It goes like this – somebody says something potentially controversial , we (as SEO’s) decide as a collective that we disagree with the author , everybody tweets about the post and people start typing their responses … and then somebody screams linkbait. We stop writing our responses, we don’t comment on the blog, we stop retweeting the link and we definitely don’t write a counter post citing it. The general thought is, because it might be a cunning linkbait ploy, we should all ignore it and let it go unchallenged. If we disagree with something, we definitely should make sure we do our part to bury it (or something like that).

The first thing I think we’re doing wrong is making the classic assumption that other people are like us – that they share our knowledge and motivations. I’d like to bet that the majority of people involved in publishing online don’t have a clue about linkbait. Maybe Techcrunch know about linkbait but the PCmag guy? Really? Even if he has heard of linkbait, I think our fear of being duped is likely greater than his desire to get our links.

But the problem is deeper than that – even when we know the other party might want the publicity should it stop us? Do we really let our fear of falling for linkbait override the need to put our side of the debate across? What if we really disagree with what was said? Is it OK to suffer ignorance as long as it doesn’t get found by others? A similar thought process is applied when justifying the decision to censor extreme political parties (better to let distasteful views go unchallenged than risk them even getting more attention). I don’t agree in either case.

Perhaps part of the problem lies in the word linkbait itself – when bait is used in fishing context, it’s being used as a way to fool the fish purely for the benefit of the fisherman – the fish is definitely not going to be having a good time if it takes the bait. What does a web publisher lose though from linking out? If anything we’re likely to gain from linking out to something that’s getting lots of other editorial links – and hopefully, if that post is ranking, your counter argument will be ranking alongside it.

Let’s think of it another way, if a BBC journalist contacted you about a white paper you published, and subsequently wrote an article informed by it, but didn’t link and then said “I can’t link to you …. I really disagree with what you say on page 2 and the last thing I want is to do is help you rank that… besides, you’re whitepaper is obviously a linkbait! I’m not falling for that” - surely you’d be up in arms? “Old media doesn’t get it”.

Let’s not fear linkbait even if we know its linkbait, and we don’t like the content. If the said linkbait  provokes us to respond, then that’s what I think we ought to do – linking is beneficial to all of us and we all rely on it. We wouldn’t want people to not link to us just because they disagreed with us, would we? If that happened we might have to agree with everybody, and that, for sure, would suck.

“Good thing about twitter is people know who you are and can recommend you – everything you say and believe in is out there for them to see ” @Rishil

There is no getting away from it, we all love twitter. It allows us to engage with people who may never have spoken to us before, we can listen in to the conversations happening in social spheres that are not our own, and we can connect with people all over the world, with different interests and backgrounds, all from one interface. But what happens when you are not just one person online How do you bring all of the facets of your personality together.

It’s not an easy decision to make, and all the worse in that it’s a decision we generally make when we’re just starting out, and not one that’s easily changed once we have started to build contacts and a reputation. Even worse is when a company is involved, if you tweet as part of your company, and your identity is tied up with that, what happens then when you leave?

How many twitter accounts do I need anyway?

Of course this doesn’t just apply to twitter, but it is the easiest medium to demonstrate it in. It’s an age old question, and one that resulted in me being better known online as Yoshimi than I am as Sarah. Many moons ago when I first started on AOL chat rooms, I was known as SECsy (a name amazingl,y suggested by my mother, when I was only 14. SEC were my initials & the internet wasn’t exactly popular then so I don’t think either her or I considered the danger associated with such a name) Later it was changed to Sassy2306 (my birthday if you want to buy me a gift) and finally, when I started joining forums, I settled on Yoshimi. Slowly over time I stopped visiting the places where I had used other names and Yoshimi became me. Whether I was on my favourite Knitting community, or chatting about Rats, or the GTD system, suddenly I was Yoshimi everywhere I went.

