Here is a list of people to follow on follow friday from people that i follow and follow me.
Tired of those laundry lists? These are reccomendations, not just retweets..
Here were the instructions:
come up with a list of people you recommend for follow friday.
make a list of people you really interact with and a short blurb about why u follow them.
140 chars.. per description max.
@martinbowling #followfriday
@oilman cause he always has some wild adventure
@persianwiki providing a great look at what's really happening on the streets of iran
@oncee IT Manager in Charleston, WV always tweets awesomely helpful info
@jordankasteler has awesome insight to using social media in creative and new ways
@davesnyder it's BIG DAVE nuff said :)
@rfr an incredible gifted designer, he <3''s the environment
@steveplunkett #followfriday
I follow @kimsherrell because she is an intelligent person who adds value to your twitter stream.
I follow @cyandle because he is my twitter homie.. #seo #ppc
I follow @zerbetron because she's got that Boom Boom Pow and she is a fellow webmaster chair dancer.
I follow @melyssatweeting because she has a good brain.
I follow @jackleblond because he's a good man, no b.s. yet open minded, good sense of humor and sometimes he even posts some cool recipes.
I follow @mandaotto because she is real and smart, and an amazing artist.
I follow @martinbowling because he has a great sense of humor, he's quite intelligent and crafty.
I follow @lookadoo because she is a great friend, a good voice of reason and wisdom.
I follow @mosquitohawk because he has a good sense of humor and an interesting viewpoint.
I follow @dannysullivan because he is the walter cronkite of SEO.
I follow @blueyedmuse because she is smart, funny and tweets good stuff.
@zerbetron #followfriday
#followfriday For the best in geekery & nerddom, I recommend @geekgirldvia. She's smart, funny, & knows enough about BSG to be dangerous!
#followfriday A nerd in search of love? Worry not! @geeksdreamgirl helps nerds & geeks find their perfect match. Super nice and lots of fun
Interested in SEO & Social Media? Follow @cyandle. Great guy and he's always got fun and exciting things to say. He rocks! #followfriday
If you do SEO, & you're not following @steveplunkett, you should get your head checked! He's an SEO Jedi Master. #followfriday
@MichelleRobbins is a SEO smarty-pants, BSG nerd, super smart cookie & all around nice gal. I love her tweets & you will too! #followfriday
@lookadoo #followfriday
Learn all you need about Online Reputation Management & best practices in online marketing from @andybeal. His training classes kick it!
Get blogging, WordPress, SEO & many tech tips from @DazzlinDonna. Donna's stream is like tapping into a business marketing coach!
Just received my autographed copy of "What Success Takes" by @garrettpierson! I had the honor of reviewing his book, changed my approach!
I am in debt to @pageoneresults for 2 hours of his SEO consulting time! I'm wiser & now broke! "Web Standards" should be his middle name.
Friendship & geekship combined, @professor is the genius behind @Blogsville. Don't miss out on this blogging lineup!
@GlobalFusion is more than a specialist in Spanish SEO, he's a thought leader. Admire his wisdom, approach & ethics in SEO.
I've learned a lot about using Social Meda sites from @BrentCsutoras. He knows the insides of StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg! Add SEO, too!
The Social Media Queen is @TheNanny612! Don't tell, but I have a #girlcrush on her!
Obsessed w/the science of search, @SEOdojo speaks to SEO geeks & wannabe-gurus! Reading his newsletter is on my TO DO list!
One of the youngest & earliest prodigies I've followed is @PluginID. He knows how to make money blogging & will show you how, too!
I started reading Barbara Rozgonyi @wiredprworks before Twitter. She's become a friend and PR mentor!
If I had children, I would homeschool using Montessori lessons by @loribourne. I met her on SEOmoz & the friendship optimized from there!
Forget music! I tune in to the latest in search marketing on @WebmasterRadio @BrascoAtWMR is more than a radio genius! <3>
Get the latest analysis in search from @BruceClayInc by listening to @SEMSynergy every Wed! They translate SEO into understandable tidbits.
