I'm Back to Help Drive Traffic through SEO and SEM

It's time for me to come out of hiding and start posting again. Like happens to every prolific blogger occasionally, that pesky thing known as real-life interferes. I've finally got a nice tight grip on the reigns, and can take a few moments to re-engage the world through the HitTail blog, which seems to have only been getting better and better in my absence. Kudos to Valerie, Ambar, Adam and all the other (mostly Connors) team that keeps this thing one of the top blogs in marketing.

OK so enough back-patting. HitTail's momentum continues strong, and we have some very exciting things planned. I've decided to take up my propensity for prolific pontification in the SEO arena that dates back to being the Inktomi moderator in the original Search Engine Forums, and re-engage the blogging and SEO (and now... SEM) community.

Whaaaaaat? SEM?

But Mike, you're the SEO guy. OK well, Gary Beal's persistent message to me about HitTail being an awesome tool for PPC, right up there with SpyFu and WordTracker, has finally gotten through my thick skull, and I now view SEO and SEM as virtually the same thing. Basically, in all things online-marketing, you hedge your bet by using just about every service that you reasonably can that Google provides you. You never know how they're cross-indexing their data from different systems to calculate relevancy, and I think it's important to keep a hand in each of them--AdWords, included. I'm managing about $5K/mo in AdWords campaigns just to keep myself engaged on that front. I need to know that stuff well for...

...well, you'll just have to wait and see.

Until then, I'll tell you exactly HOW I'll be re-engaging the community. Primarily, it will take place here on this blog. But I'll be practicing what I preach in actually ENGAGING IN HITTAILING . So essentially, the headlines of every blog post I make will be constructed based on HitTail suggestions. I'll try to document how well these posts do in driving more traffic to the HitTail website, seizing first-positions in Google results on terms that are actually driving traffic, and the various tweaks I perform here to this Blogger section of the HitTail site itself in optimizing it for search. Contrary to popular wisdom, simply starting with Blogger Classic using the FTP feature to transmit the file into a subdirectory of an existing site is a good start in blogging for traffic (there ARE other approaches). But there are dozens of tiny little tweaks on top of that--many of which apply to all blogging and CMS platforms--that can still be done. We've done a bunch of them, like putting the title tag text in the anchor text of thepermalink . But there are others we have not done, such as tweaking out and promoting the RSS feed of this site for maximum reach in subscriptions and syndication, such as on iGoogle. I'll be covering that stuff.

And finally, I'll just be exercising my writing muscles, because using HitTail for SEO can be tough--only because of the "actually having to write" part. It requires a sort of discipline and getting into the groove that doesn't come easy, and lags off quickly. It's just like going to the gym. It's tough to start, but once you do the adrenaline rush keeps your momentum going day-by-day, but if you stop even for a couple of days... BAM! You're out of the game.

Well real-life took me out of the game for awhile, but in the words of George Castanza, I'm back, baby!

SEO Super Powers Meetup #1

We had a successful SEO Super Powers meetup yesterday, considering the rain kept all but 4 non-Connors people away. With myself, my Connors posse, and Marshall Sponder (Webmetricsguru), Pauli Price of Sindex Systems and Rupali Shah of 24/7 Real Media, we discussed a broad array of issues, veering far off the Ajax + SEO subject for the night, but always returning to the theme of how to make business more successful. The life-span of SEO as we know it was estimated from anywhere from 2 to 5 years, with much talk of social media. Time was spent discussing whether or not blogging is SEO, and what the process might look like from someone initially discovering you, to building trust, to some sort of relationship (customer).

I feel that this meeting laid the foundation for future SEO Super Power meetups in NYC, where we will fully embrace, and perhaps even lead, what the field is becoming. Stay tuned for the information regarding the next meetup. And on a related note, I think I'll start getting out to some more of the meetups around New York. There's Technology, Entrepreneurship, Networking, Marketing, Programming, Graphic Design and the like. It's going to be a challenge pairing it down to a reasonable number to attend each month!

HitTail Hosts SEO SuperPower Meetup Tonight

Just a reminder to everyone in the NYC area that HitTail is hosting a SEO SuperPowers Meetup tonight. The topic is the effect of Ajax and other Web development technologies, such as Silverlight, Apollo, Java, Mobile and others on SEO today and in the future.

Anyone in the neigborhood is welcome to stop by. It starts at 6:30PM tonight at the Connors Communications office in New York City on 7 West 22nd Streeet, between 5th and 6th Avenues. It's the "Spinning Wheel" building--a small entrance. We're on the 7th floor.

Free drinks.

Make the SEO Short-list

Come read the article by my boss, Connie Connors, the woman who REALLY brought you HitTail. I may be grabbing a lot of the spotlight, but this wouldn't have happened had I not hitched my apple cart to this star. First, she recognized the changes that were occuring in public relations and decided to lead instead of follow. Second, she knows how to get press for exciting new endeavors. Case in point, we were in BusinessWeek not once, but twice. First, for building a better mouse trap, and later for being one of the most important new ideas of 2006.

The Future of Media & Business / What HitTail's REALLY About

There is so much I'd like to talk about, I hardly know where to begin. Ironically, I'm someone who doesn't need HitTail, because my stream of consciousness provides me with an unlimited number of writing topics on which I'm fairly confident that search traffic exists to be intercepted. In this way, I plan on building myself into sort of an Aaron Wall of SEOBook, whom I respect immensely. So, I'm following my instincts right now, instead of the HitTail suggestions. However, that doesn't stop me from smattering some blatant hittailing through this blog. I would like to add traffic to my site after all. Ahemm, but let me move on...

