There is always one question on my mind when I am working on Social Media; How am I going to track my efforts? And what is a waste of time? It is very difficult to perfectly determine what type of Social Media pieces have potential to go viral without practice and patience. Thankfully, there are people out there who put a lot of time into this research.

Yesterday on ReadWriteWeb, Dan Zarrella wrote an article about the new tool he developed which helps Diggers test out keywords, before they submit a story.  The tool researches the keywords from within the title and description of the top 33,000 front page stories that made it to the Digg holy homepage in 2007. This is quite an impressive database!

Obviously we are all aware of the benefits of Digg, but there are also hidden dangers.  If you are in the Brand Management field you might be afraid that people who find your story on Digg want to blog negatively about it, or leave tons of negative comments, etc.   Of course this is a possibility on any social platform and needs to be monitored.

By using the tool that Zarrella has created, we might have found a safe tool the check the history of similar content.  In the end this might save us a lot of time doing research, and having failed attempts.

Many clients and even some of our peers don’t really understand the space that is Digg.  This tool might help to explain some efforts that are used. And naturally… new tools are a lot of fun!

No, not really. I just spent ten minutes thinking up awful, topical titles so I chose to go with a completely unrelated one instead.

My first post as an SEO-Chicklet (or Guest Blogger, for those of you who like proper titles) and I’ve sat here for two commercials with my fingers on the keys, unsure of what to write. Since getting into SEO eighteen months ago, I’ve only ever written for one SEO site. It’s like I’m leaving my favourite bar for the first time and stepping into a new one. How to you talk to people here? Do they like the same jokes as you? At least I’ve started off my tenture as a Chick well: talking about booze. Hi, Lisa and Julie!

Just in case you missed Lisa’s introductory post, I’ll recap who I am and why I’m writing here: I’ve been working at SEOmoz in Seattle for the past year and a half. I’m from New Zealand, moving to the U.S. in 2002 in the typical style that my family tends to embrace: because it seemed like a good idea at the time. By the sheer grace of God and relatively good social skills, I landed a job at SEOmoz in September 2006 after enduring the most inventive and completely horrifying job interview process known to the Internet. My only previous experience with SEO was the complete delight I experienced as a college Junior (Third Year) when a classmate explained to me how the Googlebomb worked. I remember sitting in my apartment and thinking, “Christ, that’s awesome.”

In case you’re not interested in reading the very long article about how SEOmoz hires people for entry-level jobs, here’s a run down of how I came to be an SEO: the six finalists for my position had to write blog posts that were published on SEOmoz’s blog. Readers voted on which one was best, and they also commented on them. I knew enough about online communities to truthfully believe that I was going to be torn apart. I didn’t know how to blog. I knew how to write upper-level English, History, Political Science and Sociology papers. I knew words that only existed in Roget’s Thesaurus but I didn’t know how to talk to people, rather than write at them. The post I wrote is cringe-worthy. It isn’t badly written and its contents aren’t awful, but it’s the work of someone who knew she was in over her head. People who are now my friends commented on it and said much the same things that I’d say now if it had been written by somebody else.

Given that I knew next-to-nothing about SEO when I first took my seat in the offices, I am the typical one-company employee. I brought nothing with me and thus learned the SEOmoz way of doing things. Less kind individuals may say I drank the Kool-Aid. However, coming into the industry with no experience and figuring out everything while I worked has been a fantastic way to learn.

Obviously, I learned a lot very quickly about search. I distinctly remember the moment when I learned that underscores didn’t serve the same purpose as hyphens. I remember the first time I heard the term “duplicate content”, and I didn’t immediately realise that I’d hear it again every day for the rest of eternity. I learned how to write basic HTML in about two and a half minutes after finding out pretty quickly that it was easier than expecting Dreamweaver to do it for me. When you’re learning something that’s quite foreign to you, you go through phases of thinking that you’ve gained no knowledge at all. Then, out of nowhere, you realise that you have acquired more knowledge in three months than you did over four years at college.

Just over a year ago, I wrote a post titled The Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know and I’d like to update those ten bullet points now to include things I’ve learned about SEO and the Internet Marketing industry in the past thirteen months.

