Sometimes, you have to jump at opportunities even if it means you personally won’t reap the benefits. If you don’t you may never see your vision come to light. This year I lucked into such an opportunity. I had hired a very talented team of SEO’s and developers to build a network of websites for my employer. While we did pretty good at building the traditional sites that my company was familiar with, we were missing our killer app. We had nothing that set us apart from the many, many competitive sites in our industry. The main challenge we faced was that we didn’t have a core community website that we could use to leverage trust and authority from the search engines. This authority site had to be unique, and it couldn’t just be another blog, forum, or directory. Those are all done and dated already. We needed a different type of site. As I’ve faced this exact challenge in the past with many different clients, it’s no surprise I already had an idea for the type of site we’d need that would bring the power and authority to get the rankings we were after. Now was the time to build it, even if it means that I’d be giving my prized idea to my company as intellectual property. But, that’s part of why they hired me, to bring all my ideas that can benefit us directly and put them on the table.

I did some research and discovered it would cost us almost six figures to purchase the licensing and custom development for the type of site that I wanted to build. So I talked it over with my developers and did a quick feasibility analysis. This could be done! I told my team that this was a second priority to any other projects they were assigned. I have some brilliant developers. They were able to conquer all my projects ahead of schedule, beating my most unrealistic expectations for deadlines. They built facebook app after facebook app, all the top priority sites in queue, and a lot of single one-off projects from me and from corporate. I have worked with a lot of great developers in the past, but these two have truly shown me they are two of the best. So with a lot of projects cleared off the board, and an initiative to focus only on projects that would benefit us in SEO, I gave the guys a greenlight to work full-time on the project.

This week we are ready to launch the main project, and it’s supporting sister sites, to the public as beta. I’ll be posting about it soon as an official announcement. Stay tuned!

BTW – As much as I honor my development team in this post, I can’t say enough about the fantastic marketers that I have that make up the rest of my team! They too are brilliant, motivated, and bring a very unique set of skills and talents that contributes to the unique nature of the team. Some of our projects haven’t panned out exactly like planned, but it isn’t because of a lack of trying or lack of talent. The industry we are in is truly a bitch and very competitive. But, with the launch of our new project, I expect some great things from the result of an entire-team marketing effort in a very short amount of time. So, as before, stay tuned!

You see, I’d watch in agony each week as the kids who won would run through Toys-R-Us and make the same mistakes over and over. They’d all do the same thing: with huge eyes, they’d frantic their shopping cart through the store filling it with things like bikes, skateboards, basketballs, huge stuffed animals, radio control cars, and other huge items. I swear one time a kid tried to stick a trampoline in his shopping cart. Watching these kids would frustrate me because they were doing it wrong! They get to keep everything they could squeeze into one cart. If only they had my strategy, they could have gotten all those toys and more. My plan was pretty simple to. If I were on the show, I’d run straight to the baseball cards and fill the cart until it was overflowing. I could then maximize the space in my shopping cart with some of the smallest, yet highest valued items in the store.  I wouldn’t need to run all the many aisles, I could maximize my full 5 minutes in a single spot. After I took home my loot, I’d open all the packs, sort them out, create a few sets, and resell those sets plus the highest valued singles back to my local baseball card dealers (there were many in the 80′s and early 90′s). With the money, I’d return back to Toys-R-Us and get the toys I wanted and still have a lot of money left over.

As my friends know, I’ve always been a entrepreneur geek. Sure I enjoyed making money, but what I enjoyed most was optimizing a little-known process (which could also be thought of as exploiting a loophole or exploiting the system). My career choices are pretty much par for the course from my humble beginnings. As a Search Engine Optimizer and Social Marketer, I look for ways to “optimize” the experience for my clients. I make their website more suitable for success within search engines and social networks. Back 3 to 5 years ago, I was simply exploiting holes in Google’s algorithm. These days I play their game, but still have many opportunities to leverage social networks like Twitter, reddit, StumbleUpon, and Facebook in the process.

I enjoy it. It’s fun to be able to make changes and see how it affects the traffic coming into the site. I’ve been on the tipping point for a few months with one of my sites, and I think we are about to release a product (another website) that will soon push it over the edge and give me the results I’ve been looking for for so long. One downside to this business is that it can be entirely frustrating to not get the results you were hoping for as soon as you want. But when you do achieve success, it is very rewarding. So I’m hoping this little extra “oomph” that my team has been working on for the past 2 months will really jump start something good. We’ll see what happens. But our shopping cart is full and we are more than ready!

