Search Engine Tigers

Congratulations to both Bill Slawski and Li Evans on the official announcement today that they’ve both joined Christine Churchill over at KeyRelevance. The great news for both of them is that they’ll be working remotely, so Bill will be able to stay ‘by the sea’ in Delaware, and Li will be able to stalk watch her beloved Eagles. Congratulations also go out to Chris Boggs, who is moving from the Philly area to Ohio, to work for eMergent Marketing.

As for me, well I’ll be making some changes in the near future, but they’re all going to be blog related. The current title for this blog is “Local and In-House Search Marketing Topics”. Since I write about In-House for Search Engine Land, I haven’t really been doing much on In-House here. Funnily enough, a (non-personalized) search for – in house search marketing – has this blog third, with one of my SEL articles in first place. Yes, this site currently ranks above SEMPO for in-house search marketing, and they have a committee dedicated to it…

As for the local side of things, since I changed jobs 3 months ago, I haven’t been working with geotargeted campaigns as I had in the past, so without daily, or at least frequent exposure, it does become difficult to keep on top of a topic. Then there are the other writing commitments that are eating up my not so available time: I write on a little bit more than a weekly basis for RBDRodeo, and probably soon on a ‘more frequently than I was doing’ basis for SearchEngineGuide (I was bribed with a wonderful laptop bag), so I’m not quite sure where I’m going to go with this blog. In all likelihood I’ll continue to use it as a place where I can put a little of my personality in the posts, with posts that are either slightly off topic / don’t fit with the other blogs I write for, or posts that are fairly short and concise. Thinking about it more, you probably won’t notice much of a difference beyond the title change (when I get around to it), but still I thought I should mention it to the 18 29 subscribers (nice jump since the last time I checked Feedburner).

If you’re interested in checking out my recent posts on the other blogs, here’s a list.

Search Engine Land

• When to Work with Agencies – August 2007
• Managing Search Marketing Campaigns with Social Media tools – August 2007
• How To Hire A Search Marketing Team Leader – July 2007
• When To Bring Search Marketing In-House – June 2007

Search Engine Guide

• Using Google Trends to Research your Brand – August 2007
• Using Lead Generation Services – July 2007

RBDRodeo

• SEO and Object Oriented Programming – An Analogy – August 2007
• Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2007 wrap up (links to the 12 sessions I blogged) – August 2007
• Search Engines and Re;evancy – August 2007
• 5 Reasons for Continual Search Optimization – August 2007
• LinkedIn – Social Media Overview – August 2007
• Social Media – An Overview – August 2007
• How Advocacy Groups can take advantage of Universal Search – July 2007
• The Basics of Online Reputation Management – July 2007
• When should your CEO Blog? – July 2007
• The Perils of non-Canonicalization – July 2007
• Grand Central – not quite the Google Phone – July 2007
• Spreading your Corporate Footprint using Google Universal Search – July 2007
• 6 PR Disasters from late 2006 to the Present – June 2007
• SEM, SMO & PPC for the PRSA – June 2007
• International Search Marketing – June 2007

Yep, I’ve been tagged for another blog tag game, this time actually by name. The idea behind Rhea’s game is to identify the 7 members of your SEO dream team… so here goes.

• Jason Calacanis
• The other 6 – The starting line up of the 1974 Philadelphia Flyers…

Oh wait, that’s an old Simpsons joke. Let’s do the real thing.

Danny Sullivan – This one is a given

Matt Cutts – Ditto

Avinash Kaushik – You need analytics, so go for the best (there wasn’t one person that objected when his presentation went over time in San Jose).

Now it’s time to change it up from Rhea’s answers…

Bill Slawski – one of the brightest minds I know, let alone in search.

Todd Malicoat – despite the new tattoo.

Jeremy Schoemaker- if there’s a way to make money, he can find it.

As for number 7… I’m going to leave that open for a specialist in whatever direction my team decides would be the best way to go in. Now all I have to do is have my numbers come up tonight in the Mega Millions drawing and we’ll see how this works in reality.

Ok, now Matt, Pat and Rob, it’s your turn, should you decide to upset people in the industry by not selecting them.

