Dallas Business and Marketing Blog

We have had a great week for our new Sales Director, Brad Hermett and with his assistance we have added two new clients.  The interesting part is both have a connection to us via our blog.

The first new client is VIP Reality who has done great things with SEO on their own, they currently are doing great with the Dallas Market but they also have a company to run, clients to serve etc.  So their president (Richard Soto) has given us the opportunity to start working with them on their new San Antonio Real Estate site.

How did I first meet Richard?  Via this very blog as he was doing some link building for his own company and interacting with the local business community here in Dallas - Fort Worth.

Our next new client is Tom Sadler owner of Executive Press a Dallas Printing Shop that has made a strong commitment to running an environmentally friendly company.  We will be doing some basic optimization and analytics services for Tom and we are also already quoting him to update the look of his site and take over his hosting.

While I met Tom initially because we choose him as our vendor to do some printing work for two of our clients there is still a blogging story in this relationship.  While Tom is not quite ready to start blogging himself just yet I did a post last week about meeting him and his commitment to the environment.

So here are two instances where blogging was a part in developing relationships that have led to new business and new partnerships.   Blogging is a very powerful marketing tool.  The key though is to make it part of true relationship development, this is not like casting a wide net.  In both instances these were exceptional organizations with something special about them.  They were both “blog worthy” even if we never directly worked with them.

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Last fall my partner and I (Neil Franklin) embarked on the process of coauthoring what has become the first published book for both of us. The book is entitled “Your Inner Salesman - Finding the Natural Salesman Within“. Recently I gave a key note address at the 2008 Phoenix Construction Expo where the topic was “Finding Your Inner Salesman” and it was very well received. We actually have a web site set up (as you might imagine) for the book at www.innersalesman.com and a free audio download of my presentation is available at the site.

Neil and I are hoping the book sells well. Between the two of us we pushed a combined 80 years of learning into just under 130 pages. This book is not just another book on how to sell, indeed it really examines the sales process at a deep level and explains how we are all born knowing how to sell, how we loose this skill and how to reconnect with it. We even examined the roots of why many people dislike sales and where they go wrong in the way they perceive the concept. If fact if you read our book you will learn how sales people were actually the people that laid the entire foundations of modern society.

If you would like to order a copy of our book you can do that at this link. If you are local to the Dallas Market and would like it signed by Neil and I just let me know we are pretty active in local activities and I am sure we can arrange to do that for you.

Honestly this was a major learning experience for us both. As people who have sold and grown companies all our lives it was quite interesting as we wrote the book to realize how much we had come to take for granted. We have begun teaching the philosophy to our sales people in all of our companies and the results have been exceptional.

When Neil first approached me with the idea of a book on selling I wasn’t totally on board at first. There are so many books that talk about formulas, methods, closing tactics, etc. My question was why another one? Neil’s response was, “well let’s simply not do another one like that, let’s write about the inner sense, the way we are able to close deals with out actually “selling to a person” the way others teach, just by being natural, being human and being in touch with the psychology of why people buy.”

We used a print on demand service called LuLu to publish this book. While not as simple of a process as it sounded in the beginning I have to say LuLu.com is doing wonderful things for new authors. The cost of production really amounted to the cover graphics, an editor and paying someone to properly format the manuscript. We also got an ISBN number and the book will also soon be available at most book stores (special order) and on sites like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

I will be working to set up some local speaking opportunities to present the book. If you have a need for a speaker on the subject of selling check our my audio on selling to get a feel for what we have to offer and get in touch with us and we are happy to discuss speaking at your event. In “closing” I wouldn’t be much of a salesman if I didn’t mention one more time that we would like your business. Pick up your copy of our new book The Inner Salesman and I can promise you it will change they way you look at selling.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Blogs and Blog Marketing are big news today, there is nothing novel or revolutionary about that. So in general we always talk about the possibility of blogging as part of a marketing campaign when we speak with perspective client. It isn’t always a great fit though. First you have to buy in on the ownership or at minimum the “ownership” of the marketing department. With out doing this you won’t positively know if a blog is going to get used or updated.

In such instances, I actually think selling a client on blogging is disservice to them and I believe it contributes to the fact that 50% of all “Business Blogs” fail in the first year and by fail, I mean these become dormant and never updated. Hence, these are not visited nor read.

