SEO Cold Calls / Shoulders

Got this in this morn from one of my clients:

So, I just a cold referral from some vendor who wanted to pitch for them doing our SEO... needless to say - they put together a sample report to display their skills - 😆 ! Basically it was an excel file of keywords & competitors with a "Ranking Column" that stated "Good" "Bad" "Very Bad".

No, I'm not kidding.

Hope that added some humor to your day 🙂

Also, one of the more recent job openings called to my attention was a thing yesterday, a well-known company based in Seattle looking for an SEM Director. Now, Seattle is arguably as much of a hotbed of Search Marketers as the Bay Area is. Apparently though, all the good and/or experienced ones there are all unavailable(?).

...with our staff getting competing job offers every other day, we need to make sure that we can compensate our team at market rates...
- SEOmoz

Rand, your turf's overflow is felt southward.

* * *

That's one of the things about the SEM and Web Analytics spaces nowadays, if not the Web Marketing sector overall. Just about everyone I know seems either fully employed if not overbooked. While I've got some years under my belt logged in, I'm not one of the uber-badass heavy hitters e.g. the "name" people who are self-employed and/or ceaselessly working the conferences speaking circuit etc... So I can only imagine how many calls some of those folks get asking for their services, and it's a given that they don't place (cold) calls looking for work. They're always working as well as turning down work.

So re. those vendors who are placing cold calls... sure, some might be great and totally know their stuff - however especially in this market, jeez: buyer beware.

These are robust times thankfully, but they are in some ways fragile.

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SEO Quiz Master Baiting

Don't take it as gospel or hang your hat on whatever your score is once you've taken this. Some folks are acing it via relative chance, others with much more experience are reportedly getting whupped by it.

There is some definite subjectivity in a number of the questions. An experienced SEO could score high if taking the test attentively, carefully and slowly. The same SEO could easily score n00b level if taking the test with less divided attention, say in a state of multi-tasking, sleep deprivation and/or semi-sobriety. If I were pitching to a client and then at the end of my presentation they said "OK, before you leave we'd like you to take this," I'd be hard-pressed not to think them a tool, moreover one who alas probably didn't grasp the more important parts of what I'd covered.

That said, aside from being first and foremost an example of great linkbait, someone's got to be putting out quizzes like this. Shortcomings aside, it's one of the better quizzes to come out yet. I'd certainly prefer that they mostly be coming from groups like SEOmoz, as opposed to some upstart poser barfing something out that's riddled with inaccuracies and trying to spam it up the Digg ranks as part of a half-baked visibility campaign or something.

As for my own score, I happened to be one of those who seemingly lucked out...

SEO Dark Lord - 95%

Are you an SEO Expert?

I literally flipped a coin on determining my final answers on some of the questions though, especially the uber-geek trivia like re. Larry PageRank etc. ... In other words, if you ace it you should perhaps respectively flip a coin on whether to feel casually proud or casually embarrassed - unless you are or have ever been a Googley personality, officially.

Anyway, give it a spin and then a Sphinn (or at least, consider the discussion started here), but whether you come out of it with a warm fuzzy tail held high or with it hanging 'tween the legs, ain't much a thing either way. Definitely put more stock in how you do on it than you would in re. the basic crossword puzzle in the back of the latest issue of Search Marketing Standard, though.

Supplementary comments here and here (I think a 301 redirect from their older version of the quiz would be a good idea but that's just me).

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Mama Mia!!!

Jason Calacanis is seemingly stirring up all of SEO yet again.

Here's why many of the straight-up White Hats among us in particular are so pissed off about this: It's hard enough being one of the "good" guys. It's especially testing for those of us with families to feed, who know deep down that though we'd take no pleasure in it and it would be nothing personal against anyone, if it comes down to it we can and will spam - aggressively if need be.

If I need $2000 right now to keep my house, I'll spam.

- Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz

High profile people calling all SEOs spammers tests the patience of those on the fence. Distorting reality here might only worsen what they're complaining about for them, i.e. it increases the chances that SEOs who aren't already spamming will start doing so either now or later. Many of us WHs note our Black Hat brethren poke fun at us, and the really committed and successful ones make more money than some of us... Like many people some of us lost a lot of money to the post-Bust funk, moreover within that group some are still losing. Such individuals are making every effort to keep both their noses and resumes clean nonetheless, as are the rest of us. So we don't need this kind of crap, nor do we deserve it.

Just to be clear on my position: I'm no WHW (White Hat Whiner) nor a defender thereof normally, but I do feel compelled to call out ignorant name-calling from whatever source when I see it. The core issue here is not the Black Hats. It doesn't take a rocket scientist - or a BH apologist - to recognize they are a natural part of the SEO food chain no matter how plagued some people might feel by them. So my respect goes out to those who suck it up and speak as much with their actions as their words, if not more. Webmasters can choose to work to defend their sites against BH as they can, or not.

One more thing on that note: It's almost like he's asking for someone to mess with him. If at some point calacanis.com ends up uber-spammed, vandalized, otherwise hacked, hijacked or overloaded...

Trivia: Bart is voiced by a woman... Power to voiceover!
I didn't do it.

Anyway, most of the SEOs capable of some of those things I expect will stick to their usual spamming, figuring they have better things to do. But one never knows. As I've indicated before there are a few distractible players out there with itchy trigger fingers. Some claim to have made themselves wads of ca$h filling engines and sites with stuff, and also that they enjoy it when something comes along to help liven up their days (hey, who doesn't?).

Don't mess with the family.

It's wise to avoid giving such peeps an excuse for a little target practice. There's a point where buzz goes too far, and there is such a thing as bad publicity. With few exceptions I find SEOs overall are smart, talented, basically good people who aren't really out to hurt anyone. True jerks are very, very rare and the scene has its ways of filtering them out anyway, which significantly limits whatever damage they can do. Within their chosen camps SEOs mostly stick to their own publicly, and take care of their own privately. Perhaps more us in the marketing blogosphere might do well to do the same.

Fortunately the Godfather of all us Search Marketers (on all sides) has spoken. When Danny Sullivan says you should apologize, you really should.

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"Wikki wikki wikki wikki!"...

"Shut up!"... "(wikki wikki wikki wikki)"...

First, props to anyone who remembers that song. Mark my words: breakdancing will be back someday.

Second, thanks to Jeannette in NYC for reminding me about this recent Wikipedia change. My POV:

Wikipedia is an awesome site, oozing with content and domain trust. Engines have always had a great appetite for it virtually since its inception, and hence for a while now, yes as a place to get links it's been coveted by SEOs and besieged by spammers.

That they've now made all their external links forced-NOFOLLOW is no shocker. Things had gotten to the point where, to counter the vigilance of their Link Nazis failed writers proudly unsupervised Deletionists splendid editors, spammers and non-spammers alike were sicking cron jobs on Wikipedia in order to make links stick (links that automagically reappear every hour/night if/when removed have a way of wearing out humans eventually... Mercilessly fresh!). :mrgreen:

However while I expect this will deter some, it won't deter the more experienced who have made a habit of trying to learn the various dialects of Googlespeak. Several seasoned SEOs believe the NOFOLLOW standard is misunderstood, being as much a social engineering move as a technical one. In other words, Google wants the world to dismiss such links as useless for natural ranking, but behind the scenes clicks on them still count towards getting good relevancy credit under certain circumstances... like when they come from users with Google Toolbar installed for example. That the West Coast G is quietly watching and applying all kinds of data via such means is 99.99% certain, as they'd be foolish not to. I recall all the way back to SES '05: Rand's eloquent take on it was "Evil, evil, evil!" 👿 and he wasn't the first to have taken that stance.

