Posted by MikeK@DanconiaMedia

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

It’s been said here before: Press releases are much less powerful than they used to be for SEO purposes. While churning out news releases and submitting them to free sites may not do much, the medium can actually be more powerful than ever if used right. Convincing a single reporter or high-profile blogger to pick up your news is infinitely more beneficial than posting worthless releases all over the place and Digg’ing and StumbleUpon’ing them with your multiple accounts.

I have a somewhat unique perspective about news releases. Not too long ago, I worked full-time as a newspaper reporter, and my inbox was regularly inundated with press releases. Some of them caught my attention and were turned into lengthy stories. Others, however, failed to captivate me or my peers and, as a result, went nowhere.

Here are some tips on how to craft your releases in a way that increases the odds of them getting noticed by the media:

Get to the point. Make it clear from the get-go what your release is about. Don’t try to be cute. I used to get releases all the time from PR people who buried the news or tried to get creative with their writing. Sometimes, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what some releases were even about. If you’re looking for a creative outlet, press release writing is not the avenue. Try writing a short story.

At least pretend you’re objective. Obviously, you have a vested interest in what you’re writing about, but it’s still important to craft your releases like down-the-middle news stories. Avoid unnecessary adjectives; most adjectives are unneeded. You don’t want your release to read like an advertisement. Pick out the newsiest element and concentrate on that.

Speak English. I see releases all the time that are stuffed with industry jargon that most people do not understand. Don’t assume that what you’re writing about is a familiar subject for the people who’ll read your release. Dumb it down. Assume your release will be read by the densest guy in the room.

Send it out manually. Instead of just dumping your releases into submission sites and hoping someone important notices, email it yourself to media outlets and bloggers you think might be interested in it. If you’re publicizing a new product, send your release to newspapers in the company’s area. If you can, find out which reporters cover the relevant beat and send it to them directly; that usually only takes a phone call.

Have good timing. If you’re looking for coverage, sending your release out on Election Day or after hours on a Friday is goofy. Those are good times to release bad news you’re obligated to report – any White House spokesman will tell you that – but it’ll do you no good unless your story is wildly sensational. News outlets are typically more desperate for copy during the summer months and around holidays.

Act like a human. Interactivevoices’ post about getting a link from CNN.com – the only PR10 news site – illustrated this perfectly. There’s no harm in picking up the phone and calling reporters directly to see if they’re interested in your story. For all you know, the only thing preventing your news from being published is an over-finicky spam filter.

Don’t beg. When I was working as a reporter, I didn’t realize why some sources were so hellbent on me including links in my stories. Now I know. If your link is relevant to the story, the reporter will probably include it. If not, you’re still getting good publicity.

Of course, all of this will only help if you actually have something worthwhile to say. If you think there’s nothing interesting to say about your enterprise, you’re probably wrong. You just need to think long and hard to figure out what it is.

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This post was written by Aditya Mahesh, founder of AMBeat.com, a complete resource for entrepreneurs complete with advice articles, start-up profiles, interviews, news analysis, and more.

Common wisdom suggests that academics are always chief in importance. Students, at least those here in the United States, are told time and time again that extra-curricular activities, whether it is a sports team or clubs, always come after academics. Student entrepreneurs and bloggers have a tendency not to follow this rule of thought.

Throughout my high school and college experiences, I have always been more dedicated to and more passionate about my business and my blogs than I have my schoolwork. I was recently going through my Algebra notebook from 11th grade and noticed that for every page of Math notes were three pages of business ideas, future blog posts, marketing strategies, etc. Still, while I always placed more emphasis on my business, I was always able to balance my work with my academics, allowing me to excel in both.

For those of you who are not students, the information in this post is still applicable for balancing a blog/work balance of you blog part-time and work at another job or a blog/life balance if you are a full time blogger.

The key to managing my business work and my school work is time management and planning ahead. It is absolutely vital that you do not procrastinate, because all procrastination does is lead to a great increase in personal stress and a great decrease in work output quality.

Throughout the course of my high school education and now in college, I maintain two separate calendars, one for school work and one for business. In my school work calendar I plot out all assignments that have been assigned and when they are due. Typically, I have as much as three weeks lead time for major papers and projects and know of testing dates at the beginning of the semester. Once I have established my calendar, I plan out my time so that I have a final product completed, whether it is an edited version of my essay or completely developed and analyzed study guide for a midterm, one week in advance. This way, I can ensure that all assignments will be completed in time and that I will not be scrambling at the last minute to get everything done. There are no surprises. It also leaves me a week to take my paper to my professor for additional editing or time to review for a test instead of cramming, allowing me to ensure that I excel in my academic work.

Sticking to this schedule is by no means easy. It requires hard work and dedication amidst all the distractions there are in the life of a student, especially in college dorm life. Yet sticking to this schedule is definitely possible and you will find that it frees up more of your time for recreation. Instead of sleeping in until noon or wasting time pointlessly surfing the web, take control of your time and get some work done. This way, you miss out on nothing, have your work completed, and can still relax or go out at night and during the weekends.

Once you have an academic calendar finalized, it comes to creating a work/blogging calendar and matching it with your academic calendar. You will tend to notice that despite even a rigorous course load, there is still plenty of time for business if you manage your time efficiently. I do the same thing for my business calendar that I do for my academic calendar; make a list of what all I need to get done and when. For example, as a blogger I need to write posts and market my blog so I create an editorial calendar to plan out which pieces I’m going to post when and a marketing plan to schedule when I am going to execute certain elements of my marketing strategy.

I schedule this work into time I have not dedicated as “academic time”. You will see that you begin to develop a routine as with blogging and school the same tasks have to be completed over and over again, whether it be writing posts or studying for weekly quizzes. Over time and with practice it becomes easier.

However, you must take into consideration the fact that there are certain times when you need to spend more time focusing on school and more time focused on business and you need to plan ahead for these times. For example, during finals week I need to be 100% focused to studying for my exams, yet I can’t just let my blog or business sit idle. In these cases, get help from the outside, getting guest posters, paid writers, or pre-scheduling posts. Remember, planning is very important.

While a blog/school balance is definitely doable, you have to be careful how many things you are involved in. There are only 24 hours in the day and you need to rest and take time to enjoy life, so make sure to not overextend yourself getting involved in too many different activities at one time. I have gone both routes, doing a little bit of everything and a doing lot of fewer things and have found that when I focus on fewer activities, I can fully dedicate myself to them and actually accomplish something meaningful. Prioritization is also very important. You have to do some research and soul searching to find what is MOST important to you. Personally, I recommend focusing on academics until your business or blog begins to take off and earn revenues. Even once you find professional success, I strongly recommend staying focused academically and achieving to the best of your ability because I am finding that academic effort and success and constantly opening new doors for me in my personal and professional lives.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Manage a School/Blog Balance

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One of the most popular resources for new bloggers – Become a Blogger – is reopening its doors to new participants – for 5 days only.

