January 2008

I know, everyone wants the part 2 of the SEO shit post. We’ll I promise it will be out Monday morning for your never ending demands. It’s a very time consuming post and I just haven’t had time. In the meantime, I’m headed to Hollywood, CA Monday morning for my first DOMAINfest Global conference. Being an experienced SEO but new to the domaining industry I’m pretty excited. I’ve been dabbling in the area for about 8 months now and I’m ready to jump in full steam ahead. I’ve got some ideas and new business models I want to dig into and this will be an excellent opportunity to do so.

If any of you SEO types will be out that way next week, shoot me an email or direct msg me on twitter. I’d love to have someone that’s on my level to learn, discuss, and network drink beers with. Actually in all honesty I’ll probably be in every single session and keynote since it’s all new to me. That will be a little change.

They have a great agenda that’s geared for all levels including the dumb shits like me. I will be like that schmuck at SES that asks what to put in his meta tags. So until next week my friends, be kind to your neighbors…or just the ones you like and tell the rest of them where to stick their overinflated ego.

And since I didn’t have time to do the Tea Time, here’s some Intraweb Gold: I don’t know what this guy does for a living, but he’s got way to much time on his hands. Or maybe I do since I found it.

Sometimes I hate the nonsense that goes on around the SEO circle. Two different people can have differentiating opinions that can both be backed up with relevant data. Instead of having an intelligent conversation, it turns into personal attacks that don’t have anything to do with the discussion.

Let’s take for example the recent post from John Andrews and his opinion on why this article should not have been published. Personally, in this case I agree with John. That’s not the normal type of content that goes on Search Engine Land. On the other hand, I may have posted it on this blog, and probably would not have been surprised to see it on blog with heavy blackhat content. That’s okay but I was surprised Danny posted it. To his credit he later apologized, and I respect him and his stance on the whole issue. His responses added to the conversation and he provided further explanations of why he posted and that he might have made a mistake. The real issue here is the angry attack from Rand Fishkin.

This blog post (and a similar one from another source) are pure hypocrisy, crass negative link (and attention) baiting and feed off the natural draw of drama on the Internet.

That part of the comment was fine. That’s your opinion, and although you didn’t really explain why, whatever. Here’s what I don’t get.

For shame, John. To think I had respected you, invited you to events and even recommended your services. On occasion, your posts and comments have made me question your integrity or worry that my respect for you was unfounded. Here, you’ve sealed the deal. “Trashy sensationalism that crossed ethical borders for the sake of short term audience attention grabbing” Repulsive, derisive filth (and obvious hypocrisy). Disgusting.

What’s wrong with saying “I disagree with you John and here is why I believe that post was good for the SEM community.” This “Rand Response” seems to be the norm rather than the exception. There seems to be more intelligent conversation on Perez Hilton sometimes. What’s the point of that response? It doesn’t add to the conversation in any way. Rand, why is it pure hypocrisy? Why is it attention baiting? It’s like grade school. You’re a sissy, na na na na. Blogs and communities are supposed exist to encourage intelligent conversation and not “fuck you eat shit and die”. Enough already.

John also mentioned you made it as if you personally knew him and then you questioned his integrity. I don’t think his values have a place in this conversation. Tell him he’s full of it, but say why. If we’re going to question each others ethics and integrity all day, you probably don’t want to get into that conversation with the way you attempt to portray yourself and your company.

That was a despicable thing to write and this blog post merely confirms that you’re seeking nothing but publicity and attention from your negative attacks.

Good job explaining why it was a despicable thing to write. Why was it a “negative attack”? Just because it’s a post that says something negative doesn’t make it despicable and doesn’t make it something done merely for attention.

I’m all for calling out people who have gained so called “Expert Status” when they post or say something I think is stupid or incorrect. It’s my opinion. They have every right to respond and offer their own opinion. Experts are questioned all the time, that’s what happens when you’re a public figure. Question me if you want, I’m sure there are a lot of people who think I’m full of shit, and I write this blog for others as well as myself. That pretty much means I’m open to criticism, otherwise I wouldn’t have a blog. Post your criticism and tell me why and I’ll respond and tell you why I’m not. If it has to do with search or whatever topics anyone thinks I’m wrong about I’ll either post a response and say “yea, I could have been wrong” or maybe expand on what I was trying to say or “I disagree and this is why”. What I’m not going to do is act like a twelve year old on the playground. I only act like that when you’re a real douchebag.