Now I always enjoy a good tradeshow, but I really enjoy them when I’m about to launch a new product. It seems that when I learn things with an idea of how I’m going to apply them to a current project, they seem to make a stronger impact. After all, what is knowledge without application and execution? My company will be launching this ambitious project later this summer, and I hope that the timing of SMX and the opportunities I know it will present, will help benefit our product launch.

Oh, and another thing, I friggin LOVE the city of Seattle. It is easily my favorite city in the states. I especially love the emerald city during this time of year, check out this weather! I’m also a huge Mariners fan. They happen to be playing a series while I’m there, but as much of a fan I am, I opted not to go to a game because that’s not the purpose of this trip. I’d hate to miss out on networking opportunities while I was doing the seventh inning stretch.

But if you only had 6 feeds to follow in the IM world, I’d recommend the ones below. You simply *cannot* exist online without Google (unless you are John Chow). So, unless you plan on riding the Cuil wave to your internet millions, I recommend you stop resisting and join the BORG by subscribing to the central nervous system directly.

I have placed these 6 blogs at the top of my netvibes page and I strongly suggest you do the same:

1 – The Official Google Blog (RSS)
How many times have you followed a link from another article to the OGB? Why not just hear everything from the horse’s mouth first? It’s not all business either, they often are finding fun ways to use Google products. For example, during the holidays you could track Santa or build a gingerbread house. Cool!

2 – Inside Adwords (RSS)
Let me ask you this, if you operated a store in a mall and the property owner came and told you a way that you could piggyback off their efforts and improve traffic by 1% or reduce operating costs by 1%, would you jump on that? Any business owner would. So if you are spending your dollars advertising within Google’s mega-opoly, wouldn’t you want to know of any tools or features that can bump your performance in one direction or the other? I sure would. This is why this blog is so close to the top of my list.

3 – Google Website Optimizer Blog (RSS)
Next on my list is another gem that MOST advertisers are simply not taking advantage of, and that’s Google Website Optimizer. Not only is Google’s Website Optimizer one of the simplest and easiest ways to setup split testing for your traffic, it also seamlessly integrates within Adwords and Analytics. Oh, and it’s free. Do it, do it, do it!

4 – Google Analytics Blog (RSS)
A lot of webmasters use Google Analytics because it is simple to integrate. But what a lot of webmasters don’t realize is how much depth Analytics data can go into. The GAB (Google Analytics Blog) is one of the best places for tips and tricks on how to utilize all that data. Plus any updates or new features and they’ll get full coverage here.

5 – Inside AdSense (RSS)
Hundreds of thousands of publishers rely on AdSense revenue to bring home the bacon. Therefore, the Inside AdSense blog is crucial for anyone making money from Google. Not only will you get updates on features and changes to policies, but you’ll also get some great tips on how to use AdSense more effectively. Keep in mind, Google is also trying to help you place ads that convert. By doing so, it keeps the advertisers happy, and it keeps your users happy. It’s a win-win (or as Michael Scott would say, a “win-win-win!”).

6 – AdWords Agency Blog (RSS)
And finally, the Adwords Agency Blog. I listed this one last not because it was the least important but because it fits the least amount of people. However, if you are an agency who has AdWords running for several clients, your situation among Google Advertisers is unique and this content is geared directly at you. This reading is pure gold! Even if you are just an advertiser without an agency, you’ll gain some perspective and a few hints from time by time by reading this blog.

By stopping the ignorance and tuning into the Googleplex University, you will soon be on your way to a Utopian marketer lifestyle. There are several other blogs that Google publishes, and if you wish to study those I’ve created a public page at Netvibes where you can one day earn your Google MBA (we wish, right?).

Yes, I had an epiphany and I’m not ashamed of it. Like the epiphanies before, this gem was so obvious it was stupidly beautiful (or beautifully stupid).

I don’t know if I have the ability to describe the full diorama of the idea, but I’ll try. Lately I’ve been registering domains like a fool. Any niche or meme that I feel like I can one day profit off of, I think “Hey I need 10 domains for that!” and hastily buy them, then just let them sit and park (much to Google’s content). Many many domains sitting unused. No traffic, therefore no revenue. And I’ve been getting more and more niche ideas lately. So my dilemma was: lots of ideas * lots of ideas = almost zero revenue – lots of costs. So basically I’ve been losing a lot of money on parked domains. Yet I still want to play and get more.

