I just wanted to make a quick update apologizing for the lack of posts last week. It was my birthday on April 20th and then my little brother’s yesterday, and on top of that I’ve been rolling out a ton of new (time consuming) projects, so I’ve been pretty swamped. Next week I should be able to catch up, though, and get bloggin’ again :).
I try at all costs to avoid doing what I’m about to do which is to make a post just telling you to check out someone else’s blog, because I hate reading these myself :). The reason I hate these posts is because out of the 40 to 50 blogs I subscribe to, often times 10-15 of them have basically the same thing regurgitated with only a slight variation. So I apologize, but this one was just too good.
Suntdubl’s SEO Playbook, in my mind, isn’t so good because it’s a playbook. The reason I liked it so much was because of the amazing job Stuntdubl does in eloquently/uniquely describing SEO. Aside from that (which imo is the part that makes the post worth reading and sharing), it does have some basic SEO/internet marketing guidelines.
My favorite quote?
“Technology and marketing were formerly unique disciplines with very different types of people. SEO’s are the folks in between.”
I don’t think I’ve heard a better description of what an SEO really is.
You should check it out for yourself, though—it’s not more than a 5-10 minute read.
“So will you do it for me?”
That’s basically what Matt says in a recent post on ‘hidden’ links. As I read through the post I had so many strong reactions I had to keep setting down the page to allow what I was reading to sink in. How could Matt Cutts really be posting this garbage? The only voice of reason in the comments section, although perhaps in an overly aggressive tone, was that of graywolf—of course he was quickly swarmed by the die hard Matt Cutts groupies.
I like Matt—I’ve mentioned as much in past posts on this blog and I’ve even got my dad subscribed to Matt’s feed. That being said, I couldn’t believe Matt could post something as pretentious and embarrassing as this. His post is virtually equivalent to lamenting “Well, we tried… But here at Google we just can’t figure out how to do what needs to be done algorithmically, so will you guys please do it for us?”
Who are you? Microsoft? Come on, Google, I thought you guys were the best and the brightest. Are you really telling us you’ve been forced to stoop this low in order to provide quality results? Quite a slap in the face to your engineers, if you ask me.
At the outset the post appears reasonable—basically, Matt says you shouldn’t use sneaky CSS/javascript to disguise links to porn sites. Okay, I can understand that. Fair enough. I still think Google should figure it out algorithmically if they want to do things right, but at least I can appreciate the point.
Later, however, it seems that Matt’s anti-spam zeal reaches new and ridiculous heights. Specifically, he goes on to say:
As long as we’re talking about links, this seems like a pretty good opportunity to talk about a simple litmus test for paid links and how to tell if a paid link violates search engines’ quality guidelines. If you want to sell a link, you should at least provide machine-readable disclosure for paid links by making your link in a way that doesn’t affect search engines.
Even now I can’t believe this truly is a quote from Matt’s blog.
This “simple litmus test,” in essence and without exaggeration, suggests that Matt believes every webpage on the internet that has a paid advertisement (Matt doesn’t even limit this to text links) including a link to the advertiser’s site (pretty much standard practice), is in violation of “search engines’ quality guidelines.” [Note the apostrophe used in “search engines’ quality guidelines”—what is this Matt, the Google version of the “royal we?”]
Matt, do you really find it appropriate for you to dictate the internet’s ‘linking legislation?’ You overstepped your boundaries here, to such an extent that even ardent Google fans would have to concede that this as an inappropriate use of a border-line monopolistic market position. You’re using Google’s dominance to redefine the internet as you see fit. What’s next? Google-compliant gHTML? You can’t possibly believe that every webmaster in the world should have to read Google’s quality guidelines and carefully redirect or rel=’nofollow’ all paid advertisements that include a link… can you? I hope not.
The bottom line is this: If Google has a problem with paid links, they need to figure out a way to algorithmically detect them, or come up with some other way of ranking sites. Proclaiming stringent “quality guidelines” that essentially ask webmasters to do the work that Google doesn’t want to is a myopic step down a dead end street. Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible.”
It is not “to take advantage of a dominant market position by bullying / forcing webmasters to change their pages (the world’s information) so we don’t have to work as hard.”
I feel that was a little unclear, so I’ll rephrase: Google is supposed to organize the world’s information—not tell the world how that information needs to be presented.
Matt, you should be embarrassed. Or at least edit your post and retract this silly decree. We all make mistakes—I just hope you don’t stick with this one.
PS: Please don’t ban my sites. I swear, my lord, I’ll use nofollow or a robots.txt’d redirect. 
For me, today is one of those days where you wake up and clearly feel that you had wayyy too much fun the night before. I feel like Frank from the movie Old School when he says “I had a great time last night!” and his buddy answers back “We know you had a great time last night. The whole town knows you had a great time last night.”
I have to admit that I do take comfort in one thing: when you start out as the SEO Loser, you can’t really fall too far. Whenever I find myself doing something stupid or embarrassing I laugh and figure “Okay, I’m living up to my title.”
