PANELISTS:
Mike Grehan, Global KDM Officer, Acronym Media
Adam Lavelle, Chief Strategy Officer, iCrossing
Julie Sun, Senior Manager, SEO, MTV Digital Media
Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, SearchEngineLand.com

Here is a quick overview of each speaker and their major points.

Danny Sullivan:

• Honestly, I didn’t take notes for Danny’s presentation because he said the whole thing would be blogged the next day on Search Engine Land. Well, I couldn’t ever find it. If you can, can you post the link in the comments or email me?

Julie Sun:

• The Digg community doesn’t typically like big brands (in fact, there can be some ugly backlash if the brand isn’t fully transparent). But is a great place to read feedback. Example:MTV launched a new video site, and some of the immediate feedback was along the lines of, “Oh great. Another video site that doesn’t work outside the US.” In actuality, the site worked just fine outside of the US, and after addressing the issues that led to the problem in the first place, this issue was nipped in the bud.
• Julie pointed out a potential flaw and/or exploit on Facebook. She said that when you do a Facebook search, the first results page will be whichever one was created first (pizza example). is this true? Does anybody know for sure?
• Facebook recently opened up their pages (not profile pages) to crawling, so we’ll probably be seeing them show up on the SE’s SERPs more often.
• Use Yahoo! Answers to get a #1 ranking before your site even launches. I liked this one. Everyone knows that Yahoo! Answers is one big SEO racket, but why not use it as a surrogate for your brand until your site goes live? Good stuff.
• Don’t blindly jump into a social media marketing campaign just because you have a good idea. Make sure that you have the proper resources before starting. No sense in starting something potentially great that you will have to abandon once it builds steam.
• Know your goals beforehand. Are you branding? Are you looking for traffic?

Mike Grehan:
This presentation was all about the crossover between search and social media.

• The communituies will drive the engines. This is the likely future of search.
• Librarything.com is an excellent example of user-driven search. Check ou its tons of UGC.
• Mike talked about an example of making a short video that he published to several different video hosting sites. He tagged it in such a way that it would compete with a moderately competetive term (he didn’t say which one). Within 3 days, several of the videos were ranking in the top 10 for that term. The point? Google is obviously listening, and HTML is not the future of content - nor is it what the search engines will eventually be prioritizing.
• Textbook SEO will disappear completely (nothing new there).
• DAO: Digital Asset Optimization. This is defines as offsite SEO using social media.
• Mike claims that the number one source of Google’s information is their toolbar. He didn’t elaborate, but I’m curious to know why. Mike? Are you reading this?
• He Quoted Andrew Tomkins who suggests that HTTP and HTML will become obsolete.

Adam Levelle:

• If you think that you are in charge of your own brand, you are not. Eventually, nearly all information about any brand will be UGC. Most will be crap, so the SEs will be in charge of filtration.
• Case study: The company was able to radically decrease negative sentiment by merely answering questions. Here is a great argument for getting involved. You don’t even have to initiate anything - just answer people’s questions.
• Clive Thompson of Wired is quoted: “Google is not a search engine. Google is a reputation-management system.”
• Measuring social media is still very difficult. One tactic that Adam tried was to track the links posted and clicks received via every different social media site on which they had activity. He mined the Omniture data in order to do this, and it was horribly tedious.
• Measuring social media is not the same as ROI.

-Drew

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on ad:tech New York 2008
• Ad:Tech New York & Leadpile Lead Exchange
• Thoughts for 2008-11-03
• Share Results Attending ad:tech in New York
• Next Stop, Ad:Tech New York!
• Ad Tech New York 2008
• Guitar Hero 4

MODERATOR:
Jeff Flemings, Senior VP, Renaissance Planning, VivaKi

PANELISTS:
Kay Madati, VP, Audience Experience, CNN Worldwide
Michael Lazerow, Chairman and CEO, Buddy Media, Inc.
Jeff Hunter, Innovation Toolkit Director, Cereal Partners Worldwide, General Mills, Inc.
Marc Ruxin, Chief Innovation Officer, Digital, McCann Worldgroup San Francisco
Chris Pan, Head of Brand Solutions, Facebook

Discussion highlights included:

• CurrentTV’s election coverage that ran a  Twitter feed and a Digg feed below video window.
• Dont’ try and create something new. pick something you know people will already engage with and center your social media campaign around that.
• Obviously you have to give people a reason and a chance to engage.
• Don’t merely set up a SM listening system. Create concrete goals for engaging and make a plan for converting participation (offline or online) into a way to generate revenue.
• Brand relationship networks (groups of brand enthusiasts) can help you understand why/where to engage and develop new ideas and campaigns.
• Consumers now have more of a face than ever. Therefore, even though so much of social media is driven by technology, there needs to be a layer on top of that that is driven by emotion.
• The challenge isn’t finding people but rather learning about them and knowing which content to direct them to.
• How do you build relationships with consumers? How do you create one-on-one engagement with an ongoing dialogue? If there is a local event, how do you communicate it to the correct people? The quest to answer all of these questions is driving the evolution of a new type of CRM. Can you create or nurture fans that will help you promote your own brands?
• Any advertiser who is getting involved with any social media space needs to understand the expectations of that space before getting involved.

Take-aways

• Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day is a must-read for any social media marketer. It’s available for sale at Amazon:
  It was written by Dave Evans of ClickZ, and it came highly recommended from several members of the panel.:

This presentation was overseen by Samantha Skey, Executive VP, Strategic Marketing, Alloy Media + Marketing. The focus was on the panel of six “Millenials,” who can be generally defined as people born between 1980-2000. At this presentation, the Millenials were between 18 and 21 years old. Our panel was made up of Carlos, Emily, Dash, Brianna, Joe, and Nicole.

To open the keynote, each panelist was presented with an image of either the infamous Barack Obama “change” poster, the icy-white, beveled Apple logo, or a carton of Ben&Jerry’s ice cream. They were then asked to say the first thing that came to their minds.

The discussion opened, as had already become a trend at ad:tech, with Tuesday’s election. A huge amount of young people turned out to support the campaign. This fact led to a discussion of “Obama-nomics,” which was defined by Ms Skey as…

Obama-nomics: reach (access + utility) = cause adoption

The idea and/or hope is that this method lends itself to development of brand passion. The suggestion is that Obama’s campaign was hugely successful with younger people, so can we leverage the same principles in every-day marketing?

