We hold a select few traditions dear in my family. Mixing proper whiskey drinks is one of those traditions. No other mixed drink is more synonymous with my old Kentucky home than the mint julep. The 1st Saturday in May marks Derby Day every year, and no doubt mint juleps are the most popular drink at Churchill Downs. If you don’t bet all your dollars on the first leg of the Triple Crown, you can even treat yourself to a $1,000 mint julep.

Anyone who has lived in my motherland the Dark and Bloody Ground knows how brutal the heat and humidity in the Spring can be. During these muggy Derby Days I do enjoy a mint julep, although not just any one will do. The real secret to the best mint julep is in the cup, believe it or not.

If possible, you should use Sterling Silver cups. If not, a silver-plated glass will do, but under no circumstances should you make my tasty bourbon drink in a plastic container. This may sound pretentious, but the bourbon does not chill properly, nor does the mint crush properly in a plastic container. One of the other secrets for proper taste is having crushed ice instead of cubes. Be sure to crush the ice in a blender or use a bar towel and a mallet if you did not purchase it pre-crushed. For best results, enjoy on a warm day.

The Main Ingredient:
Bourbon - Evan Williams Single Barrel is my favorite whiskey to drink neat. For this recipe, the brand matters not, but I use Kentucky Gentleman or Early Times for large batches.

Ingredients:
1-2 tablespoon of sugar depending on your taste
1 tablespoon of Meyer’s Dark Rum
6-7 mint leaves
1 sprig of mint for garnish
shot of hot water
3 ounces well, call or top-shelf bourbon
Crushed ice
fresh clove of nutmeg

Directions:
Put the sugar in the bottom of the glass along with a tablespoon of dark rum and dump a shot glass of hot water in there with it. Give it about 30-60 seconds to cool a bit. Next, put your mint in a frosted silver cup and bruise it with a muddler. Then pack the cup with crushed or shaved ice to the brim. Finally, pour your jigger of bourbon in and shove a straw along with mint garnish into your chalice of splendor and grate a tiny bit of nutmeg on top. Now prepare to bet on ponies and get crunk with the classy.

Good day, Gonzo gals and guys.

It’s @content_muse; coming to you live, bangin vibes from the brain to the keyboard for your internal storage pleasure.

When we last left my mind at Kaiser the Sage‘s place, I was giving you a tour of alternative yet actionable link-building goodies.

Don’t be afraid to build links out of your regularly-scheduled comfort zone.  It’s not that the old flavors have lost their taste (Though some scaled processes makes my organic senses turn sour.), it’s that link building, like traditional marketing, grants opportunity to blaze other trails.

Sometimes, rather than repave old inroads, rehashing previously broached argument, methods, and results, one must turn that fucking Jeep sideways, and consider blazing their own trails.

We’ve beat old link building methods (Though, many still work effectively) with a hollowed horse head.

I’m happy to have people who endorse my tendency to go off the grid when minding particular clients and methods of marketing.

If you have faith in your product/service’s intended value, and your boss and client have your back, your roads exist any and everywhere.  Get lost…

When I just a mini muse, my parent’s provided me with a wealth of toys to play with in our third-story row home in South Philadelphia.  I didn’t have siblings and not allowed to play outside without a watch on me.  That third-floor room, in retrospect, was my creativity laboratory.

I return there again and again for marketing purposes.

Have you ever had a discussion with a child?  They view things very honestly, playfully, and with great question and wonder.

But enough introductions and pleasantries in getting to know a bit about me, your guide.  On with the show, shall we?

Peter Llewelyn Davies: [as a preface to his play] This is just a bit of silliness, really.
J.M. Barrie: I should hope so. Go on.

Hello, HARO

I enjoy using HARO now and again.  Reporters and editors need insight and content for upcoming stories.  HARO allows them to connect with those who can help them produce quality stories.  If you have something valuable to provide, aside from factors beyond your control, it’s likely reporters and editors will (at least) appreciate your participation; best cases get your brand and CEO’s under the lights of major publications and in front of more consumers.

HARO is a two-way communication device.  Sure, we want PR opportunities, but what about everyone else?  They want them too, right?  Therefore, get more people involved in your content creation (psst, just like editors and reporters from major publications do every day).

Rather than respond to their queries, make your own, creating opportunity to field insight from others, ingraining it in your content.  Who knows?  Those who contribute to your content are likely to drive traffic and exposure to your composition; it is featuring them, right?

We have great crowd-sourced pieces like this.

But, as we commonly admit, we in the online marketing space are a bit more ‘social’ than others in various industries.  HARO gives your brand the chance to become an interviewer and news source.

So, (stay with me here) major publications use this technique, interviewing and asking others about particular stories and angles, to increase the intrigue for readers.  That’s what you want to do too.  Also, getting more people involved in the composition likely begets more traffic and links from their sites and brand-related real estate.

I’ve been interviewing recognizable figures on LinkBuilding.TV.

If I wanted to expand my interviewee potential, I may put some feelers out on HARO, making the interviews more dynamic for viewers and increasing our relations with more personalities and link building opportunities.

Rhoades Reader Review

- Develop an editorial calendar for to-be produced content.

-  Use HARO to scour for those who would like to contribute

-  Be proactive, weighing opportunities, remembering some events may build more links while others are beneficial for public relations purposes alone (those may not bring links, but traffic, which produces money )

Remember the ferry scene in the chocolate factory where things get weird?  This is that moment.

I’ll be transparent in saying the muse is an independent thinker.  Like particular angels who were coerced to make a heaven/hell choice, ultimately deciding to think for themselves, @content_muse is stuck in a purgatory, not obedient enough to gain access to heaven, yet the devil himself does not admit rebel angels, fearing their independent philosophies.

