In the world of business, lots of figures are thrown around. There’s a whole school of thought in the world of investing that only looks at a company’s financial statements and decides whether or not to buy their stock based on those numbers. The most important factor of all, (more…)

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Curious why you should subscribe? The best reason I can give is that you'll find original ideas here. Not rehashed, generic beginner tips like "Top 5 Ways To Write A Great Title" On a related note, if you need SEO services, here's where to get more information.

When you and a busload of friends have had several long hours of championship partying in the club where you gave 110%, and you’re still so pumped for overtime that you go over the top for the win - you’re a Hall of Fame member of the Pro Partying Association. (more…)

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…)

A while ago, I wrote a post whereby I thought that Rich Schefren’s customers were spamming Sphinn. Unfortunately, as shown to me recently by Andy Beard, I screwed that one up pretty badly and need to apologize to Rich for sullying his name unfairly, when the reality is that I didn’t (more…)

Some of you might have noticed that I recently picked up Ice.com and Diamond.com as clients. Well, for any of you interested in working with me and with the other great people here, I have good news: Ice.com’s recruiting SEO experts, SEM specialists, analytics smartiepants, and web developers / coders / programmers (particularly if you’ve done ecommerce work before)! If you’re looking for a job in search marketing and/or analytics, write to Shmuel at ice, or send me your cv/cover letter and I’ll forward them.

Update: In response to some questions - the work requires people to be in Montreal, Canada. There may be monetary assistance for you to move (emphasis on may because I don’t know), but the bottom line is that Ice.com wants people working in their physical offices. As to the job being full/part-time, I’ll ask and update. I’d lean towards saying it’s full time work though.

In addition, (more…)

I’d love to hear your thoughts and I’ll bet that conference organizers would too. So go share your thoughts at Sphinn (and feel free to sphinn the discussion ) on whether you’d attend a greyhat SEO panel at SMX/SES/Sphinncon/Pubcon/SEM Canada etc.

Rishi Lakhani, in particular, had a great suggestion in the comments, which were quite entertaining on the whole. Dofollow link for his Treatment Search site.

On a related note, Andy Murdoch had a great suggestion on fighting Sphinn spam. Dofollow link for Andy’s forum moderation services. Do weight in there too.

Finally, Sphinn’s reaction to that thread (or perhaps they were planning this independently) was this idea to fight spam, which I’m staunchly opposed to. Please tell the mods that you dislike the idea!

p.s. I’ll have the legal series up later this week.

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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.

Shana retaught me to say no, so many thanks to her! And my friend Sean Maguire (of 360 Sell) recently served me a raw dish of ‘your page sucks‘ and in fairness - I agree to a large extent! (Just not about the aspects that matter to Google, which is what that post is about.) Kudos to Sean for being a straight talker!

Besides that, while we’re on the topic, I want to make the point to some SEO friends of mine who frequently message me on MSN about digging their stuff. I’ve done it before and will probably do it again, but you’re going to have to up the ante. I’m ashamed to say that some of those pieces I voted for took you all of 10 minutes to write and 5 more to edit. Give me a break!

On the same note, to those people who constantly send me stuff on SU and hardly return the attention, kindly take me off your lists. It’s reeeeally annoying and I’ve begun thumbing down those posts of yours that feature Adsense above the fold and content below. Is that your goal?

p.s. If you were wondering why I didn’t post much this week, check out this interview with Tyler.

If you liked this post on social media, get my rss feed.

Social media is one of the most difficult things to justify in terms of ROI because current analytics aren’t well suited to measure its data. Outside of linkbait, whose value can be measured by analogy to the link-buying market, there are no standard metrics for tracking the result of social media activity. This ties into my question on the proper measure and value of attention equity: How do you measure it and what is it worth to you? Here’s my proposal for social media analytics and tracking. (more…)

First, I present to you this amusing little email:

from seo expert <seseoexperts@gmail.com> to seseoexperts@gmail.com, date Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 8:04 AM subject Obligation signed-by gmail.com

hide details 8:04 AM (4 hours ago)

Reply

Hi there,

Thank you for taking time to read this email.

