Category: SEO Factors

SEO factors include many things including creative website content, effective SEO, and social media marketing.

How Good SEO Becomes Great SEO: Feed the Gorillas!

Feed Them Bananas!
Feed Them Bananas!


I recently returned home after an all-day meeting with a company in need of my SEO and social media marketing services. I wrote about them in my recent article titled “99 Percent of Marketing Fails, But Eleanor Can Fly!“. The company asked me to come to Chicago and meet with them at length about their needs, and get to know them. They don’t just want a consultant, they want me to share in their vision and help them to achieve some really big goals. They want my commitment to their long-term success.

We had a great time, and I learned a lot about things which make the company really great. The culture of the company is to do things with purpose. They do meaningful things and they do them for the right reasons. Their purpose is not all about the money, but the money is all because of the purpose. I suppose it is easier for them to come by their purpose, because they are a family-owned company in their fourth generation. The culture was passed down, and there is a strong sense of responsibility that comes along with that. I am still optimistic that a greater purpose can be developed in newer companies, too. They must first understand that greater rewards come from a bigger vision than themselves, and not just a clever business plan.

Tangent Thinking Creates Great SEO and Social Media

While I was meeting with these fine folks, we often spoke in tangents. We let our minds wander with our ideas. Thinking and sharing your tangent is often the best way to discover your greatest creativity. I told the guys that if I was there in the office each day, much of my best work would not be sitting at a desk and doing geeky stuff like reprogramming their websites, but rather pacing the sidewalk smoking cigarettes, and chugging coffee. I forgot to add the telephone. I need cigarettes, coffee, and a telephone so I can call for more inspiration and ideas from that perfect person in my giant network of creative and resourceful friends who can help me think through my latest flash of genius.

I explained that good SEO takes a lot of hard work, data analysis, and understanding of technologies, but that great SEO requires something a whole lot different. It requires creativity, passion, and doing something truly exceptional and showing people what makes your company amazing. Yes, SEO is a whole lot more than just picking some keywords and putting them on a perfectly crafted website. Really great SEO (search engine optimizers) know that asking for a link from other webmasters is a huge waste of time. They know that if you do something really out of the box that people love, more people will link to you because they are compelled to share the value you provided them. Yes, there I said it. I just gave you the single best tip in my SEO bag of goodies.

When the SEO Light Bulb Comes On

While I was on a tour of the company’s facility with the VP of Marketing, his right-hand man, a brilliant note-taking scribe who goes by the title of “Director of Innovation” came to re-join us on the tour. The three of us stood in the “bird cage” high atop a huge facility where employees were working hard to do their jobs. As we talked about them, it really began to feel like they were not just there to get the job done, but that the culture of this company allowed them to all be a part of a bigger picture. They worked side-by-side with family members, and I don’t just mean the strong family which is the company. They worked with people they had known since birth … you know, actual family members. Many of them had been there for a very long time. Sure, jobs are harder to find these days, but I don’t think these people came to work each day just because this was the only job out there for them. They understood the vision, and if any of them question their corporation’s intentions, they shouldn’t. I don’t. Hearing it from a guy with the founder’s same name, I can say that the higher-ups really have a whole lot of heart wrapped up in that staff. They really do care about the employees, and they feel a huge sense of responsibility to the thousands of people it can affect if they make bad decisions. It gave me goosebumps more than once.

While we stood there talking about these hard workers and sharing our visions for the company, the Director of Innovation had a moment which really came to seem like a light bulb turning on. He knew that what I do is more than just things he had read about SEO and Internet marketing, but had not put his finger on it just yet. In this light bulb moment, he really started seeing how the initial perceptions of SEO as a technical trade went a lot deeper. He noticed that it also has a lot greater than expected roots in people, talent, creativity, networking, and so many other branches of a marketing tree. It was in this conversation when he realized that there really is a lot more to the job description of search engine optimizer than he thought. It is not just about getting a bunch of website traffic. It also has a lot to do with being able to express the value of something, and doing it in a way that people can relate to. It has to do with building a brand and sharing that great culture of the company with other people who will appreciate it and benefit from it. It has to do with building consumer confidence, which often takes a lot more than just being the first search result when people search for what you offer.