It’s cheaper than ever before

If you’re a new blogger wondering how to get your blog started and moving towards reaching it’s potential – it can be a daunting prospect.

Become a Blogger is a step-by-step video based guide to walk you through the process in plain and easy to understand language.

The Guys Behind Become a Blogger

The two guys behind Become a Blogger are two people I have a lot of time for – Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick. Both live here in Australia and I regularly interact with both. They both have a gift in being able to explain complicated things clearly, they both know what they’re doing (you can get a taste for that in this free report that they’ve released) and have been successful in their own fields and they are both genuinely nice guys who I have real respect for.

I have no hesitation in recommending them to you as trainers and mentors in your blogging.

The resource is broken down into 8 Modules over 6 months – with a number of other bonuses. Here’s what is covered:

Module 1: Get Your Blog Up And Running Fast And FREE

Module 2: How To Optimize Your Blog For Maximum Search Engine Performance

Module 3: How To Create Powerful Content For Your Blog, Consistently and Without Fail

Module 4: How To Use Images On Your Blog To Make You Stand Out From The Crowd

Module 5: How To Create A Different Dimension To Your Blog By Adding Audio

Module 6: How To Breathe Life Into Your Blog Using Online Video

Module 7: How To Create Multiple Streams of High Quality Traffic To Your Blog

Module 8: How To Make Money From Your Blog

PLUS (Spread Throughout The Course): How To Use The “X-Factor” Strategies To Put Your Blog Into Super Drive!

PLUS: a range of other bonuses including a 10 part audio series on ‘master the mindset’ – access to the Become a Blogger Forums and special members only Teleconferences.

Previously Become a Blogger was $77 a month. It sold out at that rate and they closed the doors so as to deliver value to those who signed up.

Cheaper for a Limited Time Only

This time it’s $47 a month but you only have 5 days to become a part of it.

You can either sign up on a month by month basis or invest in it up front for the 6 months get a discount.

Of course as usual with these guys – there’s a money back guarantee. If you’re not satisfied you can simply ask for your money back – I trust these guys to honor that commitment.

Signup for Become a Blogger here.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Become a Blogger Reopens for 5 Days Only – Now Cheaper Than Ever

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A Guest post by Josh Hanagarne – World’s Strongest Librarian

In my Problogger post about how to land big interviews when your blog is small, I mentioned that I had a mentor. A lot of commenters asked me about that process and if I could write more about it. Send your thanks to Darren if you enjoy the post.

How to find a mentor is the easy part. First we need to talk about why.

Ask yourself this question:

Do I need a mentor?

The answer is yes—ta da!

Sorry, wrong question. If you didn’t think you needed a mentor, you wouldn’t be reading Problogger. No offense to Darren, but Problogger is a how-to, nuts and bolts blog—written by a mentor and businessman.

If you’re here for pleasure reading or entertainment, you’re really not here to be mentored and could probably use some other outlets.

Here are some useful questions behind the question:

• Do I already know everything?
• Am I teachable?
• What teaching methods do I respond to best?
• What are my goals?
• Can a mentor realistically help me reach these goals?
• How quickly do I want (or need) to reach my goals?
• Am I just lonely? (This happens more than you might think)
• Am I looking for a coach, or am I just hoping that this will be less work for me?

Take some time to answer these questions. Don’t waste anyone’s time by approaching him or her before you’ve done some thinking.

Two types of mentors: which would you prefer?

Kill Bill

There’s what I think of as the Kill Bill style mentor: the master martial artist who strokes his beard and laughs while beating you into submission. A drill sergeant who teaches through “tough love” and cruel tutelage and says things like, “Before me, your strength is that of the earthworm compared to the eagle, yes?”

There’s nothing wrong with this approach: but be honest—is that what you will respond to? Are you a person who wants to learn with a foot on your neck and a militant “Or else” teaching style?

Problogger Style

How often does Darren Rowse step on your neck or make you scream in pain? It hasn’t happened to me yet, but I’m safe in the United States. Darren encourages, coaches, and gently pulls us along, but you may choose to fail if you wish.

He answers questions, presents information, and how we use it is on us. The vast majority of Darren’s writing is backed up by empirical evidence, case studies, et cetera…in other words, it makes sense to do what he says, but he doesn’t have the time or the kung fu grip to force us. (I think).

Know your own skills

Here are some things I could mentor you on

• Exercising with kettlebells
• Getting 150 RSS subscribers in 3 weeks
• Writing a novel and getting rejected by publishers until the end of days
• Writing guest posts for Problogger
• Shopping for pants when you’re 6’8”: hint, move somewhere warm and buy more shorts
• Fingerstyle guitar
• Coping with an extreme case of Tourette’s Syndrome

Here’s the point: now that you know my skills, you can ask yourself the right question—it’s not “Do I need a mentor?” The answer is yes.

Rather, ask yourself: do I need this person as a mentor? Are my goals more achievable with this person than on my own?

Some qualities to look for in your mentor:

• Humility: they admit mistakes
• Imperfection: they’ve made mistakes so you don’t have to
• Knowledge: they must know things that you want to know and may not be able to learn on your own
• Patience: they have to be willing to answer questions. Lots of them. If someone enters into a formal mentoring relationship with you, don’t hang around for too long if it turns out they don’t have the time or temperament to spend time teaching you.

Some qualities you must have as the mentored:

• Humility: you don’t know everything. Ask questions, but don’t second guess until you must.
• Direction: don’t ask someone to help you reach a destination that you can’t describe. No, “I’ll recognize success when I see it, just help me get there.” Have a plan. If it’s the wrong plan for what you want, a good mentor will tell you.
• Work ethic: don’t ask for help, receive direction, and discard the advice. Be patient and try what they say.
• Realism: mentors aren’t miracle workers. Don’t expect perfection. Mentors are usually people who have gone through enough failures to recognize a losing hand quickly enough to fold.

But why would a mentor agree to help me?

I currently have two official mentors. One (no name—he’d be embarrassed to know I was calling him an official “mentor”) is my blogging compadre who helps me build traffic, polish my content, and market myself.

The other is a professional strongman, “Unbreakable” Adam T. Glass. He’s helping me get stronger. That’s it, because those are my goals right now: blogging and strength.

But when I asked them what they get out of our relationship, both said honestly, “Part of it is because it’s fun to help others. And part of it is hoping that when you get famous that our names will always be linked.” In other words, we may each be more successful later than either of us may be alone.

That’s the beauty of the Internet. Reciprocity is king. It’s easy to do favors. It’s simple to give someone a boost. Show someone who’s already successful what you can do for them. Chances are, they won’t say, “Oh, I’m already successful enough. Pass.”

And if they pass, so what? Life goes on. Find someone else.

