Rebecca Kelley
Under extremely strange circumstances I got to spend a day in Paris with Rebecca Kelley. She is one cool person! Rebecca left a great impression on me and instantly became one of my favorite peeps! Basically, this is a young girl that has really made a name for herself in the industry. She is very professional and extremely mature for her years. She’s a fantastic writer and has a great memory to boot. BTW, I love that “link bait” is part of her job description. The sky is the limit for Rebecca. The only thing I can see in her future is SUCCESS!
I added this after the SES NY trip. Rebecca and Jennifer Tilly could be sisters!
Social Media Spammer “Video Gary” Responds
Gary actually posted this as a comment in my original post, but I thought it deserved a post of its own:
It was certainly not my intention to try to make a mockery of search engine optimization with my videos.
If that’s how that video comes across, then I apologize.
Here’s where I’m coming from, though. It seems like a lot of people don’t understand what it takes to get traffic or good search engine rankings. To illustrate my point, I was on vacation in Colorado with some friends recently, and the topic of websites came up somehow. When I explained what I did, my friend mentioned how he had some websites a few years ago but got rid of them because he never got much traffic. He didn’t understand that you need LINKS to rank well in the search engines.
I think that for a lot of new people, they’ll spend hours trying to get their meta tags just right or get their keyword density to an optimal level because some free article they read, some outdated forum post, or some friend just as clueless as they are told them to. When instead they should be focusing on two things – quality content AND quality links. Now I know my video says nothing about the importance of quality content, so I can’t really fault you or anyone else for not knowing my stance on the subject. I should have mentioned, probably even emphasized that without quality content you’re site won’t achieve its full potential.
But quality content still needs links. It’s pretty easy to explain to a client that their content needs to be good. They tend to understand and can usually handle that part on their own with little to no help from the SEO guy. The quality links part, however, tends to bewilder most. Part of the reason is that high quality links are hard to get directly. You usually can’t just email the authority in your niche and say, “Hey, I’ve got this cool new site, link to me.”
When I go about getting links, I look at them as the middleman to me getting what I want. I figure that if I put interesting articles in article directories, write press releases, and post sites on social bookmarking sites, I’ll start to get some of those high quality links I wanted in the first place provided my site and the content on it are high quality as well.
Not a bad response. Although he left out any mention of using multiple digg accounts to help accelerate the process….
Paris Hilton Thinks I’m Hot
I logged into MyBlogLog today and was stunned to find that Paris Hilton had joined my community. What was even more exciting was the fact that she left me a comment that said she thought I was “one hot monkey.”
Now to some, that might sound like an insult, but to me it’s a clear sign that she actually reads this blog and/or listens to SEO Rockstars. And if she does read here, or listen to the podcast, she’s probably started to figure out she really needs some professional help.
Now don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that she’s embracing the whole Social Media thing, but it doesn’t look like her MyBlogLog presence is really helping her much with more traditional SEO type things like Ranking for her name. And we all know that not ranking for your own name is a bad thing when you are about to deal with a huge reputation management issue.
What Paris really needs is a good SEO consultant. So I’m going to take advantage of the fact you think I’m hot to make you an offer you can’t refuse:
Paris,
I’ll work for you for 6 months free of charge. I’ll make sure none of the bad stuff makes page one, and I’ll also help http://www.parishilton.com take its rightful place at the top of the page. All I want in return is the chance to spend one weekend with
An Update on Jason Vs. the SEO World
Jason Calacanis asked on his blog who he should have on his podcast to represent SEO. Apparently I won the popular vote. Shortly after, Jason sent me an email asking me if I would be willing to come on.
Danny Sullivan Kicks Ass
Danny Sullivan opened up a can of whoop ass on Jason Calacanis this morning over at Search Engine Land. Jason Calacanis is some one who has made his fortune online and was a keynote speaker in SES Chicago 2006. So, apparently he made a comment that ticked a lot of people off.
He said “SEO is bullshit”. Yep, he said this in a room full of SEO’s or SEO related people. Yesterday, there was a post on his blog titled Why people hate SEO…(and why SMO is bulls$%t). First of all, why did he have to add the $% to bullshit? Why couldn’t he have just written bullshit? After all, he obviously used the word in Chicago right?
At any rate, I was smiling all the way through while reading Danny’s post this morning. Danny does a fantastic job of defending the industry that he had his hands in creating. In my previous post about Danny I mentioned that he “speaks softly, but carries a big stick”. Well, he just used his stick and yes it was a big one!