For a complete change of pace, please indulge me while I write about something inspired by a friend who is well known for wearing yellow shoes, who reminded me of someone I knew long ago, who would not have been afraid to wear them himself.

In a conversion behind the scenes at Cre8asiteforums, where the Moderating staff often arrive after a hard day of whatever or can’t sleep, I found myself telling Rand Fishkin, of SEOMoz.org a story about a Letter to the Editor I wrote in my “roaring twenties” as a single woman facing dating hell.

We were talking about non-violent, non-invasive ways of expressing beliefs and I had mentioned that I like to write letters to newspapers when I’m really moved on something. Twice I’ve written passionately about topics in which I turned out to be correct and laws were changed to improve the situation (both were women’s health rights issues.)

The letter below was published in the Harrisburg, PA city newspaper and, looking back, is indicative of my writing style that still exists today.

Rand wished I’d dig it up, maybe to see if I was bluffing, so I threw around some boxes in my attic and finally found it. And so here is proof of my story to you, Rand.

Why Wimps Are Best

“Editor:

I read with amusement the editorial titled “Calling All Wimps” by Joe Murray, (Sunday, June 2). In it he claimed he’d overheard some women saying that “wimps make the best husband.” He wondered why.

Everyone wondered why I felt such a loss when my male friend and I parted over a year ago. “He’s such a wimp,” they said. I always smiled and agreed. After experimenting with macho, I always returned to wimp. Here’s why.

Wimps listen to you when you have something to say, even if you aren’t making any sense. Wimps offer intelligent advice and kind words in a calm manner.

Wimps will surprise you. They don’t always look like the “strong protector”, but they will fight for you and defend you with the same intensity as an out-of-control bulldozer. The same applies to caring for homeless pets and their own children.

Wimps offer to help with household chores. In fact, they’ll insist on it. At times they’ll retire at age 25 and send the wife to work so they can stay home with the house, pets and kids. They like for you to work, believe in equality and are perfectly satisifed to leave the “bread winning” to the female. This attitude jives well with career-oriented women.

Wimps are not violent. Their women are free to blow off steam without fear of being thrown against a wall. Wimps have feelings, show them and will cry with you, for you and on you.

Wimps are tolerant. They are usually quiet with light-weight bodies so they can’t squash you or crush you in loving embrace. They are honest, open-minded, fun, humorous, warm and don’t snore.

Wimps remain your friend forever, even after divorce, break-up, re-location and even death. They leave behind a special part of themselves that always touches your heart.

Women don’t desire wimps because, as the article proposed, women want to change their men. Women want wimps because wimps don’t try to change them.”

Harrisburg “Patriot” city newspaper, PA
1984 or 1985 (I can’t remember and my copy doesn’t contain a date.)

One thing that stuck out from Mike Grehan’s Clickz article, Goodbye, SEO Push. Hello, SEO Pull, was when he talked about the “buzz factor”.

“Marketing equals buzz, which equals awareness, which leads to consumer demand.”

Creating buzz doesn’t have to cost a lot of money, nor take much talent either.

For example, when I mentioned the garlic BBQ sauce sold by a client, his traffic and sales soared. He didn’t have to pay me $50,000 for marketing or to play pin the tail on search engine algorithms. In fact, he hired me to help with conversions and he had the brilliance of mind to send me his product to sample. (Something I love when clients do, by the way! I’m crossing my fingers on the gazebo and massage chair next.)

Money shouldn’t matter from the perspective of WANTING to help the client succeed. I, personally, put in as much passion and effort for a “mom and pop job” as I do for the top sites on the web.

Anyway, like I said, the money you are paid “shouldn’t” matter to the results, but as evidenced by his article, blog and the various blog discussons elsewhere on it, money and skills matter a lot.

Mike noted in his blog piece, Not the sandbox, again!

“How could anyone in this business take on a client, tell them not to expect any results for a possible nine months AND expect to be paid?”

I laughed out loud. All I can think of is Yahoo!.

I clearly recall the dinner meeting with a book author client who wanted a brand new site built and registered with Yahoo!. She was clueless about everything Internet. I explained to her that I would be submitting her site to Yahoo!’s Directory (this was a few years back), and though I knew what I was doing, there was still no guarantee her site would be accepted and if it did not, Yahoo!’s policy was such that she wouldn’t be getting her money back!

If looks could kill, I’d be dead right now.

