At the very real risk of embarrassing my link building agency peers (and I type “peers” with all of the irony in the world) with the publishing of what has to be the truly worst attempt to get business EVER, I’d like to say a few things about the way some linking firms go about their business. Warning: this piece won’t use cussin’ because my cousins are now on Facebook and might tell my mama about my foul mouth (she’d at least pretend to be surprised, to keep up appearances), but it will definitely be narsty.

I own a link building firm. Yes, that is a poor attempt to build links for it but hey, this is partially my blog. And yes, our website is utter crap but that’s because:

1. I built it but I didn’t feel like building it really.
2. I’m too busy actually working for my clients to do a proper website.
3. Third verse same as the first. Just last night I was reminded of just how…ok.

Even so, anyone with even a tiny iota of sense (hey Jane!) would look at my agency’s site and know that we BUILD LINKS. The fact that I’ve recently received the aforementioned “worst attempt to get business” email that came to my WORK ADDRESS (sorry for all the shouting) makes me so angry that I want to smack my nearest link builder, who happens to be humming, which doesn’t help matters.

I’ve been very upfront about the fact that I have “different” ethics than others when it comes to marketing. However, I do occasionally take great offense to things that really, really make my skin crawl. I am not a big fan of trying to make people believe that they need something that, in all actuality, they don’t, at all. That’s more than an abuse of power; it’s just plain tacky, and if anyone knows tacky, it’s a Southerner. Has anyone ever visited Pedro at South of the Border? If so, I rest my case.

The offending email has three main highlights as follows: and note that I’m not including any identifying information, lest I be accused of outing anyone. These mothers freaking deserve to be outed, actually, but I’m feeling nice right now. Note that “freaking” is not an actual curse word, cousin Donna.

“I was looking at websites under the keyword large fish and came across your website http://www.linkfishmedia.com. I see that you’re not ranked on the first page of Google for a large fish search.” (Editor’s note: A large fish search. HA. Also, what kind of freak looks at websites under the keyword large fish? FREAK.)

“There’s no reason you can’t have a top three ranking for the keyword large fish based on your site structure and content. You have a very nice site.” (Editor’s note: um, no we don’t have a very nice site at all but thanks.)

“I didn’t send this email out to very many people but I am currently reaching out to a list of your ‘keyword competitors’ as well. But I do favor your website because I can see your website monetizing the targeted website traffic the keyword large fish can deliver.” (Editor’s note: still laughing about making money off the term “large fish”…can’t think clearly, gasping for air, ordering a handbag from Amazon to calm down, thinking about how good a movie Cat People actually was, fumbling about in cabinet for unopened can of Pringles.)

SEO scams really, really upset me, especially right now when the economy is the shakiest I’ve ever seen it and people are desperate. My friend Palmer and I used to joke about the horrible salespeople that we’d make, telling people “yes this car is only $25k…actually, it’s way overpriced and you just need a scooter, or even a skateboard. Would you like one? I’d be happy to buy it for you!” Attempting to sell people something that is truly ridiculous is quite inexcusable. It’s predatory, and it taints the rest of us who do actually try to be decent, to not talk clients into overspending, and to honestly help people grow their business. Now, lest anyone think that I’m in danger of being almost nice, let me assure you that I’m happy to take money from anyone who really wants to give it to me. However, companies that are inept enough to target another LINK BUILDING AGENCY with something so asinine…well, I am thinking of all the bad things I’d like to see done to these people, particularly Chuck, the author of the email.

Here’s what I think about young Chuck, if that’s his real name. I hope it is, because who’d use Chuck as a fake name? He’s been working out of his parents’ basement for years, picking his teeth whilst looking at online lesbian porn and thinking that Dakota and Symanthah actually both want him, then gets hired by a link building agency that must be run by someone who has the brain of a small bag of sand. Chuck hasn’t been trained on link building, SEO, or anything resembling a nuance, nor has he the social skills (or writing skills) of someone who has successfully completed first grade. Is this the future of SEO? Automated systems, faceless staff promising truly ridiculous and unnecessary services that can be obtained, most likely, for a very cheap price? I’m shaking in my socks, mainly because it’s late and I’m not wearing boots right now.

Just try explaining what you do for a living to people who aren’t in the industry, and it’s clear that there’s a bit of the occult in SEO. Yes, much of it can be quantified, but there’s still a large amount of it that is way more art than science. The most frequent response that I get when describing what I do every day is “um, I have NO idea what you’re talking about but it sounds cool.” Taking advantage right now honestly is not difficult. It is, however, almost criminal. Therefore, Chuck, if you’re reading this, and I doubt you are since I can’t imagine you could even spell SEO (although you might be able to spell chicks), stop trying to intimidate people, at least until the economy perks up a bit.

As you know, I love chocolate. My passion for chocolate has extended to going on chocolate tasting tours, sampling single estate chocolate and educating my palette as to what chocolate, beans and the like are all about. I’ve surprised myself recently on a chocolate tasting event at Galler Chocolate in Harrods Food Hall with my ability to actually taste the mixed origin bean chocolate. I know, how weird.

