Finally, after all your countless hours toiling over your keyboard and coffee induced all-nighters friending and supporting others at their beckon call, surviving on 2 hours sleep per night, and spending no significant time with your wife for months … a breakthrough. You’ve hit the proverbial front page of Digg … go ahead and pat yourself on the back.

You’re so wrapped up in excitement that you can’t sleep now, but you deserve it. So you watch the stats for a while, bask in the glow of the cudos you know will be coming your way, then quietly sneak off for a nap in a dark closet.

Most people think of SEO as a technical role. While CSS, PHP and other programming skills are invaluable to SEO, I tend to think of SEO more as Marketing with technical requirements. More often than not, the marketing part of an SEO’s job is overlooked.

#5 Writing Body Content for the Search Engines

Writing for the web can be pretty challenging. You often have many different audiences to appease: your Potential Customer, Shareholders and Investors, and of course, the Search Engines. Each of these have different objectives and can require a significantly different language and tone.

Cher Monsieur Rose,

J’ai publié un article sur un blog il y a de cela quelques jours Une fonctionnalité sur Digg est brisée… Ohhhh, Ca fait mal, mettant en lumière quelques uns des problèmes auxquels je me suis heurté. L’intention, comme vous le remarquerez n’est pas de taper sur Digg en aucune façon, mais seulement de mettre en lumière ces problèmes que j’ai eus avec ce site, et la solution que j’ai trouvé pour contourner ces difficultés jusqu’à ce que ces problèmes soient résolus d’une manière ou d’une autre.

 
Image courtoisie de ScottBeale/ Laughing Squid

Like many Canadians I’ve spent Sunday and Monday shovelling snow. Heaps of snow. Mountains of snow. And while doing so I couldn’t help but think how much of SEO is like shovelling snow.

It Takes Teamwork

Doing this stuff right takes time. Looking at a site, checking it, changing it. Promoting it, building it out. Building relations with other sites and people that count to expand the network the site is in. Reporting. Talking with the client. Monitoring. Squashing issues before they mushroom into problems. Safe guarding the best interest of the client.

Hmmmm…..Sometimes you find things when you least expect it. Like when you happen to be in a meeting, doing a sample search and find yourself standing bolt upright, pointing and exclaiming, “OHMYGOD WHAT’S THAT?!?!” noting, “hmmm, that’s interesting”, as I found myself doing this morning.

Google has gone a step beyond maps to introduce addresses directly into Adwords ads and apparently is running a small test sample.

Do I like it? I’m not convinced.

Is it functional? Perhaps a little.

Credit: MirkoGarufi

Although Search Engine People has a fair share of Canadian based clientele, we also service the needs of many firms that are located overseas, and often more than half way across the globe. With Local SEO becoming more and more prominent, it’s imperative that we track SERP rankings not only on Google (dot) Com but also on regional Google search engines. Obtaining reporting on natural search results across different geographies can be tedious and time consuming, especially when a particular client receives a significant portion of referral traffic from different regional Google search engines. However where there is a will, there is a way and with so many bright minds in the Search Marketing industry, a solution to ‘optimize’ the quandary couldn’t have been far away.

I’ve been running Search Engine People for 7 years now, and am just finally getting the company to the point that I know it could run perfectly without me in the picture at all. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not planning on leaving or going anywhere. Its just that now, I can focus on working to my strengths, and taking the company to the next level of its evolution. We’re currently a 15 person organization, and if everything goes according to plan should have slightly more than 30 people at the same time next year.

I would imagine there must be several dozen Digg clones out there. Most would argue that with so much competition and a formidable runaway leader, it would be difficult for a newcomer to break through. Having said this, there was a ton of buzz surrounding Mixx at Pubcon so I spent this week checking out the site. In a nutshell, Mixx allows you to discover “personally relevant” media/news and interact within networks that you create based on interest and location.

This week I take a look at Mixx, by the numbers.

The Beginning:

Its official, Facebook’s Toronto network just surpassed the 1 million member mark (see screen print below … I captured it at the moment it hit 1,000,000 just for dramatic effect), and is growing in excess of 1500 new members per day. Toronto is the first city in the world to have this unique distinction. Here are the member numbers for some other significant cities:
New York City - 606,000
Chicago - 462,000
Los Angeles - 384,000
Atlanta - 280,000
Dallas - 235,000
Miami - 118,000

"So in order to not make any more sales during Christmas, I don’t need to do anything?!"

I shook me head.

"Nope. Nothing. Just leave your site as-is and your sales will remain more or less the same."

"Amazing…"

He was clearly impressed, both with my knowledge of search engines as well as their highly advanced AI-like technology.

My ego got the better of me and I decided to share some stories from the trenches.