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.

Earlier this year I was shortlisted for the “Blackberry Woman in Technology Awards” in the category “Best Use of Technology by under 30 year old woman”.

Last night the award ceremony took place at the Mariott Hotel Grosenvor Square in London. Me and my junior SEO, Rebecca, got to the hotel early to get all dolled up like
cinderella! We then went downstairs to the prestigious award ceremony. A few glasses of champagne and cheeky cigarettes later (not so classy!) we sat down for a 3 course meal. We were sat with a group of people from Blackberry (RIM) and Vodafone, and they were the loveliest people! Especially Harry Clark (Relationship Director Vodafone/RIM), he listened to my nervous babble for hours during dinner and topped up my glass with wine……ehm Harry it’s your fault I’m soooo hungover today Beverly Knight was doing the entertainment after the award as well, which was awesome..

The Blackberry Woman and Technology Awards launched three years ago and focuses on honouring the achievements of women both within and beyond the IT sector. And help inspiring women choosing a career within Technology.

The award ceremony was very well organised (well done Claire!) and was very classy, it was amazing to be in the room with so many high powered and inspirational women (I know it’s soppy but this is the kind of thing I have always dreamt of). I have always believed that woman are just as good at Technology as men, and I believe the reason there is still a male dominated sector is not because women don’t want to, it’s more likely to be because it IS a male dominated sector and insecurities are more likely to creep up. Woman are more humble and modest, we need to stand tall and be proud when we do something well. Speak UP! Don’t be afraid to brag, if you don’t ask you don’t get.

It’s so important not to get discouraged. Don’t be afraid of what people might think, or what you look like – believe in yourself and what you are saying! If you feel you are being judged, shake it off, keep going! Fuck em, people can judge you, but don’t let anyone define you, define yourself!

Now the power to the woman speech is over, sorry, had to be done though! I can finish off by saying:

I WON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The prize was: A designer glass bowl, a new Blackberry Smartphone and £2,500 worth of training (I’m going to use the money on programming courses!!)

I really want to thank ALL the SEO Chicks and Chicklets for all you have done on this blog and in the industry. You all inspire me to continue kicking ass!

Update: People have been asking me about photos, so here are a couple very fuzzy ones =)

Myself and Rebecca sipping champagne - oh ja!

And the Winner Is

Getting my Award - Totally stoked

I’ve been to two search marketing conferences in the past month and asked the crowd the same question at each show. The question was about a real-life example of the bait ‘n switch. There are a few different levels of bait ‘n switch and you’ll come across differing opinions as to which are ethical and which aren’t.

Level One
Popular content is moved via a redirect from its original location to another location on the same site. The content doesn’t change. This barely counts.

Level Two
Popular content is moved via a redirect from its original location to a different site. The content doesn’t change.

Level Three
Popular content is moved via a redirect from its original location to another location on the same site. The content is noticeably different.

Level Four
Popular content is moved via a redirect from its original location to a different site. The content is noticeably different.

By noticeably different, I mean that it no longer represents the content to which hundreds or thousands of independent websites originally linked. As linkers, we take this risk whenever we link to something that we don’t control; however, there is an inherent understanding that people won’t change the content and “force” us to link to something which we didn’t intend.

When the content doesn’t change, I don’t see anything wrong with changing its location. Within reason (commercial reasons included), moving content around makes little difference. Sometimes, a corporate website isn’t the place for linkbait or viral content, but once a social media campaign is complete, the content can be moved to a place on a company’s premier site. The Lenovo Tapes are a good example of this: originally displayed on a separate domain and purposefully disguised as being amateur, the page was eventually moved to Lenovo’s UK site. Sticklers for web etiquette still mightn’t like this, especially if they have a problem linking to corporate domains. However, I see no problem with this type of tactic and if you do, you should avoid linking to anything, ever.