By the time I joined twitter. Yoshimi was already taken, so I chose Yoshimiknits as a username, and opened a second account Freckle_red to use for SEO related tweeting. Unfortunately though I was already starting to become known in SEO as Yoshimi, and I was definitely known in the rest of my life as Yoshimi. It didn’t take long for me to realise that having 2 accounts wasn’t going to work, I was me, not SEO me and Knitting me & rat fancying me, just the one, Yoshimi, aka Sarah.

Recently I started to look at how other people on Twitter solve this issue, and decided that there are 4 distinct types of twit

1. The Split Personality

These people have two or more accounts, one for every facet of their personality. There is very little cross over between the two, in fact you might even be hard pushed to connect them. They use all of the latest gadgets and gizmos to manage their multiple personas, and make sure that they never tweet the wrong thing from the wrong account.

This doesn’t include managing a company account as well as your own, although if you’ve ever tried to do that for any length of time you may be able to imagine the immense amount of pressure these people put themselves under. The great thing about this approach is that you can be sure never to offend anyone with dirty joke, or bore anyone with a tweet that isn’t relevant to them. But on the other hand your followers will see you as flat, you become one dimensional, a person without depth that letting people see the other sides of your personality brings.

If you want to keep all your personas separate, be sure to bring a little from all of them into each account, and don’t expect to be able to build more than 1 “big” personality, unless of course you want to make maintaining your twitter accounts a full time job.

2. The Secret Diarist

3. The Parrot

Parrots can’t quite decide whether they are two people or one. The don’t have enough to say for two people, but aren’t ready to commit to either persona. They have people following both of their accounts, and seeing each tweet twice, as they struggle to make the decision over which account they should use and whether everyone will follow them to it when the finally commit.

Worse still, the longer they leave it the more followers each account gets and the harder the move becomes. Best advice to Parrots, make the decision now. It’s like ripping off a sticking plaster, the sooner you do it the better it will feel.

4. The Dudes

You remember the Dude, he let it all hang out. He didn’t care what anyone thought of him, or if he was wearing the wrong outfit for the venue. He just wanted to be the dude, and you either liked it, or you didn’t go bowling. Dudes have just one account, and from there hey will tweet about everything from the whether, to their blog, from work to  baby puke. They are well rounded people with lives apart from social media, SEO and ROI. They don’t exist to keep their followers happy, or to make sure that every tweet is really interesting, they’re just there to tweet and say what’s on their minds.

Of course this does mean that you only want to read one out of every 50 tweets from them, but hey, the dude abides.

Photo Credits

oudeschool (main image)

saltatempo (split personality)

fortinbras (Secret Diarist)

artolog (Parrot)

I think, when it comes to entertainment, people want to consume it (and pay for it) in different ways. They either buy it, rent/subscribe it, or want it free (and are willing to tolerate adverts). I think this varies with the type of entertainment also (here I’m mostly talking about music, TV and movies).

With TV and movies, people are used to paying some form of subscription for most of their viewing (be it satellite, cable or via a TV license). They also accept that much of their subscription will be subsidised by advertising. Fans will want to buy DVDs of their favourite shows so they can watch them again.

This is somewhat perplexing if you think about it. How many people do you know that have all the Friends boxsets even though it’s repeated constantly on E4 (or The CW in the US)? How many times, on average, would you say that you have watched any individual DVD in your collection in the past few years? I imagine it’s close to once each.

With music I think the picture is a bit different. For each CD or mp3 you have bought I would imagine the average number of plays is much higher. Why is this? Well maybe it’s because with TV and movies it is a lot about the unknown. You enjoy the show, the ride you are taken on, but in most cases when you are done you want a new experience. Sure there will be a few movies that you love to watch over and over, but in general I expect that once you’ve watched it once (or maybe twice) you will want to move on.

The same isn’t as true with music. Familiarity with music brings attachment. Many songs are “growers” that you only really begin to enjoy after a few times. Music can also have attachments to particular emotions and memories as it can set the soundtrack to your life. Portability also plays a role (you can’t drive and watch TV – well at least not safely) and also music can be listened to whilst doing other things. Also there is collectibility – the joy of having the original music with artwork in something you can keep forever.