Therefore, the rest of this post and some suggestions are to be carefully read, understanding with some actions come ascension to greatness or descent to search engine infernos.  Abandon some hope, ye who proceed…

Creative Comments

We all know I enjoy comments, not so much for link building,  but because when you comment it expresses more of you.  That way, people can gain a better perspective on your personality, your acumen, and your value to the community.  But, what do I know; I’m just a hack writer.

When, I’m not writing of late, as mentioned, I’m whitening my teeth and getting Botox injections in preparation for my interviews on LinkBuilding.TV.  Aside from LBTV, I’ve been taking a guerrilla approach to video, snapping real-time tidbits whenever the mood strikes.

A bit ago, I asked Jason Forrest, a cohort of mine from Indy Hall, what he thought about Chris Dyson’s post on sharing social media.  I want to be the techni-colored man who lives in the chocolate factory with little creepy men.  That indefinitely makes me memorable and standout among the crowd, no?

Take a look at what I did in combining my creativity with opportunity to comment on Dyson’s Disqus comment system.

Disqus marked up my YouTube video.  Do you want to find more sites using the Disqus commenting system?  (I like that guy’s style; he uses search operators.  I know a dude like that.)

Quickly, I may do a lil search a lil somethin like this:

“blog comments powered by Disqus”   “seo”

…unleashing the fury on potential blogs by niche I can comment upon, using video.

As, I understand Disqus comments are indexed (at the discretion of respective search engines) but the comments are no follow.

Listen, @content_muse has been known to stay out past his SEO curfew from time to time, running into some black cats.  In short, I know a few dudes who know a few dudes who know a few things about coding…

In confidence, I overheard someone talking about using ctrl+F, searching for nofollow prompts in the the Disqus WordPress plugin, and simply removing them to enable followed links.

I’m not advising anyone to do anything.  However, one could search for blogs using the Disqus plugin, making webmasters aware of your ability to modify their source code along with addressing WordPress security issues, which may pose threats to their site.

- Realize commenting is great for PR, exposure, and possibly begetting links

- Search for webmasters using the Disqus comment system

- Understand Disqus can be SEO friendly, recognizing YouTube videos and other media sources

- You’ll need to prompt the webmaster to allow you to modify the source code or give them a reason to want to, such as alerting them of other WordPress risks

Charcoal Cloaking

Many people know @content_muse to be a nice boy; and he is (when warranted).  However, don’t get your saints twisted, I’m no angel all the time.

“Beware of thy entrance into a quarrel, but being therein, ensure those opposing you beware.”

I don’t condone mischief; actually, that’s not true at all – mischief in moderation is muse endorsed.  However, I don’t cloak; but if I did, this is one way I would show you how. (Mom, it wasn’t me.  Geoff Kenyon gave me the idea.)

I call this charcoal cloaking; because, for one, I enjoy embracing cool names for colors, and secondly, my example is not malicious; I did it to my own boss, Mr. James Agate.

Notice my Skyrocket author box.

Oh wait.  That’s not my box, that’s a box James used as a bad example of trying to get too many links to your erm, personal brand in his ThinkVis presentation.

Here is my present Skyrocket author box.

How did I get my Twitter feed in there?  I created a Twitter widget, implementing it into my author box.  It’s followed and moreover, like Geoff advised in his article, one could tinker with the associated HTML.

Look what I did, modifying the embed code, redirecting the HTML to Content Muse rather than back to the default Twitter.com URL.

I’m a badboy, like Johnny Depp in his early days.

Pff, actually this dude is way badder, but we know this.  :)

Here’s an alternative to the above method. Let’s say I wanted to reconnect with a previous gracious host of mine, such as Search Engine Journal, where I recently wrote about on-page optimization.  What if I wanted to go back and help promote a bit other than my tweeting and sharing?

What about others who found the post useful?  The sentiments of others who champion the post serve as a positive signal to others initially approaching the post.

Thanks, Bram.

Maybe, SEJ editors would like to insert the Twitter search embed for the URL; that way newcomers will immediately see a positive signal related to the post.  Boom.

I did this with my search operators post.  If AJ’s diggin it, I may want to promote his promotion.

Again, I don’t condone dark arts, at least not out in public.  I recommend using embeds for better PR; better PR leads to traffic, leads, and money, if your band is worthy… but, what do I know?  Pro tip – If you do do use others as symbols of testimonial and good signals to your brand, let them know.  They just may link to that page do to their inclusion.

Rhoades’ Reader Review:

-   Use peoples’ reactions from Twitter to endorse your posts

-  Use Twitter search to create embedded HTML code, code you can later modify

-  Think of creative ways to use your Twitter searches, such as in your author profile box

Design Derelict 

Above, I caught a screenshot of AJ Kohn championing our Skyrocket post.  The action was inspired by AJ’s minding and tracking the importance of online images.  For example, there are many ways to uniquely marketing on Google Plus; it’s more visual than Twitter; pictures and images make an impact there.

I wanted to have a bit of fun with AJ; so, when he prompted me to better my search operator’s post attraction, with a good picture, I thought it would be clever to capture his endorsement.  However, GooglePlus is picking up a richer image I made with CoolText.com.

So, I got to thinking.  I remembered reading a creative link building post by Jon Cooper.  Therein Chris ‘Links’ Dyson waxed poetic on a little linking ditty he performed on a mommy blogger once.

What if we wanted to get bad again?

We could tinker with the HTML of engineered text.

Okay.. then…

I have to be honest in saying I changed the HTML, Don.  That image link is going to my personal blog.

