Recently, the SEO industry debated whether or not we need standards as part of our profession’s requirements. You may have heard about it. I made a bored face. It does not seem viable that any real restrictions could be put on an online industry like this, but I wonder about the pros and cons of introducing SEO as an academic field in which one can earn a college degree. Let’s look at these advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages

1. Official training. This is a given within accredited colleges and accounts for everything from my degree in English (I am officially licensed to write good and do other stuff good too) to the certifications given to surgeons.
2. Certified instructors. With university courses come teachers. These are people who (generally) know a lot about their subject and can impart it in an efficient fashion.
3. Trusted knowledge. I’d like to think that between two and four years of structured learning would take care of the basics of SEO and a lot more besides. Training new SEO employees would no longer be necessary.
4. The Idiot Recession. Total dimwits can’t call themselves doctors. Requiring some certification might elimiate some of them within SEO.

Disadvantages.

1. Money. Not everyone can afford to go to university and those who do often end up paying for it for a large portion of the rest of their lives. College educations can be hideously expensive and beyond the means of many people. At present, this expense doesn’t stop a person from becoming extremely successful in our industry. It seems criminal to threaten that.
2. Snobbery. I’m not sure this extends beyond the United States and Britain (it probably does, but it doesn’t seem to affect my native New Zealand), but have you heard what graduates of the University of Random State will say about the graduates of Random State University? Adding degree programmes in SEO is a definitive way to make our cliquey, infuriating industry even worse.
3. Standardisation can kill ingenuity. If too many institutions establish a “correct way” of doing something (and universities are excellent at this), innovation can be stifled as non-standard and thus incorrect.
4. A lack of qualified teachers. Danny Dover, a colleague of mine at SEOmoz, is currently enrolled at the University of Washington. He recently commented about how little true web development education was available at UW, a large, respected state college. He and I are both relatively sure that one of the reasons for this is that great web developers are still developing. Few have yet to progress to teaching, and becoming a web dev teacher is not yet understood as an accepted profession, whereas teaching geology or French is a normal aspiration.
5. Bastardisation. Following on from a lack of qualified teachers, universities will throw non-SEOs at SEO classes. A print-marketer or an IT specialist isn’t necessarily qualified to teach SEO, but do you remember the awful Teacher’s Assistant who taught your Biology session in your second year? The one who knew less than you did? Imagine that person in charge of teaching the difference between robots.txt exclusion and the meta noindex tag and in which situation you should use either.
6. Limitation. Even if SEO had been an option when I was choosing a college major, I doubt I would have picked it. Forcing or even encouraging people to obtain a degree in a subject before embarking in a corresponding profession limits the people the industry will eventually obtain. This isn’t a certainty: I’ve often heard that the subject of one’s degree rarely dictates their career path and that is definitely true for me. I spent four years being an obsessive wordsmith and analysing seventeenth century plays. Now I read .htaccess files and find well-executed CSS replacement delicious. Peter Chilson, you were the best teacher I ever had and I am truly sorry for what I’ve become

I’ve spoken to several people who graduated with marketing and advertising degrees (in New Zealand) who learned about SEO during college. On a superficial level, it seems like regulating SEO by introducing it into collegiate environments is a great idea, but are those benefits worth the significant and undesirable disadvantages? Is it better to put up with the idiots (your junk mail folder confirms that we have quite a few of them) and accept that Julie and I have degrees in English, Rand is one semester away from a degree in Finance and that I’d be even better at what I do if I’d spent the years between 2002 and 2006 ranking websites rather than doing my Modern British Lit homework?

Seems shooting off my gob is becoming a habit - an addictive one at that.  Knowing how much trouble my mouth can get me in, I decided to channel it in to something more productive.  So I’m doing some speaking stuff and in case you’d like to come alone to heckle or support, I thought I’d share.

