All About Content

I’ve redesigned and migrated All About Content from self-hosted Blogger to self-hosted WordPress this morning (and by “I”, I of course mean “someone much smarter than me, on my behalf”) and such things never go off flawlessly. So expect things to be kinda-sorta broken for a little bit.

Some of the links don’t work. Monthly archives aren’t redirecting (but now posts are organized by categories instead of month, which makes more sense anyway). And worst of all, I accidentally deleted almost all my comments from this year (and there was some good stuff in there). Also, in the migration the comment links didn’t transfer, so if you left some really thoughtful, brilliant comments to earn a dofollow link, I’m really sorry about that! I’ll figure out how to retrieve those from the back up and do my best to insert the links back into previous comments as well.

I know this is the part where I’m supposed to solicit feedback on the new site, but I’m scared  Keep in mind it’s a work in progress!

So recently someone tells me that I should do a post about SEO on my blog. Um, okay. Apparently my blog can haz FAIL.

If you do a Google search and there are two results that contain the same wording, and one of them is from some no-name blogger and the other is on the MSN.com domain, which one do you think is guilty of plagiarism? If you guessed the blogger, think again.

Let’s be clear, I’m not talking about my content being scraped by some spam blog. That happens all the time and I’m quietly resigned to that. What I’m talking about is plagiarism by a professional writer, for profit, on a presumably credible news portal.

My recent post on Viagra’s anniversary happens to rank well for a search on that phrase, but so does an article posted on MSN India.

This piece, “written” by Aditya Mehta and syndicated through India Syndicate blatantly rips off my post’s funniest line (on what SEOHack calls my only decent best post on this blog). The one word difference (the use of a second “please” at the beginning of the last sentence) is due to my having gone back a day later and editing it out of my post because it was redundant… something Aditya Mehta apparently didn’t catch.

It’s not MSN’s fault because they just bought content from a third-party provider, right? And I’m sure India Syndicate has hundreds of freelance writers, making too difficult for the content syndicator to police all its writers. (<-- this is sarcasm, in case that wasn't clear. I don't care how difficult it is to do QA on a product you sell, that's still your responsibility)

So, boo-hoo, who really cares about MSN India or some stupid Indian article syndication company and whether a few sentences of a fluff article aren’t original? Well, it certainly pisses me off and since this is my blog, I get to rant about whatever I want. There’s also no easy way to contact MSN’s editorial team or India Syndicate (an email to their Contact Us address bounces), so it’s not like I have any other outlet.

Who, if anybody, is responsible for ensuring integrity of the content on MSN’s network (whether it be MSN India or any other portal)? And now that freelance writers for India Syndicate know they can get away with content theft and even have that work published on major resume-padding sites like MSN.com, what’s to stop them from taking shortcuts on everything else they do from now on?

It’s really not that hard to figure out if something is plagiarized — a company with resources like MSN surely can afford some sort of software that checks if content already exists on the web (you could even call it a “search engine”) before it publishes something to its content network.

Update: April 8, 2008

Wow, did my complaining help? The URL to the offending article has changed to point to a completely different article. Good thing I took that screen shot of the SERPs first; wish I’d done the same with the page itself since I wanted to go back and check how much else of that article was copied from other people. The complete text that was copied from me read:

Indirectly or directly, Pfizer is responsible for probably half of your email volume, so be sure to take a moment to reflect on the historic importance of this day. But remember, if your celebration of Viagra’s anniversary lasts more than three hours, please call a doctor. (original post)

Here it is viewed from a different angle:

Same URL, different page info when viewed through my browser cache. The old post appears to be gone from MSN, Google and Yahoo as well.

Happy New Year. Just a quick update: I’ve resigned my in-house SEO job and accepted a Sr. SEO Manager position at New Media Strategies, an agency specializing in online intelligence and word of mouth marketing.

It’s an exciting opportunity for me to do exactly what I want to be doing at this point: to identify new opportunities/attract new clients, work on a variety of projects, and build an SEO practice from the ground up.

One of the last things I wanted to do before I start my new job is to help recruit for the in-house position I’m vacating.

Here’s what the company will need the ersatz SEO superstar to do:

Key Responsibilities of the Position:

• Recommend and manage content development strategies.
• Monitor trends in search engine algorithms and searcher behavior to identify new opportunities.
• Optimize web pages including copy, meta tags, alt tags, and streamlining code for SEO.
• Maximize the shelf space on search engine results pages (SERPs)
• Deliver quantifiable results measured against concrete revenue goals
• Work with development teams to improve site architecture for SEO
• Educate developers and designers about factors that influence crawlability and rankings, allowing them to understand how their decisions impact SEO

It’s posted under the title SEO Manager on LinkedIn, where you can also apply. Oh, and by the way, if you’re curious about how much SEOs earn, the SEMPO in-house salary survey just came out.

I’m also taking on more freelance clients (obviously where the projects wouldn’t pose any conflicts of interests).

If you’re interested either in learning more about the SEO position or in hiring me for a small scale SEO contract project, look me up on LinkedIn and send me a message.

p.s. Take a look at these SEO interview questions to make sure you rock the interview.

Chapter 11 that is. My company declared bankruptcy yesterday. (What does Chapter 11 mean?)

As far as my SEO projects are concerned, it’s “business as usual” though. If by “usual” one means that coincidentally, i.e. completely unrelated, one has been working off bad keyword data for the last year. A bug in our reporting was only recently discovered that completely changes the profile of our organic search traffic. arrrrghhhh!