Well, my passion for chocolate also means I get a lot of requests for my favourite chocolate picks by people looking to buy someone special something special. So I‘ve decided to post about my favourite chocolate picks. Now, this is going to be a wide selection with everything from single estate chocolate through to M&S choccies but most is going to be stuff that goes off in 2 weeks or less.

My top pick is Luento Santoro chocolate. This is some of the world’s best chocolate. You can pick just about anything from this range and you’ll love it. My top pick from my top pick is the World Flavours Chocolate and save all the Indonesian ones for yourself. The chocolate from this region has produced some of the most lush chocolate in the world. Next is the Chocolate selection box but my dream would be to receive the de-humidor

My next most favourite chocolate is the Chocolate Society chocolate. Their truffles are my top pick. Actually, most of their stuff is lush so I made a gift registry and put my top picks in it. Do *NOT* use for adding to your shopping cart! These are only suggestions based on my favs. Now, there is a range of things in there with a range of prices but my top pick is the truffle range. I love these truffles because the chocolate surrounding the filling is superbly balanced and just the right amount of flavour offset by the filling. The “credit crunch” is lush and funny to boot. The chocolate and cocoa dusted almonds are divine. What is missing is the baked goods I get at the shop. Those brownies were worth the trip to Elizabeth St!

I also just love Gorvett & Stone chocolate. I got a box of their chocolates once and I cannot express how much I love them. The flavours are so much fun! While not the distinguished single country origin of Luento Santoro or the chocolate flavour height of Chocolate Society truffles, these folks have the flavours down pat. The chocolates are small and wonderful and come in round boxes if you select “formal”. The taste is sublime and just enough. The spiced chocolates could so easily have been done incorrectly and yet they managed to accomplish this brilliantly. The green tea was the height of expertise as was the spiced dice. The truffles were phenomenal and really if I lived in Henley I’d snack on these every day. I’d suggest ringing the shop and selecting your flavours which I could not do online. I contacted them directly and they suggest that you select “trust us” which will ensure you get the best selection. Make sure to point to any you absolutely don’t want but also keep an open mind.
These chocolates are small so you will get a lot for your money and they taste lovely too!

Most who have experienced chocbait have experienced Swedish Druid chocolate otherwise known as M&S Belgian cocoa dusted truffles. These are surprisingly delicious and well made. There seems to be a good amount of cocoa butter with not an overwhelming amount of sugar making these a wonderful and frugal choice. I highly recommend them!

Last but certainly not least, is Galler chocolate. I went to a chocolate tasting event here where we tried a small number of their chocolates. Tucked away at the back of the chocolate hall – or the front depending on how you enter it – the chocolate counter can too easily be lost in the cacophony of chocolates assaulting your senses. With a unique set of flavours divided into themes, this chocolate is delicate and quite pleasant. It’s going to be different from anything you’ll find elsewhere and you’ll be appreciated no matter what you select. The easiest option rather than be overwhelmed by the selection is to go for a themed box. The Kaori box is going to make you the star of any party with a selection of very different flavours you can eat alone or dip in to another flavour to enjoy. I had the opportunity to sample this at my leisure along with a few chocolates and I can report back that while not all of the box of Kaori was quite to my taste, things that I did not think were to my taste were not as bad as I thought. The balance is well done here and the Kalamansi can be used like glue so dip your stick in there before your choice of Orange and Cocoa Nibs or Matcha Green Tea and Poppy Seeds power to coat the outside. It did take some getting used to but for a gift or at a party, this would be superb. Of the few chocolates I sampled, the white was predictably sweet but the dark pleasantly mild. There was not as much body to the dark as I have become used to but hey – I did enjoy it nonetheless. The milk was too sweet for me but many people will find this the perfect milk chocolate as it mirrors more closely the flavour and sweetness many expect in a milk chocolate.

A special shout out to Donnelly chocolates for those of you in the US. These are excellent chocolates worthy of high praise. If you want to sample chocolates that echo the joy and pleasure I find in chocolate, just get yours from here!

So that is my chocolate selection. The chocolate I enjoy and love and I hope you will too!

I want to refer back to a post Julie wrote a couple of months ago about writing in SEO. I’ve struggled with this a lot recently, because sometimes it’s just torturous to come up with something new. I get to work at about eight-forty-five every morning and leave sometime before six, and I do SEO all day. Sometimes I do extra things when I get home too, but there is often just nothing noteworthy to say about it. I fix mashed up redirects. I figure out who should link to what from where. I do things that interest me, but do you really want me to write blog posts about the merits of dropping IIS servers off of cliffs? Well maybe that wouldn’t be a bad post. But I, too, get “so bored with the SEO.”

