There's no doubt about it - being a startup in any economic condition is rough, and in the current tumult, mind-bending challenges aren't out of the ordinary. However, I, like most other entrepreneurs I've encountered, am a staunch optimist and thus, even in the face of hardship, seek the silver lining. Tonight, I'd like to share a few of the diamonds in the dung pile that are closest to my heart.
I couldn't help but love Chris Yeh's Outline of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions. It's a fascinating look into the surprisingly predictable psychology that powers human actions and reactions, and I think there are some definitive lessons we can take away from the piece and apply to web marketing. Let's run through the list:
Over the last few months I've found myself doing slightly less SEO, and in its place I've been thinking about how we can improve the SEO services we offer our clients. SEOs, I've found, tend to be quite a creative bunch, both in the type of work that gets done but also in the way that the work gets done. One of the joys of being in SEO is that the tasks that need to be done and the best way of doing these tasks is permanently evolving. The creative urges mean that often when asked to do two similar tasks a week apart, the tasks are done in a completely different way. From a job satisfaction and creativity point of view, this is fantastic; starting from scratch each time on a task means the creative juices can really flow. From a management and consistency point of view, re-inventing the wheel each time is a nightmare!
By keeping children and teenagers entertained back in the 1980s, Nintendo has claimed a spot in the heart of the present day internet generation. Nintendo's internet success is widely accepted yet largely undocumented. The tactics below reveal only the tip of the iceberg. ...
There's no two ways about it - SEO is hot again. In the last 6 weeks, SEOmoz has received a considerably higher than normal volume of requests for consulting. Alongside that, we've been getting calls from venture capital firms out of the blue - 7 to date - asking either about investments they're considering in the SEO sphere (and requesting insight) or literally asking whether SEOmoz would like...
Earlier this year Rand did a white board friday talking about how to get an seo job. A couple of years ago Rebecca covered the SEOmoz hiring process, with a full re-cap of how Jane became a 'mozzer.
There has been a spate of posts recently that talk about spammy SEO agencies offering guarantees, trying to con webm...
It's been a few weeks since I last posted a headsmacker, but this topic has been begging for some exposure. Recently we've worked with some fellow SEOs who've felt the harsh constraint of overly eager, impatient management. They're campaigns followed solid tactics, stuck to best practices and even...
The news this week is pretty dire. On the heels of the US Government's bailout of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and AIG Financial, stock markets in the US, Russia, Japan and elsewhere are suffering tremendous losses. The NYTimes paints a linkbait-worthy, interactive picture of the financial industries collapse. If you're anything like me, this news brings on some anxiety and fear - neither of which a...
For the first time in a while I was let out of the office and sent to a Sales meeting. For as long as we have been running the company the typical stereotypes of coder vs salesman have been applied to Will. Taken to extremes people think that I can't string a sentence together and Will doesn't know how to turn a computer on. At sales meetings Will likes to talk in terms of the foll...
Tonight, I received an email with a familiar question, asking why the top companies providing SEO consulting and development services rarely ever provide guarantees (and virtually never use it as a marketing tactic). To this, there are three solid reasons that compel SEOmoz internally as well as the many companies we work with/...
Another business-focussed post from me today (with a little SEO at the end). I was answering a Q&A the other day in a kind of tag-team formation with Rand when I realised that some of my thinking would make a good blog post. The question was about how to grow a new agency and asked whether we thought that contacting site owners and pointing out flaws / suggesting improvements was a good way to win new business. Rand and I sung with one voice to say (paraphrased) that we weren't big fans of the cold approach and that networking (both online and offline) was one of the keys to success. I wanted to elaborate on that a little bit.
Not many people know that I actually attended the University of Washington in Seattle and worked, briefly, towards a degree in finance, thinking that I might join the ranks of Wall Street. It was a long time ago (in web years), and I dropped out of the program two classes away from graduation to pursue the company that would become SEOmoz full time (in 2001). Before I did, though, I met a ...
Owning a domain name is much like owning land. On top of that land you can build something valuable (or something you want to use yourself), you can sell the land on to someone else (with or without construction) and it has an address. Of course, this applies more to generic domains.