Today I’m off talking about Online Brand Reputation Management at the Web 2.0 Practical Applications for Business Benefit Conference Something I think everyone needs to do but I’m specifically talking brands.  I’ll be talking people later :-)  Today I’m just focusing on trying to help brands do better stuff online.

Next week, I get to gab about my in-house experiences before I joined i-level.  I’ll be at SMX East talking as part of the In-House day.  I get to gab about how I got around the obstacles inherent in the work us in-housers have to do.  FUN!  Hey - if you’re there, I’m bringing M&S chocolate truffles and Celebrations chocolate bonbons - hit me up for some chocolaty luuuurrrrvvveeee!

Week after next - otherwise known as October 14th & 15th - I’ll be speaking at the A4U Expo on SEO stuff.  My first talk is the basics - just about what everyone can do to optimise their site.  My top 10 tips only I share as much as I can squeeze in to 40 min :-)  Then on day 2 I team up with Rob Kerry and we discuss what you can do given Google is trying to be the Church of SEO.  I promise to be my heretical best

Following on from A4U is Social Media in Business which is a great day away from London in Marlow.  A fantastic line up where my name gets changed Judith De-Cabbit includes Toby Moores who is FANTASTC as are Will McInnes  and Neville Hobson.  Really one to leave London for - it is going to rock!

I get the fantastic honour of speaking at SMX London about legal issues facing search.  I am not a lawyer - my dad is and I almost went to law school but was saved at the last moment by psychology.  I still may go back to school and may end up going to law school eventually but I think an MBA comes first. Anyway!  I’m chuffed to be at both SMX East and SMX London so watch out - MORE CHOCBAIT FOR EVERYONE!

How cool is it to talk about “The Dark Side” - well I get to at the IMS 2008 show the Information Management Solutions Show - what a mouthful!  Well, I get to speak on The Dark Side of Social Media and talk about all those mistakes people have made, how not to make them, how to do it right and the new changes to the law.  So lots and lots!

So that’s me shooting off my gob for this year.  Thanks for your indulgence folks!  I’m passionate about search and helping companies deliver relevant results and one way is through talking about search and related subjects all about the town - and the world

It seems like years ago now that I moved into my own apartment and started looking at cable and Internet options. In actuality it was only two months ago. When I discovered that Verizon Fios was available in my location, I automatically went online to activate an account and schedule an installation. I wanted the fastest Internet possible!

The online activation was simple and easy to use. In about five minutes I put in my information and scheduled a date. One second later I got what I thought was a confirmation email. The email lacked any sort of number or code however. I called customer service to alert them about my order and their neglect on confirmation numbers. The customer service rep explained that sometimes ‘the system‘ takes 24 hrs to send a number and I might get the email tomorrow. I hate phone calls like this.

These sort of phone calls continued for a few weeks and I started to get really upset. I had to steal crappy internet at home and it was not fun! So I started expressing my Fios related sorrows on Twitter. Within a few minutes, I received a DM from the Fios twitter guy. Finally! We talked for a bit on Twitter (see pictures) and I got a call from a few new Fios people who helped me and got my Fios installed on A Sunday morning. Now I have the fastest internet evar!

The morale of the story is that if this Verizon Fios employee was not monitoring Twitter for brand mentions, my anger would have left me to some serious brand bashing. Instead of writing this nice blog post that includes a link to the Verizon Fios site.. I would have posted a negative blog post, continued to tweet about how awful they were, and possibly participated in forum bashing. Not that I have a huge voice but I’m louder than just a regular chick, because I’m and SEO chick!!

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.

I might be a late to the party on this one but it randomly entered into a conversation today, and since I’ve been truly rubbish at posting I thought I would do my 2 cents (or 2 pence, kroners, Euros…whichever rocks your boat) on Google personalised search.

To be honest I really don’t get what all the fuss is about. Why do SEOs still fear personlised search? Surely people don’t still think it will take away the need to optimise your website for the search engines? If anything it quantifies the need for optimisation.

