Keyword Research – Marketing Pilgrim’s SEM Contest

Posted on June 12, 2008 by

Yep, I’ve entered into a contest on the Marketing Pilgrim website with an article called "How to Research Keywords".

I know, I KNOW, the title is pretty vanilla.  Consider that one a lesson learned.  Especially in light of the fact that the other entries are stacked on top of mine like kids in a dog pile, and only the ones with numbers ("5 Easy Ways to..") in them or CAPS actually stand out.  Oh, and the one that mentions Kobe Bryant.

All I need is to get into the Top 4 for traffic though, and I’ll have a chance at the Grand Final.

Unfortunately, without my entry being titled something WAY catchier, I doubt anyone’ll notice it.

I’m off to ideate and hopefully salvage my chances at winning this bugger.

Thanks to those that have hit the site, stayed for 2 minutes, and left a comment.  I’ll hook you up with some free research or something.

‘Til then, have a good website.

Category: SEO | 1 Comment

It may not be a lightbulb, but it’s still pretty big.

Posted on May 8, 2008 by

I am, by no means, Thomas Edison, but after the last month or so, I can certainly understand a bit about how he felt.

I’ve written in here about my ideas, the tools that I’ve decided to build to make life easier for SEO/SEMs, website owners, everyone actually, and I’ve been going great guns ‘o glory on them for quite some time now.

I can remember the exact second I thought of them, and how I began working on them the next day, and in those moments I truly knew what it felt like to be an “inventor”.  The thing is, whenever I pictured Old Tommy Alva and his cool stuff churning out of Menlo Park, I never actually thought about how difficult it was for him to build some of these things.  The trial, the ERRORs, and the spirit it takes to pick your chin back up and tackle the damn thing again.

It is a trying process, to say the least.  I give thanks to those that are helping me test it, and for their invaluable feedback, but some of the headaches I’m experiencing on things that were just. so. simple. in my head are giving me… well… headaches.

One of the things that keep you going though, is that spirit that I mentioned above.  Whenever my energy towards these new “inventions” starts to flag and wane, I am further bolstered on by thoughts of how to make them bigger and even better, how to take things even more beyond the limits of conventional thought.  In short, dreaming again.

But dreams are good, they’re more than good, they’re great.  They keep us going through the humdrum of actually “working” and, in the end, make “work” not feel so much like work.

Category: SEO | No Comments

One is sometimes better than Two

Posted on April 22, 2008 by

Most folks cruising this blog for the first time may start to think that I’m a bit of a Mike Grehan fan because of the fact that I link to so many of his articles.  I’m afraid it’s true.

I can’t help it though.  Every single morning I read anywhere from 5-20 different newsletters and up to 30 blogs, ALL industry-centric, and the guy just writes stuff that so strongly resonates within me that I feel like I have to write about it.

Today is no different.  His article, “Analyze This, That, and the Other” is yet another example of not just the point that I try to get across to my clients and peers, but to the entire Web Industry, that SEO and Web Analytics are too important separately to NOT be put together.  They’re the core of my business and desperately need to be blended together into one, cohesively data-ed, easy-to-use tool that’s both good and good for you!

As I eluded to in my last post, I’m working on one and, while it’s still small I believe it’s important and if you’re an SEM/SEO I can think of no reason that you wouldn’t want to use it.

Web Analytics and Search Engine Optimisation have been too separate for too long.  Two separate logins, URLs, software apps, sections, or tabs on something-or-other isn’t working for me any more.  I’m putting it into ONE and it’s almost ready.

So, good on ya Mike, for yet another article that speaks to me.

Take it easy, and have a good website.

Category: SEO | No Comments

Something SEO this way comes…

Posted on April 21, 2008 by

I’ve seen it happen all too often lately, where someone is hired simply for SEO and nothing more.  The client is looking to sit better with the Search Engines and figures that there’s some sort of “trickery” to get this to happen.  “If only we could hire someone to do something about it,” they think, “we could harness some of their witchcraft for our own purposes.”  Fiendish cackling aside, this is not terribly far off the mark as far as what goes down in the clients’ noggins.

So they hire someone to do some SEO, figuring that something magical may happen.  Sometimes it does, usually it doesn’t, and they go away wondering just that much more about whatever it is that happens when someone “performs” SEO.  Search Engine Optimisation isn’t a magic trick or waving a wand.  Anyone with 15 minutes to spare can Google the term and figure that much out.  Hopefully, information on the basics of it will spread thoroughly enough throughout the web such that the majority of people seeking the service will start to understand that.

Part of educating others is blogs like this one, where we debunk a few myths and basically use a very no-nonsense approach to our language and industry references.  I’m the same with my clients, in that I don’t sugar-coat a whole lot, instead shooting straight from the hip in the hopes that no one will have to waste time or money.

Well, I’ve been busy lately (too busy to even blog, heh), and I’ve been working on something that is even bigger than just words in a blog or a voice on a phone.  I’ve been building something.  I don’t want to go into too much detail just yet, but it’s pretty cool, this thing I’m building.  It literally “popped” my eyes open at about 4 AM a few weeks ago, and I haven’t stopped working on it since.

Here’s a basic rundown… I’d been thinking lately about all the SEO and Web Analytics tools out there, free and otherwise, that I use for my business and are pretty much integral to making me money.  Most of them are great and I love them, but I still use them for my explicit purposes, and not necessarily as the creator had in mind.  There are still other tools that only do a small fraction of what I really need, leaving me to do the rest manually.

Well, I started searching, really looking, for something that did what I, in particular, needed.  And I couldn’t find anything that did it.  Oh, some stuff came close, and I could pretty much do what I needed by combining data from about 5 different places, but who wants that?  At the end of the day, I wanted one place, for me and my clients, to stop in and check out how certain things were going.

And that’s what we’ve got now.  I’m just tweaking it and trying to make it a bit more usable.  Thankfully, I’ve got clients (and Friends!) that are helping me with this.   Soon, I’ll roll this sucker out to a few industry colleagues and have them see if it is indeed something that is both exciting and usable.

And, dear reader, once it’s ready, I’ll make it available to YOU.  Trust me, it’s worth the wait, especially for you SEOs out there that are tired of trying to be Google Webmasters too.

Until next time, have a good site.

Category: SEO | No Comments

Social Media and Web 2.0

Posted on March 10, 2008 by

Jason Burby, another favourite over at ClickZ, recently wrote about Social Media and Web 2.0 and I am forced to echo his sentiments once again.

In times passed, I may or may not have been guilty of pushing the Web 2.0 aspect of site promotion a bit too hard, encouraging blogs and forums where they may not have been the absolute best solution. Now though, I can sum up my overall theories and beliefs on the best things for a site in one phrase:

Have a good website.

I say this quite often, I’m aware, but that’s because it’s so important to me. Part of the reason that SEO/SEM firms get such a bad rap about being snake-oil salesmen and scam artists is because so many of them push something purely because it’s working.

Social Media, sadly enough, is yet another victim of this. SEOs see that Digg and Reddit can drive traffic to a site and, as they’ve undoubtedly promised it already, they’ve got to deliver on some increases in traffic or end up looking inept. So, they throw a few articles in there, plug a few pages, and use these clever tools in ways that they weren’t originally intended.

Unfortunately, many Social Media sites are headed that direction, where they’re being used for the wrong purposes, and I fear they’re going to get burned by it.

The Social component to a site needs to be just that, social, and as soon as SEOs start making it too commercial then we’ve only given ourselves a bad name.

Yet again.

Category: SEO, State of the Web | 1 Comment

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