Business Management Consultant - Stuntdubl Search and Marketing Consulting

It is with anticipation and a bit of sadness that I will be leaving We Build Pages to pursue a new career. Unfortunately, the direction of the business is not inline with my personal and professional goals at this time, and therefore I feel I must move on. Now before you hooligans get all uppity and looking for some drama, I would like to let you know that I still hold the highest regard for Jim Boykin and the We Build Pages team, but don’t see our future growth going in the same directions. I have had a great time here in upstate NY working with great people that really know how to do SEO. I’m very dedicated to branching out in marketing areas beyond SEO, however, and have decided it is time to explore new opportunities.

As far as the near term future is concerned, I will be taking a little bit of time off to weigh my options while doing some consultancy work. I’m open to mutually beneficial opportunities at this point, but probably won’t decide on my future plans until sometime into May or June at the earliest. I’m looking forward to continuing my growth as an internet marketing professional through consulting, sales, and a variety of SEM related activities.

So, in conclusion, I loved working at WeBuildPages and I think they have an excellent thing going. Jim Boykin will continue to be at the forefront of SEO research, and excel at getting clients top rankings. It was a personal decision based in part on some personal issues, but mostly I just wanted a change of pace for a bit. I am excited to take a bit of time off and then move in a different direction, and wish Jim and staff nothing but the best with their future endeavors. A huge thank you to them all for making the experience a very pleasant one.

If you’ve been lollygagging around like me, not reading up on all the new up and comers, Rand and Kat of SEOMoz have just saved you a helluva lotta time through the creation of their web 2.0 awards. Not only did they roundup 300 websites in 38 different categories, they also interviewed with the founders of 22 of the winning sites. This is a pretty amazing piece of research, that has obviously taken a lot of time and dedication to put together. Do yourself a favor, and soak up all the knowledge they’ve collected with the Web 2.0 Awards.

10. You can say you know Aaron Wall and Rand.
9. Because most people will never “get it” and that’s a good thing.
8. Everybody’s an expert because even the most experienced have only done it about 10 years.
7. You get to read Matt’s “seo blog”
6. You’ve experienced a “google dance”
5. Top 10 listings
4. You travel on a national or world tour “for work”.
3. This is not a bubble.
2. Everyone loves web 2.0 and it’s impossible to not make money with even a little SEO knowledge

1. It’s fun to be the hero!

1. It doesn’t exist outside it’s own sphere
2. Forum drama and valid paranoia (sometimes they ARE watching)
3. Incompetent creative teams, illiterate content writers, and bad coders
4. Too much back biting blogger bullshit and snake oil peddaling.
5. Unreasonable expectations
6. When no one knows or understands the strategy.
7. Poor communication and organization
8. Rodney Dangerfield gets more respect
9. Rougue bots
10. Web hosts

From some recent discussions, I’ve learned that it’s good to have a sense of humor and be able to handle a little self deprecation, constructive criticism, and even the occassional excessive sensationalism.

I hope most of your SEO experience doesn’t make you laugh at the below. Don’t get mad at me if you don’t like them…get mad at the guy I guy I stole them from, doing a find and replace for “lawyers” and if you republish give him a link too. I stole them because I’m a shady worthless criminal.

SEO is not a crime, it’s just misunderstood, and we just like to joke about things like big ideas on occasion.

SEO Jokes

• SEOs are safe from the threat of automation taking over their professions. No one would build a robot to do nothing.
• If it weren’t for SEOs, we wouldn’t need them.
• Talk is cheap…until SEOs get involved.
• It is the trade of SEOs to question everything, yield nothing, and to talk by the hour.
  –Thomas Jefferson
• How was copper wire invented?
  Two SEOs were arguing over a penny.

• Two SEOs were walking along negotiating a case. “Look,” said one, “let’s be honest with each other.” “Okay, you first,” replied the other. End of discussion.

• SEOs are the only profession where the more there are, the more are needed!
• Old SEOs never die, they just lose their rankings.
• What are SEOs good for?
  They make used car salesmen look good.
• What do you call 100 SEOs at the bottom of the ocean?
  A good start!
• What do you call 25 skydiving SEOs?
  Skeet.
• What does molds, ooze, pond scum and SEOs have in common?
  They’re all slime.
• What does pond scum have more of than SEOs?
  Respect.
• What is the definition of a shame (as in “gee, that’s a shame”)?
  When a tour bus full of SEOs goes over a cliff.
  What is the definition of a “crying shame”?
  There was an empty seat on the bus.
• What is the difference between pigs and SEOs?
  You can learn to respect a pig.
• What’s the difference between SEOs and vampires?
  Vampires only suck blood at night.
• Why did New Jersey get all the toxic waste and California all the SEOs?
  New Jersey got first pick .
• Why do they bury SEOs 20 feet under?
  Because deep down, they’re really good people.
• Why don’t hyenas eat SEOs?
  Even hyenas have some dignity.
• How many SEOs does it take to shingle a roof?
  About 3 1/2, but you need to slice them pretty thin.
• It has been discovered that SEOs are the larval stage of politicians.
• Why should SEOs wear lots of sunscreen when vacationing at a beach resort?
  Because they’re used to doing all of their lying indoors.
• Why won’t sharks attack SEOs?
  Professional courtesy.
• The problem with SEOs jokes is that most SEOs don’t think they are funny, and most people don’t understand that they’re just jokes!

