Online Marketing Blog

I get to talk to a wide variety of prospective clients about search engine optimization and internet marketing in general. The amount of information about what search engine optimization is, is as varied as the motivations of the companies that employ it. To help companies understand the various aspects of SEO, I often make comparisons to things just about everyone can relate to. So here are a few reasons why effective SEO is like successful weight loss.

1. No pain, no gain. Losing weight takes work. You have to make changes in order to make a significant improvement. If your web site doesn’t rank well, you will have to make changes and those changes will cost time effort and money. In most cases there is not a simple, “painless” solution. Same goes for weight loss. For a great SEO program, expect to make an investment.

I’ve seen Jim Boykin call these cat posts, so here’s a bit of a “cat post” from me.

This weekend I went to North Dakota for the funeral of my 91 year old Grandfather. He was quite a character and a story teller. Also a bit ornery. Think of a combination of Albert Finney in Tim Burton’s movie, “Big Fish” and Archie Bunker. For some reason, he rarely ever revealed his ornery side to me – just the stories.

One of my favorite tales was of how he worked as a boxer at a circus during the great depression. Others included World War II exploits. Even in his 80′s he’d call me “buckshot” and boast about how all the nurses liked him and how tough he was. True or not, the memories are there. Funerals can make one relflect on what’s important.

The class action noise about Google and the company who’s rankings have dropped is a pure waste in my opinion. Google has no legal obligation to treat sites in any particular manner as far as I know. No one pays Google to be included, so is there really an obligation by Google to explain legally? Granted, it would be unfortunate to have one’s site removed from Google, particularly since Google can mean the difference between being in or out of business. But a lawsuit?

Let’s start the rant engine folks….

CNET reports that uber blogger, Jason Kottke has pulled the plug on blogging for a living. All I can wonder is, why it took this long? What kind of business model is micropayments? The guy needs to stop drinking his own Kool Aid and treat that blog like a business, not an experiment.

It’s a bit disheartening, really. So much potential and opportunity not realized.

Kottke.org is one of the most popular, most visited blogs on the planet – #23 on Technorati’s list of popular blogs. Throw some damn AdSense on there Jason!

There are over 13,000 pages on that domain and over 450,000 inbound links. I hear some SEOs out there salivating. What could you do with a site like that?

My Yahoo news alert for “search engine optimization” sent me a link this morning to a Q/A article from USATODAY.com about SEO. A small business asked a question about bringing more traffic to her site, saying she had paid for “submission” services with unsatisfactory results. Ugh, people still fall for that?

The journalist talked to a “SEO expert”, which was really a web design firm for some suggestions.

Here’s my beef with the article:

Web designers are not search engine optimization experts. In fact, it’s web designers that keep most of us SEO practitioners so busy. That said, most SEOs are not web design experts either, with few exceptions.

Flash smashing. The issue with indexing Flash is brought up. Recommendation: Use less Flash. What’s the problem with that? It’s not the use of Flash that’s an issue, it’s the absence of text.

In this month’s Business 2.0, “2006 Smart List” issue, Google was bestowed “The Smartest Company of the Year” honors. In the ensuing article four scenarios on the possible future of Google were outlined. Three were optimistic and the fourth was doomsday for Google by 2020.

The cause? Hold on to your seat, because this is damn hilarious ….. SEO.

Yes, Rand, you’re given credit – it’s all your fault. And Microsoft.

From the absurd article:

“The once-mighty search engine falls prey to privacy intrusion, optimizers, and Microsoft.”

This article was good humor. The demise contributed by search engine optimization is credited to the focus on Google optimization by so many SEOs, that MSN’s search engine is ignored and that Google search results fill with pron and irrelevant sites. MSN search in the meantime, takes this time to develop without notice by SEOs.

You know you’re in blog trouble when you start your posts with, “It’s been too long since my last post….” Hey, we’re busy as hell and we’re hiring: SEO Specialist, SEO Copywriter, Linking Specialist, Admin. More about all that on the TopRank site.

Now on to this malarkey about discount search engine optimization:

Over the years I’ve had many opportunities to give prospective search marketing clients “good deals” for a variety of reasons. Early on in your business, there are some compelling reasons to do so, but my advice? Don’t. Here’s some classics along with my feeble replies:

“We want to see what you can do with organic SEO for a month or two, and if we see results we’ll pay more.”