I’ve never met John or Rand. In my opinion both are very smart search marketers and I would like to meet them both. That being said, this statement also got me:

To think I had respected you, invited you to events and…

Invited him to events? So? Who are you…the Hugh Hefner of SEO? What’s that got to do with either post? Next time you write a post I’m going to comment that I used to like them but now I think you have ugly shoes…it makes about as much sense.

John, I think you handled this situation very well and very respectfully. Rand, you sound like you’re hanging out at digital point.

It’s shit like this that makes me want to turn off comments, shut down the internet, and become Amish. Let’s concentrate on making money, having fun doing business, helping each other out, not being afraid of having a different opinion, and drinking more beer. More beer is always good.

Jim Boykin recently launched his new members only training/tool set program called Internet Marketing Ninjas. If you haven’t heard of it yet it is for sure worth looking into. (I would imagine most of you have as I don’t get that many n00b SEO people here)

I took a good look at each piece of the program. It’s not a cheap membership ($2995) but the quality of the material should warrant the price.

Jim has collected enough speakers to pretty much cover all aspects of search marketing and the majority are industry people I respect. Each of them speak at length about their specific specialties which is much more information than you usually get hearing them speak at a conference. Most of the videos average around an hour or so, but some are longer and cover more topics (ShoeMoney for instance has a 3.5 hour video).

- Aaron Wall of SEO Book
- Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim
- Bill Slawski of SEO by the Sea
- Christine Churchill of KeyRelevance
- Cameron Olthuis
- Jim Boykin We Build Pages
- Jim Gilbert KeyRelevance
- Jeremy Schoemaker of ShoeMoney
- Jill Whalen of High Rankings
- Lee Odden of TopRank
- Neil Patel of Pronet Advertising
- Todd Malicoat of Stuntdubl

I previewed some of the videos and the quality of information sounds great. You can only preview 5 minutes or so of each presentation so I didn’t get the whole experience, but with that long of a discussion I’ll assume they’re spilling most of the beans (nobody spills all the beans, especially this group, but I’d bet you get more than usual).

The price of admission is probably worth the 3k they charge simply because of the video, but you also get access to the members only tools from We Build Pages. Now most of these tools used to be free so I tried a lot of them, and they work okay. I assume since it’s going private they will be maintained a little better (something similar to the SEOmoz Premier tools). That being said, I wouldn’t sign up just for the tools. It’s nice to have them all in one place, but the majority can be found elsewhere or developed yourself with an intermediate level of coding skills.

There are also a few tools I thought were strange to even promote. Header checker, keyword density report, and spider view? I think if you’re dropping 3 dimes on this you’re probably beyond that. Another thing I would recommend is a little better explanation of what some of the tools actually do. For example, maybe a little hint at what the “Mac Daddy SEO Analysis” tool does. I am really interested in how the Link Value Tool works because I’ve been discussing building a tool like this with Scott and Jon over at Raven SEO. I guess I’ll have to sign up to find out what this one does.

Overall I give it a thumbs up. I would be interested in some feedback on anyone who has signed up for it.

I used to trust the media to tell me the truth, tell us the truth. But now I’ve seen the payoffs everywhere I look. Who do you trust when everyone’s a crook?

There are my thoughts today. Tea Time…

* BIG BROTHER!! BIG BROTHER!! Bill Gates please fuck the hell off. Where is Orwell? He’s turning over in his grave saying “I told you so”. Let’s give thanks to Bill for spotting this stuff so we can try and stop it before it materializes (like we can actually stop Bill Gates from doing anything).

* Vanessa a twitter fan and so am I. Yesterday I bought a kick ass Sony HDR-SR5 HD Digital Camcorder. I asked my twitter friends and within an hour I had multiple recommendations. Thanks to Rhea and Sugarrae for their input.

* Speaking of whom…FUCK OFF WANNABE JACKOFF SEO CELEBS! I hope no one thinks that’s what I’m trying to be. I write on this blog because it keeps me sharp on a lot of topics. Analyzing and testing things then putting them in words gives me a deeper understanding of search. It also gives me a chance to meet people I otherwise probably would not have (new friends I didn’t know existed, new friends I know of but hadn’t met, etc). I generally don’t post pictures of me for a reason; I can pick my friends. Frankly, I don’t really like people in general. I’m a little abrasive

* Back to speaking of twitter, go give twitter the crunchies vote in the mobile category, it’s a no-brainer. I also voted for them in the overall category. It was a tough pick between them and Zillow. Zillow is way ahead of the game in the real estate market, but I don’t really use it and I use twitter every day so they got my vote.