1. Most “penalties” are nothing of the sort. I hear a lot of questions about people’s sites experiencing “penalties” when their rankings have dropped two or three places. Most recently, the “-6 penalty” had webmasters up in arms. I was quite proud of my guess that it wasn’t a penalty, but an unexpected result of bigger changes.
2. The best defense is not a good offense. It’s knowing when to close the comment box and proverbially STFU.
3. Google is great at eliminating spam, unless your search term contains the word “lyrics.” I want to be the person who does SEO for abc123lyricsmp3sfreedownloads.com. They could spam mattcutts.com and not be penalised.
4. PageRank doesn’t really matter to you when yours drops. Pah! It’s not even accurate. How silly to get upset about such a ridiculous little piece of Google propaganda.
5. PageRank matters a lot to you when yours goes up. You knew those whitehat efforts would pay off at some point.
6. It’s a good thing when people spell your name incorrectly… if they’ve written something unflattering about you. Google doesn’t have a “did you mean?” for Copeland versus Copland
7. People whom you see on the Internet also exist in real life. Those of them who use weird screen names and odd avatars also expect that you’ll know exactly who they are when their human form bowls up to you and says, “Hi! I’m John!” when they should say, “Hi! I’m herbo_29 from the blog. My picture is a squirrel riding a German Shepherd.” Then you’ll not just stand there with that look of stupor and embarrassment on your face.
8. Nofollow has many purposes. Siloing. Editorial discretion. Comment protocol. Pure spite isn’t a great reason to nofollow something. Unless it’s a link to Wikipedia, and it’s not like they need it. Some social media sites don’t nofollow anything. It’s not spamming: they should just know better.
9. Each search engine is very very different, but when people ask your advice, use your consulting services or comment on your writing, they only talk about Google. I’ve seen instances where people really don’t care that they get next to no traffic from Yahoo! and only a small amount from Live. Learning more about how Yahoo! and Live work looks to be a great idea: you may well be one of a small number of people who really pays them the attention they deserve.
10. Jericho just came on the TV. I’ve been waiting for this series to come back for about a year so this list is one point short. Although Jericho is still kind of relevant to what we do: it was teh internetz that brought the series back! And the ads are telling me to “keyword search “Jericho” on my Sprint mobile phone”, just as a commercial last Friday advised that I should “look it up on Yahoo!” Cute.

Thanks for letting me join the SEO Chicks community, everyone. Until next time, enjoy those meta tags.

“Popularity is the one insult I have never suffered.” Oscar Wilde

My alternate title for this piece was “Page View Syndrome” but then I thought that sounded like something you’d catch by using the computer terminal at an Indonesian whorehouse. Oh, and that is the title of the article that prompted all this…

There’s a thought-provoking piece that PC Mag did that details the dangers involved in basing what we see on the web on popularity. In the case detailed in the article, the author likens our internet future to a Max Headroom-style situation (look it up you crazy youngsters) and discusses a writer being fired from a publication because his articles weren’t popular enough. This popularity contest is a seriously scary thing to consider and here’s why…

First of all, if you ever went to high school and you aren’t Mystery Guest, you may have suffered a bit. Popularity isn’t always pretty. Mystery Guest IS always pretty, however. ANYWAY, popular kids weren’t always popular because they were the ones who’d go on to save the children, end poverty, make clean water available to everyone, and become a lean-to in the forest. At the risk of this turning into a blog post about me crying and watching Pretty in Pink again (why didn’t Andy just want Duckie Dale?), I do think that we should all consider the dangers of anything that’s popular with the masses.

I’d like to say that yes, in some cases I think that mainstream popularity can be good. Ben and Jerry’s for example, is pretty popular and I have absolutely no issues with it other than that I feel weird paying 5 bucks for a milkshake that I’ll slurp down in 5 minutes. The same thing holds true for my beloved and much-maligned Starbucks. Many things are popular because they ARE as close to perfection as you can get, like Cherry Garcia. You just can’t fall into the trap of letting popular opinion constantly tell you how to think. Lots of people have STDs…you sure don’t want to go and contract one just to be a part of something do you?

It’s just as bad to like something for being liked by everyone as it is to hate something because it’s liked by everyone. However, you have to think of everything in the world that’s caused a stir, and how that benefits society. These people and things aren’t always popular but they’re sure as hell important. Caravaggio caught some flack for painting using corpses as models. J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye was banned. Trite examples, perhaps, but this isn’t the place for a lesson on all the people in the world who were once seen as being of no relevance, and who ended up being tremendously important. This is a lesson in not using a black and white measurement in order to determine what gets put out there for the public’s consumption, and unfortunately, popularity tends to be determined BY a black and white measurement.