@Remarkablogger shares blogging, tech & SEO tips. His insights convinced me to learn Thesis, so here I am with a new theme to learn!
@mandaotto #followfriday
@graywolf
a great go-to for all things seo
@tonyadam
all around great yahoo guy
@cshel
another very smart seo gal
@shanatweeting
great social media expert
@mosquitohawk #followfriday
#1
I follow @RavenJon because he has an awesome SEO toolset (@RavenTools) & is an all around nice guy with sharp spidy sense.
#2
I follow the hip @JoannaLord because she's witty, has great taste in music & is a great contributor of social media & search knowledge.
#3
I follow the brilliant @steveplunkett because when he talks SEO tactics, you better be taking notes. Where does he get those great tidbits?
#4
I follow @jrcornthwait - He's king in the land of HTML emails (& has good taste in food, design & isn't afraid to call it like he sees it).
#5
I follow @carondelet of the Brute Squad because there's always something to be said for someone who can exchange obscure movie lines w/ you.
#6
I follow @lookadoo because she cares. I also can't wait to meet her in person at some future conference. Smart, motivated & entrepreneurial.
@melyssatweeting #followfriday
@VegasWill
A great follow. Tweets all signal and no noise.
@FoundByPat
Super Dad. Really relevant tweets. Exceptional wit.
@StevePlunkett
Everything’s bigger in Texas – including his brain and the strength of his tweets – fun follow.
@cyandle #followfriday
@sspencer - his presentations always provide so much information for the audience...
@rustybrick - one of the top bloggers in the IM industry..
@dannysullivan - the father of seo; and always keeps his tweeple up-to-date..
@copyblogger - one of the top bloggers in the IM industry..
@oilman - always willing to help out other when it comes to learning new IM stuff i.e. paid links..
@StoneyD - always provides in depth posts regarding IM checklists..
@katemorris - great at PPC...
@yoast - always on top with his wordpress plugins..
@TheMadHat - can make a mean bacon explosion..
@streko - king of the porkroll..
@melanienathan - she knows her linkbuilding..
@davidmihm - great at teaching us local search..
@theGypsy - great at keeping us up-to-date on patent info..
@shanatweeting - even though she's a mega phillies fan you can tolerate her.. :)
@professor - great at development work..
@davesnyder - knows his social media...and likes to cuddle from what i hear..
@graywolf - if i need a mean cake he could do it..
@Pamela_Lund - if you need custom USB flash drives she can hook u up..
@sugarrae - knows her affilaite marketing stuff..
@BrentCsutoras - knows his social media...
@andybeal - great online reputation mgt expert..
@brianchappell - knows his social media & online reputation mgt..
@yummyman - great at teaching us local search..
@lookadoo - a great all around person to follow..
@pearsonified - thesis king..
@bbille - always willing to help a brother out..
@pageoneresults - sphinn's worst nightmare..
@JoannaLord - knows her PPC..
@wiep - master link baiter..
@GymJunkies - can pump u up..
@steveplunkett - mad IM scientist..
@martinbowling - great at development work..
@SmokinManBBQ - it always tastes better when the smokinman' cooks it..
@itcn - can develop some great stuff..
@styletime - great at designs and wordpress..
A friend of mine on Twitter @utahseopro sent me these questions to answer and post on my blog which he is also posting on his blog, Utah SEO Pro Blog.
1. How long have you been working in Organic SEO and Internet Marketing and what attracted you to it?
I started in Web Development in 1999, doing lots of ASP.NET coding. And sometime 2001/2002 some of the people I was doing dev stuff for, started asking for help with their internet marketing. I kind of did it as a side service for a while, then figured hell why not jump in feet first and really do it full time. I like this side of stuff a little more cause I get to use my creative side, I still <3 development stuff and writing code; but getting to do creative stuff has always been a passion of mine.
2. In your opinion, what's the measure of a good SEO/PR/Blogging professional?
Looking out for the clients best interest, making sure that they are doing what they need to do to succeed. Not doing shady underhanded things in their name & being a good part of the community.