How to find a mentor

And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for: how to find a mentor:

Find someone who has done what you want to do and ask them if they will mentor you. That’s all.

As Darth Vader said to young Luke Skywalker when he threw open the paternity test curtain, “Search your feelings…you know it to be true.”

It is that simple: ask. Dumb luck may play a part, but mostly it’s just asking being willing to ask. Same thing with landing interviews. Same thing with asking for that date.

Same thing about being happy—fulfillment of dreams comes from action. Nobody owes us a favor and nobody is going to show up in tears begging to help us with our goals.

That doesn’t mean they aren’t willing. It just means they don’t know what we want.

But where do you find people like that? If you’ve read any of Darren’s writing, you know where: Problogger, Technorati, trade shows, magazines, social networking groups, Twitter…good grief, there are even more ways than I thought there were.

Make a list of choices and go find someone. Tell them how you can help each other. Do it today. The sun will set either way. You can wake up tomorrow with a mentor lined up, or regretting that another day went by without action.

It won’t make any difference to the person who hasn’t heard of you yet.

Josh Hanagarne writes World’s Strongest Librarian, a blog to help you get stronger, get smarter, and live better…every day. For bonus articles, videos, and original music, please subscribe to the Stronger, Smarter, Better Newsletter. If you know someone with Tourette’s Syndrome, please let them know about the blog. They need to know that someone out there “gets it.”

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Better Questions Than “Do I Need a Mentor?” and “How do I get one?”

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Posted by randfish

(Intro: This post continues a series of personal growth focused entries. It doesn’t have much direct, applicable SEO value, so feel free to skip if that’s what you’re seeking)

I’ve learned more in the last 9 months than at any previous time in my life – about myself, about this company and about the worlds of venture capital, entrepreneurship and startups. And, in the spirit of transparency (one of our guiding principles and an ideal I haven’t been maintaining as well as I could of late), I want to share, to talk about where SEOmoz is today and why we’ve decided to explore additional capital opportunities. In fact, I feel compelled – because even if only 100 people, or 10 or just 1 learn something here they can apply to themselves, it will be worthwhile.

Segments in this Post:

• Brief History of SEOmoz
• How Outside Capital Helped Us
• SEOmoz’s Growth 2007-2009
• A Short Story that Led to a Decision
• What I’ve Learned About Myself
• My Top Advice for Other Entrepreneurs
• Got Questions? I’ll Try to Answer

A Brief History

Let’s start back in August of 2007. SEOmoz was tiny - 8 people growing a business out of a 1,000 sq. ft. office in Seattle’s University District (man, do I miss that place) and two people who believed it was going to be much, much bigger – Kelly from Curious Office and Michelle from Ignition. It’s only in retrospect that I can really appreciate their foresight, because when they invested $1.1 million in the company that November, I was an SEO geek who wanted to use that funding to solve an SEO problem. My dream was to better understand the web’s link graph and how the engines could use that to rank sites & pages. I should have been thinking about the problems faced by those wanting to do SEO and how a scalable, technology solution could be used to help them – like what Vanessa Fox did when she built Webmaster Tools inside Google (more on that later).

Our first round of capital raising was very unique, and for that reason, may be less applicable than other advice on the topic. Nevertheless, I’ll try to share that experience and the macro and micro-economic factors that impacted it.

Investment Data via NVCA Press Alert

You can see that not only was 2007 the most active year for venture capital investment, but that Q4 of 2007 was a particularly high spike. It’s probably not surprising that SEOmoz took its funding in this type of environment – possibly the best time to raise money from an entrepreneur’s perspective since 2000. Why? Because when deal flow is very high, terms tend to be more entrepreneur friendly. Ours certainly were.

It’s uncommon (though not unheard of) for a firm like Ignition Partners, with over a billion dollars under management, to put so little capital into a company. Between Ignition & Curious, the amount raised was $1.1 million, less than half the size of their next smallest public investment (Crunchbase has a list here, though SEOmoz’s funding amount is inaccurately reported as $1.25 million, and the participants inaccurately listed as 1 – and Ignition does do some smaller deals that aren’t listed). Quantity wasn’t the only outlier – our valuation, the terms themselves (things like vesting, board structure, preferences, etc.) were very good and the deal closed quickly. Today’s funding environment could be a very different story. As you can see from the charts above, the floor fell out in the VC markets last October, and although May 2009 may have been a step forward, entrepreneurs who seek capital today shouldn’t expect  seed or series A rounds to look the way they did in November of 2007.

SEOmoz was also helped in this deal by an important factor I think every startup should consider – WE DIDN’T NEED THE MONEY. We were already profitable and growing, already had a brand name in the industry and had attracted interest from multiple investors. I think that every entrepreneur who’s considering startup-dom should think about establishing those goals before they go for institutional capital – a profitable, growing company with a product that’s on the market and a brand name that’s well known makes you:

• A) Lower risk to investors
• B) Interesting to multiple parties and multiple kinds of investors (angels, VCs, private equity, etc.)
• C) More confident in every step of the process
• D) Able to walk away from a deal you don’t like

This psychology is so powerful that I can’t imagine doing it any other way. If I wanted to build a travel portal to take on Kayak.com, I’d start a great travel site (maybe even just a really interesting blog), build up some brand recognition, use advertising or low-cost premium features to drive revenue and only after those numbers made for a compelling story, approach investors. I’d use that same formula even for a capital intensive business – start with cool ideas, great writing and valuable resources, become a hub for your industry, show web traffic and positive interest, then go fundraise.

We started as a consulting business – in fact, SEOmoz is on a .org TLD because when I started the site, there wasn’t even a business behind it (even the name "moz" comes from the ethos of open sharing pioneered by folks like DMOZ & the Mozilla foundation). Gillian and I were running a website design & development shop and learning SEO because our customers needed it and we had no other choice. Eventually SEOmoz got so big and popular as a blog that it made sense to conduct business under that name, and a few years later, we realized consulting wasn’t the right way for us to scale this incredible community around us. Those decisions – made much more by accident than grand vision – gave us the credibility and the story that made investors excited.

And yeah, it didn’t hurt that Q4 of 2007 was probably the best time to raise money in the last 8 years.

