Mediaboss Marketing

Another update, another dose of mayhem. This time the mayhem is called Penguin. As with all Google updates over the years, there have been winners and losers.

Before we start panicking, we should remember that for Google to survive and continue dominating in the next decade it has put in huge effort to keep its SERPs relevant, useful, and clean of spam. As a reminder, Penguin isnt the first major update Google has rolled out in the past 10 years:

We won't go into detail on each of these, as plenty has already been written about these updates on Search Engine Watch and elsewhere. Instead, lets focus on the one theme that runs through each of them: To keep spam in check. Granted, Googles definition of spam has varied, but generally they have done a good job of being vocal in the community through Matt Cutts, head of Google's web spam team, and also through Googles own Webmaster guidelines.

Some websites are out to make a quick buck (not thinking of their customers/visitors), or they have been misguided by an agency or by some black hat SEO magician that its OK to use tricks. Here are a few of the things websites should avoid as outlined in Googles Webmaster guidelines:

Youre playing Russian roulette if youre engaged (or plan to engage) in any of the above tricks. Businesses who are in for the long haul should think a lot about their customers. Specifically, how can you:

With a mindset like this, the focus shifts from employing tricks like the ones mentioned above to a mindset of how you can publish quality content on a user-friendly website that makes users want to stick around.

As an in-house SEO, thinking of how to create value for your site visitors and employing ethical white hat SEO tactics should be on top of your agenda. And only if it is on top of your agenda will it filter down to other departments in your company. This will also ensure that there is no risk of turning to the dark side of SEO.

Lets look at what in-house SEOs can do immediately when an algorithmic updates like Penguin happen, and how to plan for the future so you dont get hit hard.

It can be a big blow to your business if you get hit by these Google updates. But avoiding SEO shortcuts, having a plan of action, and creating a long-term plan is a solid start. Think of this as your own SEO crisis management plan.

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Hit by Google Penguin? An In-House SEO Crisis Management Plan

NEW YORK and VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 1, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --Drupal Connect and Canadian Drupal development firm North Studio announced Tuesday they have merged, creating the most diverse professional Drupal development, support and training team with a complement of over 75 professionals.

Both companies will continue to do business under their respective names, with each one respectively becoming the other's American and Canadian division.

John Florez, President and CEO of Drupal Connect, said North Studio's world-class Drupal design, development, SEO and training teams will complement Drupal Connect's elite Drupal development staff. "This merger will keep us on the leading edge of technology while remaining competitive with the huge demand for Drupal CMS," said Florez.

"We are delighted to be joining forces with one of the premier Drupal development and support companies in the world," said North Studio Vice President Karen Smallwood. "Drupal Connect has some of the strongest Drupal developers in the industry, and this partnership will allow both our teams to realize their full potential as the industry moves to mobile development."

Founded in 1999 in Victoria, British Columbia, North Studio is one of Canada's premier Drupal development and support companies. Its Drupal SEO and social media marketing division, Stikky Media, helps drive traffic to clients' sites, while Q College, North Studio's education arm, is the only government-accredited college in the world offering Drupal diploma programs. "Exponential growth and demand for Drupal development encouraged us to ensure professional Drupal training was part of our growth strategy," said Q College Vice President Alida Sinkelman.

Headquartered in New York City, Drupal Connect is a full-service Drupal firm offering Drupal development, training and staffing services. The company is engaged in projects worldwide including Sony Music Entertainment, Waste Management Inc., General Electric Co., A&E, the New York Stock Exchange, NBC Universal, Stanford University and the Carter Foundation. Drupal Connect was founded in 2009 by John Florez, who previously owned Drupal Staffing.

Please visit http://www.drupalconnect.com and http://www.NorthStudio.com for more information.

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Drupal Connect, North Studio Announce Merger

Talking to the Global SEO manager of a large organization with offices around the world, he was bemoaning the high turnover of staff and the difficulty of keeping people in SEO posts around the world with the right level of SEO knowledge and expertise to achieve their goals.

Its a challenge many organizations face. Thats not to say that these businesses are bad at retaining staff the very fact that they are global often means that they offer something special to the world. Their staff are often not moving onto other organziations either but simply are being promoted to a different position, team or department. Some, of course, are leaving the company too.

Another issue is that SEO responsibilities around the world arent often held by people who are dedicated to the cause of SEO. Mostly, they have other marketing tasks to handle too and have a relatively limited bandwidth for SEO.

Before going further, I have to declare two areas of personal interest. My company runs the International Search Summit with SMX and training programs. Im also a long standing fan of SMX and SearchEngineLand and first attended conferences by Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman in 2003 in the UK and 2004 in the US. So this gives me something of a bias, but also I think a unique insight into the industry were all in.

In many sectors there have been studies into the value of training. I dont propose to labour this point I think were all aware of the rapidly changing nature of the business.

The value of keeping abreast of search engine and social media developments pays for itself many times over Im sure we all agree. You would think that investing in training would be a no-brainer but its still a cost and its value isnt always recognized. (My staff at this point are also nodding.)

We also have to recognize at this point that for those working in international SEO the challenges are particularly tough. No one speaks 20 or even 10 languages well. If you see someone who claims that, I suggest you challenge it. So how can a normal human being SEO working internationally actually cope? Lets look at some strategies.

If you think Im about to say its a good idea to go to conferences, youd only be half right. There are conferences all over the world so you could quite easily send staff to the most local conference for them. I think there is a better strategy which Ive seen a few companies deploy.