But this is what Mike’s remark reminded me of. We expect immediate gratification and we’ll pay handsomely for it.

A company like the kind Mike is Director for can do a lot. They have more resources, more staff, more expertise. They can wield the Golden Sword because they know how to ride a horse and fling that thing without killing anybody.

However, I came away from Mike’s Clickz article with a concern for those who work for small businesses on much smaller budgets. I’d hate to say to someone, “Sorry, you can’t afford me. You have no choice but to suck in search engines.”

The skillsets needed to do the job have changed. Mike has been saying, all along, quit whining and learn them.

And all I’m saying is, “Apply these skills in good faith to anybody who hires you.”

The line between a full blown web site and a blog is changing. For the moment, it’s still possible to tell a blog from most websites because of the way the page is designed. But, you won’t be able to tell the difference much longer.

Corporate Greed Marks New Territory

Fading fast are the days when the focus of blogs was to “Let me tell you about my sucky day”. Today, there are two blog power sites that are filling the new Blog-Age. One is Performancing.com and the other is Andy Beal’s new company, Fortune Interactive and their Blog Marketing division.

Marketing. Return on Investment. Corporate communication. Media kits. Knowledge management. Customer service. Wasn’t this what web sites and Intranets were for? When did blogs lose out to the whims of corporate endeavors?

Keeping Up With the Joneses

I’m not one of those folks who buys a boat just because my neighbors bought one, nor do I compete for the greenest, dandelion-free lawn in town. However, I know I’m buckling to the pressure of the New Blog Sensation. I want to know where the appeal is to “professional blogging”. If my blog is going die, I want a damned good reason for euthanizing it.

I wrote about my concerns before, in When Did Blogs Sell Their Souls to the Devil?. I can feel the power of revenue generation pulling at me. I know I’m about to be assimilated by the new Professional Bloggers club because their tea parties are so, well, in vogue.

Community Centers Are Us

I don’t think the rush to own a blog is doing blogging any favors. Community Centers, which blogs have evolved into, are just web sites. There used to be a difference between a website and a blog. Blogs rely on different software and require different forms of support. They look pretty much the same, in that you can tell them from websites.

I think we’re moving into the next generation of web site development. It’s not about the blog “uniqueness factor” anymore. It’s a “blogging type of website” growth spurt spurred on by those who see the benefits of:

ease of use
cheap software
cheap support
meets a new kind of audience
generates a new passion for what made the Internet so exciting in the first place - networking and creating communities

It’s no wonder corporations and businesses want in. But, since they do, and are, the nature of blogs is changing. There is less of a distinction between a website and a blog.

Bathwater, Babies, and Blogs

With so many millions of blogs, competition is fierce. This has created a new set of problem solving, such as networks, communities and search engines and directories just for blogs. Consider the rape of blogs, where content is scraped for someone else’s gain.

Try finding the witty writers now. Try locating niche blogs with brilliant insights and a nose for knowing good topics to cover and the talent to write about it.
When blogs are special, they are a Blog. When they get mixed up with business requirements, they are simply web site tools.

Take my local newspapers for example. They present the news as they always did on their gigantic web sites, but now they offer “bloggers” as the new “Columnist”. Each column is a blog, with ads of course, and a place for comments. It’s still a column, in my opinion. It is not a blog with its own brand, its own presence and, well, perhaps even, freedom of speech. When you have to write for the PUBLIC, and the target market is EVERYBODY, every word could be a potential bomb. These blog writers have Editors.

The Old Thrill of the Accidental Blog Pop-In

The other day, by way of searching on some logs to see who was finding this blog, I found myself at the web site of a New York city self-proclaimed “sex worker”. (I’m not kidding.)

I read the first post in his blog, and was instantly entertained with a hilariously descriptive story about how his date one night, who happened to not be a paying client, was a very loud “Screamer”. He was mortified that everyone in his apartment complex could hear her during their throes of passion. Later, as he was taking her home, a neighbor happened to come out of the apartment across the hall and looked right at him. He now believes he has to move away. Not because of the “business” he is in, but because he’s embarressed at his date.

This is kick-ass authentic blogging at it’s best. I loved the story. The writer wrote with such talent that I’m unsure of his real occupation. This is the magic! It’s more alluring to me that I’m unsure who this blog author really is and it adds to the charm of his blog.

In fact, that is what blogs are. When you leave one, you want to talk about it. You want to return to it. You care about what the blogger has to say.

Where do we blog to now, in 2006?