The main issue here is that if popularity of page views, for example, ever becomes a standard for who publishes and what gets published, we’re in for serious trouble. You simply cannot gauge true importance by large numbers. If I may again draw an analogy to the arts, think of all the films and albums and paintings that were never popular but that enjoyed massive critical aclaim; online content is really not that much different.

Getting caught up in numbers for the simple fact that they are a discrete measurement may have made sense at one point, but it doesn’t today. It’s difficult to explain nuances, though, so while you may realize that there’s more to an SEO campaign than the number of new visitors in a month, it’s very tricky to explain this to a client, or your boss, without sounding like you’re simply trying to get out of something. It’s also easy to fall into the extreme of this, and justify poor numbers in one area by making a crazy interpretation of what another number means.

So without launching into a day’s worth of data interpretation and doubletalk for the people who care about your sites, how will you let them know what’s truly going on? Can you use ANY numbers to accurately reflect success or failure? If you think that you can, what are those numbers, and how can you justify their importance? It really isn’t very clearcut right now.

If anybody remembers the IMNY Charity Party last year, it was a great place to network.

It was also my very first networking event in the industry and it is also where I met a very friendly Brian Wallace, President of NowSourcing. He is the writer of the NowSourcing blog, which is the place to be if you are interested in learning more about Digg, Mixx, Twitter, etc.

Brian also founded a new blog that is making a lot of noise: Collective-Thoughts, the collective Social Media blog who’s contributors are impressive to say the least. Brian rounded up some of my most favorite SMM people on the net; Andy Beard, Glen Allsopp, Mark Laymon, Marty Weintraub, Rose Sylvia, Shana Albert (who I nominate to make a guest appearance on the SEO-Chicks blog), Tadeusz Szewczyk (onReact), Tim Nash, and then there is Brian’s cat who is quite popular on Twitter.

Brian is really on top of his Social Media game! I often catch him online at 2:00 AM, Sphinning, Digging, and other things that can easily turn into verbs. So I asked him to share some of his expertise with me!

1. You are very active in the blogosphere. How long have you been blogging? And when did you learn that blogging became crucial to your social media status?

I’ve been blogging off and on since 2001. Blogging is an inherent factor in social media success since social media needs content to thrive. Think about it: if you post once a week, that’s 52 pieces of content. It looked to me the blogging and social media would be a huge driver about a year ago.

2. Often we see many posts about falling victim to Social Media time consumption. How often do you spend on Social Media per day?

More than I’d like to admit some days. However, I try to lead a balanced schedule, and fit social media in when time will allow. Social media can really lead to burnout, so everyone should be careful of this.

3. Why is everyone so crazy about twitter? Can it be used as a Marketing tool, or is it just social noise?

People are crazy about Twitter since it has been gaining adoption with a larger audience. A tool is only as good as its adoption. So if you look at the rise in the number of users, average time spent per user, and the number of mashup applications being developed, things start to make sense.

Regarding the noise factor: if you find specific individuals to be too noisy for your tastes, you can simply just stop following them. Some users create a company Twitter account while others keep their more personal Tweets (gosh, personal Tweets should be an oxymoron) over on their own name. Businesses can and should leverage Twitter, but as always, try to understand the community before you potentially damage your brand.

4. Digg has been retiring top diggers left and right with no remorse. Some people say Digg is cleaning itself up to get ready to be sold…What do you predict for the future of Digg? And how will it reflect on its top Diggers?

I think a better word for “retiring” would be “banning” . Many top Diggers, banned or not, are getting a bit fed up with the state of Digg these days.

My prediction is for Digg to be sold within the year, and some of the top Diggers will bail from Digg and go out to other social sites. Mixx in particular has become a Banned Digger magnet. This isn’t to say that all influential Diggers will leave, but it will likely change the landscape.

5. You launched the Social Media Ninjas Contest not too long ago… Is it really all just a popularity contest?

Much of social media is a popularity contest. Seriously though, we are about to announce the final winners, so stay tuned!

6. Everyone tries to have the most recognizable avatar. It seems like it’s all been done before. If you had to create a new avatar for yourself today, how would it look?

I’m pretty fond of the big green N, and it is recognizable. Sometimes people put too much thought into their avatar and make it too detailed and complex. Nearly all sites keep your avatar at 120×120 or less, so think about sizing issues.