Personalised search is PERSONAL, doesn’t mean you won’t appear in the SERPs for what you have optimised for. It just means you really need to make sure you pay CLOSE attention to relevancy and not freakin optimise for something that is not relevant to your business/service or product. Making sure you target the right keywords for the right pages, oh and don’t have a crappy designed website that has the usability of Russian built car.

Basically the Title and meta description (your Free ad in the organic SERPs) will become even MORE important as this is what gets the Click Through. As personalised search is mostly based on actual CLICK throughs. The relevancy and how you write these will very much determine that CLICK through. Then you also need to have a GOOD website that makes sure the user doesn’t bounce back in 0.002 seconds and makes the search “invalid”.

Personalised search is nothing to fear for white hat SEO’s that wants to rank for RELEVANT terms. Its Google’s way of bringing INTENT into the algorithm and (hoping) to get rid of all the stuff people don’t want, it’s all about relevancy. A site that is perfectly relevant to a search result will ALWAYS rank high. Yep, even with personalised search where the user has developed “preferences”. If your site is relevant for the search terms you will be the site preferred by the user anyway.

The same rules as always apply to optimising for personalised search: quality content, keyword targeting and mapping, optimisation of the increasingly important title and meta description. In addition you might do well out of prompting your users to bookmark your site, making your site more interactive (that doesn’t mean ALL in flash by the way) and obviously attract links to your site from other relevant sites that the user might visit, Brand awareness and all that jazz.

So to summaries; does personalised search make SEO redundant?

Does it bullocks!

Being a geek rarely means going out there and hitting the vibrant social scene around London, Toronto, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Auckland or any of the other cities of the world. Usually it means going to a “networking” event at a conference and drinking until it doesn’t hurt quite so much anymore. Well, funnily enough it’s conference season now that the weather has turned even rainier (how can anyone tell…?).

So what’s up and on for conference goers? TONS! In fact, there is so much going on, I’ve pared it back a bit and focused on the place I spend most of my life in – London. My underpants have yet to host a conference, being a single event, single attendee kind of venue. So what’s up and on in London town, you might ask, *BESIDES* SMX London and the great LondonSEO? Plenty!

While an actual social event, it is for geeks to roam free with others of our kind at the London GeekDinner with Carsonified and with those crazy folks at Carsonified being the focus, you can guarantee geeky goodness all around! Suw Charman, one of the strongest voices of social media, is giving a day seminar on Making Social Tools Ubiquitous

The Social Networking Conference London 2008 features a host of great speakers including me! I’ll be talking on “The Dark Side of Social Media” examining what went wrong, why and how to avoid it. It is at the Millennium Gloucester Hotel Kensington and Conference Centre which seems to be close to a tube station *phew*. Of course the main event of the week will be ad:tech - now into it’s third year in London, it’s a great place to catch up with the latest technology It’s a firm favourite on the conference calendar and I think there are both free and paid tickets available depending on what speakers you wish to see. I’m so sure there will be parties around this!

BarCamp London is almost impossible to get in to and this time it is being held at eBay. This popular weekend event attracts people from all over the world and is absolutely a must-do but it’s almost impossible to get tickets so I’ve never done it Social Media Marketing in Black + White is a half day covering everything you need to know about social media but didn’t know to ask. Short, sweet and to the point.

Starting off October with a bang is Unicom’s Social Tools Conference which will feature information about all sorts of tools and how they can be used in business. I’ll be speaking on Brand Reputation Management giving tips on how and wht to monitor and why. All that good stuff. It’s two days packed with information and good food. Last time it was near a Hotel Chocolat so added bonus! There is usually an evening social which is free for non-attendees so there’s a good looking prospect for getting geekily social

SocialMediaCamp London works like a barcamp in that you register for free then get there on the day and volunteer to give a session. I’m hoping to give one but no promises as I’ll have a busy month! But why not go and volunteer yourself? It’ll be an excellent geeky social. Just after the weekend, book yourself in to Widget Web Expo because everybody loves a good widget and here you’ll get everything you need to know about what you need to do to create a widget.

