I’m sure that we’re all still in the morning stage after losing our beloved ThreadWatch, although there’s a new site in town – and I’m not just on the rebound!
Threadwatcher.com is a sparky new SEM/internet news portal launched by Earl Grey (Syndk8), which takes a lot of influences from Threadwatch and in my personal opinion, many from The Register as well. Now apart from SearchEngineWatch (like our new look?), Threadwatch and The Register were/are my top must-visits of the day. Combining them into one juicy SEO/internet geekfest is just, well… a dream come true. It’s not the busiest site in the world in terms of visitors, stories or comments at the moment, although it’s down to us as an industry to change that.
My only concerns:
- Keeping content fresh and interesting requires a big commitment from the editors.
- Although Threadwatch has always been “edgy”, Syndk8 is way beyond that. Threadwatcher.com may not need to appeal to the mainstream SEM industry, but at least has to be inviting to the typical ThreadWatch reader. Anyone who has read Syndk8 knows what the language and tone is like (which is fine for its audience), but I don’t think that such a writing style will go down well with Threadwatcher’s target audience.
- No geeky gadget section! I’ll make the site my browser homepage if a gadget tab is added
Anyway, take a look, register your username on the site and have a browse around. I think you’ll grow to like it and I look forward to seeing how it develops.
My New Years resolution for 2007 was to become a published author, with the thought of writing an SEO book which tackles search from the corporate and in-house point of view. This idea fell by the wayside when several friends in the industry also announced similar intentions (although with different angles and subjects).
The book which I was planning would not just cover the basic Best Practice areas, but also tackle issues such as Black Hat SEO and dealing with agency bullshit. I’ve worked with some of the biggest brands on the web, and really think that there’s still a lot to be learnt when dealing with corporate websites.
Would you read such a book, and should I follow my ambitions?
It looks like that crafty Naylor guy has asked his blog readership to vote for him on the “Nicest Bloke In SEO” poll. I’m really lagging behind, which is not nice. If you’re one of the 5 people who read my ramblings here, vote for me now and you could win a date with The Lisa*!
* Lisa doesn’t know yet, although I’m sure she’ll be OK with me using her in this fashion
I picked the worst possible time to go on holiday, although my mate Dug and I have been planning a roadtrip around Ireland for a long time now and we’ve already put the date back twice. So we packed our bags and headed to Heathrow for a quick flight over to Dublin and an 11 day adventure. Oh, and to add to things, I resigned from PartyGaming on the day that my vacation began (to move into full-time SEO Consulting)! With the plan being to stick to the rural roads and try to stay away from popular tourist traps, getting internet access was not as easy as first imagined (there weren’t even any WiFi points to leach off!). I therefore had little time to keep up with industry news, which was actually quite daunting for a person such as myself. It seems that Jane is in the same situation as I was – don’t do it Jane!
The holiday was superb though; meeting the Kerry clan…
Re-creating the cover of one of my favourite books… can you guess what it is yet?
And drinking the black stuff of course!
While I was away, ThreadWatch closed its doors, which was not good at all. Although Aaron announced his intentions before my holiday, I was sure that a) It wasn’t just a link bait idea and b) someone would buy the rights and keep things flowing. So when I got home and discovered a page of stale news, I was mortified. If you’re wondering, I heard that Dave Pasternack and Jason Calcanis were to blame for the site closing – threatening to use clickbots on Aaron’s PPC campaigns and write a negative bio about him on Maholo 
.
I thought that JasonD planned to create a Threadwatch2 at w3wisdom.com, although the site seems to have disappeared.
The big chief also started a Threadwatch/Digg style extravaganza called Sphinn which I hadn’t spotted before. It allows you to submit new search industry stories like on Threadwatch and vote for other people’s stories like on Digg. I like how extensive the profile pages are, with lots of room to pimp out your blogs and contact details. I’m actually very keen on the site so far, which is very unusual for the grumpy old bastard that I am. Well done big chief, and I look forward to spamming (sorry, SMO’ing) it soon If you haven’t check it out yet, get in their fast before I hold all your usernames to ransom!
The SEO Chicks also raced ahead of us Blokes with a plethora of almost respectable articles, gaining some cred from Stuntdubl among others. I accept some of the responsibility for SEO-Blokes.com not keeping up with our female fatales, so I’ll try to start blogging again soon.
I don’t think that anything else major happened, not that I can mention here anyway. Maybe I’ve missed something over the last 2 weeks?
It will be hard for me to go without internet access for that long again, hopefully I’ll get a Blackberry soon for my email and RSS fix.
… you launch a new blog with a post like this: Time For A Valid Opinion
Oh well, I’ll just sit back and watch the flaming begin
PS. Stick the RSS Feed in your aggregator, or I’ll <edit>someone scary</edit> will come and beat you up
Adam Lasnik joked during lunch at SMX and at the SEOmoz party that I was “that guy who hates Google”. Maybe some of my blog posts such as “Hacking Your Way To Number One” gave him that impression, although I do truly love Google. It’s my default search engine of choice, my email provider, my calendar organiser and my income source. Sure, I’ve said lots of negative things towards the Big G, although correcting these issues will only make the company stronger.
