On the Maven website, the company is described as a global knowledge marketplace. Marketplace is the functional word here, the one that makes it different from Wikipedia’s global knowledge compendium. Maven’s customers are searching for data and advice that doesn’t yet exist, and they are willing to pay for it.

Maven provides three types of services: electronic surveys, telephone consultation, and extended consultation. Maven talent-sources industry experts from a global pool and pays them to answer their clients’ questions. “What you get is a quick way to get to any kind of expertise,” said Nordstrom. He pointed out that, in his opinion, Maven has kept its services uncomplicated, requiring a minimal amount of expertise for both clients and consultants to access and use.

The cost of Maven’s services scale with the amount or difficulty of answers needed. For example, surveys scale with the number of questions on the survey and the difficulty of finding the right people to take the survey. A survey of CEOs for example, would be more expensive because of their relative rareness and high level of expertise. The surveys come back to clients as raw data. Maven does not provide analysis, but does produce survey results that feature some simple graphs.

Telephone consultation is provided at the consultant’s per-minute rate. Maven arranges the session by scheduling a time for the consultation, and then ringing both the client and the consultant’s phones at that time.

Extended consulting allows clients to hire experts for longer durations. For all of these services Maven acts as an administrator, handling compensation and other details.

For each of these services, consultants are vetted through a qualification program. Clients work with Maven to develop knowledge and expertise thresholds that consultants must pass to be part of a survey or considered for consultation work. In the case of extended consulting, experts must complete written interviews. Broad qualifications will provide more survey data, while niche expert qualifications, such as “oil company CEO’s,” would provide more precise, niche answers.

Nordstrom did confirm Maven’s talent source pool does include CEOs. He emphasized, though, that any kind of expert has a place on Maven, no matter their career level. Nordstrom told us that for its members, Maven is not dissimilar to LinkedIn, just more private. The company’s talent pool, which they consider to be a social network, has grown virally, mainly by word-of-mouth, with expert colleagues telling each other about the extra consulting work available through Maven. It’s similar to Demand Media except, instead of writing, Maven is crowd-sourcing expertise.

Maven is still expanding its services and trying to cover any kind of query a business may have. In April of this year the company launched its “Knowledge Communities” product, which enables businesses to use Maven within their own workforce. This allows sprawling, multi-national businesses to make sure none of the expertise they have hired is going to waste.

Nordstrom’s goal for Maven is, like so many other tech startup founders, to cut the red tape, lawyers, and expense from traditional business practices – in his case, talent sourcing. He wants Maven to “be the single source for all forms of expertise.” Having already serviced clients such as Heinz, Procter & Gamble, and GlaxoSmithKline, it appears the company is well on its way toward that goal. This type of startup is another example of how the web can streamlines business, even for traditional industry.

Moderator:

• Elisabeth Osmeloski

Speakers:

• Elisabeth Osmeloski, Director of Online Media, Zonder.com
• Robin Liss, Founder and President, Camcorderinfo.com
• Ted Ulle, Partner, The MEWS Group
• Rae Hoffman, Principal, Sugarrae Internet Consulting

The first speaker is Ted Ulle, Partner, The MEWS Group, popularly known as Tedster in Webmaster World. He is here to answer on ‘Does ALL your content fit?’

He answers saying that workflow must support your priorities. You’re aiming for a simple and seamless experience for the end user. Simplicity is actually a discipline that is not easy.

Keep it simple and clear. Ted present a workflow on how to keep business purpose.

• First start with a web strategy first (SEO)
• Content. Keep all your ideas. Back end and metrics. This is information architecture.
• Content – Use a full copy at least during the launch.
• Now, you can involve your graphic design people
• Web edit in HTML. Don’t lay too much and too early focus on graphics.
• Edit your content again in HTML. It’s going to look different on a web page.
• Through this whole process, you want to document every choice you made. It’s hard but essential.

Menu and navigation:

• The labels are your site content. This indicates to people what you do and what you can.
• Most people have shifted to single word menu labels. These are application-friendly and not website-friendly.
• While offering options, it should never be more than 7 else your viewer will run away. Ted sticks to 5 or 6.

Final Web Edit

• Content interacts with layout
• Consider CSS for web typesetting. Bad layout is detrimental to your site.
• Good layout can fake poor content
• Good to learn print typography. Suggested reading Robert Bringhurst Elements of Typographic Style.

Where do "Seams" come from? Seams means showing off and it’s graphic designers who engage in this the most. Remember the focus of the site is your business and not some artwork. Stay away from fancy programming features. IT people shouldn’t write copy. Creative people should be involved in writing auto responders. Ensure the message you are sending out is what you want to say.

Code Geeks should not write copy. Ted has some funny examples.

Yahoo! Directory: After filling out a form where he forgot to type in his credit card details, the response he got was, "Invalid Payment Instrument Data." Heh heh.

Six figure video investment: Programmer wrote "Open Demo" for a video that should have said ‘Watch demo’. He’s thinking like a geek, not like a regular user.