3. Whose Blog do you read the Most?
Wow that's a toughie, I have been so busy that I haven't been reading much of anything consistantly but I still check the @SEOMoz blog the most.
4. What's your best "SEO secret" or blogging tactic?
As you can tell from my own blog I am not the model blogger, I do it all wrong and don't write enough content; but something that I tell all of our clients to do is check up on Google Trends and find trending keywords that relate to their industry and blog away :) Cause at the end of the day content is still king or atleast a high ranking member of the kings court.
5. Search engine algorithms are getting smarter, and a lot of people predict Organic SEO services will become obsolete. How do you plan to adapt?
No matter how the algorithms change, they are still an algorithm and still can be gamed steered in the right direction of content :) I will make sure that I help my clients stay at the forefront of what's going on, incorporating emerging technologies into their marketing plan.
6. Please Describe the biggest challenge you face in your current job.
Not having enough time to do some of the stuff I really want to do. I stay really really really busy (i know judging from my twitter stream most would say I am lying =P ) and don't get enough time to do all the testing and experimenting that I want to do. Also getting clients to buy into my crazy social ideas, that's a pretty big challenge too, alot of people are afraid to put their brand out there - afraid someone might say something bad.
7. Do you have any advice for someone who is interested in Organic SEO, Digital Communications/Digital PR and ORM, but doesn't have a background in it, on how to get started in this field?
Read, Read, Read and read some more. Practice writing, watch emerging trends, study viral memes, goto conferences, network, tweet like there is no tomorrow :)
8. If you could rank for any keyword phrase you don't currently rank for, what would it be?
I am thinking Zima cause it would still be pretty sweet to see my self top 10 for Zima
9. Assuming you had never gone into (what you do now), what would you be doing now (professionally)?
I would like to pursue some type of acting or comedy. Maybe even get back into pro wrestling :)
10. Do you have any interest in politics?
I am a political junkie, I love all things political. I like reading Howard Zinn & Noam Chomsky, love watching Bill Maher, Keith Olberman & Rachel Maddow. I'm as wonky as they come with out being a total political insider :) And as you can tell am a little left leaning :)
Thank you to @MelaniePhung for writing the questions.
Thanks to the following for their participation:
@almacy - A Digital Strategy Expert.
@melaniephung - A DC SEO Strategist.
@martinbowling - A lover of Zima.
@utahseopro - A Utah SEO Consultant.
@fairminder - A Boston Website Design and SEO specialist.
@cyandle - A Google Adwords Professional.
@melanienathan - An Edmonton SEO specialist.
@jackleblond - A VP of Internet Strategy.
@djpaisley - A Digital Communications Strategist.
@vinceblackham - A Utah SEO specialist.
@researchgoddess - A Staffing Social Media Specialist.
@monicawright - A Maine SEO professional.
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
- Create your thing
- 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 :)
- 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)
- 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:
1st 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
2nd 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.
3rd 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.
Over the past several weeks there has been much discussion about serp hijacking and ninja linkbuilding. Whether or not you should be transparent with your clients and engage in knowledge sharing. We have recently started a project with client to help them properly manage their own online reputation and increase their social media presence. They were already working with another company on redesigning their Web site. This was not only a redesign of the site but a site overhaul to improve the search friendliness of their site. As we were moving forward with our portion of the project we did an internal analysis of the sites SEO so that we would know how the site would play in our plan. Discussing the preliminary results with the client - lead them to tell us not to worry all these issues were being addressed. That we should wait till the second week of January and we would be able to view the new and improved site with all of these fixes and more in place with a brand new look and feel!