One could reach out to webmasters who need an insertion of some graphic stimuli.  Remind them graphics make a difference, as Jeff Bullas reminds.

The 94% statistic alone should get some webmasters to raise their eyebrows about existing or to-be content without some image love.

Rhoades’ Reader Review:

-  Search for blogs/bloggers who don’t have an image or who do not have great images at the start of their post

-  Remind them of the importance of images regarding on-page reception and when sharing on social platforms like Google Plus

-  Realize (at your own risk) you may modify existing HTML codes to your own devices

The Beginning of the End

I don’t want you to get the wrong impression of me.  I’m a good guy when the mood strikes; I’d also advise walking the other way if you’re not a good guy, but then again ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are on my terms.

(…But He Would Have Used It Anyways)

We get it. Author Rank is important if you want to compete in Google’s ever-expanding personalized SERPs. As reluctant as I have been to implement or even give a damn about it, I have finally jumped on the wagon. Demian Farnworth wrote a compelling case for why Hunter S. Thompson would have loved Author Rank. I am here to dispute that claim, if only to prove that he might not have loved it, but would have bought the ticket and took the ride anyways.

From the Desk of Dr. Gonzo

I am only writing this rebuttal to honor the late, great Dr. of Journalism, and because I came to the same conclusion that Farnworth did, but from an understanding perspective of Hunter and what he truly represented. My aim here is not to offend Copyblogger, et al., but to make the case for adopting Author Rank from a more defensible platform and to clarify why Hunter would have used Author Rank despite being a cavalier.

I have branded myself in a likeness of Gonzo. That is not to say I am an outlaw by any stretch of the imagination, but I do not like to be governed or regulated. As you’ll find in the pages of this blog, I can be irreverent and unfiltered. You’ll also discover I don’t write very often and that publishers have to kick me in the ribs before I’ll write for them. I plead the same defense for being lazy busy ornery to write very often as Hunter does here: Gonzo SEO Wisdom.

http://anthonyhopesmith.blogspot.com

I have always been stubborn and resistant to change, especially when it comes to being told what to do by any authoritarian (like Google). Some people don’t like to be corralled.  Folks of this ilk are like a mustang out where the buffalo roam, and refuse to be tamed. Hunter was one of those people. As his writing and lifestyle suggests, he is an outlaw on many levels of the very definition. Hunter would have liked for his work to speak for itself and not need any explanation or validation. “Res Ipsa Loquitor” he would sign many personal memos from his desk. The Latin translation is “the thing speaks for itself” and is often used in court of law to describe bodies of evidence. Hunter meant the literal meaning, and often followed it with “Mahalo” – Hawaiian for “thank you”. This was Hunter’s way of saying to the addressee, that they’ve helped him prove his theory. Hunter would have hated Author Rank because it would force him to claim ownership of his writing.

I believe that he would’ve felt like he shouldn’t have to do that. Hunter’s writing speaks for itself. If you read any of his later books, you find his voice is one of cynicism and concern for future of our nation and for journalism. He doesn’t pull punches when describing how his bleak outlook of the 60′s and 70′s became bitterly grim in the last decade of his life. He knew to whom he was speaking, and that was anyone who shared his concerns. He’d already made his name calling out government and unique sports perspectives – so his quirks were very evident to the seasoned readers of his work. Had Author Rank been available when Hunter started out, he would have rejected it to a degree, but had the publishers handle all that hoopla for him. Dude just wanted to write.

Journalistic Objectivity: a pompous contradiction in terms

Farnworth writes of Hunter: “Perhaps his journalism was second-rate, and his short stories third. Possibly his former bosses were justified in canning him — maybe he simply didn’t have the kind of talent that prima donnas need to possess in order to stay employed”.

Deviant Art: Pulce90

I don’t think Hunter was a prima donna, but more of the mustang I described earlier. I do agree his early works were kinda crummy, and his lackluster efforts might have warranted termination from his commissions. But there’s the rub, Hunter did it *his* way. I’d guess that the way he abused publishers’ credit with hotels and car rentals were likely more contributory to his firings. Ultimately, the drug-induced, stream of consciousness psycho-babble finished copy he would send his editors was hardly worth the legal fees and incidentals for most publishers. What led Hunter into inventing Gonzo journalism was shitting his pants, jumping in and swimming. He was higher than a kite and had a deadline. He chose to use the experiences he had as a player/spectator/other-worldly being to write his coverage of sporting events for the rich and hedonistic culture of the time. The editors did the rest. See, Hunter was more interested in telling the story from a stoned POV because it gave the perspective of a truly foreign observer. Sure, he already had his preconceptions and knowledge of his subjects, but he also had a vision of story-telling like no other.

Demian calls it right when he says of The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved: “The article was more about the corruption surrounding the race than the actual race, but it was the manic, first-person style that characterized his Gonzo style.” However, I think he mischaracterizes  the tale being told in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas that he confused fact with fiction. Thompson’s modus operandi was as I described it above, and in my humble opinion, he blurred the lines of what was reality and what was hallucinogenic experience, and often the reader had a hard time distinguishing fact with fiction. As David Letterman described him, Hunter is the most accurate and least factual reporter working today. I’m not saying one has had to have similar experiences with drugs and excess, but Hunter wasn’t writing for average readers. He was writing for an intellectual legacy. Something that aliens could find in the year 4014 and understand the true story of how “he who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man“.

