by Stoney deGeyter Much like life, websites have to adapt over time. When they don’t, they risk becoming stagnant, outdated, stale, and boring. As times change, so should your content. Content that was once relevant becomes irrelevant or in need of an update, old products get dumped in favor of new products, and data becomes outdated and needs to be replaced. There are any number of reasons why content needs to be changed, freshened up, or removed altogether. But rarely, if ever, do you want to throw the baby out with the bath water. Something can usually be salvaged. Previously valuable content can be made valuable again. Here are four ways you can keep good content alive, even when it’s old. Keep content up to date Keeping your content up-to-date may sound like a simple task; but, the larger the site, the more difficult it is. Sites with hundreds or thousands of pages often have a lot of little hidden gems that can easily become stale or irrelevant. Over time, you see products and services change. A simple reference to an old pricing structure or outdated way of doing things can really throw a wrench in the works for the reader. Conflicts and contradictions breed mistrust. Failing to find and correct these nuggets will send your readers a message that perhaps you are stale and irrelevant as well. So, spending time on a regular basis, perhaps yearly, reviewing all your editorial content and brushing it up to keep it current is an important item to put on your task list. Redirect deleted pages Pages on websites often get moved or deleted over time. Perhaps you are restructuring your information architecture, removing services that you no longer offer, or deleting tutorials that have become obsolete. Just because this content is considered old, doesn’t mean that it can’t still work for you. Simply adding “301 redirects” or a building a custom “404″ page can capture that traffic and send them to other areas of your site. This allows them to stick around long enough to see if you still have something that will meet their needs, even though you no longer have exactly what they want. Adding redirects allows you to keep visitors on your site if they have arrived, say, from a bookmarked page or an old page in the search results. Instead of losing those visitors, this gives you the opportunity to keep them engaged with your site, with the possibility of attracting them to your other excellent content. Repurpose old content Blogs are a great place to re-purpose old content and provide an updated spin on it. If you’re running out of ideas for what to publish on your blog, you can go back several years in your archive and find old topics and discussions for which you can provide a new take. Blog back history can give you a wealth of topics that you can pull from to create fresh, new content for your readers. Another way to re-purpose old content is by removing excessive content from your site and moving it over to your blog. This can be necessary after years of site content build-up. This happens when you keep adding content to your site and it becomes so bloated that your readers end up spending too much time working through your site instead of being moved through the conversion process. A couple months back, I worked on the Information Architecture for a client, and they had this very problem. We were able to take dozens of pages of content and move it off of their main site onto their blog. The content was good, but it was excessive. This hindered the conversion process, making the site both convoluted and confusing at the same time. By moving this stuff to the blog, the main site was better able to do the job of selling and the blog became the avenue of informing readers. Link to historical pages Content, especially blog content, often gets buried after months and years of time passing. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the content isn’t valuable or even needs to be re-written. What you can do is write new content that links to this valuable content that was written long ago. You’re giving your readers something fresh, while linking to something historical, that you can use to make your point or provide more detailed information for the reader to peruse at their leisure. Take advantage of any area of content that allows you to link to another page that provides more information. The web isn’t a brochure, it’s more like a choose-your-own-adventure novel. That historical content can be a goldmine of information, provided you’re giving your new readers a way to access it. Good content never has to die. If you’re treating it right, it never will. New people are coming to your site every day. These people have not had the benefit of reading all your past or historical stuff. No need to let it go to waste. Instead, keep it alive… and keep it working for you. This post was inspired from The Princess Bride themed presentation I gave in early 2010 at SEMpdx’s Searchfest titled Inconceivable Content: The Dread Pirate Robert’s Guide to Creating Swashbuckling Content, Pillaging the Search Engines, and Commandeering a Treasure Trove of Conversions . If you enjoyed this post you also might enjoy other posts inspired from the same. Search for “inconceivable content” on this blog to find them all. Be sure and visit our small business news site.

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Don’t Let Good Content Die - 4 Ways to Keep It Alive

Does the thought of selling fill you with dread? If you see yourself as a technologist, or marketer, then selling may not come easy to you. But we all need to sell something, even if it is just our opinion! If you’re a consultant of any description, it comes with the territory. So it pays to know a few techniques. Luckily, sales isn’t something you have to be born to do - it does not require supernatural charm, charisma, a hide as thick as an elephant, and a superhuman drive. Selling can be like a doctors consultation. A Visit To The Doctor When you go to the doctor, do you expect the doctor to just guess what is wrong with you? A doctors consultation involves the doctor asking you a series of questions. This questioning is to help determine what the problem is, and how it can best be solved. At the end of the process, the feeling is probably one of relief and assurance i.e. that the doctor has your best interests at heart, and will cure what ails you. It’s the same in business. Any client you encounter has a problem. Like a specialist doctor, it is your job to ask a series of questions to help nail down the problem and find a solution. The very act of questioning - known as consultative selling - helps build trust and rapport with the client in the same way you may experience with a doctor. This works especially well in the field of consulting, which is based on information sharing. The emphasis is on clients needs, as opposed to getting a signature on the dotted line. You first establish a client’s needs, then you provide a solution, if you have one. You’re building a relationship, based on trust, by asking a series of questions. Not so hard, really. The Mechanics Of Consultative Selling Ok, so how do you do it? First, you need to understand the buyers buying process. You then match your selling process to their buy process. All buyers go through a specific process. For example, if a company needs internet marketing services, do they go to their established provider - possibly the web design company who built their site - or do they go direct to the SEO market? Do they attend conferences? If so, which ones? Hint: they may not be SEO conferences. Do they ask other business people in their business network? Do they go with a known brand? It’s pretty simple to determine the buying process if the buyer comes straight to your website, fills out the contact form, and requests a call-back. But life often doesn’t work that way. A prospective client may ask their web design company. Their web design company may not have had a clue, had you not been in to see them a week earlier. You asked the web design people a few questions about whether they had an SEO capability in house, found out they didn’t, and found out they had a lot of clients who quite possibly needed SEO. You proposed a joint deal whereas they would refer their clients to you, for a 10% commission. Try to find out how your prospective clients buy SEO services, and position yourself accordingly. Think business associations and clubs, their existing providers in related areas, and the other companies they have an association with. You need to get yourself positioned correctly in their buying process. If you’ve managed to get in front of them, you then need to think about the questions you are going to ask. You should be asking about their business, where they see it going, what problems they are having, their place in the market, and their competitors. Business owners typically like doing this, and will welcome your interest, so long as you’re seen as a “doctor” i.e someone they trust to help. You’ll also need to make a presentation, which, depending on the context, need not be formal. It could consist of showing them case studies of how you’ve helped solve this problem before. Let’s face it, most SEO/SEM problems and solutions are going to look pretty much the same. It’s all about trust relationships. It’s a fact of life that people buy more readily from people they trust. But how do you know if you can trust your prospective buyer? Screening Buyers Consultative selling is also a great way to screen out tire kickers. A person who is just pumping you for information will reveal very little about themselves. The conversation will be one sided. If they are genuinely interested in your service, they are more likely to answer questions. They do have to trust you first in order to do this, so try to think like a doctor if you encounter resistance. i.e. “I want to help you get more traffic, but I can’t do so if I don’t know more about your business before I can devise an appropriate solution”. Be prepared to walk if they don’t volunteer the information you need. Even if you did land the job, you may end providing a substandard solution to their problem, which will likely end in tears. Better to find clients who you can work with, rather than against. Another method of screening is to pre-close the sale. When you are gathering needs, ask that if you can solve their problems to their complete satisfaction, as a result of this discussion, that they will buy your services. This will sound to them like a fairly safe bet i.e. you have to propose something that solves their problem. However, it also creates an implied obligation on their part to do so. There is no risk on your side, as you can either solve the problem, in which case you’ll likely get the business, or you can’t, in which case you’ll walk anyway. If they are hesitant, it is either an opportunity to walk, and thus stop wasting your time, or an opportunity to find out something more about their buying process. In short, when thinking about sales: You are not a salesperson. You are a “doctor” Focus on the needs of the client, not landing the job. Sale hucksters typically focus on the close too soon, which can destroy trust It’s ok to walk away. You won’t be able to help some clients Insist that the client engage in conversation. A client who asks you questions, and volunteers little information, might be pumping you for information These consultative sales techniques are covered in various sales theory books. Check out ” Consultative Selling “, by Mack Hanan, Jay Abrams ” The Sticking Point Solution “, and ” Stop Telling, Start Selling: How to Use Customer-Focused Dialogue to Close Sales ” by Linda Richardson.