So the epiphany I had isn’t new to most people, just me. It’s simply this: you don’t need a damn domain for every niche play you enter! Get a wordpress, tumblr, google pages, blogger, or whatever free site/hosting account, build up your content there, drive some traffic, and THEN when something starts to stick grab a domain and start point links to it from all your free pages. OR, and this is where it comes in handy for me, create that page of content for your new niche on an existing domain that ALREADY has the trust and age going for it. You’ll be able to rank faster and longer. (that’s what she said! hehehe).

Alexa used to make me laugh. Everytime I saw an Alexa rating in the millions, I couldn’t help but think of “One Million Dollars” scene from Austin Powers:

However, Alexa has since grown up. Almost. It’s stats are less tool-bar centric and utilize a lot more ISP data. So where Alexa was a decent benchmark for the value of one of your own sites (since you wouldn’t game the system and inflate the value of your own sites, right, right?), it is become a better gauge within which to evaluate other sites as well.Taking John’s suggestion, I’m taking a look at everyone’s Alexa score who is participating now and we’ll compare it to later to see how valuable consistent and regular posting can be to an average blog. While I’m at it, I decided to lookup Google PageRank and Compete People Rank data as well.

Ranking Values:

• Jason Murphy – Alexa 1,230,318 – Google 3 – Compete 356
• John Hawkins – Alexa 616,280 – Google 1 – Compete 943
• Jake Ludens – Alexa 2,229,922 – Google n/a – Compete 508
• Jane McFadden – n/a – unfortunately these analytics services don’t work on subdomains of blogspot
• Omnicron – Alexa 18,150,236 – Google 1 – Compete n/a
• Portagame – Alexa 242,063 – Google 3 – Compete 1,989
• Imported/Geek – Alexa 1508496 – Google n/a – Compete 574
• Shirtwatch – Alexa 2463039 – Google n/a – Compete n/a
• MoneyRemix – Alexa 736790 – Google 3 – Compete 1,924

Theory is: “with the rising tide all ships will rise”. We’ll see how accurate that theory is at the end of the month.

Best of luck to all!

BlogRush is to RSS feeds what BannerExchanges were to banners in 5 years ago. I used to run a very large and profitable traffic exchange, and you could almost say that BlogRush is a traffic generator. Basically, you display a widget, like the one I have in the sidebar, that will display recent headlines in the category you select. I wasn’t sure whether to select “business”, “marketing” or “technology” for my blog, so I’m testing it under marketing for now. BlogRush then aggregates headlines from related blogs and uses a formula to select which headlines from other blogs to display on your site. The formula is part relevancy, part recency, and a big part pyramid scheme to determine which ads get displayed where. Let’s not put a wolf in sheep’s clothing. This is definitely a referral based program. The more people you refer, and the more people their referrals refer, the more impressions you earn. BlogRush uses your impression balance to place your most recent blog post title in other blogger’s widgets.

The headline titles under marketing have so far ranged from all out spammy to informative and helpful. I’ve seen pure spam-blogs (or “splogs” if you’re so desperate to use an poorly coigned term) to extremely popular blogs such as John Chow, Problogger and Mashable. The cool thing about BlogRush is that you can filter out URLs that you don’t want displayed on your site, or even go so far as to filter out keywords that you’d rather not include. Problem is that this is a very manual process. If you don’t keep tabs on it, you’ll get overwhelmed badly, just like the early days of comment spam. If BlogRush is truly going to work for the masses, they should pre-filter content using a corporate Akismet account. This will at least reduce the amount of moderation needed by individuals.

As with any new memes, I’m willing to give a try. I don’t have to worry about getting Google bitch-slapped for creating artificial links either. First, this is a javascript widget. Each of those links are found only within the widget and not crawled by any bots visiting my site. Second, if the bots could follow JS (oh the consipiracy!) the blogs are indeed relevant to my site and targetted to my audience. But I’ll stick with the first since it deems most true.

I’ll report back in a week or so to show some of the results of any traffic that BlogRush generated. You have to remember that BlogRush doesn’t deliver hits, they only deliver impressions on other peoples sites. So just because you’re earning massive amounts of impressions, that doesn’t necessarily convert to click thrus to your site. If that’s the case, then I’ll brush this off as a gimmick and try something else. But at the very least, having impressions on some high exposure blogs, such as those mentioned above, equals a free branding opportunity. One would normally have to pay hundreds of dollars to get seen on those sites. To me, this benefit alone is worth trying out BlogRush.

