Kate Morris

Funny, I started this post in Seattle and with the blog move, never got back to it. Now Rand has gone and done so much better, but I still have somethings to say about all this.

I recently asked Matt Cutts about topics he thought I might research for my Master’s thesis. I thought paid linking and he said it was going to be sooo 2007. I disagreed because I had seen so many people still doing it. When we got to Seattle, what I said was backed up.

Now I am a seasoned veteran of sorts in this space. Not a leader by any means, but I’ve been around the block a time or two. Hearing black hat things at the show did not bother me, I enjoying hearing some of them. It was more something Jay Young said: “We are marketers not moralists.” Jay is a smart man, and a great guy from what I hear, but that kind of thinking is so irritating to me.

I almost left business a few years ago. I was tired of the BS, the backstabbing, and the greed. I wanted to be somewhere that I could use my talents for the betterment of other people, not myself. Does that make me pathetic or a bad marketer? I don’t think so. It makes me a good person. And I really don’t like being made fun of for it.

But the rest of his speech made some good points about fear. No one should fear Matt Cutts. No one should fear link brokers. They all have their jobs, and they are not out to mess with anyone else. Matt does what he does for society as a whole. Trying to give them the most unbiased answers to their questions. Putting the small company on the same playing field as the big ones. The internet is not about who has the bigger marketing budget and that is what I see as Google’s standpoint.

But the link brokers are just helping small companies play the games that the search engines set up themselves. Links are needed and they are helping people get them. Is paid linking going to die totally? No. But should the search engines stop trying to discount them? No. That is their job, they are going to do it. This industry is risky at times. It’s like gambling, if you want the short term fast results you have to put a lot on the line. And sometimes, and more recently a lot, you get burned, bad. That’s the game.

Fear shouldn’t have a place in our industry - good business sense, ethics, and all that should. Do your job the right way, and with some patience, the best results will win out.

Everyone knows that my hero is Matt Cutts. I don’t hide that fact. But I came across something really funny today … to me at least.

I started with a new auto refinance company (It’s my blog, I can link to who I want), and presented my 24 Hour Strategic Plan to them yesterday. That’s my plan I came up with in 24 hours. Well, in that plan I mentioned that in marketing material (website copy and ad copy on AdWords) does best with numbers in it. People love numbers, and in resumes they are solid gold.

Well this Wired Q&A with Matt posted today asks the question: Does SEO (search-engine optimization) work? Well … Duh. But his answer was priceless:

It does to some degree. Think of it this way: When you put a resume forward, you want it to be as clean as possible. If the resume is sloppy, you’re not going to get interviewed for the job. SEO is sort of like tweaking your resume . . . It’s helpful if you just think about which words people would use to search for your content. If you’re writing something about Mount Everest, for example, people are probably going to look for ‘How high is Mount Everest?’ . . . If done responsibly, [SEO] can be a great thing.

Love it!!!

I am sure I will talk about this issue a lot. So this is just number one. I didn’t get to attend SES San Jose, and I still regret it. But one of the things brought up there was the paid link debate. Since then a number of SEMs have gotten in on the debate, and the consensus from what I’ve seen is that seasoned SEMs don’t care for Google’s stance.

Matt Cutts has said that Google will not count link love from a paid source. You won’t be banned, but that money will have gone to nothing when it comes to your Google rank. Okay. I get this. Google is trying to keep money out of relevance as much as possible. Score one for the underdog white hats that don’t have the arsenal of money behind them.

What every posting I have seen says is that Google can’t catch everyone. But here is what every post has missed so far: Google is aware that they can’t catch everyone. It’s impossible. It’s like trying to catch every kid that steals a piece of candy.

The other point has been that you shouldn’t just think about Google in your SEM efforts. While that is true to a point (I tell my company that they need to focus on the end user religiously), Google still holds the market. You have to give them more consideration until someone else takes over that top spot.

And then I go back to what Matt says (I am not saying verbatim, but I did hear him say something like it) “Don’t build your site for us, build it for your end user. You have the right to ignore our guidelines, there are no laws online. But we have the right to take you out of our index as well.”

Will I do paid linking? Not really. I don’t see true value. My company happens to have a fantastic base of affiliates to link build with. Content rich related sites that we can get to link to us. Does everyone else have this? No. Should they do paid linking? Maybe. It’s your choice. But Google makes known what they like and don’t like. You are free to go against it, but it’s your choice.

You take the risk. With risk comes with great reward sometimes, but also great loss.

I got an invite to go to this show from Matt Cutts personally (it was his doing that made me go to SMX Advanced). And I can’t go.

There are just so many trips I can take each year when I don’t work for an SEO firm. I am going to be watching the blogs closely. So please everyone keep me updated. And have a drink for me at one of the many after parties I am not sure I would have ever found. But can wish I was at.

And Matt, I still want to see the utili-kilt around Halloween time. I’m sure your wife would get a kick out of it too. Along with the rest of your readers. Now I’ll shut up about it.

I am going to get to my blogs from yesterday later today. Blogging while learning is rough though, especially without a place to plug in the laptop. That is going to be one of my “next show we need …” comments.

The real news though comes from the Google Dance NW last night. It was a great party put on by Google, with glow in the dark cups, Google SMX shirts, and glowy necklaces. But again, not the real news.

I ran into a nice gentlemen while getting into the elevator. He took one look at my tag and exclaimed “Kate I’ve been looking for you.” That worried me. Who in the hell knew me at this conference? I just started blogging (though I am planning to continue) and have very little personal presence on the web.

Turns out he knows someone I work with, one of the executives (later I find he has met everyone: Jeff, Ed and Al). So I spent the night talking to Jason Robey and his crew from Gardner Publications.

The nights events included two things: seeing the new Ask.com launch live and talking with Matt Cutts in person.

Ask.com
We ran into Patrick Crisp, PR from Ask.com, sitting in a corner typing furiously. After we mistook him for someone else, we got to talking about what he was working on. Apparently Ask had just launched their new site, but stuff wasn’t working. So he showed us around. I must admit I was impressed. The new site is very well laid out, navigation options to the left, content and paid in the middle, and cool stuff that changes based on the search on the right.

Since he was kind enough to do that, we let him in on a few secrets on how Ask can do better. High points:

• Tell us more, talk about yourself, we are rooting for you!
• Talk to the webmasters; Google is great at that and no one else. Pick that up!
• Get a face for Ask like Google has Matt Cutts
• Take share away from MSN, it’s going to be so easy (yes I said that)

Matt Cutts
Poor guy was being cornered by this very pretty lady from Webmaster.fm who had a few too many Google drinks (she admitted it!). So my new friends and I pulled him away. I must say, Matt is a very easy guy to talk to. Even though I am an adoring fan. He was very interested in what I had to say, what I was interested in, etc.

The highlight though was seeing a guy in a kilt (Seattle loves kilts apparently) and telling Matt that it would make a great picture for his blog of him in a kilt. He laughed and smiling (devilish if you ask me) and said “Okay. So what will you do for me? I double dare you.” So now I have to come up with something so that Matt will find and wear a kilt to work some day.

I left the party, said bye to Matt and everyone else with on guy noting “You are one of 10 woman here [Not true] and you’re leaving, that’s sad.” That made me feel better.