PHP/MYSQL menu: "Search produced no results" even after clicking on a menu link.

Next in line is Robin Liss, Founder and President, Camcorderinfo.com. She starts off by discussing about Reviewed.com. This site produces reviews. Her presentation is called ‘High Value Content Production Workflow Strategies.’ Basically, it is a guide on how to create content for non-spammers.

How to make content? Just like a car maker, you manufacture a product. What lessons can we learn from traditional manufacturing?

• You can’t build a car without blueprints
• Mr Ford’s assembly line rocks
• Good tools save money
• Specialization = economic efficiency
• Bottlenecks must be destroyed
• Quality control everywhere
• Measure everything

Design your final product with care:

• Target audience
• Purpose of the product
• Topic Area (Very important)
• Article Structure
• What does the first draft producer need (products, tickets, facts)
• What supplemental content will accompany (videos, photos, links)
• How frequent
• Length
• What voice?
• Objectivity vs Subjectivity
• Deadline and delivery schedule

Writing the article or filming the video is only the first step in content production. You also have to ensure that you have a budget time and money for the remaining process.

Content Creation:

• Article gets assigned.
• People get materials
• Then create first draft
• Supplemental materials are then created
• First edit and then feedback
• Second draft and a second edit
• Content production- Load CMS and HTML-ize
• Copy Edit
• SEO edit
• Final Edit
• Take Live
• Marketing
• Revision and update

You have to keep a check of the content creation process. The duration, steps involved, if anything can be outsourced etc.

A modified pipeline: blogs.

• First, the piece is assigned and information is received
• First draft is written
• Draft is taken live
• Do some marketing
• Revise and update

One person is in charge of everything in blogs which makes it so efficient. Nevertheless as some of the are longer, there is lesser quality control. Point is, many people say this is what blogs are, the absence of external editing.

Robin shows a sample of where there’s a modified pipeline, where there are two people involved- 1 writer and 1 editor. No matter how good a writer you are, you should have an editor. With this, your quality will improve and let people focus on their core specialties.

Robin has a site about digital cameras where there are 6-10 people involved. These are:-

• Editor in chief
• Managing editor
• Writer
• Product photographer
• Product
• Tester
• Copy editor

Some CMS tools that are budget-friendly:

• Content Management System
• WYSIWYG editors
• Dreamweaver
• Plone
• MovableType
• Own your CMS
• Investing money in your own CMS will reduce long-term editorial costs

Workflow Management Tools

• Google Calendar
• Lots of spreadsheets

Find the right writer for the right task:

• Short Form vs. Long Form
• Journalistic vs Opinionated
• Edgy vs. straight
• Switching tasks takes time
• When doing large products, different parts of the article might go to different people

Other Specialists

• Find an online copy editor to pay per word
• Find a basic HTML guru for CMS
• Hire a part time or full time editor to improve your quality and manage workflow

Destroy Bottlenecks

• Time in minutes, hours or days that each step in the workflow process takes
• Constantly track these times and look to improve them
• Create an "article flow" or "article patter" by reducing bottlenecks
• Ways to create an even flow- add more staff to a bottlenecked area; outsource a bottleneck area; have staff to double duty; reduce the staff time spent on a the over-producing areas; make sure that there are article in every step of the pipeline, track this with Excel and Google Calendar; give deadlines not just for when the article is finished, but when an article needs to move through the content creation process.

Quality Control Everywhere

• As Robin’s reviews are syndicated on the WSJ, we can’t mess up!
• Error free content = credibility
• Keep an eye for grammatical, factual, and analytical errors
• More eyes – less errors
• User comments are a great way to find errors.

Measure Everything

• Measure Processes
• Measure the time each step takes
• Measure Word count
• Measure When people hit deadlines
• Measure average number of articles produced by day, week, month
• Measure what content gets high traffic.

Final tips:

• While hiring contributors, make it clear that you own all the rights to all the content
• Put plagiarism protection clauses in your contracts
• Be as specific as possible
• Try to put those blueprints in the contract
• You get what you pay for
• Cheap original content will cost more money in the long term when you have to edit it
• Try your best to be original in your content, produce what others aren’t
• Blogs are a great way to dip your toe into original content production

In the end, it’s all about quality

Last, finally is Rae Hoffman, Principal, Sugarrae Internet Consulting who brings with her some slides. And she is the fastest speaker.

Sugarrae Internet Consulting deals in building content in order to get quality links. Rae says content is the most effective way to distinguish your site from the rest while also developing traffic and developing good incoming links that will push your site to the top of the SERPs and maintain that position.