Stickier situations come about when the content changes. If Lenovo had 301 redirected their linkbait to a products page, the situation would be entirely different. I fell for such a tactic recently and it was about this situation that I posed my question to two SMX crowds this April.

Last year, I was writing away at SEOmoz, as I’m prone to do, and I came across a benign but amusing piece of linkbait from a Floridian limousine company. They were featuring pictures of beached limos. Limos that have tried to drive over steep hills in towns like San Francisco and have become high-centred. Nice. Limousines are obscene. Who doesn’t find beached limos funny?

I linked to the linkbait. I used their most important keyword, “limousines”, in my anchor text. I was perfectly aware that the content was developed with links in mind, but being an SEO and having created similar commercially-minded content, I didn’t have a problem throwing them a followed link. Good on them; they topped Reddit and gave a few thousand people a giggle. Much later, I wanted to use this example in a presentation to highlight how boring businesses with mediocre websites can take advantage of social media. I went back to my own post to find the limousine company’s link.

I ended up at the Miami limousine rentals page, undoubtedly the company’s most profitable market.

Is that okay? Would I feel fine about doing this myself? Should I remove my link at SEOmoz? I felt that I should; however, I forgot to actually do it. I was distracted, probably by something shiny. The link was never removed and never nofollowed. I have the tab open to do it right now, but as per usual, I’m in the middle of a glass of Pinot and will probably forget again. Anyway.

I posed the question to the crowd at SMX Sydney: should I remove the link? Eighty percent of the crowd raised their hands. What an honest bunch of convicts. Either that, or they were just trying to impress us. I flew back to the U.S. and did nothing. A week later, at SMX Social Media in Long Beach, I asked the crowd the same question. Eight people put up their hands. The L.A. crowd didn’t see anything wrong with a 301 redirect being used in this way.

What do you think? I will probably amend the post to nofollow the link and add a note about how the content has changed. Personally, I wouldn’t use a redirect in this way: to me, a 301 should really indicate that a piece of content has moved permanently; doing this changes the content entirely. And it’s not like I’m the most morally upstanding member of society, either. Isn’t that right, Julie?

We had a discussion - one that ended up being around 250 comments in length - at SEOmoz last month about the ethics of widget-bait. Rightly or wrongly, a former colleague of mine is suffering from Google’s crackdown on such practices. How tough would it be for a search engine to recognise the bait ‘n switch and devalue its worth?

I have just decided that every SEO Chicks post I write will conclude with my most entertaining piece of Gmail Adsense from the recent past, as I was quite pleased with that particular post. Here is today’s offering: I always enjoy humour in my email advertising, especially of the self-deprecating variety.

Until next time!

This week I noticed a lot of great things happen in the social media space. Many yummy, tasty social media treats! Since Tuesday, different Ice Cream franchises have been offering special discounts or free ice cream through the Blogosphere, Facebook, and Twitter.

• Tuesday, April 29th= The Annual International Free Cone Day @ Ben & Jerry’s. - It was pretty impressive to me that Ben & Jerry’s bought a Facebook gift to be distributed as the free gift of the day.

Additionally, they did a great job at outreach as I spent the day seeing millions of pictures of the lines that were circling around the block for ice-cream. I looked at massive amounts of Twitter posts where people tweeted the participated location and the wait time. With all of the social effort put into this campaign, it was a huge success. But in other Ice-Cream regards, it seems like Ben & Jerry’s knows what they are doing.

• Weds, April 30th = Baskin Robbin’s 31 Cent Scoop Night- Not as impressive as Ben & Jerry’s campaign but still took a decent Facebook initiative. It’s Event Page has over 350,000 RSVPS (maybe’s, not attending, and attendees). That is a huge amount of engagement. They are also donating funds to a Fire Fighters charity and only having the promotion for 5 hours.

