…and that’s about all I can say about it at this point. This is purely a tease piece. Well, ok, I can say that there are other SEO’s involved, and that my first post on the topic involves a Little Britain character. That should be vague enough

Tune in on Friday to find out what the heck this is all about, and why you should care…

Ok, you twisted my arm… you can find less details about this on SEO-Scoop

Just when you thought you’d seen everything, Search Engine Strategies announces that the last session of the first day of their upcoming SES-NYC show will be a ‘Super Session’ on ‘How to Train your Pets to Search’. This session is not restricted to just canine and feline owners, it’s also open to those who own birds, presumably to cover that whole Data Myna demographic. According to my source, the session is not open to fish owners, as evidence suggests that every 30 seconds they perform the same search over and over again (Note: there’s no proof to the rumors that MSN has seized on this knowledge to hire schools of fish to boost their share of the search market). My source informs me that the presentations currently being considered for this presentation are as follows:

• Search: Going beyond scents
• Finding the freshest catnip
• Pecking your way to the top of the rankings
• Using puppy dog eyes on Matt Cutts to avoid the spam filters
• ACME online, a case study in searching for roadrunner extermination devices

What should we expect to get out of this session? Well, we should find out whether there is any truth to the rumor that search is so easy that a trained monkey can do it.

Due to the unique nature of this session, it actually requires separate registration from regular SES-NYC, although there are benefits to registering for it before registering for the rest of the conference. So, if you’re thinking of going to SES-NYC, then go ahead and take a look at the “Search for Pets” session.

If this session is successful, I fully expect to see a session at SES-San Jose on Pet Blogging, most likely led by whom I expect to be the next star blogger on the Bruce Clay website - Jack Jack Barone (pictured up top)…

It’s been a while since I’ve let my natural pythonesque tendencies filter out onto this blog, so I thought that the time was nigh to put a knotted handkerchief on my head and hit myself in the face with a vase of flowers while talking about how watching Monty Python as a bairn prepared me for a career in search marketing…

1. In the land of the superheroes, there’s always a need for a bicycle repair man: Yes, the on page issues are generally easy to fix, and not as sexy as generating viral content, or coming up with a social media strategy, but there are still people out there that are blocking their entire site with their robots.txt, or duplicating content across multiple pages, etc, etc. To them, getting those basics fixed can make an absolutely fantastic difference.
2. (Miss) Anne Elk’s brontosaurus theory: Some people sound like they have a great story to tell, or some secret that you can only find by listening to them, then you hear it, and realize that it’s just common sense, or ridiculous, and was a complete waste of time listening to in the first place. Figure out where the real information comes from, and avoid the disinformation from those who just like to hear the sound of their own self-important voice.
3. It’s only a flesh wound: Know when it’s time to get out of a particular line of business or service. It’s all well and fine being told that a particular area of search marketing is lucrative, but when you determine that your business model doesn’t work, figure out why and either change or get out. Don’t keep throwing good money after bad, hoping that it’ll change, before long you’ll find out that you’ve sunk so much money into it, that you won’t have a leg to stand on…
4. Always look on the Bright Side of Life: This is such a fast changing, a still relatively new industry, so there are always opportunities opening up if you keep your eyes out for them. Don’t sit back and wait for them to come to you, go out there and market yourself.
5. If a Budgie is coughing up blood, it’s a good idea to flush it down the toilet: When, for whatever reason, you have a problem with a client, and the relationship goes completely sour, with no real hope of recovery, then you have to learn when to shake hands with them and part as amicably as possible.
6. Arthur “Two Sheds” Jackson: Personal Reputation Management is an issue that you need to think about, one innocuous comment, image, or video can follow you around for ever, regardless of what you do for the rest of your life.
7. The Cheese Shop Sketch: If someone comes into your site using a particular keyword, then your site had better have something to do with that keyword, and if you’re an e-commerce site, then you’d better have that product for sale, otherwise they’re not going to convert, no matter how many excuses you give them.
8. Even the Piranha brothers had a weakness: While Google is the undoubted king of search engines, who knows what will challenge their dominance in the future, although it probably won’t be a 12 foot tall hedgehog called Spiny Norman, maybe it’ll be one called Facebook?
9. Whizzo Crunchy Frog Chocolates: An unboned dead baby frog covered in lark’s vomit lovingly encased in the finest Belgian chocolate may fool people once, but it’s unlikely to do so a second time. The same goes for a website that you’re attempting to market. You can do a great job, sugarcoating the message, but if the site is abjectly horrible, either design, navigation, or functionality wise, then the visitors are not likely to come back.
10. But I didn’t eat the Salmon Mousse!: If your site is hosted on a shared server, take a look at who else is on there, and try to see if they’re likely to do things that can affect that entire C block. You don’t want your site to die by association when the Google Grim Reaper comes calling.
11. From Accountancy to Lion Taming: If you have a specialty, whether it be a particular vertical, or area of Search Marketing, and you decide that you want to do something in another area, make sure to research that area prior to leaping in. If you think you’re going to be taming an anteater, then you’re going to get one heck of a shock when you realize that you’re actually standing in a cage with the king of the beasts, with your only training being in the best use of pivot tables…
12. An African or European Swallow?: Know the right questions to ask. Prepare yourself before you have that first discovery meeting with a new client / vendor. Identify what it is that you don’t know, and that you will need to know in order to complete your SEM tasks.
13. Free Dead Dog with every jar of Coffee: In order for your marketing to function, you have to make sure that your offer is the right one to the target audience. If it’s not, you’re not going to see the conversion improvement that you’ve been paid to make happen, in fact you could see a decline if your offer is poorly thought out.
14. There is nothing quite as wonderful as money: The job of the Search Marketer is to improve the marketing of the site to increase conversions, and increase revenues, generating the best ROI possible. Of course, the reason you’re doing it is also to get some of that money flowing your way.

