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September 30, 2008

Schedule for SMX East 2008

It's that time again. Bruce Clay, Inc. is gearing up for SMX East. That means people to greet in the expo hall and presentations to liveblog from the session rooms. Oh, and parties. Let's not forget the parties.

Plus, it's not too late to register for the SEOToolSet Training course, being presented for the first time on the East Coast. Bruce will be teaching our time-tested corporate SEO methodology on October 9-10 at The Westin New York at Times Square. That means you can extend your search marketing education to five full days of expertise straight from the brains of some of the most successful marketers in the industry. Sign up for both the conference and the training course and use the promo code "smx20bci" for a value you just can't beat.

Oh, you already registered for SMX East? Why didn't you say so! Here's where you can find me during the day.

Day 1: Monday, October 6
9:00 a.m. - 10:15 a.m.: Search Integration: Are We There Yet
11:00 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.: SEM For Small Businesses Sponsored By SEMPO
1:45 p.m. - 3:15 p.m.: What's New With Video Search Marketing
3:45 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.: SMX Boot Camp: Link Building Fundamentals
5:15 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.: Keynote - Click: What Search Activity Tells Us About Society

Day 2: Tuesday, October 7
9:00 a.m. - 9:45 a.m.: Keynote with Google's Tim Armstrong
10:45 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.: Search & The U.S. Presidential Campaign
1:30 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.: Personalized & Customized Search
3:15 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.: Legally Speaking: Recent Legal News About Search
4:45 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.: Googleopoly

Day 3: Wednesday, October 8
9:00 a.m. - 10:15 a.m.: Advanced Keyword Research Tactics
10:45 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.: Give It Up: White Hat Edition
1:15 p.m. - 2:15 p.m.: Get SEO Into All The Right Places Of The Development Life Cycle
2:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.: Ask The Search Engines

Somewhere in between attending and liveblogging those sessions, I'll be recording interviews for SEM Synergy. Broadcast straight from the expo room floor, tune in to WebmasterRadio.FM Wednesday at noon PST to hear some one-on-one from a few of the speakers. In fact, let's make this fun. If you read anything in the liveblog coverage that you want to know more about, post a comment in the blog saying so. Once I know what you want to hear more of, I'll do my best to track down the speaker and see if he or she will answer some of your questions on the air. This shall be a grand experiment! Muwahahahaha! [V, don't scare the nice people. --Susan]

Ahem.

Back to some more of the certainties of SMX East. If during the day you can track my location like clockwork, my evening whereabouts will be just as predictable. I'll be with my SEO ladies on the dance floor at the networking events! And where better to cut a rug than Tuesday night's WebmasterRadio.FM Search Bash! As an employee of a party sponsor, I've been authorized to guarantee a good time. Judging from the last bash, I can't imagine next week's will be anything less than crunktastic. [What's a crunk? --Susan]

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 09/30/08 at 5:28 PM | Comments (3)
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September 29, 2008

Where the Company Name Meets the Company Brand

Peanut butter without jelly? Grilled cheese without tomato soup? There's no denying that the Bruce Clay blog won't be the same without Lisa's creative words and unique insights. But I see a more broad symbolism behind these analogies. It comes down to this: a company name is almost worthless without a company brand.

If Lisa has taught us anything, she taught us that, for better or worse, a company's brand is integrally linked to its name. Luckily for us, she didn't leave before she helped mold the Bruce Clay, Inc. brand into what it is today. Lisa infused the Bruce Clay blog with:

• The significance of branding and pro-active brand management.
• The importance of knowing who your customers are, listening to them and giving them what they want.
• The value of ethical responsibility in the search industry.
• A vast amount of cool ish you can find on the Interwebz. (Okay, maybe that one's not as relevant to this discussion, but hello, Friday Recap? The girl started a grand dynasty.)

In a post last week, Matching Your Online Brand to Your Offline Brand, Lisa explained the key to successful branding: "Figure [it] out and then bleed it from every pore."

I guess you could say that at the beginning of this new chapter of the Bruce Clay blog, one of the hardest steps has already been taken for us. There's no need to figure it out. It's clear what the Bruce Clay blog stands for, as I pointed out above. I'd venture to say that this is the same place where most newer companies find themselves today. Top-quality products and services. Superior value in the marketplace. Positive customer service experiences. You've figured it out. Now what?

Well, here on the Bruce Clay blog, there's only one option: get that blood flowing. The beauty of branding is that, if done right, it will be ingrained in the very fabric of the company. A successfully executed brand makes a mark on everyone involved. Just like the imagery suggests, the message of what the company stands for has been burned onto everything it touches. That includes the employees, the products and the customers. Customers know what they're getting. Products and services meet those expectations. And employees have a deep understanding of the value of the services they provide. Thanks to Lisa's nurturing of the blog and her affectionate attention to what the blog stands for, we in the Bruce Clay, Inc. writing room can take over the reins and trust that the course will stay true.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 09/29/08 at 5:27 PM | Comments (3)
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September 26, 2008

Signing Off

...And it always will be.

That's it for me, but thanks again to the awesome Bruce Clay, Inc. readers who have put up with me and my crazy over the last two and a half years. You helped make this place home and I take with me all the kindness that was shown here. If you're looking to keep tabs on me, my Twitter account is the best way to do so. It'll grant you access to all my mouthing off and rants about how much packing sucks.

Until the next time, Lisa's out.

[I feel like I should have more commentary here. But all I've got is Good Luck, Lisa. We're going to miss you. --Susan] I'll miss you too, S. You've been an amazing partner in crime. Thanks for it all.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/26/08 at 2:31 PM | Comments (4)
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Friday Recap

Grab on to your cupcakes, this is my last Friday Recap! Eric Lander says that means this one has to be especially good. Thanks for putting the pressure on me, Eric. Remind me to hunt you down and kick you. In the face.

Okay then!

I became a Twitter Meme this week after all the retweets about my leaving Bruce Clay, Inc and speculation as to where I'm going next. Kind of exciting, until I remembered that in a few hours I will be officially unemployed. Bummer.

And do you want to know how badly the other Writers are NOT going to miss me? Here's part of a Skype conversation we had in the Writing room yesterday:

Lisa Barone says: http://valleywag.com/5054922/americans-more-interested-in-cupcakes-than-financial-crisis
Lisa Barone says: Searches for cupcakes totally trump searches about the financial crisis. These are MY kind of people.
[New Writer] Paula Allen says: could be because of YOUR searches
Susan Esparza says: Zing!
Lisa Barone says: [tear]

See? Even the Bruce Clay newbies are on Susan's side. Sigh. [It's good to be the boss. --Susan] I wouldn't know. I'm not even the boss of Jack Jack.

Neatorama compiles the Top 15 Amazingly Fat Cats. It's awesome. And immediately reminded me of David Temple and his fat cat. Ah, nice flashback. :)

Some folks over at the Search Engine Roundtable forums were sad to hear that Ask.com would be retiring Jeeves. The world must be so confusing to those who have spent the last two years living in bomb shelters.

Jeremy Zawodny is jealous that Keir Thomas got to put a kitten on the cover his book. But then again, aren't we all? It's the cutest book cover in the whole wide world; yes, it is!

This week the world met Hubert Chang, the alleged third member of Team Larry and Sergey. Hubert says he helped write Google's PageRank formula but chose to finish school and get his PhD instead of dropping out like hoodlums Larry and Sergey. To Hubert we respectfully say: tough luck. You didn't believe in Google enough to drop out of school, they did. Enjoy your career at McDonalds. Maybe someday your old buddies will buy you. Here's a quarter.

Oddity Central introduced us to the vertical bed. It makes me sleepy just looking at it. Mmm, bed. Which reminds me, have you met iNap? I think it's the coolest iPhone application I've seen yet. Other than all those lighter apps that do nothing but are still kind of mesmerizing. Ooo, pretty light.

TechRadar pinpoints the top 15 things you should never do on Facebook. Most of them are pretty good rules to live by, except number 15. I'll totally be your zombie pirate snot monster. After all, I already have the pirate outfit.

Problogger offers some tips on how to avoid the physical hazards of blogging. I'm pretty sure I'd break my neck on the contraption they show in about two seconds. But then again, I got up to open the blinds at work the other day and almost split my head open on my desk. I'm pretty.

Tamar Weinberg talks about the new night vision in Google Maps. I'm sorry, but see how that's just a little eerie? I think Google should only exist in the daytime. I don't like them creeping around at night like the boogeyman.

Things I Learned From BoingBoing This Week:

• It's a turtle with a mohawk aka the most rockin' turtle you'll ever meet.
• New research says that people lie more in email, which makes sense considering that people don't know how to tell the truth on the Internet, period.
• Technology has finally given birth to Web 2.0 cigarettes.
• Shark dismemberment has never looked so delicious. Mmm, frosting.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/26/08 at 12:08 PM | Comments (1)
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September 25, 2008

Matching Your Online Brand to your Offline Brand

Three companies annoying me lately for killing their brands and how:

• Apple says they're more than just the preferred computer for trendy kids using their daddy's credit cards, and then they boot object-of-my-search-crush Kevin Ryan, not a trendy kid OR using his father's credit card, out of their store in favor of the mindless surfing children.
• Microsoft says they're not as old and boring as everyone thinks they are, and then launches an ad campaign saying "everyone is a PC". Everyone. As if they're nothing worth coveting, not exciting. Boring.
• Canon releases the new 5D MKII with kickass video capabilities and their kills the buzz by making bloggers take down their videos.

Hi. You need to decide who you want to be and then be that. Decide what brand you're creating and then embody it online, offline, and in between line. Get over the brand identity crisis.

