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I’ve worked in SEO for 13 years. I had a successful consulting business. I ran the SEO department for a company owned by eBay. I led SEO for brands like Calvin Klein, GNC, Levi’s, and Sports Authority. I’ve been asked to speak at search conferences. Have you heard of me? No – I’m not a rockstar. Well, not any more. **
Despite this I am really proud of what I’ve accomplished. I have some room to brag, and I have a lot of experience to share. I have even more to learn.
But so does the SEO rockstar. This industry caters to the popular (just like scientology), and thanks to the medium we’re in, we all get direct interaction with the spotlight.
That spotlight can make you crazy.
What Are SEO Rockstars
Our industry is like a music scene. We have the anti-hero Kurt Cobains, the technical wizards (Jimi Hendrix?), the thoughtful Bob Dylans, and a fair share of Kid Rocks (style, no substance). There’s also a sea of indie acts who want to be on MTV. Then, there’s the others who happily sit on the outside, happily playing music in their basement.
I hesitate to call that last group “outsiders” because I think that gives “the other side” too much weight. At the end of the day we’re all sharing. Unlike the music biz, where I can’t interact with Justin Bieber (no matter how many letters I write that little bastard), I have a shot at really communicating with some experts in this industry. For every Rand Fishkin or Danny Sullivan who won’t tweet back to you, there are hundreds of equally – if not more – qualified SEOs who will. Again, it’s the beauty of the medium we’re in. Go ask Justin Briggs, Jonathan Coleman, Ian Howells, Eppie Vojt, Nick Eubanks, Dan Shure, AJ Kohn, Dr Pete Meyers (the list goes on); these guys are happy to help you.
I can’t think of any industry where the genesis was the blogosphere. Our birth was through anonymous forum boards. We had flame wars on Jill Whalen’s or Search Engine Watch forum boards. We were maniacs. I got to learn my craft and play on the internet all day. If you were lucky enough to have a boss who understood the SEO thing, you had a great job. But from these humble beginnings it’s clear to me why we continue to have flame wars, outings, and complete silliness. We’re still maniacs. But, we also get brilliance and inspiration from an even larger, massive community of thousands of different personality types.
If you were expecting to learn how to be an SEO rockstar from this post, I can’t help you. I have no idea. But I can tell you that at the end of the day, if being good at what you do and supporting your family is your main concern, use the gift of the whole SEO community and establish yourself in your own networks. I’m most proud of the fact that each week I get calls from clients and recruiters asking for what time I have available.
That’s the kind of security every SEO can have. In that, we’re all in this together.
** And to prove that years ago I was a rock star, c’mon… look at this picture!
Update: There was a good comment from Ross Hudgens that I thought I should add here:
Rand or Danny frequently won’t tweet back (which can be interpreted as them being dicks) because when you get that big and have that many responsibilities, they would get absolutely nothing done if they did that all day. I know for one that Rand is one of the helpful if not the most helpful SEOs in the industry, and to give him a “rockstar” monkier as if that makes him smug would be a huge, not justified descriptor. There definitely are people who probably are dicks who won’t respond purely because they ARE thinking they’re too cool, but the reality is that it’s frequently the randomness of trying to contact someone who simply doesn’t have the time to address every single @ mention.
One of my (small) points in this article was to not care if you get a tweet back from Danny or Rand, because (big point) there’s others – like you, Ross – who are equally skilled and might just have more bandwidth to help more people individually. We should be thankful to this industry for being one that shares and collaborates, and not think so much about labels.
There probably are people who get butt hurt when someone won’t respond to them, but that’s another issue that I don’t have an opinion on. If anyone read into this and thought I was trying to make anyone look smug, they misinterpreted my intent (not that I thought you were accusing me of that); I think you make a good point, and I’ll add this chat to my post.
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A clarification before we begin. I don’t think Penguin will be eradicated or the name becomes a distant memory like Joe Piscipo (spelled wrong in case Joe has himself on Google Alerts – I’ve seen his arms!), but I am referring to pulling back on some of the areas that are overclocked, and reversing SOME of Penguin. There was some confusion by people who jumped at the title without reading the post. Fair enough, so I’ve tweaked the title for those I’ve infuriated. You’ve made my day.
