One of the things I think is most difficult to get right and yet is the most important factor for SEO is keyword research. The research that is done for SEO is quite different from the type done for PPC even though both are for search engines. This means while your PPC agency may have done some ‘keyword research’ it needs to be focused and refined for your SEO efforts.

Good keyword research is important because of the number of other critical SEO elements it affects (as well as PPC). The on-page targeting for non-cannibalised keywords is important. That is, don’t target the same keyword on lots of pages. The link building anchor text is important. Internal links and breadcrumb trails also use keywords. The titles, descriptions and URLs are also all affected by keyword research. Keyword research supporting a well optimised page can also reduce paid search costs. This one element of anything I believe has to be done right in order for everything else to flow properly from it.

In order to do good keyword research, the first step is to be open to new ideas. While seemingly fundamental, if a word or phrase sits at the core of branding and yet few use it, it would be more advisable to use the more popular word. If you provide “cookies” and yet insist on calling them “buttery flour chips” there will be issues with non-brand search exposures to your product. Google is good at understanding semantic relationships but even it needs some direction.

Write down groups of words relating to your product or service that you use internally. Next, expand that list to include what the industry you work in calls your product/service (a little spying on the competition). Expand that to how the media talks about your product or service. If you still have a small list, use this list set as a PPC keyword campaign and set the campaign to “broad match”. Keep it tight as a short term, low cost PPC campaign in Google. Crafting a compelling and relevant ad can be tricky but the insight gained from the keywords used to find your ad will expand your understanding of the keywords.

This should give you a core group of terms. Now, use the free online tools available to expand that list, refine it, measure the type of search traffic these terms generate and create a full comprehensive list of keywords that you think are relevant. The tools you can use for free are the Google AdWords Tool, SEOBook tool, and Wordtracker has some free data.

Next thing to do is map the strength of the competition and how much there is. If there are a lot of people competing for a term, or the top 10 are all very strong competitors, it may not be reasonable to target that word. Also be sure to check relevance. If a term has a high search volume but the search results are not relevant and the competition is strong then it may not be the right target.

By mapping the competitiveness of a word against the number of people looking for that term, you will get a very accurate measure of whether you should target that word. This is more complicated than slapping words into Google AdWords and dumping a spreadsheet of search terms and volumes which is what I’ve seen far too many agencies do. This adds real intelligence to your research and keyword selection. This will give you, and your business, a competitive edge.

One of the things I frequently get in trouble for is giving away too much information. I think that giving away too much insider information is what I am about to do below. My argument for sharing is that knowledge is power and by giving companies the skills and ability to understand what I do and how I do it, not only will they will better understand, appreciate and purchase services.

One of the things I get asked most often, next to “how do you choose an agency” is “how do you know if what they are measuring means anything”? Understanding what is being measured, how it is measured and how you can double check the measurements yourself if you choose to is an important part of understanding what your agency, or in-house SEO guru, is doing and how it is positively impacting your bottom line.

The below SEO ROI measurements can be used with different types of businesses. They are not restricted to one industry nor one type of measurement package. Where possible I’ve chosen measures which can be done easily and/or for free in order to keep costs low and understanding high.

In order for any measurement to have meaning, there needs to be a benchmark. Take the measurement you are going to track, record it and date it. If you then take the measure again, you have a point in time to compare it against. Always record your measurements at least monthly. For some sites weekly will be too frequently but less frequently than monthly may mean you miss something going wrong.

Visits from Organic Search Results – Measuring the number of visits in to your site purely from organic search results. To measure this, an on-site analytics package will give the most accurate representation of this number. Google Analytics is free and Omniture is my favourite but there are others available.

Number of Visitors from natural search Per Keyword – A breakdown of the number of visits from organic sources driven to the site via different keywords. The key here is that we’re breakingthis down by keyword and not just overall traffic. No other traffic such as direct or referred (from sites other than search engines or paid search) should be included. To measure, analytics must be installed and tracking incoming referrals. Most, if not all, analytics packages will break down incoming visits from search engines to give a per keyword value for visitors.