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Selling SEO Services: A Consultative Approach

Alexa , a free and well-known website information tool, recently released a paid service. For $199 per site Alexa will audit your site (up to 10,000 pages) and return a variety of different on-page reports relating to your SEO efforts. It has a few off-page data points but it focuses mostly on your on-page optimization. You can access Alexa’s Site Audit Report here: http://www.alexa.com/siteaudit Report Sections Alexa’s Site Audit Report breaks the information down into 6 different sections (some which have additional sub-sections as well) Overview Crawl Coverage Reputation Page Optimization Keywords Stats The sections break down as follows: So we ran Seobook.com through the tool to test it out Generally these reports take about a day or two, ours had some type of processing error so it took about a week. Overview The first section you’ll see is the number of pages crawled, followed by 3 “critical” aspects of the site (Crawl Coverage, Reputation, and Page Optimization). All three have their own report sections as well. Looks like we got an 88. Excuse me, but shouldn’t that be a B+? So it looks like we did just fine on Crawl Coverage and Reputation, but have some work to do with Page Optimization. The next section on the overview page is 5 recommendations on how to improve your site, with links to those specific report sections as well. At the bottom you can scroll to the next page or use the side navigation. We’ll investigate these report sections individually but I think the overview page is helpful in getting a high-level overview of what’s going on with the site. Crawl Coverage This measures the “crawl-ability” of the site, internal links, your robots.txt file, as well as any redirects or server errors. Reachability The Reachability report shows you a break down of what HTML pages were easy to reach versus which ones were not so easy to each. Essentially for our site, the break down is: Easy to find - 4 or less links a crawler must follow to get to a page Hard to find - more than 4 links a crawler must follow to get to a page The calculation is based on the following method used by Alexa in determining the path length specific to your site: Our calculation of the optimal path length is based on the total number of pages on your site and a consideration of the number of clicks required to reach each page. Because optimally available sites tend to have a fan-out factor of at least ten unique links per page, our calculation is based on that model. When your site falls short of that minimum fan-out factor, crawlers will be less likely to index all of the pages on your site. A neat feature in this report is the ability to download your URL’s + the number of links the crawler had to follow to find the page in a .CSV format. This is a useful feature for mid-large scale sites. You can get a decent handle on some internal linking issues you may have which could be affecting how relevant a search engine feels a particular page might be. Also, this report can spot some weaknesses in your site’s linking architecture from a usability standpoint. On-Site Links While getting external links from unique domains is typically a stronger component to ranking a site it is important to have a strong internal linking plan as well. Internal links are important in a few ways: The only links where you can 100% control the anchor text (outside of your own sites of course, or sites owned by your friends) They can help you flow link equity to pages on your site that need an extra bit of juice to rank Users will appreciate a logical, clear internal navigation structure and you can use internal linking to get them to where you want them to go Alexa will show you your top linked to (from internal links) pages: You can also click the link to the right to expand and see the top ten pages that link to that page: So if you are having problems trying to rank some sub-pages for core keywords or long-tail keywords, you can check the internal link counts (and see the top 10 linked from pages) and see if something is amiss with respect to your internal linking structure for a particular page. Robots.txt Here you’ll see if you’ve restricted access to these search engine crawlers: ia_archiver (Alexa) googlebot (Google) teoma (Ask) msnbot (Bing slurp (Yahoo) baiduspider (Baidu) If you block out registration areas or other areas that are normally restricted, then the report will say that you are not blocking major crawlers but will show you the URL’s you are blocking under that part of the report. There is not much that is groundbreaking with Robots.Txt checks but it’s another part of a site that you should check when doing an SEO review so it is a helpful piece of information. Redirects We all know what happens when redirects go bad on a mid-large sized site This report will show you what percentage of your crawled pages are being redirected to other pages with temporary redirects. The thing with temporary redirects, like 302’s, is that unlike 301’s they do not pass any link juice so you should pay attention to this part of the report and see if any key pages are being redirected improperly. Server Errors This section of the report will show you any pages which have server errors. Making sure your server is handling errors correctly (such as a 404) is certainly worthy of your attention. Reputation The only part of this module is external links from authoritative sites and where your site ranks in conjunction with “similar sites” with respect to the number of sites linking to your sites and similar sites. Links from Top Sites The analysis is given based on the aforementioned forumla: Then you are shown a chart which correlates to your site and related sites (according to Alexa) plus the total links pointing at each site which places the sites in a specific percentile based on links and Alexa Rank. Since Alexa is heavily biased towards webmaster type sites based on their user base, these Alexa Rank’s are probably higher than they should be but it’s all relative since all sites are being judged on this measure. The Related Sites area is located below the chart: Followed by the Top Ranked sites linking to your site: I do not find this incredibly useful as a standalone measure of reputation. As mentioned, Alexa Rank can be off and I’d rather know where competing sites (and my site or sites) are ranking in terms of co-occurring keywords, unique domains linking, strength of the overall link profile, and so on as a measure of true relevance. It is, however, another data point you can use in conjunction with other tools and methods to get a broader idea of your site and related sites compare. Page Optimization Checking the on-page aspects of a mid-large sized site can be pretty time consuming. Our Website Health Check Tool covers some of the major components (like duplicate/missing title tags, duplicate/missing meta descriptions, canonical issues, error handling responses, and multiple index page issues) but this module does some other things too. Link Text The Link Text report shows a break down of your internal anchor text: Click on the pages link and see the top pages using that anchor text to link to a page (shows the page the text is on as well as the page it