Yes, there are some things that even I won’t do. Unfortunately, I have lowered myself to using Meatloaf (the singer, not the food product) as inspiration so I’ll have to check that one off the list…Joe Strummer is turning over in his grave.

In my line of work (link building), there are times when clients ask me to do some vaguely shifty things, as I’ve mentioned before. (Let me insert the disclaimer here of how I actually do warn the client about potential issues, before any of you start yelling at me about how I’m a moneygrubbing, unethical blight on the industry.) However, there honestly are some things that, when asked, even I will not do…the actuals aren’t important right now, but it’s interesting that there is still honor amongst thieves, so to speak.

*There are also times when we come up with something a bit dodgy on our own so I don’t want to try and blame the clients for all the shadiness that goes on.

As an admitted proponent of blackhat techniques at times (at times, for god’s sake), what exactly ARE my limits? I can’t even define them for myself always, but I do know that when something comes up and it makes me horribly uncomfortable, I simply won’t do it. However, obviously what makes me cringe might be fine for you, and vice versa (although the former is probably not as likely since I’m intensely immoral, so it seems.)

So really, what won’t I do? There are four things that are relevant, if I exclude the following three that are highly irrelevant (mathletic moment-note that they add up to lucky 7!):

1.Transport Dracula at night.
2.Eat a caramel apple along with a coconut, fennel, and mayonnaise sandwich.
3.Combine items 1 and 2.

1. Tattling
Turning competitors into Google for any reason is not something that I will do, since it would be hypocritical as hell for me to cast THAT stone. Yes, it would make my job easier to remove the guy ahead of me, but I would feel like I’d just kicked a one-legged kitten named Peg if I did that and I’d make Google’s job easier, something I am unwilling to do since they don’t pay me. Yahoo’s another story though. OK that’s a joke.

2. Stealing
I won’t tell my smallest client to give me more money even though I could probably get it. I don’t deserve it, as I think that I have a fair deal with him and I am abiding by the price that I gave him years ago, but the fact remains that he trusts me, and were I to tell him that I needed more, he’d probably do it. So think about that…if you’re sitting there judging me for saying that cloaking’s OK, for example, but you charge someone $5000 per month and you work all of 1 hour for him REALLY, who’s the bad seed now? Put that in your pipe and smoke it. I also don’t talk any client into spending more money than he or she can actually afford just so I can buy a new pair of boots. If they don’t need to spend more money, you won’t see me telling them that they do just so I can make an even bigger profit.

3. Lying
I once worked for an agency where we hid behind reporting for a long time because we simply could not properly service all of our clients. We sent out lovely and well-formatted bits of data that we’d grabbed from places where the clients weren’t overly likely to be lurking unless they happened to be a bit odd, while we basically did fuck all of value for the month. I will, however, still lie to my mother about many, many things.

4. Attacking
I will do a serious amount of trash talking about someone in person, but not in print. I’m not at all proud of the cursing that burst forth from my filthy sailor’s mouth a few days ago, in the office with my poor impressionable young link builders who have never heard such foul language or descriptions of what I wanted to do to a certain unnamed individual with my set of keys and a roll of duct tape, but I won’t do it on a blog post, I won’t do it on Twitter, and I won’t do it on Facebook. That reminds me, I really do need to apologize to the poor little cupcakes. I of course know that it’s very poor form to personally trash someone, verbally or not. I’m not going to stop, naturally, since it brings me great pleasure and I like cursing, but I’m not going to do it in any sort of medium that can be stored in a database and later brought up by someone else. That would be foolhardy.

So what won’t YOU do? Do you even know? It’s something to consider, especially if you’re one of those types who enjoys telling other people how horribly unethical they are. (If you’re that type, you were probably the girl freshman year who told me I was going to hell for listening to Sisters of Mercy, while you were banging the geometry teacher in his office after school. By the way if you’re that girl and you read this, stop freaking asking my mother how I’m doing like you give a damn you tramp. See? No names mentioned in writing!)

A few weeks back, I spoke at a small conference in Las Vegas for the Forex market called the Forex Affiliate Conference, which is run by the guys from the Casino Affiliate Conference. It was the smallest conference I ever spoke at (about 20 people) but it ended up being one of the most productive. I made some really great connections and was able to target my presentation to what information would be most useful for the attendees. From speaking there, I came up with some conference tips that are appropriate for any upcoming event you may be attending.