The majority of the presentation was questions being asked of the panel. So I’ll run down some of the more interesting points:

• The majority of panelists watch their television online via services like Hulu. Exceptions include top favorite shows, breaking news and sporting event. Although most agreed that they use Twitter for the latter two items.
• If you could only have one gadget, what would it be? Responses were limited to phone, laptop, and iPod. Most responded “phone,” and the reason given was staying in contact with friends and family.
• Is there anything you think phones shouldn’t do? Most replied “no,” but at least one person suggested that phones are too complicated already.
• How do you use your phones? Primarily texting, and talking is secondary.
• What are some of your favorite TV commercials? Target, Subway, Sony Bravia, anything with good dancing and/or choreography, Sonic, NBA, Nike. The most common reasons given for enjoying a commercial were humor and relatability.
• Where do you notice that you see or watch the most ads? Internet, the subway, on the street, Facebook. Also important are art/aesthetics and any ad that carries a special offer or deal (e.g. free prints at Shutterfly and Snapfish). Most agreed that Facebook ads are probably the most useful because they are so highly targeted and seem unobtrusive.
• Polls show that 49% of Millenials say that they like the appearance of social responsibility. But this “green” trend carries a risk. There is a backlash against compaines who spend money on “green” campaigns because they are trying to cleanse their reputations as polluters.

At this point, I actually started to feel sort of weird, like I was at a zoo. Here were all of these people in the audience in their 30s, 40s and 50s, and we were all dissecting everything these kids had to say. It made me giggle just a little bit to think that everyone in the room was furiously writing down every last word that these kids uttered.

The discussion turned to a group called “The Reachables.” This group consumes more media than any other group, but ironically, they are the hardest to reach. Here are some stats on The Reachables:

• Willing to consume advertisements if they accompany content that is cheaper or free than ad-free content.
• 62% report learning about new and/or popular brands via advertising channels.

The most interesting take-away for me was that we, as advertisers, can learn a lot from Millenials as they shape the future of social interaction. But the panel’s concept of privacy was virtually non-existent. Most expressed dismay about the fact that their personal information or photos could be used by the company that owns the service on which their information appears. They saw it as an invasion of privacy. I guess they’ll be some of my future reputation management clients.

-Drew

MODERATOR:
Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
Tina Sharkey, Chairman and Global President, BabyCenter LLC
Rob Master, North American Media Director, Unilever US
Rob Norman, CEO, Group M Interaction
David Morris, Chief Client Officer, CBS Interactive

Rob Norman, an agency guy, started the discussion by stressing that the marketing paradigm isn’t shifting; it has already shifted. It’s time to stop talking about how and when the changes in the marketing world will happen because they are already here. So let’s discuss how to take advantage of new media.

Tina Sharkey said that according to her numbers, email marketing is stronger than ever. She made an interesting point that there is too much crap on the web to trudge through, so when somebody can present digested information in the form of an e-newsletter, people are appreciative.

As an SEO (specifically a Link Builder), I didn’t get a whole ton out of this session. Though I did think it was pretty entertaining when Rothenberg referred to the Obama/McCain election as one of the most important of the 20th century.

-Drew

Jonathan Klein, President, CNN/U.S.
& Geoff Ramsey, CEO and founder of eMarketer.com

Klein dominated most of the available time with his discussion about bringing traditional media out of the past and into the present by taking full advantage of interactivity, social media, and user generated content. He opened his presentation with a discussion of the “Obama Loses by a Single Vote” viral video campaign that was launched by Moveon.org. This is an example of the next generation of advertising, whereas the “Mad Men” (the AMC drama about ad men on Madison Avenue) paradigm of media-buying is representative of the older generation of marketing.

Using today’s presidential election as an example, Klein broke the voting demographic into the “next gen” voters who are alienated from politics and stay largely independent of political parties, choosing to align themselves with the issues instead. The realization that CNN has made in the recent past is that many 40-50 year olds share these same ideas now. Therefore the question becomes, “:How does a traditional media outlet like CNN survive?” Klein provided several examples of web 2.0/UGC sensibility that has been injected into the CNN brand. Among those, he briefly touched on:

• iReport, which is a UGC form of reporting by regular Joes
• Interfacing CNN directly with Facebook
• The “Magic Wall,” the multi-touch, interactive big screen
• Real-time debate scoring, tracked by CNN analysts
• Rick Sanchez’s new show that pulls news stories directly from Twitter
• Impact Your World: An opportunity to participate in the stories you read by donating your time and money to organizations that get involved

Klein made the claim that because of these innovations, CNN is now the #1 news network on cable or broadcast for the 18-49 demographic. He also made the claim that CNN is now the #1 site on the web for video delivery. Hmmm….

Not according to Compete.com as recently as May, so he could have meant something different, but there is no question that he made a claim as #1 for video. Either way, the point he was trying to make is that embracing new media is what boosted the viewership so dramatically.

He then talked about how Twitter continues to scoop every news outlet in existence on new stories, Klien stressed how important it is for traditional media outlets to listen to social media and pay attention to where it’s going. The most relevant example was the recent Los Angeles earthquake. It was reported on Twitter less than 30 seconds after the first rumbles. Local news took about 5 minutes and AP took another 10.

During the Q&A portion of the presentation, Klein was only able to field a couple of questions, but I thought one was particularly good: “You are CNN, so you obviously have tremendous opportunities for revenue, but what would you recommend to a smaller media presence who is attempting to convert quality content into revenue?” Klein kind of dodged this one was answering, “You have to join a gang. If you’re not a Blood or a Crip yet, you need to consider getting on board.”: OK, I guess. A moderately funny answer that suggests allowing yourself to be bought by or aligned with a larger media company.

But I don’t buy it. I think that’s a bullshit answer to a good, honest question. Frankly, it was the perfect ending to Klein’s whole presentation given everything he had discussed up to that point. In terms of social media, he didn’t offer a single innovative idea. I suspect that going live with new ideas at a place like CNN is pretty hard. So the initial reaction might be to congratulate this guy for the leaps and bounds he has made at the network, but that isn’t what I am thinking. Integration with social media and UGC isn’t just a good idea; it’s vital. As in, if he didn’t do it, somebody else would have to or else CNN would be dying (or dead).

Klein is, no doubt, a compelling speaker and a seemingly interesting guy, but I didn’t think he presenting anything unique or useful in terms of real-world implementation. After all, how many people at this conference have a brand like CNN backing them up?