How Outside Capital Helped

Taking the outside investment proved to be an excellent decision, and, to be honest, even in today’s market, I’d still consider raising money if I were in the same position again. Outside capital made me a better entrepreneur, focused our company more seriously on the things we needed to do and made us more accountable and metrics-driven. Some companies feel that pressure internally and can build those processes without external help. We needed that external pressure and it’s been remarkable. I’ll try to detail some of the big ways investment has helped us:

• Metrics Requirements - Any outside investor will require reporting of specific data points about the business from financial, HR, marketing and development perspectives. You’re probably doing this already inside your business, and we were as well, but experienced outside perspectives distill the list into the critical pieces, identify important missing criteria and work with you to help develop the raw numbers into actionable data.
• Accountability – A lot of CEOs and company leaders choose that job because it means they’re in charge. And while that’s certainly an enjoyable perk, bringing in outside investors makes you accountable again – not in the same way a typical boss does, but the responsibility and pressure to perform. In many small companies, very few people beyond the CEO and perhaps one or two others are fully aware of the company’s performance or lack thereof – and when things go south (or simply don’t go as well as predicted), no one’s there holding your feet to the fire. If external pressure can help you excel (as it has with me), then funding provides a great benefit. 
• Board Meetings – Rarely in small companies does leadership take a regular hard look at their priorities, strategy and direction (Will & Duncan, you’re the exception, not the rule). Board meetings provide that gut-level check on every facet of the business, and let you step back to see the forest for the trees. They’re not necessarily fun, but they will make you a better entrepreneur (and if they don’t, it means you’ve likely chosen the wrong board members).
• Thinking Long Term – Running a business is incredibly hard, and startups, doubly so. With so much time and energy devoted to turning the flywheel, it’s easy to miss an opportunity or ignore a fundamental problem that’s outside the scope of the day-to-day. Professional investment means you’ve got a partner watching out for precisely that issue.
• Adding Experience to the Team – Every new person we add to SEOmoz, that’s the biggest team I’ve ever led. Every dollar of revenue that comes in is the most money I’ve ever managed. With outside investors, they’ve seen and been through much bigger and can help guide you along the path – whether it’s filled with potholes or littered with opportunities that just need to be scooped up.
• Networking Opportunties – VCs know a lot of very important people. From strategic operators at big companies to C-level executives at startups to government, charity and press, you’ll rarely find a more connected group. This shouldn’t be surprising, as networking is one of the biggest value-adds VCs advertise. The problem is that for most entrepreneurs, myself included, the need for these networks is few and far between, so it seems less valuable than it really is – once your company is in a position to either do big enterprise partnerships or be acquired, those connections can "make or break" the firm.
• Oh Yeah, the Money  – Did you know VCs also provide capital? Yep, it’s true – and having dollars to spend when you’re a creative entrepreneur with a great plan is pretty awesome.

There are probably a dozen more ways that venture capital investment has helped SEOmoz, and I’m certain that many of them will be immeasurable and possibly even invisible. All of this isn’t to say that VC doesn’t have it’s downsides – there are a few, and it pays to be aware of them:

• Funding is a Time Suck – I’m personally feeling this right now (as I’ll explain later), and it’s important to be aware of the opportunity cost of seeking investment. For most startups, the CEO and the executive team are essential to running day-to-day operations of the business. When you take time out to build slide decks for investors, meet with VCs, network amongst your contacts and field calls, it pulls time & energy away from the company.
• Control of Your Business is Diluted – VCs build company boards. In our scenario, the board is comprised of three voting members (Gillian, Michelle & myself) and one observer (Kelly). This structure means that company management and founders have the deciding vote in any contentious issue (only one has ever arisen on SEOmoz’s board). In a future round, though, we expect that another 2 members would join the board – one individual from the investment firm and one independent member we all agree upon. Just to be clear, though – even in our scenario, there are certain types of votes which must pass with 100% of the board’s approval (mostly things like sale of stock, funding, etc.).
• You Have a Boss – OK, it’s not a typical boss and you don’t report to them on a regular basis, but you do have someone who watches your metrics and performance closely and can replace you if/when that performance is unacceptable. One of the most significant powers the board holds at any VC-backed company is the ability to fire the CEO.
• You Have Fiduciary Obligations – Legal documents bind you to operate the company with its interests, not your own, at the heart of your decisions. This impacts quite a bit of the decisions you make at a company, particularly when you switch from something like a longtime, family-run business (such as ours). It’s definitely good for the company (and good for your own internal discipline), but it can be painful at times.
• Your Exit Options are Limited – Retire, walk away, close up shop, sell for a low price because you don’t want to go out for higher bids or you particularly like the buyer – these options (and many others like them) become challenging to impossible, once you take outside investment.

As you can tell from my opinions above and my previous advice to myself, I’m a big proponent in spite of these potential detractors.

2007-2009 Growth 

This company looks very different than it did just 2 years ago, and I’ve been lax in sharing the kinds of numbers and data about the business that was once a signature of my blogging (see 2006 and 2007 financials, for example). While there’s a lot that I’m obligated not to share, I’m going to go right up to that line – not just because I think it will make this story more interesting, but because it’s part of our guiding principles.

Full-Time Employees

It’s tough to build this chart, because the number of full-time folks fluctuates even inside a single year, but I’ve done my best to approximate the annual averages.

PRO Members

PRO membership has really taken off in the last 6 months – and while we doubled membership from 2007-2008, we were able to do that in just the first 6 months in 2009.

Revenue

Sadly, while I can’t share exact numbers, this chart does give an accurate concept of where we are. 2009 is shaping up to be a very exciting year. Although I also can’t show margin numbers, I will say that from Nov. 2007 to Nov. 2008, SEOmoz burned capital (approx. 3/4 of the investment we took). Starting in Dec. 2008 and continuing each month through to June 2009, we’ve been profitable and rebuilt a respectable cash reserve (of course, if you ask Sarah, we still need to sweat every penny of it).

Visits to the SEOmoz.org Website 

 

Traffic is growing nicely as well, though what this chart doesn’t show is that 2009 has been virtually devoid of the types of "linkbait" that were a hallmark of the site in 2007 (and much of 2008). We’ve found that while those efforts can produce great traffic boosts and link growth, we need to focus on conversion rate optimization and the PRO membership product before we return to viral content generation.

A (Not-So) Short Story that Led to a Decision

Last October, just after we launched Linkscape, SEOmoz started fielding between 2-4 calls per month from venture capital firms seeking to place investment. These are exciting, flattering and fun calls to get, and in those initial conversations, the focus makes for an ego-padding chat. It’s pretty easy to see why these investors were so interested – no, not because SEOmoz itself is all that awesome (they didn’t even know much about us when they called) – it’s because of the potential market for SEO:

Via eMarketer’s Search Spending Swells Worldwide & Online Marketing Effectiveness

SEO is at or near the top for four different categories:

1. Where marketers get the most conversions
2. Where they get the most branding impact
3. Where they are planning to re-allocate budget
4. Wherethey are planning to increase spend

VCs love this stuff, and they love it even more when the market as a whole appears to be big and growing:

_
Data Source: SEMPO State of the Market Surveys

A predicted spend of just over $2 billion on SEO in 2009 suggests that SEO may finally be earning some respect, just as the growth in PPC spend slows its acceleration rate. Richard Zwicky‘s SEM analytics company, Enquisite, is an example of this market shift commanding respect. Enquisite’s raised over $11 million in venture capital in the last few years (including a series B round of $8 million in February) . His favorite mantra is the disconnect I wrote about last october:

PPC: 88% of all SEM spend VS. SEO: 11% of all SEM spend

PPC: 10% of all search clicks VS. SEO: 90% of all search clicks

Markets don’t stay this inefficient for long.

