Spam Forums at Your Own Risk
With every industry, there is an underground of folks who find more pleasure in wrecking a good thing.  Search engine marketing is no exception. Somehow, the idea that humans can outwit search engines became a challenge and even a battle.  For myself, as an SEO who brings usability and user experience design to the mix, the key to marketing and web design is understanding what people want.  It’s referred to as user behavior. Search engine computers are programmed to look for signals about what we want and like. Yet, somewhere along the way, somebody decided to promote the idea that spamming search engines will help their web pages rank better.  To their way

Intuit Web Site Setup Service Misleading
I would like to thank Intuit for their hard work in bringing me new clients. It came as quite a surprise that you support my web site usability and SEO services. Imagine my surprise when I flipped on the boob tube for several minutes while making tea from the comfort of my (very busy!) home office and there you were, all professional sounding like, with your (dare I say it?) sly and devious commercial to small biz web site owner hopefuls. For the mere fee of $4.99 (or some such pittance), new web site owners can buy a web site designed and marketed by Intuit. In just under 3 minutes, you had me going there, by golly. Especially the part about being findable in sea

Ms. Dewey Search Lives On
Every once in awhile I long for the days when my sassy female search idol, Ms. Dewey, would tap on my monitor asking where where I was. Today was one of those days. If you remember, Ms. Dewey as a viral marketing campaign started by Microsoft 3 years ago this month. The site was an experimental interface for Live Search. It didn’t take searchers long to discover you could prompt her to say and do naughty, silly things with certain keyword searches. Looking to see if there are any updates on her demise (they bring back dead soap opera stars, why not Ms. Dewey?), I found her domain alive and well sitting in the first spot in Google SERPS. However, upon

Learning From Conference User Feedback
I spend most of my days in my office with 2 cats and 2 dogs as my office-mates, dual monitors and a laptop. For me, “talking” to people is all done virtually. When I tap into what’s happening in the industries I work in, the feedback is limited and based on my “friends” and “followers” living in the land of the Internet. This is one reason why I enjoy industry conferences. They get me out of the house and office. They’re far more exciting than walking to my mailbox. Where I live, only the birds and squirrels keep me company outside. I can hear my gardens whining at me because I’ve been too busy to tend to them proper

Search Marketing and Social Media Weekend Camp This Weekend for $21
This weekend a special event takes place in Philadelphia for those who want to learn more about search engine marketing, web site usability and social media. It’s called Search Camp and Social Media Camp. For a small attendance fee of $21 (no catch. That’s all it is!), you get a weekend at Temple University with a small group of like-minded folks and experienced speakers. There are 5 time slots, beginning at 10am, with 4 choices of sessions to pick from. The last one ends at 3:45. Not only that, running alongside this event is Pod Camp Philly. The entire program