The economy sucks, but don’t freak out because that’s the worst thing that could possibly happen in advertising. Media spends are going to ether remain the same or improve over the next two years. The only change will be that money will be removed from traditional marketing campaigns and moved to online advertising.

I think this is something that we already know, but it was certainly comforting to see Geoff back it up with some solid data. He recently wrote a paper about the immediate future of marketing that eMarketer.com is giving away free. As soon as I obtain my copy, I’ll make it available here.

-Drew

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on ad:tech New York 2008
• Ad:Tech New York & Leadpile Lead Exchange
• Thoughts for 2008-11-03
• Share Results Attending ad:tech in New York
• Next Stop, Ad:Tech New York!
• Ad Tech New York 2008

Of course, I’m here for the social media conversations. So I’ll keep you posted about the buzz.

So I was doing some brainstorming last night…several people I know have been pretty enthusiastic about blog farming, and I think it’s a really interesting idea without regard to how long it might be viable.

Essentially, the premise is that you’re creating a large number of unique content pages in a semi-to-fully-automated fashion.  We know Google loves blogs (seomfg got out of the sandbox within a week, and had a TBPR on the homepage in less than a month — and we did everything completely legit).

So, let’s say you have an autoblog or blog farm that is generating 5-20 posts a day as an example.  Assume you’re using Eli’s PingCrawl Wordpress plug-in, you can realistically expect to get at least a few backlinks a day (probably 2-to-40, which is a wide range — but either way).

To take it a step further (this was triggered by Aaron Wall’s post on SEO book about WP IP delivery hacks), let’s assume you cloak the entire blog by crawler IP address (I recommend Fantomas’ SpiderSpy for IP content delivery) and 301 everything that Google sees back to your home page — as long as you are either autoblogging or blog farming everything with enough detail that your posts’ titles include your head keyword, you’re getting somewhere between a couple and a few dozen links back to your home page on a daily basis.  And those backlinks show some relevance because all of your fake-blog posts have your head keyword in the title.

Let’s assume your vertical is somewhat competetive.  Whoever is ranking first for your head term is probably lucky to have 10-20% of their backlinks with “head keyword” in the anchor text (unless they rented a lot of links).  So this strategy should pay some dividends, because you’ll be ruling the “head keyword” with inbound anchor text relevance (albeit varied slightly, but also productively).  Especially if you have total control over the title of your auto/farm posts.  Just make sure that most (if not all) of your posts have your head keyword in them somewhere, with slightly different surrounding text.

Hope this is interesting,
=george

PS. It should be noted that, after a short time in this industry, it makes me laugh how poorly people cloak for SEO value.  Look at this example for CareerBuilder — look at the “Jobs” footer link to Careerbuilder.com on usatoday.com with a typical browser UA…and then look at it as Googlebot.  Not that I agree or disagree with what they’re doing (or, especially, how they’re doing it).  But UA checking is for pussies; pay for an IP feed if you’re going to go balls to the wall.

How funny.  There are now 4 URLs with a toolbar PageRank of 10:

• Google
• usa.gov
• universia.esp

And…wait for it….seriously, get this:

• Google’s AdSense page

I’m not kidding.

There are several things that are important to illustrate:

1. According to Google, there are no backlinks to the URL that shows a toolbar PR of 10 (https://www.google.com/adsense/login/en_US/ – nofollowed, obv).

2. According to Yahoo!, there are a very small number of backlinks to that URL.

3. This URL doesn’t show up in Google’s cache — yet it doesn’t have a robots tag instructing engines to noindex or noarchive it.  How the fuck is one of the four most important URLs on the Intanet missing from the largest search engine’s cache?

4. Look at this handy JavaScript cloaking on the page.  That iframe redirect is included, not on-page (tricky move, Google): https://www.google.com/adsense/login-box.js

document.write(’n74iframe style7542width:19em;height:16.4em;42 align7542center42 marginwidth7542042 marginheight7542042 scrolling7542no42 frameborder7542042 id7542awglogin42 name7542awglogin42 src7542https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLoginBox?service75adsense46amp;ltmpl75login46amp;ifr75true46amp;rm75hide46amp;fpui75346amp;nui751546amp;alwf75true46amp;passive75true46amp;continue75https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fadsense%2Flogin-box-gaiaauth46amp;followup75https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fadsense%2Flogin-box-gaiaauth46amp;hl75en_US427674/iframe76′);

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some fairly similar code on some hacked .edu forums that redirected to pillz sitez.

Without speaking to Google’s business interests, I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really find it hard to understand how Adobe’s home page got demoted to a TBPR9; or that Yahoo! is a TBPR9 when Yahoo!’s home page obviously has entirely more backlinks and natural, loyal, willing visitors than the AdSense login page; and especially when the AdSense TBPR10 page is in a sub directory, it uses JavaScript cloaking, and it doesn’t have a link profile worthy to compete in a low-profit affiliate vertical.

But…don’t hate the player, right?  The mouseover on the PageRank button in the Google Toolbar reads:

“PageRank is Google’s measure of the importance of this page”

I’m not going to lie.  If I’m Google, the AdSense page is the second most important page on the web to me, save my homepage.  So maybe we should applaud Google for being transparent in this case.

=george

Another first for Google was their use of Google Moderator for fielding some Q&A from the session. You can see the participants’ questions and the moderators’ responses here:

Google’s Q&A Via Google Moderator

Here is an article that Aaron Wall wrote last year:

And here is the Michael Grey post that inspired it:

I wish I could have uncovered something good that was a little more current, so let me know if any of you guys find anything. The valuable information is located in the comments sections of each article. The general consensus seems to be that automated, mass-submission to article directory sites is pretty worthless. I think we would all probably assume that anyway, so the real question becomes, “What, if any, is the value of submitting unique, keyword-rich content with back links to deep pages with good anchor text?” Given that Google did a PR revision of these article submission sites about a year ago, search engineers decided to knock the value of article submission down a peg or two resulting in PR3s or PR0s, according to Aaron and Michael. But I just checked the major submission sites that I know (and sometimes use), and the domain PRs breaks down like this:

• http://ezinearticles.com/ PR6
• http://www.articlecity.com/ PR6
• http://www.buzzle.com/ PR6
• http://www.articlebiz.com/ PR3
• http://www.easyarticles.com/ PR4

Not too shabby. So the owners of these sites have obviously taken a firmer stance on editorial guidelines, and the Google search engineers rewarded that jump in quality by restoring some or all of their PR. A comment that was repeated a number times in the above posts was that the real power of article submission services is not in the links that come directly from the submission sites themselves but from the other sites the syndicate/republish the content. This means that we absolutely must track our submitted articles to see where there were re-posted. And we should be doing the very same thing with any original or repurposed content that we publish or promote. This includes blogs and social media interaction on Digg, Delicious, Reddit, etc. Find a unique phrase in the article and set up a Google alert for it. When you receive a notification, check it out. If it’s legit, add it to your tracking documentation (You do have tracking documentation, right?).