It’s not a boring job, but it’s boring to watch people justify their constant stream of blog posts about it. The situation is even worse when you get into social media blogging. In total honesty, I want to read and write more posts like this, composed in a fit of genius by my coworker Rebecca. I am so bored with the endless rattling about things that don’t matter: If a blogger has nothing important to say, at least do something funny. Please don’t compose another trail of drivel about corporate social media efforts. Even when I don’t read them, I know they exist, just like I know Sarah Palin exists even though she’s not going to be Vice President. (Can I get a hell yeah? Ahem. Excuse me.)

In that vein, I’m not going to write about SEO. I’m going to pretend that this is a more generic technology blog (which it often is, really). People often write lists of predictions for the new year, and this fits into much the same genre. Technology of all types, but especially of the Internet related variety, has changed my life in astonishing ways in the last two and a half years. Here are more things I see changing soon, and some things I don’t see ever changing.

1. The end of text messaging. I pay way too much for an SMS plan that I don’t use. Nearly everyone who I want to contact in a moblie environment has a telephone that supports an email client. Most of them also carry Facebook and Twitter with them wherever they go. Why do I pay for a text messaging plan on my phone when I also have a data plan? The only solution for SMS plans’ survival is that they become incredibly cheap or free. As more “normal people” adopt BlackBerries, iPhones and other incarnations of walking laptops, more of us will realise that expensive texting plans are a ripoff.The only person who will suffer here is my Dad. He has email on his telephone but can’t use it. I still receive punctuation-free texts from Dad at seven in the morning on Saturdays. This will never change.
2. The end of small plastic cards. I am old enough to remember when New Zealand switched from large, paper drivers’ licenses to plastic cards, and I assume I’ll also see such cards start to disappear. I also remember when my parents stopped using cheques and started paying with plastic. Given the right technology and security, we could put an end to this…

   

   … and introduce the era of this.

   

   I see no reason why this is a crazy idea. The technology that’s already gone into iPhones’ touchscreens allows them to do some pretty incredible things. My dear old BlackBerry Curve has a little way to go before it’s capable of paying for my shopping, but I can certainly see it happening in the relatively near future.

3. The complete and utter death of offline yellow pages. Forever. Gone. Out. Good-freakin-bye. They delivered copies of the yellow pages to my area yesterday. I came home and there was one outside the front door. In the past, they’d just leave them out by the street, near the letterboxes, and expect us to pick them up. No one ever did, so now they’ve taken to placing them on our doorsteps so that we have to at least move them before we can get inside. I begrudgingly brought mine in. Here is what it’s doing right now. It will do this until I take it to the rubbish bin.

   

   Can we please admit, finally, that the phone book should die? I’ll get people in comments who’ll say, “but I still use it!” Seriously: get a telephone that knows how to work teh Googles and save all all that paper. I guarantee that I can find something faster and more reliably on my laptop or mobile phone than I can in this massive book. Although people have been predicting this for years, the fact that they felt the need to drop the books on our doorsteps this year confirmed to me that offline yellow pages are suffering badly.

4. The reintroduction of professional journalism.
   I say this as someone who contributes to multiple blogs and who spoke on a blogging panel a month ago at Pubcon in Las Vegas: I dislike blogging. I don’t like the word. The term “blogger” usually elicits emotions of disdain from me. There are too many hacks out there who publish crap. Additionally, I’m not the only person who feels like this. As more people take up the cause of writing about their fantastically boring lives, many people will react by embracing writing as a profession again.Writers will once more need some sort of credentials in order to be taken seriously. I don’t mean that they’ll need degrees. However, they’ll need some talent with language and knowledge of their field. Quality newspapers don’t hire people to write their technology articles who are borderline-illiterate and who don’t actually do any technological work. The idiot-blogger celebrity phenomena will go the way of the yellow pages.
5. Appliances and gadgets that are Internet-capable. Why can’t I upload photographs directly from my digital camera to Flickr? I can do that from my mobile phone, and I have to imagine that cameras with degrees of Internet capability already exist. However, I should be able to select photographs on my camera and send them directly to a Flickr account. I could be logged into a Facebook account, probably via an application similar to the one on my telephone, and create new albums on that site as well. This completely cuts out the “middle man” of my computer.Although they’re hellishly expensive, some appliances like this already exist. A Seattle coffee shop near the old SEOmoz offices had a coffee machine that “talked” to its fellow coffee machines in order to determine the optimal temperature and amount of water needed to make the best cup of coffee. It was sort of ridiculous, but a sign of future normalcy at the same time.Unnecessary, irrelevant applications and appliances will make their way onto the market, but it’ll be the small, sensible changes that make a big difference. Cameras that upload straight to the Internet aren’t revolutionary, but they’re logical and useful.