links too): The report is based on the pages it crawled so if you have a very large site or lots and lots of blog posts you might find this report lacking a bit in terms of breadth of coverage on your internal anchor text counts. Broken Links Checks broken links (internal and external) and groups them by page, which is an expandable option similar to the other reports: Xenu is more comprehensive as a standalone tool for this kind of report (and for some of their other link reports as well). Duplicate Content The Duplicate Content report groups all the pages that have the same content together and gives you some recommendations on things you can do to help with duplicate content like: Working with robots.txt How to use canonical tags Using HTTP headers to thwart duplicate content issues Here is how they group items together: Anything that can give you some decent insight into potential duplicate content issues (especially if you use a CMS) is a useful tool. Duplicate Meta Descriptions No duplicate meta descriptions here! Fairly self-explanatory and while a meta description isn’t incredibly powerful as standalone metric it does pay to make sure you have unique ones for your pages as every little bit helps! Duplicate Title Tags You’ll want to make sure you are using your title tags properly and not attacking the same keyword or keywords in multiple title tags on separate pages. Much like the other reports here, Alexa will group the duplicates together: They do not currently offer a missing title tag or missing meta description report which is unfortunate because those are worthwhile metrics to report on. Low Word Count Having a good amount of text on a page is good way to work in your core keywords as well as to help in ranking for longer tail keywords (which tend to drive lots of traffic to most sites). This report kicks out pages which have (in looking at the stats) less than 150 words or so on the page: There’s no real magic bullet for the amount of words you “should” have on a page. You want to have the right balance of word counts, images, and overall presentation components to make your site: Linkable Textually relevant for your core and related keywords Readable for humans Image Descriptions Continuing on with the “every little bit helps” mantra, you can see pages that have images with missing ALT attributes: Alexa groups the images on per page, so just click the link to the right to expand the list: Like meta descriptions, this is not a mega-important item as a standalone metric but it helps a bit and helps with image search. Session IDs This report will show you any issues your site is having due to the use of session id’s. If you have issues with session id’s and/or other URL parameters here you should take a look at using canonical tags or Google’s parameter handling (mostly to increase the efficiency of your site’s crawl by Googlebot, as Google will typically skip the crawling of pages based on your parameter list) Heading Recommendations Usually I cringe when I see automated SEO solutions. The headings section contains “recommended” headings for your pages. You can download the entire list in CSV format: The second one listed, “interface seo”, is on a page which talks about Google adding breadcrumbs to the search results. I do not think that is a good heading tag for this blog post. I suspect most of the automated tags are going to be average to less than average. Keywords Alexa’s Keyword module offers recommended keywords to pursue as well as on site recommendations in the following sub-categories: Search Engine Marketing (keywords) Link Recommendations (on-site link recommendations Search Engine Marketing Based on your site’s content Alexa offers up some keyword recommendations: The metrics are defined as: Query - the proposed keyword Opportunity - (scales up to 1.0) based on expected search traffic to your site from keywords which have a low CPC. A higher value here typically means a higher query popularity and a low QCI. Essentially, the higher the number the better the relationship is between search volume, low CPC, and low ad competition. Query Popularity (scales up to 100) based on the frequency of searches for that keyword QCI - (scales up to 100) based on how many ads are showing across major search engines for the keyword For me, it’s another keyword source. The custom metrics are ok to look at but what disappoints me about this report is that they do not align the keywords to relevant pages. It would be nice to see “XYZ keywords might be good plays for page ABC based on ABC’s content”. Link Recommendations This is kind of an interesting report. You’ve got 3 sets of data here. The first is the “source page” and this is a listing of pages that, according to Alexa’s crawl, are pages that appear to be important to search engines as well as pages that are easily crawled by crawlers: These are pages Alexa feels should be pages you link from. The next 2 data sets are in the same table. They are “target pages” and keywords: Some of the pages are similar but the attempt is to match up pages and predict the anchor text that should be used from the source page to the target page. It’s a good idea but there’s a bit of page overlap which detracts from the overall usefulness of the report IMO. Stats The Stats section offers 3 different reports: Report Stats - an overview of crawled pages Crawler Errors - errors Alexa encountered in crawling your site Unique Hosts Crawled - number of unique hosts (your domain and internal/external domains and sub-domains) Alexa encountered in crawling your site Report Stats An overview of crawl statistics: Crawler Errors This is where Alexa would show what errors, if any, they encountered when crawling the site Unique Hosts Crawled A report showing which sites you are linking to (as well as your own domain/subdomains) Is it Worth $199? Some of the report functionality is handled by free (in some cases) tools that are available to you. Xenu does a lot of what Alexa’s link modules do and if you are a member here the Website Health Check Tool does some of the on-page stuff as well. I would also like to see more export functionality especially in lieu of white label reporting. The crawling features are kind of interesting and the price point is fairly affordable as one time fee. The Alexa Site Audit Report does offer some benefit IMO and the price point isn’t overly cost-prohibitive but I wasn’t really wowed by the report. If you are ok with spending $199 to get a broad overview of things then I think it’s an ok investment. For larger sites sometimes finding (and fixing) only 1 or 2 major issues can be worth thousands in additional traffic. It left me wanting a bit more though, so I might prefer to spend that $199 on links since most of the tool’s functionality is available to me without dropping down the fee. Further, the new SEOmoz app also covers a lot of these features & is available at a monthly $99 price-point, while allowing you to run reports on up to 5 sites at a time. The other big thing for improving the value of the Alexa application would be if they allowed you to run a before and after report as part of their package. That way in-house SEOs can not only show their boss what was wrong, but can also use that same 3rd party tool as verification that it has been fixed.