Lucky 7 Conference Tips

1. Reserve judgment for the end. Just because a conference has 5,000 attendees doesn’t mean that you will get anything out of it.  A conference is about who you meet and what you learn and if it is too crowded and overwhelming for you to meet anyone or learn anything, than it was probably a waste of money. On the other hand, just because there are only 20 people there, doesn’t that these aren’t the right 20 people and best leads you can find.

2. Network regardless of your mood. Just because the conference isn’t exactly what you expected is not an excuse to sit in your hotel room or bail on your presentation. Talk to other attendees or presenters, don’t be shy just strike up a conversation over a beer.

3. If nothing is planned, plan it yourself. If there are not parties, dinners or events planned for that night, get everyone together and plan and time and meeting location yourself. DK planned the Pubcon Poker Tournament, the least you can do is plan dinner.

4. If you are presenting, gear your presentation to your audience. A smaller conference gives you the benefit of meeting everyone and asking them what they want to learn. It also leads to more audience participation. If you are in the audience, ask questions and participate.

5. There is always something you can learn, so sit in on a couple of sessions. No one knows everything, so sitting in on a couple of sessions can be really beneficial.  I don’t do a lot of affiliate marketing, so the nuggets of information that I gathered will definitely be helpful for my own sites.

6. Don’t tell people overly specific information. Just because someone asks you a direct question face to face about one of your clients site doesn’t mean you have to tell them your clients best keyword/conversion tactic/seo tactic etc.

7. Don’t stick to just hanging out with people you know. I am sure your coworkers are great people, but this is your chance to broaden your horizons and meet new people.  Go up to someone you don’t know and just start a conversation. The vast majority of the time, people at your conference will be very friendly and responsive.

For anyone who hasn’t heard via Twitter, Sphinn, or Facebook, the charity event of the year is going be held at SES San Jose on Monday August 18^th.

For a $40 donation to charity, you will get 4 hours of open bar with some of your favorite online marketers like Neil Patel, Michael Gray, Jim Boykin, Chris Winfield, me Lauren Vaccarello and Pat Sexton. The pre-registration for this event has already drawn a lot of attention, but there is still time register. Thanks to Surehits, Webuildpages, BOTW, and ACS SEO all proceeds for the event will go to either the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society or the Children’s Hospital.

Details:

Where: Agenda Lounge – 399 S.1^st street, San Jose, CA USA

When: 8pm-12am PST on Monday August 18,2008

Why: Because the only thing better than drinking on a Monday night, is having it be a tax write-off too

The call came late into the evening. One of my clients who I had been involved with from almost the time I started was frantic on the other end of the phone.
He sounded stressed as he breathed “I need you right now. It’s urgent - please - I need you to come right away!”

“Can’t we do this over the phone,” I asked “it’s late and I’m across town at the moment in no fit state to be seen.”

“No no no - I need you here. Please - you know I never call like this unless it’s urgent.”

That’s true - of all my clients he’s always been the one who was most considerate. Most people think that because you’re doing it for money they can order you to do anything at anytime of the day or night but it doesn’t work that way. I do this because I enjoy it. Well, maybe not all of it, but most of it.

“OK,” I acquiesce “I’ll get ready for you and be over as quickly as I can.” I know where he’ll want me to show up and it isn’t that far for me.

“Oh thank you so much! I’ll pay you double for this!” he almost seems in tears on the other end of the phone.

I grimace, still not used to that kind of talk. “Usual place I assume.”

“Of course” I hear him smile down the phone slightly and ring off.

Luckily, I know that occasionally I’ll have to go out quickly with little notice so I have a box of tricks I can grab quickly and easy to don outfits suitable for visiting a client in. In this industry clients do expect a certain style of dress no matter how little lead time they give you.

My ‘box of tricks’, which is actually a bag, contains everything I’ve found most clients require on a visit. Some items are never used, some are often required. Quickly washing and jumping in to something I know the client will appreciate, I head out to hail a taxi on the street.

I find that it’s always best to call the client in these situations so they don’t wind themselves up too much “Hi… I’m on my way now. I should be with you shortly”

“Oh thank goodness. I can’t wait - please hurry” he moans. Sometimes I wonder about my clients mental state but this one I know. I can imagine him right now and what he’s doing waiting for me. I’m fairly sure alcohol will be involved and I know other things will already be going on. In fact, I’m sure he’s started without me knowing him.

Pulling up outside the place I look up. One of the swankiest places around, it always takes my breath away. I walk in past the man at the front desk who looks me up and down disapprovingly as I go to the elevators. It’s very late and few people are up and about right now.