Frank suggested that it might be better to create a new blog and/or micro-site and publish the content there. I think this is a great idea, but I don’t think it’s a replacement for article submission. If the value of article submissions is their syndication power, we would likely not be able to achieve the same reach with our own blog or micro-site (unless it’s been around for a while). But if you have the time to publish to both, you could take advantage of the power of an article submission site while simultaneously building up the PR/value of our own site.

Thoughts?

-Drew

Look how fast the tabs open!

Look how I can drag things around!

Ah man, no plug-ins yet!

Is Google tracking my activity?

Wow, how predictable can you people be?  Don’t you see the overlying message here?  Am I the only one that sees what is going on at Camp Google?  I feel like that guy from the original Twilight Zone where he is the same but everyone around him is different.  (George: Which one is that?) (Jerry: Ah, they were all like that.)

What everyone is missing, but I have cleverly discovered, is Google’s blatant attempt at the hip hop community.  That’s right - I said it.

It is no secret that marketing firms turn to the hip hop community to see what the future will look like.  For twenty years rap music and the b-boy culture have been setting trends from the inner cities to the suburbs.  But who would have thought that a search giant like Google would focus their marketing efforts at this demographic.  That is just how smart Google truly is.

Wait, you don’t subscribe to my theory?  Okay…proof:

First, let’s take a look at Google’s product line; G Mail, G Chat, G Docs, G Calendar - as Snoop would say, “How Gangsta!”  And don’t think that the hip hop community hasn’t taken notice.  Of course every rapper would want their email to be drdre@Gmail.com (that’s not real, but will now be spammed anyways).  Don’t believe me - take a listen to this clip from the song Can U Werk Widat by Dj Quik and AMG (some of the originators of west coast gangsta rap):

Second, let’s take a closer look at the man who has put himself as the spokesperson for the Google Algo: Matt Cutts.  Coincidence that his initials are MC?  See: MC Hammer, MC Lyte, MC Breed…nuff said.

This brings me to Google Chrome.  Not up on your hip hop lingo, then read: Urban Dictionary - Chrome.
Not sure what a Firefox is, and I guess Safari is kind of related to searching for something; but what the F does Chrome have to do with searching the internet?  Nothing.  It is simply the O.G. (Google) telling all competition that they are rollin’ out, chrome blazin’!

So finally, since I know how much interweb users need to read all of their information in list form: The Secret Gangsta Products Coming Out Of Google Labs Next

5. Google Ice
Reader: Are you telling me that all you’re giving us for Google Ice is a poorly Photoshopp’d image of a diamond studded Google logo?
Frank: Yes, that’s how I roll.

4. Google Weed
Have you ever typed in your own address on Google Maps and zoomed in all the way in satellite mode?  Have you ever typed your own address on Google Maps and zoomed in all the way in satellite mode on GOOGLE WEED MAN??  Is that my truck?  Wait, when was this taken?  Was I even living there then?  Yeah, I’ve been living here for awhile.  Wait, my truck is dark green; and that truck looks like it might be some kind of blue color.  Whose truck is that in my driveway?  Whose fuckin truck is that???

3. FUBG
Or wait, has Google already begun their secret infiltration of hip hop clothing, see: Coogi.

2.  Google Bitches and Hoes
I’m not even sure how this is a product.  And frankly, I am disgusted that Google is planning to branch out into the pimp game.  I’m not even sure how related this is to mainstream hip hop.  Shame on you Google.

1. Google Coolio
Before you say anything, take a look at how nice those two names look next to each other.  It almost looks like they were made for each other.  And Coolio?  That guy will do anything for a couple bucks and some Google Weed, see: Cookin’ With Coolio.

You may have been wondering when Google would finally adopt a mascot and what mascot they would choose.  Firefox has a dragon (btw, a dragon?  a MFing dragon? come on Firefox, what is that all about anyways?).  Microsoft has a paperclip (that may not be the entire story, but Paul Harvey won’t return my emails).  Apple has the kid from Dodgeball…yeah, the one that takes the wrench to the balls.  Netscape has a…ah who gives a shit about Netscape.  And now, Google, the largest search site on the web, has Coolio!  See: G’s Paradise.

FRANK

Drew and I drove back today, and I’m pretty wiped.  We’re pretty proud of the blogging for the week, and we’re already working on some new content to post that isn’t related to SES.  There might be another session recap or two that we throw out here, but we’re always interested in writing about new stuff, so let us know if you have any suggestions.

=george

1. Get a UPS mailbox near your opponent
2. Go buy a new domain and don’t use your own name in the registry, use the mailbox as the address
3. Go buy another domain, Put your opponent address on your site. Change your address at the PO box to another PO box
4. Buy another domain.  Don’t use your name, use your opponents name instead.
5. Repeat the above site again and again.
6. Host sites all over the place and and always host sites where your opponent is.
7. Optimize the sites and get good links pointing at them.  Make sure you go after the same links as your opponent.
8. Do not link to yourself.  Link to your opponent.  Ask for a reciprocal links from your opponent.
9. Optimize for the the same keywords as your opponent
10. Add more content to your site.  Reprint Press Releases from within the industry
11. Buy content for your site
12. Build a sitemap and submit the sitemap.
13. Then start pushing the envelope with SEO tactics.
14. Begin copying your opponents content as soon as your opponent posts and put to your site.  Submit those new pages to the search engines — immediately.  You want the search engines to make you the originator of the content.
15. Now really start messing up and try to get banned.  Just before you get banned, redirect the URL to your opponent.

The audience didn’t understand what the guy was saying and kept asking, why would someone go through all this work to take someone down?  Why wouldn’t you just spend the time to work on your own site?  Like the moderator said, it’s just one tactic to maintain your good name on the Internet.   Black hats off to you.

