SEOBy.ORG - Informal Organization for Search Engine Industry Professionals

SEO News Items - July 2004

Danny Sullivan Speaks On SEMPO SNAFU
Even as early as August 2003, SEMPO's future looked promising in a growing industry. Its board of directors, chosen by Barbara Coll included Fredrick Marckini, Brett Tabke of Webmasterworld and Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch. [Oops, who turned on the lights...?]

New Service Optimizes the Search Engine Optimization Industry
SEO Group, Inc. has launched SEOPartner.com, a first-of-its-kind service that makes it easy for clients – businesses of any size – to select the right search engine marketing service provider for their needs. [We're very excited about this news! We are hoping that we can partner with them to provide this service to our members. CN]

Who needs SEMPO?
Search marketing does need an industry association. But who exactly needs SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organisation formed in August last year, asks Mike Grehan. [ I asked this myself when I saw the inflated fees that SEMPO demanded which seemed to be designed to keep out the little guys. Heck, this is why I started SEOBy.org. Now it seems that I may have been wrong and the fees had another purpose.... CN]

Early Days of Online Marketing
Hattiesburg, MS (PRWEB) July 15, 2004 -- Today we bring you the 4th in a series of interviews conducted by Robin's business partner John Alexander, who has been looking up some of Robin's very earliest online students and asking them about their recollections of what it was like building their SEO skills way back in 1998 and chatting about what things were like in the SEO industry back then compared to now. [Yawn... CN]

Danny Sullivan Speaks on SEMPO Controversy

by Brittany Thompson
From WebProWorld July 30th, 2004
Last year's SES San Jose marked the launch of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, commonly known as SEMPO. Now, with the one-year anniversary rapidly approaching and the 2004 San Jose conference just days away, critics are stirring up controversy. In a recent article, Michael Grehan dared to criticize the organization. "Who needs SEMPO?" the Smart Interactive CEO asks.

Even as early as August 2003, SEMPO's future looked promising in a growing industry. Its board of directors, chosen by Barbara Coll of Webmama.com, included Fredrick Marckini, Brett Tabke of Webmasterworld and Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch.

Although the board is undeniably impressive, Grehan has created quite a scandal. For instance, "SEMPO has approved a $1,500 per week stipend to Ms Coll," Grehan reported. "This amounts to a salary of $78,000, to fund a part time effort from someone who already has a full time job running a SEM business." He also brought up the point that the board was self-appointed, rather than elected by members.

"Rustybrick" said on Webmasterworld that as a member of SEMPO's education committee, he was completely unaware of Coll's salary. The information was "shocking" to him, especially as Barbara Coll herself has stated that SEMPO's Board of Directors are unpaid volunteers.

After Grehan said the board members should resign and accused SEMPO of being "unconstitutional" on Jill Whalen's forum, Danny Sullivan gave a public response:

"Barbara's stipend was approved on May 15 and she began drawing it on that date. She began taking it because she also assumed a second hat, that of acting executive director, in addition to her role as president."

Danny insists however that there were already plans to announce this information at this coming Monday's SEMPO meeting before Grehan ever wrote the article.

While "things do change," Danny believes the important issue is not in Coll's stipend but in the fact that SEMPO members were unaware of the change. "I would guess that the founding documents for SEMPO give the board members the right to do this. But not keeping the members informed of major actions like this, yep, that's a failure."

But is this issue deserving of its hype? One Search Engine Watch member said, "I do not know Ms.Coll at all, but if that's a SEMPO
business decision who are we to make controversy out of it? Obviously Ms.Coll is very qualified for the position. Whether she has another full time income is irrelevant..."

Jeremy Goodrich believes Coll deserves payment for her SEMPO work. "I happen to know [some board members] and in my honest opinion they should be getting some serious money since they hopped on board and in many ways legitimized the whole thing."

"Personally, I would have no problem at all with paying a good salary to a professional executive in the field," Grehan said in response to such statements. "My problem is with the way that this motion to grant a sizeable stipend was carried out behind closed doors (as seems to be the way with SEMPO) and with no consultation with the membership at any level."

