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.

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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.

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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.
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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!

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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)

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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

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Recently, the Catholic church decided to update the 7 deadly sins with a new set to reflect it’s new socially conscious agenda.  Sweeping away the obvious historical issues we could raise here, I thought it would be fun to look at what these might be in SEO/M

These are meant in fun only.  LAUGH AT THEM - do not take them seriously

Gluttony
Based firmly in the realm of food, gluttony can be seen in the SEO community among those who consume too much chocolate – errrr… food.  Gluttony, unlike greed, specifically relates to the consumption of food.  In SEO Terms, it can be seen in the constant desire and obsession over keywords.  Wanting more constantly, this SEO scrapes content, reworks it and tries to have a page dedicated to every term imaginable, no matter how odd or obscure.  Wondering what that page ranking for asdfg is?  A desire to rank for anything and everything – a glutton for keywords.  Since gluttony is really about obsession over food, I thought I’d pop in here a fun site about SEO Foods 

Lust
Dante’s asserted that this was defined as the “excessive love of others”.  I think this could be typified as the type of SEO that chases after other rankings constantly trying to beat them.  Lusting after keywords that have nothing to do with their website, this SEO chases every keyword that catches their eye.  This SEO also chases after people at conferences and online, constantly trying to chat with them.  This ‘lustful’ individual then tries to friend and follow them on every system they can, comments excessively on their blog and if spurned, starts their own blog about how awful the previous object of their lust was.  This may also manifest as extreme excessive assertion of love/lust/desire for the target in public and online, resulting in making them look phenomenally pathetic.

Avarice
One of the worst of the SEO sins, this type of behaviour will get you thrown out of the community.  Relating to behaviours like disloyalty, deliberate betrayal, or theft, especially by means of trickery, or manipulation, I’m sure many SEOs can think of numerous examples of this type of sin.  The SEO who scrapes/steals content to run their affiliate sites, deliberately betraying confidences and secret techniques to try and achieve material/personal gain.  This SEO is driven by nothing other than personal profit and is willing to hack a site and change affiliate links and add hidden links.  This SEO is the worst of the bunch, betraying the code of SEO Fight Club.

Sloth
I’m sure by now you can picture this SEO – sitting at a computer, head in hand, clicking away on things sooooo sloooooowly.  More traditionally, sloth actually represented the failure to utilize one’s talents so it would be having the talent and ability to do really stunning SEO but failing to work beyond what is required.  Sloth is a sin of laziness or indifference; chasing the SEO easy wins and none of the more finesse SEO.  It manifests as an unwillingness to act in the face of falling rankings.  Perhaps it could be an unwillingness to care as hackers infiltrate your client site.  This SEO is going to only ever pick the low hanging fruit.  They may make SEO sound much harder and less possible for the client to achieve.  They extend the length of time to achieve changes and then results, charging excessively high fees for little, if any, work.

Wrath
Interestingly, wrath just happens to be the only sin not really associated wholly with the self.  Wrath could lead out of envy, lust, avarice or even pride.  It is the desire to do evil on others for a perceived transgression against the self or others – including society.  In the SEO, this could easily be a malicious link-buying campaign or Google bombing.  It is hacking a site to place a competitors hidden links on page to try and get them removed from the SERPs.  The SEO actively ignores the truth and aggressively targets the site they have chosen.  This may also result with fist fights at conferences or assertions of a negative sort made over multiple blog posts and other public forums in order to harm the target/victim.

Envy
I think most SEOs who do not have top rankings for their chosen keywords have occasionally fallen victim to this.  In fact, I’m sure the day someone else ranks for “SEO chocolate” I will be filled with envy (though not to the extent it is a sin).  I think I may be envious of those chosen as sexy female SEOs considering my new pole dancing abilities :)  However, as opposed to simply being a desire for what you do not have, envy is the desire to deprive others of their good fortune/pleasure/etc or to delight in the misfortune of others.  In the SEO world, this could be the perverse pleasure at seeing a competitors’ rankings fall for a highly desirable keyword.  It could also be withholding information about bad SEO practice from them which causes their sites harm.  Mind, it depends if the person deserves it whether it qualifies as envy or a service to the community.

Pride
Given the immediate drop in rankings experienced by more than one prideful boasting SEO, this is one of the most deadly of the sins.  It is also possibly the one sin SEOs strive to avoid as much as possible in order to avoid invoking ‘envy’ and the possible ‘wrath’ – especially by Google.  Pride is taking excessive pleasure in your top 10 ranking for a certain call to purchase a certain pharmaceutical and boasting about it or mocking Google for being unable to detect your undetectable linking network.  This most deadly of SEO sins can result in lost rankings and possible partial or total loss of income.  Of all the SEO sins, this one has the potential to cause the most damage.