So how does this come back to the Spotify app? Well clearly Spotify is asking users to take a different approach to the way the listen to music. Unlike TV, people are not used to paying a subscription for music. So far they have either bought it (owned it), stole it (torrents), or got it for free with advertising attached (YouTube and Spotify desktop app).

A subscription to Spotify gives you access to millions of tracks, but only while you continue to pay a subscription. A soon as you stop paying you stop listening. For some people this is acceptable, others would rather know that after one year they had £120 worth of music they could call their own. The iPhone app gives you an illusion of ownership by allowing you to download playlists and showing the album art but if you stop paying it’ll all be gone. Probably with a TV/movie application this wouldn’t bother people but I think music is a different case.

There are a few things I would think about if I were Spotify. Firstly, I’d consider how to make the iPhone app truely free. This could use advertising, like the desktop app which is downloaded to the iPhone (and hence could be used offline), resticting the number of tracks you can play in a day, restricting the catalogue available, etc. Also I would look at in-app purchasing (available in OS3.0) to pay both for a premium subscription but also for the tracks themselves. A final thought would be to offer a paid app that maybe costs £5 and gives you a certain amount of subscription included.

We have had a Ditsch open up in Leeds this week,  which I was quite excited about. Not only is this a German Pretzel chain (mmmm real German pretzels) but it’s on my way to work, which means I can have pretzels for breakfast as often as I want, right? Well no it seems not. As I walked past this morning the front of the store was open, and I could smell the pretzels cooking, Having not had breakfast it seemed like the perfect time to try the pretzel-y goodness. Unfortunately at 8.35 there were no pretzels cooked.

It seems that Ditsch don’t value the early morning on the way to work crowd, unlike every other food selling store in the vicinity, they perhaps don’t think that it’s a worthwhile market to target. In truth I would have gone there two or three times a week, not to mention possibly going back for pizza slices for lunch.

Instead I went to Pret, and had a perfectly acceptable if slightly sad pretzel instead.

Marketing Win

Yesterday I put a plea out on Twitter for 10th wedding anniversary gifts, I got one response, and the conversation went something like this;

Me: have to buy a 10th wedding anniversary gift for my sister in law. Any ideas?

@Justpaperroses: @Yoshimi_S aluminum! Happy “aluminum” Anniversary from www.JustPaperRoses.com/twitter check out our JustAluminumRoses for her?

Me: @JustPaperRoses great use of social media (replied to my 10th anniversary q) but poor targeting as I’m in the UK, not USA

@Justpaperroses: @Yoshimi_S patience. we get lots of UK orders, albeit with expensive shipping. I’m targeting “you” for next year’s A, not this year’s A !!

Me: @JustPaperRoses nice one I think I might have to send hints of your site to hubby for our anniversary next month

@Justpaperroses: @Yoshimi_S please do! or give us his @ and we’ll Tweet him!

This was a lovely exchange, I’m already planning buying from this company next time it’s someones anniversary. Their products were lovely, and I really would love the leather roses from hubby next month.

Virtually everybody I know hates the monthly report time (yes, we have them client side too), but with a little effort these can become great documents for discussion. A graph that your client/board can understand will really help bring valuable input from people who might not understand search too well, but understand the business very well. You might even find this …dare I say it, fun (ok, well compared to usual ). It’s beyond the scope of this blog post to provide detailed excel instructions, I’ll provide some pointers but if you want further help you’d be best catching me on twitter ( @moxley ).

So, without further delay, here are some of the SEM related uses I managed to find for some of the more interested excel charts :

Bubble Chart

This has quickly become one of my favourite graph’s for it’s ability to highlight material/important information on the graph in such a simple way. A bubble chart is a variation of scatter chart, whereby the bubble size is represented by a 3rd value, usually measuring ’size’ in some shape or form.