Danny is in favor for elections of future board members, more group focus and strengthening the level of communication between the members and the board. He said SEMPO plans to begin the search for a new executive director to hopefully be elected by December, so that Coll can step down from her current position and only act as chair of the board.

Other items of information that will be discussed, Danny says, include the posting of financials on the member website, current and upcoming budgets, income, accomplishments and shortcomings, an upcoming SEM advertising campaign and a current research project.

"There appear to be 10 people criticizing SEMPO for every one defending them," Andy Beal pointed out. "No one wants to see SEMPO go down the toilet, but they do want to see reform and an organization that truly represents EVERYONE in the SEM industry, not just a select few."

New Service Optimizes the Search Engine Optimization Industry

SEO Group, Inc. has launched a new web-based service, available through SEOPartner.com. It is a virtual marketplace for search engine marketing services, which helps businesses eliminate the risks in contracting service providers. With search engine marketing and advertising poised to become a mainstream marketing avenue, SEO Partner, available through www.SEOPartner.com, is the first to streamline the market and establish efficient lines of contact between client businesses and search engine optimization (SEO) service firms.

Using SEOPartner.com, clients can zero in on the right service provider for their requirement from a range of SEO specialists who compete for their projects. Clients can conduct interviews using the web site’s virtual offices to screen candidates from a virtually unlimited talent pool. SEO Partner also provides an escrow mechanism to help clients control payments until satisfactory delivery of their work.

Bourne, MA; July 12, 2004: SEO Group, Inc. has launched SEOPartner.com, a first-of-its-kind service that makes it easy for clients – businesses of any size – to select the right search engine marketing service provider for their needs.

SEO Partner, available through www.SEOPartner.com, is the first service to bring order to the booming – but chaotic – market for search engine marketing services. “SEO Partner helps businesses eliminate the risks associated with dealing directly with search engine optimization (SEO) firms, thus improving efficiency and monetary savings,” says Mr. Mike Small, Director of Technology Development at SEO Group, Inc. “The service will hugely benefit Webmasters, marketing personnel and small businesses in driving up visitors to their web sites,” he adds.

SEO is the process of optimizing a web site’s design and content in order to make it appear higher on results of search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. With growing awareness about how search engines can be a highly efficient source of leads, thousands of companies, big and small, are eager to exploit the opportunity. However, they often run into a roadblock when it comes to selecting the right service provider for vital, and often, complex tasks like SEO. There are hundreds of companies that claim expertise in SEO and there is a wide range in the fees they charge.

Enhancing choice

SEO Partner, as a neutral third party, enables a “reverse auction” process under which the SEO firms bid for projects posted on the web site. “This gives clients a wide, virtually limitless, talent pool of specialists to choose from,” Mr. Small says.

Clients can read unbiased reviews and ratings of the SEO specialists by previous clients. They can then conduct interviews with the service providers via the SEOPartner.com virtual office environment. “Our carefully thought out process aims at ensuring that clients are well informed when making their selection,” Mr. Small says.

Value-added services

SEO Partner’s escrow account for payments eliminates monetary risk for clients. Under this system, SEO Partner transfers funds to service providers only after clients are satisfied with the results of their work.

SEO Partner also provides clients with an easy to use online project management tool called “Milestone Marker,” using which they can track the progress of their projects. In the unlikely event of a dispute or discrepancy, SEO Partner’s qualified associates will provide neutral third-party arbitration services to resolve the issue.

With search engine marketing and advertising poised to become a mainstream marketing avenue, SEOPartner.com is poised to become the leading service that streamlines the market and establishes efficient lines of contact between client businesses and SEO firms.

About SEO Partner

SEO Partner is a subsidiary of SEO Group, Inc. Founded in 2002, SEO Group, Inc. is a leader in developing innovative technology and procedures for serving clients requiring search engine optimization services. SEO Group, Inc. worked closely with WorldTech Solutions, LLC to develop the SEO Partner technology.

Who needs SEMPO?