Conversions on Organic Traffic – This is a measure of the number of conversions made after a user clicked through from a natural search listing. More complex to measure as this does require the interaction between analytics and cookies. To measure, track user conversions where the last click is from natural search and leads to a sale or whatever you deem a conversion to be. To expand, measure where natural search is responsible for sending 2 or more visits by the same user to the site but where natural search is not necessarily the last click. Conversion rates = (conversions /visits)*100

Rankings for Keywords A ranking is where a particular site ranks for a particular keyword within a neutral set of search results. Neutral search results are where personalization and search history is not a factor in rankings – ie you must log out of Google and delete all cookies, close, reopen. Keywords are single or multiple words which are being targeted on page on the website being measured. To measure this, a neutral tool like Advanced Web Ranking which is able to gather non-personalised results. Failing the use of a tool, in Internet Explorer delete all cookies and history, close and reopen the browser and search for the term. This must be done prior to each search and if possible, a country-specific anonymiser should be used. Record that date this measurement was taken and link to the measured data.

These measurements, once you know what you are doing and have an action plan of execution, will help you see whether the changes are having an effect. Don’t worry if some changes take longer to show a difference – it can take up to 3 months for changes to be picked up by search engines.

For too many people for too long, SEO has seemed like occult sciences. Part research, part technical, part magic, search, and specifically SEO, has seemed something you had to trust someone else to do. Understanding more about how search works means not only being able to ensure it is executed in-house properly, it also means a better working relationship between you and your agency if you utilise one.

Setting up a search strategy may seem impossible if you come from a point of not understanding even the fundamentals of search, but information about the core of SEO – those elements which are most important to ranking – are published and freely available. What regrettably isn’t free is the expertise that comes from years of executing those theories.

To create and execute a search strategy, whether with an agency or in-house you’ll need an internal champion (not the search professional but a senior team member), a set of realistic goals, an understanding of keyword targets, the pages those keywords are associated with, a benchmark for everything – including search results and a gameplan for ownership of as much of the search results for your chosen keywords as possible.

The most important starting point is going to be identifying and establishing an internal search champion. Whether you get your search solution delivered in-house by a team or by an agency externally, there needs to be someone internal to your organisation who will bang the drum of optimisation, visibility and search awareness. Your champion can also manage the agency relationship or keep the internal team up to date with what is happening around the business to ensure everything stays co-ordinated. Lack of an internal champion (or champions) can doom even the best search strategy to failure as without that drive to keep everyone search-aware, it is easy to slip.

Once identified, everyone needs to understand what the goals are. These targets need to be realistic, relevant, achievable, and specific. There are a number of common criteria which can be measured provided the correct tools are in place. Measurements that go beyond followers, likes and fans are useful as they take the focus away from popularity measures and into measures of things which could increase ROI more directly.

The below SEO ROI measurements can be used with different types of businesses: Visits from Organic Search Results – Measuring the number of visits in to site purely from organic search result; Number of Visitors from natural search Per Keyword; Conversions on Organic Traffic; Rankings for Keywords.

Create a list of what you know needs to happen then establish an order in which they can be done as well as what has to happen first. They key elements of ensuring your site is on target are: Keyword research, technical audit & fixes, content audit and optimisation, link building, link bait & non-local content, social engagement.

One of the most difficult and time-consuming things to do, but the one thing which will last longest, is the keyword research. A well executed keyword research piece will last years. This can also be used to map the non-branded keywords chosen to appropriate landing pages. This mapping not only ensures the focus for the page is always clear, it is used in link building. Once benchmarking and the keywords and mapping has been done, other work such as technical audits, gap analysis and optimisation can happen. Keyword research is foundational.

As a search and social media “expert” (boy did I fool them!), I speak at a number of conferences through the year. I talk about the techniques behind ranking well but I rarely speak about the fundamentals and with the changes in Google’s algorithm this is more important than ever. Starting from a solid foundation will mean the difference between ranking well and failing. Starting with a solid foundation and following all the rules means you are also less likely to get hit by negative algorithm updates.

Businesses are experiencing increases in online transactions and more than ever, consumers are using search to drive both online and offline purchasing. Here are some tips about what you could do to help:

Have a strategy and a set of goals to ensure you understand what targets you are aiming for. It may seem overly basic but I have encountered countless businesses who have demanded a social media or search strategy without knowing themselves what success would look like. If your business has a target of being on Twitter, understand how it works and what the point of being there is for you. I can recount dozens of disaster stories for businesses on Twitter and speak about them as well.

Once you have a strategy and have mapped out the goals for a year (yes, 12 months. less is pointless unless we’re talking PPC) and understand what success looks like, map out the steps you are taking to get there and understand the time scales involved. Once you have optimised a website it can take up to three months to get those changes picked up in search. While we do have techniques in the industry to speed that up, misusing those techniques will get a site banned. Get a specialist in where necessary to map things out and deploy a task force of staff who will deliver the work needed to make sure your search or social media strategy can achieve success.