No wonder investors have jumped at opportunities like those Richard presented with Enquisite and others like Conductor ($10 million raised in April), Marin Software ($13 million raised in April), Optify ($2.75 million raised in Oct. ’08) and Yield Software ($6 million raised in June ’08). And no wonder they were calling up SEOmoz, hoping to learn more about us and see if there was an investment opportunity.

Despite these inquiries, our board meetings in October & November were very operational and tactical. We were at the tail end of turning around from cash flow negative to positive, and there were some high stress moments, capped off by a working "product" meeting in early December. At that roundtable, I presented some concepts for SEOmoz’s future product direction and got shot down. And thank goodness I did.

The problem with entrepreneurs like me is that our creativity, emotional attachments to technology and love of product "coolness" can sometimes get in the way of making things that real people find really usable & useful. When that happens, it’s even more essential to be surrounded by smart, secure people who feel up to the challenge of challenging you.

After the meeting ended, I spent a lot of time thinking strategically about where we needed to go. That thinking ended up in dozens of notepad pages, and I’ve shared a few below:

My goal was to get to the core of the "SEO Problem" with a software product, and luckily, I didn’t have to go that road alone. Adam Feldstein, a longtime friend of mine, joined SEOmoz in January and we spent an entire week together in the mozplex’s meeting room, diagramming a product evolution we’ve come to call "Turbomoz" internally (much as we did when Linkscape was called "Carhole").

Adam and I presented a walkthrough of our new plan in early April to a packed room, including the SEOmoz board and several internal folks. The feedback was terrific – they loved not only the product itself, but the simplicity, the design, the intuition behind it and the potential to reach a lot more of the market than just the intermediate-to-expert level SEOs that make up the majority of our members today. An early version of "Turbomoz" is set to release in late September.

A few weeks later, I headed to Boston, where I got to spend a lot of time with a great friend and mentor, Dharmesh Shah, the founder of Hubspot and blogger at OnStartups. Dharmesh and I talked a lot about our two companies – how they’re growing, what the economic downturn has impacted, where we see opportunities and what makes a startup successful. It was a tremendous learning experience, and something I can’t recommend enough to others. If you’re currently running a business and can find someone with a similar model who’s willing to exchange information and ideas, do it. Being a CEO can be a very lonely job – even close friends and family won’t be able to empathize in the same way another CEO can. Many cities even have startup support groups (although they’re not usually called that, exactly).

My visits with Dharmesh inspired me to be more self analytical and more self critical. If there are things in the business that aren’t working, places where opportunity isn’t being executed upon, and chances to make a difference, I owe it not only to myself, but to our investors and, most importantly, to my employees to make the change. As the late King of Pop said, "start with the man in the mirror."

Just a couple weeks later, I landed in San Francisco. If you haven’t read the back-and-forth between Silicon Valley vs. Seattle VC/entrepreneur/tech startup, check out Glenn Kelman (Redfin‘s CEO) comparing the two, Michael Arrington responding & Glenn firing back. There’s a grain of truth to the staments they make:

Sure Seattle is beautiful (Kelman talks about lakes and outdoor stuff a lot in his post). And if you want to have a balanced, healthy lifestyle, that’s a great place to do it. If you don’t think you have what it takes to make it in Silicon Valley, maybe Seattle or other mini-tech hubs is the place for you. But the best of the best come to Silicon Valley to see if they’re as good as the legends that came before them. It’s a competitive advantage to be here. And if you aren’t willing to take advantage of every possible advantage to make your crazy startup idea work, perhaps you shouldn’t be an entrepreneur.

The "valley culture" of depriving oneself of everything else except work really does exist, and it’s easy to become both enamored and afraid of it very quickly. But I also agree with Glenn that:

So even though all of us in Seattle would probably concede that Silicon Valley is generally better for startups than anywhere else, that doesn’t mean that we have to agree with Michael that Silicon Valley is always better, or better in every way. For starters, people in Seattle have helped me in an open-hearted, small-town way that I might not have found in the Valley.

And where Michael and I really disagree is on whether it is good some times to be away from all the me-too Valley companies trying to make money on Internet ads, even though he complains about them every day on TechCrunch.

I was very lucky to get some of that same "open-hearted, small-town" help, even in the Valley. A few years ago, Michael Eisenberg introduced me to Nirav Tolia, a former EIR with Benchmark, and the two of us have become fast friends. Nirav’s just launched a great startup – Fanbase – and has introduced me to a number of terrific entrepreneurs, nearly all of whom have great interest in SEO. At dinner one night, a fellow CEO (Thomas Layton of Metaweb), crystalized the question that had been weighing on my mind for the last 8 months – should SEOmoz take another round of funding?

Here, word for word (to the best of my memory), is what Thomas said to me:

Let’s make this easy. I’ll give you three things, you prioritize them, and I’ll tell you whether you should take the money.

1. Do you want to be the CEO and in control of the company’s destiny?
2. Do you want to make the most possible money from an exit?
3. Do you want the company to achieve the most and become the most it can be?

I don’t actually remember which one I picked on the spot… I think I struggled a bit to be confident in my response, and that’s because honestly, I hadn’t been asking myself that question, even though it’s something every CEO/founder should inherently know. A few days later, though, the answer was clear – #3. I want SEOmoz to be all that it can be. I believe in SEO. I believe in the people here. And I believe that with the right help – and another dose of all the positive things our first round brought us – we can achieve even more remarkable things.

Thus, we’re exploring the VC path, talking to those folks who’ve been calling and thinking a bit more seriously about a series B. It’s not something we’re definitely pursuing, and plenty of circumstances could change our minds about whether it’s the right option. As the media is quick to remind us, valuations and deal terms are not great right now, and with SEOmoz in such a strong position, we can afford to be patient, be picky and choose the right partner.

What I’ve Learned About Myself

• I do well with external pressure, even when it’s critical. I think that comes from childhood, when my Dad was obsessed with my grades and it made me work harder.
• I get inspired by those who’ve achieved amazing things. I want to meet more people like that and spend time with them – it’s a remarkable experience.
• I need to do a better job of thinking long term, even when I’m mired in the day-to-day. CEOs are supposed to be visionaries, and it’s irresponsible for me to be slacking off.
• I need to find ways to outsource more of my personal workload and trust others to do as good a job or better than I could.
• My stubborness is sometimes useful, but I need to do a better job of letting go when the situation warrants.
• I’m so lucky – so much luckier than I’ve ever considered – to be where I am. Thankfully, it appears I’m not alone – if Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers (worth reading, BTW) is right, everyone who gets to do these kinds of exciting things in their lives owes that opportunity to the people around them, and I’m no different.

