Don't Vote Tag Five Friends Meme

Matt Cutts is getting the ball rolling on the don't vote blog meme to help promote Google's new voter registration effort, so you just have to tag five friends to get them to register and they gotta tell five more friends, so here it goes

 

My Tags:

Dave Snyder - Cause Angry Voters Are Good Voters :)

Andy Beal - Cause I know he has been monitoring the candidates reputations and knows all the dirt

Marty Weintraub - Cause he's crazy enough to do the right thing no matter what :)

Brian Carter - Cause a little laughter goes along way

Utah SEO Pro - Cause NoFX would want me to make sure he was registered!

So go register, get the facts and get your ass out there and vote! And make sure your friends are registered and voting, it's not important how you vote - just that you do. If you don't participate then we all loose!

Throw Marty from The Train: A Journey To SMX East

Just How Did I Get Suckered Into a 13-Hour Train Ride From West Virginia to Manhattan?

Those attending the pre-SMX East networking event will invariably notice one or more of the following characteristics of a certain SEO:

1. He will be wearing black-framed, ultra-hip and stylish designer glasses.

2. He will talk non-stop, waxing poetic on any number of subjects on which he is an expert, such as the existential themes of Ricky Martin's music; why Cher is the quintessential pop cultural icon of the 20th century; and the ramifications of the power bomb replacing the body slam as the most common weapon in a professional "wrestler's" repertoire.

3. He will be sipping a refreshingly clean and crisp Zima, with a watermelon (or, occasionally, blue raspberry) Jolly Rancher dropped into the bottle for added flavor and color.

The SEO in question is one Martin Bowling. He's the Chief Technical Officer and resident evil genius here at Vec3. I tell you to look out for him and not for me because, naturally, I won't be there at the pre-SMX mixer myself. Neither will my colleague Matt Crist, the other Vec3 guy making the New York trip. It's not that we don't want to be there, mind you. It's just that Matt and I will be traveling to New York on the day of the mixer (October 5) via Amtrak's Cardinal 50 rail line. We will not get there in time for the mixer. You see, under ideal conditions, it's a 13-hour ride through the Allegheny Mountains into Virginia before the line turns north, running through Charlottesville before arriving in Washington, D.C. From there, the train passes through Philadelphia, Wilmington, Delaware and on into New Jersey before ending up, many hours later, in New York's Penn Station.

Now, if you've ever traveled Amtrak, you know the conditions are never ideal. That means, of course, that Matt and I will be on the train much, much longer. Marty? He'll be at the mixer, regaling you all with tales of his days as a trapeze artist on the underground circus circuit, or of his time in a Turkish prison. (I won't tell you his crime; it was a bogus charge anyway, the worst case of anti-American xenophobia I ever saw).

Marty will be there because he's traveling by airplane specifically so he can arrive in time for social (read: drinking Zima) hour. Matt and me? Again, we'll be on an uncomfortable train which will invariably arrive in New York City at 2 a.m. on Monday. We'll have to hail a cab in the middle of the night in a strange city that backwoods West Virginians are undoubtedly ill-prepared to navigate. All West Virginians are hillbillies, you understand, incapable of common sense or rational thought. It will be extremely unsanitary, for example, to walk around Penn Station barefoot. Maybe I should just break down and buy a pair of $10 shoes from Wal-Mart or something. We'll see.

But I digress. This is about our wonderful CTO and his social needs, not any discomfort Matt and I may (or may not) endure on our railroad odyssey from Appalachia to the Big Apple. Have a good time, Marty. We'll see you when we get there.

*********

Since sarcasm doesn't easily translate on the Web, a disclaimer is in order. I hate flying. Hate it. Not only did I choose my method of transportation for SMX East, I'm looking forward to the ride. Having traveled around the country many, many times in my previous life as an old-school media guy (read: newspaper reporter), I've hopped the Cardinal 50 line a number of times and have always enjoyed the trip.

Rail travel leaves a much smaller carbon footprint than driving or flying. It's also quite easy and relaxing. Sure, it takes forever and a day to get anywhere, but it's worth it to keep from dealing with airports, travel delays, turbulence at 28,000 feet and the otherwise kind, comfortable and accommodating nature of our nation's air travel system. Matt is coming along on the train because he's never ridden Amtrak before and is curious to see if I am crazy in endlessly extolling its virtues to anyone and everyone who is planning a business trip.

