sphinn as more of a place to exchange knowledge and talk shop. I haven’t actually benefited financially, as don’t look to it for revenue or promotion, just a place to hang out.

Share 3 – 5 key elements of your success with Sphinn.

Well, there’s the rub eh? I am not so sure what one measures ‘success’ with as far as the Sphinn-o-sphere is concerned. If it is measured by the dweeb with way too much time on his hands that likes hanging around the fringes of the campfire… then man, I am kicking ass. I am not so sure I am actually all that successful (or not). Seriously, I didn’t even come close to even being a runner up in the Sphinn Awards (wink); though I did once devise a plan to dominate the place.

What other social networks do you participate in (Digg/clones, Facebook/LinkedIn/Myspace, Ning-type sites, forums, specific blogs you comment on a lot)? Can you share your usernames there, and what type of content you’d consider sharing with the other members of those sites as well what you wouldn’t pass on?

Well G I don’t really get out much. I spend much of my time running around swatting imaginary flies from the air while puffing on a pipe and singing ‘Everything is Coming Up Roses’. Or in simpler terms, I don’t really have a ton of time for the social spaces.

If not at Sphinn, I hang out at some forums (time permitting) and that’s the extent of it. I doubt I could manage more than one Digg/Pligg clone at a time anyways. I do enjoy Stumbling now and again though. I can easily be found by a search for my nic; theGypsy.

What features (besides those announced, like “Mark as spam/Bury”) would you like to see on Sphinn?

Wow, I have never really thought about that one. I suppose if I had to dream one up I would have the option of being updated about new comments for discussions you’re involved in. That would certainly increase the community involvement aspect I would think.

Are you a socialist or a medium? [Note: This was me trying to be witty by playing on social media, but I think it was too vague an allusion for anyone to catch...]

While I think some of the tenets of socialism have merit, I am far more drawn to talking to the dead. Really, imagine the parties? Heck, I could have a few glasses of cognac with Karl Marx and have the best of both worlds. Erm…… did I miss a memo on this one? I am guessing my answer wasn’t what you were after huh? Then I shall defer and go with; enigma.

Define the term: “Sphinn doctor.” [More awful wordplay.]

Sure, that’s the guy you call when the little blue button ain’t working on your site. Can you define the term ‘smart ass’?

I think folks that you might think of as a Sphinn Doctor may from time to time become Sphinn-addicts in need of said doctor themselves. It really is a circular course one can travel.

I am waiting until ‘social media burnout’ works it’s way into the medical profession and then maybe Danny can get some in house ‘Sphinn Doctors’ the heal their ills. Man, there is a comedy bit; Sphinn-a-holics Anonymous with Doctor Dan.

Besides only submitting their own stuff or only sphinning their own stuff, what are some common mistakes people make with social media?

Taking it too seriously. I have seen a lot of emotional moments amongst the socialites that feel unreciprocated and have suffered a few lapses in sanity myself along the way.

I go back to my outlook as far as having somewhere to play with others in my industry. If the most I expect from the exercise is some good times and shared knowledge, it is easier not to be distracted by the trappings. If you aren’t enjoying yourself any longer it will be very hard to participate productively. Forget the 15 minutes of fame or traffic spikes. Enjoy yourself.

Tell us a minimum 3 non-Sphinn items about yourself that people could use to catch your eye on Sphinn (i.e. to Sphinnbait you).

1. Anything to do with geeky SEO such as; Patents, Algorithms, Data, White Papers, Behavioural Metrics, I like that kind of gobble-d-goop. I started life off as a business planner/accountant.
2. Humor is an area I have an affinity for and so anything that lightens the mood or has me spitting my brew all over the keyboard is a great idea.
3. Ranting is another cathartic exercise in my world and so any good rant is going to catch my attention.

Which of Cialdini’s 6 principles do you feel most important to gaining influence and why? Can you share some anecdotes?

Sorry Gab, but influence peddling is not my area once more. I am but a humble bean counting business building by the numbers kind of guy. My favourite way to influence people is to make them money or to otherwise create a beneficial component to the relationship. Influence is a fickle mistress best left to sheep herders not bean counters.

What is the future of social media?

I am not really sure; I am not much of a prognosticator to be honest.

But if you look larger than the usual suspects to folks like CNN, you can see a greater role for user generated content in the media world. I marvel at the folks scrambling to be an ‘iReporter’ and larger media outlets cashing in on these financially feasible contractors. What happens should the media outlets start to compensate these content generators? Is it still social? I wonder where the lines of social get crossed with commerce what the ultimate storyline will be. I embrace with my capitalist arms the website owners making a killing from these fine folks, but how long the sheep continue to follow may dictate the ultimate evolution of ‘social’ media.