My Top Advice for Other Entrepreneurs

• Don’t be too scared of taking venture capital – it gets a lot of negative press, but in the end, you and the VCs want exactly the same thing – for your company to succeed magnificiently.
• Find VCs you love to work with – people you want to be friends with and spend time with and drink beer with. Find people who care not just about your company, but about you personally. I think this has been the best part about Michelle & Kelly on our board – they don’t just care about the numbers. They care about us. Seriously consider being flexible on deal terms if it means working with the right people (though often those "right people" are the same ones who’ll give you the best deals).
• Be relentlessly self-analytical and self-critical. Work hard to identify your flaws and pad them with team members who can compensate. My relentless optimism and cavalier march to spend money to grow the company is tempered by Sarah’s risk intolerance. It’s a great balance, and every company needs it.
• Leverage the entrepreneurial community around you. If my experience is any guide, CEOs and startup founders love to help and guide others – and that culture isn’t limited to Silicon Valley or Seattle or Boston, either. I’ve had friends from New York City to Reykjavik to Shanghai, Sydney, London and Nashville lend their time, their networks and their advice. I only hope that I can do as well to help others.

Questions & Answers

In the spirit of this post, and of SEOmoz’s guiding principles, I’d like to open the comments to questions and offer to answer anything I reasonably can in a post next week. You can also feel free to email me if you have private questions. One quick thing I’ll say is that for those seeking VC, three resources have been of great help to me – OnStartups, VentureHacks and Hacker News.

I sincerely hope this blog post has brought you value and helped bring a little more transparency to a world that’s rarely seen outside of Sand Hill Road meeting rooms.

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The following is a ProBloggerDeal – exclusively for readers of this blog. For notification on Twitter of other deals, discounts and competitions for bloggers follow @ProBloggerDeals.

A few mont Ninja Affiliate Plugin for WordPress. The promotion was so popular and I’ve had so much positive feedback from readers about the plugin that I asked MaxBlogPress if we could run it again.

This time they’ve set it up so ProBloger readers can get the $30 discount (around 30% off) until 3rd July.

The best way to learn about what the plugin does is to visit the sales page and view the videos there which outline its features.

Effectively it’s a tool that manages all of the affiliate links on your blog from one central location. Here’s a list of features:

• Easy Affiliate Link Management – You can easily give each affiliate link an easy-to-remember name.
• Flexible Link Management – Accepts every affiliate link format out there, so you don’t have to waste time with various affiliate marketing tools..
• Create Professional Redirect Links – Use professional looking redirect links that let your prospects know you’re a pro marketer..
• Manage Links by Groups – Too many affiliate links? Ninja Affiliate allows you to easily create different groups to manage your links..
• Prevent “Affiliate Theft” – Cloak your affiliate links to prevent link theft and affiliate sabotage. No one will ever steal your hard-earned commissions again..
• Insert Affiliate Links Directly – Add your affiliate links directly for your WordPress blog editor – you’ll never have to hunt for links again..
• Transform Keywords to Links – Automatically turn keywords in your blog to affiliate links. You can set a limit too, so your posts don’t look like a spam blog!
• Advanced Display Options – Ninja Affiliate allows you to display any text you want in your web browser’s status bar..
• Use “No-Follow” Links – Control your link juice and escape punishment from Big Daddy Google with ninja precision. In fact, you can control your links any way you want to.

All in all – if you’re doing affiliate marketing on your blog this is a plugin you’ll want to consider investing into.

This has been a ProBloggerDeal – for notification on Twitter of other deals, discounts and competitions for bloggers follow @ProBloggerDeals.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Get 30% off the Ninja Affiliate Plugin for WordPress – Limited Time Offer

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Robby G is a blogger from ShiteILike.com and explains the benefits of pushing your blog through good and through bad.

I was doing some research recently, wondering if my blog would ever take off and what it really depended on. I was a little bit discouraged about writing lots of content for two months on my blog, but having a significant amount of less traffic than on my friend’s blog which is only two months older than mine.

To see if my blog would ever receive any readers that would get interested, and hopefully raise my hopes, I went on ProBlogger. I looked through his much older posts and went through the comment list. I clicked on a bunch of commentators’ names that took me back to their blogs and recorded how many of them were still blogging today. Their comments were from 2006 and I noticed that most of the bloggers had either just abandoned their blog or quit paying for hosting completely.

Now the interesting stuff I learnt from my research was that the ones that actually held on to their blogs and kept posting through good and through bad on topics that they found dear to them, they in fact had a pretty decent following with many RSS Subscribers and were receiving quite a few comments on each post. I also ran their blogs through a Link Checker and saw that the older the blog, the more backlinks they had.

The great thing about perseverance when it comes to blogging is that the longer you push your blog, the more you get out of it. It doesn’t matter what topic you write about, because there are a lot of people out there that have the same interests as you no matter what they are.

Perseverance gives your blog backlinks, it gives your blog a higher rating on search engines, and it gives people time to learn more about you and spread your blog’s name through word of mouth. If you read this blog and a bunch of other “making money online” blogs, it opens your mind out to how to market your blog properly, and if you connect perseverance to marketing, there is no stopping you. All that’s left is time to allow someone big and famous to come along and mention your blog in a review or just mention a little bit about your post to really help you explode onto the Super Blogger level.

So all in all, in my opinion, there are really just two things every blogger should keep in mind when either starting a new blog or whenever they’re discouraged about their own blog:

1. Make sure you’re blogging about a topic you really love (I know this one has been said before by almost everyone, but it’s true. Shite I Like is my second blog for a reason.)
2. Whatever you do, don’t give up. Keep blogging and blogging, and reading, and blogging. The more time you put into it will really come back to help you 100 times more in the long-run. And you just might never know when your blog will turn huge.

Also, if you’ve got the time to blog on a topic on an almost daily basis, you more than likely have the time to do research of your own on how to market and make your blog popular without having to really spend much money on it.

Many people’s biggest flaw in life is entering into something thinking that easy money will just flow their way, and once the going gets even a little bit difficult, they abandon ship. For example, when I was going to University and Real Estate College at the same time, I thought I’d become a Real Estate Salesperson in no time and start selling houses in the summer time while everybody from University would be working some landscaping summer job. Becoming a Real Estate person was harder than I thought and took much more time than initially planned. At many points I thought about quitting that and just focusing on Univ, but perseverance got me through College to get into the field of Real Estate as a part-time job while still continuing with my Univ studies. I’m happy I pushed myself, because now I see that if I could keep a weekend job while going to University and College all at the same time, while also learning about blogging, then I can push myself to blog on a regular basis.