And now for things that will never change:

1. Search engines will never be defunct…… although I’m willing to admit that they may one day be very different. This said, the idea that vertical search and social media will completely take over from generic online search doesn’t seem quite right, at least not for a long time. Just now, I saw somebody I follow on Twitter ask a question that she could have “Googled.” She received an answer. However, we often overlook the fact that Google would have answered that question as well. What social media is good for are questions that people can answer quickly, and the additional information that they can provide. It still stands that traditional search will win when nobody knows the answer or is around to provide it. And holy shit, I included something about SEO in this post.
2. Retail stores will still bring in customers. I’d file my fingernails online if it were possible, but I still don’t fully embrace online shopping. The main reason for this is that I like to try things on and I hate sending things back. Therefore, if I’m going to buy clothes, I want to buy them at the store. There will always be people like me who like offline shopping.Additionally, I’m never going to buy something really important online, like a car. I want to take a look at something that expensive and important before I buy it. I’m sure people have bought and rented property online before, which is an awful idea unless geography truly prevents the person from visiting the location.
3. Geography will never cease to exist.
   It makes no difference that, in looking at my Twitter feed or Facebook home page or Gtalk IM client, I can talk to people in Australia, Florida, Auckland, Washington DC, London, Seattle, California, Texas and North Carolina. The Internet doesn’t make up for the fact that I am not there with them.
   I have a couple of friends whom I talk to daily. We joke that when we’re not face to face, we live in each other’s computers, but it doesn’t work like that. Nothing makes up for being sat in front of someone–no amount of video chat, Twitter, email or anything else. We’ve liberalised communication to the extent that I can contact someone in France as easily as my next door neighbour, but until we can email ourselves somewhere, geography still wins. I’ll still buy aeroplane tickets. We’ll still miss people with whom we have a constant line of communication, and we’ll never completely close the gaps physical distance creates.

And that’s about where I stand on these few random technology-related subjects. I won’t buy online, but I’ll pretend as hard as I can–and in vain– that my far-away friends are actually here. I’ll contradict the fact that I write blog posts with the statement that blogging usually falls in between boring and asinine. And, all the while, I wait for the day when my coffee machine knows how to make a better drink than I do.

It happens every year and yet we’re so often not prepared.  We’ve planned the content, organised how it will be executed and yet still we don’t seem to get it done in time.  Optimisation for Christmas always seems possible in January and impossible in November.

Some obviously plan their optimisation well in advance, planning things out over the period of the year, ensuring various plans are executed at the most economic point in the annual cycle.  They have their strategy mostly mapped out, with some ‘wiggle room’ built in for last minute acquisitions at odd times in the cycle.

Others stick to a rigid, time-optimised plan, executing to strict guidelines within certain geographic regions with a very specific target market in mind.  These people are quite rigid in their approach and can react with hostility at the suggestion of increased flexibility.  Their budgets are pre-planned and schedules organised to the minute.

Still others will approach Christmas optimisation in a haphazard way, allowing the winds of whim to blow them here and there.  Lacking a strategy, their optimisation is rarely executed in any discernable way and to a certain extent despite spending more than they may have planned, the result is far less optimised than they had imagined.

I think I am a bit of a mix.  My approach to optimisation of Christmas is a small amount of advance planning, executing some parts at economically favourable points in the cycle but generally dashing around like a mad woman at various deadlines to try and achieve all my goals before the deadline passes.

I guess that’s part of the magic of Christmas – that I manage to get my gift buying done at all!

The accusation was levelled at the SEO Chicks recently that they had become semi-rock stars and had no time for chatting to people. As a person who often wears themselves out trying to meet people, and has had various parts of her body assaulted at these events while meeting people, I was quite distressed that anyone would think that of any of us chicks.

At the last LondonSEO I spent time walking through extreme crowds, trying not to get my body touched in inappropriate ways while handing out chocolate. You’d be surprised what the poor thing gets subjected to on a regular basis. The chocolate lasted about an hour, part of which I was stationary for. I tried to chat and say hello to lots of people, some of whom I didn’t know. In fact, I described what I was wearing on Twitter and asked people to say hello.

Chocolate is my way of saying “hello” while still hiding behind something, much like I hid behind LisaD when Vanessa Fox said hello. Not my most shining moment but to me she is still a major rock star and I’m still just a shy fat kid who can never hope to have a conversation with her about encouraging more women in to high tech despite that being something we both dig. So as Vanessa approached us, I fled, hiding behind LisaD and Jane despite wanting to say hi and have a conversation about the work Girl Geek Dinners was doing encouraging girls into technology at high schools. I’ll be posting here about various chocolates I love with suggestions to help for the holidays if you’re looking for something different to give.

Lisa does get surrounded quite quickly by fans of SEO Chicks. I have seen her swamped by people almost instantly upon entering a venue and watched as she politely tried to get a drink or dinner or something. Far from being unapproachable, she is warm and open and friendly. I strive to be more like LisaD. She rocks in being a wonderful, caring person and someone anyone can chat to. I think that’s why she’s been interviewed so often – she is a wonderful person and everyone wants to hear more.

Julie is amazing. She is a strong independent character and gave me chocolate when I was upset last time I saw her. She can seem aloof simply because she radiates this strength in her personal aura. She is far from unapproachable and she’s always got a friendly smile. If you say “Hi – I love reading your blog posts and think Adam Ant rules” I am sure you’ll get a lively and animated conversation from her. It can be hard to feel comfortable approaching someone whose blog you’ve been reading but I’ve done it and it’s great when you make a new friend that way.

