RobMaurin.com

This (dusty old) site will soon be overhauled

I'm stoked about the launch of TorontoSEOworkshop.com, the new site for the search engine optimization work I'm doing. At Toronto SEO Workshop, the main focus so far is training courses for small business owners and other website operators, to give them the foundational knowledge they need to build a better website.

Of course, I'd love for you to check it out. The site has its own blog, to which you can subscribe for ongoing tips and trends in search engine optimization. 

Now that it's launched, I can separate the chattering voices that made this blog/site troublesome. RobMaurin.com will morph into a more personal space, while the professional stuff will all move over. It will also let me get away from some of the technical restrictions I've had on this site, but I won't bore you with that.

Thanks for following so far.

Print Media Still Don't Get the Web

As far as I can tell, traditional media -- and print media in particular -- still don't get the web.

The following is not new: Print media is bleeding to death from the disappearance of ad revenue and paid circulation. We all know that. Print media will scream this at the top of their lungs when they think it might encourage people to pay for content, or when they think the government or other donors might be enticed to step up with some funds.

But for all that, many outlets still can't embrace even the most fundamental ideas about interactive media. The catalyst that prompted the knotting of my knickers tonight was a job posting I saw for a prestigious magazine. I won't name names, only because my purpose here isn't to slag that magazine (I think it often does a great job, and I wish it much success; still, not hard to figure out what I'm talking about, if you follow me on Twitter).

This magazine is looking for a half-time web editor, whom they will pay $24K, with no benefits. The candidate is expected, among other things, to:

• create content
• maintain relationships with bloggers
• do both editorial and marketing content
• monitor online feedback
• have experience in print and online media
• be fluent in web analytics

And given that this is the magazine world, don't expect to actually work half-time at this job. I can easily see anyone who gives a hoot about her/his work to have unpaid overtime equivalent to the paid work.

Why does this have me so bothered? After all, magazines have a long and proud history of abusing staff (editorial staff in particular), starting with the nearly mandatory unpaid internship, and continuing on through the lousy pay scale for almost everyone in the industry.

My beef is this: taking a rookie editor, asking the world and paying them in peanuts and the occasional swag is possible in the print world because anything this person generates is likely to go through at least three editorial hands before ever seeing the light of day.

But whoever is in charge of web operations is going to have a broader reach than the most senior person at the magazine. The web editor is going to be the one in a position to build relationships with readers and possible readers on a daily basis. And, if this position is anything like the web editors I've seen at other magazines, this person will do his or her work without all the qualitative checks and safeguards that exist in print.

And for this, the magazine -- an award-winning national title with aspirations so big it's currently pitching itself as an essential service in the country's media landscape -- is ponying up $24,000 a year with no benefits.

Small wonder so many good editors are leaving the industry. And that the people left to help the industry transition to a new economic reality are so ill equipped to do the job.

Toronto SEO training courses

I'm just about to launch the website for my search engine optimization training courses. The site is still a dog's breakfast, but it's a placeholder for what I intend to be the online presence of a great resource.

The site is TorontoSEOworkshop.com. There are various workshops planned, and a few already scheduled for private clients:

• SEO, of course. And specifically the content/writing strategies for search engine optimization, with a special series of courses for small business owners.  
• SMM: the must-know social media marketing strategies, including tools/sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.
• SEM: understanding paid search engine advertising 

Through the Toronto SEO Workshop, I'll also be working with other Toronto-based (and some international) online people with huge brains and skills, to provide a complete roster of site optimization services including site audits (SEO, usability, accessibility) and design and build services.

Interested in checking out the SEO courses? Let me know and I'll fire you a list of upcoming dates. And if you know anyone who needs SEO training, or any of the services I mention above, please let me know. For now the Toronto SEO Workshop will be using info@torontoseoworkshop.com as a primary email.

Scary: Penalized by Google?

Earlier this week I blogged with an example from my SEO workshop, that it's meaningless to rank first in a search result if the terms you're ranking for drive no traffic.

Oops.

For the example, I set up a simple page that was well optimized for the term "bilious magenta henchmen," which easily ranked first in search because, let's face it, who competes for that? I had the term in the title, in the H1 header, in an H2 header, and in the main copy. A bit heavy handed, perhaps, but my keyword density was 7.7%, which I thought would be well within limits. In a day I was #1 in Google for that keyword phrase.

But I'm guessing that Google pegged me for black-hat practices, and the page, if not altogether de-indexed, is buried somewhere in the SERPs it will never be found.

Silly mistake on my part. As far as search engines are concerned, if I'm manipulating search engine results to make a well intentioned point, it's still manipulating search engine results, and that's grounds for a penalty.

Now, to get my ranking back up will be an unpleasant task...

Out of the sandbox

March 22: registered and created the first pages on songwritinghooks.com
April 13: first concerted push at content and promotion (Twitter)
April 16: realized I had nofollow and noindex tags in my headers, thanks to a Typepad setting I had neglected
April 16: corrected the noindex and nofollow tags, created a sitemap and submitted to Google
April 20: finally indexing on Google with a search of songwritinghooks.com (1st); on page 1 when searching "songwriting hooks" (10th position)

SEO: Learnings so far on SEO (the practice), SEOs (the people), and the snake oil

In talking SEO with several smart people, I've recounted this (ahem) joke a couple of times in the last few days:

A guy brings his car to the mechanic because it's making a godawful racket somewhere under the hood. He explains the problem to the mechanic, who pops the hood open, looks around, pulls a greasy screwdriver out of his pocket, and turns some screw one half turn.

The mechanic starts the car up and it's fine. The mechanic writes up the bill and hands it to the owner, who looks at it and screams, "$700?! Are you kidding me? All you did was give a screw half a turn!"

The mechanic looks at the guy, calmly takes back the bill and itemizes it:

Turning screw half a turn: $0.50
Knowing which screw to turn: $699.50

Which, in a nutshell, sums up a lot about the business of SEO right now.

On one hand, I feel a little guilty giving a screw a half-turn and handing over a bill. So many sites are so tragically underoptimized, just pointing out the basics is a revolutionary improvement to the site's positioning in SERPs. But I try to remember that there's huge value in knowing not just about the existence of page titles, H1 tags, internal linking structure and incoming links, but also how to finesse them to do the right job. And not everyone has devoted 8 hours a day to figuring it out.

On the other hand, I'm sure there are people who know just enough to keep a client mystified and therefore in need of continuing services. And since any SEO consultant, good or bad, begins the spiel by saying Google is secretive and that nobody can guarantee search engine performance, it's pretty tough to tell the good SEOs from the bad. The most telling schmucks I've seen are the ones who write about content and keywords being king, but whose writing is so atrocious nobody would ever link back to their pages.

More to follow in a subsequent post.