Additionally you need to be able to come up with an “angle” for the blog, something that makes blogging effective for the client so that dedicating time and resources to it is worth doing. Companies that blog in a way that is just sales copy or PR on a different web platform seldom have any real success. So again with out making sure you and your client know what they will blog about and how it will assist them in building their business is another disservice.

Recently I had my new Sales Director out on his first call to do some field training with a potential client. The company is Executive Press, a Dallas printing shop that serves our local market and is actually doing some printing work for us right now. When the topic of Blogging came up the client was not that interested in it at first and I was about to simply move on and follow my own rules about the issue.

As the conversation continued, something unique was brought up, it turns out that Executive Press is a “Green Print Shop” as in being environmentally friendly. The gentleman that we were meeting with, (Company Owner Tom Sadler) made a commitment to this and explained things to us like using soy based inks and other concepts that make a Print Shop actually “Green”. He also noted that he recently observed a competitor who was advertising being “Green” by buying “Carbon Credits” and that there was a big difference in the two schools of thought.

Mr. Sadler is also very committed to “Green Industry” in Dallas - Ft. Worth as a whole and spends times working with several organizations on these issues. During that meeting and in the proposal that we then delivered to Mr. Sadler I highly recommended that he blogs about these issues. Simply dedicating say twenty minutes a day, a few times a week to talking about what is going on locally, mentioning other “Green Companies” and what they are doing to better our city and letting his readers know about events they can attend.

We have advised Mr. Sadler to blog somewhat independently, as an owner of his company but on a separate domain  vs. his company website. This helps bring to focus the subject of doing environmentally responsible business and less about his specific company. The advantages of doing so are immense. There are exceptional short and long term local Public Relations opportunities. There are also excellent networking opportunities because his fellow business people will appreciate being mentioned in his blog.

The real key is that Mr. Sadler is genuinely committed to doing business in this way and encouraging others to do the same. Sure the topic is hot, sure it is easy to gain traction with on Search Engines and in Social Networks but with out a genuine belief and passion such efforts are hollow and soon fail. In this instance Executive Press and Tom Sadler have put their money and their commitment ahead of their claims, they made the commitment, are practicing what they preach and were not afraid to spend the money to get it done.

When you add to that the current market opportunities and have a creative and committed entrepreneur like Tom Sadler, blogging is a natural and perfect fit. Whether we are chosen to handle Internet Marketing for Executive Press or not, I do hope Mr. Sadler starts a blog and posts to it often. The Dallas Business Market, Mr. Sadler’s Business and the Blogosphere will all benefit by it. I also would not hesitate to recommend Executive Press to my fellow business owners in Dallas, the work they have done for us was outstanding.

~ Jack Spirko

Popularity: 6% [?]

Given we just launched HatedOrLoved.com an online Social Network Community that will be coming out of Beta 1.0 into Beta 2.0 this weekend it may seem odd that I am about to extol the virtues of what is in essence a competitors site. Yet that doesn’t matter because I am going to do it anyway. This is also not going to be yet another of a thousand “Mixx is Better then Digg” posts but I must draw some contrast to Digg because the difference is so stark. Honestly I think the “better then Digg” thing is only stated so often due to the fact that Digg is the most successful site of its’ kind. Honestly I also feel that Mixx is better then Reddit, Propeller, Plime, etc, etc.

Why? Is it the features, the customization, the groups and other cool and new stuff Mixx offers that the others don’t? To me it isn’t that at all, those things are cool and unique but the real difference is the community and its tone, not to mention its’ pleasant lack of anger and hatred for anything commercial, republican or that might result in profit to an evil corporation.

I have self submitted very quality work to Digg and Plime and was descended upon by the masses with hatred, negative votes and malicious attacks of my other non self submissions just to punish me for the horrific sin of submitting something I wrote. The content was never judged, just the fact that I dared to submit something I created. At times I felt as though I had angered an entire legion of Star Trek Fantards by saying something bad about Mr. Spock. My experience at Mixx has been entirely different.

I finally took the leap and joined Mixx just barely a month ago. I started submitting a few items a week, I looked for cool stories and submitted them. I added people with cool submissions as friends and most friended me back, I added all the top Mixxers and most also added me back. I definitely have submitted some of my own content and almost all of it made popular. One of them even got me a “Top 10 Badge”. Oh yea that is cool too, not one Top 10 but two of them now grace my Mixx Profile along with a “Curmudgeon” badge for a day I spent nuking pure spam posts with negative votes.

