Enjoy the rest of yours!

I had thought that it looked impressive to be on the top of search for the phrase “search engine expert.” But when I Googled the phrase, I was somewhat surprised. I found my business on page one of the results at #7.

At number 1 is Scott Hendison in Oregon. I know Scott from workshops back in 2003. I think to my self… That is great! he has cleaned up his past darker-hatted ways and now he’s at the top for a good phrase. Congrats on Numero Uno Scott!

SEOlogic has #2 and thier SEO quiz is #3, Kule!

Then I find #4, Brad Fallon, listed, which brings up some emotion in me, maybe fear, as I held #1 for the phrase “SEO Expert” unchallenged for just over three years, and yes, kudos to Brad, he was one who stepped up, with his Blog of all things, to dethrone me. And he has kept it from me for two years also, so I gotta tip my hat to Brad. BTW, Brad has a couple of my old buddies held hostage over in his stomper camp.

At #5 Webreference has an interview with Danny Sullivan and at #6 is Search Engine Watch, which I think is latently semantically related to Danny, so I give the #5 & #6 spots to Danny Sullivan who is now with Third Door Media Sphinning out SMX events. Now If I were Google, and granted I am not, lol, but if I were, I would just whitelist Danny in as #1 for “Search Engine Expert” and leave it be.

Then there is my little listing there at #7 (I have never specifically targeted that phrase either as it was not part of my findings).

At #8 is Jill Whalen from High Rankings. Jill is going tit for tat with me on a couple of top positions for some of my personal favorite phrases, but I think I am winning where concerned, and I agree that Jill should be on this list. YOU GO GIRL!

And at #9 is Aaron Wall from SEOBook.com Dude, when I saw that domain launch, I knew a storm was coming! Of what I know about Aaron which isn’t a lot, he seems very sensible and very logical, two qualities that can get you to this page. I should read your blog more, I know.

And #10 would have got an honorable mention except their link server 404′d and left me hangin’ with the backie.

So, this may have even been important. So, being me, I whip out the lappie and I pulled up the Keyword Discovery, to see if I can’t do a little discovery. And what I found was that out of 60 Bugillion+ queries last year, only 1 search was for the phrase “search engine expert”. And, well, hmmm…

This is a great ego result, meaning that it feels good to ones ego to find themselves listed as a top 10 search engine expert. Hey, I even built a searchie but she broke from malnutrition, or maybe it was manipulation. Anyways, “ego” results don’t bring home the bacon.

I did find it interesting though, that KD says there are three decent phrases stemming from the phrase “search engine expert” and I went and looked and I am #1 for all three of those phrases, and these phrases bring me business and they all three have a higher count than does “SEO Expert”.

So I guess the reason I thought this might make a good blog post is because the target phrase only had a count of 1. Maybe I was wrong and that is completely uninteresting.

Ok, so that bozo at #10 who didn’t get mentioned today, well he kinda needs a replacement, so I am just gonna through in a wild card. If I were Google, I’d put John Alexander from Search Engine Workshops on page one, because for starters, as I am tiring from typing this long-assed post, I reflect on his wisdom, when he warned us three years ago about the eventual commodification of SEO as a service.

I’m dun!

Read this article from Google about the subject of hiring an SEO firm

Also, this fellow, Clay Butler has put together a great top ten list of SEO scams so he has earned a link from me as I agreee with what he points out.

Ongoing monthly fees should not be for SEO monitoring. SEO should be paid for and when it is completed the client should reap the benefits. If you are paying monthly fees it should only be for Pay Per Clicks like Google Adwords or Yahoo clicks, ongoing organic marketing and promotion efforts , or damn good cutting edge advice and coaching from a proven industry leader with quantified results and a track record that proves their worth! Just because someone states on their Website that they are an expert does not mean they really even know what they are doing. I especially laugh at companies that go one time to a certification program, get some good info, then have the audacity to put on their Website that they are “Certified SEO Experts” Ha! Certification programs in SEO do not certify expertise, they only certify completion of a curriculum. Expertise goes WAY beyond that and the true SEO experts are a rare find indeed. I’d venture to say that maybe 1/1000 of those claimants to the title “SEO expert,” actually can deliver expertise in our industry. So yes, beware of firms who use hyped up jargon too.

Mostly, just do your homework. Make sure you get to talk to the person who will be actually doing your SEO work! and stay away from companies who want you to empty your bank account just for an assesment!!!

Optimized regards,

Robert

I can’t help but assume that this data will be incorporated into an algorithm update, one that is designed to shift weight away from the IBL (in bound links) Bohemoth, which has become a bane and frustration at Google as they struggle with the rampant practice of buying text links for popularity. I don’t buy links so I am inclined to welcome this type of an update. If site popularity is influenced more heavily by who subscribes to your feed (if you have one) then this brings Google ever closer to a social media model as they would be using more peer review to determine a sites trustworthiness based upon real data showing feed subscriber behavior.

