So when James Zolman recently tweeted “I need an apprentice” then Dana Lookadoo then replied, saying she needs one too,  I chimed in, letting them know that hiring one was one of the best things I’ve ever done in business. Next thing I know, they’re asking me for tips.  From there, it all just came pouring out of me.  James then suggested all this should be a blog article, so here you go!

24 Tips on Hiring An Apprentice

1. Define what you need most help with that you can train someone on without drowning in training time

2. Reach out to everyone you know with your requirement, post to Craigslist as well

3. Remember they’re going to be your trainee so the 1st rule is “do we get along psychologically, emotionally”

4. Create a training manual so they can refer to it when you’re not around

5. If your pay is a fair, & they are passionate in the work you do together, you’ll know it intuitively during interviews.  In this economy you should get a flood of resume’s

6. Hiring local or long distance depends on your work-style. I have a local and a long distance.

7. If you treat them like a young version of you (read that equal as human yet needing loving guidance) they will prosper

8. Always pay attention to what they frown at. It’s a sign they may not enjoy the work.

9. If they don’t like an aspect of the work, find other things they do like or help them see it in a new way

10. Sometimes they don’t like tasks because they can’t see how their unique voice can be expressed in it

11. Show them how it helps YOU, that they’re worth diamonds to you.

12. If possible, show them how they can express their unique experience or voice to it

13. If their work doesn’t meet your needs, look for what’s good in it first, point that out then let them know that even tho that’s the case, you need it done differently. Explain why.

14. It’s NEVER “because I said so” or “Because I’m the boss”

15. If you take the time to do that, you may just learn that their thinking is better in a situation

16. If they ever interact with other people always protect them from bullshit others spew

17. Be willing to be their champion / protector the way you would want to be treated

18. If they step out of line, really cross it, take a time out before reacting

19. When you address unacceptable behavior, remember they are human, other issues that may be the cause

20. 1st try to discover the cause of their actions. They just may have personal crisis going on

21. Be understanding, yet always consistent in where the line is.

22. Even when being consistent, you may need to become flexible in order to allow their humanness

23. Remember too though, you’re running a business, so set limits to flexibility you can live with

24. This one is more a business philosophy tip – read this article from Brent D. Payne on business philosophy – every point will help you become more successful in the business world, and more importantly, happy in your business ventures

______________________________________________________

Well that’s all I had in me to tweet that night.  What tips can you offer?

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Thanks to both James and Dana for pulling this out of me.  And for Annie Cushing confirming my view along the way, and Gab Goldenberg for tweeting “u guys just made me star about 40 tweets. please blog so i can just have 1 bookmark!”  Because that locked it for me as far as jumping right on the blog thing rather than waiting til some future date.  And of course, thanks just as much to Bennet and Sharon – two of the best apprentices a guy could ever ask for or hope to work with!

Alan Bleiweiss has been an Internet professional since 1995, managing client projects valued at upwards of $2,000,000.00. Just a few of his most notable clients through the years have included PCH.com, WeightWatchers.com, and Starkist.com. Follow him on Twitter @AlanBleiweiss , read his Search Marketing blog at Search Marketing Wisdom, and be sure to read his column at SearchEngineJournal.com the 2nd and 4th Tuesday each month. 24 Tips on Hiring an Apprentice is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright Alan Bleiweiss unless otherwise attributed by me in the article.

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It all started at SMX Advanced, where Susan Esparza from Bruce Clay Inc. corralled a few of us into pitching in when Virginia Nussey couldn’t make it. And when I saw Lisa Barone from Outspoken Media tweet that she too couldn’t attend and liveblog, well that was all it took for me to jump on board.

After that eye awakening experience, I really was into doing this again. So I liveblogged several sessions at Blueglass LA for SearchEngineJournal.com, and the next thing you know, when I mentioned that I’d be attending SES San Francisco, Susan and Virginia asked if I’d like to pick up a couple sessions there as well. How could a guy resist the beguiling charms of Susan and Virginia? I mean seriously…

So I said yes. Along with some other great people, the bunch of us ended up covering a LOT of sessions. Personally I only took on three sessions this time because this was really supposed to be a kick-back conference for me. Yet the sessions I covered were all over the top filled with Search Marketing goodness. So I’m really glad I covered them.

Getting Into The Mood Through Rapid-Fire LiveTweeting

The day,started with the opening keynote, by Jeffrey Hayzlett formerly the CMO at Kodak. And for a keynote to have earned my “best keynote ever” label, you know it had to be great. And rather than liveblogging the session since Susan had that covered, I chose to rapid-fire live tweet it.

So to start things off, here’s a recap of my livetweeting Jeffrey’s Keynote:

Adapt or Die

You have 8 seconds to hook me and 110 seconds to sell me. That’s it.

Big Inc. charges nothing for printers. They rip you off for the ink cartridges. Kodak cut that cost in half

nobody’s going to die. If a program or a choice fails, it’s okay. Go again

19 of Kodak’s new products acct for majority of income – all are in top 1,2 or 3 in that niche market

We had to think about our core offer. Kodak makes emotional technology (used to be film now its not).

Who are you in the mirror? what is it you REALLY do (beneath the surface)? Focus, communicate THAT

we had to remake the mood in the company. Hard to be up, out there when the thinking around the company is “our best days are behind us”

How do we bring the old to the new? what can we bring forward? Trust. Reliability. Caring. Human.

We left behind the things no longer working. We added new things to those we brought forward.

We had to remake our web site to convey the new us. We had to have fun. We launched the “eyeCamera 4.1″ in April.  Which was on April 1st (the 4.1) a lot of people thought it was real…

Get Social. Engage Educate Excite Evangelize

Engage with the community. If someone is really upset, I want to get to them and resolve it.

Educate. that can be two ways in social media. We listen. We hired a chief listening officer

win hearts and minds, not eyeballs and pageviews

Interview at Webmaster Radio

After the Keynote, I popped on over to the Webmaster Radio booth in the Expo hall, where I was interviewed by Jim Hedger. Not sure when the interview will air, but I’ll let you know when it does. It was fun, especially because mine was the first interview of the conference – and so there were some hilarious delays and interruptions due to technical difficulties. Jim felt bad that I had to endure those. Yet you all know I like to talk, a lot. Or, actually, as Jennita said – no – Alan, that’s ranting, not talking… So having to answer the same few questions that started the interview off over and over wasn’t a hassle for me. It was perfect !

Then there were the three sessions I liveblogged

SEO – Successful Information Architecture

Shari’s well known for her knowledge and insights regarding Information Architecture. While I don’t agree with 100% of the things she recommends, she is someone that gets it right enough of the time that major corporations and brands rely on her services, as they should. They’d be fools not to. And in this session, she kills it. totally.

Eleanor offered up the in-house perspective on the issue of Information Architecture from her perspective at ABCNews.com – if you’re an in-house SEO, pay attention. Her knowledge and experience will save you more grief than you can imagine.

Content Marketing Optimization

Lee Odden knocks this one out of the ballpark. Like he apparently always does. Which I was told about his past speaking, however this was the first time I had the pleasure of being there. If you think you know how to market your content, you haven’t heard Lee Odden explain it to you before. And that means you’re missing out. Big time.

Developing Great Content

This was a great session – and it’s a must-read for anyone responsible for content development and management – which the panelists explain goes WAY beyond what SEOs and site managers might normally think. Sadly, if you are having to read it, you missed the monkeys flying in the air, and Rand threatening to chew one up into little bite size pieces so everyone in the room could have some.

But Wait! There’s More!

When you’re done reading my coverage, check out ALL the great coverage from the ENTIRE SES San Francisco conference at the BCI blog.

Alan Bleiweiss has been an Internet professional since 1995, managing client projects valued at upwards of $2,000,000.00. Just a few of his most notable clients through the years have included PCH.com, WeightWatchers.com, and Starkist.com. Follow him on Twitter @AlanBleiweiss , read his Search Marketing blog at Search Marketing Wisdom, and be sure to read his column at SearchEngineJournal.com the 2nd and 4th Tuesday each month. My SES SF Conference LiveTweeting and Liveblogging Coverage Day 1 is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright Alan Bleiweiss unless otherwise attributed by me in the article.

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Eventually I realized I was sick and tired of helping clients achieve great click-through ratios and lower bounce rates but where I knew instinctively that what matters more than that is conversion.

Except I struggled with how to convey HOW important that is because I couldn’t put it into words very well.  Sure, I’d say things like “For us to know how well we’re doing we really need to measure conversions.” Or “We need to measure the entire visitor experience.”  Then I’d go on to explain that I needed to know these things so that I could offer guidance on the next round of SEO.  Which are both true, yet neither one is really focused on the bottom line.

Making Clients More Money

As Joe Hall recently said in when talking about how his face builds links :

Brands, whether personal or corporate, exist to make money, not get free drinks at the next conference.

