Business Management Consultant - Stuntdubl Search and Marketing Consulting

Why it’s tough to hire SEO staff
-Good SEO’s know with affiliate marketing makes it easy to make more
-freelance web design and development makes one man project management a reality
-it’s cheaper offshore (making profitability and scalability tough)
-billable hours are no fun, and employees know the value of their work
-working for someone else is no fun – good people like their independence
-it’s expensive to be wrong
-Requires a diverse skillset
-It’s a seller’s market

• SEM recruiting resources from Lee
• Discussion at SEW
• Hiring SEO professionals - WMW
• The Challenge in hiring SEMers - SEW
• Meta-webmastering - skills needed by SEO’s
• Rob Murray talks about the difficulty of hiring SEM staff
• 8 essential skills to a search engine marketer.
• Best use of time affiliate vs. consulting
• Recruiters are desperate enough to send out uninformed requests like link requests.

Core Skills to SEO
An Understanding of:
-Business (Marketing, Management, Accounting)
-Art (Design, Development, Usability)
-Science (Economics, Statistics, Psychology)

Someone smart enough to know these things is smart enough to figure out what they can makein the open market. Your most likely not going to convince them to work for long at less than they are “worth”. I’m sure there will be an overabundance of psychology, design, and information management graduates flooding the marketplace in the next few year though to help create less of a demand for fresh meat (similar to what happend with web design).

Okay folks, there are only so many free tools out there available. For the time being, I’m pretty much out of ideas. If you have ideas for tool lists (or would like to do a tool list) feel free to let me know. At some point, I’ll go back through and redo some of the lists in the compiled internet marketing tools archive, but for now I will just release the occasional tool as I come accross it.

*Blatant self promo - In the meantime, my favorite and most useful tool is the We Build Pages Cool SEO Tool. Here’s a slew of other SEO Tools as well.

I received an e-mail from a kind gent in the UK this morning in regards to his take on the “sandbox” and his summmation of it. I asked if he would like to have it “guest posted” here as I thought it quite insightful. He has posted at WMW in the excellent thread there as well (*note supporter’s forum thread).

Thanks Calum, I’m sure your Team Building site will do quite well with your excellent knowledge of current algorithms (of course now it’s associated with a known SEO site you realize ;)).

Many of Calum’s observations were inspired by the Coffee Talk with Matt Cutts.

Guest Sandbox/ Trustbox post:

A sandbox is not a penalty or even a ‘thing’ - it’s a collection of filters
in G’s algo that causes a site (not a page) to not rank well for a period of
time (and it’s usually felt worst by sites that are):

1. released for the first time
(other sites affected are expired domains, and domains that have their originating registered dates changed - I think).

So what filters are we talking about then? This is for me the most important first question for us to address:

2. Filters are applied to certain keywords, and not to others.

They are usually the competitive commercial/business keywords. If your site is about an obscure non-commercial subject, then you’re likely to escape the sandbox.

3. Filters are usually applied for 6 months, but can be applied for up to 2 years.
If you make some changes (discussed in this thread) they may only last a couple or so weeks…

4. Filters will look for behaviour of SEO’s or spamsters
and will be applied if a site shows certain tell-tale signs of being optimised. So this is where the discussion got interesting (for me). So what are SEO’s to do for new sites?

4.1 Talked about getting listed in lots of directories as one.

4.2 Also talked about getting general directories rather than specific niche directories that are highly relevant to your product and service offering.

4.3 Talked about getting links from sites that are known to sell links.
An important distinction needs to be made here - the 2nd post from DaveN (linked to in this thread) hinted to me at certain paid advertising not being picked up as a bad neighbourhood. What follows is guesswork at this stage - my guess would be sites that are reputable and perhaps expensive to buy links from. So perhaps sites that have not been identified by G as link sellers worthy link penalties. Another previous post talked about making sure that the first few links you gather are all quality links that are on topic. This gives G the indication that your site is ‘really’ covering the topic you say it is covering, and that you’re not doing SEO work to get it ranked.

The danger is getting associated in what is being nicknamed a “bad neighbourhood”. So if enough credible trusworthy people say that you’re also
a credible trustworthy person, then hey, in G’s eyes you probably are a credible trustworthy person! This points to effective marketing, press releases, one way links. (it’s the ‘etc’ I’d love to know more about ;))

4.4 Talked about getting lots of traffic as something that can not only keep you out of the sandbox, but a definite proven method to get you out once you are in!
So again, this points to effective marketing. Also mentioned that the idea as to whether this needs to be sustained traffic, or whether G only looks for a short time and then stops the filter watch on your new site. No one has answered this questions yet, so we’re left to guess. Of course we would prefer to get a continued stream of traffic rather than one initial boost followed by little… The focus it appears to be then for a new site is that you don’t look to the SE’s for good traffic, but rather that you look towards non SE methods of pulling in the visitors.

4.5 Of course a good by-product of getting an authority site to send you initial traffic is that they often lead to your gathering a number of OWL’s
from other sites.
Eg. Prweb article gets picked up by Y and G newsfeeds and in turn these 3 sites will be read by thousands. This could lead to your site either being republished online by other news sites, or just in webmasters giving you a link because they like your article. So between the lines something that probably has an impact is your gathering natural looking OWL (one way links) after getting the quality link.

4.6. Looks like there’s not just 1 site that can keep you out of the sandbox - it’s best to have a handful. Dmoz alone can’t do it.

——–End guest post———-

While I could certainly debate certain points of Calum’s speculation, I think to do so would detract from a nice piece of work. Thanks mate.