We were rather excited about the prospects of the client getting and updated look and feel along with some much need search friendliness. We kept moving forward with our planning knowing that all of our concerns some of the things that raised a flag in our analysis were being addressed - and we would have a more solid jumping off point when the project went forward in January. The email stating they have gone live finally arrives, I anxiously open up the email and click the link. The browser opens to a Flash Splash Page, not just a splash page but one that hasn't even used any <NOSCRIPT> to provide any additional SEO boost and it doesn't have any links pointing the rest of the site! And even though google says they are reading flash files, there are some ongoing seo and flash tests that seem to indicate otherwise. So googlebot is already with a massive hurdle in indexing the "new and improved" "rehased" website. I click on the button in the flash animation and enter the site. I see only two paragraphs of text and some links. Links that I find are all hidden behind some javascript. But as I continue to scroll down the page I come across something that I find to be very disturbing.
This is the footer that is included on each page. I have blacked out the company name as to not drag them into this, even though this is about outing them to the client I don't feel that outing them to the world is appropriate or my place. But each of the red circles in the above graphic indicate a followed link, a link that has been styled to not appear as a link. They have given themselves 9 followed links with varying anchor text, appropriate title attributes and on images alt attributes. The attributes are something that they somehow forgot to include on any of the clients pages. So this of course leads me to dive into an all out analysis of the "new and improved" "rehased" Web site. And I proceed to find problem after problem.
We now have a bit of a quandary they have paid for services that we are now telling them they didn't receive. On top of that we are going to tell them that they really need to do these things so that all of their internet marketing efforts aren't in vein. I don't feel particularly comfortable with going back to them and handing them another bill to go back and fix someone else's work. Especially someone who has an established relationship with the client; we are the new kids on the block (yes, I just linked to 80's boy band new kids on the block). So the team comes together and writes a massive report on the "new and improved" "rehased" Web site. In this report we include everything we look at problems and their solutions - we spell it all out for them. We have decided by engaging in knowledge sharing; by not forcing them into choosing us that we will gain both trust and help make them successful - which is our ultimate goal. We don't want to create a drove of people who are dependant upon us. We want to create successful strategies, we want people not to need us; but to want to work with us on a continued basis to be a part of the process that creates the next winning strategy for them. Everyone on the team is feeling great about this decision. The client now knows what their problems are and how they can be fixed.
As soon as we deliver this report of course the client goes into panic mode. The president wants to know what is the most pressing issue that needs to be addressed is. We of course mention that some of their pages are ranking better for some the other companies terms and even their brand than they are for their own terms. And that they are leaking lots of link love on every single page to this other company 9 different times. I also wanted to stress that one link is acceptable but 9 was a little excessive and that they should really talk to these people and see if it was done on purpose, cause as I forgot to mention this is a .EDU site. And we all know how we SEO's covet .EDU backlinks. So we establish that this is indeed the standard footer and that they just want to build lots of links :) So there wasn't any attempt to game this client in particular; that they just game all their clients in this way. Anyway back to the story, we continue to work with the client and their internal Web department to identify things that they can easily fix and what they can't. Well as we get into the site more and more we realize that this is truly a mess. It's an ASP.NET CMS, that actually isn't really being used only it's database is being used - then they have ColdFusion pages making calls to the db pulling out content to display. So there is no "Theme" to edit and fix the menus, every one of the 23,000 pages has this stuff hard coded, they don't even use any include files. They let us know after the last group created the "look and feel" they went in and manually edited the pages to incorporate them. Wow! I was amazed. Many people had came through their doors - this was the 4th rework of their site; but no one had taken the time to integrate any of the different parts of the sites. Just band-aided them together and let the client worry about the consequences.
We are currently working with the client to help them decide how to best move forward. And I really believe that it was the transparency and knowledge sharing that really gave us the extra bump in their trust of us. They saw that we just wanted to help make their efforts successful, that we weren't trying to just make another buck. We honestly had their best interest in mind. We empowered them with the knowledge to fix it themselves or hire out someone else. But instead they turned to us; because they now know that they can trust us - we put their success first and it's paying off. I would encourage more Search/Internet/Social Marketers to engage in knowledge sharing and be a little more transparent and see how positively it impacts their bottom line. I will keep everyone updated as the saga continues to unfold :)