Search Engine Tigers

• 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.

If you’re a woman in SEO, and you’re going to be in San Jose next week, Li Evans has put together a plan to allow up to 40 women to escape from the boxed lunch hell of SES. More details on her Women of SEO luncheon can be found on by following that link. Who knows, she may even interview you for when she restarts her excellent Women of Internet Marketing series in the fall…

Now, how about Rob Kerry and the SEO-blokes sorting out a lunch for the men of seo?

With the fun of summer, and SES - SJ coming up next week (followed by my own little side trip around CA), I’m not setting up an official VASEM meetup for August, and have instead scheduled the next one for Sunday September 9th at 4pm at Bertucci’s in Tyson’s Corner (back where we had the first meetup). I’m looking forward to seeing both past and new attendees at the next VA SEM meetup.

Lisa Barone over at the Bruce Clay blog recently posted about why “Your Boss is not your Friend“. She talked about why you shouldn’t connect with your boss, and how you should avoid it - “deny, deny, deny”. I’m going to disagree with her, and explain why you should at least accept that LinkedIn request from your boss…

LinkedIn is a much more professional social site, that allows professionals to link up and recommend each other (I’ll have a more comprehensive overview up on RBDRodeo later this week). When you link with your boss, you can see all of their connections (unless they’re sneaky, and have hidden them). Whenever your boss adds a new connection, there’s a notification that goes up on your LinkedIn page to let you know. Simply clicking on that link allows you to see who your boss is linking with… it can give you an idea of future strategic partnerships, new investors, prospective employees, recruiters, etc. So by friending your boss, you can get somewhat of an insight into what’s happening at your company. Yes, you’ve got to be careful who you link to as well, but in my experience LinkedIn is a nice spying corporate information resource. Heck, you can always accept your bosses friend request, then remove them… there’s no notification, and they may not notice…

Yesterday the Yahoo Developer Network released a new Firefox plugin - a web site performance tool called YSlow. This tool measures and compares the web site against 13 different performance indicators, providing a grade for each indicator. The grades are then totaled and an overall grade is presented, along with suggestions for improving the performance of the site. These 13 performance indicators are those identified by the Yahoo Exceptional Performance team as the biggest factors in improving site performance. As you can see, it says that Search Engine Land has some areas for performance improvement.

Don’t feel so bad though Danny, CNN had an even worse score than you, and they’re doing ok. Also, this site got the exact same score and grade as SEL, but besides me who cares about that.

Tired of not being one of the ‘cool kids’? You read all over the internet about these new, invite only, closed Social Media beta sites, where it seems like everyone bar you already has a login? Well here are 2 solutions to your non-invite woes.

InviteShare is a site that allows users to share invites. If you happen to get into an invite only site, then you can go there and invite other people who are interested in playing with that site. The more people you invite, the higher your name goes on the priority list for invites to other sites. They currently list 44 different sites from Pownce to iwantsandy. You may have to wait for a while to get an invite to a popular site, but you should still be able to get in faster than if you hadn’t used the service.

BugMeNot is a site that you use when you don’t want an invite, but still want to get in.

People provide the site with a login and password, which then becomes communal property. Of course, when these sites detect the same login being used on many different IP addresses at the same time, they tend to shut down that login, so don’t expect them to always work.

Anyway, I’d better go and play with these new social media sites that I just got invites for, just like all the ‘cool kids’.

On Friday night, Debra Mastaler, Li Evans, Bill Slawski, Meg Walker, myself, and several family and friends, went out for dinner and drinks in Alexandria, VA. Good food, liberal alcohol, and great conversation led to a really nice night.

The next morning most of us met at the hotel, and walked down to the Union Street Public House for the scheduled VA SEM meeting. Debra, Li, Bill and myself were joined by Jacob Wolfsheimer and Dave (sorry didn’t catch the last name, or a url). Again, nice food, good conversation, and great company. Thanks for all those that attended, especially those that drove multiple hours to get there.

…and while I’m in a thanking mood, I do have to thank Mike Grehan, Lisa Barone, and Lydia (also from Bruce Clay) for entertaining me out in Simi Valley last week.