Social Media Seeds SEO, But Here is How!

In our discussions, I mentioned that social media is like seeds of SEO. Actually, SEO is social media, and I will explain that briefly. If you consider that Google’s most important SEO ranking factor is quality links pointing to your website, you can see that it is all about the people’s opinion. People who have confidence in your brand, and see value in your message, will link to your work. Google is just a bigger tree in the social media forest. It reflects what the people like, and what the people want. It is largely based on the same principle of great things being popular.

Google is just a bigger tree in the social media forest. It reflects what the people like, and what the people want. It is largely based on the same principle of great things being popular.

There is a lot more to it, but it is the whole forest that I want you to see. Sure, you can swap a bunch of links and ask people to link to your website. If you think that works so great, consider how long it would take to get thousands of incoming links to your site by asking for them. Then consider how much more effective it would be for your business to do great things and provide great value, then present it in a way that people will love to share. Getting this wrong is why I say that most SEO fail at link building.

How Does a Good Business Become Great?

A wise man who knew about making a good business great described it as feeding the gorillas. You must give them what they want, and they want bananas. Give them bananas and they will be happy gorillas who will be loyal to you. I think there was a lot more wisdom in this than just the picture you have in your head right now of a silly man throwing bananas to a gorilla (you saw that guy in your mind, too … I know you did). It means giving people what they want in life and realizing that is the most effective path to getting what you want. This holds true, whether it is a link to your website, a purchase from a customer, love of another person, or becoming a massively successful brand. Feeding bananas to gorillas is what made the company I met with yesterday a great one. They have been giving people what they want for a long time, and the success is evident.

I really enjoyed my trip to Chicago and the day I spent getting to know these guys. I hope they see just how much similarity we share in our methods and motivations. I suspect as they read through the copies of my book, “Living in the Storm” that I left with them, they will see that I strongly believe in feeding the gorillas, too.

Murnahan Kids

Mark’s Side-Note
This may seem a bit outside of the topic, but it does relate. I want to add that while I visited with my wife on my way back home, she sensed an emotional attraction that I have to this company. She said that from all I told her, I could not have dreamed up a more suitable and exciting opportunity to do the things I love than what this company has in mind for me. I was not looking for this, and I have been a CEO for two decades. The company found me, and has expressed an interest in making me an employee of their corporation. This is certainly not something I would normally even consider. At the same time, it really proves that if you do great things, with great purpose, and you present it in a way that people love, nearly any goal can become reality.

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99 Percent of Marketing Fails, But Eleanor Can Fly!

Marketing Makes Eleanor Fly!
Marketing Makes Eleanor Fly!

I have heard percentages of marketing efforts that do not work. I have witnessed those statistics enough to reach the top of my throat, and to declare that most marketing is little more than miserable failure, like the last squeak of a mouse in a trap. In fact, if you held my job for a day or two, you could even taste it like bad acid reflux. It is really true though, that most marketing falls on deaf ears, and the masses are immune to it. This is largely because these days, anybody with a computer and an Internet connection can bill themselves as an expert marketer. The barrier of entry no longer requires aptitude, experience, or even desire for anything other than somebody else’s money.

The odds of a marketer to recognize the root of our field as helping others with respect, dignity, and a desire to serve them has diminished to a point that skepticism is allowed to take over as a prevalent factor. This means that trust … hard-earned and well-deserved trust is due for a resurgence. A recall to the very root of the word “sell” is what it takes to be really great in a marketplace. If you have not learned this from your marketing pedigree just yet, the word “sell”, in this context, owes its origin to the Norwegian word “selje”. The literal translation is “to serve”, and that still means a lot to some of us.

The job of a professional marketer is to figure out that tiny fraction which does work. What we do is to serve our clients in a way which reflects our desire to benefit more than only ourselves, and to serve others at our highest capabilities. It means that a great marketer must look beyond the benefit of a few bucks today and understand the greater benefit of tomorrow.