Do not treat social media sites as campaign platforms. Launching strongly in Facebook or on Twitter is fantastic but a long-term strategy is needed for these platforms unlike with a paid search campaign. Once a campaign has ended, if the Facebook page remains live it can become littered with spam and customer complaints. Failing to address these complaints can cause a long-lasting reputation issue that can cause customers to turn away.

Map out everything including keywords to pages, links that exist going to your site and your competitor’s site, your social media profile, the average competitors’ social media profile and your publishing table for the year ahead. Doing this will make search and social media campaigns much more successful. Failing to do this will mean you are not only left behind but a hap-hazard approach to publishing content may leave you with a gap at key holiday times. Failing to understand what most of your competitors are doing in the social media space can lead to unpleasant surprises and a perception of being ‘old fashioned’ or ‘behind the times’. Failing to map keywords to pages will leave both your SEO and PPC strategies lacking and your link building strategy will suffer for it as will rankings.

By starting with the basics now and mapping everything out for the next 12 months, not only will this help your site rank better but also help your link building go more smoothly, your content be seen by more people and your sales increase. Trying to make fast SEO changes risks disaster to make sure your plan covers a full 12 months.

SEO or search engine optimisation is the act of altering certain key aspects of a page to help the various search engines understand what the page is about and rank it accordingly.  Each page needs to have a specific focus and there are various elements on each page which need to be fine-tuned in order to ensure the web page is found, and ranks well, for specific search queries.

Some companies feel that this is a one-time job and once done, it should last forever.  There are several reasons why this is not true and why as a business, you need to ensure you are keeping up with the changes your site undergoes.

The algorithm Google uses changes daily in little ways but frequently in big ways.  All search engines running their own algorithm (Ask, Yahoo, Bing and Google) change the way they calculate rank associated with keywords to combat spammers.  This means that a sudden dip in orders or visits may not be due to seasonality, but in fact a shift in where your site ranks for its desired keywords.  There are programs to help monitor ranking on keywords both free and paid for.  When changes happen, being immediately aware will help you recover more quickly and save thousands in lost sales.

The delicate balance that is maintained by the search engines regarding ranking relies on several factors.  For a number of years, one of the factors with most importance has been incoming links and their anchor text.  The act of “Google bombing” was when numerous links with specific anchor text were pointed at a page, and that page ranked for the anchor text.  One famous example is the White House ranking for “miserable failure”. Since this exploit was discovered, the value of links has been steadily diminishing.  If your site suddenly stops ranking for a specific term, it could be due to changes to the way links are handled.

Search engines often reward freshness and so keeping your website content fresh and constantly changing could benefit your rankings.  These changes need to be carefully managed and should be overseen by an expert.  Simply adding content is not enough.  The content needs to be targeted, with proper optimisation.  Adding the wrong content in the wrong way could harm your rankings.

Mistakes are sometimes made when changes are rolled out and it can often take an expert significant time to fix the mistake of mere seconds. This can affect rankings and depending on the frequency of your site being spidered, the damage could last months.  Monitoring ranking is essential whether through searching manually, or using a software package.

There are several things you can do without incurring significant costs to your business to monitor your site and be alerted when more SEO is needed.  For a roadmap of necessary changes, it can be beneficial to invest in a technical site audit however these can cost thousands.  They will often supply a roadmap of required changes as well as a severity ranking and guidance on what and how to make changes in the future.  For the long term, these are a solid investment.

Register your site in Google’s Webmaster Tools.  If you receive a penalty or if Google has a problem with your site, this is where they will leave a message for you.  It is free to register and validate your site and the interface is relatively simple.  Once your site is validated, Google offers helpful pointers to dead/missing pages, problems it encountered or other issues.

Check your web analytics at least once a week.  Ideally you should be spending an hour a day with your web analytics to assist with the understanding of flow, conversions, bounce and related information.  Your web analytics may be where you first discover a problem.  Google offers an excellent free web analytics package.

Read, if possible, publications available free online which communicate important news and information about search engine changes.  As an example, a recent article alerted readers to a possible change to Google’s search results that may include “favicons”.  These images, seen when bookmarking or surfing to a site, can be made for free.  If search result pages include them, it could have significant impact on click through rates in organic results.