I don’t know if Penguin is a penalty or a tweak (Update 7.28.2012 – you’re reading a post that’s a bit outdated; Matt Cutts said this is not a manual penalty) – I don’t care. At the end of the day it is a furthering attempt to organize the index to show less webspam. Either by downplaying some factors or emphasizing others, it’s a calibration nonetheless, and one that has thrown more babies out with the bath water than I have to believe was intended.
The best time to go on vacation is when Google makes a big algorithm adjustment. Ignore the posts for a couple weeks. When the dust starts to settle, and you see the end result is publically declared “bad rankings” across the board, it’s pretty hard for a company not to be reactionary. Google, who is usually pretty staunch, has to be listening to this one.
The SERPs look like they did a few years ago, when Google was getting heat for favoring big brands, which ultimately came from high domain authority. That didn’t bode well for them then, and it will be worse now.
These Google engineers are smarter than I’ll ever dream to be, but I truly believe that the algorithm they created is a monster. A series of thousands of gears built upon each other, so deep and complex that a master blueprint doesn’t even contain it. Until a Googler tells me otherwise (and even then I’m sure I’ll doubt), I think a lot of their search quality meetings end with, “Ok – let’s make that change and see what the hell happens.” I don’t think they will ever understand the true extent of what even a simple tweak will do. Forget this 3% or 7% shit – it’s clearly been a variable number with a huge “give or take.”
So, I think Google will silently develop another tweak and pull this one back. Maybe the requirement will be to pull back an offending Panda update that just isn’t meshing well anymore in this jumble, or pulling back the scrutiny lens on anchor text (including internal). I don’t know. But I do believe that headlines like As Google Tweaks Searches, Some Get Lost in the Web, from the Wall Street Journal, get passed around in the C-suite pretty quickly. Google knows perception is reality, and doesn’t want to be seen beating up the little guy.
If Google does reverse Penguin – and by “reverse” I mean pull back some of the overclocking errors, I have to think (and hope) there’s a down-turn in current domain authority factors, and a real algorithm thread that truly values this “quality content” we’re told by every SEO post to create. But without parameters, who the hell knows what a confused algorithm will consider quality.
I’m going back on vacation. Let’s see if Sebaldamus is right on this one!
Update 7.28.2012 – They still haven’t. Damn. The Google Dance is still on high. Results are still favoring brands, and SEOs are scrambling to develop more link tools to make a quick buck (like link removal tools). Penguin is starting to settle in, and as Wil Reynolds said at Mozcon 2012, it might have been the best thing to happen to our industry, and might actually improve the reputation of the SEO industry while allowing us to benefit Google. If they can just make the rankings good, well, that would be super.
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Google Analytics is rolling in reports to help you answer this question. Well… kind of.
Check out the Social Sources report:
First thing you’ll notice are two graphs to compare against each other. The top is your social referrers (that is, traffic from all the sites that Google buckets out as a social site), which is detailed deeper in 1 – 10 detail list further down the page.
Let’s drill in one step deeper. Click one of the listings (ie, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc).
Clicking the social platform you to compare takes you into that profile. You can change between different pages now with a new selector that appears above, which looks like this:
So what are we comparing?
We’re comparing Visits via Social Referral (blue) with All visits (orange). So, it’s a quick view of how much social traffic contributed to your overall traffic. Are you doing a lot of social media work? Did you have a bump on a Friday, and wanted to see where it came from? Go to this report. Set your date range and you’ll be able to see pretty quickly.
But it gets more interesting. Click the Activity Stream tab: 
Now the comparison changes to show Data Hub Activities (blue) vs. Visits (orange). These are the same “visits via social referrals” that were in the first snapshot. So what’s this Google Data Hub? Google says, “The social data hub is a free platform that social networks and other social platforms can use to integrate their activity streams.” Sounds like Google’s version of Facebook’s social graph.