Jane Copland is a wonderful, warm person who would welcome anyone saying hello. I know she’s a bit of a rock star from her SEOmoz job as well as being a Chicklet but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to chat to everyone. She is a wonderful, warm and open person and has a bout of shyness just like the rest of us – especially when being put on the spot in a presentation Jane is so darn friendly I think she’d probably starve if she did what she wanted to and chatted to everyone.

Beyond those of us who were at LondonSEO and SMX London, I can say from having met Stephanie that she is a wonderful person who gives a lot of herself to everything she does. I’m sure we’d love to see her blog here more often but she’s also rocking the world of social media and working hard just like Anita who is constantly head down, working. Anita was at PubCon last year and after having to spend 30h in transit I was shocked she made the trip! She is such a friendly and wonderful person I’m sure if you want to chat with her you’d find yourself instantly engaged in a fun and interesting conversation. Donna is a joy to email and she’s a powerhouse of information. She is just so extremely smart and she’s been around forever it can be a bit overwhelming to talk to her but just pick a topic, say hello and chat. I am sure she’s going to have a huge amount of great info and if you but say hello you’ll find yourself swept into a conversation. And Lauren is so friendly and so much fun I cannot imagine her being unapproachable. She was great when I was in NY for the first time in my life and helped me find my way around, accompanied me around and was with me at the very end as I tried to shift the stuff in my bags around. I was under my luggage limit by less than a pound so her efforts meant I didn’t have to do it at the airport

The SEO Chicks have not become unapproachable – far from it we work hard to be approachable. Pick a subject, say hello and engage us in conversation. We all have blog posts you can choose from or pick a recent topic or anything. Say hi, let us know you read our blog and chat with us. Please.

I’m speaking at the IMS conference which is free to get in to (but £15 on the door so sign up in advance!). I’ll be speaking on the Dark Side of Social Media along with other folks from the SEO community so come say hi.

Ah, nepotism. Glorious, glorious nepotism. In case Ciaran’s reading this, nepotism is nicely defined here.

Nepotism happens out of necessity in this industry. You get gigs doing blogging, consulting, conference speaking, and who knows what else (even those pesky real jobs) through knowing the right people. Obviously you need to back things up with actual ability, but many times, what gets you IN at first is definitely who you know.

I’m taking a serious risk here by paraphrasing something said by the principal in the Molly Ringwald classic “Pretty in Pink”…if you send out signals that you don’t want to belong, people will make sure that you don’t. I learned this quite quickly in high school and even through the masses of black eyeliner and pink hair, I managed to have a fairly well-adjusted four years. A few people in this industry don’t seem to have ever truly understood that, sadly, and there’s a lot of slagging off of those of us who actually make the damned effort to interact and network.

At any SEO event, I do tend to stick close to the old industry friends that I’ve made, as has been pointed out to me by several people who think that I ignore them at every available opportunity. We do have a somewhat set little group of people but here’s the thing...I cannot list a single person that I know in this industry who is in ANY way closed off to newcomers, whether they’re new to the industry or simply new to them as people they’ve met. Actually, the two individuals that I spent the most time talking to at the last LondonSEO were, in fact, people that I’ve never met before, people that I felt like I’d known forever within 5 minutes of talking to them. Sure, I spent loads of time taking photos in the loo with Lisa and Jane but that is simply how the SEO Chicks roll when alcohol is involved. Trust me when I say that people who take bathroom photos on more than one occasion are NOT snobs.

This isn’t a post about how nice I am, though…it’s a post about how, much of the time, the reason people feel unwelcome is their own damned fault. Growing up around these parts (yes, it’s another reference to the grand old South), we learn to kill people with kindness. We’re taught to be outgoing and inquire about people’s children, to ask questions and actually enjoy learning about what we hear rather than letting it drift over us. The English, I’ve found, do this particularly well. It’s honestly not difficult for me to interact with most people, but I will say that I’ve met a few people who seem to have a chip on their shoulder about being new to the industry and not warmly welcomed, even though they’ve really done nothing to cause anyone to roll out the welcome mat. I don’t recall anyone falling all over themselves trying to talk to me when I was new, unless you count Rob Kerry and that was only because I kept slapping him and asking him if he liked older women.

Networking really is essential if you expect to get anywhere in this industry. I am in no way saying that someone who does get somewhere has done so only by being charming and knowing the right people, but I AM saying that if you don’t make the effort, you most likely will not have anyone banging down your door. Whether it’s a guest blog post, the chance to speak at a conference/write for an industry publication, or get a new client, if you’ve successfully built a social network, you’re on someone’s radar. When someone pops up, you’ll be notified, and that’s what it’s all about, unless you want to spend a billion dollars on a private salesperson to be your personal pimp. If you do, in fact, want to do just that, may I suggest that you at least find a stylish one, preferably one who enjoys wearing a large timepiece around his neck? Thanks.