BlogRush.com

You see, when it comes to celebrities, the age old saying reigns true more than ever: sex sells. This is evidenced with the types of searches that users are looking for. For example, take any celebrity name and simply add “nude” to the end of it and you’ll be surprised by the amount of results (not to mention the varying difference between those results). This is a sad reality of the internet. Well, sad for some, maybe not for others.

The fact that millions of users are searching for nude (and other variations of the type) celebrities is a daunting nightmare for PR agencies and image consultants. If you are a Hollywood agent, keeping your talent’s bits and pieces under wraps is simply protecting your investment. It’s often said that when a Hollywood starlet gives the press a little eyeful that that actress’ career is now officially on the decline. “Jumped the Shark“, as they say. Maybe they have run out of ideas or feel they have nothing else to offer. Public nudity is often associated with a desperate attempt to save a career by working the gossip buzz machine. Think Brittney, Tara Reid, Lindsay Lohan, and to some extent Halle Berry.

When Posing Nude Makes Perfect Business Sense

Let’s say you’re a rising star on a TV show that started as a cult following but has grown into a primetime phenomenon. You’re being booked for talk show circuits, special appearances, photoshoots, and other press sightings. You’re starting to pick up small movie roles and your agent is trying to help you decide what your first feature role will be. You’re very much on the way to becoming a supa-stah!

But fame and stardom comes with a price. Paparazzi are starting to follow you everywhere. You and your manager worry about a photographer being at the wrong place at the wrong time, just to snap an image that will make him thousands of dollars on the tabloid market. You want to be sexy for your fans, but you don’t want the horror of waking up one morning to find your name and picture on page three.

So what do you do?

If you’re Jenna Fischer, you beat the paparazzi at their own game. A few months ago Jenna posed nude for the cover shoot of Wired Magazine, one of the most popular technology and culture magazines in the country. Yes, nude!

This was for an edition of the magazine that focused on transparency in the media and corporate America. What better way to precursor the opinions associated with transparency than by being naked?

Obviously, Jenna had full control of the terms in which she appeared “transparent”. She remained adequately covered to protect her image and her photo was safe for family viewing. This also helped keep a common workplace magazine from being labeled NSFW (Not Safe For Work – a term used when sending potentially inappropriate website links to others during office hours).

What happened next is truly remarkable.

Thousands of bloggers and celeb columnists wrote about Jenna’s photoshoot using titles crafted to generate attention from readers. Titles such as “Jenna Fischer Naked!” and “Jenna Fischer Nude!”. Ironic how the most effective titles are little more than a few keywords, isn’t it? Those article titles then started appearing in the search indexes, often with an associated picture of the event. Searches for “Jenna Fischer nude” and “Jenna Fischer naked” started getting hundreds of thousands of potential result listings. And 99.9% of those result listings would take the user to a page with a picture of Jenna’s controlled photo shoot or some geek blogging about the coolest magazine cover ever. Perhaps not exactly what the user expected, but it was exactly relevant to their search.

What was potentially a reputation nightmare was now a image consultants dream come true!

Nudity Isn’t Just For Hollywood

Another example of using this level of reputation management and transparency comes from the corporate world. Vanessa Fox, once a director for Google’s webmaster tools teams who is now working for Zillow, was fairly popular in search engine and webmaster circles. Someone noticed that one SEO was ranking within Google for her nude name and clued her in. There weren’t any pictures, just a link and a short paragraph. It was just enough for the search engines to grab hold of.

So she played along and went off and took it a step further. She registered VanessaFoxNude.com. Vanessa didn’t post any pictures that one might expect to see on such a domain, but rather offered a personal blog of her own thoughts and opinions. She explains a little more on her about page.

Now she has the number one ranking for the term Vanessa Fox Nude. Since most searchers for that term will end up on her domain, she has the ability to control the content they will see.

Basics of Reputation Management

There are two elements to effective reputation management. The first is the preemptive strike. By creating a solid reputation that you have full control over BEFORE any potential brand damage happens, you have the ability to maintain your message during the reputation crisis and will be able to manage the crisis on all fronts.

The second element is to take prompt and immediate action. If you are facing a reputation crisis don’t wait for the outcome. Strike now and strike hard. Your response needs to be twice as powerful as what they are throwing at you. The sooner our respond, the minimal your damage may be.

In my eyes, both Jenna and Vanessa are a perfect 10 when it comes to reputation management. Well done, Ladies!

• Today is Day 20 out of 30 for My Own Thirty Day Challenge.

Notice I didn’t ask which is better? Think about it and I’ll get back to the question in moment.