If I had to make a new avatar today, I’d be sure to make something creative, colorful, and memorable – and pass it out to a few friends for feedback.

7. Feed readers are as important as breakfast nowadays, skip it in the morning and your whole day is thrown off. It is sometimes hard to find good Social Media Bloggers who share really great tips, without reading the same thing over and over and wasting time. Can you recommend a few Social Media bloggers who have changed the way you do things?

Not particularly fond of RSS, as I prefer to really get the feel for the post and the community by visiting the site directly. That being said, it is difficult through all the noise and regurgitation to see which social media bloggers are truly worth watching. Folks that truly have a unique voice that have had my attention recently are: Lyndon, Copyblogger.com, CopyBrighter, Glen (viperchill.com), Tim, and Shana (socialdesire.com). They all talk about different things that hold my interest.
However, Kathy Sierra’s blog headrush.typepad.com is probably the best of anything like this, but unfortunately she may never be posting again.

8. What is your quick advice for anyone looking to improve their social media campaigns ?

Quick advice: Don’t be stupid. Many people dive head first thinking that if they just submit their own stuff, people will automatically love it. Guess again. Understand your community before submitting a thing. Observe, take notes, ask around.

I want to thank Brian for allowing me to interview him and learn from him. You can add him on all social networks as “nowsourcing”, and I advise that you do! Follow Brian’s advice and maybe you too could be a Social Media Superstar!

Editor’s Note: after reading this and having a friend comment that it didn’t flow, I’d like to say that the whole point I’m trying to make here is that you shouldn’t listen to all the people who tell you what not to do. I apologize in advance. This post kind of sucks but it IS my turn.

What are words for, when no one listens anymore? (Missing Persons reference. I’m sure you caught it.)

There’s a fairly inane little article in MarketingProfs about 100 words you shouldn’t use in an email subject line, although it’s not much more than a list without any explanation of why these words are so bad. I can’t be arsed to test whether or not certain subject lines will really get your email blocked though, even though I may write to Mythbusters to see what they can do. What’s the SEO angle on this? Obviously there are plenty of ways of getting around the rules, which we all know a lot about and that’s a good thing. So there you go…and here you go.

Obviously you know that there are certain words that you can’t use in Google Adwords, for example. For such a totalitarian group of fascists (and yes I really am using some hyperbole), they aren’t all that fond of superlatives. They’re also not fond of ads for gambling but I know plenty of people who’ve gotten around that, at least for a bit before they get caught, so here is why you should completely ignore yet another so-called rule: this is all a game to see who can last the longest.

Being somewhat argumentative, yet still a delicate flower, I tend to want to do whatever someone tells me not to do. Immediately, usually. It’s childish, I’ll admit, but the minute I am prohibited from doing something, I have an overwhelming urge to do it, especially if it involves cursing or drinking or spending money (what are commonly referred to as my three graces.) The web is chock full of blogs and sites telling you what not to do, and that’s all fine and lovely and beatific BUT it’s also geared towards the mainstream people who follow the rules without question.

I really do have a point here, I promise.

Following rules is definitely a good thing in many instances. If something is for the greater good, then I’ll do it if I can keep my dress on. There’s a fine line, though, and the fear-mongering that we see online is really wreaking havoc on the way that so many people conduct their online business. I understand the argument against cloaking, for example, but I still think it’s fine in many cases. And really, who’s been mutilated and left for dead by a cloaked page? You may have been misled but if being misled is the worst thing that ever happens to you, my congratulations. You’re an ass-ton luckier than anyone else.

So why do we have such an overwhelming amount of advice about how to stay orderly and look at the back of the neck of the person in front of you? Nothing good can come of that, I assure you. Just keep your minds open when you read this crap (and when you read the crap we write too.) I’d be in less of a mood if I were writing this and listening to something other than Sisters of Mercy but really, I get quite sick of constantly reading about all the things we shouldn’t do or say, especially when there is no explanation offered. I guess you can’t really argue when someone doesn’t give you an explanation…is that the point then? Do it. Follow the rules, don’t question them. Feck arse.

The good thing about this whole mess is that it does tend to make people get a bit more creative…black hats wouldn’t be nearly as cool if they weren’t subverting the dominant paradigm you know. I mean seriously, Esrun is only interesting to me because I know what he can do. OK that’s a joke…his deviance is fascinating too. You think John Lydon follows the rules? Yes I know he’s annoying. OH! Irrelevant but where else can I interject this? I’m off Adam Ant after seeing him cry in the video for “Wonderful.” What grown man cries in a video? I am so embarrassed, I can’t even link to it.