It’s no secret that the SEO industry is full of stunning women. No, Jane and Lisa didn’t pay me to write that but I’d be happy to accept payment, if they insist. KeyRelevance’s Christine Churchill, however, takes it to a new level. Obviously being a supermodel simply didn’t interest her. At the risk of gushing like a 14 year old boy, this woman is an absolute goddess. In our wonderful email conversations and during the unfortunately brief time we had to chat at LondonSEO, I discovered that pedestals were created especially for women like this.

Without further embarrassing nonsense on my part, I give you the lovely Christine Churchill, who was kind enough to let me interview her, something that made me giggle with glee.

KeyRelevance's Christine Churchill

Q: You have an utterly frighteningly impressive background, speaking at conferences, moderating forums, writing for industry publications, serving on boards and industry associations, running companies…I could go on and on, as anyone who reads this blog knows. However, what I find most striking about you is that with all these prolific contributions to online marketing and SEO, you continue to do interesting things. How do you keep yourself wanting to stay so involved?

Thank you for the kind words Julie.  I’m afraid my accomplishments are quite humble compared to many others in this industry, but I love search, so it feels natural to me to stay involved.   That said, there are a few things that motivate me and keep me excited about search.  I love how search continually morphs and evolves.  The SEO of today is different and better than the SEO of the 90s.

I also like the variety of working with different clients.  Online marketing is an industry that every business can benefit from.  Over the years I have had the honor to work in a variety of verticals and with a variety of niches including cruise lines and hotels, steel foundries, schools, ecommerce sites, security companies, babies to brides, software companies, service companies, etc.  I’ve worked with sole proprietorships, partnerships, and large publicly traded companies.  I’ve worked on nationally focused and locally focused companies.  This variety is an important part of what keeps the work fresh and interesting.  It is still fun for me to get involved with a company and help them to figure out what they need and how KeyRelevance can help them to solve their problems and achieve their goals.  My company is small, and I like it that way: I want to stay “hands-on” with my clients and not just be a figurehead.  That hands-on involvement as a part of their team is what keeps things “alive” for me.

If your day SEO work doesn’t give you exposure to a variety of niches, something you can do on your own time to help renew your love of search is to apply the knowledge to work on hobby and personal interests sites.  I would encourage any SEO to have a few fun sites.  Playing on these sites allows the SEO to hone skills, try out new ideas, and explore the changing landscape of the search engines.

Finally, I would have to say that one of the biggest ways I have found to keep search “fresh” is to find ways to use search skills to “give back.”  I still believe in that old saying “the more you give, the more you get in return.”   For me, I have found that getting involved with local non-profit and other local grassroots groups gives me a new energy and a positive intangible feeling.   Almost every organization wants a strong web presence and they rarely know how to go about achieving it.  When you offer search skills; it’s usually very welcomed.

I like to get involved with activities that overlap in my personal interests.  For example, I am an avid horse person and love children and the environment.  I didn’t have to look very far to find local organizations needing talent.   I’ve donated time to my local school district, a therapeutic horse riding school, and a local conservation organization.  In fact, I am on the Board of Directors of the local non-profit conservation group right now.   There is nothing like having to work on a shoestring budget to challenge your creative skills.  It will revitalize you, improve your skills, and remind you that search can be fun.  Isn’t that the reason we all got into search in the first place?

Q: Have you had instances where you felt that you weren’t taken as seriously as you would have been if you’d been a man? Strong women aren’t always 100% welcomed, sadly.

I grew up with four brothers who thought of me as their punk little sister, so I learned early in life how a woman often has to work twice as hard to be taken seriously.  The good news is that the Internet is a great equalizer.  It is new technology, and with the World Wide Web being around for less than 15 years, I think it has avoided some of the good-ol’-boys stigmatism that exists in other established industries.

I also feel that the generational difference in the WWW-era companies has helped women.  Younger generations are often very accepting of women as equals.  We do still see some problems when the SEO companies have to speak to old-school bricks-and-mortar companies and their sometimes entrenched philosophies, but overall I think women in search are taken very seriously.

If you can show positive results, it doesn’t matter what your gender is, you’ll be taken seriously.  One of my favorite tag lines belongs to my dear friend and SEO super star Rae Hoffman.  Rae is one of the most amazing and inspiring people I know, on or off the web.  Rae’s tag line sums up the essence of the strong capable woman who can hold her own in any world.  It reads “never mess with a woman who can pull rank.”  I still smile every time I read it.

Q: How do you like being a Ninja?

<Laughs>Well, it is always nice to be recognized.  When my daughter found out I was an Internet Marketing Ninja, she wanted to know if I was going to get one of those cool ninja uniforms.  So, Jim Boykin, if you read this, I’m still waiting for my ninja outfit to arrive.  Oh and Jim, I need it in Tall. 

Q: You’ve taught SEO classes before. You’ve probably also worked with people who haven’t been schooled in SEO. Do you think that SEO is something that can be learned, or do you think that you also need to possess an innate ability to do it well?

