Wingnut SEO

Remember the old glory days of chat rooms? Back before the spam bots, back before AOL when the program was called WoW, back before everyone KNEW that only pedophiles used chat rooms? Those were good times and you know what? THEY ARE BACK?

What? Where? What is this chat room where no one is spamming A/S/L IM ME LOL!!!!

Twitter. Twitter is chat room 2.0 - The new features you get out of this chatroom include:

• Only allowing people you like/know as part of your chat room
• Not needing to sit in front of a scrolling text that erases if you leave
• Can chat from your phone
• Everyone is always a part of the chat even if they aren’t around they will see what you said later

Twitter is great for these reasons. Sure it doesn’t have the features and extras like Pownce does - but if there is one thing we have learned from Google - simple sells. There is nothing about Twitter to confuse you. It really is just “What are you doing.”

I don’t think Twitter ever intended to be the new chat room… I’m pretty sure they saw that “what are you doing” feature on Facebook, thought it was cool and just jacked that idea. No matter how it came about or what it started as - it is now chat room 2.0

If you’re not a part of this great chat room go sign up and follow me!

As most of you know I have done freelance SEO for a long time and just recently started a Denver/Boulder SEO company of my very own.  It’s going really well and I’m trying my hardest to make time and write on both blogs all while working a 40-hour agency job and  then spending the rest of my time working on building a new company.

That said I started a Twitter account for my new company @10kthings (I’m @Wingnut by the way).

Before I started the company Twitter account it I asked my follwers to see if everyone thought it was a good/bad/lame idea or not - the resounding answer was DO IT.  So far it’s been a great idea.  I really can’t be more happy with it (well, I wish my partners would use it more… but they started to today) With me and 4 other people tweeting (using it the real way and not just shameless self promotion) it’s been fun.  We have a few followers and it’s just nice to know that we have the support out there.  For all the time it takes chatting with people - it’s all well worth it.  It keeps us motivated knowing that there are people watching what we are up to and willing to help support us.

All and all starting a Twitter account for your company is a GOOD THING.  It opens your company up to a whole new range of being social and lets you know that there are people out there that actually do care and wish you the best…. It also it’s awesome free advertising and public relations!

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 this isn’t what I was going to write about today.  I was going to write a piece on “Social Media Karma and how down voting your friends that you ask to vote you up is a bad idea” so as I do, I go out to find a fun image to edit slightly and then throw up as my little teaser image.  I get on Google and search images for the word “karma” at least 4 of the images that showed up on the first page were porn.  Not just classy stuff either - I’m talking hard core porn.

Where the hell was this when I was 14.  Finding free porn on the internet was a difficult thing… now all you have to do is type in any word on the Google and blam… Plenty of high quality free porn.  There is no “are you 18″ buttons to click, no credit card info to give away…  This has got to be illegal… Right?  Or since there is the preferences section… it isn’t?

On one hand it’s great - Freedom of search of something - things not being censored… On the other hand THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

Maybe there is a way to lock this on your computer… I’m not seeing one.  All a horny teenager has to do is sign up for gmail… sign in… go back to search and he has his own preferences to set.  Good times.  I hear there are some 3rd party things out there that can lock it… but what average parent/gardian is going to know about these, or know even what to search for?

There is some talk about “SEO Fame” going around started off by Lee Odden and then continued today with a post over on SEOmoz by Rand Fishkin - they both seem to be saying the same thing… It’s not an end in and of itself. Well, yeah, duh… But it sure doesn’t hurt… Both Odden and Fishkin are “famous” - How many people do they have reading every word that they write? Well, just looking at subscriber stats 40k+ between the two of them. How much ad money is brought in, how many clients actually find them because they are famous? Sure does make sales a little more simple when people are searching for you by name.

They do make a good point though - Fame is not your end game. So then, why chase it? For me it is not fame I’m seeking but just powerful networking. The fruits of my social media and SEO network labor are already starting to pay off.

Case in point: I was downsized last Monday from my agency job - Two hours later I had a better paying agency job and started Tuesday thanks to my interviewers knowing who I was because they had seen my blog on Sphinn a few times. Awesome. I’m totally famous, well… not really. BUT I AM KNOWN BY SOME. Cool.

Example 2 of my awesome power of networking: I’m looking to buy some kind of rad 4×4 for escapes to back country mountain camp sites. I get on Twitter and ask “Anyone know what car is good to get for offroading? I’m thinking about a Jeep Wrangler” A couple hours later Dan Perry who works SEO and Online Marketing for Cars.com calls me up and gives me a rundown on what’s good and what’s not - Now that is just straight up cool… I’ll be getting an FJ Cruiser, by the way - Thanks Dan

Becoming “famous” is really just a side bonus of networking. The more people you are nice to and know… the more people will be nice to and know you. That’s what SEO fame is good for. It’s so helpful being known by all the other great SEO’s out there - being friends with - friends help friends out - they will answer questions and help you meet other people… Social networkers are social people… social people are generally good to have on your side.

Well, that’s all I have to say about that. Fame would be nice to have - Do I want it? Sure, who doesn’t. If it helps me reach my goal of not being someones grunt and either running my own agency or just being happy doing freelance because I’m known great… You just have to understand what Lee and Rand both said - Fame is not an end game in and of itself, but it’s one hell of a helpful thing for any career.

As I sit here naked, before I go to bed, I look down and wonder what every man asks… Is my StumbleUpon profile long enough? Sure, it’s O.K. Every time I stumble my girlfriend’s sites she loves it. It totally brings her to about 300-700 more readers. It’s also larger than 60 people, it’s above average… But I want it massive. I want it so large as soon as I pull it out and use it servers fall to their knees. I want small websites to cower in fear before it.

I just wish I knew about the power of Stumble sooner. I have had it for years, been addicted… But I didn’t actively seek friends until about 3 months ago when I made this account… to follow along with the Wingnut brand.

So much sudden traffic for days!!!… Sigh, I just need to go to sleep… But… after just one more stumble!

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.

I you aren’t signed up and in for MyBlogLog, you should be. I know, I know being involved in another social network is a pain AND they force you to sign up for some kind of Yahoo! crap? What is this? Communist Russia?!

Well here is the deal. If you do any Stumbleing or just random surfing or have a lot of blogs in your reader and actually go to the sites… it’s important to be signed up/in with MyBlogLog. Why? Because if you look about halfway down my page, right above that crazy ad, you’ll see “My recent readers.” Want your picture there? Log into MyBlogLog and it shows up… and it shows up on every site you visit that has that nifty app.

I have received many message from people who found my site because they saw my picture on their blog log readers list and/or were happy that I was stopping by their blogs. Not only this, if you use that cool Lijit Wijit Search up there in the top right corner, you can add people to be part of your community - making that search all that more trustworthy. Plus it’s just kind of cool to leave your digital mark on every site you surf through

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.