When the presentations are posted, I’ll comb them for other interesting tidbits.

-Kim

This session is defined by the SES website as:

“Social Search can be used to drive traffic, conversions, and increase ROI by monitoring conversations happening in cyberspace, often in real time. By using buzz monitoring tools such as Buzzlogic, search professions can be very effective in finding influencer’s within online conversations and reaching out to them. As one example of a few that will be presented, learn how Military.com leverages social media and buzz monitoring tools, together with a solid understanding of business goals, to increase profitability.”

Moderator:

• Marshall Sponder, Senior Web Analyst, Monster.com

Speakers:

• Breanna Wigle, CRM Manager, Military Advantage
• Edmund Wong, Vice President, Strategy, iCrossing
• Todd Parsons, Co-founder & CPO, BuzzLogic.com
• Rob Key, CEO, Converseon

Marshall Sponder was up first:

• Start by categorizing your hits by referrer traffic. Dont’ count hybrid sites like newspapers because they have too many different niches. Many Social Media sites will fall into a specific category, whereas newspapers typically do not.
• Figure out how you are going to be able to prove the success of the campaign before you even start any Social Media Marketing campaign.
• Highly recommended book: Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide
• The WAA (Web Analytics Association) is working on some standards for social media. They plan to release first drafts later this fall.

Rob Key:

• Social media is starting to heavily infiltrate many search results because social media sites are some of the most trafficked on the web.
• When designing a social media strategy: Listen, engage, then measure and optimize.
• The “listen” part can be conversation mining. The companies who are doing this well are 4 times better able to track year over year inprovements in online customer relations (80% vs. 20%).
• Mining the entire social media universe is key. Include UGC, mainstream media, and enterprise content.
• Start by figuring out what you want to know. In other words, be certain about what it is that you want to track before you go about figuring out how to track it. Formulate a plan of attack before you begin.
• Rob recommends that 10%-12% of the total social media conversations should involve (be started by or be participated in) by you or your company.
• Use cloud tags to find out what people are actually talking about (product attribute cloud tags).
• Technology still sucks at identifying sentiment (they have a lot of trouble identifying sarcasm, etc.).
• So if it sucks, how can technology be used? Once good way is as an extenision of customer service. It can also help you identify where to engage. It can also help you dig through search results. For example, what is the anatomy of search as it relates to the social media in which you want to participate?
• Case Study: The “Graco” company engaged multiple social media verticals and their online conversations doubled and positive sentiment increased by 15%. Of course, I find it a little funny to provide a measurement of sentiment right after saying that sentiment measurements don’t work very well. So I’m assuming that there was some sort of human Q/A, but the speaker didn’t mention it.
• A great metric is measurement of total share of voice. This is a good way to show how influential your brand is in the grand scheme of all online conversations in your niche.
• If you are able to trend certain metrics side-by-side, you can end up with a predictive model. For example, if you know that an increase in positive sentiment trends directly proportional to conversion percentages, then you can predict how to increase conversion (work on turning around neutral or negative sentiment).
• Use as many free resources as possible. There are some great ones out there like Technorati, blog.converseon.com, and www.socialtarget.com.

Todd Parsons and Breanna Wigle:

• This entire presentation was one long sales pitch, so I’m not going to include anything about it here. Basically, BuzzLogic has a proprietary piece of software that identifies where online conversations are happening. Then they place targeted advertising in front of the people involved in the conversations. I suppose this is an example of measuring social media marketing’s successes and failures, but I don’t think it’s particularly relevant to the subject matter of the session. So… screw these guys.

Edmund Wong:

• Remember that the lessons you learn with individual clients can not only change your organization’s internal practices, but they will definitely help your next client. So social media “stumbles” or other failures/misfires and valuable learning experiences.
• Standard ROI, as it is measured in other areas of marketing, doesn’t work in social media. so concentrate on measuring what you can:
  • Tonality or sentiment.
  • Categorize discussion topics.
  • Measure traffic on the sites you monitor.
  • Also track direct metrics (numbers of posts) vs. indireact metrics (people who read but don’t leave a digital footprint)
  • Break down your online conversations into addressable versus non-addressable issues. For example, if you encounter a problem online and there is nothing you can do about it, don’t engage.
• These measurements are working toward a common end of developing insight to help predict how future social media engagement will effect your organization.
• There is no one killer metric, so track everything you can.
• It’s not just about numbers, so look at general trends.
• Measuring social media success and failure is not synonomous with ROI. Therefore it is important to draw this distinction when you are selling social media involvement to your CEO.

Conclusion:

The funny reality of this issue is that there really is no good way to measure the success of a social media marketing campaign. But I think it’s helpful advice to simply measure what you can. Measure traffic, measure conversions, measure sentiment to the best of your ability. Measure everything and try to correlate your campaign to other solid metrics that already exist. The technology is getting better, but for now a human review of most data is still required.

-Drew

Moderated by Pauline Ores, SES Advisory Board & Senior Marketing Manager, Social Media Engagement, IBM Corporation

Speakers:

• Erik Qualman, Search Engine Watch Expert & Global VP, EF Education
• Brent Csutoras, Online Marketing Consultant, Brent Csutoras
• Vanina Delobelle, PhD., Global Product Director, Monster Worldwide

Vanina’s presentation was all about social media marketing basics. It would actually be a pretty good best practices document, but she didn’t delve into anything beyond an introduction. The point she repeated a number of times is “global is local.” This means that social media is very much a community atmosphere, so knowing your audience is more important (and probably difficult) than ever. She would know; Monster Worldwide does social media marketing in 20 different countries.

Erik Qualman opened by asking “How many people in here are on Facebook? OK. How many are on Twitter? How many have a YouTube channel? OK. How many people use YouPorn.” It was awesome how many people raised their hands on the last one.

One of the better points that Erik made was about Facebook apps. His company made one that tracked where you have been in the world. It was basically a brag about the difference places that you have traveled in the past. It was very popular. At some point, a random user contacted him and told them that they shoulnd’t require filling out information about yourself (name, email, etc.) in order to download the app. Erik and his company didn’t listen, and that same guy ended up making an app called “Where I’ve Been” which had been hugely successful (in terms of total downloads).

There were a couple of lessons learned here. First, listen to you audience. You likely don’t know better than they do, and this is a key point in many different types of social media. Secondly, you don’t have to be unique to be successful. Find a good idea and then rip it off. If you can do it better, or at lease improve on some shortcomings, there is no reason your app won’t be as or more successful than the original.