27/July/2004
Search marketing does need an industry association. But who exactly needs SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organisation formed in August last year, asks Mike Grehan

Last year, I attended the "Rah-Rah" meeting which launched SEMPO at SES San Jose. I have to declare that, I have friends and colleagues who are either on the board of directors, or in some way involved with the organisation. But I didn't join.

I sat back and watched, to see exactly what would make this one different to any of the other ideas for an organisation I'd seen bandied around before it.

For sure, this one has some industry "movers and shakers" on the board of directors, including the mighty Brett Tabke, industry founding father Fredrick Marckini and the benefit of veritable Guru Danny Sullivan, currently sitting on the sidelines in an advisory capacity. But the first question I was asked about the great and good involved, by the people required to shell out that night (the future members) was: "How did they get there?" People wanted to know how the board of directors was voted in? Who chose them? Well, of course, in the first instance, Barbara Coll chose them. After all, SEMPO is her brainchild.

Barbara Coll (AKA Webmama.com), for those who are not aware, is a regular conference speaker on the subject of search engine marketing and runs her own SEM practice. And it is clear that the board of directors of SEMPO is a SEM powerhouse. Enough to get a good spread of column inches throughout the trade press. And they achieved just that. But since that launch...

Well since that launch, the biggest news is that they have appointed a new member to the board. However, there appeared to be no communication of this to the membership before they read about it in the press.

Furthermore, SEMPO has approved a $1,500 per week stipend to Ms Coll. This amounts to a salary of $78,000, to fund a part time effort from someone who already has a full time job running a SEM business. Some might ask whether this attractive salary such could have been used to bring on board an executive experienced in building trade associations.

I've spoken with Barbara Coll regarding SEMPO moving out of the US and into other geographical territories. The UK being of prime interest to me, of course. I have to say I was bemused to discover that, the recently appointed member of the board, Mauro Lupi as Chairman of SEMPO Europe, will "coordinate the local activities of SEMPO in Europe" (albeit that he is based in San Francisco), along with seven search engine marketing executives who were appointed as members of the European committee.

These include Sylvain Bellaïche, Massimo Burgio, David Degrelle, Marco Loguercio - Sems Srl, Morten Nüchel, Christian Petersen, Tim Ringer. In other words, two from France, two from Italy, one from Denmark and one from Germany. Once again, does this not beg the question: Who voted for the European committee?

There appears at this stage to be no appointment of a board member for the UK. This, despite the fact that the UK is the second largest market outside the US.

SEMPO has suggested that the UK may like to form its own committee and hand it over to them. But there has been no mention of a position on the board for the chair of that committee as is the case with the European set up. So, why is the UK so second-rate to this organisation that we have to take a lead from Italy? I have no problems with Italians, but they are a much smaller market than the UK.

I was invited by Barbara Coll to speak at the SEMPO meeting at SES London and it seemed essential to her that I should, in fact, be a member of the organisation first.

So, a few months ago, I succumbed and joined at the lowest level for $299.

After parting with my cash I waited patiently for my welcome pack and my newsletter and frequent pinging about events and happening stuff and... Not a sausage.

There has been much dialogue in the industry forums about what it is that SEMPO actually does and what the benefits of the organisation are.

See here for instance.

Even though I personally know members of the board, I really don't think that they have fully set out their stall to the members, to give us an opportunity to see what they are really trying to achieve. Any other trade association would have planning documents prepared and available and the board prepared to be judged on the results of those objectives.

SEMPO needs to prove that there is value to the subscription. Networking events are of value, but no single justification for paying a membership to join an association. SES itself is probably the biggest networking event for our industry on the planet anyway.

And why be an association with no teeth? The subscription needs to be seen as an investment: not an overhead. Members need to be convinced of this one vital thing: that the association is providing the member company with "bottom-line" help.

If, as has been promoted, SEMPO is purely a marketing organisation, then why do I not see those marketing messages in conventional offline publications? I see a great presence from SEMPO at SES but little advertising and promotion in other industry sectors.

Shouldn't the SEMPO presence be much larger at an offline direct marketing show, or in joint venture with other organisations such as the American Association of Advertising Agencies or The Chartered Institute of Marketing?