Of course, this has been a humorous look at the seven deadly SEO sins and should be taken as such.  It was written with a light heart, free of envy, pride, lust, wrath or avarice.  There was no gluttonous chocolate-munching and no sloth (giant ground or other kinds).  I hope you have enjoyed it in the spirit of a good giggle as it was intended. 

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Well, not entirely. IAC has announced that Ask is going to move in a different, but familiar direction.

Step 1:
Lay off 40 employees (8%) of Ask staff

Step 2:
Gear your engine to marred women above 30 living in the Midwestern and Southern US

Step 3:
Bring back the question format – but have it only answer questions about recipes, hobbies, crafting and your kids

Step 4:
Remove Jeeves from carbonite

Step 5:
PROFIT!!!!! . . . . or cease to exist

Maybe they’ll have Jeeves wear a sock puppet next

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Ah, another meme, that lovely bit of viral marketing that gets you up off your arse and forces you to write!

I was tagged by Chris Hambly, social media god…if you’ve not yet read his blog, do so. Not only will you get useful industry information, you’ll also get some nice commentary on the state of affairs in England. My topic is 8 Random Things About Me, which is truly perfect since I am nothing if not random.

1. I am deathly afraid of alligators, crocodiles, and sharks, even though I never go anywhere near them unless they’re properly put up away from me. They scare me so badly that I have nightmares about them maybe once a week. If I ever fall into the middle of the ocean or a swamp in Louisiana, I’ll die of shock before anything eats me luckily. If I lived in Florida, I wouldn’t even have a pet door in case some 8 feet long alligator would come in and I’d get up in the middle of the night and step over it, not wearing my glasses, thinking it was one of my dogs.

2. I would never transport Dracula at night or eat candy apples, coconut, or mayonnaise. All those things are just foolhardy. Actually, I may add fennel to that list, after having what was basically fennel stew with a raw egg on top of it at some posh place in Durham, NC.

3. I have never had a cavity…neither has my father or my paternal grandmother. My dentist HATES me and it’s not just because I told him that his hygienist should have his salary since he does f%&^ all. He also has silly facial hair.

4. Drawing a perpendicular to things makes more sense to me than drawing a parallel. It’s also really confusing to bystanders to say “well let me draw a perpendicular to it for you” and then that’s just free comedy. It’s the main reason why I sometimes say things like “hooray, hooray the cat lives!” when someone asks the time.

5. I assume that when I don’t know someone’s last name, it must actually be Spivey. It’s highly unlikely, statistically speaking, but still…what an awesome freaking surname.

6. I’d really like to own chickens and raise them as pets (with the proper paid help naturally and a state of the art chicken coop that is built in the same Victorian style as my house), and maybe walk one (at a time, or else it would be nuts) on a leash down the street. People would get out of your freaking way if you had a Rhode Island Red on a damn leash wouldn’t they? They could live out back with the dogs and I’d walk outside past them and gesture towards them grumpily saying “chickens here” like Tim Roth did when he played van Gogh. Unfortunately, a giant bloodhound makes everyone on the planet want to stop to talk to you. A chicken? Not so much.

7. If I like a song, I’ll listen to it over and over and over again until I’ve heard it so much, I can’t stand it any more and don’t listen to it for about a year. This is why I hate so much music. Currently I’m doing this with Say Hi’s “Let’s Talk About Spaceships” and F.U.’s “Young, Fast Iranians.”

8. I think that a boxed Chef Boyardee pizza mix is truly one of life’s ultimate pleasures. However, I’ll only make one if no one else is home, lest I have to share it. Everyone makes fun of the Chef, yet their hands are out with plates when you start dishing it out.

And here we go with the “tag, you’re it” bit…
Gene Wicker Jr.
Shana Albert aka The Nanny
Nic and Cher (yes both of them–they are both so freaking cute)
Any one of the SEO Blokes, all of whom are morons, none of whom ever write
Jonathan Pritchard-Barrett

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Schoolkids Records in Chapel Hill, NC is closing, after 33 years in business. Apparently the store isn’t getting enough foot traffic, which is insanely difficult to believe considering it’s on the main drag of a massive university town that has a thriving music scene. There was little competition here as far as I can tell, but somehow they’re unable to survive even in the midst of over 30,000 college kids who, by all acounts, listen to music quite a bit. I guess the problem is that these kids aren’t actually BUYING anything in stores. Whether you can blame the high prices of CDs or the ease with which people can quickly download the music that they want, brick and mortar record shops are quickly crumbling. (cough)

I wrote a post awhile back about how the indie music scene didn’t need SEO…my point was that independent music was, so far, mostly disconnected from mass media coverage and, as such, remained true to its very spirit. In this post, I stated that people should personally get up off their arses and seek out new music by actively searching for it without going online, by getting their music news through word of mouth, or by showing up at the local punk rock club for a night.