That’s really what our mission is or should be in the search industry.  To make clients more money.  Whether they monetize leads after someone fills out a lead generation form, they monetize leads after someone signs up to attend an event, or they sell products directly on their site,  the more people they get taking those actions, the more money they’ll make.  That’s why, in addition to offering SEO Analysis and Audits, I jumped on the Conversion Optimization bandwagon.

When it comes to SEO, Conversion Optimization is the New Black

It may be that someone else is in charge of the on-site user experience.  Or it’s somebody else’s purview to coordinate social media campaigns.  After all, we can’t wear all the hats in the online experience.  Which makes sense.  Because I have no desire to build sites, let alone be the lead graphic designer. Well, actually I do – except I suck at those things

Yet since I already need to be involved in the click-to-client life cycle, and because I have experience in UX, I’ve found that it only makes sense that I offer guidance in not just the ranking goals but also that very UX that will lead to more conversions.

And since I already understand and let clients know that they need citations and mentions across the web including within social media, and we already understand that social media is now a legitimate alternate place to find and engage customers, it also makes sense that I communicate this to my clients even for SEO purposes.  So I might as well also, at the very least, communicate that there’s a right way and a wrong way to engage.

How Much Involvement Is Appropriate?

Depending on what area of the click-to-client process you’re focusing on, it could be a lot easier than you realize.  Kim Krause Berg just wrote a great article entitled “How to Rescue Poorly Converting Web Sites“.  In that article, she helps show that some aspects of Conversion Optimization don’t have to be rocket science.

Sometimes it can get a lot more complicated.  When it does, you may want to pay attention to Brian Massey, the Conversion Scientist.

How far you take your involvement in the Conversion Optimization process is going to really depend on what your own skill-set is.  If you have no experience determining product pricing, or writing product copy, or if you really aren’t an online social butterfly in your own business, those are areas you should leave to experts.  If you can’t draw a square box without getting laughed at, you shouldn’t offer too much advice on the visual experience.

Check Your Motives

Before you decide you need to speak up about things related more to User Experience, Reputation Management, Facebook Engagement, or especially Customer Sales Psychology,  than SEO, check your motives before you open your mouth and embarrass yourself.

Yet even if you don’t have experience in other fields, you sure as heck can explain that clients could benefit from focusing on the entire click-to-client life cycle in a more proactive manner than they do.  And at the very least, you can help them learn about A/B split testing, multivariate testing, and the general principles of Conversion Optimization.

And you can collaborate with others to offer a complete solution.  As long as the people you bring on board are, themselves, real experts in various disciplines.

Remember To Get Buy-In

Since I hadn’t incorporated Conversion Optimization into my marketing and sales cycle so directly, it used to be near impossible to get clients to anything but begrudgingly allow a contact form or a sign-up form on every page of their site.  Yet I’ve been promoting A/B split tested dedicated landing pages for PPC campaigns for about 2 and a half years now.  Without push-back from clients.

So what I took away from that was you need to get client or employer buy-in if you’re going to stick your neck out on what is really a much more vulnerable level.

It’s just about how you approach the message.

It’s A Team Effort

True Conversion Optimization means every aspect of the online footprint needs to be considered, reviewed, and continually evolve.  And that means anyone who has a hand in any single aspect of that online footprint is going to need to be brought on board.

So when you approach this work, remember to consider who the person is / people are that will be tasked with implementing those very changes needed. Depending on the size of the site, or the scale of the social media effort, people who I might also need buy-in from include:

• Graphic Designers
• Marketing Managers
• Engineers
• Product Managers
• Account Managers
• Company Owners
• Advisory Boards

Graphic Designers

If the look of the site is going to change or new digital assets are needed, a corporate Twitter background is needed, or a Facebook Fan page has to be set up, you’ll need buy-in from graphic designers.

Marketing Managers

If you’re going to need to change the message being conveyed, or come up with a new message to convey on the site, in the Twitter stream, on Facebook or LinkedIn, it’s the person in charge of marketing that will be your ally.

Engineers

Somebody’s got to code the functionality, and you don’t want the engineers on the project without coordinating SEO aspects if they’re needed.

Product Managers

This one might be a surprise to some people.  Yet to me, it’s the Product Manager who’s going to either put up an impassable wall or hopefully, open their mind to talking about why the product photos they selected suck or worse, why they need to seriously consider discounts, promotions, and more importantly, coming up with more than 3 words to use on those product detail pages.

Account Managers

If you don’t include Account Managers in the Conversion Optimization discussion, they will not be prepared to handle the increase in conversions, which could cause a serious reputation management nightmare for the company.  And even if you think you already have everything else figured out, sometimes it’s the Account Manager who will provide insights into prospective client minds that was missing from the equation in the first place.

Company Owners

If you can get company ownership to buy into this early on, everyone else becomes much easier to convince.  But don’t take that to mean that once you get the head cheese to agree with you, that somebody might not come along and just to prove they’re worth the high salary they make, do all they can to prove you’re way off base…

Advisory Boards

Sometimes the client is a startup.  And if they are, and I come along and say “based on my review of the landscape, and given my own previous experience in this market as a business manager, it’s my suggestion that your price-point might need to be reviewed…”  the people I usually deal with might freak out.  That’s okay – especially if they’ve got an Advisory Board made up of more seasoned professionals.

That’s the kind of people I can win over a lot more readily than someone who’s blinded by their own beliefs or worse, frozen in fear…  I just need to be able to prove why my recommendation is valid.  And if I’ve done my footwork, and know what I’m talking about, that’s an achievable goal.

Why You Should Care

If you have any experience in PPC campaigns, you’re already involved in Conversion Optimization to a certain degree.  If you’re already coordinating efforts when it comes to site content organization, navigation changes, content development, you already are involved in and play a role in the Conversion process.  And if you’ve told them they have to be involved with social media, you can bet they’re going to ask you what that should look like.

So you better wake up if you don’t think those things that you’re doing have an impact on Conversion Optimization.  Because everything you do, even if it’s choosing the keywords to optimize for, is directly related to it whether you’ve realized that before or not.

And given that you are already involved, why not show your employer or your client that you don’t just care about higher ranking or clicks?  Why not offer more value?  If you don’t at least offer the basics and introduce the concepts, somebody else just might come along and bump you right out of that opportunity.

Just remember that you don’t have to figure it all out on your own.  Nor should you.

____________________

Black Dress Photo By Dunikowski

“Not My Job” comic from Onefte.com follow them on Twitter

Alan Bleiweiss has been an Internet professional since 1995, managing client projects valued at upwards of $2,000,000.00. Just a few of his most notable clients through the years have included PCH.com, WeightWatchers.com, and Starkist.com. Follow him on Twitter @AlanBleiweiss , read his Search Marketing blog at Search Marketing Wisdom, and be sure to read his column at SearchEngineJournal.com the 2nd and 4th Tuesday each month. Conversion Optimization is the new Black is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright Alan Bleiweiss unless otherwise attributed by me in the article.

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Nowadays, I’m not exactly getting thousands of comments, yet I’m grateful for the ones I get.  At least the ones from real people.  And Akismet continues to do a pretty good job.  But once in a while something slips through that just makes me laugh.   As much as I can see why Graywolf turned comments off, and most recently Sugarrae also announced she’s no longer going to allow blog comments, to me, comments are still a life-blood aspect of my ability to connect and communicate with my visitors.  Especially since I only get a fraction of the activity either of them get.

For those of you who do allow comments and who might not know better, I’d like to share with you a few examples of comments that are just pure spam – because the quality of your comment thread is as important as the quality of your articles themselves…

The Hit and Run Blog Comment

Sometimes people just want to comment on your blog but don’t have much they want to say.  That’s all good and fine if it’s someone you actually know or have had contact with in the past.  Not everybody writes entire books in blog commenting the way I do.  Yet all too often, comments come in that might appear to fit this category, yet upon closer examination, turn out to just be spam.

Examples:

• Nice Blog!
• Thanks!
• Good writing!

So unless you know the person who posted that comment, I urge you to send such nonsense right to the trash.

Blog Comment Evaluation Tip

If you are new to blogging and aren’t that connected yet, one sure way to tell whether a comment is from a real person who isn’t just looking to get a link to their site, look at the author information.  Is the person’s name real, or is it something like:

• Cigarettes Smokeless
• Cheap Viagra
• Mesothelioma Info

If a person’s “name” is just it’s own cheap keyword phrase, you can be pretty much assured it’s spam.  But be warned – once in a while, a real person might not know better.  They might have heard that they should use keywords in their blog comments, yet still have a comment that really does fit a particular article’s subject matter.  In those situations, it will need to be an on-the-spot call on your part.

Also, some people like to use their Twitter Nickname when leaving comments.  Again – if the comment itself really does fit your article’s focus, you may want to jump over to twitter and see if it’s a real person.