The old nature versus nurture question applied to SEO.    Taking a training course in basic SEO techniques and thinking that’s all you need to be successful in your new career, is akin to someone handing you the first ingredient in an award winning recipe and not telling you the amounts, the other ingredients, nor the techniques needed.  SEO, by itself,  is not rocket science and while there are a number of basic tenets that should be followed for all sites, there are many other essential ingredients that you need in the mix to cook up the tastiest dish.  Basic SEO tenets can be taught pretty easily, but there is definitely an art to the process and a finesse that takes time and experience to develop.

Here’s the essence of the problem.  You cannot simply and blindly follow formulas (X% Keyword density, Y # of out bound links per page, etc.) to make SEO work.  SEOs that follow this mechanical technical approach will get limited results.  Those techniques might have worked in 1999 when SEO was more formulaic, but today the SEO needs to be a marketer – they need to think bigger picture and more holistically.

Today you obviously still need to know the technical mechanics of optimization, but to be really successful you need to have many skill sets.  To stay successful in online marketing you have to keep pushing yourself out of your comfort zone to force yourself to learn new techniques and expand your abilities.  If you’re not actively out there developing new skills, you’ll wilt on the vine.  This drive to excel requires passion….it’s a characteristic I’ve seen in all successful search marketers.  Those who don’t have passion don’t stay in the industry long.

In addition to having a passion for search, there are some important skills sets that a good SEO needs to acquire.  First, an SEO needs to know HTML code.  You don’t necessarily have to be a coder, but  I would encourage anyone coming into the industry to at least learn a smattering of basic HTML….if they can’t do that, they will always be limited in how far they can go with SEO.  You need to be able to at least look at code because you need to be able to see a page as a search engine sees it.

Something else a good SEO needs to develop is persuasive copywriting skills.   Again, you don’t have to be Pulitzer Prize-caliber writer, but learning how to write for the web is a conscious effort that pays off many times more than the effort required to learn it.   Writing is something that improves the more you practice.

Another skill set a good marketer should acquire is a solid grounding in usability – the ability to know what makes a site easier to use.  There is strong synergy between SEO and usability.  The very things you do to make a web site easier for the user, is often the same things you do to make it easier for the search engines to crawl the site.   Visitors are like a search engine spider – if they don’t see an easy way to navigate and extract information from your site, they leave.  Having a good understanding for what makes a site usable and convert requires knowledge in motivational and behavioral psychology.  We are all complex beings motivated by different needs.  Identifying what a visitor needs and wants is the first step in satisfying them.  This is one of the reasons I’m a big advocate for live user testing.  I love data to identify a problem area on a web site, but there is nothing as effective as feedback straight from a user to tell you the “why” behind a problem.

A practical skill a good SEO should cultivate is the ability to see creative ways to get links.  Because the engines weigh linkage data so heavily in their ranking algorithms, linking is an essential ingredient for online success and being able to locate and secure topical links from high quality sites is a requirement.

Finally, a good SEO needs to be an expert in analytics.  This is where the SEO gets their feedback.  It’s the report card that tells the SEO whether the campaign worked or didn’t.  Analytics guide the search marketer on which direction to take.  It provides the search marketer the information they need to make good marketing decisions.

I hope my comments don’t make someone new to the industry feel overwhelmed.  What I’m really saying is that the basic SEO training is like learning the alphabet.  You grow and learn the power of words after you master the alphabet.  SEO training will help, but it by itself will only take you so far: you also need the passion and drive to keep pushing yourself to be a lifelong learner.

The appeal of search marketing is that it is complex and meshes together many disciplines.  My advice to anyone entering the industry is this:  fall in love with search, and let that passion ignite a fire inside you that will motivate you to commit to yourself to continually learn and grow.   If you take the learning in digestible pieces, it’s not overwhelming.  And this continual need to learn more has a great side effect – it will make the industry fascinating and will keep you engaged for years to come.

Q: How do you feel about the current trend of loads of people going to conferences but not actually attending them, only going for the networking aspect? How important IS networking to you?

From what I’ve observed, there are four main reasons people attend conferences:  1) advertising (on the part of vendors), 2) training (for those new to SEO or looking to expand/update their breadth and depth of knowledge, 3) renewing/maintaining friendships/business relationships, and 4) making new contacts/networking.  Most attendees have two or more of these reasons in mind when attending the conferences.

The search landscape is always changing (look at universal search, PPC changes, the emergence of social media, etc.), so keeping in touch with the changes in the landscape is important.  Personally I feel conferences are the best professional development opportunities we have.  Due to the rapid changes in the search industry, it is VERY difficult to stay current on your own.  Conferences are one way to be immersed in all the changes all at once.   Even if you work full time in this industry, you can’t keep up to speed with all the massive changes that occur on a regular basis in this industry, but conferences can at least alert you to the most important changes and give you the opportunity to talk directly with the people instrumental to the changes.  From my perspective, the benefits derived from conferences outweigh any monetary costs associated with them.

