Kate Morris

Okay, because of the insane amount of work I have to do today, the recap post is being pushed back again. But today I was reminded again why I love the people in my industry. They are just like me, they love fun and come up with the craziest ideas. My two prime examples are:

Big Watah

Best Smelling in Search

These are two websites and ideas started at SMX East because of what happened the night of October 6, 2008.

The first one has a great story and lesson attached to it (here is the lesson) and I promise I’ll tell my side of the story soon. It even raised money for the Ronald McDonald House during the SearchBash! Talk about great linkbait!

The Best Smelling in Search though was just funny. Jeremiah Andrick, Eric Lander, Scott Polk, David Brown, and a few of the other guys were all sporting name brand colognes. They all smelled really good, but we each had our favorite. Mine was Eric Lander, but the popular vote went to Jeremiah Andrick. Well looks like the battle continues on twitter and the web! We all <3 Jeremiah!

Last weekend I placed a sheet of paper in front of my brother and said “Sign It.” It was his voter registration card that I filled out for him. He’s 29 and had never registered to vote. I am the younger sibling. It’s time to take the initiative, get the people you love and respect to vote.

Nothing is getting better in this country, and no matter how you think the change should happen, the point is you have the responsibility to make your voice heard. Check out this video, it’s hilarious - oh, and has a great message.

It’s time, and we are running out of it. Tell 5 friends, get 5 people to register. It’s easy to do!

So who am I calling out online? Not Todd Freisen, Canadians, jeez - or Jane Copland (Self Proclaimed Kiwi) because they can’t!!! They want to! But can’t. How about you do what they want but can’t do? Vote!

Taylor Pratt - Just moved to Austin. Dude, you registered?
Brent Payne - You’re always late. You’ve registered right? How about getting the Colonel to push this?
Jack Leblond - Didn’t you just move too?
Shelly Fagin - You just moved to Texas! You can get it done in time!
Brian Morris - I already took care of this one, but it counts as my fifth!

If you’re not tired of looking at my graduate school rant, I am. Time to talk about something else. What better than my impending trip to New York City for SMX East. I have the honor of speaking on two phenomenal panels: Give It Up: White Hat Edition (Wednesday) and Breaking Up (with your Agency) is Hard to Do (Monday).

I am going to be annoying friends and family this weekend preparing for those, adding examples, and other fun stuff. I am due in NYC Sunday evening and the plans have already started. Drinking with Pat (though he hasn’t talked to me yet … Pat … you not love me anymore?), dinner with Julie Sun, and the SearchBash with all my party buddies.

But the most important event of all? IM Charity Party

This party has always been the main event! You should have seen the one on San Jose. The pictures tell all the stories, but let’s just say there were pumpkins, hot women selling tickets, Loren Baker in a tool belt, and the awarding of a date with Neal Patel. If you’re going to SMX East, please make it a point to attend. It’s only $50, open bar, and all proceeds go to the Ronald McDonald House. Trust me, you’ll want to be there!

Not going? Consider donating anyway. It’s a great cause!

I don’t call them handbags, but whatever. HandbagPlanet is giving away a free bag every hour for 24 hours or something. You say free purse, I come running. They launch the site on October 15, 2008. I’ll be back from New York by then, but I hope I get my free bag (I’m getting one, I can FEEL it) before New York.

Oh, and to the Handbag Planet people, check your Title Tags. Your thank you and referral page tag says “Win a Free Hangbag!” Don’t think that’s what you meant. There’s my SEO tip for you and all my readers. If you’re gonna get links and do a great contest like this, make sure we don’t refer to you as HangbagPlanet.

There are days that I am really impressed with what I see in our industry, and others I just want to shake my head in shame. Today I ran across a real winner (please note the dripping sarcasm) in my morning emails. The site, SEO Tutorial Program (just look it up) and the owner Scott White are the biggest crocks I’ve seen in a while. I mean SEO Chump could probably do better than this guy, and that’s saying a lot!

Here are my issues with the dude:

1. Asking for tips from real industry experts (see HARO ad below which has now been pulled) so that he can make money off of them. He poses to be a “big seo blog” of which no expert in the field I know, knows him. I know some fairly big names, and he isn’t one of them! Using an outlet like HARO is just stupid. That service is for real journalists looking for sources for articles. Not for you to get real tips to make money off of.
2. Own website whose homepage is about 25 pages long
   Yes, I checked it and so did Rishil; with formatting in Word it’s 24 pages long. Dude, you just broke one of the cardinal rules of SEO which is making an aesthetically pleasing site. FAIL!
3. Used an online dating picture for a testimonial
   Eric Lander noted this one (okay, maybe not an online dating picture really, but it looks like it!). He is using his own picture in the middle of his testimonials.
4. Uses things like “Ranked #1 in Google in Record Time”
   That’s in the Guinness Book of World Records? Where? I know plenty of people and sites that have probably beat his “world record.”

So without further ado, if anyone wants to help this man make money off of your hard work, let me know. I’ll give you his email listed on the ad and then beat you for actually wanting to talk to him.

Summary: new seo tips (edited)
Title: publisher (ha!)
Media Outlet/Publication: big seo blog (pwwth)
Query: “Looking to get the biggest new secrets in seo, to find out the new tips to ranking websites are there any? what’s new in seo, give me the top 10, 20 secrets how to rank your website in replying. ”

UPDATE: Peter Shankman has pulled the request, turns out other complained too.