What is Blue and White and Read All Over?

What has more than 59 million users? Has 250,000 new members per day since January 2007? Has more than 14 million photos uploaded daily? Has More than 65 billion page views per month?

No…. Not Orkut.

The Answer is Facebook!

Whether you love it or hate it, if you are reading this blog, you are a Facebook member and you use it daily.

Every SEO Chick has a Facebook.

Here is how People were using Facebook in August 2007:

It was only a matter of time before every SEO, Link Bulider, and Internet Marketer in general saturated this amazing Social Networking site and took over. When the opportunity arrived over the summer to include applications and more recently Business/ Fan Pages there are more and more Facebook marketing campaigns popping up everyday.

Facebook made headlines many times this year. From when they sold a portion of advertising rights to Microsoft for a whopping $240 million, beating out Google’s bid. And then more recently Facebook has been battling their issues with the newer Beacon addition (Beacongate), which was heavily discussed in the blogosphere. Growing at such a rapid rate, I am sure that Facebook will definitely show up in the headlines for both negative and positive reasons more frequently.

Facebook has become an important tool for not only internet marketers, but all kinds of business. However, it is difficult for some (including me) to keep Facebook at work being ultimately work driven and not include social fun, but somewhere there is a thin line.

So if you are not using Facebook as part of your Social Media or Social Networking campaign, here is a list of blogs I find super helpful to keep yourself updated on whats new on Facebook:

1. Face Reviews - An awesome up to date Facebook news blog for marketers.
2. The Official Facebook Blog- Updated by Staff and Zuckerberg himself.
3. Inside Facebook- Tracking Facebook and it’s platform.
4. Facebooking101- Facebook Bloggers- Collects random posts about Facebook from all around the blogosphere.
5. All Facebook- The UNofficial Facebook Blog.

Facebook has definitely changed my work-flow (and my life) over the past 6 months and has improved Brand Management, Traffic spikes, link building, and it has opened up HUGE doors in my career through networking.

Questions:

1. Has Facebook changed your life more so than other Social sites, such as Myspace, Bebo, LinkedIn, etc?
2. How often do you use Facebook?
3. Do you include Facebook in your marketing campaigns?
4. Do you use Facebook Mobile or Faceberry ?
5. How has Facebook changed your work performance over the last year?

Another day, another stupidly funny blog post title. So I like to think…

“Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.” Logan Pearsall Smith

Since we’ve recently welcomed the highly talented Stephanie Weingart to our blog, I thought I’d tackle an issue that arose when she baited me, quite successfully, into an interview. It’s that horrible example of one of the Seven Deadly Sins…vanity. Well, vanity is the example of Pride, which is a…damn nation, you know what I mean here. This is a piece about vanity and I don’t mean the girl that Prince hung out with either. Oh, and it’s about SEO of course.

“We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don’t care for.” Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach

While I could indeed spend quite a lot of time relaying anecdotes of insane vanity in the SEO community, my purpose here is to talk about how to use it against others. That sounds a lot more sinister than I am intending BUT it’s still what I mean to say. And let’s please not have a semantic argument about vanity/pride/egotism/narcissism. When I say “vanity” I mean what you’re exhibiting when you become upset that someone may potentially think poorly of you in any way because you want the world to love you at all times, for all reasons. If you don’t have this trait, you’re not human.

“There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it.” Mark Twain

When Stephanie made her utterly brilliant move of intentional misinterpretation of my chimps post, she was completely outsmarting me. It’s kind of horrible that I was so easily led down that path but I’ll chalk that up to her amazing competence and not my overload of character flaws brought on by a beauty queen mother and having pink hair in a tiny Southern town full of rednecks. What Stephanie realized, at a much younger age and with much less experience than many of the SEOs that I know, is that the best way to get someone’s attention is to say something about the person that isn’t correct but IS correctable. No one can resist this. I certainly couldn’t.