* This is old, but what the fuck is this? I don’t want to get into an argument with anyone again…so if you believe that post stop reading this blog. Unsubscribe. Go away. Here are a couple excerpts:

In which case, example.com/white-birds-on-bushes.html has as much chance to rank for “white birds on bushes” as “whitebirdsonbushes.com” or “white-birds-on-bushes.com”.

“They can help your SEO but page names will have a greater impact in the long run than domain names.”

Any blackhats want to chime in on that? I agree a brandable domain name should be put ahead of a keyword domain name in some cases, but saying that it doesn’t help your rankings is dumb. Sure, you need more than just the domain name and an exact match keyword domain isn’t necessary, but come on. I guess every other SEO that certainly knows what they’re doing is wrong and the forty examples I could show are there by magic “unique content” optimization. There is some great stuff on his blog but sometimes I’m really shocked by the inaccuracies (that’s not to say I don’t make any and feel free to call me out; these are the opinions of my not so humble self).

* Collin LaHay of Mixed Market Arts threw out a linkbait post on 10 reasons why this post will hit digg. I dugg it and figured it would get buried pretty quickly simply for being a digg post. I was slightly wrong. 5391 diggs and 71,000 visits.

* A great post from Matt McGee on the SEO Success Pyramid. It all boils down to trust, but there are a myriad of ways to get there. Nice job.

* Someone shoot this douchebag.

* Think blackhat is dead? Whatever. Shady SEO again this week busting them out. Blackhat profits and I’d say those numbers are conservative. (PS: .99 cent .info on sale at Dotster. I grabbed 300 this week.)

* Lazy webmasters unite and continue to waste the time of millions.

* Graywolf reminds us to use stats and goal tracking on our blogs just like on our sites. This is important for measuring ROI (in whatever form that may be…each blog will have different success metrics). It’s something I need to do on some of my blogs (not on this blog, who gives a shit about something that doesn’t increase my piggy bank).

* Interweb Gold: I am totally a psychopath.

Cheers to all, drink heavily this weekend, and that’s another Friday morning wasted writing this post!

I got home this evening and was shocked to see a big empty space where my refrigerator once stood. Google has punished me once again and banned my refrigerator. I just can’t catch any breaks at all. I wasn’t doing anything shady with my refrigerator. All my inbound grocery items were naturally grown using organic products. I only paid for a few editorially tasted snack products. I did not have any stuffing, as that was outlawed back in the 90’s and Thanksgiving has never been the same.

I don’t keep any Viagra or poker chips inside this completely white refrigerator. I just didn’t know what the hell was happening! To illustrate, here is a closeup of my refrigerator prior to the ban:

So I started digging around in the pictures of my ranking reports grocery lists that I keep and much to my surprise I found something stuck way down on the bottom shelf. Upon further inspection, I realized that some food items that were placed there by my refrigeration optimizer that I had no idea about. See for yourselves:

What shall I do??? Matt, is there somewhere I can file a refrigerator reinclusion request? Please…I beg of you. I had no idea those shady grocers were putting those items in there. They were stuck behind the giant balls of lettuce and pickled monkey balls!

If all this fails, (which it usually does when it comes to refrigerator reinclusion requests) I guess I’ll have to get The King of Poker Dan Perry to save the day! Then I’ll send under the radar organically grown food to my friends Tamar The Schwag Addict, Best SEO Blog Barry, and Mr Small Business SEM McGee on a frequent basis.

I don’t know how much longer I can make it without a refrigerator guys!!!!

*** UPDATE: I realized in my restless sleep that I didn’t actually outline my plan for what I do when I win the Google refrigerator. First, I’ll internally categorize all my food groups to insure proper FoodRank flow. I will post a map of what and where each item of food is so all my drunken friends will know where to look, and to make sure no SPAM shows up again. I won’t hire “Refrigerator Power” to optimize anymore. Finally, I’ll pop open a nice cold beer to toast all my friends on the interwebs!