You asked specifically about how important is networking to me.  I’d say it ranks fairly high for me.  Online marketing today requires you to often reach beyond your own agency.  The conferences are opportunities to meet face to face and develop new friendships or explore new working relationships.  I’ve partnered on different contracts with a large number of people and companies over the years.   And with the growth of social media, I think the need to maintain and expand our networks has grown, so I see the networking role of conferences growing in the future.

Q: What voids need to be filled in the industry? Some people want women-only conferences, or blackhat conferences; some people think that we need a set of industry standards, or professional certifications. What do you see as being the next big steps that we take as a group?

I’d have to better understand what you mean by a women only conference.  I wouldn’t want to be part of a conference that excludes anyone.  A conference that excludes men is just as sexist as one that only allows men.

That said, I am in favor of woman-focused conferences that focus on women related subjects so long as the conferences allow men.  Women are nurturers and often only another woman can understand the struggles another woman is facing.  Women often get societal and familial pressures that aren’t exerted on men.  There is a sisterhood of support that often develops between women as a result.  I know other women have helped me along the way and I’m happy to help other women as well.

You asked about industry standards and certifications.  Most professions have standards to maintain quality and to control entrance into a profession.  At some point I do see the search industry moving to standards, but currently I have some heartburn with many of the certification programs I’ve seen.  With the exception of Google’s professional certification which offers a free Learning Center, most certification programs require you to sign up for an expensive training program before you can take the certification test.  If I were a cynical person I might say a certification program that first required you to pay for expensive  training gives the perception of a money making scam.  I think you should be able to take the test without having to buy the training program.  This would take experience and prior knowledge into account.    I think for someone new in the industry who doesn’t have years of experience that getting certified is one way to show that you have some knowledge of SEO.  However I have to say, years experience and past SEO success rate are a better metric for future SEO success than a certification paper any day.

Q: How have things changed for you over the past 10 years? I’ve only been doing SEO for 5 years and the changes have been dramatic. Has it gotten more difficult? Or have things become more interesting?

Nothing remains so constant as change.  Since I became involved in SEO back in the mid 90s, there have been tremendous changes.  I’ve seen engines come and go in importance.   AltaVista, Lycos, and Netscape were the big targets back then.   Google didn’t even exist back then, except perhaps in the minds of Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Over the years, the changes have fortunately been more evolutionary than revolutionary.  For those of us who have been in the industry awhile have been able to learn gradually and adapt to those changes.   I think the width and depth required for a new person coming into the industry can be intimidating.  Their learning curve is certainly larger than ours, but still very achievable.  I think my earlier comments about SEO training as a starting point express my philosophy on how someone entering the industry should approach it.  I am in the camp where if you’re going to do something – do it the best you can.  And it’s easier to do your best if you love what you’re doing.  So cultivate a love for search.  It has to be more than a job.  Embrace it with unabashed passion and you’ll go far.

Q: How do you feel about social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter? Useful, or timewasters?

I have mixed feelings on social media.  I like connecting with my friends via the social sites, but I’m a very private person, I am not one to twitter about what I ate for breakfast.  The internet has made us all live hybrid existences – there is a blurring of our online and offline selves.  This brings with it a bit of a danger.  Sometimes we reveal more than we should online – so there may be privacy issues at risk.  Also, and blame my years of working in corporate America for this, but I think professional image can be tarnished by the informality that people adopt on social sites.   People need to stop a minute and think more about what they are transmitting on the live web.  Sure you’re friends are reading your online rant, but so are your clients, competitors, potential investors and others…..  I think if people slowed down and proof read their post before pressing enter, it might save them some embarrassment and heart ache.

On the positive side, social media is a valuable way to communicate and open a dialog with your customer base.  The breath of social media and the ease of using it make it an effective way to get direct feedback from users and to learn what users want – so from a marketing perspective it is a powerful tool.  That back and forth exchange of information also makes social media a great way for companies to let their target audience know about what the company is doing and about new products or services it might be offering.  So, from this relationship building point of view I’m very pro social media.

Q: Lastly, what are your hopes for women in this field? How can we continue to gain the respect we deserve without it being a women’s issue?

I am optimistic about women in search.  Because it’s a new profession, you don’t have the long-time glass ceilings you have in other industries.  The skill sets required for search are in high demand, so companies are vying to hire and keep search skills.  They don’t care the gender; they want to attract the best talent.

I think search offers a special appeal for women.   Because you can do a lot of search related work over the Internet, all you need are the skills and an Internet connection.  I think for women juggling the demands of a family and a job, the ability to work from home holds extra attraction.  I originally started KeyRelevance so I could be at home when my daughter arrived from school.   I had worked in the corporate world for years and was tired of the long commute each day – I couldn’t find a job that allowed me to work from home, so I created one.

The Internet has changed the work environment.  Twitter and IM are the online equivalents of the watercooler.   I think for people with a strong work ethic and who can work independently, working from home is ideal.  That is a plus for both men and women.  Many people who work from home tell me they are more productive at home and really enjoy the benefits.   So as long as people work hard and do their job, I see the work at home option growing for both genders.

Note from Julie: I’m including this last bit so that it’s on record and I can refer to it whenever I am having a bad day…