Figure out who you are. Embrace it. And then use it to connect with people "like you".

I see this as the reason a lot of companies fail. They don't understand how to create a unified image for their brand. They're not tying in what they're doing offline to the magic they're working online. They don't realize that customer service is still important and still lingers in a customer's brain. They don't realize that you can't be everything to everyone while still being something to someone. They're confused. And that confusion is leading them down a path of being completely unmemorable. Brand Fail.

Take Apple, for example. They've spent the past few years trying to prove that they're more than just a college male's wet dream [She's leaving tomorrow. I'll let this go. - Susan] There aren't words for how badly you're going to miss me.. They're not simply a trendy alternative to a PC; they're better. Macs make your life easier. Macs help you to get things done faster. Macs are a system professionals can take seriously and trust. Then they blow all that money they spent brainwashing us into thinking that and kick Kevin Ryan out of their store, while allowing the trendy surfers to continue wasting everyone's time. That's two different brand images. They're conflicting brand images.

Microsoft finally decides to start fighting back the idea that they're old and slow moving. They're finally committed to earning some of their dignity back and they're not going to allow the easy Vista pot shots any more. Alright! So what do they do? First they confuse us with Jerry Seinfield (are we back in the '90s?) and then they launch a new ad campaign by the "edgy" Crispin Porter + Bogusky that tells us that a PC is everybody. PCs wear jeans, they have glasses, they wear rings, they're accessible, they're just like your neighbor. Virtually, they're boring and reachable and familiar. Nothing excited. They're that pair of white underwear you save for Sundays. Is that going to get someone to switch over? Do those ads match the very witty and charming auto responder that comes when you attempt to email Sean Siler, a Microsoft IPv6 Program Manager, whose email address is displayed in the ad? Nope. Totally different brand DNA.

Just like in life, you can be whoever you want to be. You don't have to cater to what people think you should do or what they think you should say. You have total freedom as a company to direct your brand wherever you want to go. But you do have to be consistent, otherwise you're going to confuse people. Are you the version of you that they met online, or are you really the salesperson that's pushing them out the door? Are you the company that offline said they'd go above and beyond to ensure customer satisfaction or are you the online retailer who know won't make a wrong order right?

Figure out and then bleed it from every pore. All out. There's no middle ground.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/25/08 at 4:33 PM | Comments (3)
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September 23, 2008

Google's G1: Something Else To Get Unjustifiably Excited Over

So I'm curious, are you excited about the Google Phone announcement? Do you even care?

Personally, I don't. I just bought my first BlackBerry Curve (in pink!) a few weeks ago so I'm contently sitting in my corner ignoring all of you. However, I know Susan is pretty amped on it. The idea of an all-Google phone just isn't that appealing to me. The third-party apps may be cool, but until I see something worth switching to T-Mobile for (like an app that finds me free cupcakes), I'm not paying attention.

But plenty of people are, and for them, today was a big day. It was the glorious day that Google announced (for reals) the lovely creation called the Google Phone. Obviously all the essentials are present and accounted for. It has a three inch touch screen, a full QWERTY keyboard, browser buttons, trackball, copy and paste technology, and even the neat ability to transfer photos without the use of cumbersome email.

It's cool. But it's not that cool. So why do people care? [Better Google than Apple. --Susan] That's why I don't have an iPhone either.

I don't get it. This phone turns me off for a few reasons. First, have you seen it? It definitely got hit with the ugly stick. It looks like a 13-year-old boy was asked to sketch up his dream phone and then the Google engineers just went with it. Slick, it is not.

I'm also skeptical to adopt a phone that is so closely tied to Google. Mostly because I feel like if I do I may as well just go in to get the barcode imprinted on my forehead now, even if I do already use all their services. The illusion that I have a choice is nice. This phone is intended for those who already live and breathe by Google. Walt Mossberg says the phone can't even be used without a Google account, which is a bit scary. That's a brilliant move by Google to scoop up the remaining 17 people on Earth who don't have one.

I guess the hype about the phone comes from all this potential fairy dust people are talking about. It's "open". It's on the Android Platform. People can make applications and then share them ala Facebook. Again, I'll be impressed when I see something worth getting excited about. On the Google Mobile Blog, Mark gives us the Google pitch about how the new G phone will take advantage of all the features of the Android Platform. Developers can upload and distribute the applications they create through the Android Store which delivers apps directly to the handset. And thanks to all the hype around the Google phone, ReadWriteWeb says there are already more than 1,700 applications waiting to be purchased. La, la, balloons, puppies and unicorns, so what?

I don't get it, so maybe you guys can enlighten me. Why should I be excited about this? Or should I not be? You figure it out, I'm going to be over here spooning with my Blackberry. [I'm already on T-Mobile and here's why I'm excited: 3G network! Full Qwerty! Touchscreen! It's RIM's fault I don't have a Blackberry Bold already and I'm tempted by this. --Susan] Are you whining? Get off my niche,

[BoyGeniusReport has lots of screenshots of the Google Phone. And Pandas.

And if you're already drooling at the mouth for one, you can have your very own Google baby bottle next month here in the States. Otherwise, the device will be in the UK in November, across Europe in 2009.]

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/23/08 at 3:48 PM | Comments (4)
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Blogger evolution

Two and a half years ago Susan and I thought that we needed a blogger to help get the word out about our beliefs and support for our still emerging industry. We were in need of a new writer. The industry and business was growing, opportunities to comment constructively and with a bit of humor were plentiful and Susan was complaining that she needed to sleep at least once a week. Still hasn't happened.

When Lisa was interviewed, she was a sweet, shy, quiet girl. Or so we thought. It was obvious that she was a great writer, and from a great school newspaper so we knew she could speak her mind. And so we gave her the new Bruce Clay Blog. Sometimes things come together just the right way and you get magic. You hope it will be exciting and a leader in the industry. We wanted it to take on a life of it' own, and through Lisa it did just that. We found that, quite by accident, we'd found exactly the right person for the right task. It turns out Lisa wasn't just a writer; she was a blogger and an engaging one at that. Her fresh, witty, snarky style (we have other adjectives) gave a new twist to the same old news and it was our privilege to help her grow her voice and find her footing. She's made the blog a must read in an industry full of incredibly smart people and she developed the style for the incredibly complete BC liveblogging style that makes our coverage the best out there. Losing Lisa is a setback for us all.

If we could have kept Lisa forever, we would. Chains, rope and duct tape simply were inappropriate, and the handcuffs offered by cupcakes only go so far when you miss your home. Life intervened and Lisa will be moving back to New York. We'll miss Lisa's voice around here. Her passion and drive were as valuable to the success of our company as her way with words. She has always stood up for what she believed in, fought for those who needed a voice, given a spotlight to emerging talent and shared knowledge freely to everyone. She fit well here and projected the spirit of the company with every post.

I do not think any of our industry blogs has lost such a significant voice, and I'm sure this is not the last. Don't worry; the blog will still be here, albeit in a different fashion, while we try to replace The Lisa. Like a TV newscast that has lost its anchor, we will undergo "Blogger Evolution" and continue to bring our views to the industry. We don't want someone to just imitate Lisa--she's irreplaceable in that sense -- we want to bring in an equally strong voice to move the blog forward from here. And we know that Lisa's voice isn't one that's going to be quiet for long either. You can't keep a good writer down.

She's been part of our team for a long time and she will continue to be part of our family. We wish her all the best and thank her for everything she's given us. Now where's that duct tape?

Posted by Bruce Clay on 09/23/08 at 1:55 PM | Comments (9)
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A Report on Blogging

The 2008 State of the Blogosphere is being released in parts and makes for some darn fine reading. The five parts are being published one a day through the end of the week. Today is Tuesday so that means we've seen two: Who are the Bloggers and The What and The Why of Blogging.

Here's what I've learned so far:

• Blogging is addictive: Half of bloggers are on their second blog, and 59 percent have been blogging for more than two years.
• Two-thirds of bloggers are male. Almost half have attended graduate school and 44 percent are parents. (I love that I don't fit into any of those categories.)
• There are almost one million new blog posts created every day. We have officially gone mainstream!
• The preferred blogging style is sincere, conversational, expert and humorous. (check, check, check and check! Or at least I hope that last one is a check...)
• The mean annual revenue is $6,000 with $75K+ in revenue for those with 100,000 or more unique visitors per month.

Wait, let me re-read that last one...

Okay, what nice drugs are these people on? And how can I get some?

I'm sorry, but the only people making $75,000 a year for their blogging efforts are the royal blogging family and those who earn at least $74,999 from their "real job". Sure, there are probably a few blogs out there pulling that much revenue in, but also they're bringing in way more uniques than 100,000. Add some more zeros to that number. Or maybe I'm wrong and I need to get blogging for myself and start tricking people into reading and clicking on things. I know, that's what I'll do in New York.

One of the most interesting stats was that despite going mainstream, blogging is slowing down. Last year, there were 1.5 million new blog posts published every day, whereas this year there's only about 900,000. Is that all surprising? No, it's not. Have you met FriendFeed and Twitter? They're stealing your blog posts. They let you get out your quick thoughts and observations with zero overhead.

For me, this was no more evident than around 11:30am yesterday when I let the world know of my plans to revisit my roots on the East Coast. A year ago, that news would have been blogged. It would have hit TechMeme. The conversation would have been spread via the tech blogosphere. But that's not how it went down yesterday. The news of my leaving spread rapidly and instantaneously, through Twitter. That's where people are going to share quick information, that's where they're going to get the latest news, and that's where they're going to find the conversation -- Twitter and FriendFeed.

Twitter and FriendFeed are the new blogs. Old blogs are the new mainstream media. It's an awesome world we live in.