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Alexa Site Audit Review

Most every business, including Google’s , starts small . These days, technology is giving businesses even more ways to grow bigger, faster. In a recent series on the Official Google Blog focused on small businesses, a handful of real-life entrepreneurs shared their experiences building companies from scratch and embracing internet tools that have taken their businesses to the next level. The team received fantastic feedback about these posts, and realized that there’s a healthy appetite among small- and medium-sized business owners who want to know all about the latest web tools and tricks. And obviously, Google Analytics is one of the best, in our humble opinion. That’s why we’re giving an introductory shout out to the new Google Small Business Blog here on our blog. It’s a central hub that brings together all the information about Google products, features and projects of specific interest to the small business community. Rather than having to sleuth around in many different locations for details about templates for creating video ads on YouTube , tips for your employees using Gmail or how to respond to the business reviews on your Place Page , you can find all of this helpful information right here in one place. And we’ll be contributing content on Google Analytics there as well. They already have a few great posts, with more to come, and we’re confident their audience will continue to grow, much like a small successful business. Posted by Jeff Gillis , Google Analytics Team

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New Google Blog For SMBs

Most every business, including Google’s , starts small . These days, technology is giving businesses even more ways to grow bigger, faster. In a recent series on the Official Google Blog focused on small businesses, a handful of real-life entrepreneurs shared their experiences building companies from scratch and embracing internet tools that have taken their businesses to the next level. The team received fantastic feedback about these posts, and realized that there’s a healthy appetite among small- and medium-sized business owners who want to know all about the latest web tools and tricks. And obviously, Google Analytics is one of the best, in our humble opinion. That’s why we’re giving an introductory shout out to the new Google Small Business Blog here on our blog. It’s a central hub that brings together all the information about Google products, features and projects of specific interest to the small business community. Rather than having to sleuth around in many different locations for details about templates for creating video ads on YouTube , tips for your employees using Gmail or how to respond to the business reviews on your Place Page , you can find all of this helpful information right here in one place. And we’ll be contributing content on Google Analytics there as well. They already have a few great posts, with more to come, and we’re confident their audience will continue to grow, much like a small successful business. Posted by Jeff Gillis , Google Analytics Team

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New Google Blog For SMBs

This is part of a series of stories from people who have shared how Google has helped them in their lives. Check back the rest of this week for more, and if you have a Google story, tell us about it . -Ed. I work on several projects at Google with the goal of helping people improve their health and that of their loved ones. It’s humbling to read the feedback we receive from people who have used Google to find health information. These stories make us proud of what we do and encourage us to work harder to make our products even better. Joe from Northern Ireland sent this story about how information he found with Google helped him welcome a new member to his family—firsthand: Received: 12/23/2009 From: Joe All I can say is thanks to google search engine. Why? My daughter went into labour in the early hours of Wednesday morning … my wife phoned [emergency services] and my daughter got on her laptop and googled how to deliver a baby in an emergency … I delivered my grandson just in time for the ambulance to arrive. The ambulance staff were gobsmacked to say the least. It hasn’t quite sunk in yet but thanks to google and the emergency services I have a beautiful grandson. So there you have it first there was Google Earth now we have Google Birth. Many thanks. Michael found resources to help him and his mother cope with the challenges of cancer treatment: Received: 2/6/2010 From: Michael I am … a Sergeant in the Marine Corps. I just wanted to say thank you for your search [engine] and the work it does to make information readily available to the world. I recently found out my mother has cancer in the esophagus. She has been undergoing chemo treatment … and the last few days I’ve been on Google reading stories about other cancer survivors, side effects they’ve had from the treatments and even articles on foods she can eat to help heal her cancer. I get emotional writing this but I think google.com has been a blessing from God in facilitating people like myself to get connected to resources that are helpful, especially in difficult circumstances. Google has saved me countless hours of research that I could be spending in and out of libraries [to] find the information we need to help us get through this … Thank you and God bless you. Bettie used Google to find a surgeon who helped save her husband’s kidney: Received: 11/6/2009 From: Bettie My husband and I have an amazing story to share about a surgeon I found easily through Google. Everyone that hears our story tells us we should write a book. Not sure we’ll ever get around to that, but we do want to thank Google for directing us to the best possible surgeon to save my husband’s one remaining kidney. He had been to many local, well-respected doctors and nationally recognized hospitals for months. None seemed to have the expertise needed to perform the challenging surgery on four malignant kidney tumors. Not only did Google direct us quickly to an expert in the field, but the site had a place to “Talk to the Doctor”. On a Sunday afternoon, the doctor himself responded by email in four minutes … Thank you for saving my husband’s only kidney and possibly his life! Thanks to Joe, Michael, Bettie and the many others who share their deeply personal stories with us. It’s the people behind every search—and our ability to help them—that make my team feel so committed to providing the best services we can. Posted by Roni Zeiger, MD, Chief Health Strategist

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Your Google stories: finding health information when you need it

Yay! It’s another episode of Web Analytics TV! In this exciting series, with Avinash Kaushik and Nick Mihailovski, you ask, and vote on your favorite, web analytics questions via the Google Analytics Google Moderator site and we answer them. This episode was particularly awesome since there were some fantastic questions . Tough questions that made us think hard. But also questions that made us proud of how sophisticated Google Analytics users are. In this action packed episode we discuss: Google Website Optimizer and the ga.js async tracking code issue What is considered Personally Identifiable Information (PII)? Teaching Google Analytics the location of your local __utm.gif image Implementing ecommerce tracking with multiple currencies Goal names in Google Analytics Similarities and differences between Visitors and Unique Visitors metrics Lovely opportunities for developers to build products using our API Reasons why utm_content values show up as (not set) Best practices for applying segments to specific pages (cool answer!) Implementing ecommerce tracking if you don’t have an order id Using advanced filters in the connection speed report Why the value “other” shows up in your reports Tracking how a visitor finds a site the first time for attribution Correlating business data with Google Analytics data Here are the links to the topics we discuss: Setting the __utm.gif path using _setLocalGifPath How Mikael T. built a business using the Google Analytics API Troubleshooting the tracking code As always, if you need help setting up Google Analytics or leveraging the advanced configuration options, we recommend hiring a Google Analytics Certified Partners . If you found this post or video helpful, we’d love to hear your comments. Please share them via the comment form below. If you have a question you would like us to answer, please submit a question and vote for your favorite question in our public Google Moderator site . Avinash and I will answer your latest questions in a couple of weeks with yet another entertaining video. Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team

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Web Analytics TV #11 with Avinash and Nick

Webmaster Level: All When Googlebot crawls your site, it’s expected that most URLs will return a 200 response code, some a 404 response, some will be disallowed by robots.txt, etc. Whenever we’re unable to reach your content, we show this information in the Crawl errors section of Webmaster Tools (even though it might be intentional and not actually an error). Continuing with our effort to provide useful and actionable information to webmasters, we’re now sending SiteNotice messages when we detect a significant increase in the number of crawl errors impacting a specific site. These notifications are meant to alert you of potential crawl-related issues and provide a sample set of URLs for diagnosing and fixing them. A SiteNotice for a spike in the number of unreachable URLs, for example, will look like this: We hope you find SiteNotices helpful for discovering and dealing with issues that, if left unattended, could negatively affect your crawl coverage. You’ll only receive these notifications if you’ve verified your site in Webmaster Tools and we detect significant changes to the number of crawl errors we encounter on your site. And if you don’t want to miss out on any these important messages, you can use the email forwarding feature to receive these alerts in your inbox. If you have any questions, please post them in our Webmaster Help Forum or leave your comments below. Posted by Pooja Shah and Jonathan Simon

