First, I would like to let everyone know I have taken a new position. I am now working for MediaWhiz Holdings as the new SEO Manager for their MediaWhiz Search division. MediaWhiz is the higher ranking of two Inc. 500 companies I have worked for, the first (you know who you are) topped out at #458 while MediaWhiz hit #256 in 2008. If you have not heard of MediaWhiz I am sure you are familiar with one or two of their products. The most well known in our industry is Text-Link-Ads, the #1 link broker on the net. Other notable properties include; MonitizeIt.com, ReviewMe.com, ScribeFire and WhiteDelivery.com.

I am very happy to be at MediaWhiz, the job is exactly what I love about this industry and the room for growth in the new SEO Department of Search is basically unlimited at the moment. Its nice to be working with top tier clients again and some top tier co-workers to boot. Big thanks to Josh Gampel at Onward Search for getting me my shot at the position.

Also, I found out today I have been nominated for a SEMMY. Put together a couple of years ago by my friend Matt McGee, the Semmy’s are our industries closest thing to a pier reviewed award. I explained it to my wife at the Search Marketing version of the SAG (Screen Actor’s Guild) Awards. I am very honored and if I make if to the finals, I hope you lend me your vote.

Out of probably 100,000 or more SEM related posts  in 2008 across 100’s of sites, a panel of judges selected the top dozen or so articles in a select number of categories. I was selected in the “Industry” category for my article published in the Search Engine Journal titled “Are SEO Forums Still Needed?“. This is the same article that pushed me over the edge to win the SEJ Guest Blogger Contest. I hope it can bring me the same kind of luck here. Big thanks to whoever nominated me.

I the spirit of the election and the campaign slogan of our new presedent-elect, I am planning some “Change” for this site. Look for a brand new site design and focus within the next week or two.

Until then I hope to retun to my regular postings and a few guest postings on other great SEO blogs/site.

If you create any good ones, link them here in the comments, would love to see them.

Jim is easily one of my favorite writers in the Industry and I have know him for years so I knew it would be fun. We talked a bit about my current business model, which is rather unique in SEO. I do, as Jim calls it “White Label SEO”. I act as an outsourced resource for Agencies who do not currently have SEO products or deliverables and want/need to offer them to their clients. Additionally, we talked about how the SEO Meetup Group I help administer here in South Florida contributes to my business and could work for others trying to find new sources of SEO lead gen.

Listen to the whole show here

Over all it was a great time and I really appreciate Jim and Dave asking me to be on their show, it was an honor. Feel free to listen to the show via the link above or head over the the Webcology site and listen to the entire archive of Jim and Dave’s shows.

Oh .. and for those interested, here’s a pic of Matt Cutts wearing the “White Hat” that Dave mentioned. Lee gave some other guy credit in the comments, but he’s wrong, that was my hat promotion. You can ask Dave and Jim, I think they both have one.

The 2008 Predictions

1. Google will remain the #1 Search Engine. Unless of course Microsoft does indeed buy Yahoo, then Microhoo! would be #1 for a short period of time.
2. Major companies in the US (think Fortune 500) will start to realize that most of the 6 figure salaried SEOs are learning on the job. The 6 figure SEOs will use their beefy resumes to move on to other companies which haven’t figured that out yet.
3. Black Hats will make a resurgence because the engines will think they have them beat. All of the freshman Black Hats will make the whole group of them look like morons. The White Hats will continue to evolve too slow.
4. So many people will have so many theories about Social Media that it will be unknowingly abused to the point of global ineffectiveness as a marketing medium. This excludes the early adopters, they will continue to hide in the social shadows and manipulate from behind the curtain.
5. Google will introduce a revenue sharing plan that will allow people who sell links to keep their link juice as long a Google gets its cut. You may even be able to pay Google directly out of your AdSense earnings. On the other side of the plan link buyers will still get screwed.
6. Blogs will finally lose their magic in the rankings as pressure will be applied by Wikipedia and other wikis to be the social media of choice for the algorithms.. Oh sorry, too late.

Self Motivated Promises

1. I am going to do my very best to post every day. If I don’t have anything meaningful or newsworthy to say at the time, expect allot of sarcasm (reference this post).
2. I am going to participate in the SEO community more. I will start commenting on other peoples blogs and make a general nuisance of myself in a forum or two.
3. I am going to continue to learn and study SEO as I know that it is ever changing and I will never be able to keep up, but how else will I be able to sound knowledgeable on those forums and blog comments.
4. I plan on engaging every social media site I can find. One of them is bound to do something useful for me. Not to mention I have way to much free time on my hands.

Ok, I’m feeling a bit sarcastic today, so many posts on blogs or sites which have to introduce the New Year boggle my mind. So I am just poking at them for a bit of fun.

If you are serious about what you do, the beginning of 2008 should not mark a milestone of change. When you realize something needs changed, don’t wait for the New Year to better yourself or your business.

Here’s a quick recap of how the major search engines are distorting the results of the link: search …

Google – Only shows between 10 and 20 percent of the inbound links it knows about using this command. In the Webmaster tools you will find a comprehensive list of ALL the links it knows about even the ones it does not use and know way to tell the good from the bad.

Yahoo – Until recently this was the goto engine for the link: search, however it has been recently shown that different results are displayed for the link: search based on whether you are the verified owner of the site or not.

MSN/Live – Microsoft snubbed the search community a few months ago when it disabled the link: search altogether. Then just a couple of weeks ago it seemed to be back and MSN earned the praise of the search community for its timely reintroduction. Opps .. what ever made us think we could put faith in a Microsoft search product. Its gone again.

If you are looking to determine how many inbound links you have to a site or page, be careful and remember that any data you use is suspect at the moment.

As promised, I am posting my Linking PowerPoint Presentation online for members to access. It’s a bit over 2MB and I converted it to the 2003 format so more people are able to view it. If you plan on using it somewhere all I ask is a little credit …

Currently when using this command it is quite common for the results to only display a portion of the pages on a site. I am sure we have all see the “repeat the search with omitted results included” from time to time. This usually happens when Google identifies pages as duplicate or the pages have been included in Google’s Supplemental index for one reason or another.

Kudo’s to Google! The command is changing to show all pages they know about the site. This opens the command to be useful to people who are actually using the command to find content on a particular site. Don’t wonder if they have plans to make this change to the “link:” I am sure they don’t. Recently Google has made the complete list of inbound links available to webmasters via a new feature in their Webmasters Tools, no need to do it here too.

The site will still be primarily from an In-House viewpoint, however most of the topics will be applicable to anyone who performs or needs search marketing.

Stay tuned for the new AppliedSEO.com coming soon.

As this industry continues to define itself, I think we will see more concrete, actionable knowledge as a byproduct. With the “secretive” nature of the big search engines like Google, this will certainly be an uphill battle. Of course all of the engines have a vested interested in persuading us to focus our efforts in their bottom-line driving PPC programs. This makes me wonder how important ranking algorithmically will be in 5 years.