Author Surrogates

Raoul Duke is an alter-ego Hunter invented to be the culprit of all his hijinks and drug induced delirium. Sometimes he was the actual author of pieces that Hunter wrote. This persona was intelligent in design because it allowed Hunter to explore creativity, regardless of how dubious his methods were. Sometimes we need a persona – whether it be for guest posts to have some anonymity within our industry and for the sake of clients.  It is often not ideal to claim ownership of some writings. I am not saying this to endorse shady techniques, but don’t lie – you have some duds out there which need credibility, but you wouldn’t want to be accredited to you. Many of the superb guest posts I have commissioned for clients are from people we all know, but unless they prefer, I wouldn’t ask them to put their names to it so I use personas to claim authorship. This protects the writer, the publisher, and the client. Hey, I am all for transparency, but many content producers and publishers are not to the point of being able to do this for every single post they publish. Freelancers produce some of the best content, but they may need to remain anonymous to keep their day jobs. I think most writers can all respect that.  Author Rank poses a challenge in this because some clients and C-levels are not able to grasp the concept of generating a persona to use for content development and planning. Often times you need more than one. Mike King has an outstanding strategy behind persona creation. This may alleviate some of the burden of having to sell it to clients or project managers. Photo credit: Deviant Art: Press A to Jump

Hunter was a surly and expensive bastard to his publishers, but sometimes they loved him for it in the end. Also in the end, Hunter would have submitted to Author Rank to get paid. Author Rank is synonymous with press credentials. How else would he get into Jimmy Carter’s Georgia plantation or Muhammad Ali’s apartment in Manhattan. How else would he get the story published? How else could he afford a private shooting and explosives range at his farm in Woody Creek, Colorado? How would people with the finest Peruvian and Casteneda buttons know he was the guru of all things dopamine? Hunter didn’t need recognition among other writers, everyone from Jack Kerouac to Tom Wolfe knew his voice and understood it to be an important one. What Hunter did to procure his name into the annals of great American Literature was to tell the story from not either side of the coin, but from the center ridge grooves of the coin, the one no one really notices until it is pointed out to them.
Hunter would have understood to get the recognition for his work by other prospective publishers, he would need the credentials at his disposal. Author Rank serves as such in the digital age. Perhaps he might not have liked it, but he would have used it, if for no other reason than to get paid professional money and to get bigger and better commissions from the likes of Rolling Stone and Harper’s. The books he wrote may have stood the test of time and become cult sensations on their own, but without the credibility of being published in highly visible and well-circulated sources, his career would have been a much tougher climb into the status of legend.

The Weird Turn Pro

I hope this makes clear, that we of the Gonzo Guild recognize the importance of implementing authorship into our strategy. Indeed, after much resistance and research into alternatives, there is no work-around on this one. Terry Van Horne makes an excellent argument for authorship to remain a component of personalized search results more than expanding into a full-bore algo signal. I agree with Terry on this observation, however Google’s quest to force being signed in is already afoot. I’m not buying into the imperative need to use author rank for search, but I’m also not willing to leave those personalized search results on the table either. A somewhat necessary capitulation of our unbridled standard of rejecting authority. Perhaps one day, another better search giant will have more market share and a better method for ranking sites. Until then, we concede to the overlords and to being confined to the requirements of making a living from the thorny fruits of journalism.

I can’t be the only one who has experienced the bottle-neck of authorship and crediting pseudonyms, can I? I have too many instances where an excellent writer must keep themselves out of the byline to save the trouble of defending their side gigs to their employers. I can’t be the only one who would want an alternative to publishing under authorship. Despite seeing the value of Google Author Rank, it is not without some definite drawbacks from the freelance crowd. Perhaps I am a dying breed like Hunter was, but not in a good way. Perhaps I need to find a way to offer full transparency to the reader via the author’s real identity. Perhaps I’ll understand better how to handle from some of you fine folks. What say you, people of the internet? How do you attribute authorship when you deal with ghost writers and moonlighters? Does anyone bother with a Nom de Plume anymore?  ~ DJR

Corrective Addendum: I have been corrected by a true expert on the subject (Mark Traphagen), that I have confused Authorship –  the markup and verification process that G uses to determine authenticity and populate personalized results. Versus Author Rank – which is a theoretical rating system which is not being used as a major ranking factor (if ever). I apologize for my ignorance, was just rebutting the claim made by Copyblogger. It’s the blind leading the naked over here. #ViolentFemmes ~ DJR

How this eBook helped a traditional PR agency grow their digital services

In past experiences, I’ve usually had the luxury of working with sites during development. Never had the need to do any real site audits. Recently, I started doing some contracting for a PR agency with a budding digital department and I have yet to experience this luxury again. I’ve been charged with helping them earn new business and taking on projects for existing clients of theirs. This hasn’t been easy chiefly because there are plenty of misconceptions the staff have regarding what is good (or bad) for the health of a website. I am obligated to teach these PR professionals what to look for in prospecting new business and what the account teams should pitch to clients.

Being able to perform a comprehensive audit has always been a challenge for me. I’ve often used the idiom: “I’m like a mosquito at a nudist colony”, meaning I know what I want to do, but not where to get started. I’ve gotten by on picking out the important factors in what would improve their site’s performance, but never really had to nail down a plan for a full scale overhaul. Then came a local mortgage lender who wanted to compete with the national guys in town. I saw the opportunity to seize a major victory for the agency and an audit was offered. I made the mistake of using an existing audit template designed by a former contractor, and it failed miserably. This audit was really a poor overview of the traffic they were getting and where competitors stacked up against them. I had to offer my recommendations for improvement. I was satisfied with the result to in terms of technical knowledge and sent it on to the accounts team. I was asked to attend a meeting with the client to go over the details of the recommendations I made. That was the longest 3 hours of my career. I felt horrible for the account team, the VP of the agency, and mostly for the client. It was embarrassing because there was no focus, and no real plan of action. I felt like I should hand in my gloves and retire from this arena. The account team was able to save us from peril by shifting focus away from these intended services, to a sound PPC campaign that would ultimately do what they asked, which was to generate leads. Thankfully, that project went on to become very successful.