Awareness of changes to traffic and associated ranking changes for targeted keywords can alert you to changes as they happen.  These changes still need to be countered by professional search engine optimisation experts however by monitoring and having a roadmap of necessary changes in a site audit, you will be better placed to keep your SEO, and your site, always at the top.

The other night I was at a fantastic event at La Cave au Fromage which I highly recommend for corporate events. Introductions were made, wine consumed and conversation flowed. We got on to the topic of Google and someone made the assertion that Google “steals the last click”. So knowing the affiliate market as I do, I countered with “and the first click and the middle click and really anywhere that people use a paid ad in their journey.”

The gentleman who was arguing that Google was taking credit for that last click countered that Google was trading off others hard work.  For example, he said, Renault work hard making an advert about their new Clio car only for Google to force them to use paid advertising and stealing money as people go to Google to get more information about the new car.  Thus, since Google is stealing money from business, they are making money only because other people do the hard work for them.   Google thus was some sort of leech, draining money without making any effort. Well, even leeches make a bit of an effort and took thousands of evolutionary years to arrive at where they are.

Back when I started doing this SEO malarkey, the world was a different place. I’d been online for 10 years and in the previous 2 had heard more and more reference to something called “mosaic” and something about pages. You could see things on these pages! Unfortunately as someone who used raw telnet on a light computer this just was not possible but the online world was magnificent even without images.

Very quickly things changed and Windows 3.51 entered in to my life and the world got graphical. Google wasn’t around in 1996 but plenty of others were and many evolved in to the space with aggregators like Web Ferret and Dogpile bringing us a wider selection of search results. It was through Dogpile that I remember Google standing out. The results included actual on page text – a revolution!

What followed was a slow growth stage, then a heavy branding and marketing phase and now when certain parts of the world talk about wanting to find something online, they talk about “Googling” it. This came after only substantial marketing and technology efforts and the work that Google put in to their product should not be lightly dismissed.

Google did not simply form itself out of whole cloth and land a finished entity which cost nothing to develop and deploy – there’s millions behind this endeavour. It is able to make millions from its advertising platform because of the combined brand awareness and human nature.

I’m the first to admit to a love/hate relationship with Google. I miss the old keyword-stuffing days when it was easy to rank for anything. I’ll also be the first to admit Google is an effective monopoly in the UK and I think something has to be done. That does not make Google thieves, leeches, or sponges. They worked to become dominant and while I hope it goes the way of IM or Microsoft, we are where we are at the moment.

Google is not stealing money – they are not trading on the back of someone else’s hard work.  They are a dominant brand like Coca-Cola, Marlboro, and others.  Make the most of traffic they drive to your page by whatever route and get that conversion first time. Don’t blame Google for managing to win in a sector, learn to utilise them as a tool.

(rant over!)

It’s no secret that the SEO industry is full of stunning women. No, Jane and Lisa didn’t pay me to write that but I’d be happy to accept payment, if they insist. KeyRelevance‘s Christine Churchill, however, takes it to a new level. Obviously being a supermodel simply didn’t interest her. At the risk of gushing like a 14 year old boy, this woman is an absolute goddess. In our wonderful email conversations and during the unfortunately brief time we had to chat at LondonSEO, I discovered that pedestals were created especially for women like this.

Without further embarrassing nonsense on my part, I give you the lovely Christine Churchill, who was kind enough to let me interview her, something that made me giggle with glee.

KeyRelevance's Christine Churchill

Q: You have an utterly frighteningly impressive background, speaking at conferences, moderating forums, writing for industry publications, serving on boards and industry associations, running companies…I could go on and on, as anyone who reads this blog knows. However, what I find most striking about you is that with all these prolific contributions to online marketing and SEO, you continue to do interesting things. How do you keep yourself wanting to stay so involved?

Thank you for the kind words Julie.  I’m afraid my accomplishments are quite humble compared to many others in this industry, but I love search, so it feels natural to me to stay involved.   That said, there are a few things that motivate me and keep me excited about search.  I love how search continually morphs and evolves.  The SEO of today is different and better than the SEO of the 90s.