It seems that when the Open Directory Project is in the news, it comes in waves. It has been a while since we’ve really heard anything about DMOZ even though users have been suspicious of their editors trustworthiness for a while now.

One such DMOZ wave is building up now. Their reputation is on the line as major search engines and general users determine how relevant the site truly is. Their history has been a downward spiral, from once being one of the most sought after resources for web users looking for sites on a subject, to now being a mere afterthought for the sake of SEO. It’s just never become a common household name that you’d expect hear around the dinner table.

Remember when you could count on finding at least 1 or 2 DMOZ categories on almost any generic keyword search result page within Google? We know those days are long gone, but there does seem to be a few other regulars taking its place. Most notable is Wikipedia. Many current and former editors at the ODP are now regular contributors to Wikipedia. The site isn’t without its flaws, but one thing it does do is give editorial voice to those who seek it. Wikipedia has become such a heavily referenced piece of media, that you’ll find a Wikipedia entry on just about any search within Google.

This is where things get interesting. Google likes to trust non-profit, user generated, user edited, mega resource sites. This sorta makes sense, since Google’s end goal is to deliver the most relevant results they can for the search they received. Sometimes, as much as I don’t wish to believe it, Wikipedia is the correct answer. I just disagree with the frequency of how often it is.

So what about DMOZ? Well, the project is still well and strong, and receives plenty of care from its army of volunteer editors/gardeners. But ever since SEO started becoming a common practice, and SEOs started applying for editor positions (hell, even I was an ODP editor a few years ago), the scales of biased inclusions have been tipping. Look at this account of bribery that happened to Shoemoney. He lost his site listing because he didn’t pay the $5000 ransom to the rogue editor. Apparently its happened more than once from what others are saying in their comments.

So, how long until Wikipedia starts the corruption? We already have government offices, large corporations, and PR agencies trying to manipulate Wiki entries to give themselves a more positive spin. How long until SEOs start ganging up and manipulating entries to remove competition. Sure, one guy with one account could get banned easily. But how hard would it be for a determined individual to hire a freelance shop in India, train them to build trustworthy accounts, and then go on a full-out assault on against all their competitors? It may be closer than it appears.

Perhaps a non-profit, user controlled, resource isn’t the best solution to include in results pages for generic searches. Yahoo has been their paid directory ever since they started. Since it is edited by a paid staff AND a property owned by Yahoo, you rarely hear of people getting upset about gaining or losing submissions like they do with DMOZ.

Maybe Jason C is right. His Mahalo project is maintained by a paid staff. He claims it’s a user generated search engine, but this post suggests that even he knows its more of a directory project than a search engine. He’s got the branding and awareness train running full steam ahead. Is it enough to take on Wikipedia? Not sure. But is it enough to beat out DMOZ? Definitely.

Some people even think that Mahalo is poised to overcome Google in four years time. Such a thought is just silly.

So, DMOZ is becoming more corrupt, Wikipedia is becoming too trusted, and Mahalo is trying to strike a balance. Isn’t this a great industry we’re part of?

• Today is Day 19 out of 30 for My Own Thirty Day Challenge.

Can’t say the same about the original 30 Day Challenge. As you may recall, I was a little disappointed with the 30DC during their halftime show. I felt they had been feeding us a too much milk and not enough meat. Well, last week they really started getting going by having everyone create accounts on a third-party blog service called Tumblr. I was a little turned off by the fact that they chose Tumblr to host the content. I knew they were going to have a third-party somewhere, even if it is parasitic SEO, because they promised you wouldn’t have to pay any money to buy a domain and host your own blog to participate in the challenge. I really was hoping they had developed their own article directory or something that would get more of a green flag for the flood of content it was about to receive. I imagine the DBA over at tumblr woke up on Thursday and was wondering why his database tripled in size overnight. The tumblr staff saw thousands of new accounts using the same cookie-cutter formula posting a bunch of articles with affiliate links in them. Yeah, I’d be a little pissed off too if my service that was previously fairly pristine started getting a bunch of gunk in it. So I bet you can’t guess what happens next?

Yup. Tumblr axed most of the new accounts.

Now the Ed, Dan, and Rob three tell us there is nothing to worry about. They say that they were aware this was a possibility. Oh really? If you did foresee this coming, then why didn’t you try to disperse the challengers to use 10 or so similar services instead of having them all swarm to one. I know it’s not the service that’s making the challenge what it is, but rather it’s the methodology behind it. Of course that makes sense. But what’s the true lesson.