A Happy Marketing Success Story

As the economy spooks many companies into bankruptcy and executive fears of failed marketing reach the brim of my digestive system and invoke my gag reflex, I want to tell you a success story. Yes, amongst all of the corporate scaremongering and enterprise torment, there really is success in the mix. This story is a real one, and if it is what I believe it is, it exemplifies success in the hardest market ever, which is to find personal and professional satisfaction.

Join with me and jump on board with my excitement for a moment. Raise your hands and start cheering while I share an exciting story of enterprise SEO success.

There is a company, a tried and true success in their marketplace, who picked up the mouse and found me. They searched for what I do, they took time to read a small share of my facts, figures, and persona, and we met by voice over the telephone. The story has more detail, which I will share as it unfolds, but for the moment, I offer you a piece of my expectedly upfront social media transparency.

The caller on the other end of the phone was a bright and cheery executive who revamped much of the delight that I have held so dearly as my ideal marketplace. This was not an intern at the local veterinary clinic asking how they could get a few more sick dogs to treat. It was not even an auto dealer seeking answers to social media marketing. It was a fellow gearhead executive calling on behalf of a gearhead company. He spoke my language, and we held discussions of real marketing beyond just the couple clicks up the roller coaster track that most companies will attempt before they take the chicken exit and get off the ride while the cars roll back into the loading area.

This guy was speaking my kind of language. You know, the language of waking up and smelling gear oil, coffee, and yesterday’s sweat. The kind of stuff that would intimidate Clint Eastwood and force Chuck Norris to turn in his “Man Card” and scream “Uncle” like a crybaby-sissy-bed-wetter. Yes, it was as if the Chairman of Manhood and the CEO of Testosterone were in stereo driving an epic bass line directly into my entrepreneurial earphones.

When I tell you this guy is right up my alley, I only claim that because I actually pictured him taking down six Chicago street thugs with nothing but a toothpick and a rubber band … yep, in an alley … my alley. Indeed, this dude instilled just enough of a masculine man-crush that when I told the story to my wife, she actually recounted it, in jest, with a boy-meets-girl kind of scenario and somebody was about to lean in for the first kiss. She didn’t get to the part where they sweat on each other, but probably just because that made her a bit weak in the knees. The fog of testosterone floating around would be enough to stop most hearts dead in their tracks.

In our encounter, it was as if I was driving Eleanor from the movie “Gone in 60 Seconds” and … well, like we were both driving Eleanor (e.g. Barrett-Jackson Auto Auction LOT: 1287). All but one detail, he actually has yet come to liberate my Eleanor-plus sized budget from the company’s board of directors. He will be working on them this week, and I will assist him in that jailbreak all I can. It will be important that my new gearhead friends understand that there is a vast difference between Lot 1287 and the dozens of other nice 1967 Mustangs in the list, and the difference is not all about the price … it is value which matters.

While we visited, I discovered the most awkward scenario. The company has me pictured as an in-house corporate SEO guy. At first, I felt a little tear on my cheek, because I know there are only a relatively few companies who understand the value that a C-level position in my industry can provide for them, or how much a long-standing CEO requires just to keep feeding his family. Then I started remembering how much I hate selling SEO. I mean, after all, you can Google something as simple as “sell SEO” or “how to sell SEO” and find that I know a lot about this business. My best scenario of how to sell SEO is just to be able to do it, prove it, and earn a squillion dollars from it. I already did that. My selling is over, and what I mostly want is to do the work I love, and to never have to slink my way out of a boardroom because some kid with less talent but a better line of garbage talked them into some cheap SEO. Realistically, any boardroom worth the table where they sit should be able to distinguish real marketing talent from a marketing representative waiting for his next diaper change. If they cannot recognize that difference, maybe a quick Google for “marketing talent” will flip the butter and the bread in the right direction and show them where the real deal lives and thrives. Where that butter meets the bread is with the guy holding uncanny skills (marketing and gearhead alike), a history of success, and a knack for telling what people need to hear even if it is not what they want to hear. That is a guy with the company in mind, whether he is working as their independent SEO consultant or as their boardroom fun department ready to whip out his clown nose and reveal his magic bag filled with market share, acquisition targets, increased leverage, stronger investors, retail fanaticism, and other boardroom delights.