I'm probably just being a dork, but I find it exciting. I love that people are creating platforms like Twitter that allow people to communicate so easily and so quickly. Before you had to go through the arduous task of calling someone or writing these things called "letters" to share your story. Then you had to construct a blog post of a couple hundred words. Now you can just go to Twitter and express your anguish that Chuck from Gossip Girl is a royal jerk and that you'd like to back over him with your Aveo. Slowly. And then run over him. Technology is amazing.

Blogging may be "slowing", but the conversation is growing faster than ever. And that's what we should be watching. Can't wait to see what we learn tomorrow!

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/23/08 at 12:32 PM | Comments (3)
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September 22, 2008

Handing Over The Keys To The Blog

I'm just going to get to it.

After lots of soul searching, heartfelt conversations with friends, and intense debate between Swat, Jack and myself, I'm making the very difficult personal decision to leave Bruce Clay, Inc. and move back to the East Coast just in time to see it obliterated with snow and become a totally unbearable place to live. Or, said simpler, this will be my last week working at and blogging for Bruce Clay, Inc.

Truthfully, I can't begin to express how much I'm going to miss everyone here (except Susan*). The entire Bruce Clay, Inc. organization has been great to me over the past two and a half years and I couldn't have hoped to have been adopted by a better group of people. People who have helped me to grow, stood by me through personal roller coasters, and given me a voice in an industry that I love. And even though I'll be moving on, I will miss them all dearly and will continue to value the wisdom and strong SEO background they have imparted on me.

The fact that I'm leaving is also why last week's post thanking our readers was so important to me. Jim Hedger had no way of knowing the circumstances when he suggested it, but I am glad that I had the opportunity to say "thanks" before the news of my departure was made public. It greatly reduced the amount of snot that wound up on my sleeve.

I'm leaving, but obviously the blog will live on. In my absence, you'll see a tag team of Bruce Clay faces (some old, some new) taking over the blogging reins while they transition and eventually adopt someone new to carry on the nonsense I've helped start here. I have full faith that in a few weeks they'll be able to scrub the Lisa off this thing and make it an even better place for search marketers to hang out.

If you have any desire to be our new blogger/social media person, please send Susan your resume and let her know. I hear she's very excited about the idea of getting someone new to abuse, torture and send for coffee.

And with that, it's time to get back to business. We won't be allowing any emo here on the blog, so don't even try it.

*Okay, that's not even a little bit true. I may just miss Susan most of all.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/22/08 at 10:43 AM | Comments (59)
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September 19, 2008

Friday Recap

While today is Talk Like a Pirate Day everywhere else, at Bruce Clay, Inc., it's also Dress Like a Pirate Day.

If you check out Bruce Clay, Inc.'s Flickr page you'll see that some of us got a little more into it than others (guilty as charged). Friday + Fake Holidays = Awesomeness. (Please note: There is no real drinking going on. It's cold coffee in those bottles. I swear it.)

We're not the only ones getting into Talk Like A Pirate Day, though. Over at Search Engine Land, Barry Schwartz gives props to everyone who took time out to celebrate. Barry, we love you, but your avatar looks a little less like a pirate and more like a pilgrim. What does everyone else think?

Barry also lets us know that Matt Cutts still loves bloggers. In fact, they're his favorite people. What? He said blogs, not bloggers? Fine. Whatever.

SEOMentor gives us ten reasons why he'll be at ScarySEO next month. Will you be there? I won't, but Bruce Clay's Director of Eastern Operations Chris Hart will be. Kick him for me if you see him.

This week we learned that Tamar Weinberg's 85-year-old grandfather is both a social media whiz and hilariously adorable. Who knew?

We also learned that there were valuable SEM lessons to be learned from '70s TV shows. Or something. What are the '70s? I don't understand this concept. [I think that was the decade with Ashton Kutcher?--Susan] When they wore trucker hats and played jokes on people?

I joked last week that I would have to start stealing from Bruce to support my deadly high fructose corn syrup habit. It seems Lisa Barones everywhere took me seriously. Bad, Lisa, bad! Allegedly.

Ross Dunn had a great video interview with Ralph Wilson, with Ralph being in the hot seat this time, not Ross. During the interview the legendary Ralph Wilson gives some tips on how to stay on top of your writing and a balance your workload. It's excellent.

It's September, which means its time for Matt McGee to give us another installment of the Top 21 Signs You Need a Break From SEO. I think number one on the 2009 version should be that you've spent four years coming up with signs people need a break from SEO. We love you, Matt! :)

Dave Snyder stepped away from Twitter for a week and then came back on Monday to share what he learned. One of his big takeaways was the realization that Twitter has become a haven for negativity and fighting. He's right. And because of Dave, I'm making an effort to keep my Twittering positive. No more Twitter angst!

The Australian media hates Sarah Palin. Or maybe Google does? Ooo, that'd be a fun rumor to start!

Lastly, this makes me dizzy. But I can't stop watching it. Look, there they go!

Things I Learned On BoingBoing This Week:

• This would be handy to take anywhere.
• This is indeed the scariest toy concept ever. How is that even a toy? Maybe it's a toy for Satan's children? You know, like Susan.
• How protective over your sandwiches do you have to be for this?
• Mmm, salami floors. [The first commenter takes his sandwich meats too seriously. He probably uses those bags from the previous bullet point.--Susan]
• Some people really want to be cheerleaders. Like enough to sell out their children.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/19/08 at 12:47 PM | Comments (2)
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September 18, 2008

Taking Your Business Online Requires More Than A Web site

A worthwhile article from the Wall Street Journal came up in my Google Alerts this morning (what? You track your boss' name too, right?), and it's some pretty interesting stuff. It tells the story of the challenges that go into bringing your offline business online. I think it caught my eye because of all the times I've seen people botch up the process. They hear about the Internet and that people are making money on it and immediately want in. They head over to their computer, spend a few minutes trying to figure out how to turn the darn thing on, and then create a single page Web site that does nothing but mark their territory and make them look really old. This kind of "Internet marketing" is as effective as writing your company phone number on the wall inside a public bathroom and waiting for the phone to ring.

Obviously, making an offline business successful online takes a lot more work than that. That's why the search engine optimization industry even exists. If all you needed to rank and increase sales was a page hosted on Geocities, we'd all be making a lot more money than we currently are, but it's not. Developing an online presence actually takes work. And more than that, sometimes it requires that you have an entirely different skill set than you currently do.

Running a business offline is very different from running one online. Your customers are different. They have different needs. You have to market yourself differently. You have to provide support differently.

If you're getting ready to take your business online you have to realize these differences and work towards addressing them. In the article, Bruce mentions that Web sites need to actually be developed. You can't just throw up that single page and think that the search engines are going to take notice and rank you as an expert. You have to create an authoritative site, one that meets both the needs of users and the search engines. And it's very likely that if you're running an offline business and selling products, that Web development isn't a skill you possess. When that reality hits, it's time to hire out. You could take the time to learn how to do it, but who's going to run your offline business while you're doing that? You can't do it halfway. If you're going to take your business online, you have to entrust it to people who know how to do that.

You have to create a Web site that builds trust and that will serve to answer customers' questions 24 hours a day. This is something I've seen a lot of offline companies forget. And it's understandable. They're used to dealing with customers face to face. They can sense their reactions and alter their sales pitches appropriately. They can answer any questions they may have in the moment. They can let customers hold and touch and feel the product so that they get a sense of what they're buying. None of this is available on the Web. So you have to address these concerns and offer the same visuals with words and images and video about your product. You have to describe your product, explain how it works and how it will help them and make their lives better.

You have to find out where your customers are on the Web and how they search. Just because you take your site online doesn't mean you're suddenly targeting everybody. You're not. You're only targeting the people who would be interested in what you offer. But it takes knowing who those people are and how they think and what words they use when they search.

You have to earn your attention. In real life you get attention because people pass by your store on their way to work. Your businesses is located on their street or in the local mall or because your ads run in the local paper. On the Internet, you're not just competing with those in your area, you're competing with everyone. If you don't know how to market and position yourself in that new sea of competitors, you're dead in the water. If your site doesn't rank for the terms your customers are going to use to look for you, you may as well not even have invested the time in creating a Web site. If they can't find you, you don't exist. Being online takes a new kind of research.

Your online business is more than just your offline store copied and pasted to the Web. To do it right you have to pay attention to and address the limitations that come with interacting with a Web site instead of a sales person inside a store. That may mean hiring people with different specialties than you, spending a few months testing designs, or taking the time to really "sell" the products on your site through your content. Do that and you'll be rewarded with a booming online business. Fail to give your site the attention it deserves and the online counterpart to your brick and mortar doesn't stand a chance.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/18/08 at 11:35 AM | Comments (1)
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10 Things I Love About You, Our Readers

Get comfortable because this post is dedicated to celebrating how awesome you are!

I was looking for suggestions on what to blog about and my good friend Jim Hedger suggested that I write all of you a little note to say thanks for all the great comments and Twitter love we've been receiving lately. My initial thought was, "that's a fantastic idea!" However, part of me was also concerned that maybe if I did that you'd think I had just been fired or that I was diagnosed with some sort of terminal illness and giving you my swan song. Rest assured that none of that has happened. To my knowledge, anyway.

With that out of the way, I did think it would be fun to honor you, our dear readers. So, with that I present you with the 10 Things I Love About You.