Reminds me of learning to canoe in cub scouts. There were four of us in the boat I was in. We had a couple of white knucklers on board, they sat in the middle. I was on the rudder while another cub scout my size was at the bow. By nature, canoes rock a little when they are in the water. Well before we could even completely launch from the dock, these two knuckleheads (that’s punny) got in at the same time and felt it wobble. They both leaned to one side of the canoe. Then the canoe started tipping to that side, so they hurried and jumped to the other side. In one big motion the canoe swooped back out from under them and dumped us all in the water.

Lesson one: Don’t jump in the boat at the same time.

Lesson two: Sometimes it’s easier to be unique. Needless to say, I’m a big fan of kayaking.

• Today is Day 10 out of 30 for My Own Thirty Day Challenge.
• This post is also part of the 30 Day Challenge Series.

The first one that makes total sense to me is simply a homebrew scoring system by bloggers. This concept was originally mentioned by Jason Parker in a comment on Problogger.net. Basically, you develop a scoring system that works for you and keep track of what tasks/habits you perform on a daily basis. For example, Jason mentions you could earn 10 points for a long blog post, 5 points for a short one, points for replying to comments and points for commenting on other sites, etc. Ben Cook says this is a great way to set daily blogging goals and avoid becoming another abandoned blog. He then encourages people to share their comments, because “…after all you’ll earn up to 5 points!”. Brilliant!

I love the idea of keeping score. Now only if there was a plugin or widget that would allow you to enter your daily scores, your goals, and perhaps relevant URLs for each days scores, then I’d be set. I’ll use a spreadsheet for now, but I’d really love to see a dynamic chart online that I could check from both work and home. That would be an uber-cool tool.

Speaking of uber-cool tools, mashable dropped this whopper on us: 30+ Tools For Working With WordPress Posts! I would claim that this post was originally going to be something like what they did, but I’d be lying. They put a lot more research and time in their list than I ever would and it’s definitely worthy of a thorough reading.

So if I couldn’t live without one plugin, which would it be? Geez, that’s an easy question. Akismet for sure. But deciding on the runner-up would be much tougher. It would be a toss-up between Simplepie and All in One SEO Pack just for the functionality and flexibility they provide.

But the most powerful tools that I use aren’t plugins, and they don’t run on my site at all (well, sorta). The first one is Netvibes. I read all my RSS feeds there and also keep a ton of notes. It’s a great place to generate ideas from other posts then jot down your ideas in the same location. There’s a ton of other cool features that Netvibes brings to the table, but I’ll have to reserve that for an “Why I love Netvibes” post.

The next tool is ping-o-matic. What they do is simple, but very necessary. Basically POM lets you ping all the major news servers and let them know that your RSS feed has been updated. It’s an all-in-one service. WordPress makes it even easier on you by removing the need to manually submit your site to PM each time it’s updated. You just simple select an option in your blog settings and it does the work for you, automatically! As the Beaver would say “Gee WordPress, that’s swell!”.

• Today is Day 8 out of 30 for My Own Thirty Day Challenge.

Probably the biggest and most pleasing surprise about the SMX show in Seattle was the representation of SEOmoz and members of their online community. Mozzers were out in full force!

For those who don’t know, SEOmoz is an independent internet marketing firm that specializes in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Marketing (SMM). They have 8 employees and are based out of Seattle. They are often cited by national press seeking commentary on the industry. But what really sets them apart from other firms is the industry portal that they built and the online community that participates in that portal. I personally have been a member of the SEOmoz community for at least two years now.

At most conferences you typically find yourself in conversation after conversation about “What do you do?” However, at SMX Seattle, I quickly found myself approaching and replying with “Hi, I’m Jason Murphy. Or roadies on SEOmoz.” It was very surprising to see how many people knew me as roadies.

So, this blog post is to all the Mozzers out there that I met up with at SMX Seattle.

First to the actual SEOmoz crew themselves. I had opportunities to chat for a bit with Scott (great_scott), Rebecca (rebecca), Jeff (Fluxx) and Jane (JaneCopland). I missed both Matt and Rand this time around, but was very impressed by the rest of the team. Even if I didn’t get an invite to the exclusive party. (Psst…I’m only joking. I intentionally missed it and for good reason, of which I think you’ll thank me later.)