The Blessings From Hell Blog Comment

Sometimes you’ll get comments that are pure complimentary of your outstanding ability to have saved their lives with your award winning blogging.  More often than not, these are also purely spam.  But they sure do stroke the ego, so it may be tempting to allow these through.

Example:

This webpage has absolutely transformed my perspective on this topic. Theres no way I wouldve thought about this by doing this if I hadnt appear throughout your web site. All I was carrying out was cruising the net and I observed your web site and all of a sudden my views have altered. Good on you, man!

Yes – that is a comment I got just this week.  So I’ve either helped completely transformed this person’s view on the topic at hand, or it’s just spam in the guise of a compliment.  The next step then is to look at their name.  This one looked real, but a quick look at the site they provided turned out to be a spam site promoting smokeless cigarettes.  Just like an earlier comment this week from a guy by the name of “Smokeless Cigarettes”   #FAIL

The Foreigner Ploy Blog Comment

Okay so I’m an American.  I speak and write using American English.  Yet the web is a global world.  Some of my online friends and colleagues are from other countries.  Their English is not always “correct” as far as American English goes.  And I have no problem with that.  Yet honestly, I need to say that if a comment comes in where the English is so butchered as to make my head spin, that’s going to be a big red flag, especially if the comment isn’t even discussing the topic of the article.

Example:

Nice to become visiting your blog again, it’s got been months for me. Nicely this article that i’ve been waited for so lengthy. I have to have this post to complete my assignment in the college, and it has similar subject together with your content. Thank you, fantastic share.

Isn’t that great?  What if this was a real “English as a second language” college student, who came across my blog, and found it useful enough to want to thank me in the comments?

Well guess what?  It’s from another smokeless cigarettes spammer. 

The Utterly Stupid Blog Comment

Then there’s the truly mind-bogglingly bogus comments that come in.  You know – where when you read it, you either want to laugh, or just punch someone in the face…

The business brokerages network will provide you with access to some large pool of individuals who’ve the details about companies for sale and buyers or investors searching for any company venture. By making good use in the information you’ve, you might be cutting a provide and make a handsome profit out from the transactions.

OMG hahaha  yeah – that was posted to one of my TopSEO’s articles.  The one where I question whether TopSEO’s is a shakedown operation or not.   The comment “author” was listed as “Bradford Camenisch”. So even though that seems like a real name, the comment is just nonsense as far as it not relating to my article.  And the site Bradford linked to was all about some business brokerage group.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line in all this is that much of this is trapped by Akismet.  Yet it’s important to review any comments Akismet flags as spam because once in a while it will trap a legitimate comment.  So you need to be on your toes!  Don’t be afraid to delete comments you think are even borderline phony.  The quality of your blog is more important than possibly offending the rare person who posts a borderline comment.

Blog Comment Points to Remember

• Comments should be on -topic.
• Comments should be from real humans
• People who use something other than their name need extra scrutiny
• Comments should add to the conversation, with few exceptions

Alan Bleiweiss has been an Internet professional since 1995, managing client projects valued at upwards of $2,000,000.00. Just a few of his most notable clients through the years have included PCH.com, WeightWatchers.com, and Starkist.com. Follow him on Twitter @AlanBleiweiss , read his Search Marketing blog at Search Marketing Wisdom, and be sure to read his column at SearchEngineJournal.com the 2nd and 4th Tuesday each month. The New Bloggers Phony Blog Comment Overview is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright Alan Bleiweiss unless otherwise attributed by me in the article.

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In my last article regarding how TopSEOs continue to use deceptive business practices, I closed out the article looking for opinions by “award winners”.  Essentially, I believe that one of the most serious problems our industry faces when it comes to cleaning up the SEO cesspool is that seemingly upstanding and highly regarded companies don’t go far enough in railing against the scum that causes harm to unsuspecting business owners looking for services from our industry.

Looking For Opinions

To this end, I visited a number of web sites for companies that are listed in the TopSEOs system where those companies otherwise appear to be legitimate.  Believe me, that was a challenge simply because so many of those listed have turned out to be ripoffs.

Nonetheless, there are companies out there doing good work from an overall perspective, (or there are complaints floating I have not personally been able to verify) and I was curious to find out, directly from them, why they continue to sport TopSEOs banners that make the claim they’ve gotten an award for quality service even though everyone now knows that TopSEOs themselves don’t really perform an unbiased comprehensive review, and that their new disclaimer page actually states that there’s no reason to believe that their claims are based on any facts whatsoever.

By developing and posting such rankings, topseos.com makes no representations or warranties as to the accuracy or factual basis of the rankings

Now any reasonably intelligent human being who reads that line can clearly see that their “rankings” are complete bullshit.  Yet while that tidbit is buried deep near the end of a 942 word disclaimer (that only appeared on their site after my scathing Jeev Trika interview article and a plethora of complaints came out during this year’s initial Sphinn push initiated by Edward Lewis forced them to issue a public apology and vow to change), the fact remains that they continue to distribute and promote those asshat badges.

And those seemingly legitimate companies in our industry I reached out to continue to display them.

Which means a business owner who doesn’t know better will see that and may think “Hey – wow – this company looks legit – they’ve even won an award…”

Which we know is complete bullshit.

You Can Run but You Can’t Hide Forever

Long story longer, not one single response came from any of the companies I reached out to.

Until SMX Advanced.

Up in Seattle, the first night of the conference, Third Door put on a “Meet & Greet” – where early arrivals could socialize, get introduced, and begin the experience that I think is the most valuable of all at conferences – networking.

One of the first people I had the pleasure of meeting was Bruce Clay.  Generally speaking, I have always appreciated how successful Bruce has been over the years.  By some people’s accounts, the size, scope and scale of his company is something they only wish they could achieve.

Personally, I don’t aspire to run a company with a global reach and such a large staff, because I’m not that type of business person.  Let’s be real right?  I’m such a renegade, so fiercely independent, and thoroughly inappropriate in my approach that there’s no way even I could tolerate me as a boss. 

Bruce, on the other hand, is obviously more than skilled at running such a venture.  His business acumen is proven through and through.  And his employees sure look like they have a lot of fun at all those company parties

And while there has, over the years, been some controversy around Bruce’s linking methodology, I personally haven’t seen or explored enough of that to be able to say, with complete certainty, that it’s anything other than grey-hat stuff, if that.

Bigger Problems

Yet one of the biggest thorns in our industry is how BCI, with all their recognition and weight, sports a TopSEOs “award” right there on the BCI site – right along with their own Bruce Clay Inc. code of ethics badge…

(note – at the time of this article, that “award” has been removed from the BCI home page, replaced by their “SEO & PPC Competition” banner, however the “award” remains on their About page)…

So naturally, I felt compelled to speak with Bruce about that.

Curiosity And The Cat

Why, I wondered, would such a pillar of the search marketing community, need to display their “best in” badge, knowing full well that it’s not an independent rating? Why would they want to be associated with such a deceptive company at all?

To Bruce’s credit, our conversation was not only polite, it was downright relaxed.  Having never previously met or spoken with Bruce, I had no idea what to expect going into this.  It turns out (no surprise to anyone who has actually dealt with Bruce, I am sure), that he’s a really decent guy.  There was no arrogance, no holier-than-thou energy about him at all.

And he proceeded to explain to me why he continues to associate with TopSEOs.

Profit As A Business Motive

It turns out that BCI actually gets a fairly substantial amount of business that comes through that channel.  Even though Bruce told me exactly what percentage, he didn’t say I could share that here, so I’ll just say this – you might be shocked if you heard the number…

So that’s a major factor right there.  It’s not personal – it’s just business.

But what about the whole deceptive practices issue?

Bruce was very clear on this point.  He told me that he most definitely doesn’t like all of the things they do over at TopSEOs – from article scraping to the concept of bait and switch (for the record, Bruce said that to his knowledge not one time did any such unsuspecting prospect get referred to BCI), and just as important – he clearly thinks there’s a serious problem with how some highly questionable companies get top billing.

The Good Guy Hat

Since they do get a serious amount of business from that channel, Bruce doesn’t see any problem in participating in that way – he says that since his company does quality work, he figures if he didn’t get that business, there’s a good chance that those clients might just end up at a less than reputable company and get ripped off.

That’s an interesting perspective I hadn’t previously considered.  That while TopSEOs steers God knows how many unsuspecting businesses toward scummy solution providers, at least some percentage of them are potentially going to be sent to companies that actually deliver real solutions…

Now, personally, I don’t think it’s enough that legitimate companies are thrown into the mix.  The sheer volume and weight of the asshattery, in my opinion, far outweighs the good that might come out of this whole deal.

Yet as far as Bruce is concerned, and according to him, “I prefer to remain neutral in this” – it’s not his policy to address such concerns…

The golden Ticket

Here’s where things really get fascinating.  And why we have a critically serious problem in our industry.  What I’m about to share was, when I heard it, both shocking and not surprising in the least…

Bruce told me that he doesn’t pay TopSEOs one cent.  Nadda.  Nothing.  No monthly membership fee whatsoever.