Before I go on I must note that this same approach I am describing made me a target for attack at Digg and got be banned by Plime before I even got started.

What I must say I have gotten from Mixx that no similar site has offered me is “acceptance”. You see I have an illness a terrible disease that is more shunned in many social networks far more then lepers were in biblical times. You see I am an Internet Marketer and worse then that an SEO! Everyone knows that any time an SEO submits to Digg (even a story about kittens in Ohio that save a mouse) that it is pure spam and nothing more and must be voted down. On Plime the SEO must have his entire C-Block of IPs banned for life.

OK, OK relax my fellow Diggers I am trying to be satirical here. As for Plime well Plime is evil, no satire intended.

No it isn’t as bad as all that on Digg but I could never have been so accepted with say 2 of 10 submissions being my own on Digg. At Mixx on the other hand power Mixxers actually apparently examined my content, decided it was good solid content and not just voted for it, commented on it and welcomed me. No my friends that is not all, there is much more.

A fellow named Bruce (who goes by the handle Yoda on Mixx) invited myself and some others to over see a group called the “Hall of Fame” which features the greatest Mixx stories of all time. Yoda is a “Super Mixxer” and almost always listed as a top Mixxer of the day. He is the analog of a Power Digger and yet he not only accepts the Dark Side that SEO represents (pun intended) he even trusts me as a moderator on a group that features the best of the best.

Why? Why am I so accepted at Mixx? I believe that Mixx is devoid of one thing that infects many other communities. Mixx lacks what I call a “hate crime legislation mentality”. On Digg when someone submits an SEO piece or worse submits his own piece if it starts to get votes the attackers never read it, they don’t judge it based on its content only what they perceive as its intent. In other words they act as “thought police”.

The reality is I am not a bad guy, I don’t try to take over these networks for evil purposes and I do work hard to make sure when I submit something it is damn well worthy of being submitted. I then work the system just like others do and let it results land in what ever way the community wants it to. Simply because the content of my submissions, voting, comments, etc have been judged on Mixx rather then some false assigned view of my intent I have had a great first month and look forward to earning my Super Mixxer badge and making a ton more friends.

So that is what I learned about how to build a great community from the Mixx community. Banish “hate crime laws” from your community, insist that rules be followed but also that content, contributions and participation be judged for what they are not for the intent behind them. That difference in my opinion is a bigger part of why Mixx is what it is today then groups, lists and customization.

So that is the exact approach I plan on taking with my new Social Network and it would be my advice to anyone creating a new site that relies on a self policing community. Police away but police the quality and behavior, to hell with intent. Spammers will still be easy to spot and even easier to deal with and your community will grow because new people won’t be walking on egg shells afraid of the wrath of a few of your veterans.

So what has your experience at Digg been like compared to Mixx? Or vs. Propeller or say Reddit? Also what are you thought on “abolishing hate crime laws” online and insisting that the same rules be applied to all, regardless of their profession or the fact that they may actually benefit in some way by being an active member of a community?

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Recently in the post I did called an “Open Letter to Google” a lot of debating went on. One thing to come out of this is that many SEOs consider the link based algorithms used by Google and other Search Engines to be so flawed that they should be done away with. That the engines should rely solely on the sites content.

One individual actually said the following,

And my point is exactly what the author stated - on-page SEO work is relatively trivial compared to off-page, and off-page largely consists of link building. And so, without the link-based page rank algorithm, a large piece of SEO work goes away and perhaps people start to wise up and realize that the on-page stuff isn’t that hard. Follow the best practices and integrate it into your content production work-flow. Educate your staff instead of paying lofty prices for external SEO companies. Like the author said, it doesn’t take much time to teach. - Stated by TinPig on Sphinn

Now while I disagree with many things Mr. TinPig has to say I do agree with the fact that Onsite SEO is very easy to learn and to teach for that matter. I can teach anyone with good PC skills to do exceptional on site SEO in less then a month, if they can’t learn in that time frame in fact they get to go try to learn somewhere else on someone else’s payroll. This fact though is exactly why Link Based Algorithms will be with us for a very long time.