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New Message Center notifications for detecting an increase in Crawl Errors

The following is a guest post by Kpaul. A long time ago, on an Internet far, far away (when I wrote for fun - and for free), I did a piece called Portrait of a Blogger . The year was 2002 and blogging was just beginning to really hit the mainstream hard. If you’re not familiar with the audience at Kuro5hin.org, they’re a snooty version of slashdot readers if you can imagine such a thing. (Mentioning both of these websites is outing my age, I think. I better not mention Compuserve.) The story was published on K5 and is still available today. I was told once that it drew a lot of traffic, although Mr. Foster never would share the exact numbers with me. (I imagine he’s laughing somewhere on his yacht these days.) It’s interesting to see how many of the links are still active in that article. In any case, I thought about that story the other day when I was lamenting the fact that I didn’t start publishing my own content on my own sites earlier. (I spent the bubble years working for corporate media on the Death Star .) I let the idea of the piece gel in my mind for a while. I knew I couldn’t do another portrait of a blogger piece. I mean, I could, but I don’t think it would do as well as the previous one did. Also floating around in my mind was an okay from the esteemed Aaron Wall to submit a guest post for SEO Book. Eventually, these two ideas crossed paths, exchanged emails, and set-up a plan to combine the old Portrait of a Blogger piece with something relevant for Aaron’s audience. So, without further ado, I give you a portrait of an SEO circa 2010 The SEO Newbie Favorite software: SENuke Favorite website: webmasterworld.com Favorite drink: Jolt (cause that’s the stereotype and it was in Hackers the movie) Favorite viral video: Numa Numa Favorite rapper: 50 cent A friend of their friend’s sister’s little brother makes money online, so it’s totally going to be possible. The SEO newbie looks forward to a life of an hour of work every week for untold riches. While more and more people are trying to make money online, many of them just don’t have what it takes to work for themselves online. While chasing the magic button - also known as the golden tip, the super duper affiliate secret, or even the extra double tip for making money online - the SEO newbie tends to get distracted from the one obvious thing that equals sucess - i.e. work. Once most SEO newbies find out making money online takes work (more and more of it as time passes and competition increases), they drop out of the game and go back to whatever it was they were doing. Before that, they’re usually found on Webmaster World gabbing about the latest “Google Dance.” SEO Auto-Blogger Favorite software: WordPress MU Favorite website: Any with an RSS Feed Favorite drink: Watered Down McDonald’s Pop (mass produced sugar water that sorta resembles soda) Favorite viral video: Lazy Sunday (something everyone copied) Favorite rapper: Black Eyed Peas If one page in the SERPs is good, and ten pages in the SERPs is great and so on and so forth, what about 1 billion pages? That would be best, right? But how to write a billion pages worth of content? Enter the auto-blog. This spray and pray method of SEO is still tried by many new to the industry, but it is becoming more and more difficult to keep a site like this going for more than a few months. That’s not to say that it doesn’t exist, but there are few low level auto-bloggers who don’t end up getting burned. And yet auto-bloggers make up a large slice of the SEO landscape. This will undoubtedly change in the years ahead. SEO Link Merchant Favorite software: Yahoo! Site Explorer or any Online Link Tool Favorite website: Any that will buy or sell a link Favorite drink: Absynth (not legal anymore) Favorite viral video: Star Wars Kid Favorite rapper: Tupac These people live and dream about links. From the value of links to anchor text to placement to link wheels, their world revolves around the power of the link. Since link selling and buying has gone into a shady black market type atmosphere over the last few years, some of these characters can be shady. A common technique is to peddle “text advertisements” for a low monthly rate to unknowing webmasters. While there are some websites and email accounts still operating in the open, there are also black hat link merchants in some very bad neighborhoods. While I probably shouldn’t mention it, there are some who see short term success using these methods. The thing is, online you want to play the long game. And for that, buying and selling links is out. Phony SEO Guru Favorite software: The autoresponder Favorite website: forums.digitalpoint.com Favorite drink: Acai Juice Favorite viral video: That annoying frog techno thing! Favorite rapper: Vanilla Ice The schemes and scams are plentiful in the world of the phony guru. Yes, you too can make money by showing others how to make money. A lot of these so called gurus don’t even make money on the Internet other than peddling their ebooks and membership sites. The problem with these people is that after a person is burned by so many, they run the danger of not spending ANY money online. This can be just as bad as wasting money on worthless, phony gurus. For example, an SEO Book membership is a wise investment that will pay off in the long run. Don’t be afraid to invest money wisely after being burned by phony SEO gurus. SEO Tail Chaser Favorite software: The latest WSO! Favorite website: warriorforum.com Favorite drink: Budweiser (or something domestic and bland) Favorite viral video: Anything their neighbor liked Favorite rapper: Eminem Usually found huddling around the phony gurus (which grow in numbers every month it seems as more and more people try to monetize the web), tail chasers are those people who try to copy current successful marketing methods online. If you study the whole rebill period of Internet marketing, there were a few people who started off strong (and somewhat legit), but as more and more people got into the game, the boundaries were pushed more and more. The highlight for me, I think, was seeing an elderly lady talking on a YouTube video about posting links to Google to make money. While some tail chasers may be able to make small (or even moderately large) amounts of money in a short time, they lack the skills (and vision) to replicate the success on a continual basis. We interrupt this guest blog post for a shameless plug. On one of my blogs, I’ve started using D&D character alignments instead of ‘colored hats’ to tag various methods for SEO and marketing online. Okay, it’s not really unique and I doubt it catches on, but it gives more opportunities to categorize Internet marketers. We now return to our regularly scheduled guest blog post. Thanks, Aaron! White Hat SEO Favorite software: Vanilla Internet Explorer Favorite website: mattcutts.com/blog/ Favorite drink: Water (good for you) Favorite viral video: Anything LOL cats Favorite rapper: DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince When not wearing their “I Heart Matt Cutts” t-shirt or coming up with ways to make their website more unique and useful for visitors, these individuals like to volunteer at local homeless shelters and nursing homes. But seriously, these people make an effort to do things above board online. Many are still able to make a good living while doing this. Many don’t have the patience for white hat SEO, which is a shame, because it’s one of the better long term methods of success online. Think of your visitor after they get to your site more than trying to trick Google into ranking you high in the SERPs and you’re on your way to becoming a high level white hat SEO, which comes with many special abilities and powers. Black Hat SEO Favorite software: xRumer Favorite website: Any that will take a link - willingly or not Favorite drink: Whiskey (wine is fine but liquor is quicker) Favorite viral video: Anything from 4chan Favorite rapper: NWA There