Business Management Consultant - Stuntdubl Search and Marketing Consulting

At the WMW conference in New Orleans, I had the privilege of speaking on the “linking on a dime” panel (presentation here), and learned that public speaking most certainly cannot kill you (or at least it didn’t this particular time). The opportunity gave me a chance to step back and evaluate my personal strategy on link development, and how it could all tie together as a a cohesive plan of action. I think I tricked Barry and made coverage a bit difficult, by using pictures instead of bulletpoints a la Seth Godin in “Really Bad Powerpoint”, so I’d like to re-introduce some of the ideas that I introduced sputtering and stuttering in my major public speaking debut.

My over-riding theme for the presentation was “balancing the link equation”, to which I would like to write a bit today. My thesis here being that there is most certainly definite guidelines and thresholds to maximize the value of your linkage data. An early example of this was using optimal anchor text and a lot of it. As this technique became abused, SE’s implemented some types of filters for this technique. If you went over this threshhold your link equation was out of balance and your rankings suffered accordingly. (more…)

The Search Marketing Association of North America is a relatively new project being headed up by Ian Mcanerin of SEW fame among others. Having got a chance to speak in depth with Ian on the way to the Google dance, I’m sure this association is in for good things. It gives independant consultants and those of us who like to maintain a little “less corporate” identity an alternative to SEMPO. Ian mentioned it being more of a “bottom up” approach to attracting SEO/SEM’s than the “top down” approach of SEMPO. Since I like rooting for the little guy, I am a card-toting member of the SMA as of about a week prior to SES.

Since Rand was willing to dish out a little link love, I will offer the same for a good cause. If you write me in the next week, I will feature a post about those that joined up and e-mailed me as well. You can do it for the links, or you can just do it to support a good group of people.

Thanks to Ian for helping to provide an alternative for those of us without huge budgets for membership dues. Apparently, the organization has a good sense of humor as well.

Tags: Search Marketing, Search Engine Optimization

I thought the regurgitated internet marketing news section of the site was worth mentioning again. While I don’t post to the main site as often as I’d like, I do update the news pretty much daily. It’s turned out pretty well, and at the very least it keeps my from posting the same news articles that you can get on 3,000 other websites that start to clutter your RSS reader as badly as your e-mail box. I’m really trying to only post original content to this site for the most part (must…resist….urge….to aggregate).

Anyhow, you can subscribe to the feed, and find out the top reads that I come accross in my daily perusal of sites. You can also sign up and post stuff if you are really so inclined, or just catch the top reads for the day on the side of the main site. I will keep “secondary news” to the news section, and only post mostly original thoughts to the main site. Don’t be a search news regurgitator.

Tags: Internet Marketing, SEO News, Internet Marketing News

Informational Bootstrapper Tools

For those just getting their SEO business started, there are a multitude of free tools available to help. If you are a up and coming SEO consultant the true value in these tools is developing the ability to disseminate the information available from them into a plan of action for your clients. The value for the creators of these tools is in links you give them because you are so overjoyed they are available for free (don’t forget to spread them a little link love).

As an SEO consultant, there is a variety of information that you need information that needs to be accessible at a moment’s notice. You need to have access to this information quickly to diagnose problems with a site through a mental checklist. A consultant that is familiar with the majority of the search algorithm variables will be able to identify potential problems and solutions in a fairly short amount of time. Below is the tool list that I presented at the “My SEM Toolbox” session at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose.

You can download the entire presentation in HTML or Powerpoint as well. If you were at the session, I would definitely love to hear your comments or constructive criticisms. Hopefully, once I get a chance to wade through my mountains of e-mail I will have a chance to post some of my conference take-aways. Thanks to everyone I got a chance to talk to. There are truly some brilliant minds in our industry.
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Really big thanks to Danny for givin’ me a shot to speak on My SEM Toolbox. I think I’ve got a slew of nice tools that should really help people out (they’re all free tools too!). If you’ll be in San Jose, be sure to grab me and say hi. It’s always a blast to get together with folks and talk SEO with people who actually “get it”. I’ll be sure to post a link my presentation after we get back.

Tags: SES, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Strategies, SES San Jose

It appears to me some folks in this industry are so emotionally attached to that little green gauge on the Google toolbar, the mere thought of dismissing it as having nothing more than novelty value (which I do) is deemed almost sacrilegious.

Ladies and gentlemen, get a grip on yourselves! Don’t be afraid. Let go of your little, green security blanket. It’ll be all right. Trust me — I’m a search engine marketer.
- Mike Grehan

PageRank. My guilty pleasure. I know toolbar PR (TBPR) means next to nothing, but I still sneak secret glimpses in it’s direction on many an occasion. I longingly reminisce when I see my PR rise for the days when there were a direct correlation to my rankings. More importantly, I use the the conceptual value of what PR has come to be known as to more effectively explain link popularity to those just starting to wrap their mind around the fact that text links help search rankings. There has been so much hullabaloo over those pretty green pixels in the last few years, that the mere mention of it will definitely get you some quite opinionated answers. I’ve been holding onto mine for a while, and figured it was about time for a little rant.
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