“One of the troubles about vanity is that it grows with what it feeds on. The more you are talked about, the more you will wish to be talked about.” Bertrand Russell

Just the very idea that someone was possibly not getting my point made me really upset. Did I write the post poorly? Was this simply yet another instance in which no one thought I was funny when I was doubled-over with sobs and cackles while everyone looked on in abject horror? Was I a bad writer? A terrible person who runs down old ladies when they try to cross the street and I have to get to Target to buy some lip balm? I remember that day…I was visiting a friend in the hospital yet was consumed with wondering “where did I go wrong?” while his chest had been cracked open and his lunch wasn’t there at 2pm. OK that’s somewhat of a joke really…but it did get to me, and it definitely got my attention, and I had to get to the bottom of it. And now look. She’s a damn SEO Chick. Well done, I’d say. Quite well done.

“The only cure for vanity is laughter, and the only fault that is laughable is vanity.” Henri Bergson

I am definitely not suggesting that you spend tons of time trying to insult people whom you’d like to talk to, of course, unless the insults are really funny ones. I just think that vanity is an overlooked aspect of social marketing, and it’s a very clever way of getting through to someone. It’s this kind of thing that makes me truly love marketing…what’s next? Will someone get to me by capitalizaing on my gluttony? Maybe sending me an offer for a cheese dip of the month club in order to get me to talk about something? I damn well hope so. Let me know so I can give you my address.

    One night, from the only punk rock bar in Las Vegas, I gave a horribly long rant to RateItAll’s Lawrence Coburn. It was my take on the industry. It is hard to find those words again as that was a conversation at 2AM and my brain was competing with the Bouncing Souls. The rant went on and on about popularity, branding, reputation management, and so on. Ever since this conversation, I have been thinking about this concept of SEO and Internet Marketing being something I think must be taught and discussed. Ultimately, the industry lies within conversation and apprenticeship.

For my first article on the SEO-Chicks blog, I wanted to write about the importance of understanding this industry, but that has been done so many times, and I just can’t take another “What my dog can teach you about Social Media” post….No offense.

I suppose there should be some sort of prerequisite, especially to understand where I’m coming from in this post.

I decided that I needed to be in this stimulating industry when I recognized how much observation my band was getting from just our website, social media, and forums; not to mention fans, PR, and label interests. We built links, contacts, tours, sold merchandise, licensing deals, but we really weren’t famous or critically acclaimed (but in our heads we were!). However, we looked great online.

*FYI: the site no longer exists, the band dismembered= long story.

My silly little band acquired huge label attention just based on our social media sites. I then asked myself, what kind of ROI would a legitimate business with awesome products see?

I contacted as many people I knew in the industry, took jobs with websites; primarily selling products online- slowly making the switch to purely working online and getting to know the ins and outs of this amazing industry. Over the next few months I decided that I would try to encompass everything I learned, did and sell to the internet. Slowly but surely this strategy worked, (Of course this is a really long; but short story) and I developed great skills to work in online marketing, something that teaches me new tricks every day.

Having been to Pubcon, other social events, reading millions of blogs, and e-books, I have learned that in the industry the only way to learn the trade is to be an apprentice. So I latched on and learned, like other thousands of young SEO’s. Even in job listings, companies are looking for SEO Apprentices, because as we know, every SEO has their own style, so you would want to train your staff according to your own practices. As Sugarrae said at Pubcon, when she spoke about hiring staff; “You must be able to train them.”

Apprenticing, the “Original 4 Year Degree” is extremely important in the SEO industry; and sure, most people in the industry have learned the skill as an extension of web development, but will the practice die out just as it did for the chair makers in the Middle Ages?

Apprenticeship= A master craftsman entitled to employ people as an inexpensive form of labor in exchange for providing formal training in the craft. - Wikipedia.

Well, we are already seeing huge numbers of companies outsourcing SEO work to places like India, reading articles saying a career in SEO is a bad choice, and there are many new SEO, SMM, SEM and even Facebook classes in tons of Universities.

So will the practice of Apprenticeship live on in the world of SEO, or will it be replaced like it was in the golden days? I think that to be an SEO you must always be an apprentice. Learning the skill is never-ending… thus we have millions of SEO blogs.

Questions:

• If the practice is replaced by manufactured SEO’s, what will be better for the industry?
• Aside from this ancient practice of training, are their better ways to become seriously skilled in SEO?

The SEO Chicks have been neutered! Wait, that’s not right.

We’ve been tagged for a meme by none other than my fellow redheaded primate freak Rhea Drysdale. Our subject? 4 Ways To Improve This Blog. Short and sweet, just like Anita. It was hard to get the list down to just 4 ways but here you go…I do love a meme!