[takes crumpled paper out of pocket, prepares to read off of it]

1. You're Really, Really Smart: Sometimes I feel weird about writing the blog when it is very obvious that all of you are way smarter than I will ever be. I'll write my thoughts here on a certain search engine optimization tactic or my opinion on what Google did today and then you'll comment in a way that is far more intelligent and articulate than my original words. And I love you for that. I love that you are kind enough to come here and depart your hard-earned wisdom and to share your experiences. You make me smarter.
2. You Watch Our Back: When the site goes down, you email, Twitter and call to tell me about it. When you read something that you think I may be interested in, whether it's about SEO, Gossip Girl or cupcakes, you share it with me and sometimes I get to work it into the blog. When someone has taken something I've written and used it to say mean things, you speak up and defend me. When we need help getting something done, you offer suggestions. Heck, when I tweet that I'm having a bad day you email me jokes or cute cat videos to make me laugh. You're my favorite people on the whole Internet.
3. You Have Awesome Suggestions: Whenever I'm facing an important decision, you guys are there to help. You've helped us pick blog post topics, given us ideas for what to include in our SEO Newsletter, suggested guests for SEM Synergy and helped us choose what to have for lunch (pizza or Chinese? Pizza!). You're always there to help us over our hurdles so that we can get back to producing great content. You help make us more productive. Look what happened when I asked for suggestions on what to write about yesterday:
   

   You guys rock!

4. You Submit Our Stuff: I'm not very good at pimping Bruce Clay, Inc. on the social media outlets. There's something about it that just makes me feel dirty. I don't have a problem submitting other people's posts that I find awesome, but when it comes to ours...well, I get shy. And you guys know that and do it for us. I need to bake David Wallace a cake for all the Bruce Clay sphinning he's done for us. And I owe the rest of you hugs for passing our blog posts on through Twitter, leaving comments on Sphinn, stumbling things you find interesting, etc. It means a lot to us to have such a supportive community behind us. You help increase the number of people reading our stuff and bring more traffic into the site.
5. You Send Us Presents: This is one of my most favorite things about you! For some reason, you send us presents and we like it. To date, readers have sent Squishables, cupcakes in a jar, books, T-shirts, fortune cookies, things that light up, and various other types of schwag. I don't know why you do it, but it certainly makes my day. It seems we're even about to get new presents.
   

   Yey, for friendly chiropractors!

6. You Call Me Out: Next to presents, this is my favorite thing about you. You don't let me get away with a lot. If I write a post that isn't fair, you tell me. If I've taken my sarcasm a bit too far, you let me know either in the comments or by email. When I'm whining too much on Twitter, you advise me to get a cookie and move on. You give me the kick in the face I need to get myself back on track and to refocus on the important things. You challenge me to be better. You make me better because you won't accept anything less.

   [Okay, I changed my mind. That is even better than presents. It's the best present! ]

7. Guestbloggers: When I went on vacation and needed some folks to step in and keep the blog alive - you were ready and waiting. Ten of you (and one of you had just had a baby!). You jumped in, delivered, and gave our readers some exceptional content. You give us life when we can't do it ourselves.
8. You Continue the Conversation: Whether you're doing it in our comments, on Sphinn or through your own blog posts, you take the conversations we start here and continue them elsewhere. You help spread ideas and enter new thoughts into the conversation. You make it easier for us to engage with others and to introduce more people to the blog and the kind of search engine optimization we believe in. You're our cheerleaders and detractors throughout the blogosphere and you take us wherever you go.
   

   (Is there anyone nicer than Chris Winfield? Doubt it. That guy radiates happy!)

9. You Stick With Us: Sometimes we goof. Okay, sometimes I goof. And when I do you stand by me. You email your support. You tell me how I can make things better. You give me the slap on the wrist I need to point me in the right direction. The blog has been through a lot over the past few years and you haven't gone anywhere. That may make you crazy, but it's also what makes you awesome.
10. You Make Conferences More Fun: Don't tell Bruce, but the reason I like to go to conferences is because I get to talk to you guys. You're good people and I like getting to see you and joke with you and talk about search. You're what makes SEO fun for me and I wouldn't be here if you didn't exist.

So from all of us, thanks to our readers who make this blog what it is. And thanks to my friend Jim Hedger for suggesting we take some time out of our day today to spend a little time talking about how awesome you are.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/18/08 at 11:28 AM | Comments (3)
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September 16, 2008

The Importance of Google's Business Listings

As a sign that it's growing up and is getting ready to kick you in the throat for spamming, Google Maps has officially created the Local Business Center Guidelines to put it in writing what is and what is not allowed in your Google Local Business Listing. Because Google has true faith in your ability to hold to the law, they've also gone ahead and created a reinclusion request form for when you inevitably get kicked out for being the slimy spammer that you are.

The new guidelines include:

• Representing your business exactly as it appears in real life.
• List information that provides as direct a path to the business as you can.
• Only include listings for businesses that you represent.
• Don't participate in any behavior with the intention or result of listing your business more times than it exists. Service area businesses, for example, should not create a listing for every town they service.
• Use the description and custom attribute fields to include additional information about your listing. This type of content should never appear in your business's title or address fields.

Blumenthals doesn't seem completely satisfied with the guidelines set out by Google because they leave too much wiggle room. As he states, there's no mention of whether or not businesses can list affiliate phone numbers in their listing or if that's considered spam. He's right in that there really could be a lot more explanation to what Google will and will not allow, but it's a start. And really, when has Google ever given you the degree of information you secretly hoped for? Maybe one day that'll change, but today it's still Google's world.

I'm just glad that some semblance of rule has been put into place over there. Watching spammy local search results pop up makes my skin crawl. I need local search to be as spam-free and relevant as it can be, because that's the search I go to when I don't have time to play around and I need answers now.

Take yesterday, for example. If you follow me on Twitter you know I took my two devil-spawn cats to the vet. At the same time. By myself. (I clearly have self-hate issues.)

Once I had the cats all strapped in and was driving on my merry way, I realized that I had no idea where the heck I was going. The only time I had been to this particular vet was well over a year ago when Jack ate a dead bird (he's disgusting but he's mine). All I remembered was that I had to turn by the train tracks. I forgot just how many pairs of train tracks run through Simi Valley. After three wrong turns, I realized I had no clue where I was going.

I didn't have the phone number on me so instead I pulled out my BlackBerry (um, after pulling over and coming to a complete stop, of course) and hit up Google Maps. I typed in [simi valley vet] and was relieved when my vet's name was the first listed on the Map, with a phone number right next to it so that I could call and ask for directions. If that listing had been overtaken by spammers, it wouldn't have only been my two cats that were crying and howling in the backseat. I would have been right there with them. Luckily, it was still highly relevant.

But I got lucky. Because as awesome as the American Veterinary Hospital is at taking care of my cats, their local search engine optimization kind of sucks. The reason Google had their information was because they found it elsewhere. American Veterinary Hospital had never claimed their business. They didn't go out of their way to make sure that Google had the current address and phone number. They just left it to chance. You can't do that. Or at least, you can't do that without risking that you're leaving targeted customers who want to convert on the table because of your own laziness.

I can't stress how important it is to have your business listed in Google's Local Business Listings. It's your gateway to users who are looking for you right now. Who want what you offer at this very moment. If you're not there for them, they're going to go somewhere else. Probably to your competitor down the street.

It's also important to claim your business to protect yourself against fraud and inaccurate information. Because my vet hasn't claimed their listing, I can click on Edit Details and put whatever I want in there.

If I was an ill-intentioned competitor, I could put in the wrong phone number, I could get rid of the Web site information, change the name so it doesn't show up when people search for it. You want to make sure you that you claim your business and make sure that you're providing as much accurate information as you can. It only takes a few minutes to verify that you're the owner of that site and get the real stuff in there.

Local search is only going to take off more as searchers get more comfortable using devices like the iPhone. And the fact that Google has now established guidelines for these types of listings shows how serious they are about them. You should be equally serious about your business.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/16/08 at 4:45 PM | Comments (5)
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Social Networks More Popular Than Dating, Porn

If that headline doesn't say horrible things about the state of social interaction in the world today, I don't know what does.

Seriously though, an interesting story from Reuters today that says social networks have passed porn in popularity among users. We're all too busy twittering, sphinning and Facebooking that there's no time to head out in search of um, some "adult entertainment". Or maybe users are just confused and think twittering and sphinning are all sexually related activities? (Actually, pretend I didn't just say that. I'd rather not go there.) Adding to that is Jupiter Research's projection that social networking will overtake online dating revenue in 2009.

According to Bill Tancer, the number of users searching for porn has dropped from 20 percent of searches to 10 percent over the past decade. The searches that are leading the pack today are for social networking sites.

There could be lots of reasons for this. Perhaps social networking sites get more searches because they're done at work where searching for porn isn't encouraged. Or maybe searches for porn are just happening on social networking sites (Hi, MySpace!). Logical reasons aside, I'm going to use this as a testament to the fact that social networking is a huge resource for businesses looking to connect with or get to know their audience better. If your customers are spending an increasing amount of time looking for you, you should too.

Personally, I don't really care how many people will admit to searching for porn online. We all know that if you asked the entire Internet if they've ever performed an adult search, you'll see that no one does. Nor have they ever. They didn't even know porn existed on the Internet! How odd. What is interesting to me are all the trends that Bill has been able to spot by looking at social media and how users are interacting with it. Trends that if you were a company paying attention to social media, you'd be able to spot for your audience, as well.

In the article, Bill notes that incredibly odd piece of trivia that elbows, belly buttons and ceiling fans are just as scary to people as rejection and social intimacy. He notes how searchers' moods change with certain times of the year, saying that there are definite patterns for Internet searches that repeat specifically and predictably. If you're a search marketer selling cream for scaly elbows, dusters for ceiling fans or swimsuits, that's incredibly important information. Even more important than porn.