Let us look at just one small competitive niche for example. Say “Dallas Mortgage” for instance. This industry is fiercely competitive and right now there are several dozen mortgage brokers that are actually in Dallas trying to do a decent job of SEO to be ranked for this one (relatively small) niche. Now add to this the fact that Dallas is a major market and many companies in Houston, Austin, San Antone, etc that can underwrite a loan anywhere in the state are focusing on SEO for this one term as well. Lastly add the literally thousands of affiliate marketers that are working to build leads for companies like LowerMyBills.com, Ditech, etc who are also making mirror sites that optimize for this term and this one very small niche is persued by thousands of people.

To accomplish this goal some of these people are doing pure white hat (and getting owned by the way), some are doing varying levels of Gray to Black hat methods and some (affiliates mostly) are doing pure spam. To get a rank for this term you have to play by the Google rules and you must get links for it. Here is a news flash, no one is likely to give out links for “Dallas Mortgage” in the idealistic “democratic” way that Google suggests we get links. So to rank for this term you either directly create, negotiate, request, buy or beg links from quality sites.

Now to my idealist White Hat SEO brethren the solution is simple, just pull this link component out of the equation and judge sites on their content, what could be wrong with that? To anyone with an ability to think forward even a little bit the problem is like a oncoming train! Just go back to the fact that on site SEO is simple to accomplish, easy to learn and simplistic to teach. It only requires knowing and following standards, some very basic math and some skill with keyword research. So what scream the idealists!

Well what this means is all those thousands of people chasing “Dallas Mortgage” now will each create content with specific key word densities, proper tags, etc. Some will “win” for the moment and the loosers will just copy there techniques and try to do 1% better. Very soon the precise formula is determined and all the sites are using it and in a statistical tie with each other. Now also understand that with the exception of perhaps some of the “made for adSense” sites most of these sites will actually lead the visitor to a source for a Dallas Mortgage, they are not all junk as many would claim. Does this stalemate sound familiar? It should if you have been around a decade or more as it is very much how some of the first engines worked.

So what happened next? We needed a “tie breaker” some way to take two sites that both were quality from a code stand point, both had real sources of “dallas mortgage” information and both had a 2.5% (or whatever was in en vogue at the time) key word density for the term. What, short of a subjective and therefore flawed human review, was left for the search engines to use. Nothing but the infamous link. Why?

Beacause even though you can build your own links, even though you can buy them, even though you can build an entire series of sites just to pass link power around, some number of links will still be 100% beyond the control of the actual site owners. Right now we only have two choices in this. Human review or links as a component and humans can be bribed, wrong, bias, etc. Links at least use math and my friends, “math doesn’t lie”.

Do I think we have swung to far and links now have to much influence? Yes I do, I think it should be impossible for any page to rank for any term that is clearly not present on it at all. Yet Google “click here” and you find Adobe and if you Googled Miserable Failure in the past you found George Bush and Michale Moore (thanks to bloggers Google Bombing). Eventually Google had to hand job out those results for Bush and Moore because there were so many links nothing else would have made them go away.

I would have loved Google to simply have tinkered with things so that a word must be on a page. Sure keep the link portion but if I look for failure on Google I ain’t looking for Bush or Moore (regardless of your opinion of either). What this leads us to though is a simple understanding, links are not going to stop pushing rankings for a very long time. Google may move to put more weight back into content, which I would welcome but links will be a driving force for a long time to come. I for one don’t think removing them all together would create some sort of democratic internet eutopia, that others seem to belive it would.

What do you think? Is there to much weight on links? Would it be good if Google put more weight on content? Do you like things they way they are now? Or do you think I am wrong and TinPig is right and that Google should just stop using links to rank sites at all, if so how do we then break the 100 “ties” for a first page ranking?

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On April 6th 2008, a gathering of 4000 people participated in the Cedar Fest street party. This was organized through a page that was created on the social networking site Facebook that promoted the event. The word of this party, which had been banned back in the late 90’s due to excessive property damage from rioters, spread like wild fire. For those that attended, this was a night of drunken revelry and the chance to be part of a small riot, just to say “I was there and got to see it for myself.”

What could be a more perfect example of viral social network marketing in full effect?

See the video of the Facebook Cedar Fest Riot along with a number of other videos that have been posted by the people who where there, basically creating a mini-documentary of how the night unfolded. Also, notice the ubiquitous use of everyone recording the moment for themselves via their cell phones that will no doubt be shared with their friends and family through Youtube and other social networking sites.