1. Get a damn SEO Chicks logo. We really are working on this, I assure you. A logo is a good thing to have. I don’t have any witty comments about a logo unfortunately. It’s nice on a t-shirt, business cards, and your header. Period. Chicks like us need a seriously high class logo to reflect our utmost dignity and grace and we just want to find the right one. (Cough)

2. Entice more users to comment. I’m not talking about the “hey you girls are cute!” comments either. Thanks for those though!! We’ve gone back and forth between allowing all readers to comment and allowing only registered users to comment. Regardless of what we do, we get the same people commenting. I’m not negating their importance certainly, and we all appreciate all of the regular readers who comment but I don’t think that we’re getting as much feedback as we’d like on many of our posts.

3. Make it easier for new users to find more good posts to read without having to really search for them. Michael Gray does a great job of this. A Top Posts section would be nice…it would also be nice if we simply listed other relevant posts that a user might like every time we write something.

4. Strip down to bra and panties and have an SEO Chicks tickle fight that’s photographed and proudly displayed online.

In the essence of memedom, I tag the following to write more about this subject…and hopefully some of them will provide us with more enlightening information than I have.

Evil Green Monkey (Lisa’s betrothed)
Danielle Winfield (who still owes me one from last time you little minx!)
Stephanie Weingart (one of my new best friends)
Matt Davies (who better be throwing in some musical references in his post)

Recently SEOmoz has had the pleasure of being caught in several bloggers’ scopes because of the controversy behind Rand’s Google Payola post. While much of the criticism was largely professional and constructive, some of it has been more personal and not constructive. Regardless of the type of criticism, it’s essential to react to it appropriately, especially when the Internet is essentially your workplace.

Before I delve further, let me be the first one to admit that I am a stubborn person (thanks, Kelley genes), and I’ve had my feathers ruffled a few times online. It can be difficult to respond to professionally to criticism, whether it’s constructive or a personal attack. In light of recent events, however, I’ve thought a lot about how to “temper your hubris,” as Rand often puts it, and handle the occasional negative or disagreeing remark thrown your way.

Let’s face it, a huge appeal of the Internet is its seductive anonymity (Rand had a recent Whiteboard Friday about a similar topic). You can say things to someone you wouldn’t dream of uttering in person because you’re hiding behind the warm, soft glow of your monitor. Keep this in mind when you get your feelings hurt and are furiously typing a scathing response—would you say what you’re about to type to that person face-to-face? If so, more power to ya because you’ve got quite the pair on you. If not, it might be a good idea to tone it down a bit and write a response you’d actually give in person. Lots of people avoid unnecessary conflict in person because it’s uncomfortable—keep that in mind when you’re addressing it online. Don’t exacerbate the matter or add fuel the fire if it’s unwarranted.

Someone (I forgot who, so if it was you then let me know and I can credit you) pointed me to this great writeup about how to handle criticism on the web. I recommend giving it a read. One sentence in particular stuck out to me: “The more viewers your work has, the more likely you’ll be to encounter a completely unreasonable opinion.” Indeed, the longer I’ve worked at SEOmoz, the more criticism and backlash I’ve seen directed at both me and the company. When we were the underdog we got a lot more polite encouragement. As SEOmoz became more visible and a rising authority in the industry, more and more people began to scrutinize and criticize our business decisions and blog posts. From a personal standpoint, it is pretty surprising to go from reading comments about how I’m a great addition to SEOmoz to hearing people scoff that I “don’t know anything about SEO.” But, I understand that the more visible you become, the more attention (both good and bad) you get (here is a nifty graph for you visual learners). What matters is how you react to the attention.

The important thing to remember is to not take criticism personally. Remember that constructive criticism, though it may hurt, is meant to help you, whether to be a better person, run a better business, implement a better business strategy, etc. Personal attacks are juvenile and are meant to hurt you, so don’t give those people the satisfaction of knowing they got to you and upset you. Don’t dismiss criticism, however—ignoring constructive criticism ensures you’ll make the same mistakes over and over again and run the risk of alienating those who are trying to help you, while you can take negative criticism and decide to avoid or not to do business with the offenders.

In my opinion, if you have any sort of visibility online and are sensitive to everything negative you read about you, you won’t last long in that role. Though it may sting, if you’re looking to have a positive brand and be successful on the Internet, it’s a good idea to remember when to swallow your pride and thicken up your skin.