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks, to say the least.

That’s all for now.

It’s the end of the month and I realized I’ve barely posted at all in the last few weeks. There are at least half a dozen posts started but never finished just sitting in the queue, but a heck of a lot of good that does anyone.

So, yeah, I’ve been pretty busy. Lotsa stuff going on at work. I can’t really talk about it (shhhh) but I’ll mention that I had to lay off two of my staff, which was really hard to do. I’m also spending more time on brand management (again) and product merchandising, the latter of which generates a greater sense of urgency going into the holiday season than SEO projects do. (Xmas SEO? Puh-leeze, we took care of that back in July. J/K)

Obviously the big SEO chatter this month was about the contentious paid links debate and the related issue of several major sites (like the WashingtonPost.com, for example) losing a lot of PageRank. Bruce Clay does a nice job of rounding up relevant posts on the subject here and here. If you haven’t been following the debate, you might want to start with Rand’s roundup of the links session at SES San Jose.

Other news some of you may find interesting is that Google seems to be changing the way it displays sitelinks (at least intermittently). Here’s an example of the new 8-link layout I’m seeing a lot in Google’s sitelinks:

I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to start blogging again more regularly soon, once the work drama subsides (assuming it does).

Updates to this site have slipped lately because the free time I used to spend blogging is now consumed by something a little more colorful. That colorful thing’s name is Stewie, whom I brought home from the Animal Shelter two weeks ago.

So you’ll forgive me if the latest Google/Yahoo/MSN happenings are taking a back seat to more exciting reads like tips on how to get your parrot to eat vegetables, or the intense debate about whether Happy Huts are appropriate conure cage accoutrements.

I actually took the opportunity to create a WordPress blog about this experience, since I wanted to spend more time with that system. (I’ve mentioned before how much Blogger sucks, in my opinion.) Don’t worry, I’m not actually trying to get anyone to read it — I’m not one of those pet owners… yet. Nor will it be updated for much longer (unless I can figure out how to monetize it much more successfully than this blog).

From what little I’ve used the system, it absolutely hands down beats the Blogger platform… except that you cannot display LinkShare.com affiliate links in your posts. Is it that
the WordPress CMS just strips that code right out of the posts if you’re on the WordPress domain (to force you to comply with the WordPress ToS)?

And if that’s the case, how is WordPress identifying all the links that could have a for-profit component to them? AdSense and LinkShare are probably easy to identify, but there are scores of other affiliate programs out there and the folks at WordPress couldn’t be tracking all of them. Am I missing something here?

Not that I intend to circumvent WP terms… just curious.

p.s. More pictures of my adorable little Stewie.

My analytics show that someone found this blog at some point searching on something related to why you should blogroll. There isn’t anything on the site to answer that question, and I thought it was a good one, so I thought I’d take a shot at it. So here are 5 reasons to have a blogroll on your blog:

1. Because your readers are interested in what you’re reading, what inspires you, to put your work into more context.
2. Because your readers want more good content; why not be the one to help them find it?
3. Because the third “W” in WWW stands for “Web”… as in a network. That’s the whole point of the intar-web now, ain’t it?
4. Because bloggers like showing up in blogrolls and maybe (just maybe) they’ll link back to you and send you some new readers.
5. Because outbound links can help search engines figure out what your pages are about.

So why don’t I have a blogroll? Another good question. Where would I put it? My site isn’t really designed for more links in the template. I could get rid of my “What Am I Reading” list, but I think that serves a very similar purpose — to provide up-to-date, related content.

If you read this blog and think “this blog is fabulous, but would be so much better with a blogroll!” let me know. If you’re a reader of this blog and think “this is the worst SEO blog ever!” … well, I’ve got a 3-point rebuttal: 1) shows what you know — that honor is already claimed by this blog. 2) Why do you read it if you think it sucks? That’s not very smart. 3) Keep it to yourself. I don’t like to hear from not-smart haterz.

Well, gee, who asked him anyway?

(More on why GrayWolf hates me on Cape Cod SEO — because there ain’t no way I’m sending any link love his way after that indictment.)

…And what does he mean, I have nothing original to add? Is there anyone else who covers industry-breaking news like my own site redesign, my experience as comment spammer, the fact that I don’t like slugs, or any of the other fascinating things that I write about here on All About Content?

Hmph.

… that’s been how I’ve described my job as SEO. Now add to that 50% management. (Nothing less than 200% will do!) I resolved late last month that for the next 2 quarters at least, I’m going to commit half my time to management. This includes recruiting and hiring, professional development, and raising the profile of my team and our projects. That sort of stuff.

One of the biggest priorities for 2007 for me, according to a recent discussion with my manager, is building up my team. That’s a big change — up until now I’ve been very hands-on with all of our projects, ensconced in the minutae of optimizing individual pages, just because I’ve had a hard time trusting anyone else to sweat the details.

That clearly needs to stop, since there’s just not enough time and way too many projects that are in need of some strategic leadership.

The good news is that I’ve filled one of my openings (the online marketing assistant position), which solves 2 issues: a) less energy needed to fill the remainining position(s) and b) more hands and brainpower to actually execute on the zillion ideas on our to-do list.

Building an SEO team from the ground up is proving to be an interesting challenge, and it will continue to be one as I continue to hire people without a background in search engine optimization, per se.

Any tips from someone who’s been in my shoes? Do you think it’s foolish of me to hire people with no SEO experience and rely on them to learn on the job?