Below, is a brief overview of the history of Cedar Fest and the events that took place this past weekend. Keep in mind that before the rise of the Internet and especially, sites such as Facebook and Myspace, imagine how hard it would have been for a crowd this large to gather in one pre-determined place as is demonstrated in the link above?

Cedar Fest was an infamous gathering in the 1980’s in an apartment complex called Cedar Village. This complex is located just south of the Michigan State University Campus. The events, in the fall and spring, often attracted big crowds which eventually led to thousands of dollars in damage and complaints of the excessive use of tear gas.

Cedar Fest was shut down by a court order and banned by the East Lansing City Council. However, since 1997 there have been several new riots in the Cedar Village area and downtown East Lansing, but under new laws, police have moved in quickly to quell them.

At the onset of the gathering, the crowd was peaceful. The police officers allowed the people to enjoy the evening and only intervened to arrest or ticket those who were heavily intoxicated. As the night wore on, the crowd began to behave violently, throwing beer bottles at officers, tearing up street signs, setting dumpster fires and chanting “We want tear gas.” After being hit with bottles, cans, and various other debris police ordered the crowd to disperse.

The East Lansing Police Department began monitoring a Facebook page created specifically for the event along with the Facebook account holder who planned the Cedar Fest street party. East Lansing Police Public Information Officer Kym Johnson stated. “We’re going after anyone who had any part of getting this party started. We are going to do our best to prosecute those individuals who started this whole resurrection of this Cedar Fest all the way to the last person we arrest tonight and tomorrow.”

Chief Tom Wibert said police were not sure what to expect. “This is the first time we have dealt with something organized on the Internet,” Wibert said. Police made a total of 52 arrests, many of them Michigan State University students. “I don’t know what we could have done different to avoid it. When 4,000 people suddenly decide that they want to take the streets, it’s pretty hard for 50 police officers to stop them,” he said during a press conference at East Lansing City Hall.

Right now, consider this: In the realization that even though the Cedar Fest street party turned into a riot, the fact that such a large group of people chose to act in a pre-defined manner based off an internet site is amazing. What should be sloshing around in our minds is all the different angles that this prime example can be turned into profit.

For those of us who are able to capitalize on the loyalty that these social networking sites generate. We will prosper many times over in terms of revenue and the amount of link power that is the end result of creating a high traffic site that is affiliated with these networks. Imagine how this can be utilized for a client’s brand recognition if they are successfully associated with social networking sites that have the loyalty of literally millions of people.

What if through expert marketing, this resource of people could be tapped on demand, in promotion of new product or service? The point that drives this whole ordeal to heart is this. With a clear call to action, the sheer numbers of people that can be moved to do something in a pre-determined way by a single post on something like Facebook or Myspace is absolutely incredible.

Yet, on the opposing side, one has to accomplish this delicate task without having the users feel like they were manipulated for a profit, such as the nefarious practice of capturing the private information of users, only to be sold to the highest bidder and on and on and on.

Everyone is well aware how Facebook lost a large amount of their credibility regarding privacy when they began offering targeted ads to people in a user’s network, notifying them of when their friend purchased a specific item. I’m not necessarily stating that targeted ads are bad but this obviously has to be judged in the context that they are used.

These practices have to be disclosed in such a way that a user knows exactly what they are getting into without having it sprung upon them. When a large group of users feel violated as a result of finding out that their private information has become exposed to everyone by a trusted source, that creates huge problems and Facebook was at the splitting edge of alienating their user base. See here for the Facebook Beacon debacle.

Therefore, a strategy for monetizing this incredible resource has to strike a fine but crystal clear balance. Figuring out a legitimate way of integrating large swaths of users into a well defined marketing campaign… and from there doing so in such a fashion that users will act of their own volition and make the choice to participate based off of their own interest. I’m definitely curious about the related topics this subject stirs up and I would like to hear comments from what others think about social network marketing.

Erik Lignell
Internet Marketing Specialist

Popularity: 11% [?]

I recently did a post where much of the satire was lost on many of the readers. It was angled as an open letter to Google and pointed out ways that SEOs in general have made Google and other Search Engines for that matter better, not worse as it is often claimed by some individuals. If you read the comments on it you will see a wide swing of opinions.