We provide high quality graphic design service like Web design, banner design, logo design and web development at a very low cost.

If you are interested, we are willing to Exchange link with you for our mutual benefit.

Please do not hesitate to contact fastlinkmaster@gmail.com for further inquiries.

Thanks and Best Regards
Link Department

We are not spammers and are against spamming of any kind. We are sending this mail with sole intention of link exchange for mutual benefit. If you are not interested in Link Exchange then you can reply simply “NO”, we will never contact you again.

Second, I’d like to share some genuine link love with people who’ve produced good content or have some points that deserve your attention.

1) Uber Aff has made some great posts, some of which are unfortunately buried in archives. Today’s post on how much to spend is a good place to start, then here’s something for those who are interested in blackhat PPC, how to contact human support at AdWords is another great one, and then this video Q&A just made me burst out laughing.

2) Daniel, a bright and friendly Sitepointer, has this very nice blog on building trust and credibility.

3) Quadszilla has an explanation on how to daisy chain your Diggs and gain more social success.

4) This is a year old, but imho, still very true and still very fresh: Crowd Clout aka collective purchasing power.

5) Besides trolls, there’s a much darker face to Web 2.0 and social media. Read antisemitism in web 2.0 and social media to find out more. On a related note, please do link to Jew Tube and to this Jew. If you’re wondering why I’m doing that, read this: Google’s explanation of why the antisemitic Jew Watch ranks for “Jew”.

6) For those of you interested in outsourcing tech overseas, Israel has some of the best IT labour in the world. Thus have a look at Launchpad Israel’s relaunch. On the more strictly search marketing side of things, that link right there takes you to my friend Omer Shoval’s Israeli search marketing company. If you’re in the job market, you can check out these Israeli SEO Jobs (in Hebrew).

7) This one is new to me, but not new generally: How Google Emulates the Las Vegas Casinos in Trying to Control The Web’s Rules. John Andrews is a bright guy, and that’s a cutting indictment!

I’d like to point out to you that from now on, you can find all my blog posts at SEOROI.com/blog, while the best ones will be reserved for the front page. That was the original intention, but my original developer never got around to doing that (although the other stuff he programmed works pretty well).

p.s. Coming soon: My interview with Barbara Ling, a veteran webmaster, as well as some affiliate marketing posts that compare networks by an objective criteria and help you decide who to sign up with.

SMX West was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. In large part, that was due to all the great people I got to meet. It was quite literally networking on steroids. If you want to learn more about SEO or chat with some bright people in the field, have a look at these people and the sites they back.

And if you want to have any success at all, be it in SEO or otherwise, invest in your network. Why was Guy Kawasaki able to launch a succesful site and get 200K pageviews in 24 hours? Because he spent, in his own words, “24 years of schmoozing and paying it forward.” In English: He made friends. Lots of em. Genuine friends. Pretty good reason to go to SMX Social Media, in my humble opinion.

Rand Fishkin, Sarah Bird, Rebecca Kelley, Jane Copland, Scott Willoughby, Jeff Pollard, Gillian Fishkin, Evan Fishkin - SEOmoz (Evan, let me know when you put your own site up) - Finally! I think that meeting you guys and hanging out with you was probably one of the biggest highlights of the whole trip for me. And if that weren’t enough, the awesome business/community you guys run allowed me to have/meet a whole bunch of other friends at SMX! I learned a lot, had a blast, and of course, I can’t thank you guys enough for your help getting my lost laptop back! Friends in need, are friends indeed …

Will Critchlow, Duncan Morris - Distilled - Guys, it was very nice of you to say hi and have drinks with me at the “Expo Hall Networking Reception,” and chat it up at Gillian’s table. Next conference we need to spend more time hanging out though! Distilled are doing big things in the UK, so if you’re in that part of the world, give ‘em a ring!

Tamar Weinberg - Techipedia / Mashable - Tamar has got to be one of the biggest social media power users you’ve ever seen. She’s on SU, Sphinn, Flickr and does awesome stuff at all of those places! And so I was totally surprised and flattered when this superstar walked over and said hello at the reception. Fun hanging out with ya Tamar!