• Thursday, May 1st= Carvel launches it’s new Drink Flavors with Free Drinks.- This campaign was not executed too well. While, yes I found the event listed on Facebook, it was realy nowhere else. I did find a bunch of boring PR about the new flavors they are promoting, but no creative, no engaging interactive applications, nothing. Their website is not too helpful either, it does have a call out on the homepage, but the CTA links to basically nothing. Seems like Carvel was not completely prepared to launch this campaign but decided to jump on the bandwagon of Ice Cream promotions week.

I hope everyone has enjoyed their Ice Cream treats this week!

We’ve all seen the graphic shown below or one similar to it, haven’t we? Sure, it’s the typical image of the evolution of man. In fact, you may even have pictured this image in your head while you were reading one of Julie Joyce’s famous SEO Chick posts, Could A Chimp Do SEO? Heck YES! or SEO Easy, A Caveman Can Do IT!, back in October and July of last year. (I’m pretty sure Julie watches The Planet of the Apes series every few months, and that’s why she’s obsessed with that particular theme). I’ve decided to continue Julie’s recurring theme and present to you, The Evolution Of A Newbie SEO.

In the beginning, a newbie webmaster (who did not yet know SEO existed), created a web site. The newbie webmaster sat back, satisfied with his first attempt at HTML (which looked very similar to a 1997 geocities site I once owned), and waited for the instant wealth that would be bestowed upon him. Five minutes ticked by, and the newbie webmaster couldn’t understand why he’d not had the millions of visitors he’d expected by now. In fact, he’d had not even one! WTF? What happened to “build it and they will come?” At about the same time as the newbie webmaster was pondering this, he received a fortuitous email in his inbox. It read: 50,000 Visitors To Your Site For Only $19.95! And so the noob began his journey into the seedy realm of purchasing untargetted (and often imaginary) traffic from shady sites and exit popunders.

The newbie webmaster later begins a slight evolutionary process as his web travels introduce him to a new term: SEO. Filled with wonder and excitement, the newbie webmaster becomes immersed in this new world known as search engine optimization. He now understands that a site sits empty and alone if it cannot be found, and so begins his quest to rank well in search engines. His first exposure to SEO, again through his wondrous email inbox, details the riches to be gained by hiring a firm to optimize his site’s meta tags, and subsequently submitting that site to thousands of search engines each and every month. It costs $99/month, but surely that is nothing compared to the massive amounts of money that will be made once his site ranks in the top 10 for over a dozen phrases chosen by the SEO firm in at least 50% of the search engines they submit to. Wow! Thousands of search engines…50% of those get top 10 rankings…for more than a dozen phrases! The riches are right around the corner! Until they aren’t.

At this point, the newbie SEO has learned to be wary of the promises made in unsolicited emails that land in his email inbox. Another turn of the evolutionary wheel has been made, and the newbie SEO wanders out into the realm of the … SEO Forum. There lies all the answers…and all for free! The newbie SEO now makes the leap into optimizing his site himself, as he spends all of his waking time (which is close to 24/7) reading every post, in every thread of the SEO forum he has tumbled into. He soon learns that METAS aren’t the holy grail of SEO, and that submissions to search engines are silly and outdated. Instead, he skips off down the brown-brick road of recip links pages, sending form-letter emails requests demanding reciprocal link exchanges of thousands of site owners, optimizing his home page for 30 important keyword phrases, and including every keyword phrase he can think of in teeny-tiny light gray text at the very bottom of his home page. Then, he checks his rankings every day for every keyword, and gets really excited when he finds a few ranking in the top 100! Finally, the riches will come! Until they don’t.