In either scenario which my gear-hugging pals over there prefer, my Eleanor+ (performance bonus, equity, and etcetera) price point is a cheap jailbreak to fire up the passion of a real gearhead marketer who can come to the office and bang out high-compression gasoline flavored treats the way I would passionately provide for these guys.

I doubt they can afford me, but I am just as sure as motor oil and gasoline going to give them every opportunity to try. It really comes down to how their board of directors view the value of the Internet and my impact upon it.

To my new gearhead pals, I have a tip for your use in our synergistic battle in the boardroom. If they want to know how to justify SEO cost, just Google it! They will find the same guy as when you were seeking how to find SEO talent. 😉

NOTE: To my many longstanding and devoted clients, many of which have been with my services for a decade, please be aware that nothing will shake my devotion to you. You will continue to receive the highest attention from my highly capable support representatives, and you can expect the same level of service which you have trusted me with for so long. As you are surely aware, there is no dollar amount which can purchase my integrity.

Is Squidoo Good for SEO? Likely More Than You Think!

What Can a Squid Do?
What Can a Squid Do?


Is Squidoo good for search engine optimization (SEO)? The short answer is “Yes!” The longer answer involves how Squidoo can help to improve your search engine ranking.

First, for the uninitiated, I will explain that Squidoo is a service which allows for creation of topical pages. Squidoo calls each of these pages a “lens”, and the lenses you can find on Squidoo cover a great deal of useful information. Your lens (or lenses) can include any topic you like, and in fact, I have a Squidoo lens just for that. It is titled “SEO, Social Media, and Other Stuff Murnahan Likes“, and it includes RSS feeds from some of my blogs. That means more syndication of my content. This is a good thing, although the RSS links are not very useful from a search engine optimization standpoint. It also includes RSS feeds for commenting services I use, such as my Disqus profile and Intense Debate profile so people can see things I am commenting about on other blogs. It makes a nice aggregation of things I like and things I am up to. The possibilities are vast, and Squidoo has a lot of nice modules that are easy to customize.

Squidoo Helps SEO, But Not How Others May Tell You!

There is a whole lot of speculation and contention regarding the SEO value of Squidoo. Just as with most services with any search engine optimization value, there are many dirty attempts at SEO using Squidoo. This does not mean it is overrun by spammers or that it is not still valuable. I simply point this out because I do not suggest tagging yourself as the next great SEO expert by trying to make Squidoo your platform. It is just another tool, and I recommend being respectful of the Squidoo community.

You may think I try to make the very best use of each tool to improve my SEO. I do enough that people often ask me if I ever sleep, but I do not hold any tool in high enough regard that I would call it my “silver bullet.” There are some social media and social bookmarking sites that I see more benefit from than others, but each of them will have some degree of importance. Squidoo is one of the services I like very much. However, I will openly admit to shamefully under-utilizing Squidoo. Like my father told me, “do as I say and not as I do.” I do as much as my days and nights will allow. As time runs short, we are each guilty of neglecting to do some of the things we know we should be doing. In my opinion, Squidoo is one of those things we should both be doing, and doing better.

Squidoo Backlinks Help SEO

One benefit to Squidoo for your search engine optimization is incoming links to your website (backlinks) from your Squidoo lens (or lenses). I know very well that Squidoo links are valuable for SEO, but in case you are skeptical, I will show you just one way to measure them. I invite you to check the incoming links to this very blog, using SEOmoz Open Site Explorer. If you check my incoming links (yes, click this), you can see that Squidoo is listed with a “Page Authority” of 63 and a “Domain Authority” of 87. That is a worthwhile link, and one which should not be ignored. In the link above, I narrowed the report down to where you can easily find Squidoo in the results. It will look like the image below.
Open Site Explorer for aWebGuy.com

With enough links, such as I have explained here, it does not take long to start seeing better results in search engine results and more link authority for your site.

Squidoo LogoMy SEO tip for you today is this:

Squidoo should not fall into that list of things you neglect. Take the time, today, to give a closer look at Squidoo and judge for yourself.

