Too Busy to Think

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As a marketer, I often find myself so caught up in the daily grind that I’m just too busy to think. Whether I’m swamped with client meetings, stretched thin from producing kick-awesome deliverables, or overwhelmed with proposals and sales support, it’s easy to mentally check out and keep moving at a comfortable pace without any regard for progress and chances for improvement.

A couple of weeks ago, Peter Bregman wrote a great killer article on HBR about time management, and, you guessed it, what to do when you don’t have time to think. He used an analogy that really got me thinking about how to better manage my time and use it for what we were born to do: think and innovate. In short, he described a recent business trip in which he was booked at a Four Seasons hotel with two buildings, each separated by 11 acres of garden. Much to his dismay, the majority of his meetings were held in the building opposite of the one he was staying in. Having  a busy and hectic schedule that week, he was concerned about “lost time” spent walking the garden, but found himself taking longer and longer each time he walked it because it gave him time to think.

Regardless of whether your function is in creative, strategy, account management, or even sales – the more time you have to think about your client, company, and challenges often amounts to more time innovating and getting results. Who doesn’t need a little more of THAT? 

Soon after reading the article, I started thinking about how I could tap into my 11 acre garden- the local fitness center. Working in a fast-paced agency setting in an even faster-paced industry like search engine marketing, I find myself at the gym between 4 and 6 times per week. Doing so keeps me mentally sane, physically fit, and strategically sound as that’s where I used to catch up on WebmasterRadio.fm podcasts (Note: I do realize this is not normal). For the week or so, however, I’ve been trying something different. Instead of listening to the latest edition of “Office Hours” (Sorry, Vanessa!), I’ve started thinking… about anything and everything.

It may seem like a no-brainer, and you’re probably thinking “What the heck, this guy never stopped to think about things?!?!” but I’ll bet a lot of people don’t take time out of their busy schedule to just think. I’m curious to know how everyone else handles the balance between work, personal life, and “personal time”. If you have any tips that work for you, feel free to share them!

SEO – The What, Why, and How (SLIDES)

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Last week I did a couple of “lunch and learn” sessions for my colleagues at Fullhouse. The top was “SEO – The What, Why, and How”, and it was created to educate agency personnel that wouldn’t ordinarily be exposed to the daily operations of SEO. In the deck, I cover:

  • What SEO actually is
  • Why search matters
  • How search engines work
  • My typical SEO process
  • Some metrics beneficial to measuring SEO success

It’s a lot like an “SEO 101″ with a little for everyone: account executives, project managers, designers, developers, and copywriters/copy-writers/copy-righters (SEO humor, get it?). Let me know what you think!

SEO – The What, Why, and How

Google’s Online Advertising Market Share Reaching Critical Mass

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On Monday, eMarketer published an article that showed Google’s increasing stranglehold of the online advertising market share. In 2010, Google served just under 39% of all online advertisements, from search to display. In 2011, they are project to increase market share to 43.5%, or, just under a 12% increase year over year. For marketers, this goes to show that if you aren’t playing in the Google sandbox, you are missing out. For consumers, it means an increase in contextual AdSense and display ads.

Aside from essentially owning nearly half of all online ads by 2012, I think Google really has things locked down. Their latest product improvements in the space are heavily targeted to user behavior and preference. A prime example would be “remarketing”. Around this time last year, Google unveiled their version of retargeting, dubbed “remarketing”. As a marketer looking to do what I can to help clients succeed in the digital space, I can vouch for its value as it allows me to retarget online ads and serve creative specific to browsing history. As a marketer concerned with the 800 lb gorilla in the room eating up market share at such a rapid rate, I’m a bit concerned.

What do you think about Google growing bigger and bigger each year?

SEO Ethics – Why I Live & Breath SEO

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The SEO industry has taken a lot of hits lately. Surprisingly, it’s even gone primetime on Law & Order. Even with all of the bad press and “scammy” nature of the trade, I still stand strong in my resolve to help clients increase search visibility by ensuring they provide unique, relevant content to their audience. I sincerely believe that in an increasingly crowded market of SEO “experts”, “gurus”, and “visionaries”, the few actual SEOs that provide value to their clients will rise to the top and lead the industry to a new height, void of the scammers, exact-match domainers, and content thieves that hack and reverse engineer the very algorithm that 80% of all searchers have  come to know and trust.

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t an article cleverly-crafted for link bait – hell, half of the folks in the industry I know and respect can be considered “competitors“. This post is merely meant to be a call for those in our industry to stop the BS and start thinking big picture. Do we really want to be the group of people that are hesitant to divulge our trade at networking events and cocktail parties because people like this pollute the SERPs and give us a bad name? No – that’s not who I am and that’s not what I do. I help companies, big and small, from Fortune 100′s to startups, large budgets and small budgets, get their website inline and truly compete with the scammers that pollute the internet with garbage and useless content.

For the record, I’m not delusional in the sense that I believe I know everything there is to know about the industry. Honestly, I don’t believe any single person does. I’m 26 with three years of experience in the industry. In some circles, I’m still considered a rookie. One skill that I do possess, however, is the ability to say “no”. Even in this stage of my life, having paid for both my wedding and my first house on freelance SEO gigs alone, I’ve been able to steer clear of distasteful clients and either say “no” to prospects or flat out fire clients that want me to break the rules. If a 24-7 self-acknowledged workaholic can do it, I think anyone can.

Ok, ok. Enough babbling – allow me to get to the point. I’d like to propose an industry-wide “sniff test” to aid in weeding through the scam clients and allowing them to drown in the ever-increasing cesspool of spam. The SEO client “sniff test” includes asking yourself:

  • Does the client have an exact-match domain name? Chances are, this client has “read a little about SEO” and believes that having an exact match domain with a keyword density of 42.434% will get them #1 placement.
  • Is the potential client asking for a “guarantee”? Wow, don’t even get me started! Any client that insists on “pay for #1 placement” or agency that offers “guaranteed #1 ranking” should seriously be sent straight to your SPAM folder. Note: SEO firms that offer guarantees have another thing coming.
  • Does the potential client have “thousands of positive reviews” AKA self-written? Honestly, I was first exposed to SEO while working at an agency known for astroturfing, or, littering the internet with fake reviews. I’d steer clear of these types of clients, especially since it’s 100% illegal.
  • Is the potential client asking for 100 PR6+ backlinks in one month? First off, a true SEO knows that good links are acquired over time – not in bulk. You’d be surprised how often I see this in RFQs or random cold emails.
  • Does the potential client “spin” content, i.e. steal from popular sites or take advantage of people new to digital marketing? The catalyst for this post was the SERoundtable article on the Webmaster Help thread with the content spinner that was “smart enough” to post his concerns with the Google Panda update. Clients that spin articles and rip other’s content have a significant flaw in their business model that all the links in the can’t help. Stay far, far away.

I only stress avoiding these types of clients because I’ve encountered them in the past. They may offer lucrative, on-going contracts, but in the long-run, it’s just not worth it. It’s a waste of resources and will make you look (and feel) like a slimeball.

J.C. Penney’s Sale on Black Hats

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There have been quite a few mainstream news articles as of late touching on search and the impact it has on businesses, from the smallest shops to the largest brands. Over the weekend, the New York Times dropped a bombshell by bringing attention to an elaborate link scheme hatched by the search marketing firm managing the campaign for Fortune 500 retailer J.C. Penney. It’s the largest brand to get penalized by Google for violating search quality guidelines since BMW in 2006.

Read the rest of my post on the Fullhouse interactive marketing blog…