Of course he doesn’t.  He doesn’t have to.  TopSEOs needs the “legitimacy” factor that comes with the relationship.

By sprinkling in highly visible and highly touted industry players into the mix of craptastic thieves, it lends a massive amount of credibility cache’ to what they’re doing.

So how many other companies (legitimate or otherwise) are not paying for those badges?  And how many who ARE paying, know that someone else ISN’T paying?  but I digress…

And That’s The Rub

As long as companies such as BCI continue to sleep in the same bed as TopSEOs, Jeev gets to play his game.  For all the negative that comes when the industry cries out against them, every service provider that plays, and every industry conference that continues to allow them to play the role of sponsor or “partner”, counters the outcry.

A Matter of Business Ethics Perspective

And that brings me back to a point I brought up a while ago in this ongoing discussion.  Business Ethics.  While many of us have defined the concept of business ethics, as it applies to the TopSEOs situation, to mean that you’re either against TopSEOs altogether (and refuse to have anything to do with them), or you’re not.  And if you’re not, in our view, you’re contributing to the problem, and that, in turn, means you yourself are running an unethical company.

Except to some people, that’s just our opinion.  And it’s not good business sense or realistic, according to them. In fact, when we look at what goes on in the business world – whether it’s participating in a TopSEOs type scheme through the display of phony “awards”, or it’s outsourcing overseas and paying people 80 cents an hour for work that generates your company hundreds of dollars an hour in profit, capitalism from a detached perspective doesn’t factor in moral or ethical issues the way some of us would prefer.

It’s a cold, hard, reality.

Alan Bleiweiss has been an Internet professional since 1995, managing client projects valued at upwards of $2,000,000.00. Just a few of his most notable clients through the years have included PCH.com, WeightWatchers.com, and Starkist.com. Follow him on Twitter @AlanBleiweiss , read his Search Marketing blog at Search Marketing Wisdom, and be sure to read his column at SearchEngineJournal.com the 2nd and 4th Tuesday each month. Exclusive Insights – Bruce Clay talks TopSEOs is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright Alan Bleiweiss unless otherwise attributed by me in the article.

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According to Sean:

On the topic of metadata, Ohye said that Google is now once again pulling its search index descriptions, or snippets, from website metadata description information. Ohye noted that for several years, Google considered metatags as a spam technique, but are now again considering meta description information when determining overall search relevancy.

I’ve read and re-read that paragraph four times now, trying to determine if I’ve misinterpreted it.  I can’t see a flaw in what I thought I read the first time.  “now again considering meta description information when determining overall search relevancy” seems pretty straight forward to me.

I’ve tweeted a confirmation request to Matt Cutts, and we’ll see if he responds at all one way or another.

Update: Vanessa Fox Weighs In

In response to Alex’s tweet, Vanessa Fox, herself often misquoted, chimed in with

my guess is that was almost-right reporting. And that she actually said keywords tag not used, but description used for display.

She then went on to tell me that

There’s no quote in the story though. just a summation. this happens all the time when I speak

Well, if that’s the case, that’s a significant mis-interpretation on Sean’s part.  Which might explain why SEO types who attended that keynote haven’t lit up the blogosphere with the “news”. 

As I’ve been digging around the interwebs for more info, Christian Maund-Anderson said he got the impression it was business as usual – that they may, or may not, use it, as overheard while at the conference.  Since he said he got that impression from “overhearing” it at the conference, I’m not sure how that figures into the equation.  When I asked for clarification, and if it was a google employee who said that, Christian then said

Yeah, they gave pacman aka googlebot a sugar pill, they are definitely ramping up on information retrieval.

LOL uh, okay then!

Testing Testing, 123, Is This Thing On?

What I want to do is some testing.  It’s just that this could be tricky, both because proper testing of this could take some serious time, and I’m also intuitively thinking it’s a minor factor, so any testing done needs to be done quite carefully and across multiple scenarios. So good luck finding the time for that any time in the very near future!

Call For Opinions, Tests, Data

What I can say is this – if you’ve been down this road recently and have conducted any actual tests, I’d love to see the data.  Or hear your thoughts. And as I learn more I’ll share it here…

UPDATE June 12th – Testing Begun

I have actually begun a Meta Description Usage Test for this scenario, and since Vanessa and Jill have weighed in (see comments below) I’ve redoubled my efforts.  But I don’t want to be isolated here.  So if you would like to help here’s what I’m doing.

I created a new page on my old business’s site just for this test.  I have a meta Description with text that’s unique to that page and not in the page’s content.  I’ve then linked to that page from both that site’s home page (the only page remaining on that site these days) and from my blog.  I then added it to my sitemap.xml file, and resubmitted that to Google to try and expedite it’s inclusion in the SERPs.  From there, I’ll see if that exact match wording will cause that page to show up in the SERPs.

That’s the first step in the testing process.  Up for it?  Let me know!

Also, if you know of any real world test conducted in the past few months, that info will help…

Update #2

Jill Whalen commented that new pages may not be treated the same as old ones, so I will now add an existing page into the test mix to see what happens with that and if there’s a difference between a brand new page and an existing page.

What To Do About Meta Descriptions in the Mean Time

Regardless of whether it’s true or not, for quite a while I’ve been advocating to clients that it’s my belief the best practice for Meta Description usage is to write content that engages the reader in helping them understand what the page is in a way that attracts them to visit your link as compared to competitors.  And in that process, you should integrate the top phrase of the page.

The thinking here and as I’ve seen others do and advocate, is that if someone types a phrase to search, the words in that phrase will be bolded in the SERPs.   And if those words are highlighted in the Title and the Description, it’s more likely that the person doing the search will say “this one really is on target for my search”…

And in my A/B testing over the years on several client sites, that’s been the case.  It’s critical though, that the description not be keyword stuffed, and really does make sense as a readable chunk of text…

Alan Bleiweiss has been an Internet professional since 1995, managing client projects valued at upwards of $2,000,000.00. Just a few of his most notable clients through the years have included PCH.com, WeightWatchers.com, and Starkist.com. Follow him on Twitter @AlanBleiweiss , read his Search Marketing blog at Search Marketing Wisdom, and be sure to read his column at SearchEngineJournal.com the 2nd and 4th Tuesday each month. Meta Descriptions Now Count for SEO says Google? is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright Alan Bleiweiss unless otherwise attributed by me in the article.

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And keep your eyes out in the near future for a “So you think you want to be a liveblogger” article.  Because my experience will save you much pain.  Much very serious pain.   Trust me on that.

Note – clicking on a link will take you to that page in a new window so you can come back here and read the rest of the articles.  Which I know you’ll do.  Because I know you respect how much sweat, pain and agony I put into these.  For you.

Opening the Contract Kimono: Translating your Pricing Model to Legal Agreement

If you are an independent consultant, a small shop owner or at an agency, you’re going to want to check out the Contract Kimono session.  There’s some great stuff in there that could potentially save you tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawsuits.  And some solid points made about why some contracts in our industry should be Pay for Performance.  Which until this session, I had been totally against.  And now think is worth consideration…

Demystifying Online Attribution

Lately I’ve been working hard (okay, I don’t work hard – except when I’m liveblogging…) to drive home the importance of proper conversion attribution to clients.  If you think “We had 30,000 visits this month and a 60% bounce rate, so something sucks”, you may be completely off the mark when going to address it.  Because you don’t track the full life cycle of some purchase decisions.  Online attribution can resolve that problem and not only save your company a lot of money, it could significantly increase your revenue…

You&A with Matt Cutts

A regular comedy show ensued this year as Danny Sullivan interviewed Matt Cutts taking questions from the audience, and injecting his own pet peeves and wise-guy style into the process.  Which both kept Matt on his toes, and everyone in the room, including Matt, laughing…

So You Want To Test SEO?

Never take Matt, or Rand, or Aaron, or Jill, or anyone in our industry at face value when you’re doing SEO.  If you’re not testing, and doing it properly, you’re not getting the most you can for your company if you’re in-house, or your clients if you’re a consultant.  This was a big one for me.  Not only did I feel by this time that I’d actually gotten into the groove of liveblogging, but it was on a subject I’m passionate about.  And even though 95% of everything shared by speakers this week was something I already knew (hey – I put in 10 hour days for the past 10 years, okay?), I came away with great new stuff more from this one session than I did from any of the others I attended.

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And when you’re done reading those, come back again.  Because then you’ll be able to go visit the Bruce Clay blog and read all of Susan and Dana Lookadoo and Gil’s session coverage as well.

And then you can go to SearchEngineLand and go read all the other liveblogging coverage for both day one and day two.  Because there was a lot of it.  All for you.

Then, when you’re done there, be sure to send Lisa Barone and Virginia Nussey flowers, cupcakes, rainbows, puppies and kittens encouraging them to complete heal so the next conference they’ll be able to liveblog again.  And I’ll be spared the cruel and unusual suffering.  Okay?