Since Pat kind of tagged me on this, here goes…

1. I started working retail at the age of 14 (under the table as it contravened certain British child labor laws, ok all of them!).
2. I have no middle name… some people think that’s strange.
3. One of the reasons I’m a vegetarian is thanks to a summer job working in a sausage factory…
4. I once had a bicycle disintegrate on me as I was riding it, thanks to the delayed reaction of WD40 on rust…
5. In my final year of college, I lived over a newsagents and next door to a strip club – “The Piper Club”.
6. My first job in the US was selling chocolates and ice cream in a strip mall.
7. I became a naturalized US citizen the week after 9/11.
8. I’m running in the Philly 1/2 marathon in 2 weeks, and the Marine Corps Marathon in 2 months, they will both be my first races at those distances. Somehow I’m also fitting the new soccer season in there as well (starting Sept. 8th)…

Well, it’s been almost a week since the end of the Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2007 conference, and it’s taken me this long to get around to writing my wrap up post. Well, to be honest, after the conference I rented a car, and drove down the pacific coast highway to Los Angeles, where I spent the next few days lounging around, hitting the beach (which explains why my back is a lovely shade of what can only be described as ‘lobster red’). So now, here I am, back in VA, nicely rested and ready to write this post.

First, I’d like to say that the conference was absolutely top notch. The sessions that I attended were, for the most part, worth it. There were a few where there was a decent level of overlap on the material, but they were offset by some of the better sessions, that overran their timeslot due to the wealth of material offered. Personally, I managed to blog on 12 of the 17 sessions I attended, which was roughly 12 more than I’d originally anticipated blogging. Even the lunches were good, with the boxed lunches tossed, and a buffet line set up. I think that was a nice touch, and addressed one of the biggest complaints about SES (now if they can get power strips set up for the bloggers in the front row, they’ll be golden).

As for the networking, it was great to once again see people that I know, either from previous SES conferences, or meetups, such as Li Evans, Debra Mastaler, Kim Krause Berg, Lisa “The Lisa” Barone, Mike Grehan, Bill Slawski, Erica Forrette, Melanie Mitchell, Todd Malicoat, Rhea Drysdale, Chris Boggs, Barry Schwartz, Christine Churchill, Meg Walker, and Rebecca Kelley. Then there were those people that I got to meet face to face for the first time, and had a blast doing so, again in no particular order they were: Matt McGee, Tamar “The Magnet Queen” Weinberg, Jennifer Laycock, Chris Sherman, Rob Key, Vanessa Fox, Rob Kerry, Rebecca Lieb, Matt Bailey, Robert Clough, Jessica Bowman, Loren Baker, Jim Boykin, Chris Winfield & his wife Danielle, Patrick Shaber, Lee Odden, Natasha Robinson, Kevin Newcomb, Melinda Cayetano, Matt Cutts, Adam Lasnik, Dana Larson, Michael Gray, David Dalka, Andy Beal, Carsten Cumbrowski, Ariella Robison, Mike Yanke, Thomas McMahon, Stoney deGeyter, Diana Adams and Nate Eslinger. Thanks to all of you for making it such a great experience.

If I missed you out, let me know and I’ll add you in.

Today I did a search on Google for Neil Gaiman, and saw the interesting result of the combined listing up top, showing links to the main site, the journal, work, cool stuff and things, and Fragile Things. The second result was for the journal… the exact same url as shown in the combined listing up top.

Checking this out against other searches, I see that this is fairly common. Is it fair though? Should Google be giving double listings for the same URLs? In this case, should they remove the journal link from the first listing, or remove the second listing completely? From a user perspective, they should probably place everything together in the first listing, but from a company perspective, that wants to dominate their SERPs, they’d want the second listing to remain. What do you think? Is it fair / user friendly as it stands?

At Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2007, you get the opportunity to meet with many different people, from many different walks of life. I have plenty of pictures that will be uploaded to Flickr when I get a chance, but until then, here are some teasers with pictures of Googlers past and present.