Keep those 2 points I outlined above in mind and make sure to always keep pushing yourself, because without perseverance you’ll never see any glory. I hope this post really gave you a motivation to keep blogging and reading and most importantly believing that all you need to reach your goal with blogging is constant determination, time, and a little bit of luck.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Perseverance Will Save Your Blog

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[Breaking news from Lara - Pardon the interruption!]

Just read over at FOX Business that Amazon has decided to close out their affiliates program to residents of North Carolina (USA) due to a proposed change in sales tax for affiliate sales.

“In an email, Amazon reportedly told marketing affiliates in the state that the move was a direct result of North Carolina’s push to levy a tax on purchases made through Amazon affiliates.” FOX Business

I remember there was a similar situation with New York, I wonder which US state is going to be next? There’s more details on Amazon’s calling NC lawmaker’s bluff here.

Interesting what politics and legalities can do to a blogger or affiliate marketer, in just a blink. How do you feel about these laws that are changing the way bloggers effectively handle their income options?

Update: Appears that they also closed off Hawaii, and may be considering California as well. [Thanks, 5starAffiliatePrograms for the tip off in the comments!]

Tags: Affiliate Programs, Amazon, New York, North Carolina, Sales tax

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Amazon Ends Affiliates Program for North Carolina

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This morning I tweeted this question – ‘what are the first 3 things you do when you get online in the morning?‘

You can see many of the answers to the question on this twitoaster thread.

A number of people asked me to answer the question for myself – so I thought I’d do so as a blog post as it is pretty relevant to how I run my business. Of course I couldn’t just stop at three – here’s some of my morning routine:

Firstly: I liken most of what I do in the mornings to a Triage in the emergency room of a hospital. It’s about assessing what happened over night, identifying urgent things that need immediate attention and less urgent but important things that I need to prioritize and then mapping out how I’ll use my day.

Note: Preceding all of what follows is Coffee…. without it I find very little of it works.

1. Check Blog Stats

The first thing I do in the morning is to check the stats of my blogs. While this might seem like a bit of an egotistical thing to do first thing in the morning I actually do it because it gives me a very quick overview of any problems or opportunities that might need my immediate attention.

I am particularly looking for any spikes or lulls in traffic.

Spikes indicate that something has happened to bring me traffic on some other site. This could indicate a social media event (front page on Digg or a hot link on Twitter) or could indicate something more controversial that someone has written about me. Either way – I want to know about it – either for damage control or to see if there’s a way to extend the positives.

Lulls in traffic indicate potential problems with servers or other problems on my blogs including broken design, posts not going live, newsletters not going out that should have gone etc.

What flows from analyzing stats could be leaving comments on another blog to respond to what they’ve written, tweeting a hot link to extend it’s viral qualities, fixing an error on my site, checking server errors etc.

2. Scan Twitter Accounts

I find Twitter is another great source of being able to assess what I’ve missed while I slept. This is particularly important for me because I’m in Australia and actually sleep during the peak times on my blogs when most of my readers are online.

I scan three main things on Twitter – my Direct Messages, my @replies and trending topics (via Twitscoop).

Twitter quickly reveals any topics/stories/news that has broken over night that could be relevant to my blogs. Many times I have links that have been DM’d to me by my followers alerting me to these stories.

I am also on the look out from any problems with my sites that readers are reporting (I find that if one of my blogs was down even for 5 minutes that I’m told about it on Twitter).

Lastly on Twitter I’m looking with interest at what people ReTweeted overnight – particularly posts on my own blogs. If I notice a post I’ve written is doing well on Twitter and has a lot of RT’s it can be worth me giving it a second push. It might also indicate to me that it could be worth writing a followup post on the topic to keep the momentum going.

If a story has not been RT’d much at all it’s an indication that perhaps the post needs reworking or that it wasn’t a topic that connected with my audience.

3. Scan News Alerts

This is a quick one but can be important. I have a number of alerts set up in Google News and Blog Alerts that I quickly scan each morning (it’s my ‘vanity folder‘). Each of these alerts is either an alert to anyone using my name, blog URL or a keyword relevant to my niche in a blog post or news article.

It’s important to know what has been written about you and about topics you’re writing about as this can lead to all kinds of opportunities and interactions (not to mention damage control). I generally don’t respond immediately to these unless they’re urgent but they’re good to keep in mind as I plan my day.

4. Scan Email

Are there any urgent matters in my inbox needing my immediate attention? This is a real challenge as most mornings I wake up to around 100 emails in my inbox (this is after another 500-700 emails are filtered automatically in Gmail using techniques that I talked about in this post on clearing your inbox.)

I don’t reply to many emails at this point – I’m just scanning them looking for important stuff (I don’t always see it unfortunately). I come back to email later in the day.

5. Scan my A-list of RSS feeds

In Google Reader (my RSS reader of choice) I have a folder called ‘A-list’. In this folder I have around 20 feeds from blogs and news sites that I read religiously each day. These are feeds I want to read because they have important news, stories or posts that are directly relevant to my niches.

They are from thought leaders or news sources – I want to know what they say and I want to know it as soon as I can after they write it.

Many days what I read in these feeds will lead me to a post that bounces off their stories, informs me of new products that have been released overnight or alert me to controversy or hot topics in my niche.

Then What?

The above process usually takes me around 15 minutes (on a normal morning where there’s nothing that needs an immediate response).

Remember it’s simply about scanning rather than stopping to respond – unless there’s something important.

At the end of this process I generally have a list of a number of things that I need to achieve in the day ahead. I then attempt to plan my day combining the list I’ve compiled with other tasks that need to be done.

Usually at this point I identify posts that I want to write and publish for the day, schedule in other marketing or admin tasks etc.

I tend to ‘batch’ my tasks together so that I’m not flitting from one thing to the next but instead am setting aside chunks of time for different activities.

Once I’ve got a plan for my day (that usually takes me 5 more minutes to compile) I get to it and start to knock off the things on my list.

One More Tip

I use Firefox and have a number of bookmark folders set up. One of these folders is called ’start up’. It contains the following bookmarks:

• All my stats packages
• TwitScoop
• Google Reader
• Gmail
• A couple of news related sites

Each morning I simply hit ‘command/startup folder’ and each of these sites opens up in a tab of its own. I have them in the order that I’ve mentioned above and simply work through the tabs one at a time. This way I don’t have to think about what I need to do next – all my stats are there ready for me to take a look at first, TwitScoop is open next so I can look at that…. etc

Of course I have to open my Twitter client (I’m using Tweetie at the moment primarily) to check my twitter accounts but apart from that everything I need is open in a tab of its own for me to work through. I simply close down tabs and move on to the next ones as I move through the list.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Watch How I Spend My First 20 Minutes Online Every Morning

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Posted by Danny Dover

Update: Google representatives responded to complaints of the Google News delay with the following explanation:

"The spike in searches related to Michael Jackson was so big that Google News initially mistook it for an automated attack. As a result, for about 25 minutes yesterday, when some people searched Google News they saw a "We’re sorry" page before finding the articles they were looking for." – Source

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 First and foremost, let me extend my best wishes to the family and friends of Michael Jackson. I can only imagine the pain of losing a close friend and then having to watch it play out on a global stage. He made an extraordinary impact on the world and although not perfect, he is a teacher even in death (as evidenced by this post).