Alan Bleiweiss has been an Internet professional since 1995, managing client projects valued at upwards of $2,000,000.00. Just a few of his most notable clients through the years have included PCH.com, WeightWatchers.com, and Starkist.com. Follow him on Twitter @AlanBleiweiss , read his Search Marketing blog at Search Marketing Wisdom, and be sure to read his column at SearchEngineJournal.com the 2nd and 4th Tuesday each month. My SMX Advanced Liveblogging Index is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright Alan Bleiweiss unless otherwise attributed by me in the article.

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But since I actually payed attention and liveblogged along the way, I figure I’d share what I got out of it with you.

(And maybe make up for the guilt I felt at using that excuse)

Of course, as has been the case in the past, this was a one on one interview style session between Danny Sullivan from Third Door Media, and Matt Cutts.  For those of you who are not Cuttlets, Matt’s the guy who guns for spammers over at Google.  And he’s a pretty good pool player as well.

I’m sitting in the front row, just left of center – to my left are Jonah, Marty Weintraub and Matt McGee, and to my right is Susan Esparza.  And it’s Danny and Matt up on the stage.  So I guess you can say in just 3 liveblogging sessions I’ve skyrocketed to the top!

Or you can say – who was the clown that let Alan in the door in the first place?

Here we go!

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The session starts off with Matt and Danny donning life vests – half the people in the room are confused, and the rest of us get it that they’re making a joke about the recent MayDay update over at Google.  (If you don’t know that “Mayday – Mayday” is a distress call by boaters, well then, you don’t get the joke either, now do you?)

I also need to say that this is already going south fast – Danny and Matt are ripping jokes left and right, faster than I can keep up even at 55 words a minute.  Needless to say, it’s killer stuff!

1^st Question from Danny – to talk about this Mayday update (but he interrupts the process by breaking out the caffeine and now I think they’re set!

So Matt – you’ve got this big mayday ranking update plus Caffeine is live right?

Matt – SearchEngineLand has a post just now to announce that Caffeine being live!

Here’s the story on Caffeine.  Way back in the ancient days when Alta Vista roamed the earth – Google hadn’t updated our index in 4 months.  We had to crawl the web for several days.  We didn’t have enough capacity to update all the data centers.  So we had this thing called the Google dance – for about a week we had the data roll out.  But we realized people want fresh results.

Freshness matters. In 2003 we switched to an incremental system – we would crawl a portion of the web every night.  Update Fritz was switching to incremental.

Caffeine – instead of a billion docs in one day, with Caffeine, when we crawl, we immediately index it.  This essentially makes the entire index closer to real time.

Analogy – before you might have waited for a bus to come by.  Now it’s like your document comes out the front door, and a taxi is waiting and whisks it away.

It massively increases our ability to scale up the index. We can index a lot more documents.

Its something like 50% fresher.

Its also easier for us to annotate documents with information.  Caffeine lets us any type of general information we want to.

Caffeine lets us process on the order of 100 petabytes.  (Beyond my brain’s capacity to envision because I’m just a marketing guy! )

Danny – talk about the annotation part of it, mentions meta keywords

Matt We don’t use meta keywords!

Danny – you could see all the facebook likes…

Matt If it’s publicly available, we could do that.  If somethings behind a password, we can’t.

Matt – metadata or just plain data, Google has the ability to attach more stuff.  We can think of new signals without writing new code.

Danny – can you talk about citations?  – that’s Metadata.

Matt –  Twitter recently introduced an annotation API – there’s info encompassed in a tweet – where it came from, etc.  – Google has a lot of extra associated information that we can incorporate and then throw in that document.  Content, things that are linking to it.

Danny – Caffeine – faster indexing – new ability to attach metadata and then down the road…

Matt – my team is just starting to interoperate with some of the data.

Mayday was a ranking change – entirely algorithmic – my team had nothing to do with it.  Google as a whole raised the bar.  In 2010 we look at the challenges of the web as it exists – how do you look at stuff that’s not maybe web spam but maybe not the highest quality.  Mayday is looking at how do we look at site quality, page quality?  Users don’t use content farms – its one of the things we look at.  How do you improve the quality of the results?

How much content am I generating, how fast?  Uniqueness, editorial control…

(Note – Danny tries to pin Matt down on the issues some of us find annoying – like Mahalo getting rankings even though they violate several Google guidelines that the rest of the world is held accountable for, or Wikipedia polluting the results pages.  Matt, ever the evasive one, consistently dodges the bullets flying at him).

Danny – What is that designed to kill?  Mahalo?

Matt – Google doesn’t want to get into value judgments – rather than individual sites, it’s a complete algorithmic change.

Danny – was this in response to Mahalo and you’re saying no.

Matt – I’ve been on a site where there was a content free (lacking content) article.  And that’s the kind of thing we’re looking at.

(As Matt’s talking about a sample site, Danny’s trying to figure out which site.  Lots of laughter…)

Matt – we just yesterday announced in Webmaster tools where you can see soft 404’s  – the site says 200 found but it’s not found.

We’re going to keep working on paid links, We’re looking at ways we can make the cached page link a little bit better – how can we improve that experience?

If your description isn’t displayed wouldn’t it be great if you could figure out where on the page that came from?

(Danny keeps bringing up the issue of Wikipedia dominating and Matt keeps avoiding that – go figure!)

Danny – how about HTML 5 and caffeine?

Matt – very good question – HTML 5 is different – we don’t give points for validation.  But we are looking at better ways to do parsing.

Danny – Do you still give points if your site has adsense? ( a LOT of audience laughter at that one)

Matt – Conspiracy theories galore!

Danny – I’m trying to get you to shout – yes! Yes it does!

Danny – as the results get increasingly blended, is Google planning on providing webmasters more data in webmaster tools?

Matt – I don’t think we have any plans in the works.

Danny – Do you want to tell them all they get Nexxus phones now?

Matt – we were going to say that but Graywolf wouldn’t let us. (Ha!)

Danny asks about sites that sell links –

Matt – we have taken action on individual sellers.  I think we’ve been taking strong action – and we have some new tools to make sure they don’t work.  We’re getting laser guided scalpels – its harder and getting harder to have paid links work.

Danny – I love my job (#Win)

Matt – I think Danny should do the daily searchcast again

Danny – you’ve said nofollow is no longer a factor – are you bleeding value from strong pages.  Is there no way for us to signal to you the importance of pages?

Matt – there is – which pages do you link to from your root page?  Which pages are easy to find in your site?  Rather than doing special order stuff, I would think about sites like the ODP – think of that tree structure.  Take the products and pages that are important – put links to them closer to the top of the page.

Danny – will caffeine affect the way you handle javascript?

Matt – we are more able to find not just raw links, but actually process javascript.  We’ve seen a few spammers try to prevent that – we’ve improved our ability to read javascript and see links in javascript.  If you’re white hat its always best to have HTML links to be safe.  But we are getting better at reading javascript.

(Really Matt?  Because I just had a client kill the javascript they were using to link to over 4,000 internal pages that were never indexed and 6 days later, over 3,000 were indexed!  Sorry – that’s an Alan insight Rant… Now back to our session!)

Danny – how many of you like the new look of Google – a few hands – how many hate it – a few hands – how many don’t care – a few hands!

Matt – How many use firefox?  A lot of hands – Internet explorer- a few hands – Chrome – a few more than use IE…

Danny – you’re just promoting your own stuff- Google shopping, Google this, Google that – do you see anything wrong with that?

Matt – I think Bing is using big weather widgets so the organic results are lower down

Danny – so you’re saying Bing is worse!

Matt – someone asked – is google favoring YouTube – no we bend over backwards to show videos from other sites.  There are people trying to do the right thing – it’s not my area but there are people at Google focused on that.

Danny – When are you going to use rich snippets for ecommerce because right now Yelp has an advantage.

Matt – we have a tool in Webmaster tools for rich snippets – timeframe its not weeks but maybe not months either – I think a relatively short time.

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Lightening Round

Danny – do we need to have flash sitemaps to finally deal with flash indexing or is [Steve] Jobs going to kill Flash?

Matt – we don’t need separate sitemaps – its not as helpful to have your entire site in flash.

(Well thank you very much Matt.  Now can you go back and kill the press release Google did way back when with Adobe, claiming that Flash was more indexable?)

Danny – is bounce rate part of Google’s algorithm?

Matt and Danny then proceed on to go back and forth as each time Matt answers, Danny thinks it’s an evasive answer   This goes on for several minutes and it’s getting funnier by the moment…

Matt‘s final answer: to the best of my knowledge bounce rate is not used in our general algorithm.

Danny – my pet peeve – it’s not ten results on the page.  Getting rid of the indents, sitelinks, wikipedia – you get more variety….

And that’s it!  Danny closes by asking people – if Matt’s on the way to the bathroom, please – let him come out first before you go up to him!  (Ha!)