are some who fall between the tail chasers and the SEO grandmasters (of all persuasions) who have the ability to recognize an opportunity and jump on it, making a bit of money along the way. The problem is that most methods used with Black Hat SEO are short term. They may have a huge payout, but the model is not sustainable unless you can stay somewhat ahead of the crowd when it comes to new things to exploit online. While some are fine with this, most at this level have the ability to come up with unique ideas on their own. When you consider that there’s about the same amount of work involved and the non-black hat techniques last longer, it makes sense to try to get beyond this stage in your SEO evolution. Grey Hat SEO Favorite software: A little of this and a little of that Favorite website: wickedfire.com Favorite drink: Coffee (some mornings with a dash of rum) Favorite viral video: Boom Goes the Dynamite Favorite rapper: Drake If you mix black and white, you get grey, of course. The grey hat SEO uses both white and black hat techniques. While they’re more open than those who wear a black hat most times, they are generally more cautious than people into white hat SEO. For the most part the mix of both (good and bad) vary at any one time with grey hat SEO. Over the years, this label has morphed somewhat into a blue hat SEO, with a few key differences. Grey hat SEO, to me, means more about techniques while blue hat SEO concentrates on a mixing of web properties with different values. Blue Hat SEO Favorite software: A little of this and a little of that Favorite website: wickedfire.com Favorite drink: Coffee (some mornings with a dash of rum) Favorite viral video: Charlie the Unicorn Favorite rapper: Ice Cube I’m pretty sure I know who came up with this phrase, although I’m not exactly sure of their definition of the term. To me, it follows the ‘SEO Empire’ line of thinking that was created by Eli at Blue Hat SEO . So, it would be a mix of pure white and somewhat grey (or downright black) websites in a network online. So, garbage sites at the bottom of the pyramid point up toward the money sites at the top of the pyramid. How this differs from straight grey hat SEO, I’m not sure, but it’s used by quite a few people these days. For the most part, Blue Hat SEO peoeple are well versed in the way the Internet works. And if they don’t have skills, they have someone in their network who does. There are quite a few high level blue hat SEOs currently operating online. Article Marketer Favorite software: Google Docs Favorite website: ezinearticles.com Favorite drink: Green Tea (proven weight loss, act now!) Favorite viral video: None (text based viral only) Favorite rapper: Mos Def (very lyrical) When they’re not actually banging out articles for their own or other sites, they’re thinking up ideas and topics for their next round of articles. They know the value of content online. This group is split like most others into various levels of quality ranging from garbage to modern literature and everything in between. You will notice if you look closely that the more successful article marketers have higher quality content. This is no coincidence. Of course, good content is only one small piece of the puzzle, but you may want to consider outsourcing your content needs to an article marketer. Viral SEO Ninja Favorite software: Anything related to email Favorite website: digg.com Favorite drink: Tang (it’s orange, it’s different) Favorite viral video: lonelygirl15 Favorite rapper: Kanye West (marketing magic man - good or bad) When it comes to linkbait and causing ripples in the blogosphere, there’s nothing like the skills of a high level viral ninja. Part Charlie the Unicorn, part Star Wars Kid, and with a dash or two of LOL cats and one very, very, extremely tiny bit of 4chan, the viral ninja can mix media to send a message, get a laugh, or compel people to tell their friends about the content. As more and more people come online and try to be viral, it’s becoming more and more difficult to be unique and stand out from the millions of other people online who are vying for attention. The viral ninja understands this and is already working on three or four projects that will drown the numbers for the “Please don’t taze me” video. SEO Grandmaster Favorite software: LAMP Favorite website: SEOBook.com Favorite drink: Vitamin Water (expensive, but worth it) Favorite viral video: Dancing baby (old school…) Favorite rapper: Grandmaster Flash You don’t hear from these people too much on the forums or at conferences. They don’t typically have a very active blog. They do, however, spend their time making money online - most times quite a bit of it. They apply their SEO knowledge quietly in the background, slowly building their empire piece by piece. They understand marketing and business principles and employ them. These people learned early on that wasting time online - especially at forums chasing the magic button - is not a good thing. They learned how to buckle down and apply the knowledge that everyone who’s anyone has. They know it’s all about applying the information rather than just knowing about it. While you don’t hear much from these people publicly, when they do talk quite a few people tend to listen. Real SEO Guru Favorite software: Firefox browser + extensions Favorite website: Any that they own or are involved with Favorite drink: Orange Pineapple Juice (sweet, sour, but good for you) Favorite viral video: All Your Base Are Belong To Us (cause they do) Favorite rapper: Jay-Z (making piles of money) What are the lyrics from Ghetto Boys about real gangsters not talking much? Go Google it. (Sorry, Matt, it’s a verb now. You know there are secret Google parties celebrating the fact. Smile.) But yeah, real gurus aren’t all talk and no action. Real gurus of the industry don’t pitch anything and everything just to make a buck. The real gurus are few and far between, but they do exist. If you run into one, be nice to them. Unlike the SEO grandmasters, they’re more public and don’t mind interacting with the public. That said, they tend to value their time, so don’t waste it. This path has the most opportunities for people who are into SEO. (In gaming terms, it has the highest level cap.) It’s a long road, and it’s not a quest that can be undertaken alone, but if you’re serious about SEO, this is the route you want to take. The Future of SEO? If you’ve been around for any length of time, you know that the Internet is still constantly changing. Some of the changes are for the better and some aren’t as good, but they all are something that everyone who works online has to deal with. The SEO of last week - or even today - isn’t the same SEO that is going to be in operation over the next decade. Personally, I see the word organic being more important. By organic SEO, I mean not mass produced, not a trick, not a scam, not a scheme, but an actual relationship between publishers and website visitors. The sites that are able to build communities around themselves are going to be the ones that survive, I think. And there is no method of SEO known to man that can create a community - a real one - out of thin air. That said, SEO can be useful to help draw people to a website that is worthy of a community forming around it. —– The above was a guest post from K. Paul Mallasch, who runs kpaul media , which publishes local news communities like Anderson Free Press as well as many niche websites. You can contact him at kpaul.mallasch@gmail.com A disclaimer from Aaron: I thought it was fun, but I loath rap music (especially that from asshats like Kanye West), and I realize that being a publisher in the SEO space is way more profitable than being labeled as an SEO guru. I also didn’t put the last picture in because he used me…and I felt that would have been a wee bit egotistical for me to publish a guest post highlighting me like that. But the post is still a lot of fun & I am sure you can associate with at least 1 or more of the above profiles. If not then you haven’t been in the SEO space very long yet!