There has been mention of SEMPO using membership monies to conduct primary research into the market. Once again, figures and stats are nice to have access to, but do they justify the cost of membership?

More to the point, I've just recently helped a research company called Vividence, in California, to package up the results of their new search engine study. The white paper will be available soon and the data is superb. With such good secondary data available, why does SEMPO feel it's necessary to conduct very expensive primary research? Is this not a "reinventing the wheel" exercise?

The question of "reputation" continues to hound our industry. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch recently likened our industry to that of PR firms and noted that there was no official body to govern standards in that sector. That's not exactly true. The PR sector does have the Institute of Public Relations, which although does not impose standards on firms, it does impose a code of practice on all its members. And its members are not firms, they're individuals. At least there, much like the Chartered Institute of Marketing, individuals are accepted on vocational experience at the lower end and fully accredited by studying for a recognised diploma at the higher end. There is much more collaboration with academia to provide courses leading to qualification.

Perhaps the model we're looking at for representation is wrong. Forget the whole issue of "black hat vs white hat" because that's a situation which search engines have to deal with themselves. They are the ones who must develop their technology to defeat the issue. And certainly, personalisation will go a long way to contributing to that. To go back to the PR analogy for a moment. I know for a fact that, in my days in PR if I had fed bullshit to a journalist I had a relationship with - once discovered he would never, never deal with me again. And in a similar way search engines currently try to do the same with spammers.

Here's a "finger in the air" figure, but let's take a guess at the average size of a search marketing firm and about 80% will be "one man band" or "micro-firm" perhaps? So why don't we concentrate on a body which recognises individuals as opposed to firms? Individuals who are accredited in some way so that they can run their own small practice, or use that qualification as a major factor to be considered when applying for a job with a larger firm.

Maybe we need to think about the development of qualified people in the industry and not just the further development and recognition of organisations.

In August it will be one year since SEMPO was formed. I'm sure there is much back-slapping and cork-popping on the SEMPO agenda for the anniversary at SES San Jose. However, when that is over, I have a suggestion that I'd like to put to the entire board: Why don't you honourably take the plaudits for your excellent work in forming a steering group (which you have been) to gain the first wave of membership, and then resign your positions?

That way, the membership will get the opportunity it certainly deserves, to decide who should be responsible for taking the association (that it pays for) to the next phase of development and direction with a democratic vote.

Mike Grehan is CEO of search marketing solutions firm, Smart Interactive

http://www.smart-interactive.co.uk

And author - Search Engine marketing: The essential best practice guide.

http://www.search-engine-book.co.uk

From www.netimperative.com

John Alexander Chats with Search Engine Expert and Author Susan O'Neil About the Early Days of Online Marketing

Robin Nobles was the very first person to develop a structured series of comprehensive courses and lessons which are recognized and approved by the US educational system for training people in search engine marketing skills. Robin Nobles celebrates her 6th year in the online Web training business with her ever popular SEO certification courses at http://www.onlinewebtraining.com .

Hattiesburg, MS (PRWEB) July 15, 2004 -- Today we bring you the 4th in a series of interviews conducted by Robin's business partner John Alexander, who has been looking up some of Robin's very earliest online students and asking them about their recollections of what it was like building their SEO skills way back in 1998 and chatting about what things were like in the SEO industry back then compared to now.

Today, John Alexander started the interview by welcoming his special guest...

John Alexander: "Welcome Susan O'Neil, I'd really like to thank you for taking the time to share with us today. Susan, you had some background in marketing before you started into the search engine marketing industry. Could you tell us a little about your background and how you first got thinking about search engine marketing?"

Susan O'Neil: "I began my career in marketing in 1975 as Director of Public Relations with a symphony orchestra. From there I went to Wall Street where I was National Advertising Manager for Paine Webber. When I moved to New Hampshire, I opened a public relations agency, which is where I first got involved with the Internet when a client company launched an e-mail service."

John Alexander: "Could you take us back and share some memories of the early days? How did you first find Robin Nobles online courses in the beginning?"