This chart is naturally geared towards PPC campaigns. I have plotted cpc against conversion rate to show in detail which campaigns are too expensive, which aren’t converting well, and the relative importance. Here’s an example that might represent the sales from an Insurance comparison site :

The bubble size is represented by the amount of sales each campaign has delivered to give an idea of importance. The blue line represents the efficiency curve, whereby anything above the line is probably delivering an acceptable CPA, and anything below is not. We can see from this that the Home insurance campaign is clearly providing the bulk of profitability overall, while the other major campaign for Car insurance is borderline due to it’;s high cpc. Life and PPI campaigns are not performing well at all, for very different reasons – the former probably needs some work on Quality score, while the latter could be an issue with the offering. Pet insurance is doing very, and given it’s moderate size , shouldn’t be ignored. The big message here though, is that the focus has to be on getting the cpc down on car insurance.

Brief Instructions for excel 2007

1 ) Get data into Excel , with each campaign in a row, and then 3 columns for cpc,cpa and sales (or whatever metrics you choose)

2) Insert chart, choose bubble.

3) select a bubble, right click and go to ‘Select Data’. Delete what is there in the left column, and press ‘add’, add the relevant x,y and bubble size ranges.

4) You’ll then need to add data labels, and rename them manually.

Doughnut Chart
Probably not my favourite of all the charts, but  I still think it can be an improvement (space saving if nothing else) on using multiple pie charts. That’s basically what a doughnut chart is – multiple pie charts in one (for instance when comparing 1 year against the next). There are a million and one uses for this ; in my chosen example I chose illustrate the effect of the ‘Vince’ effect by showing the before/after breakdown of traffic driven by keywords based on the number of words in the phrase.

Number of keywords pre-post vince

Ok, here we can see that far less of our traffic is now being driven by keywords with 2 words in (my imaginary client just got knocked onto page 2 for ‘car insurance’. ouch ). The effect on our short tail has been quite dramatic, and , because my client is only a small player ,we don’t expect to be able to repair this anytime soon. The good news is that we’ve been trying really hard to boost the long tail , and keyphrases with 5+ words in are now driving more of our traffic – this is good since we know on-page relevance  counts more for these terms, where we are confident we are the best. Unfortunately, this chart doesn’t show totals, so this would need to have been covered already.

Brief Instructions for Excel 2007

1) Get the data into a table, with a row for each series (number of keywords ,in this case), and a column for each time period

2) Go to graphs, choose doughnut

3) add some data labels.

Area Chart

Ok, so this is the most complex of the charts , but it’s also very impressive if done right. It’s basically very good for showing the trend of a set of sub-components over time. You can go a lot further than I have here, but my example shows natural traffic broken down into categories over the year :

Categories of traffic broken down with an area chart

What this chart tells is exactly how our seo campaign has grown our client’s natural traffic. In this fictional example we’ve used Google analytics segments to separate out all our key types of traffic. Following last year’s board meeting with the client we’d agreed to put a huge effort into the social channel to help build the brand. This graph shows we have delivered well on this, radically improving the traffic to the Blog and, to a lesser extent the news. This extra traffic doesn’t seem to have cannibalised any other sections, and indeed, the Homepage traffic has improved also. If you have enough space, you’d probably use data labels on here for the traffic amounts by month, but it would have looked too squashed here.

Brief instructions for Excel 2007
1) Get data into excel with category names as rows, and time periods as columns

2) select area chart, in my example I use a stacked 2d area chart, but feel free to play about with the more impressive ones!

3) Add data labels

Radar Chart

Last but certainly not least comes the cool sounding radar chart. I love this chart – done properly it shows competitive strenth’s and weaknesses very well. All your categories here need to conform to a standard measurement scale (i.e 0 to 10) for this to make sense. Given that the guys at SEOmoz have found a great use for this graph, using likescape data , I will build on their example.

Linkscape data for our competitors in a radar chart

I really feel this chart can do a really good of explaining something complex. From this example we can see that oursite is a good all round site, doing well for most metrics, but being weak at the domain level. Competitor 1 is the exact opposite of us, and will probably enjoy better rankings for the long tail. We have absolute advantage over competitor 2 however, and need not worry about them. Competitor 3 looks very strong , and has a very good domain mozrank, but curiously doesn’t do well for Moztrust or Domain moztrust – maybe an investigation into their links is warranted.

