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.

The overall jist of it is that Caffeine’s main goal is to increase the speed of its results as well as integrate more “real time” results from sites like Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook.

But this is an SEO blog, and I am an SEO consultant, so we don’t care about Google getting faster or stuff like that. We want to know how this is going to affect our rankings. Right? Right!

Thank goodness that Summit Media conducted an independent study on Caffeine’s impact on rankings. They compared Caffeine results against current Google results for over 10,000 keywords.

They saw that on generic search queries news sites and social media sites were being given a bit of an advantage while other niche sites were ranking well for longer tail searches.

Most sites should not expect to lose many rankings, there were not many fluctuations, but sites with older content have a greater chance of losing out.

No changes to any one sector or niche over another. All changes seem to be across the entire index.

Domains with exact matched keywords had less emphasis

So overall not much to riot about. Things SHOULD be fairly stable as far as rankings go. But I’ll tell you this much, with the recent Page Rank update and Caffeine rolling out, things have been fluctuating. And if any of you use Google Alerts you will notice many more alerts coming through erratically and for content that is super old in many instances. I noticed this phenomenon right after Google integrated Real Time results. Seems that these changes did not mesh well with Google Alerts, which really has not been working well at all for the past year anyways.

They offer a “Master Certification” for $3500 and it covers SEO, PPC, Analytics or Online PR. Now I am typically against these types of things but you should see who the teachers are!

That is a veritable who’s who of online marketing in each respective field! Avinash for analytics, Eisenberg for conversion, Dr. Rimm-Kaufman for PPC, etc. I mean come on now, is Matt Cutts going to teach Google optimization? That is a solid lineup of teachers that would make even the most seasoned SEO consultant attend. I have been wanting to refresh my PPC skills after all, and I have been following the RKG blog for a long time now.

It is a steep price but at least they do have some of the best minds in our industry. I will go ahead and stamp my approval of this course just based on that fact alone. If anyone has done the course or is going to do it please comment here on your experiences.

Its the SD Bloggers 1st Anniversary Party this coming Tuesday, and I have to say that “you’ve come a long way baby!” It makes me so happy and proud to see Web and marketing events and organizations grow and be successful in San Diego. We really do have a wealth of talent in the technology fields and I still do not feel that San Diego gets the recognition that it deserves. Groups like this and the San Diego Ad Club are really becoming big!

The purpose of this group is to support local bloggers by providing a way to network with other bloggers, discuss blogging techniques and technologies, and to have fun! A huge recognition needs to go to Matt Browne who runs this group, and many others, in addition to running his own successful company Integral Impressions! I mean, I hardly have time to just write in my two blogs let alone run a whole company and many groups after hours as well as have a family. So Matt really deserves lots of praise. He has worked tirelessly to give back to the community and his work is paying off.

If you are in the area, I highly suggest that you join and attend the 1st anniversary party! The event will be at:

Modus Supper Club
2202 4th Ave, San Diego, CA 92101
619.236.8516

Now I have never advertised on Facebook or MySpace before, but I would imagine that the conversions are pretty bad. I don’t think that many people would be looking at or clicking on any banner ads. People are just too engaged in their social networks. I know that I completely tune out all ads when I am on MySpace. But, anyways, this is a good chance to test the waters!

TLDs are the extensions on domains, like .com, .net, .uk, etc. Since the price will be so high to get one of these custom TLDs only the big fish will be able to take advantage of them. And this is something that I do not particularly like. Whenever there is a situation where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer it rubs me the wrong way. But Barry suggests that the Internet marketing community ban together and all chip in to secure the .SEO, .SEM, and .SMO TLDs. He offers up that we should do this through a large industry organization like SEMPO. But my guess is that there will be many people who will want these TLDs and that with the bidding process the price will get VERY high!

ICANN noted that they have spent $10 million in studying the new domain names and will spend another $10 million to implement them. Hey, why not, while you’re at it tack on a few extra mil for the organic SEO consultant! How the heck do you waste so much money researching a concept that is so obviously a good idea. It is a good idea because it will allow marketers and business people to better brand their domains. And it is good for ICANN and the rest of the domain registrars because it will net them an exponential amount of CASH. Of course the cost for registering one of these new custom TLDs will start at about $100,000 and will probably be a huge bidding war. I wonder who will get .searchengineoptimization?

No new snow? Well, I guess that is par for the course in sunny southern California!