YAY!

Alan Bleiweiss has been an Internet professional since 1995, managing client projects valued at upwards of $2,000,000.00. Just a few of his most notable clients through the years have included PCH.com, WeightWatchers.com, and Starkist.com. Follow him on Twitter @AlanBleiweiss , read his Search Marketing blog at Search Marketing Wisdom, and be sure to read his column at SearchEngineJournal.com the 2nd and 4th Tuesday each month. You & A with Matt Cutts – SMX Advanced is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright Alan Bleiweiss unless otherwise attributed by me in the article.

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So if you want to, you can read my take on the session,  check his out, and compare notes

Okay – we’re about to start the morning SEO session on day two at SMX Advanced!  I wore a t-shirt this morning because yesterday I was too warm in my long sleeved shirt.  Except the air conditioning is working too well today for my change in attire.  I’m going to chalk it up to life doing what it wants in spite of my plans, and just focus on liveblogging.  Another notch as well in the “things livebloggers have to deal with” column.

This session’s on one of my favorite topics, testing SEO.  Because no matter what I’ve read, heard, or “learned” over the years, none of it matters until I’ve been able to test it out and verify that it applies to each of my clients and their unique situation…

For this session, we have:

Moderator: Vanessa Fox, Contributing Editor, Search Engine Land

Q&A Moderator: Alex Bennert, In House SEO, Wall Street Journal

Speakers:

John Andrews, , Seattle SEO Consultant
Jordan LeBaron, Senior Consultant, Omniture, An Adobe Company
Branko Rihtman, R&D SEO Specialist, Whiteweb
Conrad Saam, Marketing, Avvo

And here we go!

Vanessa’s up at the podium, starting things off, going over the usual introductions, but in Vanessa’s fun way

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First up is Conrad.

You hear the word “statistically relevant” – what does that mean?  If we were to test ten people in this room, and the men were all 4′ taller than the women, you’d be confident that they’re all taller.  If they’re all 4″ taller, you’d be less confident that they would be taller.  We need to look at how we come up with averages.  How confident am I in my decision?

Sometimes you don’t need to test – a major change can be seen as to its impact and it’s really obvious.

Fundamentals of testing include

Sampling

Sampling Size

Variability

Confidence Interval

Types of test include:

Continuous Tests

Binary Tests

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With sampling, you take some set of data and extrapolate that sampling to the population.  If you have a large data sent, you have less variability than if your data set is much smaller.

Conrad is using bell curve slides to talk about sample sizes and confidence levels. There’s no way I’m going to explain them here.

And now it went from bad to worse.  He’s talking about using something called a “TTest” (yes, that’s correct, two “T”s in that so it sounds like  “T-Test”.  Not to be confused with the process of testing green tea vs. black tea.  We’re talking about complex functions and formulas here people.  Way over my pay scale.  And geek-quotient.

What it boils down to is that you need to find out ways to improve the quality of your data by increasing the sample size of your test.  And now I’m thinking – uh, why couldn’t you have just said that in the first place?  But then probably half the attendees here are just eating this stuff up because they’re statistical fanatics.

He says you can use an A/B Testing Confidence Calculator from ABTester.com, which will give you a confidence level assessment based on your test sample size.  And THAT is useful, even to me!  Thanks Dude!

Conrad says there are “tons” of this type of calculator out there as well. (just Google it and you see a lot of opitons)

Seasonal variability – nobody looks for laywers during thanksgiving, so if you test for people who search for lawyers and you do so during Thanksgiving, you have a bad data set.

Pay attention to things that might cause your sampling or your data set to be incorrect due to mistakes or assumptions that aren’t valid!

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Next up is John!

I’m going to talk about the community aspect of testing.  As an SEO I want actionable information, I want to isolate myself from sudden changes, and I want to avoid penalties and protect against competition.

These days we’re hearing about better correlations, higher probabilities, super LARGE numbers like 11 million…

Scientific reports are usually supporting claims, like Page Rank Sculpting “Doesn’t Work” or Title tags should be 165 characters, only the first link on a page matters…

The value has shifted from the data to the claim, but that’s marketing, not science.

Scientists go through a peer review process before publication.  As Scientists, you usually can’t “redo” your study or republish your paper.  Promotion / fame is based on citations, respect, publishers protect their own quality score.  All of this is built into the scientific world.

In SEO, we have almost the opposite.  Remarkable claims get the most attention.  Sponsors fund studies.  There’s virtually no peer review.  Success follows attention, not validity, anyone can publish anything on the web, links are cheap and easy.

Instead of saying what’s true, share what you have and let’s ALL determine what’s true.

Remarkable claims backed by weak science draws lots of links, but they tend to be lower quality over time.

Contribute to the science of SEO

Science is slow, boring, not easy, and it’s expensive.  Most scientific experiments don’t produce significant results.  Scientists learn by making mistakes, proving themselves wrong, “We”, never make mistakes.  But every SEO is an experimentalist.

Publish your findings without making any claims.  Describe “What I Did”, “What I Saw”.  Be complete and transparent.  Let your peer community review your data.  Even if it’s not public, give peers access.  They might repeat your experiment.  They’ll provide a citation to your data if they do a write up on it as well.  This linking is very powerful linking.

Make suggestions about the data, but not “hard claims”.  You’re only making honest observation so nobody can dispute it.  Others are likely to promote hard claims on your behalf, as a one-off.

You can earn more valuable inbound links by publishing your observations and separately publish the discussions.  You’ll get more authority sites linking to your data.

You won’t get the social media attention because it’s not wild claims.  but the higher authority links are worth it.

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Next up is Jordan

How do you kill a vampire? What are the two primary ways?  Audience answers stake through the heart, or direct sunlight.  These are the historic beliefs.  More recently, an expert has said that’s wrong.  (He flashes a “Twilight” book cover on the screen. )

How do we deal with this discrepancy?  Do testing yourself.

Now there’s a photo of Matt Cutts up on the screen and he says “Don’t Trust This Guy”.  And a photoshopped photo of Matt’s there now, looking really evil. 

You need to take what others say with a grain of salt.  Every site is different, every competitor situation is different.  You need to test for yourself.

Why do we test?  To help break through the red tape that’s out there, and validate the recommendations and processes we want to go through.  We need the evidence to show what we want to do is the right thing to do.

Testing process:

• Formulate your plan – lay out the steps.
• Execute your test
• Monitor the metrics and reports you determined during the plan
• Share the information.  there are key stakeholders in your organization that need to know the information.  If you can, share it online in the SEO community.
• Maintain consistency for ongoing success.

Measure impact and conversions – use A/B testing with changes on your site and monitor the conversions.  Was there a negative impact on conversions?  If not, you’re safe to move ahead.

Data points to consider:

• Visits or Searches
• Average SERPs (pull data from visitor URL)
• KPIs – your key success metrics

Generate trend reports, and granular data reports.

Example reports – Overall visits, Organic visits, Google Visits, Keyword group level results, all the way down to monitoring individual keyword results over time.  At the deepest level, you can look at results over time for an individual page.

Create a dashboard – to automate the generation of the data, which frees you up to do other work.

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And our last speaker is Branko (Go @Neyne!)

I admire Branko – an SEO scientist who routinely does lab testing of the biological kind!

Some of the things important in science that can be applied to SEO:

First, we want to define the question, usually after we observe something.  The phrase isn’t “Eureka”, it’s usually “oh – that’s funny” – a thought that comes up as we’re observing something.  You don’t have time or the ability to test everything – its important to know what we can test or we can’t test.  PageRank is an example – they can test that in MountainView, but we can’t.  Everything you do on your web site is a potential thing we can test.

Gather information and resources before you test – related blog posts, social media, forums – maybe someone has done this before that you can learn from.  A problem with this is non-standardized terminology – we don’t all use the same words to describe things we test.

Perform an experiment and collect data.  Testing with “nonsensical” terms (non-words) is not really valid.  On the other end, testing for “payday loans” isn’t valid either.

I like to take the third route – phrases that are made up of real words, but aren’t normally phrases.  You’re able to couple changes to your site with changes in rankings.

Multi-directional experiments -I take a site without a link and change it, then look at the results, I’ll then do the reverse – if I see similar results, I have more confidence in the results.

Interpret your data and draw conclusions – does my conclusion agree with expectations?  Does it have an alternative explanation?  Bounce your findings off of others – two heads are better than one.

Remember – there are no definite conclusions.  That should be kept in mind.  It’s a tough reality to live with, but it’s important to be aware of.

Data Analysis- Get a real statistician to look at your data because it can lead to bad examples if you rely on yourself or someone who isn’t an expert.

Avoid personal bias.  We think we see what we do based on our expectations.  Try to erase your expectations before you look at the data.

Go Social!  Some of the best findings I’ve found have come from going social – you’ll learn much more.

SEO Testing Secret Ingredient:

Identify the people who like experiments, buy them a beer – you’ll get much better results and we’ll all enjoy it more!