Many new business opportunities were not being offered audits and I had no tangible plan to change that until a prospect insisted we provide them with a similar audit from a competing agency. Time to shine, I thought. Coincidentally, Nick LeRoy just released his ebook for DIY site audits and offered a review copy. I jumped at it because I’ve trusted Nick’s advice for a long time and I knew it was going to be designed for strategic action items as Nick never disappoints.

I got to straight to work and found it to have the direction I needed to provide the prospect with details that could allow them to take it to another vendor or their in-house with a strategy to win their niche. I even found opportunities that I hadn’t considered. Let’s dig into the details of what you can expect if you get Nick’s guide, and you’ll see why the client not only hired us, but expanded their budget because the audit warranted.

First off, you get an easy to understand score card of SEO elements and weights of each. Brilliant, because now, the client can even play along and it shows accountability for your plan. Then you get the important, distilled details of how to find data on each element and what each one means. I found the duplicate content and structure/architecture/nav sections to be the most helpful because this is where I’ve found every site to be different. You might be able to cookie-cut most everything else in your audit, but these two sections is where I needed to understand how to conduct the reconnaissance necessary to make good recommendations. After using Nick’s scorecard and template, I better understand the direction necessary to improve a site’s performance. The results are a solid action plan to rectify each issue in order of importance. I appreciate the time he put into this and you can tell a ton of experience has gone into it. I think Nick’s ebook is an excellent value to my practice and to those who benefit from the organized approach to auditing a site.

Another benefit I’ve found using Nick’s guide is how I am able to determine the amount of time/work it would take so the account team could charge accordingly. Now we have a viable blueprint for offering an intelligent action plans and pricing to the client. I always stand by my recommendations, but now I can do so without being nervous and second guessing them. What’s more, I can now look for additional opportunities for existing clients. While this may be time the agency pays me with no receivable from the client, it has surely paid dividends on creating reasons for clients to renew if not raise their retainers. I am eternally grateful for the guide that Nick has bestowed upon me and my endeavors with helping grow a traditional PR agency’s digital abilities.

“Untutored courage is useless in the face of educated bullets” ~ Gen. George S. Patton

The Gonzo SEO is proud to present a guest post from Joel Klettke, the coolest keener from Calgary since James Gosling. Joel kicks ass daily for Vovia Online Marketing there in Cow-Town and he can be easily talked into a guest post via twitter @cstechjoel.

We all want to make friends – especially in an industry as small and interconnected as SEO. Nobody wants to be “That Guy” known for outing his competitors or sending competitor’s clients “Did you know you don’t rank for…” e-mails. But while I am madly in love with the SEO community and I’ve made some amazing friends in the industry, business is war; a war I want to win.

That’s why over the past three to four months, I’ve successfully stolen clients from my competitors. After all, are there any better leads out there? They already know and appreciate what SEO can do. They’ve got budgets. They’ve got expectations – and if you watch carefully enough, you can see when those expectations aren’t being met and exploit it.

So this is basically an open letter to my competition. Here’s how you helped me steal your clients, and why I’m going to be able to do it again.

You’re a bad communicator.

You spent an awful lot of time cold calling, but once you landed the client, your interest level dropped off. You wooed them, wined them and dined them – and then you lost touch.

You stopped sending updates. You stopped picking up the phone and asking them how they felt their campaigns were going, what their concerns were and whether or not they were seeing any ROI. Once a month they got your e-mail.. “Attached is your SEO report for June. If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to ask.” – Yeah, real personal.

You left them in the dark.

All I had to do was step in and romance them away from you. A comprehensive, personalized audit combined with a phone call and the next thing you know, your checks are landing in my bank account.

 Your reporting is atrocious.

Word to the wise: Your SEO reports aren’t hard to coax out of your clients. I’ve seen what you’re giving them, and frankly I wasn’t impressed.

For starters, your recommendations were either missing, or incredibly vague. They weren’t actionable. “Develop more content surrounding your targeted keyword phrases”. “Improve your internal linking”. “Have you thought about infographics?” – are you for real? How are they supposed to move on those?

Somewhere along the line you forgot that clients don’t speak your language, don’t know what you know, don’t know why they should care and need to be handheld like 5 year olds.

The next place you screwed up was communicating your value. You sucked at showing them what they were getting for the cash they were paying you. You didn’t use visuals. You didn’t pick out specific and notable wins. Gosh, that’s too bad.

You also chose near-meaningless KPI’s – total overall traffic, time on site, total pages visited.
You never showed your client the money or the wins (conversions? Unbranded traffic? Total number of traffic driving keyword phrases?).

So I showed your client the holes in your work.

You got apathetic.

The problem wasn’t that you weren’t getting results. You were. But then you moved on, patting yourself on the back and writing up the case study.

You got to the “good enough” stage and stopped looking for ways to expand the campaign. Stopped looking for new niches and verticals. Stopped thinking about how you might drive new referral traffic. Stopped thinking about creative ways to increase your reach and conversions.

Newsflash: An SEO campaign is never “done” or “good enough”.  The site didn’t need to tank in the rankings; it just needed to stop capitalizing on the wealth of opportunities you weren’t thorough or caring enough to identify.