I guess if a site doesn’t have a feed this should be part of the equation also so maybe Subscriber popularity would just be used as part of ranking sites that do have a feed.

And if you have a feed, start paying more attention to it, and nurture it so it is lively and useful and you will gain subscribers and not see any rank fall over just this matter. Make your Feed content excellent or maybe stop feeding to avoid a feed slacker penalty.

It’s all just a hunch. But I am curious,

What do you think about this?

Robert

These droves of independent, so-called “SEO’s,” are trampling the industry’s credibility with frivolous, kindergarten claims of collegiate SEO knowledge, which are not in accord with their real abilities, and who are thereby devaluing and commodifying the real, dignified and important craft/service of SEO in the public eye. Every week new prospects tell me nightmare stories involving their previous “SEO firm/company/consultant etc.!” How many of these stories would it take to make a decent sellable e-book?

So what can we take home from this matter? Easy, If you are actually a good SEO and you see things like search dynasties and wannabe optimizers eroding at your SEO livelihood, then find another Web industry niche to perfect and sell, then package it up and bundle your SEO acumen as a value add to hiring you. If you haven’t made it rich with SEO by now, then by SEO alone, you probably never will. SEO related searches will continue to increase while SEO profits will continue to disperse. The real future of Internet marketing riches lies in other search marketing niches, not in search engine optimization practices.

Today, SEO isn’t what it was yesterday. In fact the reality of SEO is so fast changing, that it’s history has become a moving target.

Robert Wright

I also posted this Nov 27 07 here: http://scobleizer.com/2007/02/08/the-search-engine-guru-schools-calacanis/ but since I wrote it, i decided to put it on my blog also.

I don’t make it a habit to criticize search engines but sometimes I just got to rant or I’ll bust. You know what I mean.

Unfortunately, Google has recently decided to kick the entire SEO community square in the groin, by disabling the ability for us to see which of our Web pages need more work, and/or updating, in order to be worthy contenders and be listed in Googles “main” database/index. In other words, we can no longer see which pages are in the inferior Google database, the one known as “supplemental” index, or the “this page sucks so it ain’t going public in Google” database. Suddenly, supplemental pages are no longer labeled as such in Google. Some of us clever SEO’s do know of a way (or perhaps ways) to determine this valuable information, but it involves a process which takes 50 times longer to get our findings, which means that the consumer has to pay for (many) more SEO hours to get this information, which was like free candy for an SEO in the past. This is a real low blow from Google (and it really blows), one which by design hinders SEO analysis of sites who are struggling or falling in Google. This action makes it much harder to troubleshoot basic Google search marketing issues which commonly plague sites across the Web. The deliberate omission of this very important data marks a sad day in the history of search marketing. The trend I am seeing with my old friend Google, regarding the subject of “SEO” and organic positioning is not one I want to dwell upon. Thank God for search diversity and new search technologies and environments, which give us hope that we can succeed online without being strong armed into revenue shares with the moguls who already own the Web and who strive to own the world. And you all know those (plural) of whom I speak! The search scenario and even the search arena is fast changing friends. You must stay on your toes, be ever vigilant and saavy or fall into the poorhouse with the masses.

Bad news comes and goes but Google will be here at least till Armageddon. So we’ll make the best with what she’ll give us while we search for, and innovate, even better, more personal, accurate and affordable, if not free solutions. I don’t want to hurt Google or any business nor anyone or anything, I just want to help my clients evolve and prosper and to feed and educate my children. Is it too much to ask that I also be able to be employed by my spherical self, rather than be ultimately forced to work for some huge mega-merged cubical corporation?

And so, Mr. Web Guru wept (but in the now, I smile and I am happy).

Robert

R

So I stopped blogging till I could get to SMX and ask Matt Cutts about it personally. I got a chance and talked to him about the problem. Ironically, a major part of the one session that day was talking about this very problem. About 30 minutes after talking with Matt, I went online to get the culprits URL and I discovered that Google had recently acted on the complaint I had sent them a couple weeks earlier regarding this problem; his domain was returning a server 404 and about 30% of my blog content had come out of the supplementals.

So, I am happy again about Blogging, and I will give it a try again. I’ve always considered this to be a weekly blog. So I will do me darndest to get at least one good post per week again. However, in all honesty, when things are busy for me, I am lucky if I can get up one new post per month.

Now that I think about it, I’m just going to take the day off and sleep as many hours as possible!

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

A good algorithm has interesting formulas composed of things like vectoring and densities and proximities and frequencies and percentages and semantic analysis and democracy. Similarly a good piece of music has interesting formulas composed of things like scales and chords and arpeggios and circles of five and majors and minors and augments and diminishes.

I guess you might have to be a veteren SEO and a student of music to see this, at least like I do. But it is there. Both are mathematical, intriguing, artistic, and…

I suppose I’ll have to put this in the rant category.