Formally Yahoo sells advertisers behavioral targeting options. Google offers users Personalized Search options, and doesn't sell advertisers behavioral targeting tools... yet. If/when they do make an official play for that turf though, what would be their competitive advantage against Yahoo's version; what would inform their product to give it an edge? Yahoo's been gathering scary gobs of data about what you, me, and everyone else on the Web does for longer than Google has. A crux of Google's brilliant strategy: Yahoo tried to be the Web's premier destination site, the cool club to hang at. Not Google, though. On their domain it's "get in, get out," but pay attention to the Web at large and it becomes obvious they're everywhere pimping ads... (BTW if anyone has any estimates on how many Adsense ads are out there for every YPN ad, please do forward). As for MSN, well they've tried to be just about everything over the years. It's part of why they're still way behind the search game.

Google gathers all kinds of data about people in many ways, for different reasons. Aside from if/when using their Toolbar, any time we're logged into Google accounts and/or have their cookies on our machines, our actions help inform their business (tiny bit by bit, cumulatively). Consider those ads popping into our Gmail - ever eerily at least somewhat on-topic for whatever a viewed thread is - to be a hint of things to come. They may not be collecting personally identifiable information but certainly the CTR they have to measure there could serve more than just setting CPCs for advertisers. Those Blogger accounts all now "upgraded" to Google accounts? Yep. Google Analytics? Fine for White Hat if one (and/or one's clients) can entrust data with Google without flinching, but a potentially fatal misstep for n00b Black Hats.

Sidebar: The idea of constantly aggregating, analyzing and leveraging data is a cornerstone for Google. They live and breathe it, culturally, strategically and tactically applying it to many parts of their operation... just like all the rest of us in the search business, and more power to them for it after all. It's not like they don't make kick-ass stuff technologically, despite how many of us have love/hate relationships with what being Googley seems to be sometimes. (For example, one hiring trick they've seemingly long used has been to consciously keep want ads posted for up to years after respective positions have been actually already filled. Enabled via auto-responders, self-running online interviews etc., the ruse is one of the ways they try to be always pinpointing who and where the world's top talent is. Their files are always getting updated in this way, in case of growth and/or departures etc.)

These details should be noted regardless of whatever Google formally offers advertisers in the coming months/years or not. Among other things, they've refined the art of making the complex look and feel simple while sprinkling in a few mindfucks along the way because they can. This is why in working with them simplicity is often a good way to look back upon their actions, through assumptions at the least, or even healthy paranoia perhaps (depending on the nature of one's projects). There are even certain Firefox extensions for SEO work that are preferred over others which have been found to leave unwanted footprints.

Despite whatever technical truths of the moment lie behind NDAs at the 'plex, Wikipedia's NOFOLLOW defense will probably quiet things down initially at least. It will not however, become a definitive silencer.

As of now are all outbound links from the english Wikipedia Site using the NOFOLLOW attribute, no exceptions. No matter where you place it, Article Page, Talk Page, User Page, Project Page, whatever. No Link will get any credit at the major search engines.
- Search Engine Journal

Meh. It was Google as opposed to a neutral entity that invented NOFOLLOW, and their market share depends on their index staying more relevant than the other guys any way it can, so reading between their lines means there's more to it than that. Bots ignoring links is one thing, credit and how to get it is another, and I doubt the two are in such a cleanly monogamous relationship. Normally, under certain conditions inbound NOFOLLOW links probably still help relevancy scoring... and even if not they sure as hell don't hurt traffic anyway!

It's the Flava, Life Sava!
Don't Believe the Hype!

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Based out of Northern California, bl.asphemo.us is a bl.og dedicated to the advocacy and study of high-impact, data driven marketing disciplines and related concerns: Analytics and Data Mining, Marketing Automation, Integrated Advertising (targeting, retargeting), Demand Generation and Lead Nurturing, Social Media / Social Engineering (Crowd-hacking) and the new PR, Privacy, Security, CRM, SEO / SEM, CRO, ROI... more TLAs (three letter acronyms) than any sane person's daily lexicon should include.

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