If quality content is published regularly, you can:-

• Get links
• Get traffic referrals
• Website citations
• Develop feed counts & subscribers
• Gets your site listed in social media
• Ups your possibilities for traditional media mentions

According to Rae, there are 3 ways to get content developed for your website:

Freelancers:

Pros: Cheap, commitment-free, use as needed

Cons: Trial and error for quality, availability issues, no commitment

Full-time remote writers:

Pros: No overhead costs, dedicated, more skills for less money

Cons: Distance management, training barriers, and just a paycheck

Full time in house:

Pros: Easier to manage, easier to train, dedicated

Cons: Overhead costs, more expensive, must have long-term needs

Know hat to look for in a content developer:

• Know the type of content you plan to develop
• The type of industry you work in
• Good organizational skills
• Ability to work independently
• Can think for themselves
• Good to stellar writing skills
• Ability to hit deadlines
• Basic HTML skills
• Right writing tone for your site
• A great sense of humor
• Expertise in a certain area
• Journalism specific skills
• Basic promotional skills, etc.

Training Content Developers

• Train your writers to promote their own work as much as possible
• Develop media lists for the topic area your writer is working on for them to be able to push their best pieces to
• Encourage your writers to become active in the community by interacting with others in their industry by participating in forums
• Teach your writers about social media and ask them to become involved in it. They need to know who they’re writing for (not to lead the social media campaign)
• Explain to your writers how they can take angles on pieces to receive traffic and citations from big sites that they may not normally appeal to with their straight niche writing
• Encourage writers to pitch to traditional news outlets to get exposure within the niche for your site with a byline that includes your site information in addition to citations in the form of links if they also publish online
• Train your writers to link out when it makes sense and follow up with notifications to companies who are linked to
• Explain to your writers how to use Google News alerts to stay abreast of important happenings

Comments

Tag:

Moderator:

• Joe Laratro

Speakers:

• Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOMoz.
• Neil Patel, CTO, Advantage Consulting Services, Inc.
• Michael Gray, President, Atlas Web Service.
• Cameron Olthius, CEO, Factive Media.

With social media, booming at a staggering rate, everyone wants a piece of the pie. Knowing this, the experts came to give us their two-bits on how to further businesses. First to speak was Rand Fishkin, who kicks off the second day by showing two presentations.

• Social Media 101
• 60 websites worth watching (more advanced)

Social Media 101. Listed below are websites in a random order:

• 23hq.com
• adultswim.com – message board
• babblz.com
• ballhype.com – Digg-based sports portal
• bloggoggle
• blogs4god.com – Religious portal
• buzzflash.net
• care2.com
• chipin.com
• comagz.com
• couchsurfing – Leave your links there
• deviantart.com – Drop your opinion, has live links
• dfinitive.com – social bookmarking site
• dnhour.com – add a link to your profile
• fanpop.com – profiles come with links
• flickr.com
• hugg.com – eco-friendly community
• memeorlame.com
• mixx.com
• photographyvoter.com – as the name goes
• pixelgroovy.com
• plugim.com
• qoolsqool
• scoreguru.com
• showhype.com
• sk-rt.com – profile’s come with links
• smallbusinessbrief.com
• sphinn – live links
• tweako – social bookmarking site
• videosift.com

Some of Sites

1. adobe showcase
2. askmen.com
3. digg.com
4. picks.yahoo.com

 

Next is Michael Gray, President, Atlas Web Service who says that two important things to remember before starting on these are sites are:

You have to think long-term, so act and perform accordingly.

The story you publish should be about how relevant it is to the site. Examples are:

1. digg.com: How to paint the social bookmarking site’s logo on your wall
2. hugg: how to pick an eco-friendly paint
3. lifehacker: This is where you learn how to paint your living room in a weekend
4. propeller.com: Find out what the color you use reflects about your personality

Important Pointers:

• Back to school
• Spring time
• Tax time
• Use calendar and current events
• Fall: save money on heating bill
• Winter: last minute tax saving

Rands puts up a presentation about a new website which received over 120,000 visits within a span of two months. Next, he shows a graph about blog subscribers, which shows an upward movement. Apparently, social media is about owning a crowd/audience that isn’t search engine-dependent. Also, your site must have regular link growth (refer to Google patent). The stories you have should be connected to other parts of the site. Create brand awareness, repetition is key here. So, it will take about 7-8 times before your audience remembers it. The audience you create should know how to use social media as if they like your stuff they will finally do the work for you. Join a community and be part of it regularly, don’t do a half-hearted job. Don’t be shy about linking to other blogs.

Rand’s 10 Tips for Social Media-

Titles must be eye-catching

Site should be and have images

Content should be short, simple, witty, easy to scan content

Don’t make the page deadends

Share links

Stay topical and keep an eye on trends

Find a solution to someone’s problems

Incorporate buttons and widgets to encourage voting

Use less ads and target links

Everyone loves top 10 lists – break some rules and make yours go to 11

Next up is Neil Patel, CTO, Advantage Consulting Services, Inc, who discusses the ‘Dark side of social Media.’

1. Pay for votes – Apparently, it has worked for Neil, whenever he used pay sites
2. Social media rings -

   Have a long e-mail list and make your friends vote.

