Between Stations » day job

On Cats & Search Marketers

Julie — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 14:29:55 +0000

A study has found that cats sort of domesticated themselves because human granaries became a source of food, followed by the humans themselves encouraging the cats to stick around (because the cats ate the rats in the granaries).

The same is true of in-house SEOs, in my opinion. The magic of a lot of in-house positions, or ‘near’ in-house positions, is that it guarantees the search marketer a number of advantages: the paycheck always clears, the medical benefits resemble something at least ok, and it can be more stable than even a position at a large agency. While a large agency generally has the paycheck and the benefits, they also have a long tradition of dumping a lot of creative staff on the streets during lean periods or large account turnovers. Corporations are a little less prone to that, even if the marketing budget seems to be among the first against the wall when a revolution comes.

Beyond that, many SEOs just aren’t suited for freelance work. This is as true in search marketing as in other disciplines with freelance potential, like copywriting. Managing one’s own business development, client relations, and billing can be a drag, and sometimes just not in someone’s skill set. Sure, much of that can be developed, but not everyone wants to go to the bother.

Still, learn from the domestication of the cat: Your SEO team in-house is only so domesticated as you keep them fed and give them a warm place to nap.

Out at SMX

Julie — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 22:09:41 +0000

I’m at SMX in Seattle this week, experiencing the magic of the Seattle weather and the oddities of my laptop’s battery. A few things I will expound on during my free time later:

why this conference’s food is currently winning the ‘conference prize’ for the recent past, excepting that of the MIMA Summit
Supplemental index
Duplicate content
Kneeling down to speak to Vanessa Fox
The complete weirdness of spending my weekend in a rustic northwoods cabin in Minnesota, followed by a stay in a faux-rustic Seattle hotel with ‘modern cabin’ themed furniture.

I am told that, at home, my little kitten is sad and lonely and is sleeping on my robe, as I now haven’t spent a night at home since Thursday.

Certification is Tiring

Julie — Thu, 17 May 2007 17:16:52 +0000

I give you David Temple, lord of the SEO/SEM Certification Blog, studying hard for his Google AdWords exam:

SEOing is hard. Good thing he’s a professional.

Things that are true:

Julie — Tue, 15 May 2007 14:02:48 +0000

1. I went a full 10 days without omnipresent wireless Internet.
2. I went a full 8 days without checking any of my e-mail.
3. I went 10 days without checking my work e-mail. (ha ha ha!)
4. I haven’t read any of my RSS feeds in 10 days. So if anything has happened in the world, I don’t know about it.
5. Cherry lambic is the bomb.

5 Reasons Why I Blog (hi paulie)

Julie — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 20:37:51 +0000

Paul Jahn, who I like to call the Pope of Search Marketing, is playing blog tag on the subject of ‘5 reasons why I blog.’

So.

Because blogs amuse me from a perspective of history. There’s some extent to which blog comment streams remind me of dial-up text BBSes. And the server this is on generally reminds me of 300 baud modems, but that’s another rant for another day…
Depends on the blog. My cycling blog is mostly in existence to provide context for some other projects I have going on, like mapping and teaching. This one is mostly to occasionally irk some people, like Paul and my current boss and David Temple.
Just in case I lose my job by irking my current boss. (ok, no chance there.)
Because I needed a place to play with Google Analytics where I don’t care that the TOS in GA means they own the data.
Insomnia. Beats watching cable tv at 2 AM.

Character Traits of SEO Pros

Julie — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 19:15:35 +0000

It’s hiring time again. Interviewing candidates always gets me thinking about what traits make for a top SEO practitioner, or someone who could become a top SEO practitioner, given several hundred sites to work on.

This is a really brief list, relative to what’s in my head:

Ability to understand human behavior and psychology — both from an optimization perspective, and to be a usability guru
Knowledge of domain set-up and domain issues
HTML skills
CSS skills/knowledge enough to work with design gurus
Ability to multitask
Strategic orientation to balance short-term and long-term factors
Voracious reader (education)
A strong liver (for conference attendance, a must have!)
A strong problem-solving orientation

I think there are several nice-to-haves, such as the ability to explain what you’re doing to the ‘normals,’ which can include business sponsors and people with checkbooks. While, in theory, if you’re in an agency where Account Reps are the external facing staff and you’re an SEO-in-the-closet, you’ll still have to educate the Account Reps.

Also, these days I think people who come from a content perspective have something of an advantage on those from other disciplines. Local Search, Public Relations, and Social Media all work best when someone has a strong command of branding and content strategy. However, that’s certainly not mandatory… yet.

Duplicate Content & Local Search

Julie — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 21:09:36 +0000

I have a theory on duplicate content and local search that is insane, but seems to be true.

Based on trends I have seen in individual client sites at the day job, where in many cases they are carrying ‘duplicate content’ or ‘canned content,’ surrounded by custom content, design, and geolocator text, duplicate content can actually perform very well in search engines.

This content is not displayed via something designed for duplication/syndication like RSS. It is clearly duplicate.

The insane-but-possibly-true part is that I see this content performing decently on new domains, right from the indexing gate. You know, the sucking-sand period of any given web site’s launch.

No, I can’t show you the stats reports. But I see this repeatedly: Take some terms found in the duplicate content. Add a juicy geo term. Boom. There’s the new site performing well in a SERP.

I may go play with this on a new domain that’s not client-controlled, where I can show the data… hm.

Putting the E in SEO

Julie — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 22:38:56 +0000

Sometimes, the E in SEO equals ‘entertainment.’

My friend and colleague David Temple found the following posting about top in-house SEOs, mentioning his name, my name, and our manager’s name.

Multiple sources of amusement follow:

We aren’t really ‘in-house’ SEO. We provide agency-like services within a specific vertical segment. With 6,000 clients, we can’t argue that we’re in-house SEO.
I have no freaking clue who this dude is.
Putting our boss’ name near Matt McGee’s is hilarious. (And man, if you’re reading this, don’t let this comment negatively impact giving me a raise. I can be bribed.)
He links to my other blog — which is about bicycle advocacy, not SEO.

Maybe I’ve had too much caffeine today, but even thinking about this makes me giggle. This is not to say I’m not a swell SEO. I am, perhaps because my background is content and database marketing, so I have a really solid grasp of conversion behaviors. But in-house? ‘Captive’ may be a better term.

Update: oooh, it was linked from Search Engine Land. And they didn’t even spell my name right.