It did however, bring up an interesting set of questions for me. In a nut shell where are the lines between Black Hat, White Hat and Spamming. I am not going to discuss White and Black to much and where the gray areas are there. It has been done many times, what I want to talk about today is when does Black Hat equal spam?

Some would say they are one in the same, I disagree and do so with real conviction. I think we should remember that “spamming” in the beginning was simple unsolicited commercial email. Then as comment “spam” and forum “spam” came into existence “spam” (as a word) came to mean more then just unwanted emails. Then next thing we know it is being used to describe certain practices that many people want to call SEO.

Here is the line between Black Hat and Spam as I see it. Anything you can call spam I feel could also be considered a Black Hat technique as most people use the word but not the other way around. Here are two examples,

1. You build a website about let’s say hotels and you use the US Postal Database to create 60,000 pages each with random and scraped content to make them appear unique. With a bit of rotational content via PHP or CFM or something to that effect you create the illusion that not only are these pages unique but updated and changed often. With this you rank for tons of city and township searches for long tail terms with the word “hotel”. The pages just push people into ads and perhaps an affiliate program using a Hotels.com search tool.

Is this Black Hat? - Yes, I would say so. It won’t work the way it did in say 2001 so it may be a poor attempt at Black but it is Black.

Is it spam? - To me yes this is a very accurate way to describe this practice. This is using automatic content generation to send thousands upon thousands of false results into the SERPs. One can clearly see the analogy to sending 60,000 emails to some list you buy or build through malicious methods. It is also a great way to get caught, devalued and possibly banned by the Engines.

2. You build a high quality web site and go out and broker deals with other site owners for links. You optimize the content on and off site and you push links not just to your site but to the sites that link to it. You build widgets and bury links in them and give them to bloggers. You start a blog and submit some of the articles to social sites.

Is that Black Hat? I think if you ask a group of SEOs you will get many different opinions about which of those are and are not Black Hat. I don’t consider it Black at all if you are ranking a site for things it is actually about with those techniques and other SEOs will call every bit of what I mentioned above Black Hat. Still others will be more in the middle and say some of this is Black, some Gray and other parts are fine. I think this is a subjective argument that I leave to others for now.

Is that Spam? - I say no this isn’t spam it is not an attempt to take tens of thousands of listings in Google with low quality junk pages. It is an attempt to gain specific search engine ranks via a variety of methods, some which are at least gray but I would not call this “spamming the SERPs”.

So what do you think? What is the line between “Black” or “Gray” Hat SEO and Search Engine Spamming or say Link Spamming. Is a link a spam link simply because of the intent or must it also have something to do with the method?

Popularity: 10% [?]

I decided to add this note at the beginning of this post. Please understand while there is a ton of fact in this post it is to be read as a form of satire. Many did not seem to grasp that, hence my addition of this notification.

Sometimes it seems that despite owning one of the biggest SEO Companies in the world that Google has it in for all of us. They have waged war on buying links, crippled paid blogging services by nuking their networks page rank and have even banned web sites of major corporations. They constantly seem to push a covert mantra that all SEO’s are spammers unless they “just create content and let the system work” or some version there of. Personally I think it is getting old! So on behalf of my fellow SEO’s here is my direct letter of truce to Google, let’s see if anyone cares.

Dear Google,

As a person who has been optimizing content for Search Engines before Google was a search engine let me say I admire the work you have done and the industries you have created that have benefited so many of us. That said I and many other SEO’s resent the fact that you have worked so hard to make our lives miserable, spread propaganda about us and generally blamed us for your search engines limitations.

To be blunt every time a person runs a search and can’t find something they are looking for it is not because some evil SEO have optimized spam web pages. Often it is a failure of Google to return a relevant result and it is also at times a searcher who is, well, not capable of running a proper web search.

The following is a list of why Google could not exist with out SEOs

• The Long Tail - Right now searchers are beginning to search with more and more 3 and 4 word queries, to find specific content. It is SEOs that are out here doing deep data mining to find out what these people are looking for and creating specific content to meet those needs. Without us building that content and optimizing it such queries would now still be bringing your users the same 30 - 40 websites that show up for most of the larger terms and giving them the poor result that led them to go to long queries in the first place.

• Someone to Blame - Honestly with out us optimizing content when your algorithm takes a dump who would you blame? Who would you point the finger at? As mentioned above if we did not optimize tail search terms your results would be worse and we would not be here as your whipping board.