Around 9:30 or so we decided to leave the Hilton bar and grab some food. On the way out we bumped into some other attendees and started talking with them. I wasn’t paying full attention but my ears perked up when I heard a lady say her name: Rae Hoffman. For those who haven’t read my blog in the past, I ripped on Rae pretty badly in my first post. Afterwards I felt guilty about it because I thought I was too harsh and a couple friends/people I respect had contacted me saying Rae was actually really nice–I must have gotten the wrong impression.
Anyway back to the story—I had to tell Rae I was the SEO Loser. I couldn’t resist. But at the same time I knew she would (rightfully) hate me. Luckily I was pretty deep already and any form of timidity was long gone.
It was the kind of awkward situation I’m prone to, but Rae was really cool about it although she was a little heated at first. I’d say more but we agreed the conversation was “off the record” (the first time in my life anyone has ever asked me to have an off the record conversation 
… I must be moving up). I’ll just end this topic by saying Rae was really nice.
There’s one more incident worth mentioning that happened before we made it to our restaurant. On the way out we met a couple other nice girls attending SES and my friend asked them what company they were from. They pointed at my SES man-purse–specifically to the Findology logo on the side of it. Being a little tipsy and in bad lighting, the yellow O (the first o) didn’t really stand out. So I said in the stupidest way possible, “Find – Low – Gee? You’re company is called find low gee?” It was pretty bad. She called me an idiot and said “What company would name themselves Find Low Gee?!
After grabbing a bite to eat, we felt like we’d pretty much missed the boat in terms of the party scene. Word on the street had it that Pepperjam was hosting a killer party and unfortunately we hadn’t heard about it so we were about to give up on SES-parties and just check out some NYC bars. But first, we decided we’d give the Hilton one last shot.
I’m very glad we did. At the Hilton we bumped into Daron Babbin (aka SEGuru)–a very cool guy I’d actually met before at the Ghost Bar during PubCon. We talked to him, had a few drinks and met some other SESers around the bar before migrating to a bar down the street where a big group of conference goers had congregated. On the way out I saw Neil Patel sitting on the bench. I know what you’re going to say—“do you ever learn?”—but the answer is no, I don’t, so I walked up to Neil and started talking to him. He was a really nice guy as I would have expected based on the tone of his blog that I’ve been subscribed to for several months.
There was a lady sitting next to Neil and somehow it came out that her last name was Schoemaker. Mrs. Shoemoney?! I talked with her for a bit, told her how much I loved her husband, you know—the usual. A few minutes later Shoemoney walked into the hotel.
Now one thing that’s interesting about being an SEO Loser is that you’re never sure if people are going to recognize you or not. I’ve only posted one picture of myself on this blog and it was pretty blurry. Still, sometimes I’ll get a glare or weird look and I’m always wondering if they recognized me from the blog. The same was true when Shoemoney walked in—to be honest I didn’t think he’d recognize me. But he did. “Dude the SEO Loser!!!” he yelled and came up and gave me a hug. That was pretty fun.
We let the Shoemoneys go and headed out to the bar where we bumped into Chris Hooley – now famous for his ability to get SEOs wasted :). I had met Chris at PubCon as well so it was cool to see him again and have a few drinks.
In addition to Chris, there was a whole crew of SEO / SES ‘elite’ at the bar. I talked to Todd “Oilman” Friesen, one of the actual SEO Rockstars along with a bunch of others. Andrea, Shoemoney’s sister, was at the bar as well and it was cool to finally meet her— very nice girl.
Chris Hooley drink baited me into a final shot / beer combination that ultimately did me in. I could feel myself spinning and when I saw the homeless guy making fun of me I knew it was time to go.
I’m sure there’s a lot I’m leaving out but it’s time to start another night so I have to wrap this up. Hope to see some of you out tonight! As always comment on the blog or send an e-mail if you’re at SES and want to meet up and I’ll try to get in touch. Have fun!
So I have to admit, SES New York has been very fun. I was disappointed with the first few sessions but more than satisfied with the last. Then, of course, comes the party scene! We are at the Hilton still and now it’s 9:10 PM. Word on the street has it that PepperJam is hosting a very cool party tonight. Unfortunately, being the loser that I am, even knowing Kris Jones and being halfway in love with the guy, I don’t know where it is. So we’re hanging out at the bar at the Hilton, desperately hoping to hear ‘wherrrrr’s the party at.’ So if by some chance you happen to know, we’d love to join you and party here in the big apple. I’ll be checking the comments regularly (out of desperation) in addition to e-mail, so send me a msg at kris @ seo loser.com or give me a call at 831-359-5555 and we’d love to join the party. Hope to hear from ya! Kris
I received an e-mail about a week ago informing me of an ‘official’ thread at Search Engine Watch with details regarding the SES-related parties. It was remarkably helpful and welcoming for the average attendee—the hospitality and warmth of the post is so overwhelming I decided I’d provide a summary here:
Monday:
Tuesday:
Wednesday:
Thursday:
Seriously—what is the point of posting a public, not to mention “official,” list of private parties? I don’t want to pass judgment too early, but I’ve got to say this list of SEO after-parties is comically reminiscent of the PubCon scene.
