Are you using social media platforms to social network? Or, are you using social media platforms for social media marketing? Or perhaps you are using web 2.0 to socially market your social media platform for social networking to maintain active in the web 2.0 space?

Does this sound a bit confusing? Good!

Anyone else want to poke themselves in the eye with a bamboo shoot every time they hear all the different web 2.0 words?  I mean it’s one thing if we had some consistency but it seems like we are just all over the map!

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In the online market space, it is important to know what your competitive landscape looks like. This is especially crucial for SEO. If you are going to target particular phrases and keywords that you want your site to show up for, you need to know who is already showing up for them and how good of a job they are doing. Let’s face it, if you are a new shoe store that only sells Nike shoes, you probably don’t have much of a shot at ranking well for the term “Nike.” That is where keyword research comes in, but that is a topic for another post. Ok, so how do we analyze your competitive landscape?

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The Google Quality Rater Guideline have been leaked on the net, and here they are

This document is a gold mine because now SEOs will be able to understand what Google considers relevant content or spam content. For a good explanation of why internal documents can be so valuable for SEOs and marketers read Aaron Wall’s post about spying on google.

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I had a great time at last nights SEO meet up event. It was great to have a bunch of SEO folks together to just hang out. The event was held at Medjools in San Francisco at the rooftop terrace; ya it was cold, but after a few drinks it was just right. I showed up around 6:30 pm and couldn’t seem to find anyone. I went up and down the elevator twice, thinking maybe I just didn’t look hard enough. Finally, when I thought all hope was lost, I see Rand Fishkin get into the elevator. Well I figured if the Wizard of Moz is going upstairs, than surely the SEO meet up must be happening.

We got upstairs and met up with the rest of the gang, among those in attendance were:

• Rand Fishkin
• Todd Malicoat
• Natasha Robinson
• Marshall Clark
• Tony Adam
• Jeff Rohrs
• Lawrence Coburn

We all hung around and chatted about how we can purchase links without getting caught, Rand mentioned his new hacking software that allows you to display a picture of Matt Cutts in a bikini on any website, and Todd Malicoat got into a drinking contest against Natasha Robinson, Natasha won. Then Todd got upset and started making fun of her myspace profile, that was a bad idea. Needless to say they started arguing and throwing mashed potatoes at each, of course I had to step in and straighten everyone out. Ok, so I’m kidding, none of this really happened.

What did happen was…

After dinner Rand, Tony, and a few other folks drifted off to a burlesque show, that’s right, a burlesque show. Myself, Todd, Lawrenece, and a few other folks decided it was time to eat…again. So we grabbed burritos and then met up with the rest of the gang at the burlesque show. I couldn’t seem to find anyone, when all of a sudden (as I’m washing my hand in the bathroom) I hear Rand’s voice. I found it amusing that the two times I couldn’t seem to find anyone, that I just happened to run into Rand. Once we joined up with the gang, we hung around a bit, got a few drinks, and then most of us left.

All in all it was a great time, Rand saved Jeff Rohrs’ life, he almost got hit by a Prius. We shlepped back to where all the cars were parked and then everyone went on their marry way. Todd was kind enough to give me ride home, thanks for that Todd! And so my story ends, for now, BUT the next event is just around the corner.

The next SEO meet up event is for the Search Marketing Salon, a group I helped created. The event is scheduled for March 27th in San Francisco. For more details visit:

http://searchmarketingsalon.eventbrite.com

If you wish to attend, please RSVP, I hope to see you there!

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Just came back from the Google VIP party and I must say, it was great. After attending events like these, you start believe that Google is not a search engine - it’s really a relationship management platform. Matthew Dolan, the relationship manager for the National Agency Team, was eager to speak with myself and my co-workers before we even got there. As soon as I walked in and introduced myself to someone, they immediately said, “Matt was talking about you and, he’s looking forward to meeting you.” Now that is called building and maintaining a relationship. Great job Matthew and thanks to you and Google for hosting a great event.

The event was held at Sino in San Jose, a very nice restaurant with great food and drinks. Google really made everyone there feel like a VIP.

I met a lot of smart and interesting people and engaged in an interesting discussion with David Szetela, the owner and CEO of Clix Marketing, a PPC firm based in Kentucky. Of course, David believes that PPC is better than SEO, and he did make some valid points. PPC does have greater accountability and allows for the targeting of specific landing pages per keyword - if you use dynamic landing pages that is. His argument was that SEO IS PPC, but for natural search. This rings true to a certain extent.

While PPC is restricted to specifically search engine advertising, SEO can be applied across a wide spectrum of marketing channels, such as PDF’s, videos, blogs, etc. I believe a chasm exists between the different types of SEO, and I’m not talking about black hat vs white hat. There are SEO’s who seek to “game” the system. They believe in driving traffic and in ranking in that top coveted spot on search engines and see SEO as just a rankings tool. They are the ones who spam social media sites just to get some extra links, and these are the guys who stuff keywords in their title tags to try to rank for as many search terms as they can. This is not SEO. This is spam marketing.

On the other hand, we have SEOs who believe in SEO as a marketing tool. That is, instead of worrying about traffic, they focus on conversions and on targeting the people that matter. SEO spam is equivalent to t.v. advertising - a lot of money spent and not a lot of results delivered. SEO is about delivering a consistent marketing message via multiple channels to the people that care and to the people that matter. Why was the Youtube series “you suck at photoshop,” so popular? Why do millions of people watch the CEO of Blendtec blend random products in his blenders? It’s not because of spam and it’s not because of SEO. It’s because these guys targeted the right people, and those people did the rest of the marketing. I consider myself a marketer not a spammer.

I know you are waiting for me to say that SEO is better than PPC, but I am not going to. Instead of saying that either PPC or SEO is better I will say that they work well together and can share their learnings. In order to dominate search, you have to have a solid understanding of PPC and SEO, and you need to understand how they can work together to provide an overall integrated approach to search marketing.

Thanks for the great party Google, and thank you, David, for engaging me in this lively discussion of PPC vs SEO.

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