• Links - Honestly you would not be able to find much of the quality content that allows you to sell those wonderful ads (that you arbitrarily make one person pay more for then the next for reasons only you know) that make you those billions of dollars. Most site owners are simply unable to understand the nuts of bolts of making content indexable, findable and friendly to your bots with out our guidance.

• Even the Real Spammers Helped - Seriously when your first few versions of search were released they had holes one could drive a truck through or perhaps a cruise ship would have been more accurate. With out spammers you would have never improved your product to the level you have reached to day.

• We Must be Profitable - As an SEO I must either make my content or the content of my clients profitable. To do this I must have valid and useful content and my optimizing must match the search terms to content the user wants. If I simply get a page about Panda Bears ranked number one for the term “animals” it does my client or my own company no good at all. SEO’s do not try to rank irrelevant content as you sometimes infer, we purposely rank the best content we can develop to match the users need based on what they search for. In short the best and most accurate content online today is being created by professional SEOs.

At this time I would like to propose a truce, though we are sure you have no interest in doing so, as you need us as much to have someone to blame as you do for the other reasons I have pointed out. Still do you think you could tone it down a little? I mean we both know that you need us to make your search engine the best it can be so why are you always driving that multi colored bus over us?

In conclusion you built the system that values links over content so don’t blame us for using it that way. We are only doing what is necessary to help you provide relevant search engine results to your users. Sure we profit by doing so but based on the current financial reporting you are providing it is clear you are profiting a lot more then most of us.

Sincerely,

Jack Spirko

To my fellow Internet Marketers, so anyway I am sure I missed a few things. I am sure I missed some reasons why we are a far better friend to Google then an enemy as we are often portrayed. Please chime in below with your thoughts on this and point out the other ways that SEOs have made Google better then it would be with out us.

Popularity: 34% [?]

Now before you flay me, before you explain how they have purchased huge social sites (YouTube springs to mind) understand this is not a white paper, not an industry brief, no it is simply an speculative opinion. My first speculation is that I am correct about where social media is going and my second speculation is that Google’s staff is smarter then I am and can predict even more. When I put those two speculations together it forms an very interesting view of the future.

Here is my theory in a nut shell. Search Engine Journal just reported that Google now controls 69% of online advertising. When any company gets to such a dominant position it is not always the champaign and happy times one would expect. Wall Street is a picky mistress and wants growth all the time, every time and at the expense of all other things. Growing when you own a market can be difficult at least growing any faster then the market itself and when a slump hits, even a tiny one you have it real hard.

Again not saying Google won’t continue to make billions, it is the growth of those billions that is getting harder to create.

Now further we must simply accept that Google has never built anything that has really been successful from the ground up other then their search engine. Everything else you can name that they have really succeeded with has been developed by others. The list is long,

• Blogger
• YouTube
• Google Docs
• adSense
• adWords (yep that too)
• Double Click
• And it goes on

Now the problem for Google and their growth long term is that, unlike search, social media is both easier to build platforms for and easier to innovate with. Social Networking is in its’ infancy right now it won’t just be more clone sites in the future exploiting niches (though there will be many of those - successful and flops). No, social platforms will get cooler, more specialized and honestly evolve to change the way people communicate, find jobs, gain education, earn incomes and much more.

One could state that this has already happened. I mean you can get a 100K job at The Ladders, talk to Japan for Free on Skype, find a date on MySpace and get referrals for your next big deal at LinkedIn. All while running a million dollar company from a small home office. Today is a lot different then say 1998 or to really make a point, say 1988.

What this should mean to Google though is growth of market share for the next 10 and 20 years is going to be hard fought. If we are using the web (which was little more then BBSs in 1990 accessed on 14.4 modems) to do these things today, what will tomorrow bring? My guess is some of the innovations we will see in the next 24 months have not even reached a “thought form” stage yet. I bet Google knows this too in fact I am sure they know far more then I do about it.

Now while Google can buy up companies and hire bright minds with something like social media it is going to be driven entrepreneurs coupled with smart programmers and marketers that change the landscape over the next two decades. While most web marketers are not thinking in decades yet, Google must be. As a darling of Wall Street they have to think about this quarter, this fiscal year and their long term plans as well.