I also cannot think of one person I dislike at Google; my comments about Matt Cutts’ views on paid links were aimed at challenging Google’s policies and plans on this matter – not challenging Matt on a personal level. I don’t really speak to Matt much at conferences as he’s usually busy in big crowds of star-struck newbies, although I’ve had a few drinks with Brian White, Vanessa Fox and Amanda Camp before and think they’re top notch. I’ve also seen a glimpse of the future and was very impressed after chatting with Google Webmaster Central intern, errr… Red Googler (sorry that I can’t remember your name despite you telling me several hundred times).
So in summary, please don’t hate me just because I’m evil. Anyway, more tips and tricks on how to spam and hack Google coming soon
I’m over in Seattle this week for Danny’s first SMX conference event. We kicked off last night at the Microsoft pre-conference party, which seemed to have more Googlers present than MSN Borgs. It turns out that Vanessa wasn’t joking about always registering domains on her Blackberry, buying seobreasts.com at the party after Danny suggested it as an alternative to Lisa’s SEO Chicks idea (would be funny if she stuck an MFA site on it). I’m sitting in a session right now about duplicate content, it’s a little disappointing that the content being presented is just as basic as found at SES conferences. It’s great stuff for beginners but not exactly worthy of the “Advanced†title. I suppose it’s the age old problem of advanced techniques being too valuable to just give away. The duplicate content panel is made up of all the engines as well, and lets face it – they hesitate and circumvent even the simplest of questions at all the search events. I’ve put some photo’s up on Flickr if you’re unable to make this event or want to see if you got into one of my pics. Not sure who’s blogging the sessions, I’m guessing that Barry and Tamar will be over at Search Engine Roundtable.
UPDATE: I’ve just come out of a “SEO, meet SMM” session and it was actually very good. The majority of it was the usual Social Marketing basics although I felt that Rand and Stuntdubl did well at expanding things a bit more and offered some excellent tips. More “Advanced” 
My friend and ex-workmate, Anita Chaperon (PPC Queen), has just launched her long awaited (by me anyway) website called “reviewlicious“. After deciding to leave our SEO Mafia group, Anita kept tight lipped about her new venture – even after we sent the boys round.
Opening it’s doors earlier today, the site takes a new spin on the previously stagnant world of “squeeze page” internet marketing. With “Get Rich Quick” SEM and Affiliate e-books getting quite a grilling recently on forums and blogs, reviewlicious tries to level the playing field by introducing Social Media style ratings and reviews for online marketing products and services. Despite only just getting started, the site already features reviews for products ranging Aaron Wall’s SEO Book to keyword research service WordTracker.
An interesting section will be the Case Studies area, which currently appears to be aimed at offering “How To” guides. I’d personally like to see this develop into showing how real people used a product/service listed in the Reviews section and how/if it helped them.
Go check out the site and come back regularly, as I see this site growing in information and features very rapidly.
Oh, and talking about new sites – Lisa Ditlefsen has also launched a new blog at SEO-Chicks.com with a growing list of female co-bloggers. If you think I’m evil, wait until you see this lot at work.
A while ago, Ekky and I coined the term Retro SEO after finding several high profile websites using SEO techniques previously confined to the history books.
I’m pleased to announce that #3 search engine MSN has joined this prestigious club with their UK loans page. The Retro SEO judges especially liked the use of keyword spamming in the page title with: “Loans | Loan | Car loan | Consolidation loan”. We were also delighted to find a keyword list at the bottom of the page and some beautiful optimisation for “Compare … Loans”. This latest attempt at Non-Best Practice SEO comes after their “Search And Win” campaign last year which used hidden text and keyword stuffing on the landing page.
Sadly this probably would actually benefit you if optimising for MSN search results.
Certificate and membership card is in the post lads
It was officially announced yesterday that Elisabeth plans to step down from her role as Editor at Search Engine Watch on Friday, to concentrate on her new career in the travel sector. I couldn’t believe it when I was first told over the phone, although the reasons for her departure became clear to me when I found out about the fantastic oppurtunity ahead of her. I’ve had the honour of sitting on SES conference panels, which Elis has moderated, and the passion and knowledge she has shown for the travel vertical is unequivocal. There’s no doubt that Zonder will be a big hit with her on-board to manage their online marketing.
Elis was the person who gave me the oppurtunity to moderate on SEW, she also provided the solid backbone from which the forum grew and that the moderators took inspiration from. Her senior role at a promising start-up will no doubt require a lot of time and work, although I have been told that she will still be hanging out in the forums when she can – just not so prominently.
After chatting with Rory (MD at Incisive) and Rebecca (Editor-in-Chief of SEW/ClickZ), I was thrilled to be offered the chance manage the Search Engine Watch forums after Elisabeth’s departure. As Elis said, the forum is her baby, and I really appreciate that she is entrusting it to me.
I officially begin my role as SEW Forums Editor on Monday and am currently building a list of ideas for how the forums could evolve. Hopefully my close proximity to Incisive Media’s headquarters in London will aid in progressing the development of the site. If you’ve got idea’s of your own for the forum, I’d love to hear your suggestions
Oh, and you know where to go when looking for vacation rentals now, don’t you!