It has been really cool and surprisingly fun to see the reaction to my initial post about my experiences as an SEO Loser. Thank you very much to everyone who Dugg, commented on, or even just read the post! I’m happy some of you enjoyed it. This post will basically be a summary of how I promoted the post, who reacted to it, and how. Keep in mind that I am a total blog newbie so maybe some of you will comment with advice on what I could have done better.

1. I set up the blog and tried to make a funny header.

2. I made my post.

3. I tagged it in Delicious and Technorati.

4. I added it to Digg.

5. I added it to my forum signature at the Digital Point forums where I have about 1000 posts.

6. I made a shameless plug on the Webmaster Radio chat telling people about the post.

7. I made the SEOLoser.com site my homepage and commented on a few industry blogs (Shoemoney’s blog and Aaron Wall’s SEOBook blog are the two I remember right now). At the outset I thought Shoemoney might have been censoring my comments because he didn’t like my blog and I got a little upset, however it appears he’s approving them now, so I appreciate that and feel a little stupid for jumping to conclusions so quickly. I’m also glad to see he commented here! Thanks!

The reactions?

1. Matt Cutts commented about the post on his blog! Wow, this was pretty much the ultimate goal for an SEO related blog post. Too bad it was just a comment as opposed to part of a full post—I didn’t get an actual back link but I did get some visitors. Thanks Matt!

2. The post got about 23 Diggs in a week (if you liked the post but didn’t digg it, please do!) which I wouldn’t call stellar but I wouldn’t call it a complete disappointment either. I have received some traffic from Digg but nothing to write home about.

3. I was linked to by Chris Hooley who has received a lot of attention due to his great drinkbait.com blog. Thanks Chris! Chris was very cool at the conference and I actually hung out with him a bit. Hope to see you again.

4. There must have been a thread about the blog in the WebMasterWorld Supporters Forum because I received about 30 visitors from there. I don’t have a supporters account because I have a hard time getting myself to pay $149 for a forum membership when there are so many great, free forums. Maybe a supporter can tell me what the thread was about? Or maybe I’ll just have to pay up and register there.

5. I received comments from many of the people I had blogged about. This was really fun and rewarding

6. The blog was mentioned on the SEO Rockstars radio show, but not in a very positive way. Apparently the Rockstars were a little offended or interpreted the post as a complaint (I honestly didn’t mean for it to sound that way… it was supposed to be a humorous reflection of my experiences). I was a little upset by this because I would have thought they’d understand I was half-joking and also have appreciated my positive comments toward them. Not to mention the fact that I like those guys

7. Surprisingly I’m already getting some search traffic for the names of the people I blogged about.

I recently received a pass to the Affiliate Summit West conference (totally unrelated to this blog) and will write up a little post with my expectations and plans for that event.

What else am I hoping for with the blog? I’m really hoping the original post gets a few more Diggs—I’d love to see the effects of making it to the Digg homepage. It looks like this might be a long shot, though, as it has been a while since I submitted it (over a week).

There were also some people and interactions I wanted to blog about in the original post but didn’t. The reason why was simply that the post got way too long. I’d expected it to be about one page, but it ended up being about four. I’ll make a post later tonight or tomorrow covering the people I had to skip over in the first entry.

The one part of my post I do feel a little guilty about was the part that criticized Rae Hoffman. I don’t know her well enough to judge her character or anything like that and it seems that she is actually quite a nice person. My only exposure to Rae was one panel at PubCon and I guess it just brushed me the wrong way. Sorry Rae, I really didn’t mean to ‘bash you’ or anything like that! I feel extra guilty because according to analytics I’m getting some traffic for the search “Rae Hoffman” (although I don’t see myself in the SERPs) and I don’t want people to think poorly of Rae because of my post.

Thanks again to everyone who commented! It really made this an awesome experience. For those who mentioned that they hoped I would post more, I can say I definitely will. I just want to make sure the things I blog about are worth your time so I’m making them at a “measure pace.”

PS: I’ll approve any comments that aren’t spam or porn or something like that, so even if you want to comment about how much you hate the blog, it will be approved! Don’t hold back.