Arriving at the 5th floor, one of the doors is slightly ajar and going towards it, I can see inside a flickering light. He has started without me and I know something of the mess I’ll find. Straightening up my outfit, I knock on the door.

“George? George are you in there?” I raise my voice slightly as I poke my head in through the door.

“Yes, back here” I hear him call along with a slight rustling of fabric. He has started without me.

I walk through the front area and come across him on all fours under a desk. Biting my tongue against my immediate reaction of a snide remark, I clear my throat and he bangs his head in an attempt to crawl out quickly.

As he emerges, I see a tangle of wires and a few hard drives hanging by wires and nothing else. “Everything crashed and the mail server is down. I just need you to recover that for me now and I can get everything else done overnight.” Which is easy really but for some reason it seems difficult.

Taking less than two hours, the mail server was back up and in less than six the whole system was repaired.

—

For the post number 555 I thought I’d get all nostalgic about technical support days gone by.  Sometimes nothing happened when I covered 24h support, sometimes I never got a moment’s paid sleep and sometimes I helped a customer find a problem so obscure for which they were so thankful I got chocolate

Gareth Davies just forwarded me this fun list of 21 Signs a Girl Geek Likes you

These were my favourites *giggle*

You know a girl geek is in to you if….

“She stops blogging in front of the TV and talks to you.”
“She invites you to “301 back to my place” after a night out.”
“She always tags you for memes.”

Maybe we should do a seperate one for SEO girl geeks

In case you aren’t married to a man who constantly refers to you as a Luddite, let me first explain what a Luddite is, all without going into any sort of intricate detail: it’s someone who doesn’t much care for things that make our lives easier, a person opposed to technological progress. That’s me, many times. It took me years to accept the mp3 format, I still don’t like to use remote controls, I never go through a drive-through, and my attempts to use the self-timer on my camera end up leading to shots of my backside as I walk away in order to get into position. It’s not that I hate these things really, it’s that I just don’t fucking care about them. Yes, they make things simpler, but I can’t be arsed usually.

This also applies to how I do SEO, in many instances. You know all of the blog posts where people talk about their favorite Firefox add-ons, or link building tools that they can’t live without? Have you ever seen my name on one of those? Hell no. I don’t use the Adwords API because I’d rather manually make changes, even though it takes me forever and the system crashes half the time on me. I don’t think that I have ever used any sort of coding software that writes even a fraction of the code for me, and I usually come up with new keywords based on nothing more than looking at a site and talking to a client (unless I’m instructed otherwise). So far it’s working out quite well…

I in NO way mean to say that using these types of tools is a bad thing; it’s just not as necessary as it might seem if you only took the sheer amount of online space devoted to SEO helpers into account. If you’re running a giant amount of PPC campaigns, you’d probably be quite stupid not to figure out some way to make things easier, obviously. The same holds true for link building…when you’re working on a massive link building campaign, it might really be nice to not spend all your time manually checking for contact information on each site. However, for a lot of us, the reliance upon things like this could mean that we’re becoming SEO tool operators, not SEO innovators.

Many times when you see a huge push in technology, you soon see the backlash. Can we thus expect to see a return to the old way of doing things, without a plethora of SEO tools that can do all of the grunt work for us? Admittedly, even WITH using these tools, there’s still a ton of grunt work involved in SEO, unless you’re lucky enough to have a masochistic underling who enjoys being whipped. Sadly, I don’t, as the advertisement for that position has not yet been publicly posted. Naturally I’ll be handwriting it and physically delivering it to all of the local papers for publishing…ok I’m off to churn butter and sing gospel songs now.

My friend Gene just pointed me to a very amusing (perhaps unintentionally so) piece on the push to change the perspective of typical IT workers away from unsociable geeks to vibrant and hot women. OK the author didn’t really put it like that…but still, you get the idea. The IT industry is apparently suffering from nerdy and unsociable man overkill (so is the comic book shop across the street) and is doing its best to show the employable public that IT jobs can indeed be sexy.

So how can we band together and ensure that the SEO industry becomes as saturated with hot babes as the heavy metal industry is saturated with hairy, ugly men who need not wear leather chaps on stage? I have 5 ideas…

1. Don’t simply place your job opening in the standard professional areas; print out some hot pink flyers and tack them up in the girls’ loo at all the local “see and be seen” bars, especially ones that are famous for serving cute little fruit martinis. This is a good way to get some seriously hot chicks into your office, and even if the interview goes as poorly as you know it will, hey, at least there’s a babe giving you the time of day for once.