I mean, who knew that people were afraid of elbows? I didn't, but if that's true, than maybe you have to be careful the way you market to these freaks folks. Or maybe knowing this is awesome because now you can use fear tactics to send hordes of elbow-fearing people to the stores to pick up your product! Or maybe it's time you start marketing that elbow Halloween costume to really get sales going this year. I'm just saying, once you're, er, armed with this information, it puts you in a better position to address your customers specifically.

As much as search marketers are fascinated with social networks, the general Internet is just as fascinated. They're creating profiles that reflect what they're interested in, what they're afraid of, what they want, what they don't want, what books they're reading, etc. They're giving you an insight into who they are and what they value. And if you're not looking at that, you're a damn fool. Your consumers are generating a story for you to take in and learn from. Tune in.

In case you missed it, yesterday's edition of the SEO Newsletter had a Feature article from yours truly about the 7 Deadly Sins of Social Media, talking about all the ways companies fudge up their social media efforts. You may want to give it a look.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/16/08 at 10:35 AM | Comments (1)
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September 15, 2008

Good SEO Starts with a Good Product

There's this weird myth that seems to circulate around the industry about how things are done. I hear it the most when I'm at conferences chatting with new faces and getting to hear about their business and why they're at a show like Search Engine Strategies or Search Marketing Expo. I'll meet someone, introduce myself, and then ask them what they do for a living and what they hope to get from the show. They'll tell me about their also-ran of a product/service, I'll give them a deflated "is that all?" look, and then they'll chuckle and say, "that's why we're here. To help it get attention and to catch on."

Hi, the Internet's marketing community called. They said you're doing it wrong. SEO isn't going to make your boring product interesting.

Here, look at this:

Search engine optimization can offer a powerful punch for your business. Obviously being someone who works for an SEO company, I totally get that. I understand that creating a Web site that is SEO'd and therefore structurally sound, usable, and that builds trust is incredibly important. It can help take your earning-nothing Web site and make it a serious player in your industry. But it can only do that if you deserve it. If your product or service is worth the attention. I've mentioned Bruce's pig/eagle saying numerous times, but I think it holds true (and frankly, I like it). As our fearless leader says, it's not the job of SEO to put wings on a pig; it's the job of SEO to genetically reengineer the pig into an eagle.

In less animal-related words, that means whomever you hire to do your search engine optimization, it is not their job to get your crap site to rank. It's their job to show you how to fix your Web site so that you deserve your rankings. It may be their job to explain to you how to get there, but it's not their job to do it for you. It's your site. It's your responsibility to make it something. Your SEO can then help get it the attention it deserves.

I think a lot of sites underestimate how much easier it would be to rank if they actually deserved to rank. Often you'll hear site owners complaining about how unfair Google is and how it's not right that they've been banished to page four of the SERP. And then you'll go and take a look at their site and you'll get it. You'll know exactly why they rank where they do. They rank there because they deserve to rank there. If you're trying to put wings on a pig and call it a resource...welcome to Google's toilet. Stay awhile.

Search engine optimization isn't the first step to achieving high rankings. Having a good product is. Offering something that is better than your competition and serves a purpose to the community is the most important part of achieving rankings. When you offer something of value, that's when the links come in naturally. It's when word of mouth does your marketing for you. It's when people are linking to your content on social media networks because it's actually interesting and engaging, not because you hire a company to push your stuff. Before you go and hire a search engine optimization company, make sure you have something worth getting to rank. Because if you don't, you're just wasting your money, money that would be better invested in actually improving your product.

Step one to a successful SEO campaign is this: Have a product worth selling or a service worth paying for. Otherwise, why would you ever rank?

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/15/08 at 5:31 PM | Comments (5)
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8 Questions for BlogWorld Founder Rick Calvert

The second-ever BlogWorldExpo is getting ready to take place in Las Vegas this weekend and it's going to be amazing!

If you were lucky enough to make the debut show last year, you know how much fun and how successful the entire event was. In fact, BlogWorldExpo 2008 is the conference I've been most looking forward all year - which is why I'm really, really bummed I suddenly can't go (darn last minute life events)! To help soften my loss, I conned BlogWorldExpo founder Rick Calvert into chatting with me a bit so I could get a look at what this year's show has in store. I think I may print this interview out later and sleep with it under my pillow. Then I can have BlogWorld dreams. And it'll be almost as good as being there!

1. Hi, Rick! Thanks for being a good sport and letting me ask you a few questions. Rumor has it this year's BlogWorldExpo will be considerably larger than last year's - congrats on all the success. What did you learn last year that you hope will help make this year's show an even bigger hit?

That getting 2,000 bloggers together is kind of like herding cats? =p Seriously, we learned that this is a whole lot of fun and that the blogosphere needs an event like this. We told ourselves we would have fewer speakers this year but it didn't work out that way. We had 130 speakers last year; this year there are over 200!

2. Wow! Okay, I'm going to step backwards here, but how did BlogWorldExpo come about? What was the inspiration behind the show?

The very short version is I wanted to go to an event that helped me be a better blogger, increase my audience, and monetize my content. I wanted to go to "the blogging tradeshow" and when I realized there wasn't any such thing, we started it.

3. Tell me a bit about the Executive & Entrepreneur Conference you guys hold. Who is that geared towards?

The E&E conference as we call it (I still hate the name btw but we haven't come up with anything better yet) is geared towards corporate executives and business owners who want to understand the blogosphere and social media. Either to create their own content, or just how to engage bloggers, advertise on blogs, or pitch ideas to bloggers without pissing them off. They need to understand we are not old media and we are interested in genuine value added content for our blogs and our communities. We are not interested in spewing PR speak on behalf of businesses, the way old media sometimes does. That should rile a few folks up =p.

4. I had the chance to look at the schedule and it's amazing how many different niches you're able to cover in one show. Is it a struggle to balance so many different kinds of content into on show?

Yes! But I love it. We want more niches. The blogosphere is made up of millions of different vertical communities, most of which are completely unaware of each other. By getting all these diverse bloggers together at the same time, we help each other grow, and grown the medium that we are all so passionate about.

5. If you had to guess, do you think most attendees are coming to learn tips for improving their blog content or are they looking for ways to monetize and make money?

Both. The monetization track is by far the most popular track in the show but most bloggers don't start blogging to make money. They start blogging because they are passionate about something, sports, politics, technology, quilting, whatever. As the mature as a blogger, build an audience and start to realize the power of new media, they go through this evolutionary process. Finally one day you say to yourself "hey I have a pretty big group of people reading my blog, this is crazy but I might actually make money from my hobby!?". That's what happened to me, and I have heard at least 1,000 other people tell various versions of that story. The most critical thing is that the passion comes first. If you exchange your passion for dollars, you have sold out and chances are you are going to fail.

6. What are you most looking forward to about the show? Any of the sessions or the events that really stick out for you?

Honestly I am like a little kid at Disneyland during BlogWorld. I get to meet all of my blogging heroes and so many of my blogging friends. My biggest regret is not being able to sit in more of the sessions as I am busy running the show. It's kind of ironic that that was the whole purpose of starting the event and I don't get to see much of the content. But, yes, I can't wait to meet Steve Rubel, Mike Shinoda, Tim Ferris, I can't wait to meet Tish Grier in person and see lots of folks that have become friends over the last year like Wendy Piersall, Jeremy Wright, Laura Fitton, Geekmommy, and about 1000 others.

7. I'm so jealous! I've been to a lot different trade shows for different industries but the blogging shows are always so much warmer than your average conference. What do you think it is about blogging that bridges industries so widely and connects people?

We love this thing whatever you want to call it, and we are all social people. We love talking, writing, arguing about all things blogging, and we have built these relationships via the Web and this for many of us our one chance during the year to meet each other in person and hang out.

8. Last year the Pajama Party at the Hard Rock Hotel was amazing and gave me a great excuse to break out some over-the-knee toe socks! Have any afterhours events planned to top it?

Lots of events this year, I don't know if we will top that. We have the E&E reception Friday night at the convention center, then the TechSet Party at Bare inside the Mirage Hotel. Saturday night is the opening party, then we have a reception on the tradeshow floor Sunday afternoon.

Sounds like it's going to be an amazing time, Rick, thanks for being a good sport and helping me get my BlogWorld fix on. Your excitement for the event is certainly contagious.

There's still time to register for the event (barely!), so if you don't want to miss out on the fun, head over to the BlogWorldExpo site and register. You won't be disappointed.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/15/08 at 4:16 PM | Comments (2)
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September 12, 2008

Friday Recap

We're having our own little Random Acts of Kindness Day at Bruce Clay, Inc. You should join us and do something nice today for someone else. Perhaps you should send your favorite blogger a cupcake in a jar? Just a suggestion.

Ah, a year later and the whole Pluto debacle is still funny. Poor little guy.

RankedHard got some giggles (and some slack) for their rendition of the SEO Squares. That Rand sure is pretty. And Vanessa's naked. Yowsa!

More people are having dreams about Matt Cutts. That's really just disturbing on many, many levels. Maybe if SEOs had actual social lives they'd have better dreams? Try going outside tomorrow.

The Online Journalism Blog gave us the 1000 things I've learned about blogging, but only actually offered up 99. I guess lesson 100 is that you can lie when making up lists. [And lesson 101 is that journalists can't count. --Susan] Or that numbers are highly overrated, which is actually something I've been saying for years.

Komarketing Associates had a really great post this week detailing how 8 of your favorite search bloggers got their starts in the business. Totally love it.

Twistori has me mesmerized in a voyeur kind of way. It's good to get a glimpse at the thoughts and tweets of total strangers. And to look into their bedroom windows. What?