If a party is private, why post it on a widely read and publicized list? The only motivation I can see for posting such a list is let others know there are parties they aren’t invited to. And that other, more ‘important’ people will be welcomed. Some people were cool enough to get an invite, and you weren’t—“you’re an SEO Loser! I’m a search engine optimization rock star…”
After all, if it’s a private party, I think it’s safe to assume the guys on the VIP list already know about it.
Because this list is so ridiculous, I’ll try to keep an up-to-date version here consisting only of parties that are actually open to all attendees.
Anyway, I’ll be staying in Brooklyn with an old friend from home who now lives in I’m looking forward to providing some coverage of what I hope will be a great event.
I saved yesterday’s Shoemoney show for today, knowing that I’d be in the car for a few hours. Shoe’s guest was Scott Jangro, the founder of BumpZee – a very cool and, in my mind, promising social networking project. The guys discussed a number of topics, mainly news (I wish I’d listened live and called in as I’d loved to have heard this very knowledgeable and successful duo discuss some more ‘precise’ / applicable affiliate strategies), but toward the end of the show they discussed conferences like PubCon, Affiliate Summit, Ad Tech, and SES. Scott’s favorite was, not surprisingly as he’s a long time affiliate marketer, the Affiliate Summit. I agreed with his sentiments in that the atmosphere at the Affiliate Summit was really unique, welcoming and fun.
One of Scott’s comments reminded me of a phenomenon I’d thought of blogging about in the past but apparently forgot, and that is the incredibly “tight lipped, big paranoia fest” (borrowing Scott’s perfect description) that is so prevalent at these shows. Basically, many attendees feel there is an unwritten rule–separating the wise from the ignorant–that you don’t talk about things that make you money. If you do, the idea is that others will copy, compete and ultimately conquer you.
The fact is, however, ’secrets’ that the elite or even the losers can share about how they’re making money online—for example, which programs they use and how they are promoting affiliate offers—are not likely (with a very few exceptions) to hurt or benefit anyone to a significant extent. While talking to a few guys attending the PubCon conference outside my hotel, I remember one of them asking me “so what affiliate programs are you doing well with?” My response was something like “mortgage leads are making me a lot right now” and both of the guys looked at each other with a poorly disguised expression of victory. When I saw their reaction I immediately attained a fairly certain guess of what they were thinking: “Dude, we got him! This idiot must have had a little too much to drink and gave away a secret!”
“DEAR GOD NO! Now they know I make money off a mortgage affiliate program. I’m ruined! And they’re gonna be rich!” Reality check guys–this just isn’t how it works. Go ahead, “bring it!”
If you disagree with me that’s great, because then I can give you one piece of advice that’ll get you a ton of these ’secrets’ and you don’t even have to get anyone drunk: call your affiliate manager and ask him which programs people are making money with. Ask for conversion data, keyword lists, etc. They’ll give you stacks of spreadsheets and other information in a matter of minutes with no questions asked.
Sure, there are a (very) few cases I can think of where a person might have discovered some incredibly easy maneuver that earns big bucks. But for the most part income of that type is short-lived and usually isn’t the part of your portfolio that’s going to make you rich.
In my opinion it’s more ignorant to think you’ve tricked some ‘fool’ into giving away the bank than it is to tell someone about an affiliate program that makes you money. We’ll see how people are at SES, but I’m hoping the ‘paranoia fest’ isn’t quite so pronounced. It’s fun to talk to people about online business, particularly at these shows. But it’s not fun when people naively assume substantive discussion automatically means idiocy.
I just finished making all the flight and accommodation arrangements for Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York, 2007 so there’s no turning back now—the loser will head to New York in a week. I fly to New York on the 9th and back home on the 13th. I was thinking of sticking around for the weekend following but figured I’d be pretty partied out by Friday.
This will be my third conference since starting the SEO Loser blog. For those who haven’t followed the whole saga, the first event and inspiration for SEO Loser was the Las Vegas PubCon 2006, where I had a number of funny, embarrassing and unexpectedly awkward experiences.
Affiliate Summit, on the other hand, was much different. The atmosphere was much more relaxed and welcoming—there weren’t as many plainly visible cliques and exclusive groups. At the upcoming SES I’m expecting something more like my first experience. I know this show is attended by nearly all of the SEO elite, including most (if not all) of the characters from PubCon. I’m definitely looking forward to the show and will post as much coverage as I can live from the event—both on actual search related issues and on the social side.
Anyway, If you want to meet up with an SEO Loser and have a drink or a cup of coffee or maybe even check out some parties, leave me a comment or send me an e-mail at kris [at] seoloser.com. Either tonight or in the next few days I’ll also post a rundown of the sessions/panels I plan on attending and what my expectations and hopes are. Hope to meet some other SEO losers out in New York—and maybe even a few Rockstars :).
