SEO Blog

“Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving websites or web documents with the goal of achieving strong search engine rankings for those sites or documents under relevant keyword queries. Everything else is technique, applied marketing knowledge, analytics and skill.” – me, late last week.

SEO is a ten year old industry and therefore somebody else must have said something similar at some time or another. Often, I get the feeling the mainstream world isn’t listening.

Search engine optimization is woefully misunderstood, even within parts of the greater online marketing community. As very good SEO firms rarely have to advertise, the general public often has no idea what it is SEOs do. When they are exposed to SEO, it is often in ways we would rather they forget. Years of e-mail spam guaranteeing SPECIAL TREATMENT and TOP RANKINGZ on the LARGEST SEARSH ENGINES IN THE WORLD have mildly annoyed most people using commercial email addresses, forming their most frequent contacts with the concept of search engine optimizers. That’s what they are exposed to when it comes to SEO and therefore, that’s what they know. Because that’s what they know, that’s what they think because, until they do some research, that’s all they know. Circles are vicious that way. Again, over ten years into the search marketing industry and we are still tagged as spammers and snake-oil peddlers.

… “because it knows you don’t find Chuck Norris, he finds you.”

It’s true, sort of. The cult of Chuck Norris has won top spot under the inadvisable keyword phrase, “find chuck norris”.

As posted by Google PR-czar David Krane at his blog, this is Simply Awesome…!,

“Step 1: Visit www.google.com
Step 2: Input these search terms: find chuck norris
Step 3: Click “I’m feeling lucky”

Note the site restrict!! —-> “pages from Chuck’s Beard” “

Is there nothing Chuck Norris can’t get accomplished?

The spoof is sort of funny but it also shows a secondary power to achieving the #1 position under any given keyword phrase. When Google users hit the “I feel lucky” button, the searcher is sent to the first place site.

Chuck Norris’ career has enjoyed a Shatneresque boost over the Internet following the Walker, Texas Ranger spoofs on the Conan O’Brien show. Every time O’Brien pulled the Walker Texas Ranger Lever, the second coming of Norris’ lone star rose a little higher. He is now an Internet fun-meme.

OMG…  There is nearly a half-foot of HAIL on the ground here in Victoria. I am sitting in the Metamend Boardroom watching the hail fall sideways.

According to our friends at SEOmoz, a similar situation is happening in Seattle with 7-inches of snow falling this morning. Spring on the wild west coast.

It’s only a few months away… Having just returned from what is (in my mind), the most fun and interesting search marketing convention, SES New York, my thoughts are turning to what is (in my mind) the most challenging and intellectually stimulating one, SMX Advanced.

SearchEngineLand posted the agenda and schedule for SMX Advanced yesterday afternoon. Held at the expansive Bell Center on Seattle’s waterfront on June 3rd and 4th, SMX Advanced is viewed by most long-term search marketers as the best show of the year.

Incidentally, the name of the conference suggests exactly what attendees should expect. This is by far the highest-level information sharing conference on the annual circuit. With no time or even inclination to cover the basics, attendees are taken to the cutting edge by some of the leading search and internet marketers in the business.

There is a limited number of tickets available and last year’s conference sold out very quickly. If you are interested in having your brain expanded and your high-level networks filled, register now. As I wrote, SMX Advanced is exciting, enlightening and for those of us who live and breathe search, inspiring.