SEOaware offers clients some advice on how to get along with their Web-services provider. While we would never, ever, talk to our beloved clients that way (we <3 you)...we may print it out for some of them to read. Or accidentally slip it in with their contract. I'm kidding, I'm kidding! We love you. (Bruce, please don't fire me.)

Speaking of rants, my buddy Eric Lander got his rant on this week taking aim at Google and blasting them for hurting small businesses, while Matt McGee gives some solid advice about how to spot directory red flags.

If you have a guilty pleasure for all things vapid, there's a contest in the works to be the new The Hills blogger. It may be a good way to kill off some extra brain cells.

The Worst SEO Blog Ever wrote a letter to Plurk calling the Twitter-wannabe just a little bit needy and then all hell broke loose in the comments. It's the funniest thing you'll read all week. Other than YOUmoz Newb Pwns Spammer, of course. Poor little spammer "girl".

Shimon Sandler continues to be my favorite SEO gourmet. This time around he tells us how to make a chocolate chip cookie cake. I do believe I love you, Mr. Sandler. :)

Mark Cuban says when he dies he wants to come back as himself. Could have been worse, he could have said he wanted to come back as Robert Scoble. The world doesn't need another one of that guy. Kidding, Robert.

Robert actually unleashed some tough love to start ups this week that I really agreed with. Don't kill the messenger; it's not Robert's fault your startup sucks.

To all the unstable and oversensitive bloggers out there (holla!), Web Worker Daily gives some advice on what to do when your work is criticized publicly. I was surprised to find that "lock yourself in your room for days" and "crawl under your desk to cry" were not included. Oversight, I say.

If you were bummed that Coney Island's Astroland is now more, Rides-4-U gives you the opportunity to buy them so you can create your own backyard wonderland! You can get your own set of bumper cars for only $125,000.

And lastly, The Consumerist is on a plan to destroy me by announcing the TombStone pizza vending machine. Um, hello, how do we get ten of these for the Bruce Clay offices? Someone needs to look into this. They also piqued my interest with their advice for creating "art".

Things I Learned on BoingBoing This Week:

• Last winter Susan and I spent an afternoon trying to conquer the art of making paper snowflakes with a sheet of paper. [We had to look up instructions on the Interwebz because we didn't have a second grader handy --Susan] This guy made a desk out of one sheet of steel. He wins.
• In 1947, parents kept their babies in glass boxes to help them avoid scary germs. Today we just put babies in front of glass boxes that talk at them. That's called progress.
• This is not less repulsive now than it was a few days ago: How to make a squirrel sandwich. The best parts occur at :44 and :55.
• If times get rough with the current economy, Instructables tells you how to live in a school bus.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/12/08 at 2:16 PM | Comments (5)
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September 11, 2008

Kids, Social Networks and Parent's Responsibility

I've been reading some disturbing things this morning about kids and social media and even though it's not technically Internet marketing related, I feel like it's worth talking about if only because I can't get it out of my mind. And you, my friends, are my outlet.

The New York Times had an article this morning about Twittering from the Cradle, talking about parents who create social media accounts for their children in order to keep friends and relatives up-to-date on the monumental life achievements of their 10 month old. Because after all, this is what we've now succumbed to: Twittering, Facebook'ing and blogging everything that happens in our lives.

I'm being somewhat flip, but the truth is, I get it. If I was the mother of a 10-month-old baby, I'd probably be blogging about my little one's first steps, trip to the zoo, first bath, etc. I get the allure; I just wonder how safe it is to be revealing all this information about your youngster. And I'm even more disturbed by the folks that blog and twitter and live as their infant. Attributing a mature personality, likes and dislikes, and feelings to someone too young to express their own thoughts or control their own movements. It's like the weirdos that create a Dogster or Catser profile for their pet and then blog as if they're the animal, barking about how stupid their owners are.

[Total Weirdo Disclosure: Bored at my old pre-Bruce Clay job, I once created a mortifying Catster profile for Swat which still lives on to remind me not to be such a social media idiot.]

But there's a difference between creating a great dad blog and actually blogging as your baby. From the New York Times article:

"So much so that some early adopters have become ventriloquists for their children, even those too young to speak for themselves. With a quick glance at a cheerful profile, parents can also handpick their offspring's playmates much like online daters choose companions."

Hello, creepy.

It really, really concerns me to see young children's lives documented online. As one of our newer writers expressed this morning (Hi, Paula!), it's as if we've become so charmed by the idea of publishing to the Web that we've forgotten about safety. Or privacy. Or protecting that small being whose life we are now responsible for. If you want to blog about your baby's trip to the park and share it with family and friends, I get that. I think it's great that the Internet has allowed us this, but for God's sakes be careful. Don't reveal everything. Don't make it easy for someone to track down your child. Don't allow someone with bad intentions to be able to scout out your child's pre-school and arm them with enough information about your family that they could convince a stranger that they know your kid. And then take them.

Obviously these parents have no malicious intent. They love their kids. No one doubts that, but we get so caught up in social media and the ability to share our lives that we forget about safety. When you can't see who you're writing to you're likely to say things that you wouldn't normally say. This includes both revealing too much information and forgetting that people have emotions and that you should consider the human element before writing or publishing anything.

Tamar Weinberg guest posted on the Bruce Clay blog back in August and wrote about social media relationships without a face. Part of her post touched on the lack of empathy that takes place when you're writing about someone or something you don't know. When you write without thinking and publish to the Web without giving it a second thought. There's no greater example of that than the Rocky Mountain News reporter who spent yesterday livetweeting the funeral of a three-year-old who was tragically killed. Here's a selection of some of the tweets you can find in that feed. Remember that we're talking about a dead three-year-old boy here:

• "family members shovel earth into grave"
• "the father is sobbing over the casket. I loved him,' he says. others are sobbing", "people are viewing the body, which is lying in casket with teddy bear."
• "some people falling on knees to pray"

The lack of emotion present is startling. It's unnerving. It's disgusting. It's unforgivable.

But the actions of that RMN reporter illustrate what happens when you remove emotion from real life and instead write/blog/speak about someone who is faceless to you. I wonder how that RMN reporter will live with him or herself knowing that they liveblogged the funeral of a dead kid and did it with such coldness that it was like neither the child nor the family were human.

Today is the seventh anniversary of 9/11. What if Twitter was around seven years ago? Can you imagine some of what we'd be reading? I'm glad that it wasn't. There are some things that shouldn't be blogged or put out there. The very private details of your child's life and the funeral of a killed three-year-old are examples of such things.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/11/08 at 12:28 PM | Comments (2)
See more entries in Social Media

September 10, 2008

Effective Brand Management using Twitter

Okay, so I'm kind of addicted to Twitter these days. As much as I knocked it early on, I have now fallen completely under its spell. I'd marry it if I didn't think my other social networks would get jealous (Hi Facebook!). One of the hardships of being an addicted Twitter user is that you constantly have to defend your obsession to nonbelievers around you who think all you're doing is going to Twitter to talk about your cat. This sometimes includes bosses and fellow coworkers. Bosses and coworkers who don't understand social media but who do understand the need to be in tune with their target audience. [She doesn't mean me this time. For once. --Susan] And yet you still felt the need to chime in. Typical.

And Twitter's ability to keep my ear pointed towards the right conversations is one of the reasons why I've become so loyal. I love being able to chat with people interested in Bruce Clay SEO training or our tools and get their opinions on stuff. I also love that I can simply set up an RSS feed for certain brand-related keywords and hear what people I'm not even following are saying. This has become especially useful over the last week.

For example, over the past six days I've eavesdropped on all sorts of conversations about Bruce Clay.

I heard Search Marketing Expo's Karen Deweese recommending our Brand the Company or the Players post to new Twitterer Rebecca Kelley:

I listened in as Paul Baranda got his Bruce Clay account set up, which was totally confusing at first as I thought he was setting Bruce up...like on a date!):

I listened to some folks show interest in our SEOToolSet training course:

....And I also listened as fellow Twitters asked for recommendations and talked about maybe hiring us for their search engine optimization campaigns:

Twitter helps me listen.

And that's just a few of the tweets my RSS feed has picked up over the past 6 days. Twitter's a great brand management tool because it doesn't just alert you to mentions of your brand name or your keywords, it picks out conversations. And it gives you a way to easily step into that conversation to try and answer questions people may have or just to forge a new relationship by saying hello to someone you heard talking about you. Because I spotted their tweets in my RSS feeder, I was able to connect with and contact many of the folks above to say thanks for sharing a blog link, if they had any questions about training or if they needed help with anything at all. It makes your brand more useful when you're able to step into conversations in real-time and offer assistance. And because you can subscribe to an RSS feed for these terms, it's one of the simplest things you can do to help yourself keep in better contact with your customers.

See, Boss, Twitter's not all useless conversations about what you had for breakfast, where you are in airport or how much traffic there is on the 405 at 7:30am. Only partly.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/10/08 at 3:59 PM | Comments (4)
See more entries in Branding

Do You Miss The Old Days of Blogging?

Louis Gray had a post yesterday about blogs' never-ending battle of page views vs conversation and, to be honest, it made me a tad emo. He talks about his perfect world where the best bloggers with the best content get the most attention, and how that's not even close to how it exists today. Instead, Bloggers have been forced to fight for page views instead of focusing on what blogging used to be based on - sparking conversation and debate. It's like the old way of blogging died as soon as folks realized they could monetize it. Bah money.

I've often wondered if you can really do both equally well - balance the sky-rocketing page views while also sparking genuine conversation in a single post. Obviously, you can. It's humanly possible. But I think it's definitely the exception.