Chris Winfield - 10e20 - Chris, thanks for sharing some tips and concrete pointers with me at SMX and for twittering my post on being an independent webmaster - that brought it to most votes in upcoming at Sphinn literally overnight! You’d think that Chris would be a pretentious guy (not to mention his frequent mentions and citations in the mass media and stature as a social media powerhouse) but he was very down to earth. Great to meet you Chris!

Sean Maguire - 360 Sell - Great of you to say hi, Sean, and nice to meet the man behind the moz comments! I appreciated the offer of a ride to the airport as well!

Hamlet Batista - Ranksense SEO Software - Hamlet, your software demo was really impressive and I’m looking forward to testing it out in depth once my exams are done! Also, funny story about the t-shirts .

John Carcutt - Applied SEO - I read Stuntdubl’s tips on attending a conference, and brought a notepad with me to my chat with him and Mike Gray and Rae Hoffman. I only wish I’d done the same when chatting with you, John, because you kept making me say “wow, that’s a great idea” and sharing these sweet tactics that have unfortunately vanished from memory. Sigh… Great idea with putting your social media profiles on the back of your card though!

Jordan Kasteler, Stephen K Hansen and Brian Utley - Utah Web Services (& SEO) - Jordan, thanks so much for saying hi. It was really nice to meet you, Steve and your other teammate (who didn’t have any cards, hence the blank), and I had fun chatting with you dudes :).

Jon Kelly, Scott Schedek; President, BizDev Manager - Sure Hits Insurance and Loans - Nice to meet a fellow Mozzer, Jon!

Ralph and Jason Thompson - Ad Customers (PPC) - Ralph’s a former lawyer and real estate agent (very cool, imho) and got online back in the 90s, sensing the next wave. Pleasure chatting with you two and whenever you have a question on local, let me know!

Ken Jurina, Damian Finlay; President and Consultant - Epiar Industrial Strength Keyword Research - Ken, it was cool to finally meet you and I hope the stuff with MatchCraft works out. Damian, thanks for teaching me a bundle, and I also hope those references pan out :).

A, Renee Henry and Janet Prado - Matchcraft SEM - A pleasure singing along with you guys during Karaoke, guys, and chatting afterwards (even if we were all a bit tired/hoarse).

Miguel Salcido, Stephen Peron and Mike Cheslar - eVisibility - Awesome chatting with you folks and smooth moves on the rel=nofollow shirts! Also, thanks for being a sport on the paid drinks stuff Miguel.

Jay Young, Big Kahuna - Str0ud LLC / Linkfish Media - Nice chatting with you Jay, and congrats to you for the success you’re having!

Tyler Shears, Online Marketing Manager - Databanq Media - Tyler, thanks for coming up after the panel and introducing yourself dude! Honestly, it was awesome to see someone else my age there, not to mention how well you’re obviously doing! Keep it up :).

Fionn Downhill, President & CEO - Elixir Systems - Talk about being an Influential! Fionn, you taught me (and everyone at that growing your firm panel/lunch) a whole lot, not to mention changed my perception of SEMPO! Thanks a lot, and here’s to some more chats in the future!

Amy Konefal, Sandra Niehaus, Lance Loveday - Closed Loop Marketing - Amy, that was an eye-opener PPC presentation and Sandra those were great practical details you shared on MV testing. And Web Design 4 ROI is awesome :D!

Loren Baker, Eric Lander - Advance Rankings - At first I didn’t even realize Loren was the Loren Baker from SEJ, but obviously that changed when I saw his card! Eric was my co-panelist on the local SEO panel, and brought a fresh perspective to the table given his industrial strength work doing hundreds and thousands of local listings (whereas most local clients are small and have a single location).