As the months roll by, and the recip directory on his site reaches 30 pages of spam-filled links, but the rankings and traffic aren’t at the expected levels, the disgruntled noob seo begins to wonder where he went wrong. He now turns an important corner in his forum world, as he emerges from his “lurker” status to ask for feedback on his site. He is shocked when his amateurish attempts at optimizing his site are ridiculed and mocked. He is suddenly faced with new theories of content, long-tail, and one-way linkage that causes his brain to hurt as it is remolded and reshaped so intensely, that his skull actually begins to change shape (and will continue to do so over the next evolutionary stages), and he realizes that he needs to stand a little taller to be able to grasp this higher level of learning. Still, his past experiences have so shaped his thinking, that he still sees the need to take this new knowledge and twist it into a form that can be easily added to his site. So he listens again, despite his wariness, to the emails in his inbox that offer to help him generate lots of content on his site with the newest, whiz-bangiest RSS feed mixer available today! And as a bonus, he’ll also receive a blog comment auto-generator for no extra charge! Thus begins the budding SEO’s use of “automation tools”. He uses his wondrous new tools and the dollar signs flash green in his eyes, as he sees his 3 page site suddenly expanding to 3,000 pages - overnight! - while his blog commenting gizmo increases his one-way links by the thousands with just the click of a mouse button. And because he now has a slightly-straighter posture, he learns to dance a little at the thought of all those riches pouring in. Until the music stops.

One morning, the budding SEO wakes up to find that his site can no longer be found in Google - at all. It has been completely removed, and the tales he has heard of sites being banned suddenly become real for the emerging SEO. His beloved site, his baby, his creation, has been dealt a mighty blow, and he has been banned. The endless days and nights of research into the causes of such penalties creates new neuro-pathways in our SEO’s brain, and his evolution takes a mighty turn. It is at this point that our SEO does one of three things:

1. His evolution stops and his species dies as he abandons his web site dreams forever.
2. His brain calculates the risk vs. reward of automated site building and he buys/builds/outsources new, stealthier, less easily detectable tools that can crank out site after site after site, so that as some are banned, others are bringing in small amounts of money (which all add up)
3. His brain comprehends the many mistakes he’s made in the past, and he seeks out those who can mentor him in search-sanctified methods

At this point, our SEO is well-past the newbie stage and spends his next few years as an experienced (but ever-learning) SEO. His evolution is as complete as it will be for quite some time, and his occasional fashion changes (hat colors) only serve to increase his level of expertise. He has now completely started over, concentrating significant time and resources on either:

• Creating a well-designed site filled with quality content that naturally attracts links, and becomes more marketing-focused as he begins to understand that conversions matter, networking matters, and being unique matters. He spends considerable time doing keyword research and writing strong, compelling copy. He has mastered the the technical aspects necessary to ensure his site is crawlable and provides no roadblocks to search engine bots.
• Immersing himself in the clever intricacies of black-hat technologies, always attempting to stay one step ahead of algorithmic changes, but being able to quickly adapt and change tactics when the search engines occasionally catch up and catch on. His failures are many, but in this game of numbers, it only takes a certain percentage of wins to make it all profitable.

This stage of evolution will sometimes show our SEO occasionally crossing over from one side of the fashion world to the other, and back again, but ultimately, we will likely see him choosing one fashion over the other as he determines his true comfort level. Perhaps in a few years, we will be able to add a few more evolutionary cycles to this post. Until then, happy SEO’ing.

Wow…This is true privilege!!! Writing for SEO chicks……. thank you ladies. I am so excited about writing on here, and loving that Lisa actually found this post funny - serious leg slapping involved here and was there a snort……there may have been a little snort laugh, thank you lisa for pushing this forward. I hope that you chicks will ‘digg’ what I write. Recently I’ve been focusing on some of our PPC clients campaigns, and developed an analogy for keyword matching to share with clients and work colleagues. A far-fetched, if not a little warped, theory I know but hear me out……..

Exact Matching

Say you went on a dating site and wanted to find your exact match your Mr. Right and you could target the exact traffic in your ad you would no doubt find the men you were advertising for…..

If you surround your keywords in brackets for example, [tall Spanish man] your ad will only appear when a user searches for that exact phrase, in this order without any other terms in the query. For instance your ad will not be shown for ‘Crazy tall Spanish man’ or ‘tall Spanish woman. ’ Exact match is the most targeted option. With this option you will not receive as many impressions, however you will likely gain the most targeted clicks - users searching for your exact keywords typically want precisely what you are advertising for.