Later, Erik’s company built their own social networking site that he referred to as “The field of nightmares” because they built it and nobody came. His advice here is that building your own community straight out of the gate is probably a bad idea. At least at first, try to leverage the existing ones and learn about the community you are trying to participate in. If there is a niche that needs to be filled then you can move onto developing your own. But even then, be certain that you have something unique to offer.

Erik closed with a list of common questions that he is frequently asked.

• Were should I start?
  • It’s best to start with the big ones: Facebook and MySpace. Get to know the communities you’re trying to reach out to.
• When should I start?
  • Start now. Social networking is still mostly in wild-west-mode, so the sooner you get in on it, the better your chances of eventual success.
• Can search engines crawl social media/networks?
  • In a word, yes. There are certainly parts (like password protected profile pages) that aren’t crawled. But search engines are getting better at knowing how to deal with social media sites.
• Does Facebook PPC work?
  • It completely depends, but it’s worth testing. Run your test across all possible audience (don’t restrict to yourself to any specific demographic - at least not at first). And rather than sending them directly to the site, send them to your Facebook profile.
• What is the easiest way for my company to use Twitter?
  • Do some searches on your company name and see what people are saying. This will help you understand how your brand or service is perceived.
• What else is exciting in social media?
  • Search and where is it going is exciting because the search engines still don’t deliver the right content, but that capability is on the horizon. The example that Erik gave was: Imagine you want to purchase an SUV, so you start doing some research online. What if you could immediately see which of your friends bought it? What if a number of them provided feedback? We’ll likely see marketing budgets from companies like the one selling the SUV you want to buy going into promoting user generated content on networking sites - as in, they’ll pay you to write reviews.

Next up was Brent Csutoras, and in my opinion, he was the star of the show. His entire presentation centered around using social media to get links. It all starts with good content. If you have quality stuff, social media is an excellent way to increase the visiblilty of that content. If you use sm to spread the word and your content is compelling, you can end up with massive amounts of links.

So, where to begin? Let’s say you have your content, and this could be a photograph, a video, a top 10 list, a how-to article, etc. Figure out which communties are most appropriate for your content. You don’t want to submit an Xbox 360 game cheat to a baby boomer community, so know your audience before you begin. Also remember that there is a massive audience out there, and they want your content and are willing to link to you as the source. So the challenge is getting it in front of them. Being listed on the front pages of aggregators like Digg and Reddit is an automaitc indicator of authority. So the sheer act of getting voted into those top spots will mean that most people will automatically trust you.

This built-in trust can even lead to media play outside the web (newspapers, magazines, etc. The example that Brent used was Wired magazine’s reporting on Digg stories). The ripple effect continues because other sites and Blogs who then write about you leads to higher-quality traffic that is likelier to convert. This residual effect that can last weeks if not months (as opposed to the Digg effect which is very brief).

At this point, Brent showed a picture of Matt Cutts smiling. The great thing about back links from social media efforts is that they are all completely natural. Google has stated so many times that they discourage paid linking and aim to penalize those sites that pariticpate in it. Links from social media campaigns, if executed properly, can be a get-rich-quick success story (in terms of back links).

There were recently a couple of social media phenomena. If you didn’t see them on Digg, Reddit or StumbleUpon, somebody likely sent them to you in an email. I know that I saw them several times the week that they were circulating around:

and…

Each of these hit the front pages on Digg and Reddit (and likely others, though he didn’t go into detail). Brent was able to get approximately 130,000 visitors back to the target page for each one. And each on baited about 8,000 completely organic inbound links from very high value sites. He figured that this equals approximately $300,000 dollars worth of paid links.

It’s not just the funny stuff that works well. He has gotten articles and top 10 lists about tax codes and other seemingly boring topics. One client wanted to promote urinals, so they made a list of the 20 most expensive urinals ever created. The point is, with a bit of creativity, there is a way to make practically any topic viral.

TIPS:

• Make sure that your site is social-media-friendly.
• Pick communities that you or your business can relate to.
• Do research on what has worked in the past. For example, if your company sells dog collars, search for social-media types of syntax like, “Most dog collars,” or “Dog collars are,” etc.
• Dont’ forget that ultimately it’s about your content. So allocate the necessary resources to the creation of high-quality content.
• Lean and understand how to submit and push social campaigns.
• Most importantly, be prepared for what to do with your success if a campaign hits big. What are you trying to achieve, and how are you going to deal with the traffic, leads etc. if they come flooding in?

Question and Answer Section:

Q: What does a new company do to get into SMM and selling a product/service?

• BRENT: You are not going to be able to bullshit people and get away with it. if you don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to social media marketing, pick one community and stick to it. Social media cannot be one of the ten things you are going to do that day - it pretty much has the be the only thing.
• PAULINE: the problem is that it’s so time and resource intensive. It takes so long, and the challenge is showing what the benefits will be. How do you sell a service with no concrete ROI to your CEO? Showing value can be really hard. Also, a quick tip: “Bring wine” to your social media participation. That is to say, you wouldn’t go to a party without wine, so make sure to bring something of value to the community.

Q: What is the best way to get involved with Twitter? And is this the most successful or useful social media community?

• BRENT: Use Greasemonkey’s tools. Also, Twirl is pretty great (desktop app). Another piece of software called Tweet Pro searches keywords and adds automatically adds friends.

Q: Social Media tends to make reputation management harder, so what can be done about this?

• BRENT: You don’t have a choice. But at the very least, you can get involved and try to steer the conversation in a favorable direction. Also, give people free stuff and they will almost always shut up or change their tune.
• ERIK: If an online conversation gets out of line, try calling these people on the phone Sometimes good old-fashioned talking is what’s required.

Vanina: If you get a bad comment, respond.

• BRENT: Yes but only sometimes. If a bad comment is buried or otherwise relatively unnoticeable, just ignore it. You can also help to vote it down on certain sites. If the comment is really flagrant or inappropriate (or if you are getting flamed), then report it to the community itself.
• PAULINE: I agree. The community will normally take ownership of unreasonable behavior.

Q: Where is social media going? What are the next steps.