Your client cared, though. Especially when I showed them the niches you were invisible in. Rankings and traffic don’t need to drop for you to lose the trust of your clients. They just needed to see the greener pastures. So I put together a presentation outlining where their competition was beating them, and how they could play ball in those areas.

You screwed yourself from the very beginning.

Ah, this one is a favorite. There’s three ways you’ve been handing me clients.

First: You don’t educate your clients. You sell them something they don’t understand. You don’t explain the “Why” behind the “What”. They never understood what you were (or weren’t) doing until someone came along and explained how it all works. Wink wink, nudge nudge. You also didn’t educate them on an ongoing basis. A lot changes in a year.

Second: You failed to manage clients’ expectations. You sold them a cheap “package” and forgot to mention that the moon they felt was on order wasn’t going to arrive. You put their focus on the wrong things: rankings. Total number of links built. And so on, and so on. They thought they bought a #1 ranking. You never told them otherwise.

Third: You charged too little. Yup, that’s right. In a dash to get the client, you undercharged to land the account instead of charging what was necessary to actually get results. Combine that with the first two and it was a recipe for failure.

So I met with your client and explained how and why we only quote custom solutions. They loved it.

Your work was awful.

Thank you for not staying current. Thank you for not being strategic. Thank you for resorting to the link building fad of the day with no real regard for sustainability. Thank you for not knowing anything about content siloing, 301 redirects or canonical tags– and thank you for being completely oblivious to how the search engines were changing and evolving. Thanks for all those doorway pages and that enormously fat footer too.

All I had to do was wait for the next algorithm update, run a competitive ranking report and pick up the phone.

Don’t let it happen to you!

At the end of the day, I wanted this post to be a cautionary note to the SEO’s that I know and love out there. I want this to make you panic a little bit, pick up the phone and call your client – just to chat. I want it to make you go check the reports you’ve sent out over the past 3 months and see whether or not you’re committing the sins of vagueness, repetition and obscurity.

Because even when you’re on top of the world and your clients are getting killer results, it’s easy for someone else to come along and blow holes in your armor.

Keep communicating. Keep current. Keep innovating. Keep educating.
The minute you stop, you’re vulnerable.

Hey, I just wanna axe your client a few questions....

**Editor’s Note: Joel is a professional at client expropriation from the clutches of under-performing SEO’s. Unless you are prepared to service a client with measurable results, do not try this at home! ~ DR

As I forge my path in this world, there are some lessons I’ve learned along the way. Many of them were hard-learned and have helped me make wiser decisions later. Sometimes, all the wisdom and knowledge in the world can’t help you make a choice between good and better. When both options have merit, the decision is even harder to make.

In my 2nd favorite baseball movie (Eight Men Out slightly edges the #1 slot) Bull Durham, both Nuke and Crash have know-how and elbow grease for their sport. Ebby Calvin gets called up from the majors and Crash stays behind and holds it down for Bulltown. My story is a bit different, but I identify with both characters as they make their way in the game and in their lives.

Photo credit: http://thisdistractedglobe.com/2008/10/12/bull-durham-1988/

I’d been  grinding away in the minors, trying to build something for myself for the past few months.  Part time in-house, part -time agency, side clients and other small contracts were the makeup of my income and the source of greater stress than I encountered after being an in-house guy for the past several years. I don’t care for having to wear multiple hats of running my own business, but I do appreciate the independence from rote rat-racing and stringent corporate employee policies. Once things got too comfortable and no real way of growing without compromising quality, I decided to seek a challenge and one where I could grow and help a company grow as I’d done in the past with success. As if by willing it to happen, I got two calls. One from an incredible PR firm that offers me the chance to work on killer projects, and the other from a major player in real estate. The PR firm is very impressive, with talent and clients I want to work with, right here in Raleigh. The real estate outfit is Big Time like Peter Gabriel and is in my second city of San Francisco.

Both of these are options that if the other wasn’t presented, I’d have no issue taking. Either of them are sound financially and have room for me to grow and both are eager for my talent. I can go yard on a high-inside fastball and maybe hit the bull and win some steaks, or I can go show my stuff on the mound at Pac-Bell Park* and record K’s and W’s for the Giants.

What would Robert Frost Do? If alive today, he’d watch Bull Durham and write some post about how he can’t make up his mind…. and then realize how grateful he should be to have these opportunities, but then also realize how hard he’d worked to get those opportunities. Then he’d realize it was late and he needed to sleep on it some more.

*IDGAF what they call it now, it’s Pac-Bell Park to me. #nostalgia

Sea

When The Going Gets Weird, The Weird Do SEO!

Photo Credit: crinkle25

Whether you pursue your SEO activities with the most obstinate drive, or are as laid-back as can be, there is always plenty to be getting on with. Perhaps it’s time to find some inspiration and discover some new hobbies because, as challenging as SEO can be, there is a repetitious side to the job.
Here are some experimental techniques in keeping strong focus while fighting boredom. They are based primarily around creativity, with the focus very much indeed on the future and evolution of social media. So break free from the mould and embrace new forms of culture! Link building, guest posting and social media boosting will never be the same again!

The Keith Moon Course in Explosive Creativity

The legendary drummer for The Who was a notorious self-styled maniac; a detonator of drum kits, destroyer of hotel bedrooms, driver of vehicles into ponds, and general mayhem creator. How exactly could this chaos-loving lunatic be suitable for anyone’s approach to SEO?