And then, to all the SEOmoz community members I met. I know I met more people than I’m listing here, but these are all the usernames I can remember. (If I forgot your username and we met at SMX, please let me know in the comments and I’ll add you to the post.) So, in no particular order, shouts to…

…Pat from FeedTheBot. On SEOmoz he’s also feedthebot. Watch out for Patrick, he’s quickly becoming a known personality in this industry and is just realizing his potential. Not only did he single handedly persuade Google to update their guidelines within 24 hours (or else!), but he also has some mad Seattle-Hobo-Management skillz.

…Raffi from a niche online retailer. On SEOmoz, he has the coolest username: kwijibo – which I can’t recall the definition but it came from the remaining pieces of Scrabble being played by Bart Simpson to make the most unique word ever. Friggin awesome.

…Lisa from Base One Search, SEOblog, and of course SEO Chicks. On the Moz she is well known as Lisadit and pondskipped a long way from her European home to make it to the Seattle conference. I sat next to Lisa during one of the sessions, during which she showed me the piece of blackmail that she has on Rand. Genius picture, Lisa!

…Ciarán from Eyefall, also from the U.K., and is also ciaran on SEOmoz. I only had a brief intro with Ciarán but it’s always great meeting familiar SEOmoz bystanders offline for the first time. It’s only a matter of time before SEOmoz makes Ciarán a regular blog editor.

…Chris-Hooley from NextStudent. He’s known as SearchStudent on SEOmoz, but really known as a dude who knows how to party!

…Curtis from Superb Internet. He just recently started getting active with SEOmoz (as CRCurtis) because he saw how cool Mozzers are. We met briefly and discussed CPA networks and hosting (if I recall). Welcome to the Moz club Curtis!

Seriously cool people in this industry. I’m lucky to be working in it. I know I’m forgetting a few people, so please let me know…

A group of us, including Kwijibo and feedthebot, and Beau and Jay from my first post, hung out on Monday night and listened to bad karaoke, dodged flying hobos, watched a street scrap, and ate some of the best corner-vendor dogs on the whole west coast. It was a seriously great time. Vegas, fellas. Let’s do it again!

As much as I could go on and on about how much I really love the town and the community of Seattle (I used the live there in the Kingdome days), I’d have to say that the people I met on this trip were what really made it just a positive experience for me. So, to continue the tradition I started with Affiliate Summit, I’d like to leave a few shouts (and links!) to the people I met that made this show a success for me.

In no particular order, shouts to…

…Francis and Todd from MPS Group. I hung out a lot with Todd during the event, especially the first day as we were waiting for the events to commence. Francis (Frank) joined us later that night at the Microsoft party. Talking with them both was very cool as they are facing similar tech issues with their company as I am with mine.

…Matt D. and Bernard (who happens to be Francis’ brother) from the Microsoft Adcenter team. I met a few other people from the Adcenter team but can’t recall names. It was great talking about everything from Advertising on the Xbox to Brazillian BBQ with these guys.

…Marcel and Nish from the Google Webmaster Central team. I met these guys at lunch and shared a few ideas with them. I didn’t get to ask if they participated in the GWC blog or not, or if they had their own. But it was still nice to meet members of the GWC team, as I’m a huge supporter of that group.

…a good friend and ally Michael Stark from PostYourProperty.com. We always seem to bump into each other at the same conferences and are always able to have a enjoyable conversation about business and home. It’s always a pleasure Mike and may we meet up again at future shows.

…Jay Westerdal from AboutUs and DomainTools. I’ve been a long time user of DomainTools, ever since their whois.sc days even. In my role, DomainTools has been nothing short of a lifesaver. So it was great to meet up with someone from the DomainTools team. Jay was a ton of fun to hang out with and talk with, this guy knows so much about the IP-space that it is enough to make the room spin. I am definitely going to put a pitch into my company to attend the Domain Roundtable in August. It’s in Seattle so of course I HAVE to go!

…Beau Vignes from ghotibait. Not only is this guy a brilliant designer, but he’s also the most chill guy I’ve ever met at one of these things, not to mention man enough to drink pink drinks!

…Aaron Wall and his girlfriend, Honey. I don’t want to get her name wrong, Aaron was calling her Honey so I will to. I’m sure they’ll be ok with it. Aaron and Honey are conference veterans and even though they seem to know everyone, they were happy to meet new people. I bought Aaron’s book years ago, and always enjoy his updates that seem to be dead on accurate with industry trends. It was great to finally meet up, and yeah I’ll get more involved with my ThreadWatch account.

…Jim Boykin from WeBuildPages.com. I hope everything pans out for your Grand Canyon retreat, because I’ve been wanting to become a certified Link Ninja for sometime now.