I also like the variety of working with different clients.  Online marketing is an industry that every business can benefit from.  Over the years I have had the honor to work in a variety of verticals and with a variety of niches including cruise lines and hotels, steel foundries, schools, ecommerce sites, security companies, babies to brides, software companies, service companies, etc.  I’ve worked with sole proprietorships, partnerships, and large publicly traded companies.  I’ve worked on nationally focused and locally focused companies.  This variety is an important part of what keeps the work fresh and interesting.  It is still fun for me to get involved with a company and help them to figure out what they need and how KeyRelevance can help them to solve their problems and achieve their goals.  My company is small, and I like it that way: I want to stay “hands-on” with my clients and not just be a figurehead.  That hands-on involvement as a part of their team is what keeps things “alive” for me.

If your day SEO work doesn’t give you exposure to a variety of niches, something you can do on your own time to help renew your love of search is to apply the knowledge to work on hobby and personal interests sites.  I would encourage any SEO to have a few fun sites.  Playing on these sites allows the SEO to hone skills, try out new ideas, and explore the changing landscape of the search engines.

Finally, I would have to say that one of the biggest ways I have found to keep search “fresh” is to find ways to use search skills to “give back.”  I still believe in that old saying “the more you give, the more you get in return.”   For me, I have found that getting involved with local non-profit and other local grassroots groups gives me a new energy and a positive intangible feeling.   Almost every organization wants a strong web presence and they rarely know how to go about achieving it.  When you offer search skills; it’s usually very welcomed.

I like to get involved with activities that overlap in my personal interests.  For example, I am an avid horse person and love children and the environment.  I didn’t have to look very far to find local organizations needing talent.   I’ve donated time to my local school district, a therapeutic horse riding school, and a local conservation organization.  In fact, I am on the Board of Directors of the local non-profit conservation group right now.   There is nothing like having to work on a shoestring budget to challenge your creative skills.  It will revitalize you, improve your skills, and remind you that search can be fun.  Isn’t that the reason we all got into search in the first place?

Q: Have you had instances where you felt that you weren’t taken as seriously as you would have been if you’d been a man? Strong women aren’t always 100% welcomed, sadly.

I grew up with four brothers who thought of me as their punk little sister, so I learned early in life how a woman often has to work twice as hard to be taken seriously.  The good news is that the Internet is a great equalizer.  It is new technology, and with the World Wide Web being around for less than 15 years, I think it has avoided some of the good-ol’-boys stigmatism that exists in other established industries.

I also feel that the generational difference in the WWW-era companies has helped women.  Younger generations are often very accepting of women as equals.  We do still see some problems when the SEO companies have to speak to old-school bricks-and-mortar companies and their sometimes entrenched philosophies, but overall I think women in search are taken very seriously.

If you can show positive results, it doesn’t matter what your gender is, you’ll be taken seriously.  One of my favorite tag lines belongs to my dear friend and SEO super star Rae Hoffman.  Rae is one of the most amazing and inspiring people I know, on or off the web.  Rae’s tag line sums up the essence of the strong capable woman who can hold her own in any world.  It reads “never mess with a woman who can pull rank.”  I still smile every time I read it.

Q: How do you like being a Ninja?

<Laughs>Well, it is always nice to be recognized.  When my daughter found out I was an Internet Marketing Ninja, she wanted to know if I was going to get one of those cool ninja uniforms.  So, Jim Boykin, if you read this, I’m still waiting for my ninja outfit to arrive.  Oh and Jim, I need it in Tall. 

Q: You’ve taught SEO classes before. You’ve probably also worked with people who haven’t been schooled in SEO. Do you think that SEO is something that can be learned, or do you think that you also need to possess an innate ability to do it well?

The old nature versus nurture question applied to SEO.    Taking a training course in basic SEO techniques and thinking that’s all you need to be successful in your new career, is akin to someone handing you the first ingredient in an award winning recipe and not telling you the amounts, the other ingredients, nor the techniques needed.  SEO, by itself,  is not rocket science and while there are a number of basic tenets that should be followed for all sites, there are many other essential ingredients that you need in the mix to cook up the tastiest dish.  Basic SEO tenets can be taught pretty easily, but there is definitely an art to the process and a finesse that takes time and experience to develop.

Here’s the essence of the problem.  You cannot simply and blindly follow formulas (X% Keyword density, Y # of out bound links per page, etc.) to make SEO work.  SEOs that follow this mechanical technical approach will get limited results.  Those techniques might have worked in 1999 when SEO was more formulaic, but today the SEO needs to be a marketer – they need to think bigger picture and more holistically.