Here is the original post: 
Portrait of an SEO

The following is a guest post by Kpaul. A long time ago, on an Internet far, far away (when I wrote for fun - and for free), I did a piece called Portrait of a Blogger . The year was 2002 and blogging was just beginning to really hit the mainstream hard. If you’re not familiar with the audience at Kuro5hin.org, they’re a snooty version of slashdot readers if you can imagine such a thing. (Mentioning both of these websites is outing my age, I think. I better not mention Compuserve.) The story was published on K5 and is still available today. I was told once that it drew a lot of traffic, although Mr. Foster never would share the exact numbers with me. (I imagine he’s laughing somewhere on his yacht these days.) It’s interesting to see how many of the links are still active in that article. In any case, I thought about that story the other day when I was lamenting the fact that I didn’t start publishing my own content on my own sites earlier. (I spent the bubble years working for corporate media on the Death Star .) I let the idea of the piece gel in my mind for a while. I knew I couldn’t do another portrait of a blogger piece. I mean, I could, but I don’t think it would do as well as the previous one did. Also floating around in my mind was an okay from the esteemed Aaron Wall to submit a guest post for SEO Book. Eventually, these two ideas crossed paths, exchanged emails, and set-up a plan to combine the old Portrait of a Blogger piece with something relevant for Aaron’s audience. So, without further ado, I give you a portrait of an SEO circa 2010 The SEO Newbie Favorite software: SENuke Favorite website: webmasterworld.com Favorite drink: Jolt (cause that’s the stereotype and it was in Hackers the movie) Favorite viral video: Numa Numa Favorite rapper: 50 cent A friend of their friend’s sister’s little brother makes money online, so it’s totally going to be possible. The SEO newbie looks forward to a life of an hour of work every week for untold riches. While more and more people are trying to make money online, many of them just don’t have what it takes to work for themselves online. While chasing the magic button - also known as the golden tip, the super duper affiliate secret, or even the extra double tip for making money online - the SEO newbie tends to get distracted from the one obvious thing that equals sucess - i.e. work. Once most SEO newbies find out making money online takes work (more and more of it as time passes and competition increases), they drop out of the game and go back to whatever it was they were doing. Before that, they’re usually found on Webmaster World gabbing about the latest “Google Dance.” SEO Auto-Blogger Favorite software: WordPress MU Favorite website: Any with an RSS Feed Favorite drink: Watered Down McDonald’s Pop (mass produced sugar water that sorta resembles soda) Favorite viral video: Lazy Sunday (something everyone copied) Favorite rapper: Black Eyed Peas If one page in the SERPs is good, and ten pages in the SERPs is great and so on and so forth, what about 1 billion pages? That would be best, right? But how to write a billion pages worth of content? Enter the auto-blog. This spray and pray method of SEO is still tried by many new to the industry, but it is becoming more and more difficult to keep a site like this going for more than a few months. That’s not to say that it doesn’t exist, but there are few low level auto-bloggers who don’t end up getting burned. And yet auto-bloggers make up a large slice of the SEO landscape. This will undoubtedly change in the years ahead. SEO Link Merchant Favorite software: Yahoo! Site Explorer or any Online Link Tool Favorite website: Any that will buy or sell a link Favorite drink: Absynth (not legal anymore) Favorite viral video: Star Wars Kid Favorite rapper: Tupac These people live and dream about links. From the value of links to anchor text to placement to link wheels, their world revolves around the power of the link. Since link selling and buying has gone into a shady black market type atmosphere over the last few years, some of these characters can be shady. A common technique is to peddle “text advertisements” for a low monthly rate to unknowing webmasters. While there are some websites and email accounts still operating in the open, there are also black hat link merchants in some very bad neighborhoods. While I probably shouldn’t mention it, there are some who see short term success using these methods. The thing is, online you want to play the long game. And for that, buying and selling links is out. Phony SEO Guru Favorite software: The autoresponder Favorite website: forums.digitalpoint.com Favorite drink: Acai Juice Favorite viral video: That annoying frog techno thing! Favorite rapper: Vanilla Ice The schemes and scams are plentiful in the world of the phony guru. Yes, you too can make money by showing others how to make money. A lot of these so called gurus don’t even make money on the Internet other than peddling their ebooks and membership sites. The problem with these people is that after a person is burned by so many, they run the danger of not spending ANY money online. This can be just as bad as wasting money on worthless, phony gurus. For example, an SEO Book membership is a wise investment that will pay off in the long run. Don’t be afraid to invest money wisely after being burned by phony SEO gurus. SEO Tail Chaser Favorite software: The latest WSO! Favorite website: warriorforum.com Favorite drink: Budweiser (or something domestic and bland) Favorite viral video: Anything their neighbor liked Favorite rapper: Eminem Usually found huddling around the phony gurus (which grow in numbers every month it seems as more and more people try to monetize the web), tail chasers are those people who try to copy current successful marketing methods online. If you study the whole rebill period of Internet marketing, there were a few people who started off strong (and somewhat legit), but as more and more people got into the game, the boundaries were pushed more and more. The highlight for me, I think, was seeing an elderly lady talking on a YouTube video about posting links to Google to make money. While some tail chasers may be able to make small (or even moderately large) amounts of money in a short time, they lack the skills (and vision) to replicate the success on a continual basis. We interrupt this guest blog post for a shameless plug. On one of my blogs, I’ve started using D&D character alignments instead of ‘colored hats’ to tag various methods for SEO and marketing online. Okay, it’s not really unique and I doubt it catches on, but it gives more opportunities to categorize Internet marketers. We now return to our regularly scheduled guest blog post. Thanks, Aaron! White Hat SEO Favorite software: Vanilla Internet Explorer Favorite website: mattcutts.com/blog/ Favorite drink: Water (good for you) Favorite viral video: Anything LOL cats Favorite rapper: DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince When not wearing their “I Heart Matt Cutts” t-shirt or coming up with ways to make their website more unique and useful for visitors, these individuals like to volunteer at local homeless shelters and nursing homes. But seriously, these people make an effort to do things above board online. Many are still able to make a good living while doing this. Many don’t have the patience for white hat SEO, which is a shame, because it’s one of the better long term methods of success online. Think of your visitor after they get to your site more than trying to trick Google into ranking you high in the SERPs and you’re on your way to becoming a high level white hat SEO, which comes with many special abilities and powers. Black Hat SEO Favorite software: xRumer Favorite website: Any that will take a link - willingly or not Favorite drink: Whiskey (wine is fine but liquor is quicker) Favorite viral video: Anything from 4chan Favorite rapper: NWA There are some who fall between the tail chasers and the SEO grandmasters (of all