Here's a list of 10 non-marketing related tasks that can be used by search engine professionals to boost performance, keep a great work attitude, help to retain more knowledge and have more energy each day. Although the duties we perform on a daily basis are fun and challenging they can often lead to stress, burn outs, tiredness and feelings of being overworked or overloaded. Tak...
Two years ago a friend introduced me to fantasy baseball (rotisserie style of course), and needless to say, I've been hooked ever since. As I logged in last night to check my auto-drafted selections (and my wife exasperatingly asks why I am on the computer for the 14th hour in a row), I started to think about what makes this game so much fun to me and it occurred to me that 'Yes...
The business of optimizing websites for search engines is an immensely difficult, convoluted task. It requires a massive amount of knowledge, an incredible dedication to keeping up with one of the fastest moving industries on the planet and ruthless...
Local Search Optimization has a chance to become its own niche market (if it hasn't already). I found one SEO firm running AdWords for "Local Search Optimization" - I expect there to be much greater competition at the end of the year for this term.
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Our field has grown tremendously over the last 5 years. When Danny Sullivan launched the first Search Engine Strategies conference, I'd estimate that less than 5,000 people worldwide called themselves SEOs. Today, the number of self-referencing "search marketers" is probably closer to 100,000 and may well be much higher. But, a number of features separate the SEO/M expert fr...
The debate continues to wage within the SEM family as to whether SEO is rocket science. Somewhere along the way, it seems that this has become a question of literals? This is certainly a great position to be in if you are on the opposing side of the debate since it takes away the relative meaning of the statement and simply leaves a true or false statement. So if we are stuck in this li...
One of the more interesting challenges that I find as a search engine optimizer is succinctly describing what I do when people who are not savvy in the fields of web design or e-commerce ask me about my job. How do you sum up this job in a quick, interesting way?
The recent hacking of SEO blogs such as Wolf Howl, BoogyBonBon and Stuntdubl underlined a key point – the vulnerabilities of publishing software that we rely on.However, in this incident, although the...
Didier Bizimungu had a post on his SEO News Blog that circulated around the industry. The subject was the top 10 SEO leaders, and since Didier asked for my opinion, I thought I'd share it publicly. Here's Didier's list: Daron Babin Matt Cutts R...
Recently there have been a few negative comments about general on-page optimisation. David Pasternack has pooh-poohed it, and Shoemoney has expressed reservations. A couple of years ago I would have joined them – after...
Someone mentioned to me today that Bruce Clay has done a great job of optimizing his site over the past year, and reclaimed some of those top positions for broad level SEO terms. One of these is search engine optimization, where Bruce ranks in the 2nd spot: ...
An ugly situation recently arose out of Chris Hooley's "drinkbait" campaign at Pubcon (which was not only a great idea, but a well-executed one, to boot). Liana Evans developed a remarkably similar campaign called "hatbait" that she began at SES Chicago. Until tonight, when I read Chris' post on the subject...
Aaron had a brilliant post yesterday on on Bad Advice that Sounds Good. He noted a few "white lies" of the SEO world that we continue to perpetuate. I agree with some of them wholeheartedly: Create quality content. Why do I hate it? If you don't hav...
Alright, this one's just for fun. We were batting around some cliches in the industry (at conferences, on blog posts, in forums) and thought that a few were worth sharing. Black Hats are BritishMore specifically, it seems they all have some relationship to Leeds (born there, live there, from "around there"). Maybe there's something in the wate...