Today you obviously still need to know the technical mechanics of optimization, but to be really successful you need to have many skill sets.  To stay successful in online marketing you have to keep pushing yourself out of your comfort zone to force yourself to learn new techniques and expand your abilities.  If you’re not actively out there developing new skills, you’ll wilt on the vine.  This drive to excel requires passion….it’s a characteristic I’ve seen in all successful search marketers.  Those who don’t have passion don’t stay in the industry long.

In addition to having a passion for search, there are some important skills sets that a good SEO needs to acquire.  First, an SEO needs to know HTML code.  You don’t necessarily have to be a coder, but  I would encourage anyone coming into the industry to at least learn a smattering of basic HTML….if they can’t do that, they will always be limited in how far they can go with SEO.  You need to be able to at least look at code because you need to be able to see a page as a search engine sees it.

Something else a good SEO needs to develop is persuasive copywriting skills.   Again, you don’t have to be Pulitzer Prize-caliber writer, but learning how to write for the web is a conscious effort that pays off many times more than the effort required to learn it.   Writing is something that improves the more you practice.

Another skill set a good marketer should acquire is a solid grounding in usability – the ability to know what makes a site easier to use.  There is strong synergy between SEO and usability.  The very things you do to make a web site easier for the user, is often the same things you do to make it easier for the search engines to crawl the site.   Visitors are like a search engine spider – if they don’t see an easy way to navigate and extract information from your site, they leave.  Having a good understanding for what makes a site usable and convert requires knowledge in motivational and behavioral psychology.  We are all complex beings motivated by different needs.  Identifying what a visitor needs and wants is the first step in satisfying them.  This is one of the reasons I’m a big advocate for live user testing.  I love data to identify a problem area on a web site, but there is nothing as effective as feedback straight from a user to tell you the “why” behind a problem.

A practical skill a good SEO should cultivate is the ability to see creative ways to get links.  Because the engines weigh linkage data so heavily in their ranking algorithms, linking is an essential ingredient for online success and being able to locate and secure topical links from high quality sites is a requirement.

Finally, a good SEO needs to be an expert in analytics.  This is where the SEO gets their feedback.  It’s the report card that tells the SEO whether the campaign worked or didn’t.  Analytics guide the search marketer on which direction to take.  It provides the search marketer the information they need to make good marketing decisions.

I hope my comments don’t make someone new to the industry feel overwhelmed.  What I’m really saying is that the basic SEO training is like learning the alphabet.  You grow and learn the power of words after you master the alphabet.  SEO training will help, but it by itself will only take you so far: you also need the passion and drive to keep pushing yourself to be a lifelong learner.

The appeal of search marketing is that it is complex and meshes together many disciplines.  My advice to anyone entering the industry is this:  fall in love with search, and let that passion ignite a fire inside you that will motivate you to commit to yourself to continually learn and grow.   If you take the learning in digestible pieces, it’s not overwhelming.  And this continual need to learn more has a great side effect – it will make the industry fascinating and will keep you engaged for years to come.

Q: How do you feel about the current trend of loads of people going to conferences but not actually attending them, only going for the networking aspect? How important IS networking to you?

From what I’ve observed, there are four main reasons people attend conferences:  1) advertising (on the part of vendors), 2) training (for those new to SEO or looking to expand/update their breadth and depth of knowledge, 3) renewing/maintaining friendships/business relationships, and 4) making new contacts/networking.  Most attendees have two or more of these reasons in mind when attending the conferences.

The search landscape is always changing (look at universal search, PPC changes, the emergence of social media, etc.), so keeping in touch with the changes in the landscape is important.  Personally I feel conferences are the best professional development opportunities we have.  Due to the rapid changes in the search industry, it is VERY difficult to stay current on your own.  Conferences are one way to be immersed in all the changes all at once.   Even if you work full time in this industry, you can’t keep up to speed with all the massive changes that occur on a regular basis in this industry, but conferences can at least alert you to the most important changes and give you the opportunity to talk directly with the people instrumental to the changes.  From my perspective, the benefits derived from conferences outweigh any monetary costs associated with them.

You asked specifically about how important is networking to me.  I’d say it ranks fairly high for me.  Online marketing today requires you to often reach beyond your own agency.  The conferences are opportunities to meet face to face and develop new friendships or explore new working relationships.  I’ve partnered on different contracts with a large number of people and companies over the years.   And with the growth of social media, I think the need to maintain and expand our networks has grown, so I see the networking role of conferences growing in the future.