The Bruce Clay, Inc. blog gets a moderate amount of traffic. We go hot on Sphinn, stuff makes it big on Reddit, we're Stumbled, content is bookmarked, etc. We're there. We get those page views. However, nine times out of ten those aren't the posts I'm proud of. It happens without fail and often makes me laugh - the post that I write in five minutes without much thought is always the one to get attention. I spend five minutes of my time breaking up with Ask.com and the post is Sphunn, Stumbled and bookmarked. I write a quick rant about Google's new indexing of Flash (that I'm now genuinely embarrassed of) and it goes popular on Reddit and sends about 10 gazillion new visitors into the site so they can leave really, really intelligent comments. Meanwhile, the posts that I'm personally proud of, the posts where I think I've brought up something worth discussing and where a conversation has brewed go nowhere in social media, giving them considerably less page views and allowing them to fade off into obscurity.

And that's totally fine with me. In fact, it's become a game. I can almost predict the popularity of a post by the time I spent writing it. If I spent 10 minutes it has a chance to go hot on Sphinn. If I spend 40, it doesn't. But that's okay, because I'd rather write something I'm proud of and have it go nowhere, then chase page views. We're not social media whores around here. We never have been.

But I wonder how other blogs work and what'd they rather have. If they'd rather have the conversation or the page views. Now, I'm not talking about folks who make a living from their blog;, obviously they're chasing page views and ad clicks. I'm talking about the bloggers out there like me. The bloggers who write for a company or for themselves where they're not directly making money off their blog and where their living isn't based on how many people click through. What are they interested in?

Taking a look at some of what gets covered in the blogosphere (and not just in SEO), I see a lot of blogs chasing page views. Linking to certain stories so they'll show up in TechMeme. Being jerks online or pretending to be offended by what someone else said so they can make a stink and get attention. It's sad, but if you're going for page views, it works!

Personally, I'd rather spark a good conversation. In his post, Louis Gray wrote that page views are only more important than conversation if you let them. I'd take some good community debate over a flood of Reddit or Digg visitors any day.

People started blogging because they wanted to spur a conversation, to share ideas and insight, and to learn new things. If that's changed and if page views are today more important than conversation...I'm sorry but that sucks. That's not a blog I want to write or a blog I want to read.

I don't know how many page views Louis' post got. I know it didn't get a lot of TechMeme attention (at least not that I saw), but I do know that it has sparked a good conversation, and to me that's more important. What's most important on your blog: Page views or generating a good story? Do you quietly miss the days before Google AdWords, when you could just blog without having to be a slave to the almighty page view? When you didn't have to think up a crafty new Reddit-friendly blog title and when you could instead focus on engaging your reader? Let it out; it's okay. This is a safe place for discussion. :)

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/10/08 at 3:14 PM | Comments (2)
See more entries in Blogging

September 8, 2008

Reputation Management: You're Doing It Wrong

The people behind high fructose corn syrup want you to know that despite what you've heard, they're not really the devil, nor do they sacrifice babies. As long as you consume the stuff in moderation, you probably won't die, become really fat or sprout an extra head. Or at least that's what they say. I'm not totally convinced yet.

You may have noticed that there were some odd ads taking over your television this weekend. Ads featuring robot-like "people" eerily stating that high fructose corn syrup isn't bad. It's made from corn and okay in moderation. And it doesn't mean you're a bad parent just because you give your kid some random pink stuff. Suddenly it's like the Cult of Fructose radiating out of your television set.

I'm serious. Watch one of their ads:

Kind of creepy, right? Totally. Watching that commercial gives me a skeevy feeling, like someone is about to call me into the shadows to offer me a bite of their strawberry ice pop. And it'll only take that one bite and I'll be hooked for life. Before you know it I'll be stealing money from Bruce Clay, Inc. in order to support my high fructose corn syrup addiction. In six months I'll be found living under a bridge with ice pops stuck to my face. [Would you like a frosting shot? --Susan]

Send help! Or at least better advertising.

We all know that high fructose corn syrup is in need of some reputation management. I don't know what I've heard, just that I'm not supposed to eat anything that contains it. It's being blamed for all that ails us. It's clear that it needs a brand makeover; however, you can't end a bad brand image without presenting a new one. You need to give us a new message to hold on to and these ads don't do that, or at least they don't give off a positive one. And yes, I'm saying that "it's okay in moderation" is not an adequate brand message. They say the same thing about cigarettes. We're not buying that those are healthy either.

The Corn Refiners Association (who even knew!) were smart to launch a campaign to defend their product. I don't know anything about the CRA, but it's probably pretty important to them that parents aren't afraid to feed the product their kids. However, if they're trying to make high fructose corn syrup less scary, they're totally doing it wrong.

If you watch either of the two ads that are currently running, you'll see that they don't accomplish anything. I don't even know if the CRA knows what it's trying to accomplish. They don't seem to have a brand image worked out. Are you trying to make your product appear more friendly and less dangerous? If so, you failed. Are you trying to get people excited about the benefits and yumminess of high fructose corn syrup? If so, again, you failed. The brand message of "okay in moderation" is no better than saying "it may not kill you this time". That's not what people want to hear. You need to associate something good and friendly and fun with your product.

Also, if you're going to create ads to combat what "people have heard" about your product, you may want to mention what that is. It's hard to fight something you're too afraid to mention. You also can't dispel our fears if we don't know which fear you're trying to overwrite.

Everything is marketable. You can market that high fructose corn syrup isn't the leading cause of making you fat and unattractive, but you have to present a clear, more product-friendly brand message. These ads don't do that. They simply make high fructose corn syrup connoisseurs look creepy and uptight, which is only half a notch up from thinking they're all about to die. The ads aren't engaging, they're a total turn off.

*On a side note, casting someone who once played Buffy Summers' demonic college roommate to say that your product isn't, you know, evil may not have been wise. Just saying. [I feel like such a bad geek for not recognizing her. The shame, it burns. --Susan]

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/ 8/08 at 3:29 PM | Comments (9)
See more entries in Branding

Do Search Engine Rankings Still Matter?

Matt McGowan alerted me to an article over at GrokDotCom today that uses eyetracking data to argue that ranking first in Google is still important to your company's bottom line. The article is worth a read for a couple of reasons - first, we get to debate the importance of rankings again (fun!), and second, it presents data that may be completely contradictory to what you always thought. At least it was for me.

First the back story: Over at The Grok, Brian Eisenberg offers up two eyetracking studies, one shows how users searched in 2005 and the other shows how they search today. The results, as you can imagine, are completely different.

According to the study, three years ago people actually scanned down the whole SERP; we see lots of red trails taking place all the way to the tenth results. Today, the red high activity bubble is located between the first and second result, with users not even paying much attention to the blended search result in the fourth spot (I think it's in the forth spot. My old eyes aren't too sure.). Everything below result number three doesn't even exist to searchers.

I was pretty surprised by that, to be honest. I would think that with blended search and images and video appearing in the results that users would be more likely to interact with the whole SERP, not less. I would think that seeing an image appear in the fourth spot would drag a searcher's eye over there and make them pay attention, but according to this study, it doesn't. Is the novelty factor with new forms of content in the SERP over already? I was also really surprised to see that in 2008, the search bar isn't getting any love, whereas in 2005, it was hopping with activity. If searchers are only looking at the first two results and aren't hovering around the search box, where are they on the page? Are they really only clicking on the first two Google search results? I'd have a hard time swallowing that.

So what's really going on with searchers? Are they searching smarter? Are they too impatient to take in the whole SERP? Or are factors like personalized search coming into play and giving users exactly what they want straight out of the gate? Or maybe Google just ultra-awesome at deciding what you want for you? After all, according to Marissa Mayer, Google has at least 90 percent of search figured out.

I think everyone's getting smarter.

Searchers are getting smarter. They're not wasting their time on bad searches. They're doing a search for [moving information] and when they're bombarded with irrelevant results, they're not going page by page hoping they get better. Instead, they're immediately refining their search. Maybe that's why the search bar has no activity, because they're not lingering. They're there and then they're not.

And the search engines are getting smarter. They're using intent-based search to analyze the words you selected in your query to get your true motive. If you search for [moving information], they know you're looking for information resources. If you search for [moving companies pricing], they know you're further along the conversion path and are looking for services. I totally believe Google is taking this information into consideration today when they're giving back results. And so is Yahoo.

Beyond intent-matching, behavioral search and personalized search are helping to align users' wants, needs and past history to give them exactly what they want. And despite what the data actually proves, I think blended search plays a part in that, as well.

Which brings us to the question of whether or not rankings matter today.

They matter. They may be losing their importance as a prime SEO metric thanks to social media and advancements in the search engines, but they're still important. Rankings are how users find your Web site. If you don't rank, you don't exist. And by looking at this new eyetracking data, it could be that if you don't rank in the top three, you don't exist.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/ 8/08 at 12:54 PM | Comments (9)
See more entries in SEO, Search Engine Optimization

September 5, 2008

Friday Recap

It's Friday Recap time! That means it's almost time for the weekend. Huzzah!

Hey, did you know The Wonders Years may be coming back to television? Holy Kevin Arnold!

This isn't really search related but Jonathan Fields asked a very important question this week: What Do You Want To Be Known For? It's inspiring and thought-provoking in that warm and gushy way. Give it a read and then go conquer the world.

The mysterious QualityGirl says all she really needed to know about Internet marketing she learned in pre-school. I'm beginning to think all that money spent on college was a waste. It seems all the education you need in life is over by age four.

After leaking and releasing wonder-browser Google Chrome, Sergey Brin says he definitely doesn't want to reduce FireFox's market share at all. Of course you don't, sweetheart. Of course you don't. Just like Matt wants us to know that Chrome isn't really as evil as we all fear it may be. We totally believe you both.