Look beneath the surface of Moon’s insane behaviour and you find an incredible creative mind. As well as being a genius drummer, his lust for life and originality are what made him stand out. His sense of humour was also well known. Embrace his creative drive and transfer his unique take on things to improve your SEO; try something new and experiment with something unusual. Customers are (usually) impressed by a company with a sense of humour. This does not mean you have to start blowing stuff up, but engaging your customers with a genuine sense of fun would be advantageous. For example, get your company on Pinterest and put your vision across to the world. If you have a new range of printers to sell, take one to the nearest cafe and pretend to be meeting it for lunch. Photographs like this, based around “cute” factor and silly creativity, will get you noticed.

For inspiration listen to The Who: My Generation Live at Monterey Pop Festival

Beat Generation Inspiration

Here is your chance to take a trip back in time, to journey to the 1950s and discover a world of a free-wheeling fun and creativity; the jazz tinged, heavy drinking (it’s advisable you avoid this aspect if you want to stay employed!) world of the Beat Generation writers. Spearheaded by the likes of Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski and William Burroughs, their stream of consciousness style of writing became seminal and continues to inspire.

As with most of the suggestions on this list, the Beats were all about creativity. But they also championed free thinking, being in step with the modern way of things, and diversity. This is vital for any SEO practitioner to follow if they want to be a success. So is being ahead of the game, whilst embracing traditional practices. Being a contemporary, you will want to keep up with your peers! This means appearing impossibly cool – so sign up to Lady Gaga’s new social media network littlemonsters to stay with the game.

For further inspiration read Jack Kerouac’s On The Road or The Dharma Bums. Whilst you work listen to some Miles Davis’ music, such as A Kind of Blue.

Become a Sophisticate

Go upmarket and become a true sophisticate; listen to high brow compositions! Although often considered for “posh” or “old” people, you should listen to Mozart or Beethoven. Their music has inspired millions and there are no reasons why they shouldn’t lift you as you perform your duties. Beethoven’s 7th Symphony will make even a mundane backlink seem like the most dramatic mouse click in history.

You could also promote your company by heading over to gentlemint.com and become a member. Beard strokingly wonderful creative posts are but a step away.

For inspiration listen to Mozart – Concerto For Two Pianos, K 365; 3rd Movement.

We demand the finest SEO available to humanity!

Photo Credit: I Heart Withnail and I

Withnail and I remains one of the best films of all time. Although it has been sabotaged slightly by drunken students who seem to miss the point, the film is a cult classic and should be seen by all. The plot? Two unemployed actors take a break from their squalid London flat for a weekend in the country. Mild peril ensues, and so they return home. It’s the dialogue that makes the film, you understand.

The key to SEO is to drive traffic back to your website – you need to be memorable. The one thing Withnail and I has in abundance is memorable moments – its script is endlessly quotable (“We’ve gone on holiday by mistake!”), the scenes (fishing with a shotgun, stumbling drunk into a cafe of pensioners) will stay with you forever. Take some of its wisdom with you to your desk! Make your writing as sharp and witty as possible for your blog posts, be engaging, be cunning and try and gain positions over your rivals. It’s a competitive arena, the SEO world, and if you take the best of Withnail and I, you will come out of it a better practitioner.

For inspiration watch Withnail and I.

 Alex Morris works for Office Kitten in Manchester where he writes, researches and blogs on office stationery supplies. Follow him on twitter @csalexmorris

I like to define myself an industrial SEO. “Industrial” is referring to a music genre I like a lot, and SEO stands for “search engine optimization”. I was a molecular biologist until 2010, and then I became an SEO starting from March 2011.

How You Doin'?

One of the bands I listen to the most when I’m writing and working is Nine Inch Nails. If you don’t know it, well…you’re missing a lot. If you know it, you know that one of its greatest album (and one of the masterpiece of the entire music scene) is “The Downward Spiral”. I have to say, I listened to it a lot, especially when I started doing SEO. Remember: I did not know anything about it. So here is few things I learnt and I think about SEO world. Dedicated to all beginner SEOs around the world.

I take you where you want to go, I give you all you need to know

When you begin to do SEO, they keep telling you: you have to work in order to rank the site in the first position for a lot of keywords, so the user can find us. So you start reading a lot of posts and articles, and everyone seems to help you, to answer to all your questions, to give you the key of the success. Well, they DO NOT. They apparently are giving you all you need to know, but truth is you have to start experimenting and be able to risk something, proving yourself what’s working and what is not for you and your industry. Get your hands dirty: the only way you can learn something.

Hey pig, Nothing’s turning out the way I planned

Hey pig there’s a lot of things I hoped you could help me understand

What am I supposed to do I lost my shit because of you

Here’s what happens when you read a lot and you don’t try to experiment. You spend an incredible amount of time reading and thinking you know everything, but then nothing turned out the way you planned. And so you use forums and tweets to ask around why that technique did not work for you: well, because every case is different, and yours is for sure different from the case Rand Fishkin is saying in one of his whiteboard friday, for example.

Your God is dead and no one cares, If there is a Hell I will see you there

I like this sentence, because I always associated it to the “SEO is dead” topic. I don’t know if it’s dead or not, thing is for sure if you start from the beginning as I did, you have to consider yourself part of the whole online marketing strategy of your company. If you have to inform other departments on what you’re doing and who you are, and raise your voice. In a lot of companies, SEO is considered somehow the last important thing of the entire strategy. Well, learn to fight for what you’re doing. Plus, there are a lot of discussion about SEO, social media, SEO + social media: I don’t care who’s saying what, but working together with my social media and PR department brought me a lot of results, with less efforts and more amplification. To me being SEO right now means being involved in a lot of stuff, and not only the classical onpage and offpage stuff you read in the book. Sometimes it’s a hell, but it’s worth trying. 