…Dot A. from Domainer’s Magazine. We only met for a few minutes but what great discussion about the state of the industry! I’ve been working my way to becoming a domainer for sometime now, and the talk that we had was very inspiring, thanks Dot!

…Terry Light who has the coolest title ever: Idiot In Charge. He’s the force behind SearchEngineIdiot.com and from the sounds of it has a few interesting projects in the works.

…Paul B. from Anvil Media. We sat through lunch with table full of genius Google engineers…and survived without our heads exploding. Great to meet you Paul and hopefully we can do some work together.

…Mindy S. and Herman C. from All Star Directories. Both Mindy and Herman were at the same lunch table with the Googlers, and we enjoyed discussing the CPA world (which was refreshing in a PPC heavy environment). Hopefully we’ll be able to do some win-win business together in the near future.

Well, that is all for now. I have many many more shouts to do, but will have to do that in a second post.

Late last night I started thinking about why one would buy anything other than a lifetime link from a directory. I hate paying the Yahoo annuals, even though I feel it is a necessity. And whenever I saw a “subscription” option on smaller directories I usually passed and went straight for the lifetime.

As you may know, I’ve been playing the site-flip game where I buy a site for a value, work on it to build up its content, incoming links, and traffic, and then sell it off for a much higher markup.

It’s taken me two months to realize this (some things are too obvious). When it comes to buying links for my site-flips, instead of buying lifetime links I can buy monthly (or annual) subscriptions and save a large portion of my upfront costs.

Now obviously if I’m going to be keeping the site, I always buy the lifetime option. But if there is any chance that I might sell it in the near future, I’ll buy the subscription link. And if it is one of my flagship sites, I’ll even consider upgrading to a “sponsored” link for the exposure depending on the directory I’m working with.

So, there you have it. Don’t always assume that a lifetime link is always the best option. Sometimes a subscription link makes plenty of sense too.

The SEO is quite an elitist industry. Exposure and reputation are king. If you can get your name (or online moniker) to be recognized by the masses, you win the clients, the babes, and the cash.

Take a look at one of the persons that SEO Loser was stalking happy to meet: Shoemoney. Not long ago Jeremy Shoemaker (aka Shoemoney) was just a regular user on Digital Point. He was anxious to learn everything that he could, and became quite popular on the forum as he shared all his energy and new tricks he learned. Now (about 2 years later) he has an online Radioshow/podcast, a popular blog, his own advertising network, several profitable forums, a few software sites, and a gazillion ringtone landing page sites ta’boot. Jeremy is singlehandedly making six figures a month on his personal projects. Everyone knows this, and they all want to be his friend.

Another Digital Point success story would be Rand Fishkin. Rand was also a frequenter on many other forums too, like SEOChat. He started on his own, programmed a few “cool tools”. Used those tools for clients, and now runs a very successful SEO company that focuses on “Linkbait” (a strategy used to create internet buzz). His company, SEOmoz, also has a very popular blog with tens of thousands of readers and thousands of comment participants.

But outside of the industry? We’re all a bunch of geeks. Truly. We’re referred to as such too. How many times have you had to explain what Search Engine Marketing, or even Affiliate Marketing is? The masses all use the web to play Jewel Quest while at work. Watch them blank over when you explain them how you can move up in search engine rankings or get 25K hits from digg.com. SEO/SEM is increasing in popularity, but most people on the streets simply do not care.

Even the poster boy of the industry, Danny Sullivan, knows the SEO industry is a tight circle. Check out this bit from a recent USA Today article:

No illusions about fame

He may not have a fortune, but in his own little

world, “Danny is the rock star of our industry,” says Brown, who sells
him that way to potential attendees of shows.

Sullivan holds well-attended Q&A sessions,
where he takes questions from the audience for several hours. But he
harbors no illusions about how large his niche fame actually is.

“Sure, you can get swamped at the show,” he
says. “A lot of people want to talk to you. But then I’ll stand next to
Matt Cutts, and he’ll get masses of people vying for his attention.”

Sullivan calls this fame within a small group of
people. “Here in England, where people ask what I do, and I tell them

about search marketing, they respond with a blank stare. That says it
all.”

Despite it all, I’m quite fond of the SEO industry and what they have accomplished in a short timespan. In 2005, the industry grew at a rate of 44% over 2004 to become a $5.75 billion industry (according to a report by SEMPO). They also state that by 2010, we’ll be hitting $11 Billion. I think that is a little too conservative since search is just starting to peak. But it still isn’t too bad for an what’s mostly an indie market.