And something to get to know me better?

That’s easy; I love animals… here’s my collection;

1 Cat

3 Dogs

2 Lizards

2 Snakes

2 Tarantulas

2 Hermit Frogs

Thanks for caring Gabs… I told ya I wasn’t much for the Social Media world. I hope it is usable brother :0)

Dave

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Sphinn Interview Series: David ‘theGypsy’ Harry

]]> http://seoroi.com/seo-roi-quality/sphinn-interview-series-david-thegypsy-harry/feed/ 4 http://seoroi.com/seo-roi-quality/my-first-smx-advanced-conference/ http://seoroi.com/seo-roi-quality/my-first-smx-advanced-conference/#comments Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:02:21 +0000 Gabriel Goldenberg http://seoroi.com/?p=1724 Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Updated Feb 8, 2010: Internal Link Building, a Wordpress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so that you can rank like Wikipedia. General info: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
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• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  

My First SMX Advanced Conference

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This is a guest post by Troy Redington. Find him on Twitter @TroyRedington, and his wife, an architect and photographer, at Johwey!

As the solo in-house SEO for Fatwallet, it is important that I keep up with the constant changes of the industry. My two staple conferences have been SESNY and Pubcon Vegas. Last spring I was toying with the idea of attending Pubcon South instead of SES when Danny Sullivan told me to skip both and go to SMX Advanced. I decided to go to New York. Big mistake. SES sucked, and the SMX Advanced conference was blessed with the nofollow pagerank evaporation announcement.

This year, I made my first trip to Seattle for SMX Advanced. I’m glad I did, and here’s why.

Advanced Content.
The name of the conference says it all. Is it REALLY advanced? Not incredibly, but a rookie SEO would likely be overwhelmed. The tactics, research, and advice given by the experts* are often fresher, and in better alignment with current Internet trends than the typical link begging advice found in the fluff at the other conferences. Sure there were sessions, and speakers that were arrogant, stale, or just plain full of suck, but for the most part every session I attended had at least two takeaways Ð even if the takeaway was just a reminder or a priority changer.

** Experts: I’ve come to the hypothesis that only 40% of the speakers at any given conference are actual experts on their topic. While roughly 25% of the audience is an expert on the topic of the session they’re attending.

Favorite Take-Aways
I won’t go into crazy details here as there are plenty of roundups and blogs covering the best info, but here are a few bullet points.
# Google still doesn’t want your search results pages in the SERPS. Noindex them.
# Max, from Brafton, looks just like Jacob from the Twilight movies (not that I’ve seen them or anything)
# Facebook is the new Wikipedia. Build optimized social content. Fans will be the ranking factor
# Google CAN* crawl and index a page and have updated SERPs within an hour of the crawl.

** CAN: Sixth grade logic here folks – ‘can’ means that it is possible. It doesn’t mean your site is going to get the ‘limo to the airport’ service.

Direct & Accurate Interpretation
Being there, in person, to interpret statements and advice accurately is priceless – especially when those statements are coming from the mouth of Matt Cutts. One of my favorite things to do when Matt Cutts is talking is to follow twitter to see what all the parrot tweets are talking about. It reminds me of that game we used to play in Kindergarten where we’d all line up and the teacher would tell a secret to the person and one end. Everyone shares it with his or her neighbor until the last person receives something completely different than the teacher originally told.

Example: Matt Cutts is on stage and makes the statement, “Sometimes I pee when I laugh”
The resulting tweets would likely be:
“Matt Cutts wears diapers #smx”
“Laugh & Pee to rank better on google”
“Did Matt Cutts just use the word ‘pee’?”
“Buy cialis online http://bit.ly/asdflj #smx #justinbieber #thatswhatshesaid”

When Matt originally announced the pagerank evaporation statement, the interpretations and theories were WAY out there. This year, with caffeine, same thing. Matt is typically very careful with his choice of words. Unfortunately many people who repeat his words change things around.

Food
Food is part of the conference right? I’m normally a fan of skipping conference lunch at least ONE day to check out local eateries, especially with SESNY (which has crap food anyway.) But mother of God, the food at SMX was downright impressive. The boxed lunches of the other conferences have a LONG way to go to catch up to SMX. For the record, I would gladly pay a higher admission for better food.

Overall, my experience at SMX Advanced was fantastic. The content was great, as were the nightly gatherings. I am definitely adding it to my ‘must attend’ list. I’m hoping that the upcoming BlueGlass LA will rock this July.

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My First SMX Advanced Conference

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