   The bigger the ring, the better

   Be a part of multiple rings

   Don’t vote right away

   Don’t vote on just about everything

   Never abuse the ring

   Use hxxp instead of http – helps block the referral

3. Social media apps.

   Add friends

   Vote on stories you like

   Ask a developer to build you an app

4. Forced Actions-

   Use iframes to vote/add a friend/subscribe to something

5. The dark side. Think of the best stuff. Don’t think it loud. Think dark and shady and it will come out sooner or later. (Audience loves it)
6. Light reading. 10e20.com Brentcsutoras.com Seomoz.org/blog

Next up is Cameron Olthuis, CEO, Factive Media, who talks about linkbait. Cameron suggests using ‘remakeable content,’ that will compel people to link to you from their site.

Methods:

Be informational

Be controversial: Jason Calicanis

Add humor

News: Try to be the first one to break a story

Tools: Include tools like widgets, calculators etc.

Benefits of Linkbait:

Links

Link profile

Traffic

Branding

Bookmarks

Media publicity

Cameron next brings out a Case Study: Sobercircle.com

1. Research. Go though social media sites and find out what people like. Use Digg and Del.icio.us to know what different audiences like. With Del.icio.us, you get associated tags that is beneficial in giving you more ideas. Also, you learn what is popular.
2. Brainstorm. Try to find as many ideas and suggestions as you can. The more the merrier, in a while you can lessen it down after a while.
3. Create the content. SImplicity is key. Moreover, most of the readers are channel surfing.

   Format lists. Easy to scan, add images and videos.

   *Cameron shows the audience an example*. The site is about a drug. His slide shows 1001 Diggs, page has a video, image, and a good amount of content.

4. After content, comes seed.

   - Submit the site and select the topics and tags.

   - Use a Power Account

   - Use Witty titles & descriptions – Titles can make or break you

   - Categorise and tag properly. Don’t go with what is popluar, go with where it belongs

   - Target sites
   
   

   

   Results:

1000 diggs

150 comments

800 links

Wikipedia link

read/write web found the page and gave it more exposure

Takeaways

Research your target audience

Content should have appeal

Must have aPower account

Test test test

Use good titles and descriptions

Keep your server up!!!!!

After this came a Q & A round, where some of the best questions were:

How much traffic can you expect? What type of servers?

Cameron: 5-25k vistors from reddit. Digg can do 100k+.

Graywolf: Call your hosting provider before hand

Rand Fishkin: for images use flickr and other sources. If your page uses a DB, make the page static and it will help you. The Database could really hurt you so just make it static.

Neil Patel: CPU somewhat matters, its the memory. Have 4GB of memory and use Memcache.

How do you get access to power users?

Rand Fishkin: the power users are for sale. Find the users and befriend them.

GrayWolf: Vote on their stories early so they see you. Really pay attention to stories they are interested in.

What are some other measures of success?

Rand Fishkin: Hard core tracking. Track your brand name in the results. Blog Search in Google reports accurate links, or use Yahoo Link. Watch your referring stats, where did it come from? watch your repeat visitors.

Neil Patel: Track your PR. Watch magazines, web sites, and other press contacts. Rand suggests using Google/Yahoo news to see how often your brand was mentioned.

How many man hours goes into an idea?

Neil: as little as possible (gets laughs) The hardest part is the idea

Rand: As little as a day, as long as 60 days (it took Jane 60 days to put together the Web 2.0 awards and get the votes)

GrayWolf: 2 Sides: Maintaining the Power Account and then creating the content/idea.

Cameron: No cookie cutter approach.

In the end, the best cam from Cameron Olthius who said, "No cookie cutter approach."

Comments

Tag:

Moderator:

• Rand Fishkin

Speakers:

Vanessa Fox, Features Editor, Search Engine Land, Entrepreneur in Residence, Ignition Partners.

Michael Gray, President, Atlas Web Service.

Alexander Barbara, CEO, ReidBrown Enterprises, Inc.

Laura Fitton, Principal, Pistachio Consulting.

Rand who is moderating this time, says it is important to monetize our social media endeavours sometimes.

First up is Vanessa Fox, Features Editor, Search Engine Land, Entrepreneur in Residence, Ignition Partners. Vanessa says page Views have no worth unless you maintain and operate a CPM ad model. Many a times, people focus so much on page views singularly that we lose sight of the other significant stuff. Vanessa pulls out the page views for her sites. Apparently on the 6th of September, her page views went over the room. This apparently was the day, the Vanessa Hudgens scandal broke out. Apparently viewers wanted to see nude images of Hudgens, not Fox. Heh heh.

Hook ‘em and keep ‘em, says Vanessa. She stresses on the significance of maintaining traffic by making viral material while also having other content to keep people interested. The content you have should be of prime interest to the people who visit your site. They should want to stay.

Vanessa on converting visitors into customers:

• Foremost, your viral marketing must be relevant for your site.
• Make it easy for your visitors to see what your site has on offer.
• Provide multiple links to other pages on your site.
• Think about your goals are and funnel your site’s users into a conversion path.

Lastly, Fox says that Search Traffic has more value in comparison to Social Media Traffic as Search Traffic is equivalent to determined views while Social Media traffic equals to web browsers who have no exclusive target interest.