So there you have it, back in the late ’60’s and early ’70’s, despite there being no such thing as Search Marketing, the Internet, or even personal computers, that group of Cambridge and Oxford educated gentlemen that formed Monty Python were thinking ahead to a time such as this, where their advice could shape our lives… and now for something completely different…

On the last Saturday of 2007 we held yet another meeting of the Virginia Search Marketing Meetup group at the Bertucci’s in Tyson’s corner. The day didn’t start off too great, with Bill Slawski calling in to let me know that due to car trouble he’d had to turn back to Delaware, but on the plu side he did make it back safely. Not that Bill would have won the award for furthest distance traveled to the meetup, that went to Tim McGuinness of Hakia, who came all the way down from NYC just for the meeting (well ok, he did mention something in passing about coming down to sell his house from when he used to live in the area, but I’m sure that was just something that he figured he could do while he was down for the meetup).

We had 7 people at the event, with backgrounds in agency SEM, in-house SEM, toolset development, link building specialists, and the aforementioned search engine rep. So you can imagine that we had some really good, interesting discussions over the 2 hours that we were there. One of those discussions was about certain work that one of the group had performed for one of the top 3 search engines in the recent past, he’s the one that’s not in the picture.

So thanks to Debra Mastaler, Dirk Johnson, Rachan Malhotra, Steve, Tim, and Jim for attending, and I hope that you all enjoyed the meetup.  For anyone that’s interested, we’ll be having another one probably some time in March, more details will follow on this blog as we firm things up.

If you’re in Virginia, DC, or Southern Maryland, and are free on December 29th at 11.30 am, then you should head over to Bertucci’s on route 7 in Vienna (directly across from Tyson’s Corner, behind the Borders). Yes, it’s the next VA SEM meetup event. As of now confirmed attendees include me (no shocker there), Debra Mastaler, Li Evans & Bill Slawski, among others. So if you’d like to chat with other search marketers and don’t get a chance to hit the conference circuit, here’s a great chance for you. For further details on the event, you can go to the VA SEM event website, and RSVP there if you plan to attend.

From XKCD.com

Ron Paul has by far been the most popular politician on the web for this political cycle. For some reason his message has resonated with the Digg crowd, and the like. Mike Huckabee has seen this and obviously decided to compete for this demographic. To that aim he’s tapped into the popular Chuck Norris Facts that have been floating around for a year or so, and backed by the man himself, he’s put out this video on YouTube.

Thanks to Paul for the heads up.

I’m heading over to SMX-London to do a presentation on Reputation Management.  Currently I’m sitting at the Lufthansa gate at Dulles airport, waiting for my first flight, which will be taking me to Frankfurt.  On the way here I stopped off in the Duty Free shop to do some browsing.  One particular display caught my eye, and in fact had me do a double take.

Yes, American Candy, with Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, Nestle Chocolate and Nestle After Eights…  Ok, Cadbury’s is English, and Nestle Swiss.  Maybe they were made here?  Nope, in fact the Dairy Milk was made in Singapore???  If they’re blatantly providing misinformation such as this, how can I trust them about anything else in their store?  Were I to be purchasing a ‘designer’ handbag or perfume as a gift, 2 items which I wouldn’t know much about, how could I be assured that their claims of authenticity were correct?  I couldn’t… so I left empty handed.

After looking at the organic results for the next Presidential election, I thought I’d take a look and see what’s going on PPC wise with the campaigns. Looking at the SERPs for each of the Democratic candidates, there’s no competitive bidding going on against those names.  With Bill Richardson being the only candidate bidding on his own name.
On the Republican side it’s a different matter. A search for Mitt Romney displays a PPC ad for John McCain. A search for John McCain displays an ad for Ron Paul, a search for Rudy Guiliani has just John McCain, and a search for Sam Brownback has ads for both McCain and Paul (with the McCain one being about the Brownback endorsement of McCain). Searches for Ron Paul and Fred Thompson have no PPC ads from other candidates.

So it looks like the Republican candidates are starting to grasp hold of PPC as part of their campaigns, placing ads on candidate names that they feel they may be more ideologically tuned to, so they have a greater chance of converting their supporters. As the races heat up over the coming months, it’s going to be interesting to watch and see exactly how this changes.

…against nudists. From the SMX-London speaker documentation.

Speaking Tips

Dress Code: Please wear clothing…

Nice little throwaway line in the documentation to see if anyone actually reads it. For anyone going to SMX-London, please note that I do intend to hono(u)r that clause and will indeed be wearing clothing.