2. Instead of those bulky and unflattering conference tshirts (but not the BOTW ones! those rule) that some of us (Jay) are particularly fond of wearing, let’s give away makeup kits. I mean really, if you’re a hot woman and you have to sit through a lecture about how to get started on Facebook, at least make use of the time and keep the permagrin looking nice. You’ll need to look good afterwards, too, when all the dorks come up to you and start talking to you about meta tags and you can’t let them see you sweat simply because you have no idea what a meta tag is. Thongs with your company’s name emblazoned upon them are a good second choice. Hot women love this kind of shit.

3. Alter your benefits package. Don’t want to give a hot female employee more than 10 days off per year? Well who can blame you? Office morale would deteriorate. Instead, how about adding something like “the chance to star in SEO Girls Gone Wild videos” to the employee handbook? What hot chick will turn THAT down? If these videos sell well, you may even be able to cut out dental insurance (just don’t make the mistake of discontinuing coverage for breast augmentations and lip injections). Hot women age, you know, and they droop. Invest in their future.

4. Promote a universal loosening up of office dress codes. Sure, we have casual Fridays, but that simply isn’t enough these days. What about Mammary Gland Mondays, Tramp Stamp Tuesdays, Whale Tail Wednesdays, Thong Thursdays, and Freedom Fridays? Give a hot woman the chance to express herself through fashion, and you’ve earned her respect. Why should push up bras and tacky fuschia patent leather heels be confined to weekend wear?

5. Rebrand SEO as SEXO. This automatically titillates. I can barely type that without laughing. No one knows what the fuck SEO stands for anyway, so adding the X isn’t going to hurt a bit. Plus, it makes hot women seem hotter, because they’re being PAID to do something that conjures up something they can do even if they could honestly be outwitted by a bagged salad.

I’d love to be indignant about all of this, as it’s been awhile since I’ve actually truly been indignant about something other than the fennel stew I was reduced to eating in Durham because they couldn’t be arsed to save any damn carrots. However, I really can’t be, because the more women who take a job in IT because they think the field is sexy, the smarter I’m going to look. Pretty soon, if we’re overrun with women who are in the field because it gets them dates, I’ll be able to royally screw up and still look like a nuclear physicist. I’m all for it!

And here’s the fun disclaimer, since some people don’t really “get” irony: this isn’t a serious piece. Well, the part about the comic book store being overrun with nerdy men IS serious but most of the other stuff, not so much. So don’t send me any freaking hate mail, or tell me how hot women have brains too. Look who I’m freaking blogging with. I know hot women have brains, so save it.

A couple of weeks ago I read a post about “Why the SEO World is like High School” and it really made me giggle. The SEO Chicks are the Cheerleaders of the SEO World, ha ha! Now, after chuckling for a while at this post I started thinking “Hey I wonder what all the other SEO Chicks and Chicklets were like at High School?” and whether that could make a good “just for fun” post. I sent an email to all the chicks and chicklets and asked them to send me a photo and a blurb. AND OH MY GOOGLE was it funny. We are probably the most Unlikely bunch of cheerleaders! Don’t get me wrong, we don’t mind being called cheerleaders in your post Ken. Quite flattering really, especially when you see the evidence below of what we were like at high school. Can you guess who’s who? Some are quite obvious

“The Goth Rebel Geek”

In my four years of hell, aka high school, I was in the Math Honor Society and was the editor of the school literary magazine. I also wrote “Julie is God” on all the desks that I sat in, skipped school in order to steal my old grandmother’s car and drive to the next town over since they had more skateboarders to watch, read Lolita under cover of a hymnal in church, and went through a LOT of eyeliner. The only thing I ever cheered for was the newest Cure album.

“The Last Amazon Geek”

I wasn’t really a part of a group at high school, but always stood up for whoever was picked on and always got into fist-fights to defend others. I was nicknamed “The Last Amazon” as I had… ehm…a slight short fuse and plenty of attitude. When I wasn’t busy beating someone up I spent my time trying to make people laugh. I wasn’t popular with other kids OR the teachers. I did come second place for prom queen though, but not because I was pretty; My mum insisted that wearing hot- pants and fishnet tights would be totally cool on prom night. I looked like a hooker!

“The Actual Cheerleader Geek”

My family loves sports so I was groomed from the start to be a cheerleader. I was a cheerleader from 2nd through 8th grades, and then chose to simply be a “booster” (pep squad) during high school. By the time I’d hit my high school years, I was already too geeky to be a cheerleader. I didn’t necessarily “look” geeky (I don’t think), but I hung out with the geek crowd, which was not conducive to making the cheerleading squad.

