I love the example Jonathan Shapiro gives in his “Death of the marketing budget” article on iMediaConnection.com. He asks:

“What if I offered to sell you $10 bills for $5 dollars each — how many would you want? What would your budget for $10 bills be?”

The answer is simple … As much as I could get. No budget, just pure open ended profit generation. Why would I want to put a cap on that?

Gauge your marketing spend, not on a set budget, but on how well the marketing performs. If the effort is making money then throw more money at it, if its not cancel it or use the detailed measurements now available to fix it. Mr. Shapiro also notes that the amount of detailed data about how marketing is performing has increase dramatically and this data can be used to craft a well oiled machine of marketing focused on getting results not meeting a budget.

It’s simple really, Instead of building a marketing plan around budgets, build it around performance and as long as it is performing…

Damn the Budget and Full Steam Ahead!

It amazes me how many marketing and more specifically PR people don’t understand online culture. How in the world are you going to be effective at communications if you don’t understand the demographic  you are communicating to? Seems simple right? Apparently not.

I recently ran across a situation that unfortunately is more common than I would like to admit. Someone hired a PR firm to help with a online reputation management problem. While there are a few PR firms out there that get ORM (very few), many just see this as an extension of their existing skill-set. They couldn’t be any further from the truth than if they thought the commercial of Tiger Woods playing golf on the moon was shot on location.

The particular situation I ran across included a PR firm with a fairly impressive pedigree. The owner was a Harvard grad, an ex-editor at a major national newspaper and even presided over some Pulitzer winning coverage. He even seemed to have somewhat of a technical background. However, the actions of his firm suggest they do not understand the market they have jumped into.

A client has a rather stressful reputation online. Quite a number of bloggers, site owners and even ex-employees are writing about bad experiences. It has caused quite a stir and now other bloggers are picking up the cry and republishing some of the original complaints or stories. As you can guess this can be a rather large ORM problem and can quickly spiral out of control if not addressed. How you address it is the key however, it is very easy to make the situation even worse. Any guess what the previously mentioned PR firm did?

Here’s an example of what not to do:

Send a letter to bloggers threatening them with civil action if they don’t remove offending content.

Negative consequences of that action:

First: Most of the time, bloggers will not cave to the pressure and will actually take this as a challenge, especially if they were only reporting on something someone else wrote.

Second: If they do remove the content, many times they replace the content with a reference link to the original content. This is even worse. Now the duplicate content (which would have been filtered from search results) is now replaced with a link which gives more weight and strength to the original negative article. This additional link juice makes he situation even harder to handle from a ORM perspective.

Finally: The odds are this blogger has readers, who may have their own blogs. The blogger will write about the threatening email and his readers may support him/her with new articles on their own sites. Again, adding to the overall negative press published about the client.

What do you do?

People online are prone to be a bit rebellious. This is partly because of the perceived anonymity provided by the internet as well as the personality type of those who participate. The best course of action in this case it to let them spout and do nothing, they will move on to a new topic soon enough.

I recommend to all my friends, co-workers and strangers I meet to read The ClueTrain Manifesto. I cannot imagine a better book to get grounding on how to deal with people in the online space. Once you are done with that, pick up Naked Conversations which has been called ClueTrain’s sequel.

I should probably send a copies to the PR firm hinted at above.

It be there and will be presenting on WordPress SEO. I know its a hot topic and plenty of folks have been asking a ton of  questions. Let me know if you are coming and if you have any specific topics you want me to cover, ask here and I’ll make sure they get into the presentation.

To find out more visit the official site at WordCamp Miami or just register directly from here.

There is also a Geek Dinner after the fact but you need to RSVP, I hear the tickets are going fast so dont drag your feet.

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.

Search engine rankings are always in a state of flux. This happens for a number of reasons. First, web pages are being added and subtracted from the internet at rates closing in on 100’s of thousands a day. This alone is enough to ensure search ranking change on a regular basis. Add to this the fact that the search algorithms are also changing on a constant basis and rely on many factors which themselves change on a regular basis. An example of this would be in-bound links to specific pages. Historically fixed positions in search engine ranking are almost unheard of due to the fluid nature of the internet itself.

Additionally, the major search engines are really just HUGE databases full of information about web pages and this information is spread out among a number of different data centers. In a perfect world, these databases would be perfectly in sync. The huge amount of data contained in these databases makes this a near impossible task. So what we end up with is different data centers sometimes showing different results. If a person in California finds his site at #1, that does not mean the customer in Ohio searching with the same keyword finds the same site at #1.

Now take into consideration Personal Search. The proliferation of this variation on search results is starting to take its toll. Search engines are customizing search results based on an individuals personal search habits. This means what might be a #1 ranking for you may only be a #5 or #6 for me. Each person will have their own results, making that #1 listing even more elusive.