Susan O'Neil: "I was helping a few of my PR clients with text for their websites and began experimenting with Meta tags and content alterations. The more I learned about the power of optimization, the more I realized that I didn't know it all. That's when I searched for an online SEO course and found Robin Nobles. Her expertise and her passion for her work inspired me then and it still inspires me now."

John Alexander: "That's very nice and I know exactly what you mean. Could you tell us how long after your initial training was it, before you began realizing your true SEO skills and begin helping people with their Web visibility challenges?"

Susan O'Neil: "I had a good deal of early success back them by just applying the basics that I'd picked up through trial and error. This was easy to do in the mid to late 90's. However, once I finished Robin's course in 1998, I was able to implement a more aggressive program that could better serve the most competitive types of e-commerce sites. Also, through Robin and her students, I found a forum that allowed me to share and learn from peers -- so important in the then-emerging industry. Previous to that, doing SEO was a pretty lonely job since few realized this field of marketing even existed."

John Alexander: "That is very interesting to see how far this goes back. Robin's vision for a forum has always been to create an ideal place where people can share information safely together and she has always been so good at bringing the very best talents out in people.

Note: I should mention just for our readers sake, that her newest efforts in this regard just recently has been to fashion an excellent networking community called the World Resource Center at http://www.sew-wrc.com."

John Alexander: "Susan, I was reading a copy of your book which you co-authored with Robin Nobles and noted that in the preface, it says that you two actually wrote "Maximize Web site Traffic" without ever actually meeting in person. Can you tell us how this came about?"

Susan O'Neil: "As I helped more and more of my PR clients move onto the Web through optimized websites, I realized that there was a need for a corporate, comprehensive approach to providing professional SEO services to America's companies. I decided to create such a company and, in 1998, closed my PR agency and launched @Web Site Publicity. In order to give my new company quick credibility and exposure, I decided to write a book on SEO - a "how to" book. Knowing how time-consuming the writing would be, I asked Robin to share the endeavor with me."

John Alexander: "And this was the beginning of the book?"

Susan O'Neil: "Yes, she agreed to the idea, so we divvied up the chapters and started writing. We didn't meet until it was time to do the final edit. Robin flew up from Mississippi to a ski chalet in Vermont where we typed and talked non-stop for a week. Robin brought a great depth of specific SEO experience which mixed beautifully with my years of marketing experience and the result was a book that, outdated as it is, still brings us fan mail!"

John Alexander: "That is very cool! Now as you know, last month just as of June 29, 2004 Robin Nobles has been celebrating her sixth year in the SEO Training industry with her online (www.onlinewebtraining.com) instructional courses in search engine optimization. Looking back to the early days when you first decided to study search engine marketing, can you describe what your SEO skillset has meant to you personally? How much have these skills meant to you?

Susan O'Neil: "Because of my SEO skills and my marketing expertise, I and my staff have been able to help hundreds of small to large businesses succeed on the Internet. This remains exciting and gratifying. Our clients were also better able to ride out the dot.com bust because our approach to providing SEO services has been to focus on the long term "health" of a website, which means building quality content continuously. Robin in her teaching and, together, in our book - we've never strayed from the truism that "content is king" and that continues to serve my clients well."

John Alexander: "Can you tell our readers about one of your earliest SEO success stories and what it felt like the first time you made a real difference to someone's business online?"

Susan O'Neil: "A longtime PR client of mine is a publisher of fine nonfiction for children. This company was early in recognizing the power of the Internet and so invested in a delightful, informative website that also offered subscriptions to their magazines. However, after spending the money to build the website, they didn't get any visitors. I liken it to giving birth after a long labor to a beautiful new baby that no one comes to admire. Aware of their concerns, I starting tweaking tags, cleaning up code, and adding content and their site began to take off. That early first client has remained with my company all these years and has been generous in their recommending of us to others as they continue to grow their online business."

John Alexander: "What word of wisdom or advice do you have for any of our readers that might be considering building a new career in search engine marketing these days?"

