Wingnut SEO

I am pleased to announce the recently registered LLC 10k Things. After being canned from my last job (even after getting a great job 2 hours later) I started to really take things more seriously. The SEM world is always changing and clients come and go – how secure is my new job?

So I did what any Freelancer turned Agency Worker doing side freelance work would do – Took it up a notch with my freelance work. I have always worked with designers and PPC consultants to help with my freelance clients – but now it’s official a company. The launch of the new internet marketing company site, 10kThings.com, should happen later this evening.

It’s pretty cool. We have been working together for a while now and interestingly enough we can do the exact same things any large agency can but for a much lower cost – As we have ZERO overhead.

We will see how things go – we have a few proposals out and a couple clients already signed. Who knows this thing could get huge… here’s to hoping.

To those wondering I will be keeping my full time job - and they were cool that I was working side work when they hired me as they encourage the entrepreneurial spirit. I am really happy where I am with this company and 10k Things will not be a direct competitor with where I am now. The current company I am with is much more large scale than anything 10k Things will be for quite some time.

Right now it’s just a fun project to bring in a little extra money with taking on a few clients and try something new.

So I have access to a pretty rad team of developers who want to start making some tools for the company I am now working with.  I have a pretty good idea of what I have always wanted in a sweet SEO tool but I thought I’d open up the floor to everyone to chime in and help out with some ideas.  Any tools created will be free to all

So - If you could have your dream SEO/SEM/PPC/Social Media tool - What would it be?  What would it do?  How would it work?  Would it be web-based?  Should you have to download something? Tell me about it… If you have an amazing idea that isn’t already out there I want to know what you would like to see.  I won’t be working with this company forever but I may continue to use the tools long after I’m gone - Free SEO tools help everyone

So don’t be shy - Either leave your dream tool idea in a comment or Email me Dave@DaveWinget.com

So you go to your favorite social media site, you try and be active, you try to get your stories to the front page, but it rarely happens because no one knows who you are… you are not a power user, you don’t know how to write catchy titles… Hell, you don’t know the first thing about using social media effectively… and even if you do know how you just don’t have the time it takes to become well known.

You know that social media can give you a ton of traffic overnight but YOU just can’t do it. What do you do then? Make friends of course!

From my own experience the social site power users are generally very friendly, all it takes is a little time to get to know them. Then when you do write that killer article you direct their attention to it and if they like it - since they are power users and like submitting things - they just might submit your article/page/what-have-you.

Depending on the reputation/relationship you build with these power users - you can even go so far as ASKING them for a submit. This tactic can work but I generally don’t like doing it, it always feels like begging. I have done this before, today actually, but it is a rare thing for me to do. I’d rather just show people great content that they feel should be submitted.

How do you go about building a friendship with these power users? There are several ways that I like to use:

• Be their friend on the social site - vote for their submits and comment on submits
• Joining their MyBlogLog community and saying hello
• Following them on twitter, being friendly and making a connection with them
• Reading their blogs, subscribe to the RSS feeds, and make intelligent comments or ask questions
• Get their contact info (generally found in their social profiles) and send them an instant message a friendly hello, how’s it going, love your blog (insert question about them here)

Sure there are a ton more ways but the above are some that have worked very well for me. It just goes to show you that a little bit of time spent being nice/friendly can go a long way.

2007 marked the rise to god-like popularity for social networks. Starting in late ’06 with a deal ranging in the billions of dollars when Google acquired YouTube to the hundreds of million’s invested into Facebook just a few months ago – it is clear that being social is big business.  Social networks are so popular that even the porn industry has gotten in on the action with Penthouse dropping $500 million into acquiring several dating social networks. These absurd amounts of money have caused the world to take notice.

 Social sites are popping up everywhere.  You can find them for just about every niche group there is.  There are social networks for music junkies, car enthusiasts, bargain hunters, tech people, book lovers, marketers, religions, and everything else.

 This, in turn, has and will continue to cause a radical shift in how online marketing and search in general is done now and in the future.  As little as just five years ago there were only a handful of well known ways to go about promoting a website and gaining traffic – SEO, PPC, link buying/banner placement, and the infancy of the social networks – forums and personal blogs. 

With the rise in modern social networks, however, it has opened the lines of communication from marketers to consumers and consumers to marketers in never before seen proportions.  This has unleashed an array of viral marketing campaigns, corporate blogs, and link baiting tactics that would have been nearly impossible in the past.

These new practices have caused online marketers to build reputations on networks such as Digg or StumbleUpon for the sole purpose of being popular enough to send thousands of unique visitors to a website with the single click of a button or a few lines of a written review.  This is no easy power to obtain but there is obvious value for companies to have people like this on their side.

Further changes to the state of search and the rise of social media in the near future include sites like Mahalo that continue to gain popularity and more users each day.  These sites are giving the power of search results to the people, by letting them submit like, find useful or think should rank more highly.

As this trend in social networks and social search continue the general population may one day inevitably turn away from the faceless Googles and Yahoos in favor of more reliable search from the people they or their friends trust. 

In essence that is what all the social networks are about - trust.  Something that the major search engines are losing as the general population starts to understand what sponsored links are and how easy it is to game the system to place a spam site at the top of the search results pages.  At the same time people are growing more wary of the search engines tendency to data-base everything they do for unknown (potentially sinister?) purposes.

In 2008 social networks will continue to gain steam with the general populace and with them more corporations will see the value in being a part of the social world through blogging and/or hiring people to become leaders in various social networks.

What the end result of these social networking and search trends will mean to the SEO and online marketing world is, as of now, uncertain. One thing you can count on, however, is that it will be very interesting to watch how the major search engines react to this fundamental change in how people find content online.  

Dan Perry has come up with a rather genius link-bait in the form of giving away something - Win a Google Fridge.  I have decided I need to win this fridge because it would be the perfect size to store my life sized bust of Matt Cutts that is made entirely out of his hair and used chewing gum (pilfered from conference trash bins).  Without a fridge the bust needs constant spritzing of the purest mountain spring water or it tends to dry out and catch fire… I don’t know why

Real posts will happen when I find some time… so thanks to all my readers for sticking with me

Here is an image from where some of my Organic traffic is coming from for this month thanks to Google Analytics.

Hah. Haha… Who is searching for this?

The page they find is about how having boobs makes boys like you.

As I work away in my medium sized agency in the middle of America, working with one of the our Pay Per Click (PPC) E-commerce clients, I am reminded of a game that I played in grade school called Lemonade Stand. Looking at it now I notice the similarities it has to the PPC accounts I run.

The goal of Lemonade stand was to make as much money as possible within a 30-day period. The player had complete control over every aspect of the business including cost of goods, pricing, purchasing supplies and budget.

There of course was a big unknown, and that was the weather. That unknown could make or break your day. If the weather was hot and sunny a lemonade stand operator could raise the price and still maintain volume and ultimately make more money. If it were raining and cold, a player would be lucky to break even.

This is not unlike running a PPC campaign. Being a Search Manager I have control over my cost per click, keywords, ad-copy, and managing my clients budget. Of course my big unknown is search volume. Search volume is what will ultimately drive sales volume. Factors that influence search volume:

• Seasonality of the product
• What engines the campaigns are running on
• What keywords are bought
• The Quality Score - how relevant your keyword is to your ad group and to a user’s search query
• Max Cost Per Click

The list goes on and on. Without search volume, I am sitting at my lemonade stand in the rain and watching my ice cubes melt. With it, however, I am a lemonade tycoon!

-Dan Tisser - Sr. Search Marketing Manager