In addition, Matt and I will be live-blogging and Tweeting the trip through the Vec3 blog and our Twitter page--as we'll also be doing for the three days of SMX East--so keep an eye out for our updates.

Marty? Yeah, sure, keep an eye out for him, too. Trust me...you can't miss him.

Scared Clear Part Duex Or Something for the Kids at Home

Celebrating Meaningless Rankings Or How SEOChumpion Ranks 1st and 2nd for SEO Agency Firm

So last night I am getting ready to watch some tv, being fall there is lots of good tv to watch, before I do I hit refresh on Twummize.com and low and behold this is what I see

Now I know what you're thinking give poor SEOChumpion a break, what did he do to anyone. Well it's not really what he did to anyone, it's just what he is doing that made think about how sometimes people get so fixated on rankings and keywords that they start to celebrate the empty victories. Yeah he is ranking #1 and #2 for "SEO Agency Firm" but how many people are actually typing "SEO Agency Firm" into Google or any search engine. Well let's take a look.

Now of course these numbers are kinda meaningless in themselves but when Google doesn't even have enough data to display anything you know for sure it's a keyword that is not really worth spending any time and effort on, much less touting it as a victory. Now here is a snapshot of what might actually be some money keywords when it comes to SEO

I for one though don't think ranking or not ranking for "SEO xxxx" should be a measure of ones success. We get most of our business from word of mouth referrals, and I think that is because so many people have Googled "SEO xxxx" and been lead to a snake oil seo who is using bogus claims like I can guarantee rankings or I rank #1 for this term, so I must be good right? Taking advantage of the fact most people don't understand rankings and keywords. Preying on their vulnerabilities. But I digress. So we know that this keyword has little traffic, wonder what kind of competition it has. Well thanks again to the twitterverse, specifically mvandemar 

So zero competition, zero actual searches happening in Google. What the hell is the point? You might as well be ranking for laser kitten vertices. Ok so I am getting a little ranty again oops. I guess my main point is that SEO isn't and shouldn't only be about rankings and keywords. A good SEO should help their clients with a well rounded holistic internet marketing strategy, one that helps impact their ROI. Ranking for silly terms isn't going to do your clients any good, isn't going to bring traffic, isn't going to bring leads and certainly without those things won't result in any sales. I would much rather help a client get a good solid foundation for their website, help them produce good content, provide their users with a good experience and then build on that. The rankings will come with time and patience; but getting people ranking for junk - is only going to frustrate them and continue to tarnish the image of SEOs as a whole. I am sure I could go on and write forever about that; but I thought I would list some examples of pointless keywords that I rank for just for fun :) And please share your examples in the comments :)

• I ranked 10th for how fast is mexico sinking
• I rank 3rd for baby got back 25
• I rank 12th for fast result seo
• I rank 8th for best pist off bowling
• I rank 1st and 2nd for online reputation management india

 

Of course I am sure I could go on forever and ever; but I think everyone gets the point! Don't waste your time or clients time talking about empty rankings, and please share your empty rankings - do it for the LULZ :)

Scared Clear or Using The Zima Meme to Get Your Ass to Scary SEO

Contest Introduction Brought To You By Brian Carter

If you haven't heard, Martin Bowling loves Zima. He loves it so much (or so people say), that Google Suggest has permanently associated his name with Zima- they're officially related now.

Martin Bowling Loves Zima is a meme (a viral idea) that was started by Andy Beal and his wife, and has been embraced and fueled by search industry personalities such as Rob @SEOcracy, Sheila @govisithawaii, Todd Friesen, Brian Carter, Todd Mintz, Joshua Sciarrino, Dana Lookadoo, Danny Sullivan, Rand Fishkin, and others.
Now Martin is announcing the Martin Bowling Loves Zima Meme Contest... it's the contest that asks "Who can create the best whatever (video, blog post, tweet series, captioned picture, avatar, twitter background, the sky is the limit - want a great example check out ZimaFan on Twitter) about the Martin Bowling Loves Zima meme?"

The prizes are awesome, the judges are cool, and the contest is going to get a LOT of attention.
Here's what you have to do by October 3rd, 2008

1. Create your thing
2. Put it on the internet, and you don't EVEN have to link to the contest blog post, that's right this isn't a ploy to steal your link juice :)
3. Tweet about your entry with a link & Leave a comment here with your entry (just incase as we all know that twitter is sometimes teh suck)
4. Rinse & Repeat, cause you can enter as many times as you'd like!

