SEO Blokes

Rapping Your Way To The Top

evilgreenmonkey — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 21:05:43 +0000

I’m not generally a big fan of rap music (too much swearing for an innocent guy like me), the only rap song on my iPhone is “I’ll Be Missing You” by P Doddy or whatever his name is these days. I do however love the SEO industry and couldn’t resist the charm of this rap video by a chap called “Poetic Prophet“. I’d love it if Danny got him to open one of the SMX events

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5 Hottest Guys In UK SEO

ciaran — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 14:28:19 +0000

I’ve always wanted to be tagged in a meme post, but never dreamed it would be on a topic which will only enhance the impression many have of me; i.e. that I may not be so interested in the ladies (despite the fact that I’m married & all that). So thanks for that Julie, I really appreciate it. Anyway, here we go….

Ekky: He’s cool, he’s got great taste in music, he can wear an anorak like no other man. What’s not to like?
Chris Cotton: Again,I’m probably swayed by his taste in music & fashion, but who wouldn’t love the man once described as being like a big cuddly bear?
Rob Kerry: Because if I didn’t list him, he’d black-hat my arse (yeah, yeah, I know - you’re reformed!)
Hugh MacLeod: Ok, so he has a funny accent, and he doesn’t really work in SEO, but anyone who can get £15 million in extra revenue for a company through social media, can draw & is funny too, gets my vote.
Me. Danny? He lives here doesn’t he?

Sorry Julie, but you really stitched me up there! Everyone knows that all UK SEOs are black-hats, and that black hats are all ugly, otherwise they wouldn’t have spent so much time in their bedrooms when they were kids!

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Bucharest!

ekky — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 16:20:12 +0000

My friend Gav was due to get married to his Romanian fiancée in Bucharest and invited us to experience a Romanian Orthodox wedding. Now this has nothing to do with SEO so far but a couple of weeks before I had received Search Engine Optimization with PHP: A Developer’s Guide to SEO. On reading I discovered that one of the authors was Cristian Darie who lives in Bucharest. I work with some hardcore techie guys who baffle me with the programming technicalities of SEO and this book actually made a lot of sense a clarified a lot of stuff I had been working on. I approached him with the line “Oh I’m going to be Bucharest could you recommend anywhere I should visit?” clearly I was fishing for an invite. Fortunately Cristian is a generous soul and suggested we meet up, mission accomplished.

I’m going to need to be careful wording what I’m going to say next, programmers aren’t necessarily the most “social” of people so I was a little concerned that a guy with Cristian’s pedigree check out his CV regarding his writing. He picked us up and took us to a Serbian restaurant where it turned out he was actually very engaging bloke. Enough so that we met up again that evening where a lot of tequila was consumed.

Now I was going to tell you about the in depth detail that we went into regarding his book but I won’t, what I would say is that if you’re interested in finding out the technical aspects of PHP in the context of SEO buy the book, you won’t be disappointed even if you aren’t overly technical. They have achieved something that no one has done so far in this industry. Also if you are in Bucharest in the near future look up Cristian but you might want to avoid the tequila!

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Dave Naylor Is The Nicest Bloke In SEO

ciaran — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 19:51:21 +0000

Or at least the bloke most willing to play the game and pimp his readers to win a popularity contest. And for that we salute him.

For anyone unhappy with the result, all I can say is that I said I would close the vote when it got to 200, but due to being away I’ve let it get to 208 and Dave got nearly 25% of those! The top 5 in reverse order are:

Dave Naylor - 49 votes - 24% of vote
Rand Fishkin - 34 - 16%
Danny Sullivan - 24 - 12%
Todd Malicoat - 19- 9%
Rob Kerry - 19 - 9%

I realise that Rob & Todd got the same number of votes but thought in the interest of fairness that Rob should take the lower position (seeing as how he is one of the creators of this site!)

Anyway, I wanted to make a badge for Dave to proudly display on his site, but in order not to piss off our sisters at SEO Chicks we felt that this might not be the most politic thing to do. But if anyone else would like to make one and sends it to us, we’ll pass it on to Dave along with a link to the designer’s site from SEO Blokes.

You can’t say fairer than that now can you?

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Why SEOs Don’t Like Authority

evilgreenmonkey — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 09:27:57 +0000

Are you the boss of an SEO? If so, they probably either don’t think of you as a boss, or can’t wait to leave the company. A real SEO is a maverick, the kind of person who sat alone in the classroom with a demonic smile and created masterplans when others were playing hopscotch. You cannot tame such a beast, only use their talents in the knowledge that they are probably using you.

When I was the boss of a team, I trained rough diamonds into becoming little gems - although there’s a point in the process when these gems realise the powers which they behold. Why work for an evil person such as myself, when you can rule your own dominion?

I currently report to someone, although I see that person as a friend and someone I respect as an excellent SEO. They do not like being called the boss, and I probably wouldn’t work with them if they did. There’s a big difference between a coalition of SEOs and a tiered hierarchy of reporting. I work alongside Julie from the SEO Chicks, and she was jokingly told by our chief to report to me in future. The little lady now calls me, Sir, which she finds highly amusing; as she is of an SEO mindset and would never report to someone like me. If I were paranoid (which I am), I may just think that it’s also a reference to Marcie, from the Peanuts comic strip.

People assume that SEOs go freelance to earn more money, although any major corporation would be more than willing to match the income of a freelancer in return for gaining market share and higher profits. After all, affiliates only earn a small percentage of the profit on a product from the seller, the seller earns a lot more when acquired directly. It all boils down to the lone gunman, the Dirty Harry; the bloke or chick working at home in their dressing gown for 10 times what their parents or siblings ever earned. They are the kings and queens of their kingdom, and whether they want to knock Amazon off #1 on Google today or sit in front of the TV and eat Pizza is their decision.