When doing this chart you’ll almost certainly need to adjust the axis, or you’ll not be able to read the differences properly, especially if you have quite a few competitors!

Brief Instructions for Excel 2007

1) Get the data into excel, with your competitor names as rows, and the linkscape metrics as columns.

2) select radar graph

3) Adjust the axis. You also might want to increase the thickness of your own line for emphasis

So that’s it for now. I’m sure there’s 100’s of interesting ways to present seo data in charts, and I’d love to hear more examples in the comments. Has anybody yet found a use for the mindboggling surface chart? what about making 3d charts that actually make sense?

I’ve saved each of the 4 charts with thier raw data if anybody is interested – you know where to find me

If you are going to run a successful social media campaign, for a real life client, there are some things you are going to have to come to terms with. Depending on your current state of mind this may involve you growing a pair.

Firstly, the last thing you want to say to a client looking to do social media is yes. Really the very last thing you should ever say to them is yes. If you want to be a social media manager/guru/flunky you may as well strike that word from your vocabulary all together, shall we do it now…yes there doesn’t that feel better?

Now you need to figure out what you are going to say to them, do you have your big girl pants on, because you’re going to need them…You’re going to say NO! That’s right you’re going to be a big meanie and tell the client what they are going to do. Now what I’ve done to make this easier for you is put together some practice phrases. Stand in front of your mirror in your bed room and repeat the following until you can say it without crying, OK?

NO you don’t want a twitter account Mr client, your audience is made up of 21 year olds on low incomes, that is not a key twitter demographic

NO you don’t want a facebook page Mr client, your industry is not one people like to talk nicely about and opening a facebook page just gives them another chance to bash you.

NO Mr client no one wants to read a blog about rubber table leg ends

All done? Has the weeping stopped? Good, because you’re not done yet. Now step two is to tell them what is going to happen, did you see the key phrase there, Tell that’s right, you’re going to be in charge. So some more practice for you these ones you have to say until you sound like you really know what you’re talking about, off you go

You MUST have something interesting to say Mr Client

You MUST strike while the iron is hot and take advantage of today’s news, not last weeks news Mr Client

You MUST engage your audience how they want to be engaged with Mr Client, not just talk at them

Well done, you have now managed to get to the point where you should be allowed to start thinking about managing a social media campaign.  Whether you actually manage to keep the client for more then the next 2 hours, well that’s up to you.

The basic promo tweet:

Win a MacBook Pro with @mpora http://bit.ly/svZNM #mpora
2:58 AM Jul 27th

A bit of word analysis

If you take away the letters #mpora from “MacBook Pro” you get #cbokro. Best anagram of that I can think of is “Bo Rock”.
3:08 AM Jul 27th

A tribute to 90’s band “Snow”:

Back to the 90s: #mpora, you no say that’s who I’m gonna blame, A licky boom boom down.
3:31 AM Jul 27th

Travel tips:

Was thinking about one day going on holiday to Bora Bora but now think I may go to #mpora mpora
3:45 AM Jul 27th

A new take on a classic story:

Hmmm, maybe I should read my kids “The #mpora ’s New Clothes” tonight.
3:49 AM Jul 27th

An apology for my mpora tweeting:

Sorry guys, the possibility of winning a MacBook Pro brings out the creative cheesy side of me #mpora
3:55 AM Jul 27th

A liquid solution:

Having trouble transferring liquids beginning with the letter ‘M’? Try an #mpora for guaranteed satisfaction.
3:58 AM Jul 27th

A hopeful last tweet before the first draw:

Going offline for a while. Hope when I get back I will be the proud winner of a MacBook Pro #mpora
4:38 AM Jul 27th

The battle with Yoshimi_S begins:

@Yoshimi_S you can try to beat me but only if you can shoe-horn #mpora into a sentance.
about 20 hours ago

