Business Management Consultant - Stuntdubl Search and Marketing Consulting

“You’re not a true SEO until you’ve been banned at least once!”" - not sure who gets original credit for this one…most likely Boser, Oilman or perhaps Jake.

Anyone who has pushed the bleeding edge of search engine optimization has had a site go greybar, or just totally tank from the SERPs. It really sucks. Sometimes it’s worth a reinclusion request, and sometimes it’s best to keep walking and never look back. Bannings are a very interesting phenomena that don’t get discussed often except by those who are proud to be blackhat. Fortunately, it’s not a problem I’ve had to deal with for personal sites, but I seem to have been getting requests for consulting from a lot of folks who managed to get themselves banned lately, and I wanted to put together some information on the subject. I would like to try to open up a discussion for a few of my own pressing questions including:

• How can you tell when your site has been banned?
• When is it a ban? Filter? Penalty? When is it just poor optimization or the sandbox?
• What percentage of bannings are hand bans vs. algorithmic collateral damage?
• Will the search engines admit to doing hand editing for quality control?
• How can you best prevent a site from incurring the wrath of a banning while still pushing the bleeding edge of search engine optimization?
• What are the best practices for reinclusion if your important or branded domain gets popped

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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

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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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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Affiliate marketing is an awesome opportunity for those who are self-motivated. Brand your affiliate program as the best out there for your industry. In my mind, affiliate marketing is the retail distribution channel of the virtual world. I sometime wish I fell into the self-motivated category more often to create a fleet of affiliate sites for myself, but I stay with the security of bein’ a SEO consultant. The affiliate realm has really become an entity onto itself, and takes dedication to stay up to date with changes. Understand how affiliates work.

I recently had a former client who had set up an affiliate program with Shareasale write and ask how he could more actively promote his affiliate program. Again, it made me realize that a program will only be as successful as it’s affiliates, and the pareto principle definitely comes into play (meaning 90% of your sales will come from 10% of your people). If your program doesn’t stand out, you won’t be remarkable. Attracting the right people and keeping them motivated is critical to the success of an affiliate marketing program. Creating working relationships with good synergy is key as well. If you sell peanut butter, partner with a site that sells jelly. Make it EASY for those around you to make money, and they will often try to reciprocate. Work with your affiliates to get rankings and sales.
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Okay, the title is a hoax. You caught me. I’m a liar who likes to tell stories. There is no “magic formula for website success”. There are only best practices. As a search engine marketer (SEO/ SEM..whatever you want to call it), we are really moving towards being project managers (yes, I harp about this all the time). As a project manager, you have to understand how all the tools at your disposal work, and how they could work better. I’m going to tell you exactly what best practices *I* would use as a guide for marketing a retail (or better yet manufacturer) website online.

Assumptions:

• You have a worthwhile product
• You have exceptional profit margins
• You have a well trained, enthusiastic staff that is willing to work and learn
• You have a plan for growth
• You are willing to change when necessary
• You have a qualified web development team
• You have someone who will handle link development and PPC

10 marketing strategies that matter

Months 1 - 3

Month 1 - Planning
Spend the first month planning. Document and consider every angle to your marketplace. Define your unique selling points. Devise ways you can be remarkable by your customers. Brainstorm and write down EVERY idea in your head that is even remotely related to your new online business. Write down keywords. Start organizing your ideas and writing copy for your pages. Delegate responsibilities to your staff. Start dividing up the work.
Compleat guide to SEM I
Compleat guide to SEM II

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