Since I basically suck at coding, I keep borking my wordpress template breaking comments. For all those kind enough to comment, they are now back. Gonna try not to experiment without backups or knowledge from now on. Thanks to a very good developer discussion is back in action again.

Download the new free beta Performancing Metrics here.

I really like stats and most other webmasters and SEO’s do as well. Stable positive stats over time is one of the nicest things we can hope for. While Performancing Metrics is geared more strictly towards bloggers, the need for reliable, granular data is the same.

Nick Wilson agreed to answer a few questions for me in regard to their new offering.

Firstly, Nick, what it is the differentiation factor of your stats packages versus others for blog performance software?

Well, we thought we’d miss out on the usual web2.0 hype of releasing something half baked via invite only and simply release a professional grade application specifically designed for pro bloggers that simply worked, and was available to all.

One of the main differences, is the fact that users can track as many blogs as they wish, and even track entire blog networks, or start a blog network using the system. The actual aggregated view of blog networks is not in the system yet, but it’s coming, hopefully in a week or two.

How important is statistics tracking to a professional blogger?

For some pro bloggers it’s extremely important. Being able to see how different blogs perform and how advertising performs on a blog is essential to managing a successfull income via blogging.

Having said that though, for some pro bloggers, it will simply something to help them understand how readers are finding them, and how different types of posts work in terms of participation (comments).

There’s something for most types of pro blogger, but equally we’re not a one size fits all — we’re geared toward high traffic commercial blogs, not small private blogs. There are other packages available that are better suited to some types of blogger.

What is your favorite feature thus far?

The search engine details page. I’m learning a lot, I dont like log analysers as it just seems like too much work, but looking at a web page with a whole bunch of SE info is cool.

The service has seemed to scale well, with well over 500 users in the first day of launch. What is the platform of the system?

The platform is LAMP, with some serious customization. The server setup was designed specifically for the purpose of serving thousands of blogs without slowdown to page load on the user side.

I think this is a good time to mention that you guys put the tracking code very last part of the page. This showed great forward thinking, as this way if there ever ARE slowdowns, you are not taking the user’s site down as well. I know there have been some recent issues with G analytics because they place their tracking code in the head tag which has created some downtime issues for some when the Google tracking service timed out.

I’m sure they’ll work that out, they’re a fairly clever bunch over
there.

Are there any upgrades coming in the relative future that you’d like to comment on, or rather, what are your pet peeves that you really hope the developers work on soon?

Tons of stuff. Mostly little things that are starting to show now we have a larger user base giving feedback. Many of them have now been fixed and we’ll be rolling out an update later today, but what I’m really waiting for is the public viewing options, and full blog network
functionality.

What is some of the future opportunity in the blog marketing metrics space that you’re hoping to do business and do business with others?

We’ve always been headed toward some kind of advertising solution for bloggers, and we hope to have that spec’d out shortly as the next stage in the companys development. As per our core philosophy, we’ll build the base, and our community will help shape the final product.

Can you tell us how you plan to use any of the data gathered from the
tool, or sum up the privacy policy briefly (for us tin foil hat types)?

The privacy policy will be online later today, but essentially it says “you cant sue us, but it’s cool, cos’ we ain’t gonna do nuffin bad anyway ok?”.

Okay, but I know you’re a tin-foil conspiracy theorist about data collection and storage sometimes as well (along with many of your current and former readers at TW) - Personally, I’d be much more likely to not worry about Performancing dipping into my niches, than I would be of the larger players scooping up the traffic in a large percentage of a vertical market, but the question remains - Why should I (or others for that matter) trust you with our important metrics data?

You shouldn’t. This service isn’t aimed at seo’s. Any SEO that thinks Performancing Metrics will help her do her job needs to go back and start all over again.

If you’re an SEO, or a webmaster working with Ecommerce sites, spend the money on a high end log analysis package, not a free blog orientated stats service.

Thanks as always Nick for your extreme candor and insights. Congrats on a successful beta-launch, and I look forward to sustainable, solid, valid metrics. I hope that many others will take advantage of this great service you’re offering.

Thanks Todd, always nice to speak with you!

You can get your copy of Performancing Metrics here.

Other discussions on Performancing Metrics:

• Lowdown on Performancing Metrics at Top Rank Blog
• Search Engine Journal
• Problogger.net