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Question time!

When you’re doing testing on a moving target, what are the challenges?  The moving target is the algorithm.  How can you isolate that the changes you’ve made are what moves the data?
Branko - my multi-directional method does a pretty good job.  But the title of the whole thing, you’re only increasing the certainty a little bit.

Vanessa - I really liked not only the multi-directional method but doing the test a couple times.

Branko - On a few pages as well.

John - Over time, you find some sites that are representative of content strategies – and you can go to them and see what happened to them.

Vanessa - if you’re looking at all the sites you’re involved with, it’s more likely to not be a coincidence.

Question: Do you want to talk about tests you’ve done that didn’t match expectations?

Branko - A while back it wasn’t well known at the time, but we discovered that you didn’t need quality links, only consistently more links coming in.  That was new to us.  It may not be that way today but it was new and it worked for us.

Question: Do you use external control groups? Do you track other peoples web sites to see if their changes are comparable to yours?

Conrad - Benchmarking competitors can be bad.  We do watch competitors like a hawk, but if you’re studying them, you might stumble into a test, assume that’s something they’re doing not just as a test.

Branko - I do it sometimes when I test links.  I insert a link to a control group that I don’t have control over – if that link behaves as links to my web site, then it’s better ( for my evaluation of my testing).

Question - where are good places people can go to publish this information, and exchange ideas?

John - I joined Twitter only for SEO and over time, I can twitter something and get attention of hundreds of people.  That same thing happens at forums – I like the SEOBook forum – they’re hardcore people with being serious.  In the science world, we form working groups all the time.  When you meet people with common areas, take advantage of that.

Branko - a study that came out on the Distilled blog – they published excels with data that anybody could take and study and we joined forces – and that’s the whole point of that.

Question: Can you each briefly give ideas for setting up SEO testing environments?

John - If you’re beginning, go into Google – Analytics, Webmaster Tools – put them to use

Branko - The problem with testing – it’s isolated from the places we want to be at.  I would make sure you’re constantly aware of what’s happening on YOUR web site – or isolating sections on your site and doing experiments – that teaches you more.

Jordan - if you can’t set up a completely controlled environment – set aside testing areas of your site.

Conrad - Make sure you and the people you are sharing the data with are using statistical standards.

And that’s it!

Alan Bleiweiss has been an Internet professional since 1995, managing client projects valued at upwards of $2,000,000.00. Just a few of his most notable clients through the years have included PCH.com, WeightWatchers.com, and Starkist.com. Follow him on Twitter @AlanBleiweiss , read his Search Marketing blog at Search Marketing Wisdom, and be sure to read his column at SearchEngineJournal.com the 2nd and 4th Tuesday each month. So You Want To Test SEO? is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright Alan Bleiweiss unless otherwise attributed by me in the article.

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INDUSTRY OUTRAGE LEADS TO OFFICIAL APOLOGY

Outrage over TOPSEOs deceptive business practices has been brewing for a couple years, and came to a head over the past couple months.  As a result of the SEO industry’s coming together with one voice in opposition to Jeev Trika’s deceptive game playing and the seriously mounting complaints from both industry professionals and business owners who had been deceived, I reached out to Jeev in an attempt to get his side of the story and wrote about it on April 26th.   Three days later, TOPSEOs issued an official apology press release, vowing to change.

TOPSEOs ANNOUNCES THEY’VE CHANGED THEIR WAYS – BUT HAVE THEY?

That was more than a full month ago, so a review of their claimed pennance and changes is due. Especially since they issued a subsequent press release claiming they’ve changed their ways.  Let’s look at the facts and then you can decide for yourselves whether TOPSEOs is a reformed criminal, or Jeev Trika was full of shit.

FIRST, THE GOOD NEWS, MAYBE

One of the biggest complaints that came out of this was how TOPSEOs listed countless companies in their database that were not paying for leads, and when someone would click on a link to contact that company, it would actually be redirected to paying members without the knowledge of the innocent site visitor.

In their “we’ve changed” press release, they state

Some of the changes implemented include of: (i) enabling the contact request for all companies across the five regional sites without the agency being required to sign up for the leads service, (ii) contact requests within articles, case studies, research materials, and jobs have been disabled, (iii) the links within the articles sections have been enabled, and (iv) the website response times have been further optimized.

At the time this article is being written, I can confirm that contact requests within articles, case studies and research materials have, in fact been removed.

As far as contact requests being redirected or not, I’m still testing this and will need to report on my findings only after I have done enough testing to truly confirm this, a daunting task given how vast their database of listings is.

LOOK AT US – WE’RE BETTER NOW

IF my ongoing study of the bait and switch issue proves them truthful in this aspect, I highly encourage Jeev Trika to tout that fact prominently on the TOPSEOs web site.

Except it might have to read:

Since 2002, one of our primary business models has been based on bait and switch tactics.  But we heard the outcry, and we no longer pull that bullshit on unsuspecting business owners!  Sure, we still deceive you in countless other ways, but hey, at least now we’re no longer performing the most egregious of criminal activity, so please – cut us some slack!

NEXT – THE BAD BAD BAD

Exhibit #1 TOPSEOS THEFT OF ARTICLES

An article by Marty Weintraub originally posted at SearchEngineWatch on February 22nd, 2008 continues to live on in its entirety at TOPSEOs, with no original article attribution, and presented to TOPSEOs readers as if it’s an article originally posted TO TOPSEOs by Marty.

An article by Jill Whalen originally posted at HighRankings.com (Jill’s site), on May 30th, 2004, continues to live on in its entirety at TOPSEOs, with no indication that this is a stolen article or that it was originally posted at Jill’s site.

UPDATE – Jill just notified me that in that article, they are, in fact, properly attributing the article to her, and linking back to her site. As such, she would not call that infringing. So we can give TOPSEOs a break on that one article.

Yet that leaves all these other articles, and God knows how many more I haven’t uncovered…

A Case Study by Michael Gray, origionally posted to his Wolf-Howl web site, continues to live on, in its entirety at TOPSEOs, as though he wrote it for their site.

Articles by Loren Baker, posted to SearchEngineJournal.com, continue to live on at TOPSEOs, direct theft of SearchEngineJournal.com content. And THAT pisses me off, in a more personal way because I am an author at SEJ, and SEJ article scrapers disgust me.

Articles by Ann Smarty, also posted to SearchEngineJournal.com, live on, in their scraped content entirety at TOPSEOs. Hey Jeev Trika, didn’t you get it just now when I expressed how much you piss me off?  Well, now you’re just aching for me to digitally bitch slap you aren’t you?

Other articles originally posted elsewhere by industry professionals continue to reside on the TOPSEOs site and presented as original to TOPSEOs which is both deceptive and in violation of copyright law, such as this article by Chris Boggs, still on the TOPSEOs site.

Do I go on? We’re talking about articles by Matt McGee, Joanna Lord, Andy Beard, the list goes on and on and on…

So clearly, TOPSEOs continues their deceptive practices.

ARTICLE REMOVAL COUNTER ARGUMENT

Some people believe it should be the responsibility of the author of an article to contact TOPSEOs and have their scraped content removed.

To be fair to Jeev, they have set up an article removal request site, where writers can submit a request to have their scraped content removed from TOPSEOs system.  While I applaud them for doing so, nowhere on their actual site do they provide this link that I can find.  Nowhere on their site do they communicate in any easy to find manner, that removal of unintentionally scraped content is even possible.  No, the only reason I know about this method is because I saw that one-time press release.

The vast majority of article writers would most likely NOT have seen that one-time release.  And hell – they don’t even list their apology or “we’ve changed” releases on their own site.  Go figure.

WHY SCRAPED CONTENT REMOVAL IS TOPSEOs RESPONSIBILITY

As far as I am concerned, I call BULLSHIT on Jeev Trika, because they know damned well that they scrape content.  It would NOT take a rocket scientist to know which articles have been posted directly to their site and which ones they stole.  And since they continue to leverage their ability to deceive unsuspecting business owners, I say the onus should be on TOPSEOs, not article authors.  Especially since they stated, on the record,

This content was identified, and is in the process of being removed.

So yes, as far as I am concerned, either they lied when they say they identified the content, or they’re incompetent fools who have no right to exist.  Take your pick.

Exhibit #2 TOPSEOS BULLSHIT REMOVAL EFFORTS

Conducting a search for “Jill Whalen” at TOPSEOs reveals several “press release” and several “article” titles and snippets under both the High Rankings banner and Jill Whalen as author.  When clicking on the link on these to “View Article”, you are redirected to the TOPSEOs home page now.  So at least they’ve removed at least some of the full articles.  But by listing these articles in the search results it means they continue to leach off of the hard work of true industry professionals.

