AndrewMiller
from AndrewMiller 536 Days ago#
Detecting and handling bot activity is a whole new battle. Not as much fun/profitable/easy as PPC analysis but still important.
from AndrewMiller 945 Days ago#
This tactic goes too far, requiring people to "opt out" of your facebook status updates instead of "opting in" to your Twitter updates.
from AndrewMiller 1194 Days ago#
I suggest adding a link to your Twitter account info into your FB profile so that your friends can see it and choose to follow your updates on Twitter where they belong. Or, manually update your FB status once a week or so to encourage people to follow you on Twitter if they choose. Either of these options seem much less spammy and still observe the "opt in" sentiment that Twitter allows, rather than relying on people to "opt out" of your FB news feed updates.
Story: 2009 Google Flash SEO Update
from AndrewMiller 1217 Days ago#
One of the best articles I’ve seen in a long time. Well done, and thank you!
from AndrewMiller 1350 Days ago#
I am glad to see this definition changed as it now encompasses more of my competitors in the highly competitive retail automotive category (U.S. only). This should help my cause for many thousands of long-tail keywords that we have actual "useful" content for, in contrast to competitors that rank fo rmany of the terms just because of their heavily linked thin pages. The key here is "useful" content, which will always win in the long run, as this new definition proves (again).
Story: The Art of SEO Evangelism
from AndrewMiller 1391 Days ago#
Great post! Being an evangelist was the most fun part of my job, and actually being able to back it up with results made it that much sweeter. Thanks for compiling all the relevant points in one place.
from AndrewMiller 1483 Days ago#
I don’t think SEO will ever go away, but I predict it will become more commoditized. Like banner advertising 5 years ago or PPC management 3-4 years ago, SEO is currently not a mainstream marketing discipline. SEO will become more mainstream as agencies and in-house marketing teams catch up to the independents. However, most of the innovation will still probably come from the more nimble, smaller companies that are less risk averse. Unlike banners and PPC, larger organizations won’t necessarily have the same advantages due to their size and scale. In fact, it may actually hurt them because they would never jeopardize their clients’ rankings to test a new theory or gray/black hat tactic.
from AndrewMiller 1483 Days ago#
Having been involved (on the receiving end) with an undeserved RoR extortion attempt, I am hooked on this story, and hoping it turns out like the mafia stories we’re used to reading.
Story: Is Yahoo! Mash Dead Already?
from AndrewMiller 1584 Days ago#
@TimDineen - My thoughts exactly. Nothing about it screams "Facebook-killer", or even "Orkut-annoyance". @Natasha - Let’s hope they make something more compelling that we won’t feel so sorry about cheering for. Thanks for the comments.
Story: Is Yahoo! Mash Dead Already?
from AndrewMiller 1584 Days ago#
@PocketSEO - Thanks, for some reason feeding and petting my Mash pet only makes him more sad. I think a little experimentation with Mash Pets might be worth a post on its own. Then again...maybe not.@AndyBeard - Let me know if you try it out. I’m interested in a wide variety of opinions on this. Surely Yahoo is not just going to give up on it, but it doesn’t really seem like they are putting a ton of effort into it either. Not yet anyway.
from AndrewMiller 1586 Days ago#
Great article. It’s very apparent to those of us in the industry that our online actions follow us forever. My friends and family are also aware because I make it a point to remind them never to put anything online that they wouldn’t want their mother, the IRS, the New York Times or the blogoshpere to read and react to.
from AndrewMiller 1586 Days ago#
Noted. I agree that the list could be expanded to include Pragmatic, Professional, Paranoid, Puzzlers...beyond that it’s a stretch to find more P’s. I can’t think of any P words that mean analytical or empirically minded, so I’ll make the exception. Thanks for the suggestion!
from AndrewMiller 1607 Days ago#
Got any ideas? The Pacific Northwest is always nice during the summer, but who wants to take a worldwide tour of chain-link fences and security sentry points? This post was mainly a result of wishful thinking on my part, with just enough search-related content to keep the IRS at bay. Thanks for the comment!
from AndrewMiller 1607 Days ago#
Very good investigation. I forwarded it to a client that might be dealing with similar issues. Is there any thought given to creating and marketing more U-haul related content to push those negative sites off the 1st page?
from AndrewMiller 1644 Days ago#
I was invited to one of these "SEO chat" sessions with Google at my former job while they were in town to talk Adwords with my PPC colleagues. They brought an engineer to point out some aspects of our website that are not optimized per the webmaster guidelines. Stuff we already knew about but didn’t have time to address yet. Try as I might, I could not get them to answer anything outside of the published guidelines. I tried asking questions several different ways, but they were very protective and could not (would not) answer a lot of my questions. They’re very good under pressure!
They also suggested participating in and optimizing for many other Google services such as YouTube, Blog Search, Base, Product Search and the Local Business Center. We were already using all of them, but their well rehearsed best practices were still helpful. Little did we know they would announce Universal Search a few short weeks later.
I say go for it. Ask the tough questions. I guarantee you they’ve heard them before. Good for you if you break through the armor, but don’t expect any insight into the black box that you can’t get elsewhere.
Story: How to poison your competitor’s PPC campaigns