persuasions) who have the ability to recognize an opportunity and jump on it, making a bit of money along the way. The problem is that most methods used with Black Hat SEO are short term. They may have a huge payout, but the model is not sustainable unless you can stay somewhat ahead of the crowd when it comes to new things to exploit online. While some are fine with this, most at this level have the ability to come up with unique ideas on their own. When you consider that there’s about the same amount of work involved and the non-black hat techniques last longer, it makes sense to try to get beyond this stage in your SEO evolution. Grey Hat SEO Favorite software: A little of this and a little of that Favorite website: wickedfire.com Favorite drink: Coffee (some mornings with a dash of rum) Favorite viral video: Boom Goes the Dynamite Favorite rapper: Drake If you mix black and white, you get grey, of course. The grey hat SEO uses both white and black hat techniques. While they’re more open than those who wear a black hat most times, they are generally more cautious than people into white hat SEO. For the most part the mix of both (good and bad) vary at any one time with grey hat SEO. Over the years, this label has morphed somewhat into a blue hat SEO, with a few key differences. Grey hat SEO, to me, means more about techniques while blue hat SEO concentrates on a mixing of web properties with different values. Blue Hat SEO Favorite software: A little of this and a little of that Favorite website: wickedfire.com Favorite drink: Coffee (some mornings with a dash of rum) Favorite viral video: Charlie the Unicorn Favorite rapper: Ice Cube I’m pretty sure I know who came up with this phrase, although I’m not exactly sure of their definition of the term. To me, it follows the ‘SEO Empire’ line of thinking that was created by Eli at Blue Hat SEO . So, it would be a mix of pure white and somewhat grey (or downright black) websites in a network online. So, garbage sites at the bottom of the pyramid point up toward the money sites at the top of the pyramid. How this differs from straight grey hat SEO, I’m not sure, but it’s used by quite a few people these days. For the most part, Blue Hat SEO peoeple are well versed in the way the Internet works. And if they don’t have skills, they have someone in their network who does. There are quite a few high level blue hat SEOs currently operating online. Article Marketer Favorite software: Google Docs Favorite website: ezinearticles.com Favorite drink: Green Tea (proven weight loss, act now!) Favorite viral video: None (text based viral only) Favorite rapper: Mos Def (very lyrical) When they’re not actually banging out articles for their own or other sites, they’re thinking up ideas and topics for their next round of articles. They know the value of content online. This group is split like most others into various levels of quality ranging from garbage to modern literature and everything in between. You will notice if you look closely that the more successful article marketers have higher quality content. This is no coincidence. Of course, good content is only one small piece of the puzzle, but you may want to consider outsourcing your content needs to an article marketer. Viral SEO Ninja Favorite software: Anything related to email Favorite website: digg.com Favorite drink: Tang (it’s orange, it’s different) Favorite viral video: lonelygirl15 Favorite rapper: Kanye West (marketing magic man - good or bad) When it comes to linkbait and causing ripples in the blogosphere, there’s nothing like the skills of a high level viral ninja. Part Charlie the Unicorn, part Star Wars Kid, and with a dash or two of LOL cats and one very, very, extremely tiny bit of 4chan, the viral ninja can mix media to send a message, get a laugh, or compel people to tell their friends about the content. As more and more people come online and try to be viral, it’s becoming more and more difficult to be unique and stand out from the millions of other people online who are vying for attention. The viral ninja understands this and is already working on three or four projects that will drown the numbers for the “Please don’t taze me” video. SEO Grandmaster Favorite software: LAMP Favorite website: SEOBook.com Favorite drink: Vitamin Water (expensive, but worth it) Favorite viral video: Dancing baby (old school…) Favorite rapper: Grandmaster Flash You don’t hear from these people too much on the forums or at conferences. They don’t typically have a very active blog. They do, however, spend their time making money online - most times quite a bit of it. They apply their SEO knowledge quietly in the background, slowly building their empire piece by piece. They understand marketing and business principles and employ them. These people learned early on that wasting time online - especially at forums chasing the magic button - is not a good thing. They learned how to buckle down and apply the knowledge that everyone who’s anyone has. They know it’s all about applying the information rather than just knowing about it. While you don’t hear much from these people publicly, when they do talk quite a few people tend to listen. Real SEO Guru Favorite software: Firefox browser + extensions Favorite website: Any that they own or are involved with Favorite drink: Orange Pineapple Juice (sweet, sour, but good for you) Favorite viral video: All Your Base Are Belong To Us (cause they do) Favorite rapper: Jay-Z (making piles of money) What are the lyrics from Ghetto Boys about real gangsters not talking much? Go Google it. (Sorry, Matt, it’s a verb now. You know there are secret Google parties celebrating the fact. Smile.) But yeah, real gurus aren’t all talk and no action. Real gurus of the industry don’t pitch anything and everything just to make a buck. The real gurus are few and far between, but they do exist. If you run into one, be nice to them. Unlike the SEO grandmasters, they’re more public and don’t mind interacting with the public. That said, they tend to value their time, so don’t waste it. This path has the most opportunities for people who are into SEO. (In gaming terms, it has the highest level cap.) It’s a long road, and it’s not a quest that can be undertaken alone, but if you’re serious about SEO, this is the route you want to take. The Future of SEO? If you’ve been around for any length of time, you know that the Internet is still constantly changing. Some of the changes are for the better and some aren’t as good, but they all are something that everyone who works online has to deal with. The SEO of last week - or even today - isn’t the same SEO that is going to be in operation over the next decade. Personally, I see the word organic being more important. By organic SEO, I mean not mass produced, not a trick, not a scam, not a scheme, but an actual relationship between publishers and website visitors. The sites that are able to build communities around themselves are going to be the ones that survive, I think. And there is no method of SEO known to man that can create a community - a real one - out of thin air. That said, SEO can be useful to help draw people to a website that is worthy of a community forming around it. —– The above was a guest post from K. Paul Mallasch, who runs kpaul media , which publishes local news communities like Anderson Free Press as well as many niche websites. You can contact him at kpaul.mallasch@gmail.com A disclaimer from Aaron: I thought it was fun, but I loath rap music (especially that from asshats like Kanye West), and I realize that being a publisher in the SEO space is way more profitable than being labeled as an SEO guru. I also didn’t put the last picture in because he used me…and I felt that would have been a wee bit egotistical for me to publish a guest post highlighting me like that. But the post is still a lot of fun & I am sure you can associate with at least 1 or more of the above profiles. If not then you haven’t been in the SEO space very long yet!

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Portrait of an SEO