The Lisa wrote a post stating that “Your Boss Is Not Your Friend“, although in my books they would therefore be your enemy - the person standing between you and your goals. If your boss is your friend, you will respect their opinion and requests, a boss is someone that is trying to cage you - trying to control the uncontrollable.

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SEO Superheroes?

ciaran — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 10:36:26 +0000

An article about DC Comics (yes, I’m a comic geek as well) using Web 2.0 got me thinking about what an SEO superhero would look like.

My colleagues and I at Altogether think that they would probably look something like this:

But what do you think? Why not have a go at creating your own SEO Superhero. Vanessa Fox as Wonder Woman (or maybe Buffy)? Matt Cutts as Superman? Dave as The Punisher? We’ve already had (on a slightly different note) Rand as Dr Evil.

Get Photoshopping and link to your SEO Superheroes here. Best one gets… something (I’ll have to check with the boys!)

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All Quiet On The Bloke Front..

ciaran — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 14:35:50 +0000

Unlike our lovely sisters over at SEO Chicks, we’ve been a bit poor on the posting front recently. It’s down to a mixture of work, festivals, travel and some general slacker-ness.

To keep things tiding over until we get our arses in gear, here’s one of those handy little round-ups (not all of them on topic):

And to keep you amused until we get our acts a bit more together, why not meet the lovely Obama Girl? We’d vote for her….

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Arctic Diamonds: Predicting Search Traffic

ciaran — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 12:42:39 +0000

One of the true arts in search marketing is predicting possible high volume search terms. Just as with any sort of marketing, if you can guess which way your audience is going to go, and get in at the ground floor, you can do very well.

Case in point: Sitting in my lounge yesterday afternoon, beer in hand, watching the Glastonbury Festival on TV (and hoping that Jay, Jay Jr & Eccy have managed to stay reasonably dry). The Arctic Monkeys had headlined on the Friday night and, in a homage to Shirley Bassey who is playing today, had covered Diamonds Are Forever.

Now I also have a blog on music (Sample As That), which concentrates on interesting remixes, samples & cover versions. And it occurred to me that a lot of people would probably be searching for information on this cover of Diamonds Are Forever and that some enterprising young soul had probably uploaded the footage on to YouTube. So, using my learning on how to write for search users, I knocked out a review of the Arctics cover of Diamonds Are Forever.

And today, when I look at my traffic stats for Sample As That, I notice that most of the phrases driving traffic to my blog are to do with this track, as I rank on page 1 of Google for a whole host of phrases about the cover version. And a very nice person at a forum has started a thread about the cover, with a link to my blog (and this is currently my biggest traffic referrer, beating even Wikipedia).

I’m sure that it will probably earn me about 10p in AdWords, but I do the blog out of love, and it’s nice to know that my professional knowledge can make sure that as many people as possible get to see it.

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Nicest Bloke In SEO

ciaran — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 13:48:32 +0000

Yesterday was the service of thanksgiving for my step-father Michael, followed by a wake in my local pub. It was a really lovely day, made all the more so by the lovely people who were a part of it. From Mike, the landlord of the Wheatsheaf, to the vicar, to all of Michael’s friends, it really did show that there are a lot of nice people out there.

Prompted by this, the friendliness of all the people I met at SMX and also following a comment on Eccy’s post by Lisa of SEO Chicks, I thought I’d do a poll to see who is considered to be the nicest bloke in SEO. I’ve provided 10 names, but feel free to suggest someone else in the comments. And in order to be completely open, I should add that Rob Kerry is one of the SEO Blokes.

I wonder who it will be.

UPDATE: It seems like a comment on SEOmoz has seen a spike for Rand, probably from his readers. So I’m pinging all the main nominees so far to pimp their readers to win this poll (although maybe that’s not what a nice guy would do - oh sod it!) Come on Matt, Dave, Rob (don’t think he’ll need much encouragement - he’s already threatening violence!), Aaron, Neil, Todd, Danny, Andy & Michael - work it guys!

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How SEO Got Me (Carpet) Laid

ciaran — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 15:24:03 +0000

After reading evil’s post I wondered what other utterly ridiculous stories people might come up with as linkbait. Now the offending article which evil mentions is obviously aimed at celibate diggers, but hey - most of us here at SEO Blokes are in or near our 30s, 2 of us are married, 1 of us has kids and I don’t think that we’re alone - so here’s a take on that story for all the 30-somethings out there…

So there I was, just minding me own business (the narrator’s Northern in case you hadn’t guessed) when I noticed that some of t’carpet was starting to unravel a bit.

“Bugger” I thought. “I better do something about that. One of the kids could trip over that and do themselves a nasty injury”. (Sorry - bored with the Northern accent now).

So I did a Google for new carpet. And guess what? After the results for Wikipedia, MySpace, IMDB & eBay, I found a guy who lays carpets. Every day! What a job.

Anyway, I emailed him and he came over in this van. Which was really DIRTY! And then he came in and said

How big’s the room? Oh - quite big. You’re going to need a right old length.

I know - he said length!!

Once I’d managed to stop giggling, I got him to lay the new carpet (right there! In front of me!) And then I paid him and he left.

And then I cried. Because my life is defined by digg.

The end.

Now I plan to sit back and just watch those social media sites send me billions of totally untargeted visits! Woo hoo!

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