TOPSEOs continues to deceive and leach off of the SEO industry

Similar entries continue to exist for other industry professionals, including Matt Cutts, Loren Baker, Matt McGee, and who knows how many others…

Exhibit #3 TOPSEOs CONTINUES TO LEACH OFF HIGH PROFILE INDUSTRY LISTINGS

A search at TOPSEOs for “High Rankings” lists several companies, including Jill Whalen’s company, High Rankings.  Clicking on the link in the bottom right to “View Company” causes a “302 Found” redirect to the TOPSEOs home page.  So they no longer have a page on Jill’s company on their site, but they still list it in the search results, and redirect that sucker to their home page.

High Rankings Company Profile at TOPSEOs

Exhibit #4 TOPSEOs FALSE CLAIMS

The Independent Authority Lie

Even after Jeev Trika vowed to change their ways, they continue to display a claim that they’re an “Independent authority”. In fact, they mostly claim they are “THE” independent authority.

Again, I call bullshit.  If the vast majority of companies you rank actually pay you insane fees for the right to be ranked, you are NOT an independent authority. You have a VESTED INTEREST in ranking those companies.  You are NOT providing a fair, unbiased and impartial opinion.  This is classic BULLSHIT.

The 4000 Firms Analyzed Lie

To this day, TOPSEOs maintains a claim on their home page where Entrepreneur magazine quoted them saying that they have analyzed over 4,000 firms.  Where do I begin with this one?

First of all, they use the Entrepreneur logo as some sort of “proof of truth” banner.  Kind of like their own “Best in the industry” badges.  In fact, this is no proof of truth or trustworthiness at all, it’s purely a marketing ploy to deceive site visitors who don’t know better.

Then there’s the minor detail they fail to disclose in any real way, that many companies they claimed to have reviewed, turned out to NOT have been reviewed.  Like Vertical Measures, as well as numerous other companies who’s representatives spoke up in the various Sphinn threads and on their own articles across the web over the past couple months.

Jeev Trika never disputed these claims. Not in his interview with me, or in their official apology press release.

So I call BULLSHIT on the 4000 firms claim.

Highly Questionable Rankings

To this day, many of the companies that have been well documented as to be highly questionable, and where actual clients have accounted where they posted complaints directly on the TOPSEOs web site, only to have those complaints mysteriously disappear without resolution, remain highly “ranked”.  Some companies that have been ranked, are, upon a simple lifting of the hood, companies that use black hat techniques to achieve whatever results they achieve.

No, we don’t believe that TOPSEOs has actually done proper, reasonable, or respectable “independent authority” due diligence in their “ranking” process at all.  Not in the least.

So I call BULLSHIT on the claim of ranking companies as “BEST” anything.

Exhibit #5 BULLSHIT DAMAGE CONTROL

Let’s face it.  When a murderous criminal is caught with blood splattered all over their body, gun shot residue spread across their hand, and the crime scene isn’t properly scrubbed of all DNA trace evidence, it’s pretty damned hard for that criminal to erase all traces of their criminal activity, let alone perform damage control.

I do, however, give Jeev Trika credit for trying to pretend like they’re covering their asses in a sufficient enough manner.

Take, for example, the now visible “FULL DISCLOSURE” button that appears at the bottom of every page.

Of course, when I zoom in on that little area of the site all the way at the bottom of pages, that green button jumps out at you doesn’t it?

But when you actually go to their site, and you’re looking at the page like most humans do, and your eyes are bleeding from absorbing all the primary content, that green button becomes a blur among a flurry of bottom feeder links and buttons.

FINALLY – THE DOWNRIGHT UGLY

So okay, we already know it’s a BULLSHIT ASSHAT way to skirt the disclosure requirement that was called for in our outcry.  Personally, I called for an obvious and easy to find disclosure throughout and across the site.  This isn’t even CLOSE to obvious or easy to find when you’re overwhelmed with trying to focus on primary content areas.  It’s not in any of the top navigation links, there’s no icons or text directly inside the content areas.  It’s buried at the very bottom in a blur.

But let’s at least look at it to see what they’ve come up with, shall we?

There’s a lot of marketing bullshit about how they do their rankings and this little gem:

The rankings are strictly our opinions based on our research process.

Okay – so we should believe their ability to be trustworthy why?

Oh yeah – they’re the Independent Authority!  (BULLSHIT)

THE “WE DON’T NEED TO BE HONEST” LOOPHOLE

The rankings are usually measured on a series of scores that we assign on five factors within each category.  The scores for each factor are assigned based on our analysis. Only the top scoring agencies make a given list.

Wait – USUALLY?  What the fuck does THAT mean?

It means they have the right to list any fucking douchebag asshat scumbag company they damned well please.  Without otherwise TELLING you that’s what they did.  Because they tell you right there on that disclosure page.  So FUCK YOU if you were hoping for fairness and independent trustworthy rankings.

AT LEAST THEY GET A LITTLE HONEST

They go on to say  in the disclosure page

We charge a standard fee from agencies and tool developers for our time to evaluate.

So there you have it – an actual truthful statement that they get paid to rank sites.  Isn’t that nice of Jeev Trika for actually being honest about how rankings are bought and paid for?

LETS GET REAL – ITS A BULLSHIT PLOY

AFTER they close out the “disclosure” page content, below the “Summary” and the “Sincerely” bullshit closing, they go on to provide a p.s.!

P.S.:   Our lawyers advised us that we should say a few more things…

Users are recommended to do their own research and investigation before engaging services with any company.  User agrees to not hold topseos.com and/or e-ventures, LLC and/or any members and/or any managers and/or any of our partners and/or suppliers liable from any decisions they take. Furthermore, e-ventures, LLC is not liable for any statements, representations, descriptions, comments, or opinions posted on the Site.  e-ventures, LLC cannot guarantee the accuracy, integrity, or quality of Rankings. Under no circumstances will e-ventures, LLC or any third-party providers of the Rankings be liable in any way for any Ranking, including, but not limited to, any errors or omissions in any Ranking/s, or any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of the use of the Ranking/s.

(bolding by me for emphasis)

Do you grasp what that paragraph means?

It means they have the right to lie, deceive and otherwise spit out the most insanely nonsensical, totally non-independent, non authoritative, non-trustworthy “rankings” they want to, for whatever reason they see fit, and if you don’t like it, FUCK YOU.

I especially like the GO FUCK YOURSELVES IF YOU EXPECT QUALITY RANKINGS line:

e-ventures, LLC cannot guarantee the accuracy, integrity, or quality of Rankings.

Isn’t that just fucking special?

DRIVING THE FUCK YOU ATTITUDE HOME

As good as all the above facts are, this line from the disclosure page really drives it home:

By developing and posting such rankings, topseos.com makes no representations or warranties as to the accuracy or factual basis of the rankings

Translated, this line says “we make no claim that any claim we make about rankings is even fucking real or factual.

See?  Their lawyers insisted that they admit somewhere on their site that they really don’t have any need to honor their bullshit.

LOOKING FOR OPINIONS BY “AWARD” WINNERS

Bruce Clay Badges

I’ve made several attempts to reach business owners whose companies have actually placed “BEST IN…” badges on their sites or in their marketing materials.

The one question I ask each time is why they choose to display their badges and fail to disclose along side them that they’re just bought and paid for, not truly independent awards (as in J.D. Power or Consumer Reports type ratings).

It’s a simple, fair and reasonable question given how some of these badge holders are very high profile companies, like Bruce Clay, Inc., for example – a company that touts quite proudly, their own SEO Code of Ethics. RIGHT BELOW THEIR TOPSEOS Badge.

So they’re either also bullshitting the public, and that means they’re in collusion with TOPSEOs, or they’ve been duped by Jeev Trika.

As of the time of the writing of this article, only one company has had the balls to step up to the plate and discuss the whole TOPSEOs “ranking” bullshit.  They no longer display any of their “awards” based on a position they’re taking that TOPSEOs is in violation of FTC regulations regarding endorsements.

Sadly, not one other company has had the balls or guts to step forward to defend their asshat bullshit badges.  I can only assume the reason for this is that they don’t want to get their business dragged into the public maelstrom or the vortex that this has become.

Except by the mere fact that they have chosen to ignore my inquiries, and they continue to display their bullshit phony badges, they’re complicit in the TOPSEOs deceptive practices we’re talking about. Especially given that they’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars paying for the ongoing right to display that crap.

It’s disgraceful.

And I highly encourage anyone who ever comes across a company displaying or promoting their TOPSEOs badge to run.  Away.  As fast as possible.  And not look back…

Alan Bleiweiss has been an Internet professional since 1995, managing client projects valued at upwards of $2,000,000.00. Just a few of his most notable clients through the years have included PCH.com, WeightWatchers.com, and Starkist.com. Follow him on Twitter @AlanBleiweiss , read his Search Marketing blog at Search Marketing Wisdom, and be sure to read his column at SearchEngineJournal.com the 2nd and 4th Tuesday each month. TOPSEOs Continues Deceptive Practices is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright Alan Bleiweiss unless otherwise attributed by me in the article.

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