The following is a timeline of how the news of the Prince of Pop’s death traveled across the internet. Not all the times are exact (they might be off by up to 5 minutes) and not every source is included. All times are GMT.

From an internet marketer’s perspective, I found this story fascinating to watch unfold. I was impressed by the speed of information distribution and very surprised to see which site posted the news first. Wikipedia is still the fastest news aggregator. It was faster than Twitter and much faster than Google.

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19:21 – One of Michael Jackson’s employee’s calls 911

The next forty-nine minutes are best described as the calm before the storm. The Los Angles Fire Department arrived at Jackson’s rented mansion in Bel Air and family members were alerted of the news.

20:10 – (Story Breaks) A small entertainment site called x17online.com breaks the story.

They post photos and a brief story a full 20 minutes before the much larger entertainment site TMZ.com posts the news. Information goes live on the internet. BOOM!

20:30 - TMZ.com posts "Michael Jackson — Cardiac Arrest"

TMZ.com posts the story on its homepage and the story is distributed to hundreds of thousands of people via RSS. My guess is they paid a pretty penny for the image above and it paid for itself ten fold with all of the links TMZ got from the story.

21:12 – Wikipedia reports Jackson’s Cardiac Arrest

A member of Wikipedia adds the news of the Cardiac Arrest to Jackson’s Wikipedia article. This is well before any other news or social media source.

21:20 – TMZ.com posts story of death

Report of Jackson’s death starts to show up on RSS feeds and eventually Twitter. It is 11 minutes before the first person clicks on a bit.ly link to TMZ.

21:30 – CNNbrk tweets that Jackson goes to hospital

The official CNN account tweets to its 2 million followers that Jackson went to hospital after suffering from a cardiac arrest

21:31 - First bit.ly link to TMZ story

The first bit.ly link about the story is clicked by someone which leads them to the TMZ article.

21:45 – Wikipedia freezes Michael Jackson page

After an explosion of edits to Jackson’s Wikipedia article, editors take the step of locking it down in protective status.

21:48 – Wikipedia first reports Jackson’s death

Wikipedia editors get enough evidence to post Jackson’s death.

21:50 – bit.ly link reaches high of 2,500 clicks a minute

Bit.ly link to TMZ hits high of almost 42 clicks a second.

22:03 – TMZ story on Jackson’s death is submitted to Digg

A bit late to the game, the story that would eventually go on to be one of the most dugg stories ever is first submitted to the site.

22:11 – TMZ story goes popular on Digg

The story is moved to the front page of Digg where its distribution erupts.

22:19 – "RIP Michael Jackson" tops Trends on Twitter

Story takes the next step and appears on Twitter’s Trends. Tens of millions of Twitter users now can see the story.

22:20 – MSNBC.com Confirms Jackson’s Death

One hour after the news of Jackson’s death hits the internet, the first mainstream news source publishes a confirmation article.

22:25 – CNN.com Confirms Jackson’s Death

CNN, out maneuvered by TMZ and MSNBC, confirms Jackson’s death.

22:34 – Approximately 2000 mentions a minute of Michael Jackson on Twitter

Mentions of Michael Jackson hit an all time high on Twitter with nearly 1,500 a minute. That’s almost 20% of all tweets at that time!

22:38 – Twitter starts to overload. First signs of the fail whale

Twitter starts to falter as a result of the massive spike.

22:40 - First stories of Jackson’s death make it on Google News

1 hour and 20 minutes after the story is first posted on TMZ, Google News starts to report the story.

22:46 – Google News Results of Jackson’s death start showing up on the results page for the query "Michael Jackson"

Google News results top the Google results page for "Michael Jackson".

22:58 – Googlebot crawls CNN twitter feed

Google starts returning CNN’s twitter feed in "Michael Jackson" SERP and provides link to cached version.

23:00 – "Michael Jackson Died" shows up in Google Trends

Google trends updates and show’s "Michael Jackson Died" as hottest trending item.

23:18 – 4chan.org goes down

4chan members temporarily overload servers. I mention this mostly because I find it really funny. ;-p

23:47 – "Michael Jackson Heart Attack" and "Michael Jackson Cardiac Arrest" show up as suggested search on Google Homepage for "Michael Jackson"

Indirect news of Jackson’s death (if someone types "Michael Jackson") shows up on Google’s homepage.

My Take Away:

Google has a really big problem and SEOs need to pay attention.

(Note: I choose Google rather than the other search engines because it leads them in all of the aspects I mention below. Everything I say about Google applies even more to the other search engines. I only have a basic idea of how difficult the technology problems are with the issues below. For better or for worse, I hold Google to a higher standard and I am not afraid to expect more.)

First, a little background information. I believe it was Ben Hendrickson who first mentioned to me the existence of three separate time priorities when indexing the web. He pointed out that the current version of Linkscape crawls and analyzes the slow moving web with a delay of about 4 weeks. (This is damn impressive given an index size of 54+ billion pages.) Blogscape (PRO Only) is much faster and aggregates the fast moving blogosphere of millions of feeds with less than 6 hours of delay. While impressive, we are still trying to catch up with Google and have started to run into the same wall as them. Sites like Twitter, have created a new real-time web. It is only in the order of perhaps hundreds of thousands of pages but indexing it is almost useless with a delay of more than a few seconds.

The events of Thursday demonstrated that Google is falling behind in the emerging real-time web. It was 3 hours and 17 minutes after TMZ first announced Michael Jackson had experienced cardiac arrest before it appeared as a auto completion suggestion on Google’s homepage. In the computer age that is a huge amount of time. It is 3 hours and 17 minutes during which consumers may choose to go somewhere other than Google to get the information they want.

As SEOs, we largely rely on the success of Google for our incomes. These are the same incomes that put food on the table for our families. It is easy to think that Google’s technology is flawless, after all, it really is incredible. However, it is experiences like the events of Thursday that reveal how truly vulnerable the search engines are.

For me it was humbling,

Teaser: SEOmoz does have a plan for the real-time web and we are excitedly working on it. More information to come in the future.

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If you have any other story sources that you think are worth sharing, feel free to post them in the comments. This post is very much a work in progress. As always, feel free to e-mail me or send me a private message if you have any suggestions on how I can make my posts more useful. If that’s not your style, feel free to contact me on Twitter (DannyDover) Thanks!

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