A few days ago Graywolf and I had a small debate on Twitter and I’m curious. If Danny or Kevin (think that’s his name) wanted to pick a new location for a national show, where would you want to go?

Graywolf wants Orlando (yawn!) hehe.

I want to see a show come to Austin (along with many other Texas people). Why? Austin is the live music capital of the world. We have more awesome music in a five block radius than Orlando has in the entire Magic Kingdom. Austin has Sixth street, one of the most well known strips of top notch bars and dives in the US. We have Lance Armstrong, Keep Austin Weird, ACL (Austin City Limits), Congress Bridge Bats, SXSW, The Driskill, some of the best local restaurants, and the best TexMex anywhere!!, the list could go on and on! Austin is the best place for SEOs to meet up because we have the best mix of technology, laid back-ness, food, and alcohol on the planet!!

This all stems from Laura Alter’s post about how we get no conferences in Austin that are geared toward SEMs (she and I just got back from one geared to SMBs).

By Kate Morris and Lisa Barone

Idea so stolen from On365’s 21 Signs a Geek Girl Likes You. This is coming from a couple of the apparently few single SEOs. As I’ve said before, almost all SEOs are married! I realized this while stalking people before SMX Advanced. Regardless, if you’re single and think an SEO Chick *might* like you, here are some ways to tell.

1. She googles your goods.
   If meeting on the internet, by the first date she knows what you’re into, family names, contact info, rants, raves, laments about past girlfriends, things sold on eBay, friends, and everything else. It’s a compliment. If she finds all that and is still interested, you’re so in.
2. She leaves her phone/BB in her purse during the date.
   If she picks it up and starts typing, check twitter later for the real truth.
3. She has IM alerts set up for when you sign online.
4. Your company/website/blog starts to rank really well.
   You’ve told her about your real estate business and how it’s just not taking off. Even though that’s the industry that will kill SEO, she works on getting your site up to par and ranking well.
5. She spends hours trying to give you a brand-able online identity and uses it when she talks about you online.
6. She finds all of your social profiles before you realize it.
   You blink and she’s added you on MySpace/Facebook/Digg? Dude, that’s a clear sign she’s thinking about you. As with #1, for an SEO Chick, stalking is a good thing. We aren’t crazy, at least not in a bad way.
7. She’s made it official on Facebook that you’re dating.
8. She’s found the social networking profiles of everyone you’ve ever dated.
   She knows what they’re doing, where they work, if they’re married, if they have any pets and that they’ve died their naturally red hair brown.
9. She looks past the fact that you have MSN set as your default search engine, and then changes it to something so much f***ing better.
   If you’ve gotten to the point where she is willing to accept that you don’t know how to change your settings in your browser (*gasp* still using IE??), she’s willing to accept any other faults you have.
10. You become a category or prominent tag on her blog.
    Dude, she’s talking about you publicly. Mind you, it might not always be the best things, but the fact that she’s talking about you out loud is a damn good sign.
11. She starts following everyone you’re talking to on Twitter.
    So she can “get to know you better”. Not because she’s stalking you.
12. Her SEO friends start following you on Twitter.
    It’s part of the initiation. It’s right there with meeting the friends and family only these people are brutally honest. Suck it up and make friends. The faster they accept you the better.
13. She’s constantly emailing you her daily Reddit and LOLCat finds and sending you her favorite YouTube videos.
    It’s not love until you’ve met Charlie.
14. She organizes your bookmarks when you’re in the shower
    … so you can make the most of your time together.
15. You find yourself with an extra wardrobe thanks to all the conference T-shirts she brings home.

I have a party trick … searching. I tell people that I can find almost anyone on the internet with very little information. They tell me no way, and I prove it by googling things like their email address and phone number, common pieces of information. They all get amazed.

I have always know that I am good at search, that’s one of the reasons I do what I do. I get search engines and love to try to figure out what people are thinking and needing. My mom and even coworkers will come to me and ask me to search for things. To teach them how to search. But even they know what Google is.

A recent study just said that 24% of the population fail at doing a Google Search. Yes — a quarter of the population. Some say they want to use Google because that is the term for search engine today. Think Kleenex. In fact they just type in the search to their address bar and get MSN or Yahoo.

This doesn’t surprise me because of the Google brand name issue, and the fact that most people don’t know how to change the settings on their browsers. I sometimes forget that I am happy in my little world and assume that everyone else is like me. Then I reads something like this and get ripped back into the real world. We have a far way to go before search engines can be used fully. It’s no one’s fault, its a common learning curve. We’ll get there.

Until that day I will help people find stuff, be the travel agent, and fix the computer every once in a while. Small price to pay for education and a world of better information.

I love this article from Copyblogger Brian Clark. It’s a great look at some of the best (and worst) copywriting in history. The titles at Cosmo have long sold millions of magazines, and provided humor to women all over the world at checkout stands. But they really are very good at catching attention with headlines, maybe we can all learn from them.

Here are some articles I would LOVE to see written, and may write myself soon:

1. How to SEO Together: Getting Executives and SEM’s on the same page
2. How to Read a Black Hat’s Mind: Tips from the Dark Side
3. Your Website Health: What Your Outsourced SEO isn’t Telling You