Then you wait for our judges' decision anxiously while chomping on your nails, knowing the outcome could change your entire life forever!

The second half of this post brought to you by your regularly scheduled host Martin Bowling

And now on to the good stuff, how is this going to get my ass to ScarySEO? Well here is how these are the fabulous prizes:

1^st place

Win a trip to ScarySEO, (includes conference registration and Two Nights Stay at the awesome Hilton Deerfield Beach Hotel - Sorry Folks Airfare not included, unless someone would want to sponsor it :wink: )

$50 bar tab provide by yours truly, and no drinks will not be limited to Zima only :)

And one of these awesome Zima t-shirts

2^nd Place

So you don't get the free ride to the awesome ScarySEO mini-con, but we still want to hook you up with some SEO knowledge so

SEOmoz SEO Training DVD’s over 7 hours of SEO knowledge from Rand & Crew

One of those awesome Zima t-shirts pictured above.

3^rd place

3 month subscription to Online Reputation Management Monitoring Tool - Trackur.com subscription, so you can make sure you don't have your own Zima Meme disaster :)

Zima t-shirt

 

*Honorable mentions to receive random Zima treasures

 

**Contest will be judged by the following panel of Zima experts: Andy Beal, GoVisitHawaii, Jane Copland, Todd Friesen, Dave Snyder, Brian Carter.

If you need more details about the awesomeness of ScarySEO go check out this great post by Eric Lander (who is also speaking at ScarySEO) and if you don't win or don't enter don't forget you still have time to go register for ScarySEO.

The ultimate in the Zima Meme Zi.ma url shortening

Dr Pete had this great idea on twitter this morning.

 

And I thought to myself wow that has to be one of the best ideas ever in life, it is a must. So I head to google to check out what's involved in registering a .ma TLDcc. So after a few seconds I find out that .ma's are for Morroco, and to register them you need to head to www.internic.ma. So I fire up my browser and head on over to check it zi.ma is available, and LIB it was, so I start the registration process & I am starting to get really excited. I am sure Andy Beal & GoVisitHawaii had never expected the Zima meme to reach such heights. I am all the way through the check out process when I am greeted with.

Ouch! 169 Euros, based on today's exchange rate that's 236.9718 U.S. dollars. Pretty hefty for two years of registration. So I tweet to Dr Pete (hey I am a poet and didn't even know it) that I will probably have to forego that for now, cause I don't have an extra 237 laying around for domain names right at the moment. Then Good ole David Mihm comes to the rescue.

And I thought damn, what brilliant people I am following! So I thought why not see if anyone would want to get in on the Zi.ma Zima Meme train. According to the email that Internic.ma sent me I have 10 days to complete my registration before they cancel it. So just 23 dollars a day, I guess 24 to be safe :) So with out further ado here is the paypal donate link.

UPDATE:

Mission Accomplished!!! Zi.ma has now been purchased. many thanks to @andybeal @chiropractic @davidmihm @johnsantangelo @joshuasci @loribourne & let us not forget @MikeTek

Everyone will be getting link love from zi.ma once it goes live!

Google Suggest(s) a New Reputation Management Nightmare

So I was over reading Michael Jensen's blog SoloSEO about how Google was going to roll out Google suggest into the main engine, removing it from the Google Labs. Both Patrick Altoft and he were of the position that this would effectively kill the long tail. As Google will now be forcing users into high-volume, high-money terms (i.e., terms that people are bidding on via Adsense) it's almost like Google is creating a new Top 10 before the user is ever even taken to the SERPs. By having your primary keywords that you are ranking for listed in this drop down, you are far more likely to get traffic than those related terms that aren't being listed. When presented with options, people will generally choose one. That's not to say they will be satisfied with that result and only stay in those SERPs but I am willing to bet it's going to be the first stop for them. I am sure we could talk endlessly about how relevant these phrases are that Google is going to be offering searchers. Will users be forced to immediately perform another search to get the results that they actually want? Perhaps. But that's not what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about how Google Suggest is going to lead to an Online Reputation Management nightmare for many.

 

As you see by the illustration above, for my name Google only suggests three items--one of them being the infamous zima meme that my wonderful friend Andy Beal started. So with my particular name it doesn't really matter. Instead, let's take a look at Barack Obama.

 

As you can see, there are two glaring negative results. One is the "obama antichrist" listing and the other is "obama muslim." Both of these results, however, are not among the top 10 results for the keyword "obama" because of savvy--and quite effective--online reputation management.