I’m hoping to find the balance between growing a blog and letting the medium blossom into something that gives back something productive (like a paycheck, brand, reputation, news source) and contains the magic that once was called “a blog”.

Note: The inspiration for this post is credited to a conversation found in the Performancing Member Survey. Specifically starting with How Do You See Blogging Changing in 2006?

I couldn’t help but add my thoughts on the recent commentary about the Search Engine Optimization field “A-lists” and “generations” of SEO’s by Andy Hagans, Danny Sullivan, Todd Malicoat, Rand Fishkin and Graywolf (who is right-on about Mike Grehan.).

I didn’t make any lists but, as an SEO Ancestor, I can still spin a tale or two.

When I Was Young, I Walked Five Miles to Search Engine School. Uphill. With No Shoes

When I started teaching myself SEO in 1996, Danny Sullivan, Jill Whalen and Fantomaster were my teachers. I launched Cre8pc.com that same year to begin keeping track of all the search engines and how each of them ranked and indexed web sites. In 1998, I launched a discussion group in what was then “EGroups” called “Cre8pc Website Promotion” because in those days, we didn’t refer to it as SEO.

I became an online teacher by virtue of sharing my passion. Like others in those days I shared SEO skills and advice in newsgroups, where I’d run into Fantomaster and small forums like MarketPosition, where I met Ammon Johns (a.k.a. “Black Knight”) in the late 1990’s.

It was Ammon who first provided the glimpse that web site promotion and organic search engine optimization were related to web site marketing and he preferred to use the term “SEM”. He’s always thought of himself as a marketer. Understanding how search engines work just added value to his skills. He was the first niche example but was quickly followed by Ralph (aka “Fantomaster”) and his foray into cloaking. Jill and Heather had their newsletter and others, like Detlev, provided months of discussions.

In The Old Days We Worried About Many Search Engines and Directories

Those were the days when SEO was fun as heck to do. There were lots of search engines to get client web sites into, not just one or two like today. In my day, we had 10 strong contenders and lots of minors to play with. Each of them refused to sit still for long. They changed business models constantly. Part of my work was just keeping up with these changes, passing them on to clients and making adjustments to submission campaigns. Because, you see, in the old days, we submitted web sites to search engines and directories for clients.

We tracked progress. We tracked rank. There was no Page Rank score. There were few fees for submission. There were many tools to use, including software and web-based submission software, but hand-submitters like me were in demand because we oozed the thrill of SEO. There were scams everywhere and it became one of my own personal missions to alert web site owners on what to look out for.

I Saw The Signs

There were several signs that I was going to retire from performing SEO services. Pay per click bored me to tears. Pay for inclusion was tolerable for a short time until every search engine wanted money. Inktomi was the big player then. In 2000-2001 Alta Vista began dropping web pages by the hundreds of thousands. That sent a lot of web site owners into a panic. The other shock was Yahoo! demanding $299 per year to be added to their directory and if your site didn’t meet their guidelines, they didn’t refund the money.

I had, on my old SEO web site, a text-based version of something similar to Bruce Clay’s Search Engine Relationships chart. His was prettier to view. Both of us had to monitor search engines to death to keep our data current for our web site visitors. He eventually won the battle, because after awhile I left the industry, though I continued to consult on SEO when asked for help by friends.

The Company I Worked For Trained Me in Usability and Software Testing

The move to usability was purely by accident, but once I had a taste of it, I was hooked.

I launched Cre8asiteforums in 2002 to cover web design, with a huge portion being SEO and search engine discussions. My blog followed shortly afterwards. Sadly, I took down the old Cre8pc web site with all the years of SEO related content it contained. My binders of old search engine information are in storage.

The In-between World Called “Niche”

Today I work with SEO’s who have added usability and accessibility services to their own. They like knowing I understand what they do and I stay clear of their “side” of projects. They let me do mine. While they focus on search engines, I focus on the people who use web sites once they are found.

There are other people like me, who speak at SEO conferences and have their own businesses, but did not make the official lists of who you should know in SEO.

Christine Churchill works on PPI/PPC and landing pages. Debra O’Neil-Mastaler is the link building expert. Matt Bailey, for statistics and accessibility, Karon Thackston for copywriting and Scottie Claiborne is fantastic with usability design. They’re all part of the High Rankings team led by Jill Whalen and all of them are proficient in SEO/SEM, as well as their added areas of expertise.

