Lately there’s been quite a bit of brouhaha over a fairly popular bit of hoax marketing involving a teenager, stolen credit cards, and prostitutes. I’m no stranger to hoax marketing in fact I advocated it back in 2006 and have been debating it with Matt Cutts for at least as long. While I don’t expect either of our viewpoints will change, I have to say I find the disclosure that Google will now be taking steps against hoax marketing an amusing bit of hypocrisy. What we have is another in long list of double standards and selective application of Google justice especially when it involves internet marketers or SEO’s. Don’t believe me read on for some examples …
When Michael Arrington of Techcrunch wrote a bit hoax marketing about suing facebook did google remove the 1200+ links, since techcrunch ranks #1 for [techcrunch sues facebook] I’m going to say nope […]
Read the Rest of the Article…
Written by on May 27th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on hoax marketing and Viral Marketing and Google and Rant.
I am curious if anyone else has noticed a trend over the past year or so where people (I have nobody specific in mind) in the search marketing business seem to increasingly gravitate towards becoming a “SEO celebrity”. It’s a bit like like moths to a flame, really.
A while back, I had a search marketing job candidate answer the, “Where would you like to be in 2-3 years?” question with, “I want to be a famous SEO”. “Why?” I would ask. “Because that’s my goal”. Fair enough, but it’ll be tough to pay the bills with a wallet full of famous.
An amazing number of people seem to think becoming well known in the search marketing business is an end in and of itself. Not seeing the forest for the trees, these folks put vast amounts of time into link bait ridden blogs, networking up and getting addicted to the rush […]
Read the Rest of the Article…
Written by on February 18th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on seo celebrity and search engine optimization and toprank and SEO and Rant.
While doing some research for a presentation, I was checking out the WordPress.com site on “types of blogs” looking for creative ways to categorize them. And what did I come upon, but this page which separates blogs types into two overall categories of “popular” and “banned”. Guess where SEO blogs fall? Sigh.
Even our dear WordPress which so many search engine optimization professionals sincerely love and prefer as a blogging platform, is misinformed or at least, subject to making sweeping generalizations. This is the “banned” category:
And here are some examples of blogs that are banned from WordPress.com (all of these fall under the general heading of “spam blogs”, or splogs, and we will be deleted as soon as we find them or they get reported):
Scraper blogs: Blogs that take content from other blogs and re-publish it without permission (this is sometimes called scraping). If a blog contains all or mostly […]
Read the Rest of the Article…
Written by on February 10th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Blog Optimization and wordpress.com and Wordpress and Blogging and Rant and seo blogs.
[Start Rant]
Anyone in the search biz who knows me, knows I’m a pretty easy going person and sometimes even rational. My experience with usbank Visa both in the past and today trying to buy a product online and later a domain name transfer gave me a good taste of the unreasonable way seemingly reasonable companies are serving customers. And making it difficult to stay on as customers.
First, I attempted to purchase a product I was planning to use as a prize for a contest at our office. I should have just had Amie take care of this stuff, but I thought it would only take a few seconds like most of the monthly online purchases I make. However, in this case, the online merchant checkout screen said there was a problem with the usbank Visa.
I called usbank Visa and the auto attendant directs me to some […]
Read the Rest of the Article…
Written by on December 20th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on visa complaints and usbank visa complaints and usbank visa and usbank complaints and Rant.
This morning, and I mean really early morning, I went about my weekly perusal of about 50 or so SEO and SEM blogs. For the most part this is a very informative and satisfying experience. However, there are a few barriers to blog reader experience that I feel especially obligated to point out. These observations are relevant for any business blog:
Don’t make readers register or login to make a comment. What, you’re too lazy to manage all the comment spam? Or install a better spam filter? You’re lucky to get people to your blog in the first place. Why make it inconvenient to interact?
Please don’t publish content in PDF of MS Word format that would be just as fine as a web page. I hear you saying, what? Yes, there are a few blogs out there that post using a blog content management system, but publish longer articles, white […]
Read the Rest of the Article…
Written by admin on August 9th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on blog tips and business blogging and Blogging and Rant and seo blogs and Online Marketing.
In the past I’ve written about the benefits of attending Search Engine Strategies conferences with tips on gaining knowledge, finding new clients and employees, networking with others and even as a resource for generating content.
However, there are even more benefits you can gain from going to conferences like Search Engine Strategies, Pucon and SMX that you may want to consider, albeit with your humor hat on:
Competitive intelligence - As you play the meet and greet game, you’ll undoubtedly run into employees from competing firms. Be sure to ask lots of questions. Smile, be friendly and engaging. Remember how important it is to be a great listener and remember: Loose lips sink ships! Also be sure to get PPTs from direct competitors, especially from their “new” speakers, who tend to want to impress and often include more information than they should. Also, some speakers don’t provide the conference organizer […]
Read the Rest of the Article…
Written by admin on July 30th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on search marketing conferences and Rant and SEO SEM Conferences and Online Marketing.