So this makes sense. If you notice in the Activity Stream, there are far less sites than Google was originally reporting. Missing for me are Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook, etc. Why? Because they’re not playing ball with Google and the data hub. Google doesn’t have information about shares and retweets here. In other words, they’re not behind the wall. They know Twitter is a social network, and buckets it that way, but they don’t have accurate data out of the Twitter firehose.
But what we can see from the sites participating with Google is what traffic you receive from social engagement. For example, here’s what it looks like filtered to Google+.
By looking at the graph above, I can see that on Monday, May 7, a link from my site was interacted with 4 times (blue), and led to 2 Google+ referrals (orange). For you data junkies, if you have enough data you can put together your own value of social with your own KPIs per platform. You can determine that spending most of your time on one network, vs. another, is a wise or dumb move. Or, you can rely on the “conversions” report right below the sources report (if you use “goals”). Do you have to be more social for your KPIs? Or do your current circles, say Google+, just not give a damn about the latest kind of content you’ve been sharing? (more…)
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Once upon a time, the prince of SEO, Matt Cutts, said that only a small percentage of web links are nofollowed, and we shouldn’t pay much attention to it.
I must only be surfing that small portion of the web because I rarely see external “editorial” links that are followable anymore. I think it’s sad. Many of these are the editorial links Google originally built an algorithm around, but simply failed to measure the link graph for a publisher’s intent.
Google. What have you done???
So I have questions for all you bloggers, webmasters, spammers, etc:
The major blog and social media platforms nofollow all posted links by default. They blame spam, but in this automated world, where they press a button to spam 10k blog comments, is the nofollow really deterring anyone?
We’ve been told that Page Rank scultpting doesn’t work anymore, but are some of us still concerned with leaking Page Rank? Or have the other signals stepped up to pick up where Page Rank leaves off?
Does having a lot of nofollows signal to Google that you care about them not misunderstanding your endorsement, or does it signal that you really don’t care who you link to?
Or do you think the nofollow is being counted (somewhat) by Google now anyway, and it doesn’t really matter?
Personally, I leave this blog dofollow. I get a lot of spam that gets caught either by my spam script, or by my own eye. It’s not difficult to moderate – in fact, it’s actually fun. I see the comments and get a chance to contribute to the conversation. My old company used to moderate comments for the NFL and other leagues; it was quite managable. In the past I had clearly marked rules and regulations for my own sites, where I would clearly state what kind of comments and guest posts I would allow (or turn on the “dofollow” for). If someone gave enough of a damn to leave me a comment and engage me, I’d like to see them get a little token of my appreciation.
I think the whole nofollow thing is a Google protocol that has gotten out of hand, and in light of Pandas and Penguins, I think we need these good editorial links back. I think we need a fundamental shift in this industry, but I don’t have the voice to declare it.
What do you think?
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Tweet for link love. Tweet for the world. Maybe Google isn’t into Twitter, but Twitter is still a great marketing platform that you can’t ignore.
Here are a few reasons why you should keep Twitter part of your daily iMarketing Mix:
Link Prospecting / Link Negotiation
If you’re a link builder, you probably have some tools that you use to find relevant link partners. Maybe Blogdash or Ontolo? Maybe it’s just Google. But by following and watching on Twitter, you can find some other authoritative authors. You don’t even need to dig for their email – you have their Twitter handle. Use Twitter daily to make some friends. Find and talk to the cool kids in your industry. Share and CC them on the relevant information you curate through Twitter. If you’re awesome at what you do, and they’re awesome at what you do, you two can become mutual friends through Twitter.
Expand the full conversation thread and start following anyone in the conversation who you think might be good to know. Try FollowerWonk to search by the content in their bio – a lot of time Tweeters will add their area of expertise in their bio. Create lists to organize them so you can listen to them without noise.