Matt Cutts of Google, and Simon Heseltine

Adam Lasnik of Google, Simon Heseltine, Nate, Kim Krause Berg, Bill Slawski

Vanessa Fox of Zillow (formerly Google)

• Dog days
• may be comin’ to your town
• getting better all the time
• Speak of the Devil
• goggling
• A moment of coolth
• Notes from a vegetable
• I feel like a cork

All of the above are actual titles of blog posts from the same blog over the last 3 weeks. Do you have any idea what this blog is about? Actually, can you guess what any of the posts are about? Ok, maybe the “may be comin’ to your town” post, but the rest? No. Would it shock you to know that this blog ranks in the top 10 for all of these phrases, even a fairly common phrase such as “Speak of the Devil”? How does it manage that? Looking at the site, it doesn’t even bother with metatags, but it is ranked 312th in Technorati, and has lots of links. This is all due to the content. Well, it’s all due to the author of the content, this is the blog for the author Neil Gaiman.

The posts vary from discussions on his books and films, to Q&A with readers, to finding a stray dog, to wondering what’s going on with the bees in the back of his garden. But the important thing is that the content is what people expect it to be, and as such they bookmark and visit the site. I can’t imagine that he gets much search engine traffic on the topics of feeling like a cork, or getting better all the time, and with his movie not doing as well at the US box office as hoped, he may be feeling that it might have been a good idea to try to get more traffic to his site, in order to get the word out more, as optimizing his site would most likely pull in more fans or even potential fans that were unaware of its existence.

Yes, as you read this, I’ll be in San Jose for the last Search Engine Strategies programmed by Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman (I’m writing this a week ago, loving the fact that Wordpress allows me to postdate postings, so they won’t show up until I tell them to). While in San Jose, I hope to catch up with people I know, and meet new people (I have to build up my linkedIn and facebook friends lists somehow). So if you see me there, feel free to say hello, and if you must buy me a drink I’ll begrudgingly accept.

Oh, and if you’d like to read them, I’m attempting to liveblog the sessions that I attend on the rbdrodeo blog.

You can also check out Lee Odden’s post on the 10 secret benefits of attending SEM conferences for a chuckle.

So after getting up at 3am, and flying across the country, I came across this big top… any idea where I am?

This guy was over the road, thinking inside the box.

How about a picture of the building? Does it help if I tell you that the logo is on that umbrella?

Yes, I was outside the main Google complex in Mountain View. A place I’ll actually get to go inside on Tuesday night for the Google Dance.

I was at my local Toastmasters meeting on Wednesday night, and the issue of finding a coordinator for the area humorous speech contest came up. The district governor lamented the fact that it was hard to find people to volunteer for positions such as this, as people these days tend to ask “WIIFM” or “What’s in it for me?”, rather than leaping in and volunteering to help.

This got me thinking about the SEM industry, where I really have to say that the people, on the whole, are really nice and welcoming. From buying strangers, like me, drinks, to being willing to forge friendships with people they either haven’t met, or briefly met on a bus on the way to a party for 5 minutes. People in the industry are willing to share their insights, answer your questions, or even ask you for help. This is a kind of community that I didn’t experience in my previous life as a programmer, and I have to say that it’s very refreshing.

But it does go beyond that. This week, the company that I work for announced that they are going to be providing pro bono support for a charity that takes at-risk kids and trains them a triathletes in order to make sure that their life is on track. Not only is the company providing this marketing support, but we’re also going to be providing financial support to the organization – Exceeding Expectations – by sponsoring all clients and employees for any endurance distance events (you may notice that a certain blogger gets mentioned in the article as the next to run a distance event… thanks for the pressure Nan).

It’s not just RedBoots that does this though, there are plenty of other individuals and organizations in the SEM space that support pet projects and charities in order to enrich the world we live in. Back in May, Bruce Clay ran a contest for non-profits, to give a couple of people training and tools to increase their effectiveness for their organizations. Looking at Facebook, you can see the various charities that people in your network support, such as Matt McGee of Marchex, who appears to support similar charities to some Irish singer called Bono.

I have to say that I’m happy to be part of this community, and I’d like to think that I’m trying to give back as much as I take from it. As for the contest coordinator job at toastmasters… well, my name is on it, and it’ll be one of my tasks when I get back from SES-SJ, what’s in it for me? Outside of the experience of helping out a great organization, not much, but that’s just fine by me.