Spreading the word:

#mpora – 70% lower in saturated fat than butter
about 20 hours ago

Boots the Monkey’s new friend:

A favourite TV show of my kids is #mpora The Explorer
about 20 hours ago

A fairy tail memory:

What’s the name of Sleeping Beauty? Oh yeh, it’s Princess #mpora
about 19 hours ago

Trash talking Yoshimi_S:

@Yoshimi_S could you attempt be any #mpora considering you can’t even type my name properly?
about 5 hours ago

Rhyme time

Under my fedora there is a plethora of #mpora
about 4 hours ago

Pop-tastic:

A bit of Scissor Sisters action: #mpora Can’t you give me some time? I got to give myself one more chance. To be the man that I know I am.
about 4 hours ago

Film buff:

Favourite line from Notting Hill: I knew a girl at school called #mpora. Never got to see her box, though.
about 4 hours ago

Time to go back to English class:

@Yoshimi_S I’m the #mpora of bad spelling.
about 3 hours ago

Who says romance is dead?

Wedding vows: …for better or for worse, for richer, for #mpora, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish…
about 3 hours ago

How far will I go to win?

@Yoshimi_S as long as I don’t loose friends I’m willing to loose some followers if it means I win a MacBook Pro from insane #mpora tweets
about 3 hours ago

Yoshimi_S starts to cheat:

@Yoshimi_S retweeting me to get an entry… Cheap shot to win #mpora
about 3 hours ago

Can’t agree more with Rob:

RT @RobOusbey: Will #mpora please give @StephenTallamy a prize, just to make him stop? (me: yup gimme that MacBook!)
about 3 hours ago

I find a new friend:

RT @Moxley: @StephenTallamy ‘How to lose followers and influence #mpora’ (me: I’m doing my best)
about 3 hours ago

A desperate man foiled by retweets:

@Yoshimi_S hmm, how do I copyright my #mpora entries?
about 2 hours ago

Selling out my kids for a MacBook:

A lot of people say my kids are #mpora -ble
about 2 hours ago

What I will do if Yoshimi_S wins:

@Yoshimi_S I will hunt you down a rip that MacBook out of your arms #mpora
about 2 hours ago

Long distance relationships never work:

@Yoshimi_S or we could share it. Hmmm how can you share a MacBook from either end of the M1? #mpora
about 2 hours ago

Giving everyone a well deserved break:

You will be glad to know I’m going offline for a while. #mpora out.
about 2 hours ago

As a generalisation, I don’t agree with regulation (or most forms of government interference for that matter), and I much prefer voluntary industry standards boards that have some ‘teeth’.

For those that haven’t seen my Youmoz comment, my basic suggestion was to create a body which, if we all threw our weight behind it, could gain awareness with clients and enforce standards to it’s members. I don’t pretend the idea wouldn’t be extremely difficult to implement practically , but the theory of what ’standards’ we should work to is interesting.

I’ve spent time on both sides of the fence (agency & client side) as well as my own consulting, so I’d like to think I’m not too biased either way. Here are some of the things I’d like to see stamped out of ‘mainstream’ seo agencies that I think standards would be ideal for :

Risk Taking with clients money & brands

Probably my number 1 bugbear with SEO agencies is when they employ risky techniques risking either a clients brand, or their substantial link budget without making the client aware of the risk element. Many companies will operate with agencies in  a 3 month or similar trial period before committing to a longer term, which leads many agencies doing anything possible to lift traffic in time for their review. Unbalanced anchor text profiles or buying links from big brokers are usually used to achieve this, since both can work in the short term and sometimes only get penalised by a manual review or major algo shift later down the line.

It wouldn’t be easy for any independent standards board to call out agencies for doing this since it’s difficult to prove it was the agency doing this activity. A further complication is that clients have different appetites for risk and in some cases clients actually want their agencies to do this stuff. Either way, promoting the importance of this conversation taking place is worthwhile in itself.