Next up is Graywolf aka Michael Gray, President, Atlas Web Service. Michael opened by saying social media fshould be used for sales and conversions. This is an advanced tactic Apparently, sales should only be part of your vision and not the enitire project.

What types of products work?

• Products (physical and virtual). These fare better than services.
• Consumer goods. Almost always better than B2B)
• Impulse purchases
• Low or "door buster" prices. People are always sensitive to prices.
• Technology related items generally do better.

Examples:

• Thisnext.com: The site has products for which they have a specific gift guide.
• Techiediva.com: Shows what people purchase during holidays. For eg: They targeted Cybowe Monday.
• Style Dash.com: Shows how to dress like celebs for less. Also featured are pages of affiliated links.

Pitfalls:

• The offer you have must be clear, especially restrictions or quantities.
• Always anticipate demand and have the right amount of stock.
• The worst thing you could do is failure to deliver products.
• Monitor and keep a check on what people are saying about you. If needed, do some damgae control.
• Incorporate video and podcasts. Experiment but know the space you are getting into before you jump the gun.

Apparently, SMM is the most effective way to generate sales for products & gadgets, and not really for services. If used well, Digg can also bring in sales.

Manage expectations for long terms of success:

• Make up your mind on whether a hybrid or dedicated delivery channel is best. Finalise on what is right for your audience.
• Give people the option of receiving content which ever way they want: email, RSS, SMS, whatever.
• Use trends and current events in terms of offerings.

Alternative Content: Video

• Will it blend? iPhone
• eBook – some guy used a video of a sexy woman and sold many books
• Diet.com – When people see others lose weight, they’d be more compelled to buy.

Alternative content: podcasts

• Drop links in your podcasts.
• Ricky’s Picks (Disney podcast)

Alternative content: Twitter

• CarnivalCruise
• JetBlue
• SouthwestAir

Third speaker of the day is Alexander Barbara, CEO, ReidBrown Enterprises, Inc, with a case study.

Alexander put up a site on Digg about a health and wellness post which was aimed towards women. Alexander and the writer worked on list-type articles and gave their best. The article was submitted in Digg twice.

Wednesday afternoon (3PM): The post received 38 Diggs. Within 5 days, the post received over 28,000 visits.

Monday morning (11AM): The same post received 57 Diggs and reached the home page. Within 5 days, the post received over 19,000 visits.

Point being, whether your site can handle the incoming traffic or not. When you are on the Digg homepage, it is common to receive 60-100 hits per second. If yours is a shared host, webmasters will shut down your site thinking it’s an attack- DDOS attack. If you are uncertain on whether your server can handle the traffic, redirect it to some other sites. Use mod_rewrite or a temporary 302 redirect to a static page. Another option is Google cache or use the free Coral cache.

On the question of quality of traffic, Alexander pulls out a CTR of the number of ads. He recommends avoiding advertisements for the first two days or so and then put them back on the 3rd day. This shows a better conversion rate. Another common phenomenon that takes place is the increased number of RSS subscribers. Usually, the same people will unsubscribe some time later.

About monetizing traffic, there are two ways to do it.

Direct monetizing: CPM based model beats others like AdSense, targeted ads etc.

Indirect monetizing: This is a better way of receiving links, subscribers, links etc.

What we learned:

Know your audience. Understand both your site and Digg audience.

Choose your monetization approach well.

Be prepared for traffic.

Last speaker from the panel is Laura Fitton, Principal, Pistachio Consulting. Fitton will talk about how to create long-lasting values through social media. Apparently, Laura was a stay-at-home mom wth two kids who started blogging and connecting via social networks in March. Now, she consults people.

Apparently, ads are ailing. Many people make money through via helping others sell. However, there is more money to make in making others buy. Social media works because it helps you understand how you can help others buy stuff. Most important thing for people to do is listen. Markets are conversations. Conversations suck if you don’t listen. If yours is a big brand (she take s the example of Dell), people are talking about you. Set up Google alerts to keep track of what is being said about you and engage everyone.

Social media drives traffic. If you become part of a social network, you bring in people who are interested in buying. Laura personally uses Twitter for business (Fitton has 800 followers). She suggests twittering about sales, and specials. Social media makes money but on a long term, it builds value and helps in business. Your company should have lasting value. What value does your business have and how can social media improve it? If you use a gimmick to bring people in, it’wll work but only temporarily. It’s about teaching a man to fish and create lasting value.

Fitton says social media is nothing new and that it is all about knowledge. NO tricks, tips or shortcuts will do. Gaming won’t do because in social media, it’s your customers who write the rules. If they are unhappy with you, they’ll leave.

Fitton takes the example of Facebook Beacon. Once the poster child of social media who screwed up bad. This is a warning. Beacon informed your friends about your purchases. It pissed off Charlene Li, channel partners, bloggers, pundits, Move On, mainstream media, etc. Careful not to violate your own terms and conditions. Overstock is getting sued for this.

