Organic SEO Consultant

I have come across many great posts on why companies should be running Social Media Marketing (SMM) campaigns lately. I think that SMM people are starting to get tired of being dismissed by the incumbent traditional media folks who, with good reason, seem to be opposed to SMM because they just don’t “get it.” Traditional media agencies still dominate in the advertising world, but the balance of power is shifting at an alarming rate to interactive agencies. And for good reason, traditional media is much more expensive and less effective than digital. Now that does not mean that TV, radio, and print do not have their place because those are all still very important forms of marketing. But what it does mean is that C-level execs are finally starting the shift to digital and this shift has been further accelerated by the poor economy, diminishing budgets, and the need for higher ROI and measured marketing initiatives. Everyone wants to know EXACTLY what they will get for their marketing dollar.

That level of prediction on marketing campaigns is a tough thing to manage when it comes to SEO and SMM. For paid media it is much easier to know and measure since you get the measured results almost immediately. You can make quicker adjustments, basically on the fly. With SEO and SMM you need to execute and then wait and see and with SEO sometimes the waiting could be 12 months+ depending on your goals.

And for social media I think that many SMM consultants struggle with nailing down solid metrics and then measuring those metrics to the fullest extent. This is in part because of client ignorance or stupidity and in part because of the organic nature of SMM. But there are effective ways to overcome these issues and SMM is becoming more widely adopted. The companies that are getting it right are WAY ahead of their competitors and are enjoying incredible returns, especially since SMM tends to be extremely cost effective.

Here is an awesome video I found from Outspoken Media today that pretty much nails it:

I think that like SEO, SMM is becoming more acceptable to C-level execs and that with time it will have an increased presence in the online marketing mix. I see more and more SEO adoption by C-level execs and SMM will see the same adoption curve. The ROI from both SEO and SMM is unparalleled and in the end this will win the day!

Today SEOmoz posted a bonus whiteboard video featuring none other than Matt Cutts. The video is prompted by the current SMX Advanced conference going on near the new SEOmoz offices. And since Matt was in town Rand properly took the opportunity to have this interview, in which he asked a number of great and specific questions regarding how Google handles certain situations. These are great insights for all SEO consultants and I was surprised to actually find the insights useful since 99% of the stuff I read is not new to me when it comes to SEO strategy.

I am going to discuss what I felt were the major points, feel free to view the video yourself below.

What I found most interesting were the statements around crawling. We already knew that crawl priority was based on Page Rank at Google, not the PR that we all see but the internal PR that only Google sees and that is calculated and changed almost daily in most instances. Note that the toolbar Page Rank that we see can be a decent indicator of page authority but that it is not the actual.

Site Traffic and Other Engagement Stats Debunked as Ranking Factors

Matt noted that Page Rank is the main factor in determining crawl frequency and that traffic was not much of a factor at all. If you think of the porn example it makes total common sense. Porn sites constitute and overwhelming amount of traffic compared to most sites. If traffic to a site were to ever be too big of a factor in rankings then porn sites would dominate. Therefore traffic, and I would argue time on site and some other purported new SEO ranking factors based on visitor performance, are not good factors to weight heavily in the ranking algorithms.

The other interesting point made during the interview was that having a chain of 301 redirects is really a bad thing and that Google will only put up with so much. Having a redirect go to another redirect and so on is just suspicious for one, and another thing is that it reduces the crawling efficiencies for Google. These two thoughts are my personal ones and were not directly part of that interview.

There are some other good point about geo targeting based on IP and why that is bad for Google. I’ll spoil it and sum it up in simple terms. Google.com only crawls from one set of IPs worldwide so if you are IP serving content you may end up blocking googlebot.

[Source: Online PhD Programs for MashableMashable.com]

Today marked the launch of an extraordinary new concept called DIY SEO. It is spearheaded by visionary search marketer and entrepreneur Patrick Gavin in conjunction with a talented team. I have been following the pending news and launch of the site since it was just a glimmer in Patrick’s eye. And I am a big fan of the infographics that they have been posting on the site.

The launch of DIYSEO.com today, after over a year of development and design, came with much fanfare. They are offering a nice 7 day trial to test dive the system. The videos and screen shots of the system look VERY good so far. The site looks clean and really easy to understand and follow. But the true test will come with actually using the system, which is exactly what I plan to do.

I will be posting my honest review of the service so please check back here or subscribe to my blog via RSS or email.

I know that there are many SEOs that were really scared of this service, that it would take business away from SEO agencies and SEO consultants. The other side of the camp says that this service is a rip off and that it will not hold value for most users. But I do not see it that way. I think that this is a great idea and that the purpose is to help service the small businesses out there that do not have thousands of dollars to spend on SEO, and that literally do not really need to.

But I also feel that no matter how well made the site is and no matter how good the service is, that some people will still need help. I hope to help fill that void. I get a really big kick out of helping small businesses. You can really have a positive impact on someone’s life when working with small businesses. Generating 10% more profits for a Fortune 500 firm is really like a drop in the bucket, but for a small business it can be a game changer.

So I look forward to my journey with this new product and I welcome it to the SEO community. I may change that stance after using it but as for now it looks like and seems like it would be a great solution for a large number of people out there. Not everyone, but there is definitely a market there.