In SEO, I have a lot of virtual friends through Twitter, some of which are pretty authoritative authors. I’ve interacted with them so many times that we feel like we know each other at conventions when we finally meet face to face. At any time I believe I could reach out to a few of them and ask for some links, some public support on an SEO project, or even a recommendation. If Google starts to really value authorship markup the way I believe they will, having these brilliant authors as friends may come in handy. You should use Twitter to start building a portfolio of your own, in your industry.
Content Inspiration
Got writer’s block? Ask the Twitterverse. Get their feelings on a topic, and write a solution or summary of the issues. Ask them what they’d be interested in (but provide the relevant parameters). Polling has been a great way for marketers to learn about their products and the needs of the public. There’s no difference here – in content marketing you’re looking to create an article that satisfies a need. In this case, your product is text.
Twitter is a great way to learn about a niche that you may not be an expert in. Example time – by using Twitter I learned about Jorts (a nickname for jean shorts). Not only did I learn they are completely out of style and I look like an ass wearing them, but it was language my apparel client wasn’t even familiar with. This term has 18,000 estimated US searches, and low competition – a pretty damn good section for a website.
Brand Exposure / Mindshare
Brand exposure is a big deal. If you’re an authority on Twitter, and you’re pulling your brand with you through all your updates, you’re bringing awareness to your company. No – this is not always measurable for ROI Welcome to the fluffy side of digital marketing, where not all things are measurable. Yeah, I said it.
But by putting your brand out there and tying a human face to it, you can have discussions. You can answer people’s questions (whether you were directly asked or not), or maybe even start a controversy. You can inspire people to write content where you will hopefully get a link or shout-out. Google will see these links.
You can ask your new Twitter friends and followers to help push out your brand and content. Hell, I’m going to do it myself as soon as I hit publish. Asking people to RT – especially if they respect what you do – can have a big reach. Just don’t be a menace. Remember folks – there’s nothing wrong with asking for shares not only in Twitter, but Facebook, G+, Inbound.org <<< Hint Hint.
(Bonus, non-Google item) Referral Traffic
SEO doesn’t have to just mean Google and Bing. Twitter has a search engine, and a lot of third-party apps use it as well. The terms people use to search in Google are often the terms they used to search through Twitter. By using these keywords in your tweets you have the likelihood of being served. Will you probably get huge referring traffic by SEO’ing Twitter? Probably not, but if you distill it down to a niche, you might get a decent amount of qualified referral traffic.
Now, off to trademark “iMarketing Mix” if it’s still available.
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Well, since I slept through April in its entirety, and missed April Fool’s Day, I’m dedicating May 1st as its make-up day. Yup – that just happened.
We all know about the Miserable Failure Google Bombs, but I started to think about other pranks. There had to be more, right? Yup.
Smack The Link Finding Tools
Update your websites terms and conditions to include a “service fee” for automated scraping without written consent. Send Open Site Explorer, Majestic, etc. an invoice with reference to the T&C’s. Just don’t stand by your mailbox waiting for a check.
Share Analytics Code
Copy the Google Analytics code from the source of a website, and paste it onto one of your crap, spam sites. Hilarity ensues as they start to notice traffic for Viagra terms. (Ok, I don’t know if this really works, but I’ve been told it does, and that’s just ridiculous on Google’s part).
Mess With Keyword Reports
Not too unlike the last prank, start Googling terms that will force the target website to appear, while appending funny movie quotes. When the website shows, click the listing, and laugh at the thought of the SEO looking at their keyword report and seeing “target.com Do You Like Movies About Gladiators?”
Have any of your own pranks to share?
Disclaimer – This post is for entertainment purposes only. If you actually do this stuff, you have way too much time on your hands, and probably need to find a relationship. Quick.
Bill Sebald - Ex-big agency guy, now focused on helping small and medium sized business. I've been practicing SEO since 1998. I started the SEO practice at a major digital agency owned by eBay and helped develop SEO products for one of the largest ecommerce platforms. I'm a proud member of the Philadelphia SEO scene. I'm passionate about search, writing, UX, CRO, and psychology in marketing.
Hang out with me at the SEO Grail
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