Focus only on that which matters and lasts. Help. Listen. Make yourself useful. Build love around your values and this will last.

IMAGE SOURCE: Andy Beal

Comments

>>> Click here to watch the video on Expert SEO Strategies…

When creating your SEO strategy, due diligence mandates that you not just take the word of the first self-styled SEO expert that just ‘shows up’ in your inbox one day. Beyond that it’s an even better idea to look for consensus viewpoints among established and recognized experts in the field.

So, where would an SEO expert start with a site? That’s what we wanted to know. What are some of the common themes, concepts, ideas and practices all of these guys would agree on? We put these questions to four leading SEO guys.

We got some good ones too.

• Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz.org, sure he wears funny shoes, but he’s an SEO rockstar of the first order by anyone’s definition.
• Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting, a regular and veteran of the SEO conference scene.
• David Brown of Top SEO Consultants. SEO, forums, podcasts, blogs – if you know a buzzword, David’s probably been there and done it already.
• Brian Mark from Toolbarn.com. Brian is an admin at WebProWorld forum and last year Toolbarn made the list of top 100 Internet retailers. ‘Nuff said.

Obviously, you can watch the video to get the info first hand, but for those of you who prefer to stick with the text here are some of the more interesting points made:

All of these guys agreed on the importance of having a crawlable site. Dump the pull down navigation windows, take it easy on the java script, don’t get nuts with Flash dominated pages. Always use distinct titles and descriptions from page to page. Watch your achor (link) text – you don’t want to use things like ‘click here’ or ‘home’ for your navigation because they don’t mean much to search spiders.

David Brown specifically mentioned the concept of the KEI, or Keyword Efficiency Index when thinking about and choosing keywords you want to focus on. KEI is important and it’s one of those things you can show off to your non-SEO friends to make them understand how smart you are because it has a very impressive looking formula:

KEI = (DS^2/C) = (DS/C * DS)

It’s actually not as complicated as it looks, and there is a great definition of KEI at StrictlyCSS.com.

Eric, Rand and Brian all mentioned how important the content of your site is to your SEO efforts. This is particularly true in terms of garnering those all-important inbound links to your site. As Rand observes specifically, search engines rank based on two factors; relevance and popularity.

Relevance is fairly self-explanatory, but the popularity angle is more interesting. You want your on page content to be popular – not necessarily with engines themselves (because they don’t care) and not necessarily popular with your customers — you want your content to be popular with other people in your field. Similar sites with similar topics, targeting the same kind of areas Links from those kinds of sites/pages are extremely valuable inbound links.

Obviously, this isn’t to say to ignore your customers and end users when you create your content. Simply that you should also be thinking about the attractiveness or linkability of your content to other people sites within your subject area. At the end of the day, nothing will move you further, faster than quality inbound links.

Speaking of inbound links, the general consensus of all of our experts in the video is basically the more the merrier. They all stress the importance and value of having relevant inbound links with good, keyword specific anchor text, but none of them seem to have any qualms or issues with HOW you go about getting them. A couple of guys just flat out admit that they will, and have, paid for sites to link to them.

That said, they also all agree that if you do buy links, you should be smart about it. Be selective about the types of links you buy – make double sure they are relevant etc and just basically keep it under your hat.

There’s plenty more info in the video. Be sure to check it out. If you feel like we left some major point unexplored or have suggestions or ideas for future video interviews, let me know about it and we’ll see what we can come up with.

>>> Watch the Video!

(Our on-scene WebProNews staff has passed along this latest news from SES San Jose 2007. If you can’t be there, you need to be here with WebProNews this week, for videos and reports.)

Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz led off the session by listing the types of services one might offer as an SEO:

1 – Standard SEO for keyword ranking

2 – Site auditing reports

3 – Standard consulting

4 – Keyword research reports

5 – Content creation and copywriting

6 – Link building

7 – Strategic planning / design

8 – Viral creation and promotion

9 – Social media marketing

10 – Reputation mangement/control

11 – Brand tracking/reporting

12 – Web development/web design

13 – Training and workshops

Pricing for such services, usually on an hourly basis, can vary greatly. Fishkin said rates range from $100 to $400 per hour, and in some places reach $1,000 an hour.

He offered examples of types of sites, the work they involve, and what would likely be charged. A travel industry site in need of keyword targeting, link-building, and a measurement/ROI calculation system could be a $24,000 prospect for the business.

Another property, a large media firm looking to train people internally on SEO, could generate a $25,000 fee for on-site SEO training, and consulting on search strategy. Follow-up consulting by phone and email would be part of the package.

Scalability of the services an SEO firm can offer has proved problematic. As the number of clients increase, the hours and the people in demand won’t be able to scale infinitely. It affects both what a client will pay, and what the SEO firm has to pay for talent to do the work.

Lance Loveday of Closed Loop Marketing talked about fees in general, saying they use a setup fee of two to three times what the monthly management fee will be.