Q: What voids need to be filled in the industry? Some people want women-only conferences, or blackhat conferences; some people think that we need a set of industry standards, or professional certifications. What do you see as being the next big steps that we take as a group?

I’d have to better understand what you mean by a women only conference.  I wouldn’t want to be part of a conference that excludes anyone.  A conference that excludes men is just as sexist as one that only allows men.

That said, I am in favor of woman-focused conferences that focus on women related subjects so long as the conferences allow men.  Women are nurturers and often only another woman can understand the struggles another woman is facing.  Women often get societal and familial pressures that aren’t exerted on men.  There is a sisterhood of support that often develops between women as a result.  I know other women have helped me along the way and I’m happy to help other women as well.

You asked about industry standards and certifications.  Most professions have standards to maintain quality and to control entrance into a profession.  At some point I do see the search industry moving to standards, but currently I have some heartburn with many of the certification programs I’ve seen.  With the exception of Google’s professional certification which offers a free Learning Center, most certification programs require you to sign up for an expensive training program before you can take the certification test.  If I were a cynical person I might say a certification program that first required you to pay for expensive  training gives the perception of a money making scam.  I think you should be able to take the test without having to buy the training program.  This would take experience and prior knowledge into account.    I think for someone new in the industry who doesn’t have years of experience that getting certified is one way to show that you have some knowledge of SEO.  However I have to say, years experience and past SEO success rate are a better metric for future SEO success than a certification paper any day.

Q: How have things changed for you over the past 10 years? I’ve only been doing SEO for 5 years and the changes have been dramatic. Has it gotten more difficult? Or have things become more interesting?

Nothing remains so constant as change.  Since I became involved in SEO back in the mid 90s, there have been tremendous changes.  I’ve seen engines come and go in importance.   AltaVista, Lycos, and Netscape were the big targets back then.   Google didn’t even exist back then, except perhaps in the minds of Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Over the years, the changes have fortunately been more evolutionary than revolutionary.  For those of us who have been in the industry awhile have been able to learn gradually and adapt to those changes.   I think the width and depth required for a new person coming into the industry can be intimidating.  Their learning curve is certainly larger than ours, but still very achievable.  I think my earlier comments about SEO training as a starting point express my philosophy on how someone entering the industry should approach it.  I am in the camp where if you’re going to do something – do it the best you can.  And it’s easier to do your best if you love what you’re doing.  So cultivate a love for search.  It has to be more than a job.  Embrace it with unabashed passion and you’ll go far.

Q: How do you feel about social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter? Useful, or timewasters?

I have mixed feelings on social media.  I like connecting with my friends via the social sites, but I’m a very private person, I am not one to twitter about what I ate for breakfast.  The internet has made us all live hybrid existences – there is a blurring of our online and offline selves.  This brings with it a bit of a danger.  Sometimes we reveal more than we should online – so there may be privacy issues at risk.  Also, and blame my years of working in corporate America for this, but I think professional image can be tarnished by the informality that people adopt on social sites.   People need to stop a minute and think more about what they are transmitting on the live web.  Sure you’re friends are reading your online rant, but so are your clients, competitors, potential investors and others…..  I think if people slowed down and proof read their post before pressing enter, it might save them some embarrassment and heart ache.

On the positive side, social media is a valuable way to communicate and open a dialog with your customer base.  The breath of social media and the ease of using it make it an effective way to get direct feedback from users and to learn what users want – so from a marketing perspective it is a powerful tool.  That back and forth exchange of information also makes social media a great way for companies to let their target audience know about what the company is doing and about new products or services it might be offering.  So, from this relationship building point of view I’m very pro social media.

Q: Lastly, what are your hopes for women in this field? How can we continue to gain the respect we deserve without it being a women’s issue?

I am optimistic about women in search.  Because it’s a new profession, you don’t have the long-time glass ceilings you have in other industries.  The skill sets required for search are in high demand, so companies are vying to hire and keep search skills.  They don’t care the gender; they want to attract the best talent.

I think search offers a special appeal for women.   Because you can do a lot of search related work over the Internet, all you need are the skills and an Internet connection.  I think for women juggling the demands of a family and a job, the ability to work from home holds extra attraction.  I originally started KeyRelevance so I could be at home when my daughter arrived from school.   I had worked in the corporate world for years and was tired of the long commute each day – I couldn’t find a job that allowed me to work from home, so I created one.

