Before I got into SEO and SMO I was a teacher.
It was a way tougher job than I have now.
I taught crazed 7th and 8th graders to write. Not just write, but write for standardized tests. Which meant quick, informative pieces, that score them well enough to earn IPods and Xbox 360s from their parents.
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This post will seem like a rant in spots, but if you stick with it I think some of you will be inspired enough in your efforts to fill your pockets with a little extra coin; the only result that matters in our industry.
I read a post by Lisa Barone at BruceClay.com entitled Don’t Be Popular. Be Useful. , and got to thinking about how some of those same concepts translate past blogging into the actual fabric of the industry.
The ratio of self-promoting perpetrators in our industry to actual talent seems to be ever increasing.
The former is soft and glass jawed, the later is a mean spirited glass chewer.
The former has a limited value based mostly on a segmented time line, the later will be an innovator in our industry as long as there is one.
You shouldn’t really need to have me tell you which one of these two schools you fall into, but I love allegory so let me tell you a tale to help you understand what the heart of a glass chewer is made of.
I just returned from SES Toronto where I had the privelage to participate on a panel with Lee Odden and Chris Winfield on Twitter.
It was a great session and a great experience all around. I was able to speak with some of the top minds in search and social media, about what they are doing to make themselves and others money.
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Links are the fuel that push search engine results.
You can build the best race car on the track, through strong on-page optimization efforts, but without gas what good is a fast car?
Like most energy sources quality links are becoming increasingly difficult to come by at low cost.
There are endless ways to create low quality links, but if you are optimizing a site through purely ethical methods, low quality links will do little if anything for your rankings. You really need to find ways to create lasting, quality links that can help drive your optimization efforts forward.
So far in our trip Beyond Keyword Research, we have looked at all of the data available to us on the web, both competitive and from our site.
We have utilized on-site analytics, Google Trends, Seodigger.com, and hitwise tools to collect a wealth of data about terms on our market and traffic approximations related to those keywords.
The next step is to look at heuristic evaluations of the site. This step will allow us to get a look at which of the 25% of daily search terms that are completely original queries we can capture to our competitive advantage.
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