Eric Wu, Fernanda Dorsey; Salpi Bilanjian; Sr. Product Manager of Search Audience Product & Services, Product Manager Search & Commerce, Sr. Product Manager & Account Manager - Earthlink - Glad you liked the paid drinks bit, bud, and I look forward to seeing what you’re doing with G Custom search. You guys win the award for team with the shortest names and longest job titles ! Or perhaps you’re all working for two people’s worth and need a raise? My $0.02…

Li Evans, Editor and Director of Internet Marketing - Search Marketing Gurus and Key Relevance - Just like Tamar, Li paid me the huge compliment of coming over to say hi! To this little pisher! Awesome meeting Li, and thanks for making me feel welcome at the conference :).

At this point, it’s getting a little tedious writing this out for everyone I met, so I hope you guys’ll understand if I just link and mention your names.

Nate Poupko CX Digital Affiliate Network (Awesome AM if any of you guys want to join; incidentally, that’s a thankyou link for Nate’s help in researching offers. It’s his affiliate signup link.)

Harrison Gevirtz - Gevirtz Media / CPA Share A pleasure meeting and chatting with you dude :). Let’s talk more on MSN!

Lisa A Williams Media Forte Marketing

Daniel Riveong e-storm

Chris Silver Smith (awesome doing the panel with you and chatting afterwards!) and Stephen Spencer - Net Concepts

David Mihm - David Mihm web design (yet another SEOmoz friend I get to meet!)

Carlos del Rio (you naughty spammer ) - 100 Dollar SEO - Yeah, you all wish you could hire Carlos for $100! (Hey, I kinda wish too, cuz I’d outsource everything to him!)

Jim Hedger - Markland Media - See also the words of wisdom from Jim at the end of this post.

Andrew Shotland - Sphinn buddy and Local SEO Guide

Ryan Miller, President - Etna Interactive Cosmetic Surgery Marketing - Ryan, I appreciate the tip on improving the follow-up direct mail to clients! To everyone else reading this, Ryan came forward after my local panel and suggested to me that if I wanted to make better use of direct mail to get reviews from past clients, that the cards send visitors to a redirect on your client’s site, instead of sending them to the Yelp/IYP or other review site. The point being that if Yelp etc. change their URL conventions and your review page changes location, the cards will still be valid (because you just need to change where your redirect points to).

Brian Gil, Director of Yahoo Local Product Mgm’t - Yahoo local - Great meeting you and doing the panel with you Brian, and kickass interview at Matt’s!

Colin Stevens, Director - Better Bathrooms and Jacuzzis - Next time you’re this side of the pond, I’ll take you to see the Montreal Impact.

Lindsey Walsh - Search Engine PPC - B2B PPC Management

Michael Dorausch (Sphinn nick: planetc1) - Los Angeles Chiropractic

Jason “Just Fred” Englert - SEOmoz nick Just Fred - Just Fred Works (yay, another SEOmoz buddy I meet )

Ian Lurie - Portent Interactive - Great sense of humour :).

Xavier Dao - Avery (Office Products) Dennison - Nice to meet you, Xavier; let’s chat a little longer next time! (Ok, that was my fault, but still!)

Jonah Stein - Newly Indie SEO Consultant Who Understands ROI (a man after my own business plan!) - That reference from Aaron Wall is just about the best expression of how valuable your network can be when something big changes and you need to start from scratch!

Omer Shoval - Net Working SEM Expert

Mike McDonald, Tiffany Doughty - Web Pro News

Brian LaFrance - BootsnAll

Greg and Barbara Boser - 3 Dog Media (SEO, SMM, WP, Reputation Mgm’t)

Andy Shaw - Lincoln Property Company

Tony Adam - Tony Adam SEO and Social Media

Keri Morgret - Morgret Designs, Search and Analytics

Andy Beal - Marketing Pilgrim

The following three chaps were fun talking to in terms of growing an SEO business :).

Kathi Buettner - Resort Quest Hawaii

Gary Senser - Net Advantage

Kathy Barlow - Travel Insurance

David Holmes - Digital Hospitality

Brad Rowe - Buy & Sell Colorado (You can buy and sell states now? When did that market open up??! )

Dennis Mortensen - Index Tools
John Epp - Webmaster Radio (aff)

Emily Spence - Enquisite Search Analytics