The Internet has changed the work environment.  Twitter and IM are the online equivalents of the watercooler.   I think for people with a strong work ethic and who can work independently, working from home is ideal.  That is a plus for both men and women.  Many people who work from home tell me they are more productive at home and really enjoy the benefits.   So as long as people work hard and do their job, I see the work at home option growing for both genders.

Note from Julie: I’m including this last bit so that it’s on record and I can refer to it whenever I am having a bad day…

Julie, it was a pleasure talking with you today.  I’m honored that you deemed me worth interviewing.   I’m also glad I had the opportunity to meet you in person at SMX London.  I will attest that your warm personality is as delightful in person as it comes across in your writing.  I hope to visit with you again very soon.

…but what can I do? Besides look to The Clash for inspiration, I mean.

Miss Judith recently berated the rest of the Chicks for not writing much…well, she did it quite nicely, I hasten to add. Still, it really made me think about why I haven’t been writing lately, and the reason is simple: I’m bored out of my freaking mind right now.

There is definitely a lot going on with the industry, but so much of what is out there for our consumption deals with personal issues. This person doesn’t like THIS one, this idiot thinks another idiot was rude, this asshole thinks that someone was wrong to criticise him or her for making a truly stupid analogy, etc. Several of my good friends, people that I have the utmost respect for (plus Rob Kerry, ha!), have taken a LOT of heat over things ranging from speaking their mind, nicely of course, to trying to do the right thing and prevent Sphinn from becoming even more of a suburban high school drama. If you like gossip and silly antics, you’re probably happy right now. If you actually give a damn about anything else, good luck finding much about it.

As much as people like to talk about how meaningful things other than link development are, from what I see, not much else truly means all that much. Since I own a link development firm, talking about it in this blog doesn’t really interest me…I LIVE it. Otherwise, what’s left? The newest search engine that MAY compete with Google? Whether Yahoo and MSN will merge? How to prevent people from snooping on your site? Yet ANOTHER piece about how to properly code a robots.txt file? You can see where I’m going…Boredom City. Consequently, I am struggling to write these days. There is simply nothing that I haven’t said, or that another SEO Chick hasn’t said, or that one of you hasn’t said. There are so many bloggers out there blogging about the same things right now. You can read 10 different opinions on one tiny little tidbit, all written within an hour of each other. While it’s nice to read differing voices, sometimes it becomes a bit difficult to actually want to add to the noise.

I’m not bored with what I DO every day, actually, nor am I bored with the industry in general. I am simply bored with writing about it, because the online space is becoming incredibly cluttered with people who seem to know absolutely nothing about anything; they just want to create disturbance. They harass people in comments, they trash everyone who says anything of any value, and they attract like-minded followers who, in turn, attract their attention and they feed off each other. Instead of joining in, I’d rather focus on making sure my company makes a profit, and that my clients get what they pay for. I’d rather watch Father Ted DVDs and order broccoli and tomato pizza. I’d rather watch “Control” again (spoiler alert! Ian Curtis DIES at the end!!) even though it makes me cry and I become depressed for days, spending money on a variety of crap that I don’t need, and eating lots of chocolate doughnuts. I’d rather talk to Flora and Tw@ and make rude comments about Liza’s Facebook photos. Those activities, however, don’t make for good blog fodder. Well, the conversations with Flora and Tw@ would but I don’t want to incur the wrath of all the people we constantly talk trash about so…

Take a look at the current (as of this writing, obviously, I mean) headline stats on Sphinn: 8 on the front page are about social media in one form or another, whether it’s fake profiles or Digg; 3 are about Cuil; 4 are pieces dealing with numbers of either “this many experts say x” or “this many reasons to do or not to do y”; and the rest are all variations on themes we see all the time like new Firefox extensions or what’s wrong with WordPress. Honestly, I understand that there are many people just starting out in the industry, but how many ultimate guides to SEO do we truly need? We’re also seeing tons of recaps of various conferences, further reducing the desire of many people to actually attend these once enormously popular events. Now, it could be argued that Sphinn isn’t representative of what’s going on in the industry, and as much as I would like to believe that that is indeed true, I really don’t, sadly. BO-ring.

So, until there’s a major Google Dance or people start going to federal prison for buying links, I really don’t have all that much to say unless anyone is interested in which bands I’m going to see this summer. I’ll continue to discuss anything interesting with the people I trust on IM or Facebook, or make prank phone calls.