Loveday also listed several variables that influence the fee: scale of work to be performed; new versus existing client; international or domestic reach; geo-targeting; size of client; estimate of time needed; he also jokingly noted the PITA factor as well.

Ken Jurina of Epiar said there are four typical ways to price search services:

1 – Retainer-based, 2k – 50k range

2 – Pay for performance (% sales increase etc)

3 – Fee for service models $2,500 – $1 million project based with finite scope

4 – Hourly consultation

Experience in the industry plays a part in what one can charge for search marketing. Jurina said those with an established role in it can charge market rates. Someone new to the industry may have to price a job at what they need to survive and grow for the future.

Mike Murray of Fathom SEO offered a suggestion in closing, on the topic of right-to-cancel policies. "I’d really suggest you don’t do those," he said. "They really suck."

Brian gives what he considers are the only three honest answers to the question.

1. I choose interesting projects that give me looks at complex problems I wouldn’t normally see in the course of building out my own sites.
2. I understand that I don’t know everything and, while I can help your business succeed in quality search engine traffic, your business is successful in a facet of this business I feel I could learn from you on.
3. I think easy cash today is better than more cash a year from now.

All three of the above are valid reasons and Brian does give more details on his answers to each so I encourage you to read his post. But if you’re currently an SEO not working on your own projects you might find yourself not fitting into one of these three answers and having your own reasons why all your present work is for clients.

One thing I’ve learned over the course of my life is not to pretend to know all the things that might motivate someone. We all come with our own unique set of experiences that form the reasons we make the choices we make in life. In limiting the possible responses to three Brian does many people a great injustice.

As you might expect Brian’s post generated a reaction and the reaction I’ll point you to is from SEOmoz’s Wasting Time or Clearly Incompetent – The SEO Consulting Debate.

If you read Rand’s post (and you should, as well as the comments that follow) you can see he basically agrees with Brian. Rand differs however in what skills he thinks are being called into question by working for clients as opposed to your own projects. My own thoughts echo Rand’s. Marketing a site is different than creating business models and being skilled in one is no guarantee of the other. SEOs are supposed to be good at marketing. Some will also be good at creating profitable business models, but not all have to be or even want to be.

Brian does make some excellent points though, and he’s far from the only one who would advocate working on your projects. One of the first things I noticed when I first started learning seo is that many respected SEOs are making a good deal of their money working for themselves. It’s something I’ve long considered for myself and the only reasons I have yet to begin is I haven’t decided on a project I feel passionate enough about to want to start and because I still need to pay the rent. Your own projects don’t pay you right away after all.

Brian also stated

If anyone with more than 3 years of experience is allocating more than 50% of their time to consulting, I’m going on record as doubting their skills.

Since I’m only half way into those three years I suppose I still have another year and a half before my skills are called into question, but I don’t think it’s fair to question someone’s skills because they don’t choose to do what you would do under a given situation.

Again I’m not saying it’s not a good idea to work on your own projects. I think it is and I think being able to draw an income from something other than clients makes a lot of sense. What I am saying is that not everyone wants to or has to work on their own projects.

Brian posted a follow up piece today, Attack of the SEOmoz Clones: More Thoughts On SEO Consulting, because of Rand’s post and the comments it generated. I want to comment on two of the points he makes today.

I think it was Jane from SEOmoz who asked why an SEO would choose to rank a site for [portland hair salon] for themselves rather than a client….

…yes, but there’s no money in local hair salon SERPs. By all means, if you need the jack, take that on as a consulting project because it shouldn’t be too hard to rank for that.

If I’m following Brian’s argument to completion then if you take this kind of project you’re either hurting for money or don’t have the skills for anything else. Does that mean all mom and pops need to seo their own sites, because no one with any real skills is going to help them? I’m just not sure that’s fair to say.

Brian also goes on to say

Do not lob the bleeding heart “teaching is so rewarding” argument at me. Trust me, it’s not as rewarding as cashing checks from your couch.

This one bothers me. Making money is rewarding, but it’s not at all the only motivation people have. I admit making money is high on my list of priorities, but it’s not #1 on the list. The way I earn the money I make and the lifestyle my chosen profession allows me will always be more important to me than the money I make for myself. I suspect I’m not alone in that and one of the main reasons people give for choosing a career as an SEO is the lifestyle. Money is up there, but there are other things in life that are rewarding.

I suppose Brian would also say that no doctor should ever work at a free clinic or that no lawyer should ever take a job as a public defender. I suppose no one should ever follow artistic pursuits either since art is an unlikely path to wealth.

One more time I want to say I agree with much of what Brian says. I think devoting more time to your own projects is a good thing. It’s not enjoyable working for clients who don’t want to follow your suggestions, but still want you to take the responsibility when your advice isn’t implemented. Not every client has a site and business you will feel passionate about. Ideally I think most of us would like to be able to pick and choose the projects we work on and one way to achieve that is to develop those projects yourself. And in fact I do hope if we fast forward a few years that I’m spending 50% or more of my time on projects I develop for myself as Brian suggests.