I'm not done seeding "core content" of this site that fuels the hittailing workflow, allows me to engage in the circular process that leads to the self-fueling and self-sustaining snowball effect. Previously, Connors Communications, the brilliant PR firm that I work for, would have charged a client at least $5000/month for an SEO engagement consisting of this sort of advice. But with HitTail, we're really going to change the world again, the way we did once by helping the quintessential long tail business, Amazon.com, and later overhauled the very field of marketing by aiding GoTo.com clear the way for pay-per-click search results, which in turn illuminated the way for Google AdWords and changed the world. And if we're going to change the world again, then we've got to be a little less tight-fisted with our advice.

HitTailers are our marketing disciples, and the process of HitTailing is our gospel. The lessons are difficult, and we find ourselves continually having to re-explain many aspects of business, economics, programming, and even history and human nature. People hardly even understand the 3-parties that are ALWAYS involved if you're trying to make money on the web: the buyer, the seller and the middleman. And unless you're publishing for complete altruistic or vanity reasons, then you're a middleman. It's hard to imagine that publishers who attract readers and sell advertising don't always get the idea that they're middlemen. But this up-for-grabs ad revenue being divvied out by companies that control traffic is quickly transforming our world into one where the only necessary seller is the manufacturer, and the only necessary buyer is the end user. Cutting out the middleman is a process called disintermediation. We can see disintermediation everywhere, and the occasional reversal of disintermediation with support companies such as RedHat, where the middleman's justification is completely support. Why that's still a direct buyer/seller relationship is a separate story. Finally, certain goods and services that are hard to order and deliver online will always be immune to disintermediation, such as restaurants. But nearly everything else is vulnerable and being bullied by a new breed of online middleman--ones that can arbitrate Internet traffic.

So the boyz of Wired Magazine make it much easier to explain HitTailing. First, John Battelle, spelled out how this middleman works in his description of arbitrage in The Search. Without understanding the lines that connect buyers and sellers, and how companies like Google insert themselves in the middle, then get out of the game. You'll never control the flow of traffic and thereby be an effective middleman. Later, Chris Anderson, had his turn in the spotlight spelling out how the difference between finite shelf space in your local store is different from infinite shelf space on the Web, and how this enables new business, the pursuit of more personalized tastes, and basically changes everything forever. Of course, that's The Long Tail. Yep, these two guys kick sand in the face of the digirati who love the irony of saying Wired is Tired. It's not. These guys are as fundamental to educating tomorrow's businessmen as my heros, Demmings and Drucker were in the past-- um... OK, maybe not THAT important, but important none-the-less.

With all that foundational educational crap out of the way, HitTail is instantly understandable and even obvious in hindsight. But it divides the world into two groups: those who get it, and those who don't. You can also frame this discussion by dividing the world into the "who-you-know" folks vs. the "what-you-know" folks. It's an eternal battle, like between cats and dogs. The what-you-know folks have a tough time with the long tail and the notion that people can come up through the trenches, eat their lunch, and change the world forever. Although Bill, Sergey and Larry all came up through what-you-know channels (it's the double-whammy advantage of door-opener-schools like Harvard and MIT), they embraced what-you-know methodologies. And the world's a different place. Who-you-knower's tend to fortify, while what-you-knowers tend to change the game into something where they can more easily win (did I mention Steve?).

Anyway, these battles sometimes sound like a clash of the titans, in which us little guys could never compete. Not so! Lately, the MySpace couple jumped over. And you see it happening with Web 2.0 startups all the time. VC money helps, but is not necessary--it's really just an attempt of what-you-know people trying to insert themselves into a who-you-know success by providing something that really anyone can provide--the simplest and most pure of all commodities, money. The process can even be turned into an idea-farm, like Y Combinator or Idea Lab. A lot of good can come from these things, but if your ambitions are not quite changing the world, and all you want to do is what you love, then HitTail is all you need.

OK, so that really hits this post home. HitTail is not only a practical alternative to paying for your search hits. It's a practical alternative to raising VC money, because if you've got something to sell, and development isn't an issue anymore (thanks to rapid and agile development methodologies), then all you really need is low-cost exposure and publicity. And HitTail provides that for the great unwashed masses of bloggers. We've built a ladder that anyone can climb to the top. But like a video game, each level is not actually easy. There's a hunt/solve problem/reward, and repeat pattern in HitTailing that also characterizes the most addictive and successful of videogames. But all this addiction and energy that gets wasted on video games can just as easily be sunk into your passion.

Hunt for a problem that needs to be solved that no one has tackled yet. Tackle it, and let people know about it on your blog. See the traffic start to come in through Google and the occasional links constructed to you. Learn from these hits (and link), and repeat the process. Like a video game, this addictive process where you keep bringing to yourself to the next plateau, leads to amazing levels of achievement, which when viewed in the context of Office Space America, you appear to be nothing less than your own little Steve Jobs. OK, maybe just Guy Kawasaki. But the point is, you have purpose and habit-forming systems to keep you focused and on-track.

Again, you see that we are not merely building yet-another-analytics-tool with HitTail. We've got mission and purpose--which is to enable our users to pursue their own mission and purpose.