• ERIK: Like he stated earlier, Erik sees social media moving more into recommendation-based advertising.
• BRENT: People will be given more power (Huffington Post, for example, allows you to publish directly on the site), and search engines will become smarter about indexing this content. Bigger companies and brands will eventually start to wake up to the fact that if they don’t participate in the online conversation, they will get creamed. So more big companies will become active.
• PAULINE: Social media will be bigger thatn search. Eventually, search will be seen as the stepping-stone on the way to social media’s dominance. It will change the way we all participate on the Internet and find information.

-Drew

Maybe this stuff is written down somewhere and I just haven’t found it yet, but I learned more about being an entrepreneur in internet marketing and, perhaps, in general yesterday than I have from anything I can remember reading or listening to in, well, years.  Probably since I realized that you don’t have to go to college to do fine (yeah, Filly!)

Most of the SEOs on the panels have been doing this since the mid 90s — before Google.  It’s interesting to hear them repeatedly speak of the days before there were hats.  There weren’t any rules, other than “make money”. 

Things have come an awful long way since then, but these guys are still on top of the food chain.  So the question is: how?

First, it’s obvious that they can’t do this solo — maybe you can still put together an Adsense empire without the help of others, but the research and development costs to track everything one must track at such a granular level require a team of people (or a superhuman) creating tools and checking off every box.

Second, as was so candidly mentioned during the rehab session — put yourself in a position where you don’t have to worry about what has already happened, and instead spend your time researching what is going to happen so that you’re ahead of (or, at least, on par with) the best when the time comes.

So with these things in mind, to run just a profitable black hat outfit is going to take a team of people.  They all have to eat and sleep somehow, and they’re probably not good enough to do the R&D if they’re only making $12 an hour.  So the team isn’t cheap.  And what happens if Google gets a whiff and brings down the hammer?  All of a sudden there’s less money coming in until the next scheme is up and running.  Pretty stressful work environment, right?

Along these lines, there have to be myriad older (read: no longer profitable) sites and testing-only sites that SEOs can use to push boundaries and find out exactly what they can get away with across as many spaces as possible.  While very complicated, it’s also pretty simple.  Open up the pocket books and see how far you can push Google; take what you learn and make money.

These guys are no longer strictly black hat millionaires, either – they’re running legitimate agencies with high-paying, brand clients, and they have been for quite some time.  These clients are time-intensive and require a lot of resources.  I can only assume that the steady stream of client-based income must make this whole process an awful lot easier financially. And to balance everything on the R&D side, the only thing that makes sense is that many of the self- or company-owned, non-branded sites used for testing and research are also quite profitable for durations of time.

And the number of these sites that we’ll never hear about is probably much, much, MUCH larger than one would guess.  Who knows, some of Eli’s SEO Empire strategies may still work — they’re probably just a much smaller piece of the puzzle, or maybe they’re simply a research tool at this point.

=george

Luckily for those in attendance the dry-witted Kevin Ryan moderated the session.  Not that Anne Kennedy, the “listed” moderator, couldn’t have done the session justice.  But there couldn’t possibly have been a better moderator than Ryan; his knowledge of the panelists and their strengths and weaknesses, along with his eagerness to keep everything light yet topical, was exactly what a knowledgeable-yet-fresh SEO would draft up for an ideal convention session.

The recurring joke was that Michael Gray loves to twitter about his fancy for chocolate cake at parties; yet, the takeaway was extraordinary.  Through twitter, Gray has connected with a vast network of people (nearly 8,000 followers) who vigilantly follow him, asking for advice or tweeting back and forth with him about whatever his current (and opinionated) predicament might be.  Based on the feedback he receives, he uses Twitter as a vehicle to connect with potential clients.  Further, with these short-text interactions, he employs selection and filtering techniques to determine which clients will fit his model for success.  Why work with a client that doesn’t believe in what you know you’ll recommend?

This session had it’s moments.  For the sake of posting, Andy Atkins-Krüger first presented a deck describing the SEO 12 Step Program - Sanity Escaped Organically.  It led to a couple interesting tangents.  Here are his 12 steps, with some notes in italics:

1. Take care choosing KPIs - don’t rely on rankings
2. Set realistic objectives
3. Employ people who know what they’re doing
4. Build your web site for SEO from the bottom up
5. Only work on projects which deserve to rank
6. Only work on projects where there is a market
7. Be different - ideally unique - in the market place
    Do something that creates a viral impact - something remarkable
8. Get good training
    Go to conferences and get good training and good knowledge
9. Understand the mechanics
    Know how the search engines work
10. Don’t try to be an expert in every SEO technique - focus on your strengths
     A lot of the best SEOs use different techniques
     ** Greg Boser disagrees with this point — his addiction is being an expert across all areas
11. Be patient
12. Enjoy your addiction

The presentation was a great primer, but once it was over Andy was pretty much done speaking for the remainder of the session.

When Greg Boser stepped in to speak during the 10th point, the tone was set for the remainder of the session.

Will the real SEO please stand up???

Near the end of the session, an attendee asked the panelists to offer a domain that they use to monetize traffic.  What a funny question — I’ve done tons of searches in competitive markets trying to find these types of sites, and I’ve come up pretty empty for the most part.  I just don’t know the markets, because they’re niche markets and the people monetizing them aren’t going to tell you what they are.

This goes back to a theme of the afternoon: “If you’re a good SEO, you’re not getting caught.”

The response to this inquiry was Greg’s humorous quip (paraphrased), “You see that guy in the back with glasses and a goatee?  Don’t ever mention one of your domains to anyone.  Next thing you know, you’ll get an email from him asking, ‘What’s the deal with these 500 domains?’ and you’ll be wondering, ‘How did he find out about those?’”  He was obviously speaking about Matt Cutts, who was nestled in the back row.

Another fantastic clip from Boser, when discussing black hat tactics that were discoveredby Google: “It’s because some idiot posted it on a stupid blog.”  There’s a lot of give and take with SEOs, but in general, revealing secrets to the public isn’t a great way to gain favor among the innovators of the industry.

…………….

David Naylor’s deck was actually very refreshing.  Essentially, his point was to automate everything.  It’s possible and it’s really, really, really efficient.  He doesn’t spend his time worrying about what has happened — he gets an email when things deviate from expectation and he reacts accordingly.  With this type of automation, he and his staff are afforded the opportunity to spend their time determining what is happening next in the industry, not dissecting what has already happened.  Hmmm, what a huge competitive advantage.