A good strategy is to choose a big and wide ranging conference somewhere in the world and then to fly in the relevant staff from all over the world. Yes I can hear the sharp intake of breath and I know theres a little more cost involved with that, but the value is clear.

With all of the global SEO team in one place, they can discuss not just what theyve seen and heard but also their own issues. In effect you can organise a parallel conference for you own organisation alongside the main conference with the inspiration of the main conference in the teams minds.

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5 Tips For Maintaining International SEO Knowledge With Training

The just-released first series is all about Rank Tracker. The four videos are to demonstrate how Rank Tracker's most powerful features should be used to their full potential for dominating search results.

Minsk, Belarus (PRWEB) March 14, 2012

The first training video series is devoted to the much-hyped Rank Tracker. The four Rank Tracker video tutorials released today are to take users by hand through:

"Rank Tracker by Link-Assistant.Com is the rank checking tool of choice for 380k professionals in the SEO industry worldwide," says Viktar Khamianok, CEO and Founder, Link-Assistant.Com. "Among other factors that helped us achieve this level of loyalty is enhancing our SEO software with new features several times a month to echo all the latest SEO trends."

"Though Rank Tracker is pretty easy to use, it has grown to become so feature-rich that we want to make sure our users dont miss out on every function available in the SEO tool."

Visit http://www.link-assistant.com/video.html to get Rank Tracker's training videos.

New video tutorials on the remaining SEO PowerSuite tools are to be released early in April.

Stay tuned for the company's updates, read Link-Assistant.Com's SEO blog and get social with us on Facebook fb.me/LinkAssistant, Twitter @LinkAssistant and Google Plus gplus.to/LinkAssistant.

Also check out Link-Assistant.Com's Youtube account to watch all videos released by the company and their customers. SEO PowerSuite users often have their own helpful tips and tricks on using the software that bring great value to the whole community. Thus, Link-Assistant.Com encourages their customers sending short help videos theyll be shared with other users though Youtube.

*Defining the world standard for SEO software About Link-Assistant.Com:*

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Link-Assistant.Com to Launch Its Training Video Series for SEO PowerSuite Software

**Full disclosure, this is meant to be a humorous type post and rant for fellow SEO professional, sorry if I have offended anyone! 🙂

After 13 years in this industry, I have had my share of absolutely horrible SEO leads. I know that dealing with bad leads comes with the territory of being a business owner, regardless of industry, but sometimes I feel like SEO has to deal with more (or much worse) bad leads than other industries. Here are four of my favorite worst SEO leads Ive come across over the years. How many of these have you had to deal with?

Whenever I talk with an SEO lead that refers to themselves as a serial entrepreneur, all I can usually think is hyper client. I know there are people out there that make a fantastic living building a business from the ground up and then selling it and moving onto the next project, but Ive found that the ones who are really successful at that arent trying to juggle 10 companies at once.

I was speaking with a lead a few months ago that had 90 websites he wanted SEO services for. Almost all of them were brand new (meaning zero search engine trust factor), poorly designed and had next to no content. I dont like taking on clients that I dont think I can actually help, and I knew that my company wasnt a good fit for this site owner. I recommended that he take a few SEO training courses and learn the basics of SEO for himself and really narrow his focus on which sites he thought had the most potential and then maybe a few months down the road we could revisit an SEO partnership. His response? He didnt have the money to take any SEO classes. Then how are you going to pay for full-service SEO on 90 websites?!

In my experience, serial entrepreneurs usually turn into hyper clients. They have a hard time focusing on what needs to be done (and getting in down in a set time frame) and arent ready to settle in for the long haul. SEO requires a lot of patience and a lot of trust in your provider, and leads like this usually have neither.

I do my best to get back to every lead that comes into my company, whether it is by phone or our online lead form. I am more than happy to spend a few hours going back and forth with a potential SEO client and walking them through my companys SEO process. I do my best to address any concerns and questions, especially if they have been burned by a black hat SEO company in the past. Ill draw up a proposal, and even meet them in person if I think its a potentially great client. But then what happens sometimes? They vanish off the face of the earth. Suddenly emails stopped getting answered, phone calls dont get returned and that proposal is probably sitting in someones trash folder.

If you decide your site isnt ready for outsourcing SEO, or you found another SEO provider to work with thats fine, just let me know! Ive put a lot of my time and effort into guiding you through the process, please dont just disappear on me.

How many phone calls, proposals, face-to-face meetings and back-and-forth emails does one lead really need? I understand that choosing an SEO provider isnt like deciding where you want to go for lunch, but there comes a point where you have all the information I can give you without you becoming an actual client. I want to make the process as transparent as possible and make you feel confident about choosing my SEO company as your SEO provider but there is only so much I can do!

Also, dont expect me to outline an entire onsite and link building campaign for your website during the sales process. Im not holding out on you, but I truly cant make educated recommendations without having access to your sites analytics, an insiders look at your business and much more. Unless you are prepared to let me dig through your site dont expect a custom SEO plan upfront.

I really hate it when leads try to play me against other SEO firms. If you liked what you heard from another SEO company so much that you feel the need to bring it up in our conversation why havent you hired them already? Trust your gut and go with it! I especially feel like it comes up a lot when leads start asking about pricing and they are trying to get me to lower the cost of my monthly SEO services by saying that company X was only going to charge them so much. I understand that some leads are just trying to get a feel for the types of SEO providers out there and figure out which one is the best fit for them, but it feels like others are trying to pit us against each other just so they can get a better deal. There is no secret to SEO success, and trying to convince me that another SEO company knows one and I better divulge it if I want you as a client isnt going to work.

Originally posted here:
My Favorite Worst SEO Leads