Indeed, Barack has done a very effective job on properly managing his online reputation. His efforts with Fight the Smears has been a transparent and up-front way to deal with untruths about himself and his campaign. However, now that Google Suggest is presenting users with these options, some users will be inclined to begin looking around in these SERPs. Even though Barack has done a wonderful job managing his online reputation, negative or false stories are now immediately brought to the front of the results for his name. So how do you manage this now? Over the next few weeks, I will start to take a look at what might be powering Google Suggest and how that can impact you and your online reputation management issues.

 

Just one last parting gift a look at suggested results for John Edwards. Again, we see a reputation management nightmare.

 

P.S. I can't believe I actually said Zima on my blog, I am so afraid of what I am going to start ranking for now :)

Update #1:

MikeTek, down in the comments & over on twitter, had pointed out another great reputation nightmare that has occurred because of Google Suggest. It's none other than SEOChampion, and a search for his name michael rotkin displays michael rotkin is a turd. This shouldn't surprise anyone as SEOChampion pissed off lots and lots of people, over at SES San Jose read up over at Dave Snyder's SnydeySense.

 

Obama Sent Me a Text Message About Biden But I Didn't Care

So the whole world waited with baited breath yesterday to get that text message from Obama about who his VP was. And the concept was great I thought, because of the way that social media has changed the news cycle. You see more and more news being broken via social media and it's then mainstream media who is making the commentary. Well Obama wanted to provide his supporters with that same kind of power, break it to the few first, before any official press release or any press conference or before any mainstream news source scooped it. Well after he didn't get me the text message yesterday, I kind of stopped caring. And that's the problem, because it had such a build up - because he had everyone anticipating the announcement yesterday when he couldn't deliver it was a huge let down to many. Now not to say this cost him voters or anything like that, I am just saying it's one of the problems with politicans trying to leverage social media & other technological innovations to reach their supporters. A decision like picking your VP is a very important one and takes lots of time and thought. But us social media types aren't very patient, if we don't get the information when we want it or when we thought that we were going to have it, we quickly move on. I think Obama has executed a brilliant social media and internet campaign, probably the best ever; but this time he let us down. Not to mention as Andrew Shotland pointed out this morning Google already knew

Glen Allsop Tells Me All I’ll Ever Need to Monitor and Manage My Reputation Online

Glen Allsop of viperchill fame stopped by my blog and said I noticed my news years resolution was to better manage my online reputation and he said looks like so far you AREN'T doing it. Glen said looks like you are missing some very crucial steps like Monitoring, Repairing & Managing. Something he noted where the three basic steps of online reputation management and that if only I would have read his eBook I would probably know these things. So I said Glen that's exactly what I need to do, so I spent the last few days reading over his book on online reputation management and I must say it's one of the most complete resources I have seen on the subject. As Dazzlin Donna noted in her review there are several eBooks that are available on the subject now but none that are so complete as the one that Glenn has graced us with. Not only has he went through the basics of what you need to do successfully Monitor, Repair & Manage your online reputation; but devotes space to each individual section so that you can get started working on your online reputation management right away. He describes in detail what types of reputation management issues that you are mostly likely to run into and what you can do to effectively manage them. Glen has also collected some great examples of real world reputation management issues, and discusses them in depth. And finally rounds the book out with a great over of what it takes for each of the three basic steps of online reputation management. This book is truly a must read for anyone that wants to expand their knowledge in the online reputation management space. Glen has also made sure to keep you on the cutting edge of online reputation management, each time he updates his book with the latest and greatest tips - you will get those updates for free! What a great deal, stop over at viperchill and pick up your copy today!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ViperChill's Online Reputation Management eBook is now Available!

I have long been waiting for viperchill to release his new eBook on online reputation management. He let me know a few weeks ago on twitter that he was writing a book on online reputation management and ever since that day I was waiting in anticipation of the book. Glenn is an incredibly talented young man, who has continually proved that he knows his stuff. So early today when I got the tweet that I was so incredibly pumped. I am currently reading the book and will be posting a review tomorrow. But I wanted to make sure I got a post out today talking about the eBook. Here is what we know so far:

The guide is 75 pages long and includes the following sections:

• Introduction - A piece about me and the topic
• What is Online Reputation Management?
• Reputation Management Ethics
• Reputation Monitoring
• Types of Reputation Management Issues
• SEO Basics
• How to Deal With - Multiple specific issues
• Managing Your Reputation (14 pages)
• Resources