Squidoo Lenses Rank Well in Search Engines

Another example of the usefulness of Squidoo is of course how well the lenses (pages) rank. There is little mystery about the potential for making a Squidoo lens rank well for a target search phrase. You can often find popular lenses among the top results for popular searches. Although I do not use Squidoo for this in my own internal SEO, I have done so for client projects and witnessed a reasonable level of value in it.

I do not rely on any single SEO tool too heavily, and I do not recommend that you do that, either. There is not a short list of SEO tools and tricks that will make you famously successful with search engines. No, I am sorry, but that list of important SEO tools is long … very long. You should never place all of your SEO energy in only a few places, but instead use a wide range of resources. At the same time, I would submit to you that even if it took you the rest of the day to set up your Squidoo account or to add another Squidoo lens to your existing lenses, your day would not be wasted. By the end of the day, you will have become more efficient using another SEO tool that can give you more visibility to your Squidoo lens, and additional relevant links from Squidoo to your website.

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Character Count and Word Count Script With Character Countdown

Copy and Paste Character and Word Counter
Copy/Paste Character and Word Counter
I often have a need for a character count script to tell me how many characters something contains. I also often find a need for a word count script. Since I never seem to find such a dual-purpose script handy for calculating characters and words all at once, my quickest response is often to open up my Microsoft Word. I wait for the cumbersome software to load, then copy and paste it and wait for Word to think for a while. It stinks, and I finally got really tired of it. There is no need to hog system resources and more screen space by opening Word or a similar software. I nearly always already have a browser window open, so it would be a lot easier to just open a new tab and then copy and paste the content into a quick and easy javascript character counter and word counter.

I have been a web guy for a very long time. I have often found that when I need a script or an application, it is best to just sit down and create it myself. Over the years, I have written a squillion web applications of all kinds. Strangely enough, I often find that the simplest tools to create are also the ones I have a hard time finding the moment to just do it. Once I get around to it, I have often found that there were a lot of others who felt the same way. For example, there are thousands of people every month who use my very basic and aged screen resolution test. I wrote it because at the time I saw a need for it in my daily routine. The same thing happened here.

Simple Javascript Character Counter and Word Counter

I finally got tired of the character count and word count dilemma, and I decided to just write my own handy javascript character count plus word count script. I decided that it should provide live counting when content is typed or pasted into the form, and be quick and painless to load. It started out like this:

Extended Javascript Character Counter, Word Counter, and Etcetera

Since I was already on the task of creating a character counter and word counter, I decided to throw in a couple of extra pieces to create an an all-in-one character countdown script. Since there are so many social networks where characters matter, I thought some of you may find it useful as well. I did not add many just yet, but if there is a countdown you would like me to add, just add your comment here on my blog. I will add it right away.

Add a Character Count to Your Website

If you think this is useful, of course I welcome you to bookmark this page and keep coming back. Feel free to copy and paste either of the snippets below and add them to your site.
Simple Javascript Character Counter and Word Counter

Extended Javascript Character Counter, Word Counter, and Etcetera

SEO Tip: Great Search Engine Optimization Means Paying Attention

Great SEO Involves Fine Details
Great SEO Involves Fine Details


My SEO tip today is about paying attention and taking action. There are about a squillion things that influence good SEO, and even more things are required to achieve great SEO. Paying attention to details can sometimes make the difference between good SEO and great SEO. Do I have your attention yet?

You are not, I repeat NOT going to get the best results that you seek from this article if you do not pay attention to detail. Good SEO has a lot to do with very fine details, and it often means paying attention to the details that the rest of your industry neglects. Today I am going to give you some thought-candy about the links which point to your website, but first, I am going to be sure that I have your full attention and that you are ready for this brain-exploding tip.

I think a lot of people try to make SEO seem a lot harder than it actually is. Really good SEO is actually quite tricky and time consuming, but there are many things that are pretty simple and tedious, but just need to be implemented properly. Knowing all of those simple and tedious tasks, and how they fit into the big picture of your search engine optimization strategy, and using them properly to receive optimal benefit is why people hire a search engine optimizer.

Squillions of people write tens of thousands of tips each day about search engine optimization. The good search engine optimizers choose their topic carefully, title it just right, tag the information well, add it to their search optimized website, and are sure to address it to the proper audience using just the right keywords. Then they emphasize the call to action, and make it clear why you found the information.