Congratulations to you if you find your site at #1 for your keywords. But don’t despair if they fluctuate up and down over time or if someone across the country or across the room sees results that differ from yours. If you are on the first page, expect to bounce around a bit. Just remind yourself if the results were fixed, you wouldn’t have had your chance to be #1 in the first place.

1. SEO Tools for Research
2. SEO Tools for Production
3. SEO Tools for Analysis

While there are a ton of tools out there for every conceivable need, it is best to stick with as few as possible or your work load will become fairly cumbersome. Don’t stop testing or trying new tools as they appear, but don’t get in the habit of using 2-3 tools to do the same job because each has a feature the others don’t. This will bury you and erase any advantage the tools may have provided in the first place.

Let’s take a look at each of the basic types above and dig into some specific details about tools for tasks under those categories …

SEO Tools for Research

Research is a key component of SEO and using the right tool can make all the difference. Here are some tools I use for some specific types of research.

SEO Knowledge: Researching the changes in the industry is key to staying on top of your game and keeping clients on top of the rankings. RSS Feeds are the #1 way to keep up. Either subscribe to the top SEO blogs or even easier, join Twitter and subscribe to TopSEOBlogs this twitter account posts a new tweet with a link to every post of the top 30 or so SEO bloggers. Additionally, read Sphinn.com the digg style SEO and search engine news source.

Keyword Research: This is the foundation of any good SEO campaign. Predictive keyword analysis can be tough and the right tools can make the job a bit easier to get though. One of the best Keyword research tools I have used is Keyword Discovery by Trellian. Their algos seem to understand the relationships between words better than most. Additionally, Google has recently added specific traffic counts to their AdWords Keyword Tool. This data is invaluable when doing keyword research.

Competitive Research: Knowing what your competitors are up to has always been an advantage in business and this is still true online. However, there are so many aspects of SEO it’s hard to find just one tool to do this job. One way to get a ton of competitor information in a single place is to download and use the SEO for FireFox plugin. To get more, will require you to build a list of specific resources and sometimes hit the engines manually with advanced search techniques in hand.

SEO Tools for Production

This is an area that can get you in trouble. There are way too many tools on the market that claim to make SEO easier. What can you do to make a difference?

Automation: Automated site submission, automated rank tracking, and automated link building programs etc.etc. See any thing in common with these? There are all “automated” and this makes them better, right? Wrong! Be careful with any software or program that claims to automate the processes. While there are some things that can be automated, most tasks can’t be and still remain effective.

What Not to Use: Programs like “Web Position Gold” and “WebCEO” do have some helpful features, but many of the built in tools can get you in trouble with the major search engines. WPG is specifically called out in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines as a tool not to use because it breaks their “terms of service” agreement. Don’t let these programs fool you with statements like “We use the API so we are approved.” Even using the API does not exempt you from the “terms of service” agreement.

SEO production: The most helpful tool to use when in the midst of SEO production is Microsoft’s Excel or another spreadsheet tool such as those found in Google docs or Open Office. These can be used to track progress or build resources for future use. Using a spreadsheet to keep organized is the best use of a tool during SEO production. More advanced users may want to build their own database to do the same tasks.

SEO Tools for Analysis

Research is a key component of SEO and using the right tool can make all the difference. Here are some tools I use for some specific types of research.

Site Analysis: There are so many different aspects of a site to analyze that once again we have a hard time identifying one or two specific tools to do the whole job. So here I am going to identify a few tools for a few specific purposes:

• Visitor Analysis – Google Analytics or Omniture
• Header Response Checker – RexSwain HTTP Viewer
• Crawler Simulation – Summit Media Spider Simulator
• BackLink Analysis – LinkScape by SEOMoz
• Site Search Data – SEO for FireFox Plugin
• Content Targeting – Keyword Density & Prominence Analyzer by Ranks.nl
• Rank Tracking – Advanced Web Ranking
• Reputation Monitoring – Trackur.com by Andy Beal

I know this is a ton to absorb so I won’t clog your brain with anymore for now. I highly recommend you try out some of these tools if you are not already using them. Feel add some more in the comments, I always love trying these things out so show me some I don’t know about.

I had a few people from the community ask if I would be interested in running a Meetup Group for Wordpress. I have been helping to run the South Florida SEO Meetup for over a year now. I polled the members to see if there would be enough interest. To my surprise, when I asked the 30 or so attendees at the last meeting about 90% said they used WordPress and would be interested in a new Meetup. With that kind of response it was a no brainer.

After setting up the South Florida Wordpress Users Meetup, I was shocked at the level of response it received. The first meeting is tonight and we already have 62 registered users. Over 30 members have RSVP’d “Yes” and another 15 with a “Maybe” they are coming tonight. I can only compare this to the SEO Meetup which took months and months to hit those numbers. As of now, This group (with 0 meetings under its belt) is the 6th largest WordPress Meetup in the World.

I am looking forward to seeing everyone I know and meeting a bunch of new friends. Not to mention all the great WordPress Karma that will be flowing.

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.