Future of Web Apps is going to be what everyone is going to be at and talking about. Everyone was buzzing about this and Future of Web Design and now it’s finally back in London! Be quick about signing up for tickets though – they regularly sell out and you don’t want to be left behind. There are always great parties associated with a fully paid-up ticket to this event so make sure you have your social calendar to hand once you’ve bought your ticket.

a4uexpo - Affiliate Marketing Conference & Exhibition 2008 is a somewhat niche conference that is always a blast. Given the buzz around last year, it would be a crime to miss this one. With networking, parties, chill-out lounges and a great set of people from all over, including SEO, this is a worthwhile ticket to buy. They also sell a pure networking pass! I’ll be speaking on purely SEO stuff, as will other speakers so there will be lots of everyone who attends. Check out the 2.5 days of networking & learning for less than the price of SMX London.

Linux Expo and Mac Expo are currently FREE to sign up for and always boast a hoast of interesting booths to play with new technology at. Extending to include a weekend day (Sat) to ensure us geeks who can’t justify it as a work thing can go, I highly recommend this to everyone!

Of course, the event that everyone is waiting for is SMX London with added LondonSEO goodness! With excellent sessions aimed at an intermediate level (for the most part – some beginner stuff too!), SMX London has firmly entrenched itself as a must-attend conference on the conference calendar.

Late in the year coming on Dec 2-4 is the Online Information show with IMS. This year, there is a social media stream and with free admission to the expo and many seminars, it’s well worth the day out.

Go get work to give you some training and book those tickets. Remember always to have a plan to make sure you get the most out of the conference experience. Oh and remember to say hi if you see me. Introduce yourself and I might even share some chocolate with you!

Since link building is about as fun as ripping off your own toenails with pliers, I thought it might be useful to spark some creative ideas into the heads of poor, depressed link builders. You know who you are. So without further ado, or maybe with lots of further ado, it depends on my mood…
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Top 3 Link Building Ideas For The Link Building-Callenged

Become A Candidate For An Important Political Office

(hint: After announcing your candidacy, say lots of incredibly stupid things that suggest you know nothing about politics. That will score you bonus links).

Note that this option may cost lots of money, but the really cool thing is that there are millions of people willing to just DONATE money to you for this very purpose. Amazing.

Call Yourself The Champ Of Your Industry

(hint: other ego-stroking adjectives such as Guru, UberPro, etc. may work as well. Then, just like the Candidate hint above, say lots of incredibly stupid things that suggest you know nothing about your industry. That will score you bonus links).

Note that this option can be done very cheaply. Any old badly-designed, 1990’s-reminiscent web page, with old outdated information on it will suffice.

Be The Industry Police

(hint: Tell EVERYONE who is ANYONE in your industry that they are WRONG - every chance you get. Once you’ve been banned from any communication with the industry leaders, begin telling everyone in the lower echelons of the industry that THEY are wrong - every chance you get).

Note that this option requires that you have NO LIFE because you will be spending 24/7 commenting on other people’s blogs, and holding endless inane discussions on forums and social networks.

Final Note

Note that you will need to have a thick skin if you attempt any of these link building techniques, as you will likely accrue quite a few new nicknames that may rhyme with “slick-head”, “sass-pole”, or “fun-of-a-switch”. But hey, there’s also a really good chance you’ll actually rank well for those terms as well. BONUS POINTS!

I had a conversation with one of the organic guys the other guy during which he proclaimed that if you build a kick-ass widget and placed it on a high-traffic site, it would go viral. Ah, bless… the innocence of youth.

His assertion that this was a successful link building campaign led me to ponder whether you can call it link building if all you do is create an application and put a link to it on a high-traffic page. Could you simply create an application and release it into the wild with nothing more than best wishes and call it link building?