“The Eclectic Geek”

I defined myself as ecclectic by listening to heavey metal, working at archaeological sites, hanging out at museums and wearing crystals. I cruised through school, bored with everything except the computer lab where I spent much of my free time. I learned how to make friends & date online in the mid 80’s. Martial arts and spirituality filled my teenage years with meaning and shape. I spent time in Israel at bording school where I learned how to field-strip and fire an M16. I always thought I’d be a lawyer and work with my dad. Never did I ever think I’d move to the UK and get married.

“The Rock Chick Geek”

In high school I played Varsity Softball and rock music. I didn’t usually go to many classes but ended up graduating with honors. I considered myself a rebel and a bad girl. I hated jewelery and fashion but loved chains and the color black. Never in my wild dreams did I expect to be working for a Top 20 Interactive Media Agency.

“The Mermaid Geek”

From the age of 11 to 22, I spent nearly thirty hours a week under water, so I don’t remember all that much about high school apart from how much I disliked the uniform. The first two years of high school were the best because I wasn’t swimming all that much and I had more time to hang around the Wellington train station and flirt with Wellington College boys. After that, everything gets a bit chlorinated.

“The Fitness Geek”

“Not so unlikely cheerleader actually… I started our first cheerleading team in High School back in South Africa. Me and my friend Luiza actually held auditions for team members and had proper pom-poms - aaahhh the good ole’ days…I’ve always been a bit different and a lot crazy. I love dancing, but was unfortunate enough to graduate in a time when academic achievements were the priority. So I never pursued this passion. Instead I spent a lot of time cruising between my other two passions - marketing and fitness. Never in my wildest dreams would I have not gone for something I believed in. I’d rather try and fail (as many times as it takes) than never to try at all - not shy and retiring, me…”

“The Punk Geek”

I was the last person you would have thought was a cheerleader when I was a teenager. I wore a lot of black (okay some things never change) read all the time and went to a lot of punk shows. By the time this picture was taken I was more nerd than hellion.

“The A-Student Geek”

In high school I played softball and basketball for a couple of years, was generally a straight-A student (unless I got lazy, in which case a few sold B’s streamed in every now and then), and wasn’t uber-popular but well-known enough to have friends in most every social group or clique. My junior year of high school I got suspended for making a web site (on Geocities!) that complained about my school and a couple of teachers that I had. Since I was a good student, however, I was able to make up all of the assignments I missed during my suspension, so I guess you could interpret it as I got 5 days off from school. When I returned, I found out that a lot of classmates had rallied around me in support of Free Speech. That whole sequence of events landed me the honorable title of “Most Likely To Take Over The World” my senior year of high school.
—————————————————————————————————
Laughed enough at the ridiculous outfits and hairstyles? Actually some of these photos looks relatively “normal”, ehm except from me and Julie of course (the words yodeling and crack springs to mind??!).

Now, I thought it would be quite fun to make a little meme out of this, a “High School Meme” (I’m so original), so that we can laugh at some photos of YOU when you were a teenager. So I’m going to tag 5 people and challenge/dare you to post a photo and a description of what you were like in High School (and then tag another 5 people etc):

Jon Myers
Ciaran Norris
Mel Carson
Dave Davis
Nic & Cher

EDIT: Just had a second thought, we REALLY should tag Ken that started this whole High School thing. Ok I know I said tag 5, but since we are starting the meme, we can bend the rules. So KEN YOU’RE IT!

No - this isn’t such a weird question, and NO I didn’t allude to anyone’s bowel movements either…

I did however, say NUMBER 1!

If you still have to wonder “But what does she mean?“, then you’ve just answered my question silently.

The truth is that most people in business - their own or someone else’s - hardly ever take time for themselves, or time off. As women in business, we are jointly even more guilty of forgetting the ‘Golden Rule’.

The result? An ever more stressed out society and and a depleted spirit.

The statistics about the damage stress can do are many and all-encompassing, so I won’t launch into that part of the topic. But what I ask of you is to sit and think just for a sec…

When was the last time you truly took a break?

I’ve touched on this topic before, so here I will take an unexpected turn! And ask you - when was the last time you truly knew who and what you want out of life?

Consider this;

The most important lesson you learn in business, or a project for that matter, is that you have to have a clear and specific goal - a measurable milestone/benchmark, etc. Fail to set that and you will almost certainly fail the task…

So how come so many of us, apply this to our business, and not our personal lives?