What I don’t think is fair though, is calling into question the skills of anyone who doesn’t follow that plan. We all have reasons why we do the things we do. Those reasons won’t always be known to others and often enough they aren’t always known to ourselves. There are many reasons why someone would prefer not to work on their own projects. Yes a lack of skills might be one of those reasons, but it’s far from the only one. There are simply more than three valid responses to Brian’s initial question.

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The gist of it is – if you are such a great SEO, wouldn’t you make a ton more money publishing your own sites? And even though it reeks a little bit of the SEO are scum debates that were raging through the blogoshpere a short while back, and I stayed out of that one because I just don’t dignify questions like “when did you stop beating your wife?”, Brian Provost’s question does have some merit (note that Brian’s update post does make it clear that it was not specifically an attack on SEOs

We happen to use a mix of consulting and publishing our own sites here at STC. Without question, I have made far more money on the sites we publish ourselves than the consulting business. But launching a new site in a highly competitive market is an investment and takes time. Particularly since our model is to build up valuable assets for sale at a later date to a third party.

Consulting provides short term cash flow while you are building your sites up. It also provides exposure to different aspects of search, and helps me broaden my horizons, and learn lessons that I apply in our own sites (lessons go the other way too …). It also becomes a platform for developing relationships and contacts that are invaluable for our publishing business. We have a veritable win-win situation where the two businesses feed each other.

Other high quality SEOs have their own reasons for preferring to consult. It can be as simple as wanting to have greater degrees of freedom over one’s schedule. Some people consult because they can go to their kids chess tournament at school even when it happens during the work day. Hard to do when you are a publisher fighting for market share day in and day out.

And then there are the Rand’s of the world, that simply have a great passion for developing and publishing great content. A mix of a media personality and a consultant at the same time. And so it can simply be about what makes you get excited about getting out of bed in the morning. And this is perfectly valid too.

Don’t buy into the SEO’s are scum hype, or spend your time defending yourself from it, it’s truly a waste of time. There are scum in every profession. Enough people write about SEO’s being scum that I can assure you that some (not all, but some) of those writers are scum too. It’s just about statistics. If enough people are doing something, then some of them are bad people.

You want a good thing to look for in an SEO? See if they have a passion for success, and a passion for winning. I am not saying that this is a question you ask, it’s a thing you sense when you talk to them. Of course, make sure they are competent, check references, whatever, but more importantly, make sure they will be passionate about winning with your business. If you have those 2 things, then they are probably a good bet for you to work with.

But hey, with tweaks to each situation, that advice will work in any part of your life.

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Conducted by Gelb Consulting Group in February of this year, The Microsoft High-Performance Computing Oil and Gas Industry Survey indicates that providing geoscientists with the latest and greatest in computing technology could increase overall oil and gas production.

Gelb tallied results from over 100 oil and gas industry experts from around the world. Findings of significant mention from the study include:

·    Eighty-one percent report that more ready access to high-performance computing capability could increase oil and gas production.

·    Eighty-six percent have computing power at their deskside, and 69 percent prefer computing power at their desktops.

·    Sixty-one percent believe that having the capability to run additional tasks and iterations will reduce project risk.

·    Fifty-six percent prefer to schedule their own jobs to a technical computing or HPC cluster rather than refer to a cluster administrator to manage the job queue.

·    Forty-seven percent say their computing-intensive scientific applications require multiple iterations.

·    Twenty-five percent of computing-intensive scientific applications still take from overnight to more than a week to run.

“Since the mid-1990s, the upstream oil and gas industry has had the goal of achieving dramatic cost savings in the area of technical computing,” said John Elmer, president of Gelb Consulting Group.

“This goal is being achieved today. For example, it used to be the case that geosciences applications managers would not let go of their UNIX machines for mission-critical applications. The tide has now turned with smart-client PCs and applications reaching a level of maturity, reliability and stability that has caused even the skeptics to trust a move to Microsoft Windows.”

“This new approach to high-performance computing doesn’t replace supercomputers in oil and gas. Instead, it makes technical computing more available to more people at a lower cost,” said John Fikany, vice president of the U.S. Manufacturing Group at Microsoft.

“By using Windows Compute Cluster Server, geoscientists are empowered to more easily access, analyze and garner deeper insights from complex data and information — ultimately getting oil and gas from the subsurface to the pump faster, more efficiently.”

Over at MarketingProfs.com my Business Blog Consulting co-blogger Stephan Spencer has written “Stop, Thief! How to Protect Your Site from Copyright Infringement.”

In the article he takes you step-by-step on how to combat people stealing your intellectual property, specifically the design and copy from your site.

Now, if I could just stop writing blog posts and take some action on these thieves some good might come of it!

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Rich Brooks is president of flyte new media, a Web site design and Internet marketing company in Portland, Maine. Flyte works with small businesses to build professional Web sites that often include e-commerce, Flash and content management systems. They promote their clients’ sites through search engine optimization, e-mail marketing, business blogs and podcasts, and viral marketing.