“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” -Proverb attributed to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, if you can believe Wikipedia When the world wide interwebs came along, I was instantly intrigued. That was largely because when I was a (gullible) little kid I thought there was a book called “The Everything Book” that contained [...]

I just finished 3 intensive days at MozCon 2012. Not for intellectual sissies or social introverts, the days were spent listening to presentations, demonstrations and exhortations from a list of luminaries. There was something for everyone: link building is the road to perdition, how-tos on link building, agile all over the place, data modeling, crunching, [...]

As a linkbuilder, I love college websites. What’s not to love? Sure, getting authoritative links from .edu domains can pass a ton of equity, but college sites have a lot more going for them: They’re varied. Opportunities exist for every vertical. They’re fresh. You can expect the primary pages to be updated regularly. There’s nothing [...]

Google launched the Penguin update to filter out spammy links. Great! That’s fantastic! Lead us, oh tuxedoed little birdie, to the Golden Age of SEO! Content, marketing and all-around smarts will win the day! Penguin is not subtle. It targets link profiles that flunk fairly obvious, common-sense criteria: Don’t buy links; don’t get site-wide footer [...]

Business owners got a treat this morning as Google rolled out yet another update to its local platform, this time, ditching Google Places and replacing it with Google+ Local. This move completely integrates Google’s local listings with the current Google+ social network. Coincidentally, and equally newsworthy, Portent just happens to be moving to our new [...]

Yep. Uh-huh. Google’s busted. I just took a look at Google’s link profile and the big G is clearly running a link network. Check this out: They own all these sites—YouTube, Feedburner, Google.com, Google.co.uk, Google.co.up, Blogger.com and what do they do with them all? They link them to each other: It gets worse. They’re also [...]

Lately, I’ve been feeling like a grade schooler punished along with the rest of the class for one student’s bad behavior. With Google’s Pandas, Penguins and other pandemonium-producing updates yet to come, we’re all Bart Simpson being forced to write on the SEO chalkboard, “I will not outsource link building to third-world countries that spam [...]

A few years ago I stepped into a role as an information architect and user experience designer at a Portland ad agency. Coming from a background in search marketing, this was quite a bit of a change for me. The first thing I noticed was that SEO & UX should really be a more integrated [...]

Who saved Middle Earth? No, not Frodo. His will shredded like wet toilet paper. Gollum took the lava bath, destroyed the ring, and saved everyone from a 36″ Dark Lord. Does he get any credit? Nooooooo. Nine-fingered Frodo is the hero. The ladies all swoon at Legolas and Aragorn. But not poor Gollum. Internet marketers, [...]

Pin It “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” -Mark Twain It’s been said that SEO is dead. It’s been said a lot, actually. But no, this is not another dumb, disguised, fake controversy “death of SEO” linkbait article. No. This is a fun, full-disclosure, zero-controversy death of SEO linkbait article. Now that you’re done [...]