As I was moaning about Schoolkids closing, even though I haven’t shopped there since 1995 and that was to buy a cheap poster, I started to think about something: has our industry actually been a contributing factor to the demise of my beloved physical record shops? I freaking think so (at least I do at THIS moment) and here is why:

If you do a search for most bands, and let’s take Grinderman as an example since I am such a Nick Cave fan (although I can’t tell my mom the name of their new single (like she’d ask) since it’s got a dirty word in it that rhymes with wussy), you’ll likely see tons of results for their videos on YouTube, their MySpace page, their Wikipedia entry, their Amazon listing, and their actual website if they happen to have one. Nick is well represented in the SERPs, to summarize. You can hear and watch the videos for free, and you can listen to new releases for free. If you happen to buy from iTunes, you can quickly grab a digital song or album and the whole thing’s done in less than a minute. Gone are the days when you accidentally buy an Assuck cd because it was mistakenly put into the Avail section, the store was closing, and you ignored the record clerk who said, looking at your other purchase of The Smiths, “boy you’re all over the place aren’t you!” Your main concern now is that when you got the download of The Mission’s Deliverance, it was actually Tower of Strength which you don’t really like and now you’re out 99 cents. Record shops are closing because of people like you. And me…ok and yes, the photo of Grinderman is only necessary in order to show you how insanely cool Nick Cave is. Sorry.

Seriously, why would you leave the house and go out, in PUBLIC, to risk the flu and ebola and lice and panhandling punk rock kids with $100 nose rings, not to mention having to be chatted up by an overweight and unwashed college dropout wearing a faded and hole-ridden Pixies tshirt who only works at the record store to meet chicks that look like Kim Deal and get a 10% discount on bumper stickers, when you could sit at home in your salt-bagel-encrusted chair and stay safe? Thus, you order online and this record store clerk gets fired, the store owner tries to keep the shop open by showcasing crappy local bands until the landlord sues him for back rent and the only bands they can book are ABC and The Lick Stick (ok I made that one up), and then it all truly goes straight to hell and the next time you show up for your used record fix, you’re greeted by a giant padlock on the door.

When I saw Polyphonic Spree a few months back, the lead singer made a great statement at the end about buying their t-shirts and robes (yes, robes and let me just say YIKES) because they didn’t make a lot of money on CDs anymore and needed the support. Whether or not that’s true isn’t my concern of course. I like the idea behind finding other ways to keep these artists going. He also pleaded with the audience, in his cultlike manner, to support other bands as well by going to shows and buying their assorted rubbish there. For the record (HA!!), I did not buy a robe from P. Spree, since that would just be stupid. I did, however, buy a tshirt in a wildly unflattering shade of light blue.

It’ all evolution, of course, but it does make me a bit sad. This certainly won’t mean the end of music, of course…just maybe the end of walking into a store and spending hours poring over the bins to find something amazing. And what I do for a living is partially to blame.

Ch ch ch ch changes…

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It was a dark and stormy night.  Somewhere in Pakistan, a turmoil was brewing.  ‘These search results must be stopped!  They are offensive!  BAN YOUTUBE NOW!’

Sensing urgency, the various responsible parties requested an urgent and immediate ban on YouTube redirecting all requests to a holding page.  Job done, they went back to whatever other important things they were doing.

Winging its way across the internet, the ban request was taken up as urgent on a Sunday.  At an odd hour of the day.  Coherence was not necessarily present but urgency was understood.  The ban spread.

Time marched on (as it does).  Chocolate and other terms previously graced with universal search results lost them.  No more YouTube meant no video results.  Sadness was spreading across the world.

The ban spread and people with nothing better to do than visit YouTube by doing a search on the name in Google instead of typing the URL in the browser window entered the fray.  Cue me searching for stuff for a talk…

Wha…?  An SEO using Google search instead of typing the proper URL in to the browser address bar?  Fear not, dear readers, I was not just being lazy!  I was just trying to find a universal search result for a talk I’m giving to some journalists on writing for search and I couldn’t find any video results.  Honest!  Even my beloved chocolate universal search result was sadly missing

BUT WAIT!  Patience is a virtue and so I sat and I waited and I sat and I got a coffee and I sat and I waited and I wrote a bit more and LO AND BEHOLD it was BACK!

*phew*
That was close!
Just goes to show you – when someone requests something, don’t just rubber stamp it no matter who requested it!

I would have included the actual ‘chocolate’ USR but the second image was… well, the guys reading this blog would have appreciated it I’m sure

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