“There’ll be no Fockers in my circle of trust”
Bob Deniro - Meet the Parents.

“Trust is earned not given”

Time + Trust = High Quality Indications for relevance

Why there is no sandbox there is only trustbox

1. Trust is earned not given
2. It’s easy to break trust
3. It’s difficult to regain trust once it’s broken

The Sandbox
is:

• a myth perpetuated by the uninformed
• an Adwords keyword tool
• over dependence on simplistic variables
• baggage from failed SEO’s
• misrepresented; and should be put to sleep

The Trustbox
Speculation on quality relevant site indicators:

• A high likelihood for being quality from quality references - multiple quality references
• Uses sampled user data to verify integrity
• Has checks and balances for quality control threshholds
• Sustained, consistent, natural growth
• Language similarity, reading comprehension and grammar checks to verify integrity
• Improves over time - broken trust is tough to re-earn but takes more to break trust over time
• Being noisy doesn’t make you trustworthy
• Trust is natural and not synthetized - it’s fuzzy and ambigiuous

How do you break into the trust box (out of the sandbox)?

You don’t. You earn a position in it. You’re owed nothing by the trust box until you’ve earned your trust. If you violate the trustbox you are owed nothing once again. You can choose 10 ways to get rich quick or you can earn trust through paced practice over time.

Link development is not dead…you just need ninjas, not monkeys and father time on your side. Market friction creates balance and stabilized quality.

Relative trust
Trust is relative to:

• the industry
• the individual
• the information
• the intent

Think of the people in life you trust most and why. Now apply those concepts to websites.

DaveN’s advice is to “stop thinking like an SEO”.

Trustbox references:

• Aaron coins the trustbox
• Definitive guide to the trustbox err…sandbox
• TW
• Link development is dead
• ‘Experts’ Claiming to Beat the Box **Supporter’s forum WMW thread

Tags: Trustbox, Sandbox, SEO

The Webmasterworld conference in Las Vegas was great as usual. Thanks to all the people who made for enjoyable conversations (you know who you are). Special thanks to Brett and company who always put on a great show, and to our gracious Grand Canyon tour guide who was as passionate about the national parks as we are about internet marketing. I’m glad I made it back alive (barely), and with some fun new friends, business contacts, and a headfull of new knowledge.

As mentioned, I presented on a couple sessions including the link purchasing process - how to become a link ninja. Jim presented on link neighborhoods, and we launched our new Link Ninjas Link Development Training Classes which will feature special guest Aaron Wall of SEO Book fame. Our first class will be held on January 18th and 19th. If you give really would like to visit the We Build Pages offices and come away with some great information to market your site, here’s your chance - We’re giving away 10 free passes to a chosen few to launch the new service.

You should definitely consider attending if:

You are a small business website owner

• to cancel your yellow page ads
• to get back at your competition
• to finally get some ROI on your site

You do web design or development

• to add value for your clients
• to add an additional revenue stream
• to improve YOUR business

You are in the marketing department:

• to make the most out of your media buys
• to take off your suit for a day and wear something comfortable
• to learn why you’re spending money in the wrong places
• to optimize your budgets with new media opportunities

You own a SEO company

• to learn to do it better
• Links are a LARGE part of the SEO equation
• We have an abundance mentality and will SHARE
• We’re not total altruists – We want savvy link
  partners too!

There are plenty of other good reasons to become a link ninja, but it would make this post way too long and I’m not a fan of the hard sell. You will get your money’s worth, and figure out how to market your site more effectively through proper link development.

So why ninjas you may ask?

• Ninjas train hard.
• Ninjas are focused.
• Ninjas fight hard.
• Ninjas know how to use their weapons.
• Ninjas use their strengths of speed
  and stealth to their advantage.
• Ninjas use their environment to their
  advantage.
• Ninjas know and respect their competition.
• Ninjas are just plain cool - Seriously, what’s cooler than
  a guy in a business suit with a bluetooth headset, laptop, sword and throwing stars?

If you can’t make it for training this time, we will be doing monthly sessions, so watch for future dates. Also stop by the link development dojo for some good discussions and news on the wonderful world of link development.

I’ll be playing catch-up here for a while and preparing for SES Chicago where I’ll be presenting on the My SEM Toolbox and Developing Your SEM Niche sessions, as well as our upcoming classes. It would be nice to get a bit of work done as well, and perhaps even stop to eat and sleep a bit.

Well, the trip officially kicks off tomorrow at 6a.m. Pubcon X is guaranteed to be a great time filled with a ton of new business opportunities. The vibe when you get hundreds of idea riddled geeks and marketing folks together in that small of an area is truly electric.

Jim will be speaking on “link building campaigns” with Bill Hartzer and Eric Ward.

I’ll be speaking on the “Organic Site Clinic” with Bruce Clay, Aaron Wall, and Todd Friesen as well as on the “Paid Link Advertising” session with Patrick Gavin, Roger Montti, Philip Kaplan, and Todd again.

We have a pretty cool announcement that we’ve been saving for the show. Hoping it goes over well, as it’s something many folks could benefit from.

It’s going to be an extra long trip, as we are staying near by to do some consulting work as well. Since I am pretty much a work-aholic this is about as close as I get to a vacation, so I probably won’t write much. I’m sure Barry and company will have plenty of coverage for everyone.

Oh boy. This should be fun. From his take no prisoners candor at conferences to his “asshole of the week” award on webmasterradio, Greg is never lacking for entertainment value (and SEO knowledge for that matter). Thanks to Oilman for breakin’ the news.