How come, most people take 40 to 50 years of their life (and some take a lifetime) to come to the conclusion that they are THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN THEIR OWN LIVES? And then to set clear goals of what they want out of them? And then set about to achieve it as if someone was going to hold them accountable?

Why do so many people still put “what people think” of them before what they, themselves feel and would like to do?

How come, so many people take charge in their business tasks, and yet fail to stand up for their personal lives?

So what’s the point of this post?

Well, I want to give you a “wake up call”, a kick in the privates if you want - your private thoughts that is…

Start being selfish! There’s nothing wrong with that if done in the right way.
Try this on for an experiment, and you WILL see the freedom it will give you.

Sit down and think of one are of your life that you would like to get a resolve. Then put time aside and tackle this as if it was a business task/project that your boss gave you - or if you’re self employed - that you need to complete so your business can survive.

See the quality of results you get…

Have fun :o)

My name is Julie, and I have a bad client.

OK seriously, HE isn’t a bad client…he just has the misfortune of being bound by some amazing constraints that are coming from all over his company, factors that prevent me from doing, well, my usual SEO tomfoolery. Here’s the list of services that I’m allowed to perform:

1. Meta tag writing. This brings such joy to my life, you simply cannot imagine. I get to flesh out titles, meta keywords, and meta descriptions. I’m living the dream.

2. PPC ads. Small budget, mostly just brand keywords in quotes…see item 1’s “living the dream” which is also applicable here.

3. Witty repartee with client whenever he wants it, usually on IM and Facebook, occasionally on the phone or in person.

Why do I bother? And don’t be sitting there thinking, a la Basil Fawlty, “didn’t know you did…” please. Because working with this client, whom I’ll call Martin (after the two coolest Martins ever, Martin Fry and Martin Amis), I’ve had to let my ego evaporate. I am not at all in control. That’s actually an amazingly freeing sensation in my day to day working life. I’m there for Martin, providing recommendations on everything from how to handle upcoming site redesigns to whether or not a keyword is worth $5 a click, and sometimes he agrees with me, and sometimes he does but his boss doesn’t, but in the end, I am forced to work with what he gives me, with no gifts involved other than my Christmas tower of chocolate and my birthday cookies.

When I’ve discussed this client with other SEOs, some of them have questioned why I took him on and continue to work with him. It’s actually very simple: I learn an amazing amount about how to effectively do my job when I’m forced to rely on very, very simple things. I’m not able to throw a ton of money around and Martin isn’t funding any conference trips to Las Vegas and Seattle. He expects me to know my boundaries, and to keep him informed about anything that could potentially cause his site to fall in the rankings. That’s not really a lot of pressure is it?

Here’s the real point: if you can’t do SEO well enough to let things go and lose your desire to call all the shots, all the time, you must not be as good an SEO as you think you are. There’s a great deal of ego in this field, as you may have witnessed from time to time. Not every “deserving” SEO client will let you dictate his or her directory structure or agree to invest in your link building program, and if you can’t work with that, you should step back and take a look at why it is that you have to have everything your way. Is it ego? Or is it simple inability to perform without someone doing every little thing that you say?

When your main form of optimization is writing good meta tags, you have to be very, very good at writing meta tags. When your client wants to pay you to be there whenever he has questions, and he has some amazingly good SEO questions at some fairly inconvenient times, then you have to stay informed on everything that’s going on in the industry and be ready to provide your recommendations, knowing that they probably won’t be followed, for whatever reason. You have to stop dictating what pages are named, what long-tailed keywords are good for PPC, and a better way to word the main message on the index page. That’s actually not very easy when you’re used to being the golden child of marketing, having clients throwing money at you to do whatever it takes to get them to the top. It’s very humbling, though, and it’s potentially key to not becoming a pompous asshole as fast as you might otherwise.

When you know that your efforts are most likely fruitless, when you realize that you’re going to spend three hours gathering data on pay per click keywords only to have a marketing department decide not to even bother, you really learn patience. It’s kind of a Zen thing actually, just letting go and existing. And let’s not forget that you’re still in service to this client, as you’re still responsible for ensuring that things go as well as possible, with certain parameters in place. That’s actually quite a bit more difficult at times, because nothing’s easy. However, if you get too comfortable with being the one making the rules, you don’t quite learn how to follow them and let someone else lead. Most good leaders are also seriously good followers, if I may throw in a very trite turn of phrase. Try it, if you can find a Martin, only think of him as a challenging client, not a bad one. You may be quite surprised at how it changes your entire mindset for the better