Later in the day, I had one of the more eye-opening moments in my young marketing/entrepreneurial career: Greg Boser mentioned, just in passing, that he analyzes patents.  And with certainty, he’s not just analyzing Google’s patents; he’s taking a deep dive into everything that he can get his hands on to determine what he can use to propel his unknown brands and those of his clients.  And all of the best SEOs are doing this.  It boils down to a matter of resources and some very keen insight. 

As was discussed in this session: Sequoia didn’t see how Google could possibly be profitable when they were infants in the wild world of search, and now Google is the brand of Earth.  So, how is Twitter going to be monitized?  Those who aren’t already using it as a vehicle like Michael Gray have a lot to figure out.  But, it’s figure-out-able, and once they find their monetizing model it’ll simply be another tool for SEOs (even moreso than it already is).

…………….

One final shout for Boser: toward the end of the session when some white/black hat stuff came up, he bluntly stated, “You’re not a real SEO unless you’ve been torched.”  Talk about getting the juices flowing shortly before the Black Hat/White Hat session begins.

=george

Here is the best of the god awful crap offered this year at SES.

10) Best Use Of Trying To Tie The Swag Into The Slogan: Acronym Media

I mean… you have to give them credit for trying. “Hands on search” is kind of clever. And as we all know, search marketing gets bacteria all over your hands. Those guys are creepy.

9) Best Shameless Exploitation Of Terrible Willpower

Like a bunch of assholes, Adgooroo served freshed-baked Otis Spunkmeyer cookies. Studies have shown that the human mind is incapable of resisting warm chocolate chip cookies. Next year they’re giving away piles of cocaine.

8) Worst Influence On All Of Us: Anchor Intelligence

Our moms would be disappointed in Anchor Intelligence. As if we’re all not going to stay up too late and get drunk and be hung over tomorrow morning. Thanks for feeding my habit, Anchor.

7) The Swag That Will Still Be In My Desk In 2014

Congrats to Business.com for handing out something that I’ll probably use. Oh… wait. I work for a technology company. So, um - never mind.

6) Best Swag That I’ll Give To My Aunt At Christmas

Commission Junction is pretty much the shadiest company ever. Of course, everyone involved in its creation is a millionaire. So what better swag to give away than a hundred dollar bill holder? That’s what is for, right?

5) Most Inappropriate Swag

Here’s the thing: SES attendees aren’t athletes (Not even ultimate frisbee athletes). The better choice would have been to label these things as Tron 2.0 Light Discs.

4) Ezanga.com’s Stress Frog

We all get stressed-out at trade shows. And we all hate frogs with the white hot burning intensity of a thousand suns. Take out your aggression on these sons of bitches. Good move, Ezanga. Thanks for facilitating my frog strangling fantasy.

3) The Totally Unfair Giveaway

A SmartCar? How are you going to beat that? If a dude wins this thing, I hope Omniture is able to track his success with women.

2) Best Consolation Swag

Aaaah, OK. So you’re probably not going to win the cool real-life SmartCar. So here is a tiny version of the real thing… to scale.

1) Best All-Around-We-Are-Not-Interested-In-Swag Giveaway

You have to respect somebody who just doesn’t give a shit. Some might say this is worse than pens, t-shirts, hats, keychains and buttons combined. I say this is the ultimate in simiplicity. Give your potential clients a ball. You can bounce it, you can squeeze it, you can throw it, you can stare at it. It’s the prototypical toy, and it’s awesome. Syndico, I’m not going to buy your service, whatever it is that you do, but I’m coming back to your booth next year and you and me are going to play some 4-square.

-Drew

For the purpose of this post, George will be black hat and Drew will be white hat. We will present each of the major issues that arose during this session and play devil’s advocate for each of our sides’ stances.

Drew: It’s pretty unfair to say that a white hat SEO has no game. We simply play by the rules. And, of course, those rules are made by the search engines. To be fair, we are working for the client (that’s who is paying us after all) not the search engines. This is often the rationale that black hats give for crossing over to the other side of the search engines’ terms of service. But remember that ultimately we are beholden to the search engines for our rankings and subsequent success. As far as I’m concerned, my client’s success or failure has to do with little more than thier ability to rank well. If we risk their getting banned or black listed, we have failed.

Drew: Well, let’s cut to the chase then. By and large, linking is what is causing this whole argument, right? I mean, if linking were taken out of the equation, there would be no such think as white/black hat.

Drew: Another important point. As SEOs, we have two choices: rank fast (30 days) or rank properly according to Google, which could take up to 3 years - sometimes more. I have a hard time with this one. On one hand, I would never NEVER put my client’s site in any kind of jeopardy. But on the other hand, delivering immediate results is highly beneficial - not to me, but to my client. Obviously, I get paid sooner, but this isn’t what I’m talking about. If I can get my client to rank very quickly then I’ve achieved my goal… but at what price? So the big question here is, “how is this done?” And the answer is buying links. Google and their nerd extraordinare, Matt Cutts, have said time and time again (more vocally each day it seems), paid links are worse than STDs. But no white hat can argue that paid links work. Many times, I have debated with my collegues about what exactly paid linking is. Here is an ambiguous example. If I have a ecomm client who sells model rocket kits, and I find a college model rocket enthusiast club on the web, I will probably approach them for a link, being and .edu and all. If they say “no” I’ll probably offer to pay them. They probably need the money (I hear college kids sell their plasma for beer). Is this bad? Everyone benefits and the end user AND my client end up with what they need. But as a white hat SEO, I will typically shy away from this behavior. And the bottom line here is that Google makes all their money from paid links, right? I mean, after all, what is Adwords?

Drew: Not so fast. White hat is ultimately good for the user experience over time. And if being SEOs for a long time has told us anything, it’s that gaming the search engines never works for long. Back in the old days, black hats could meta-keyword-stuff porn pages’ keyword tags with phrases like “Mickey Mouse” and it would work because back then nobody cared about conversions (of course, Google didn’t even exist back then). Page-views were king, and anything that got you the page-views was considered a win. But that stopped working after a while. So in today’s SEO game, what is legit? It’s a hard question to answer, but according to Jill Whalen, staying within the boundaries is just common sense. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to call bullshit on a fellow white hat. The “I know it when I see it approach” won’t fly. But at the same time, I think most SEOs can honestly say that they know full well when they are being black hat. Todd Friesen suggested, if Matt Cutts were to walk up behind you while you were working on a client’s SEO, would you immediately shut your laptop closed? If so, I think you have your answer.

=george &
-Drew