Susan O'Neil: "I don't think you can be in marketing today without at least an understanding of search marketing concepts, even if you don't build the code and write the content. As this "new" science of SEO has become not only universally accepted but consistently praised for its cost-effective strategies, there will continue to be opportunities for people who can apply consistent, aggressive, yet ethical strategies for growing online success, both in-house for e-commerce companies and with SEO/SEM agencies like mine. In fact, my agency is growing still and when I hire someone who may have a great marketing background but be new to SEO, I have them start their learning curve with one of Robin's courses because no one can lay out the ground work better."

John Alexander: "How nicely spoken, Susan."

Susan O'Neil: "The other word of advice I have is an old one: don't believe everything you read. SEO newsletters and forums are great starting points and can be entertaining, but the people with the best information don't go giving it away. Whatever you hear or read, never apply a strategy to a client's site without thoroughly testing it first extensively. We developed our own E-Commerce Lab for just this purpose."

John Alexander: "Finally in closing, I'll ask if you have any other favourite online resources you would care to mention for the benefit of our readers?

Susan O'Neil: "As my company has grown, my responsibilities have shifted from trying to discern the optimum number of words on a Google-friendly page or the best marketing spin in a title tag, to focusing on the bigger picture, so I'm not a good one to recommend the best SEO reading today. Instead, as I lead my team into our 7th year of business, I'm reading the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and the UK's Financial Times, always trying to look beyond the bend - to try to see where business in general is going and the Internet specifically. To keep our clients ahead of their competition, we need to keep ahead of ours.

John Alexander: "That is so very true. Well, I want to thank you again so much Susan O'Neil, for taking time today to share some of your rememberances of the early days of search engine marketing and telling us how you first got in to the business. It has been fascinating to speaking to you and I'll just take this opportunity wish you the very greatest of ongoing success in the future."

This interview has been brought to you courtesy of John Alexander, Co-director of Training and Education at Search Engine Workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com) and Online Web Training (http://www.onlinewebtraining.com).

For other articles and early interviews please visit: http://www.searchengineworkshops.com/articles.html

About Susan O'Neil:
President and CEO of http://www.Websitepublicity.com
Susan J. O'Neil, has been branded an industry pioneer by About.com and continues as a leader in search engine marketing, presenting at major conferences and authoring white papers. The book she co-authored with Robin Nobles, Maximize Web Site Traffic, was one of the first guidebooks to successful Search Engine Optimization. Susan was the recipient of New Hampshire's 2003 Business Excellence Award.

Search Engine Watch's Chris Sherman Shares Views on Search Industry

July 15, 2004
Over the next few days, in celebration of SEL's 1st birthday, we're going to publish a series on the search engine industry. We asked some of the most noted search engine experts to give theirs answers to two questions:

Q1. What search engine industry development/announcement has surprised you the most in the past 12 months?

Q2. What do you think will be the most significant development in the next 12 months?

Today, we feature the responses from Search Engine Watch's assistant editor and "nice-guy" of search, Chris Sherman.

Q1. What search engine industry development/announcement has surprised you the most in the past 12 months?

Yahoo's abandonment of the AltaVista, AlltheWeb and Inktomi technologies, replacing them with the new Yahoo Search Technology platform. In hindsight, this development made perfect sense, given the amount of time it took them to roll out the new system after the acquisitions. It also made sense for them to develop a new search engine from scratch, rather than bolting together older technologies, to better compete with Google.

Q2. What do you think will be the most significant development in the next 12 months?

I think we're going to see major improvements in three areas from the "big three" over the next year: Personalization, local search, and true (finally) natural language search capabilities. We've already seen the first moves in all three of these areas, but I think we're in for some dramatic improvements, and I'm really looking forward to watching the next 12 months unfold. I'm far less optimistic about another trend that's been hyped a lot lately: integrated desktop/web search.

Despite the hoopla, this isn't new, and just about everyone that's tried it has failed to make it work (Enfish, Kenjin, AltaVista, Inktomi... the list goes on and on). Blending web search (unstructured data) with desktop search (semi-structured and structured data) is like mixing oil and water. About the only company I've seen that's close to doing it properly is FAST, but that's on an enterprise level, not on a personal computer level. Color me skeptical.

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