The Consumerist alerts me to the coolest cell phone ever. It's a giant teddy bear that you get to carry around with you. I know! It's a phone that justifies the carrying of cute and cuddly teddy bears into public by adults. Huzzah again!

If you're a tech worker with a wandering eye, Web Worker Daily gets down and dirty talking about non-disclosure agreements and how they may affect you.

Be sure to cast your vote in The Twitties, the awards for the most interesting tweet on 140 characters. Hurry over and take a look at the list of nominees, you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll be really happy you weren't at the gynecologist during an earthquake.

YourSEOMentor had a great interview with the always awesome Brandy Eddings, where you get to learn a bit about the lady, the myth and the cowgirl. :)

Over at SEOmoz, Rand Fishkin identifies 10 inexplicable weird Google search results. Rand highlights some good stuff, but the comments are my favorite part. It gets way, way nerdy down there.

And finally, we all get to see what life would be like if Google created the hammer.

Things I Learned On BoingBoing This Week:

• How to live in a school bus. C'mon, like you've never thought about it? I found my kitty Swat living in an abandoned school bus. I should have left her there. Oh what, are you still reading this?
• Some places in the world have seriously awesome fences. Who know?
• I want an anthropomorphic light pillow almost more than I want Susan to disappear. [I'm clearly not firing you enough these days. --Susan]
• A new form of child abuse: Allowing your daughter to think it's "cute" when she puts 25 snails on her face.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/ 5/08 at 4:41 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Fun Stuff

Examples of What Makes Good Content

Jane Copland has a bitter post over at SEOmoz arguing that too many bloggers and speakers advise "creating good content" without going into the specifics. Jane calls it a new form of snake oil salesmen, and while I can share her distaste for those who blog without knowing what they're talking about, I find the whole post somewhat unfair.

The trouble with identifying what makes good content and drawing them a roadmap is that "good content" is subjective. It's almost less about the content you create and more about who's reading it and their needs. That's why the "get to know your audience" answer is so popular. It's not someone being lazy, it's simply a necessity. An article on how to properly implement a 301 redirect for a Apache server may be just what you were looking for, or it could be about 2 years late for you. What makes good content is tied to the knowledge level of your audience.

If you're looking for types of content that are popular, that's a bit easier to answer. Some of my favorites are listed below:

• Something No One Else Has: I wrote a post last week on how to use competitive research to find content ideas for your Web site or blog. One of the tips I offered in that post was to go through your competitors' sites and look for glaring content holes, the article or tool or angle that they didn't cover. If you were looking for it and couldn't find it, then chances are someone else was too and that's a gap you can help fill. Giving some props back to SEOmoz, they've been publishing some great for-pay guides recently, including the blogging guide written by Tamar Weinberg. It's unique content that no one else has and I imagine they're seeing a lot of success from those willing to shell out the cash. I think our guide to SEO methodology revealed on our Web_rank page is also an example of content no one really has, at least in that form and that in depth. That's the mark of great content, to me.
• Super Comprehensive Link Magnets: I love informational resources almost as much as I love puppies and cupcakes. It's what the Web was based on and anytime someone comes along and compiles useful information into one stellar resource...I'm instantly smitten. I think one of the best examples of this recently was David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors. Seriously. Was anyone not blown when they came across David's article? My thought would be no. It was so comprehensive, insightful and detailed that it became an immediate resource and a resounding example of great content.
• Exposes a Problem/ Asks a Question: Earlier this week Rae Hoffman wrote an awesome post accusing Twitter of "laying down" for Google after they put a nofollow on links contained in the Bio section of users' Twitter profiles. In the post, Rae sheds light on a problem that normal, non-Twitter-addicted folks may not have been aware of by explaining the situation and then offering her opinion as to what happened and why she was against it. Posts like these help keep search marketers in tune with that's happening around them and spark important debates. I think any post or piece of content that opens up a discussion of a larger issue is always needed and great content. We've never been afraid to write those posts in the past and it's something we'll keep doing when we think the industry could use a wakeup call.
• Solves a Problem/ Answers a Question: Okay, who is not in love with Ann Smarty right now? Seriously. Every day she's lighting up Search Engine Journal with content that site owners can use today to improve their site. She breaks stuff down and offers tips in a way that I honestly don't think anyone else is doing right now. And she's doing at an incredible speed. It's great content derived from by honing in on what troubles SEO and site owners are facing and then creating content that specifically addresses these issues and how to fix them.
• Bonus: Something That Entertains: In most cases content won't be valuable on humor alone, but it's definitely one of those things that can make a strong piece of content even stronger. A great example of this is every presentation ever given by Michael Gray. When he speaks people listen because he's offering words and advice that you're not going to get from anyone other than a blunt New Yorker. But his message is even better received because he uses humor and fun exaggerations to make his point. Will being funny equate to good content all on its own? Not unless you're a professional comedian. But it can increase something's overall power.

I can sympathize with Jane's feeling that there's too much of the same information out there. It's the nature of blogs. [and Web sites and conferences and books and movies and...--Susan] And she's right when she says that some of it comes from people who just blatantly have no idea what they're talking but want a voice anyway. However, I think it's a bit unfair to call conference speakers and bloggers "lazy" and "snake oil salesmen" because they offer up general advice.

As much as Jane may roll her eyes at all the speakers and blogs out there, really what more can they do in that type of forum? It's not that they're lazy or boilerplating their answers, it's that they're writing for a large audience not for one person or business. They don't know what business you're in or what you're site is like or what your objectives are. What may be good content for Bruce Clay, Inc. may not work for SEOmoz. If someone was to stand on a panel and give us both an example of what they think is "good content", it may do well on one site and flop on another. You don't read blogs for specific advice for your Web site. You read blogs to learn about what the engines value and then it's up to you, and perhaps your search engine optimization team, to come up with implementable ideas and tactics. If you're going to wait for the Q&A part of a session to quiz a speaker for content ideas, you're doing it wrong. That's a question you have to answer.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/ 5/08 at 12:32 PM | Comments (10)
See more entries in SEO, Search Engine Optimization

Going to SMX East...Don't Forget To Register!

Hey kids, just a friendly reminder that if you've been eyeing SMX East but feeling some commitment anxiety over registering, the Early Bird pricing is valid through Monday, Sept. 8. For those unsure, today is Friday. As in, almost Monday. That means you should go register.

I'll wait here while you go do it.

Back?

The inaugural SMX East is one of those shows we're all really excited about here at BC, as it'll be a great place to increase your SEO skill set and network with the industry's finest. It will be three days filled with more than 50 search sessions, 30 educational classes in the SMX theater, as well as the chance to attend SMX Bootcamp. Of course, the whole thing will end with Bruce Clay, Inc. SMX SEO Training on Oct 9-10, and that's something you definitely don't want to miss.

If you register before Monday you'll be able to take advantage of both the Early Bird discount AND the 20 percent off we can give you with our smx20BCI promo code. That puts the total cost of attending one of the industry's premier search conferences and two extra days of hands on search engine optimization training for less than $1,000. At that price you almost can't afford NOT to go!

Seriously, if you've been considering making the trip to NYC for SMX East, now's the best time to book. They're starting to reveal who'll be speaking on which panels and it's shaping up to be a great mix. Especially noteworthy is the Give It Up: What Hat Edition panel which features some of our favorite white hat SEO ladies like Kate Morris and Kim Krause-Berg and the Ask the SEOs panel with superstars like Bruce Clay, Greg Boser, Rae Hoffman, Todd Friesen and Jill Whalen. You're not going to want to miss them. Guaranteed.

I'm happy to report that we've had a lot of interest in the East Coast SEO training class we'll be hosting after the event, so we're looking forward to seeing some of you guys there. Up until Monday, the cost to attend SMX East alone is $1,195 or $2,990 with Bruce Clay Training. Danny mentioned on the Daily Search Cast today that hotels are going fast, so make sure you book your room. You don't want to be the loser stuck trekking to the convention center from 20 miles away.

And with that, we hope to see you there. :)

Posted by Lisa Barone on 09/ 5/08 at 9:25 AM | Comments (0)
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September 4, 2008

The Dilemma Over Deep Linking

One of our fine Bruce Clay Account Managers forwarded me an article he stumbled across today and it was like a gift from God. How did he know I needed a good laugh today? Our AMs are always so helpful!

The article is from FindLaw and begins by discussing a case involving a woman who was issued a cease and desist order by her police department for doing something really outrageous and crazy - linking to their Web site. Yes, I know, it's dumb, but that's not where this story ends. It gets worse.

Further down in the article the author starts talking about deep linking and the issues that it raises. Here are some reasons, according to author Anita Ramasastry, why deep linking can cause problems for Web sites and why it should be avoided:

• It diverts traffic away from the home page where all the ads are.
• It confuses visitors who suddenly find themselves "in the middle of a new site"
• Deep links doesn't always fall under "fair use" exception of copyright law.

If you hold real still you can probably feel your brain jerking against your skull while it undergoes some sort of fit from the dumb. Don't worry, it'll pass soon.

The article gets arguably worse once the author starts citing a number of US court cases where judges have actually agreed with this logic and made judgments in favor of crazy people. Last month there was a case with SFX Motor Sports where an injunction was granted because someone deep linked to some live audio casts of motorcycle racing events. SFX claimed they suffered great financial losses as a result of the link. Before that, Ticketmaster sued Tickets.com because they felt a deep link into their site confused customers who weren't sure whom they were buying from or where they were.

The whole article is quite troubling on a number of levels. There are three main problem