With exact match you will get convertible quality traffic, and maybe just maybe find true amor.

Broad Match

This is for the less fussy dater - put in a specification of your type “wants tall, dark, Spanish man, likes walks in the park and poetry” and does not mind if a “Tall, dark, too many bacon sarnies later, builder from Brixton” replies.

This is the default option. If your ad group contained the keyword ‘tall Spanish man’ , your ad would be eligible to appear when a user’s search query contained ‘tall, spanish and man’ , in any order and possibly along with other terms. Your ad will also show for singular and plural forms as well as other variations. With this you will gain many impressions and many a curious fellow relying to your ad but not necessarily Mr. Right. This option definitely saves time and effort…… no long nights considering all variations of search terms that could trigger your ad…….ipso facto more time preening oneself for eventual conversion.

Phrase Match

Phrase match is for the lady looking for a particular man but is open to variations or suggestion….. still with me??…..

By entering your keywords in quotation marks, such as “tall Spanish man” your ad will appear when a user searches with the phrase “tall Spanish man” in this order and possibly with terms before or after the phrase. For example the ad could appear for “one handed tall Spanish man” but not for “Spanish trousers for tall man”. Phrase match is more targeted than broad match, but has the flexibility for slight variation that exact match does not.

Negative Keywords

This is a good way of deterring freaky types and time wasters – men that won’t convert- away from your ad….

If your keyword is ‘tall Spanish man’ and you add the negative keyword ‘-hairy ’ your ad will not appear for ‘hairy tall Spanish man’. Negative keywords are especially useful if your account contains lots of broad-matched keywords. This will save you both embarrassment and money on hair removal cream!!!

To Conclude…. (phew)

To find true amor you need to determine what you want from your ad- do you want:

1. A high volume of traffic (interest from any man)

2. A substantial amount of quality traffic – with possible conversions (Men who vary the requirements, but who might just be the one)

3. Guaranteed Conversions (THE ONE……….. Mr right)

Target right traffic =

The force is strong with Beccy

One of her strengths is writing, having a degree in English and drama it goes without saying that whatever she writes is entertaining.

She will be posting her first blogpost today, and it’s freakin hilarious.

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.

As of 5th May 2008 Google is lifting the trademark rule for Google AdWords (UK) which prevents advertiser from bidding on branded keywords that are protected by trademark. Enter the brand bidding war and Affiliate heaven!

What was the trademark restriction? Basically if you submitted a Google trademark complain procedure you could prevent your competitor (or anyone else) to bid for your brand name in PPC ads served in the UK and Ireland. The benefit? You would be the only one in the paid listings appearing for your brand term, which means it was very cheap to drive traffic for your protected brand term to your website.

What happens now? Basically, ANYONE can now bid for your brand name. They still can’t use your brand name in their ad text, but they can bid to their hearts content for any brand terms. Which means the CPC (Cost Per Click) for any brand terms are likely to sky rocket! Who will benefit? Yep that’s right, Google! And of course the Affiliates (the guys that steal your traffic and then sells it back to you!).

Google claims that these changes will give the users ‘greater options’ and ‘help them make informed decisions’. HA! Whatever happened to relevancy? Is this really profitable in the long run? Is Google shooting themselves in the foot on this one?

It’s well known that nearly 73% of search engine users prefer (and trusts) Organic results more than Paid search engine results. With the PPC results filling up with even more irrelevant results, will this increase the user’s preference to organic? In my opinion this is a very risky time for Google to be changing anything that can fuck up the quality of their paid search listings.

It’s quite contradicting of Google to put such an emphasis on Quality Score, for them then to say, hey but you can bid on whatever you want, even someone elses brand term, we’ll take your money!

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!