I see a future with hundreds of highly successful social networking applications and many versions and niche specific applications of each. Billions of people interacting via hundreds of applications a genie that can never go back into the bottle. Unlike search where there could be a clear winner, social media is to user specific to be funneled down to a “Big Four” which everyone knows is honestly a “Big One”.

So does this scare Google? In my opinion it should. I am not saying that is should make them fear the end of an empire but perhaps the end of an ever expanding empire. In short what I am saying is the social media empire is beginning a growth curve that Google can’t either buy or innovate their way ahead of. Bold statement? I really don’t think it is, it is just my faith in the thousands of innovators out there that are building the future of the Internet.

In conclusion I would like to do one more bit of speculation in a manner anyone looking to the future should do.  Let us look into the past.  If you had to pick the “Google Analog” for say the period of 1980 - 2000, who would it be?  During those two decades who was the “800 Pound Gorilla” of Technology, the Stock everyone had to own and  company that simply could not be beaten?  While you may disagree, the numbers would prove it was Microsoft.

So is Microsoft in danger of Chapter 7 anytime soon?  Will founder Bill Gates be forced to give up his jet or private island retreats?   Of course not!  Yet what kind of growth does Microsoft have today, compared to Google?  How many bright minds want to work there as a “dream job” today?  How often are they now publicly lauded for innovation, creation and changing the way the world does business?  For younger marketers it may be hard to remember but Microsoft was “The Company” just a decade ago.

Then came the browser and even though Microsoft still controls most browsers (for now) it is Google that turned the Browser into a vehicle for a multi billion dollar empire.  When we look at Microsoft today, do we see the Google of 2018?  Now I doubt we can draw an exact analogy, however as anyone who has ever read a mutual fund prospectus can tell you, “while past performance is no guarantee of future results, history has shown it to be a strong indicator”.

Popularity: 23% [?]

Recently I published a very popular post on 20 Social Networking Sites that are good for building links. I put a lot of work into the research behind that project and isolated 20 great Social Sites that actually were useful for good old fashioned link building in the true SEO sense of the terms. Of course it was submitted it to some Social Sites and it did well, so far in fact as of right now it has

• 74 Diggs
• 51 Sphinns
• 19 Plugs
• 34 Mixxes
• 49 Propellers

Now that is a good mix of social sites and not a bad result for an SEO type post especially on Digg and Propeller. The comments were mostly good too, however, one poster took a big exception to my suggestion to self submit to these sites and just basically said it was all spam.

Part of his comment was,

“It’s best to use your brain and not try to exploit community sites in this way. It’s bad for the internet and generally unethical. You’ll accumulate a net negative of goodwill from the internet’s population in the long run.”

If you want to read my direct response just go to the original post and read it there. My question for people today though is, is he right in any way? Is it some how wrong to self submit? I personally do not think so but would like to hear others opinions on this.

My view is as follows considering that if I have that young lady on the left do my submissions I will get great results. As that is the case I think we can agree all things are not “fair and democratic” in the land of social media utopia the way some hard core users seem to claim. In some of these sites you are honestly forced to either get someone to submit for you which I have done on more then one occasion or to submit under a fake name, I am also guilty of that at times. If that is the way of the community just adapting to it makes sense.

That said I do not see why we should see self submission or client submission to a Social Site as being some sort of “evil”. The problem with that is we are judging intent vs. judging content. This is the same moronic logic behind “hate crime laws”. When you submit to these sites it would make sense for the content rather then the intent to be judged.

In many sites that is the case. No one gets bent when you self submit to Sphinn or BiggItUp, of course they are almost 100% internet marketers. Yet look how fast Mixx is taking off, I get great results self submitting to Mixx and no haters are bashing me there. They judge my content and love it or hate it and simply vote as they feel they should. Mixx is not now full of viagra postings and such on the popular pages but my posts have several times made popular there. I self submit to Stumble too, no anger, no bashing and Stumble has great content.

To me social networking has a greater future if we judge the content rather then intent. Who cares if someone wants exposure the “real news” is so driven by PR Firms anyway much of the “pure content” many members are trying to protect is every bit if not more promotional then that of a small business or typical blogger.

So what do you think? Is it OK to self submit or is it evil? I am not asking what works better but only is it right or wrong to do it? Does it pollute the web in some evil way or are a bunch of 16 year olds just hateful of anything with the dirty word “profit” associated with it?

Popularity: 19% [?]