I would argue that effort has to be made in any instance to call it work. If you come up with the idea, that is part of the work but simply placing it somewhere without any push or sell cannot lead to a high enough adoption to create a buzz no matter how good the application is. Some work seeding it – some link building, article writing, emailing and promotion – must be done.

Link building though is about more than just creating a widget and placing a link within it. In fact, this has been shown to result in a penalty where the link is not relevant to the content of the widget. Thus widgets entered the same realm as link buying – good if you don’t get caught and keep it relevant.

Links are the special sauce of the internet. They help people navigate to other, less well known sites. They help point people (and spiders) in the right direction. They indicate relevance and quality. They help elevate rankings only as a part of their larger function – navigation. Link building is not just about slapping links up on every directory possible and trying to spam the index. It also isn’t just about creating compelling content. It also is no longer about relevant content being sign-posted for others to find. Links are now a complex beast – part human, part animal, part fruit… or maybe dairy.

Links, like many other ranking factors, have been abused. They have been taken from their origins and made to serve their evil SEO overlords. Many have tried to free them, few have succeeded. Trapping them inside a widget seems cruel… and without support I would argue not link building.

Set your links free and remember to always feed them chocolate

Widget Web Expo - set your watches.  It’s the special sauce for your widget building aspirations whether business or personal.

I’m doing a number of speaker slots but one place I’m looking forward to being at is the A4U Expo where there seems to be a mini SEO conference going on.

Win tickets to A4U Expo here by leaving a comment. Even if you don’t want to go, please take pity on me by leaving a comment saying you’d go to one of the sessions I’m doing.

I’ll be speaking on SEO (or if no one shows up, I’ll be putting my feet up and eating chocolate). In fact, I’m pretty sure my room will be empty on Day 1 as I’m on opposite “Internet Marketing Howlers Uncovered!” and “10 Ways to Get the Most Out of your Paid Search Affiliates” so if you’d like to eat some M&S truffles with me or possibly some M&S yummy snack tubs, please do join me

On day 2, Rob Kerry & I will be talking on “SEO, What’s Next? Be Good or Join The Dark Side?” which is on against “How to Increase Conversions - A New Approach, based on Psychological Methods” and “How to Manage a Successful Affiliate Programme : Strategies from Award Winning Affiliate Managers” so once again a tough choice.

On a positive note, as there is so much SEO content and it does include some fantastic networking as part of the ticket, why not just buy a ticket and go for the SEO content? It’s on public transport (just) with cheap-ish hotels nearby (Ibis is official conference hotel) and great fun to be had by all.

Go on - leave a comment to win a ticket!

At last - a Microsoft party *everyone* is invited to… sort of

The team at Microsoft are working on renovating the Sunrise Children’s Centre in Tunbridge. As a part of Barnardo’s, this centre supports over 200 families whose children have learning or physical disabilities. It has bedrooms where children can stay to give their families a break and an extensive day centre.

The centre is currently in real need of some renovation. Microsoft’s plan is to fundraise £10,000 which they will put towards improving the centre, creating a games room, revamping the outdoor areas with a pergola, a sensory garden and a new drop-off area plus much more. The MS team will be spending 2 days at the centre in October making the changes.

For more information, and to donate please visit: http://www.justgiving.com/microsoftadvertisingcommunityproject

As part of their fundraising efforts, they’re also hosting a big party! Facebook page http://www.new.facebook.com/event.php?eid=25568788505 - just donate at least £10 and then email libbyt at microsoft dot com with a copy of your receipt (your name also shows up on the donations page so no cheating!). You then get your ticket for the event emailed to you.

The party is at the very funky Adams Street Private Members Club on Saturday September 8th from 8pm to 3am with a raffle and a bottle of champagne for the best dressed. So grab your glad rags and donate to help a worthy cause.

It should be noted that as this is a charity event, drinks are NOT included and they are rather pricy at this venue. Remember to bring extra cash for this and the cab ride home