None of them seek fame and glory, but they each participate in the industry in their own way. Christine, for example, was on the original SEMPO Board. That’s pretty “A-list” in my book.

Sometimes people ask me why I still attend SEO/SEM conferences when I can. SEO is still in my blood. I write about SEO. I like to see how the industry has grown. When I started out, it seemed as though there was only 10 of us and I was one of the quiet ones, plugging away and memorizing every nuance of search engine life. Sitting in a sea of attendees at SES Conferences leaves me in awe of how great the need has grown for what SEO/SEM’s do.

It also makes me realize how valuable my own niche is, and will be in the coming years. My approach to web site usability is totally grounded in SEO practices. Much of my advice is complimentary to SEO/M goals. When someone speaks of needing help with SEO along with usability work, I have a stable of SEO partners to recommend.

In the end, I have had the gift of time on the Internet. Those who have found niches and specialize may not fit into the tidy “A-list” wrapper but they are my kind of mentor and peer anyway.

I’m sensing there’s information fatigue due to last year’s overwhelming use of RSS feeds, blogs and tagging services. It’s not always clear which information source to trust.

For example, one of the complaints that I heard in 2005 was that search engine marketing forums are no place to get accurate information because it’s easy to join and start spouting off “what I know”. Coming to forums for advice should be used with caution. One of the reasons we allow links in signatures at Cre8asiteforums is so that readers can follow up and check the credibility of someone offering advice. “Sig lines” are assumed to be a marketing device and yes, this is so. However, that link to your web site is also as powerful as an “About Us” page to forum visitors.

SEO Mirror on the Wall. Who am I, Really?

Understanding you is apparently on your mind if you are in the search engine optimization and marketing field. The topic of “What is an SEO?” came up in a thread called The Future of SEO. The topic author starts off with,

“I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of SEO and its struggles and I don’t think it will be able to hold its own after a couple years. Instead I see it being swallowed up as concepts within larger online marketing programs.”

I was surprised to learn that there is growing concern and confusion over the role of an SEO. The industry is fluttering about like a bird that’s fallen out of the nest as we fly into 2006. Add to this, overall frustration for those just getting into this work, such as this comment:

“All very different SEO techniques. There are some guys still using 2003 methods and arguing it on 2005 forums, who get flamed to hell.

It’s very very hard to learn because of this.”

What Classifies as a Good Lesson and a Good Search Engine Teacher?

Sometimes someone has to ask tough questions. If a lesson on what not to do involves publicly exposing a company, is this ethical? Are you learning from this? Someone asked about it in What do you learn from Matt Cutts?, in reference to Matt’s blog. It was a disappointment that his blog won an SEO blog award (seemed a bit unfair since he’s not an SEO), but aside from that, it remains a popular resource and one of the few trusted information sources from the mysterious back rooms of Google.

Driven Mad by Search Engines

The reaction to Rand Fishkin’s SEOMoz exposure in a recent Newsweek article was an odd mix. For those in the industry, it was a chance to see their work explained to the general, clueless public. Unfortunately, public reaction was horror that anybody would want to “manipulate” search engine results. Obviously, those people don’t have a business that relies on search engine traffic for sales and traffic.

For most of the readers of this blog, what a search engine does is critical to your work. Usability oriented web designers care about how well a web page delivers once somebody finds it in a search engine. There’s a relationship between optimizing for search engines and optimizing for people that’s co-dependent, complimentary and intelligent.

This is the case even for “black hat” techniques. Of the 5 million drug sites, the one that’s designed for understandability, credibility, usability, functionality and ease of use is the one that gets the prize. If the top ranked Viagra sites are pathetic to use, that’s wasted money spent on forcing rank and a terrible brand name embarrassment.

The importance of how people use search engines is illustrated in a study called Using meaningful and stable categories to support exploratory web search: Two formative studies by Bill Kules and Ben Shneiderman, of the Department of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory and Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Maryland. What did they find?

“Categorizing search results using meaningful and stable categories is a promising way to alleviate information overload while supporting user exploration and understanding of large sets of search results.”

If you’re a web site optimizer, it’s going to be a wild year of keeping up with technologies and user behavior to maximize ROI. While you, or those who know you, haven’t a clue what it is that you do, really…rest assured that without you, the Internet would be boring as heck to use.

Case in Point…

Hot news for FLASH lovers and techno-geeks with miniature devices (i.e. “toys”). Adobe releases new Flash software for mobile devices<