Misleading advertising

Ok, so this applies to almost every trade known, but I suspect we are known to be worse than average for this – Probably on par with Banks & APR’s. There are many forms of miss-selling in SEO that I’ve seen is the cheeky way some agencies pitch PPC as SEO.  Where this is the case, it’s really simple – no agency or consultant taking advantage of this type of confusion should be able to obtain/retain membership of such a body. Claiming affiliation with Google , due to having GAP qualified individuals should also be stamped out.

Unethical/illegal practises
I’m all for Grey or Blackhats (if that’s what the client actually wants), but I do have a problem with things that negatively affect other people, and I don’t think they have a place in SEO. I’m talking the extreme tactics here – hacking sites to add invisible links, or emailing companies asking them to switch links while pretending to be the client. Comment spam, while not particularly extreme or unusual, also didn’t ought to be a part of mainstream SEO – it’s a pain to moderate/cleanup and can carry penalties for the blog if  it slips through.

So there’s my assortment of rants,  what would you like to see stamped out? and would it really make a difference to our perception as an industry, or should we just get on with being snake oil salespeople?

So I go on the O2 site this morning to check the news and I notice they have taken a step back in time and launched a virutal help assistant called Lucy on there for some unknown reason. Like talking to a virtual person is in some way better than reading an FAQ.

So I asked ‘Lucy’ (apparently “Asking Lucy is the easiest way to get help online”) if there was any further news on the Palm release and here’s what I got:

Well she provided a response, which is technically answering...

Aside from that being a complete lie (unless she’s got a Second Life account) it’s also complete bollocks. I don’t have anything against this kind of thing per se, it’s a bit cliched and tacky but at least take the time to make it useful before slapping it on your site. Schoolboy error.

I’d love to see some more Ask Lucy responses down here if anyone has any – especially if she answers your question correctly!

Update! Getting To Know Lucy – My Quest For A Virtual Date

I regularly scour the internet for girlfriends so getting to know Lucy seemed to be an ideal opportunity. Since she knows so little about O2 I thought I’d try a different line of enquiry…

Who Is Your Fiance?

As she already told me she was engaged (apparently happily but I don’t believe it) I pressed her for more details about her other half. She was tight lipped other than his name:

Paul eh?

Do you have a dog?

I seemed to hit a frosty silence with other Paul questions so I changed tack – pets! A great conversation started…

Progress!

After warming her up with those romantic overtures I decided to go in for the kill:

Let’s Mate?

You damn tease!

Can I have your number?

Maybe that was a bit strong, I toned it down a little to see if I’d have more success.

That's her real number - dammit!

Needless to say this did not leave me pleased, I resorted to insulting her before leaving, dignity intact:

F*ck you Lucy

I can’t believe she could resist but somehow she has, as well. The search continues…

A discussion last week has had me thinking a lot about my role, what it includes and what it’s aims are. I had always thought of myself as an SEO, but now I’m not so sure.  It’s quite obvious from from the name that SEO is about search engines, search engine optimisation, what else could it refer to? That creates a problem though, if I’m really an SEO then my goal is to increase search engine positions, and generate conversions (what ever they might be) for my clients. Is that really all you look at when you’re working with a client, because I know I do a hell of a lot more than that!

So what does my role include, below is a brief list, I’m sure many of you do far more than me, but off the top of my head the following seem to cover the majority of my role;

• improving search engine positions
• reputation management
• usability
• customer journey optimisation
• engaging in social media
• content creation
• generating off site referrals

Only one of those things is search engine optimisation. In which case it doesn’t seem like SEO is a very descriptive term for what I do. SEO’s have taken on these other roles because they are more closely aligned to what we do then they are to anything else, but they’re not really SEO.

I think a better term would be OOM, I quite like the idea of being an OOM, organic online marketing is a much more encompassing term for all of the pies I have fingers in, and I think is probably a much easier term for clients to understand. Even better than all of that though, if we were all to become known as OOM’s we would get to be named after this guy;

The OOM Comand battle droid

So what do you think, are you an SEO or an OOM?