I want to watch it come down

This is the part of my work when I have a better ranking position than my competitor. I mean, it’s not that you win the whole game yet, but it’s a big part of the excitement of my daily routine. It’s good to be above your competitor for a very important keyword, that means you did a great job (not always true), and it’s even helpful to show it to your big boss.

I drink the honey inside your hive, You are the reason I stay alive

This makes me think about how many SEOs are too serious about what they are doing. Don’t get me wrong: SEO is a fantastic world , with a lot of cool people, and in fact it’s one of the reason I really hope to keep working on this field. But I have the feeling some SEOs pay too much attention to this matter. For sure it’s a passion, but I think sometimes it’d be good to go out and drink beers rather than staying on twitter just to put before others the last post on Inbound. I mean, I see some cool SEOs who seem to do stuff just because they think they have to defend a reputation, because if they are not the first on commenting the last post, they are gonna lose a status. Don’t worry, get a life sometimes.

You had all of them on your side, didn’t you?

“Ruiner” is the perfect song to listen to when you want to write something that is different from the same things you read everyday about SEO. I follow a lot of SEOs who I like a lot because they are able to write about something that receives immediately a lot of complains and criticism. Yeah, because some people are reading always the same blogs, without having the curiosity to learn and try other stuff. My advice: keep on eye on the WHOLE SEO world, and remember that there are other cool resources apart from SEOmoz, HubSpot, SearchEngineLand… Be open-minded. Don’t be afraid. Try yourself what it’s working and what’s not.

The me that you know had some second thoughts

…and thanks God! it’s perfectly normal to have some second thoughts in SEO. You tried a thing and didn’t work like it does for John Doherty? NO PROBLEM. Tweet about it, talk with him, telling him why you think that thing is not working in your case. Don’t take every word big SEOs are saying like gold.

I fear I’m the only one who thinks this way

Again, no problem. It’s all cool. You can learn a lot and maybe you can share something new with community. A lot of beginner SEOs are feeling the pressure not to be as cool as people like Rand Fishkin or Michael King, but we are here to help each other out and learn new stuff everyday. So share, be ready to accept all kind of criticism, but don’t be afraid either!

Nothing can stop me now

NOPE. Everything can stop you know. When you think you have found a new way of creating links, then it’s the exact moment to try a different approach. Why? Because it can start not to work and then you are screwed. So this sentence is both true and false. You don’t have to stop because there’s a lot of stuff to learn and try, and this is because everything can stop you. Don’t be too much self confident. Everything is evolving.

A warm place

One of the first thing I learned about SEO is that there are amazing people out there welcoming you, clearing your doubts and helping you to understand better what search engine optimization is all about. So yeah, I wanna thank all the SEOs are helping me to become a better SEO everyday (I know, I’m an ass-kisser) and all those SEOs not talking to me because I’m under their radar, because they are teaching me exactly what I don’t wanna be.

Erase me

SEO can be really hard. A lot of stuff to do every day, struggling days and days and maybe not achieving any good result, or not the result they want from you. You do stuff and then you start seeing results after months. Reports, posts, articles, presentations, charts, tools….sometimes you need to erase yourself from the face of the earth. Because you need a mental break, so to start stronger the day after.

I now know the depths I reach are limitless

I simply like this song and this sentence. Reference to SEO? NOPE. just wanna write this sentence somewhere.

Problems do have solutions, you know

This is great, when you are an SEO. Everytime Google is announcing a change or whatever (let’s say every second), SEOs and inbound marketers start complaining saying Google is a bitch, and Google is not more the one it used to be. I agree sometimes, and I have to say many things people is complaining about I don’t understand because I am a newbie SEO so I don’t know a lot of stuff. BUT I do think that instead of complaining all the time (becoming even annoying at some point), it’s better to try a solution, whatever solution it could be, and react. Problems do have solutions, you know?

You read all this? WOW, well, thanks a lot. I just wanna conclude this journey with this:

If I could start again, a million miles away

I would keep myself, I would find a way

That’s the right approach to every challenge SEO is presenting to you. You can make mistakes, that’s the way human beings evolve most of the time. Don’t be afraid to be wrong, don’t be afraid of criticism.

If you like what I wrote, leave a comment. If you didn’t enjoy, please leave a comment full of insults. But in any case, go and give a listen to “The Downward Spiral” by Nine Inch Nails. An album optimized for everyone.

About the Author: Alessio Madeyski, industrial SEO. Born in Italy, working in Berlin. Check out more of his thoughts on SEO here http://www.alessiomadeyski.com and follow him @madeale.

As a solo artist of search marketing services, one can find themselves in need of tools for project management and online collaboration. The good folks at GetApp.com have made the search for the best apps to fit your team’s needs with a comparison model on their site. It contains a feature comparison and even reviews from real users. Check it out if you are looking for an alternative to what you are currently using or if you need to find the best project management tools for your small business.

While I was looking for something to replace Basecamp for my needs, I came across their superb infograhic that provided me a fair amount of information on 24 other online project management tools that I’d never heard of before. I still haven’t made a final decision, but Zoho, 5PM and Doolphy seem to fit the needs of my team the best.

What made this experience less of a headache than it normally could be, was the wealth of information on each software. The ability to quickly scan the features and advantages of each app is something I’ll use when we decide we’ve outgrown our current CRM. I was impressed with the reviews as well, it kinda reminds me of the user reviews on Demonoid. Everyone will let you know if it’s a dud or if there are hidden benefits to a certain tool over others (like email service or CRM integration). Overall, I would recommend using getapp.com to help you make informed decisions about spending your small business dollars on solid pieces of your core infrastructure. (Click the infographic to see full size)

Online Project Management Software