Good SEO (search engine optimizers) write their tips similar to the way they will perform SEO for their clients. In fact, you can tell a lot about them by the tips they give you (it is one of my top reasons to blog). Further, they provide the tips in the same way they expect their readers to implement their suggestions for those who try to take the do-it-yourself (DIY) SEO method.

The Great SEO will take a little additional time to do all of the things the rest of the world can only call “magic”. I do not want to let you down today, but this SEO tip is not designed to make a do-it-yourselfer a great SEO. It is just another piece in the puzzle that will help you to understand good SEO. I will say, however, that it is a pretty damn good tip that can help you move just a little closer to great. I still have to keep you reading regularly, so I cannot just give you that “SEO magic” all at once. Your head would explode, and I cannot have that on my conscience. Yes, imagine that, a search engine optimizer with a conscience … I guess there is just magic in the air today! Besides, I still want to leave you some reason to call on me when you have pulled all your hair out and get sick of letting business pass you by.

Now, on with today’s SEO tip!

Who Links to Your Site and Why Should You Care?

Links are at the front line of search engine optimization. The more high-quality links that point to your website, the easier it will be to rank for the things your site is about. The text within those links makes a huge impact on your ranking for certain topics. This is why many links to my blog include the words SEO and social media marketing. Those things are a focus of my blog, so it only makes sense that the links reflect this.

When important websites with a lot of authority start linking to my blog, I want to know it. I also want to be sure that they continue to link to my blog. I can control this in a couple ways, and the best of which is to keep producing consistently useful content. You know, the stuff people want to link to. Thanking them is not such a bad idea, either.

Another way to be sure the link-love keeps coming is to watch what received good links and write more of that. For example, a useful tip about a given topic (in this case, SEO) will often find its way into a lot of good streams of content, including both automated and manual linking. The automatic ones are pretty easy to manage, but the links created by people are a bit more tricky. You have to really blow somebody’s hair back to make them take the action of creating a link to you in their blogroll, or to submit your content to Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, and etcetera. If you want them to write about it and link to you in a blog post, you practically have to reinvent electricity or come up with something so amazing that they want to print it out and rub it all over themselves. Short of that you must at least write about things that people want to read, and present it in a fashion they will keep reading.

Finding Your Best Backlinks

You should know who is linking to your website. I don’t mean just the links that are being clicked on. I mean the links that make your site more visible and valuable to search engines. Here comes a big fat juicy SEO tip for you. It is called Open Site Explorer and the information it can tell you is more than you may see on the surface. Yes, this is where you have to pay attention to the details. For example, I just looked at an Open Site Explorer report for this blog and found the interesting facts as follows:

The Technorati tag “guerrilla-marketing” has produced a link pointing to my blog article titled “Marketing Without a Budget: Guerrilla Marketing Tips“, but the new content under this tag has moved my link off the page as newer articles arrived. So it seems to me that since that link is from a valuable source page, I should probably write something about guerrilla marketing and be sure to tag it with “guerrilla-marketing”. Oh yes, this article is kind of Guerrilla Marketing related … gosh, I am glad I was paying close attention. I am going to add that tag in this blog post.

I also noticed that there was a pretty nice link from the tag “whiteboards” that pointed to my article titled “Smart Slate, Smart Airliner, and Other Interactive Slates“. Perhaps I should write a follow-up to that piece and tag it appropriately.

My point is that if you pay close attention to the things which make your website rank well, there is a lot clearer path to success. Knowing that I am in the blogroll of great blogs like the ones listed below can give me a lot of reason to want to throw back some link-love to them and also keep reading their work.

These matter to me, and certainly deserve my attention (Thanks Guys). After all, they show faith in my work by linking to me. To some people, this is just a small detail, but to me it is a really important factor.

Paying attention to the sites linking to you, both automated and manually, can make a huge difference in your success. Now the question that remains is this: What will you do with this information? Were you paying attention and will you use what I have suggested? I want to guess the answer is “yes”, but there are a lot of people who do not pay attention. I hope those are your competitors and not you!

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