Hold the phone! Revelations below.

Internet genius John Dvorak who writes for PC Magazine has written the things no other man dares to say. He alone is forging a path of enlightened truth through the eternal night of the internet.

Read on, if you dare…

Revelation #1
Search engines use tricks to rank websites, then SEOs reverse engineer these tricks to trick the search engines into ranking other sites which SEOs want to rank because they’re so tricky.
(source: Paragraph 2 of the mad ramblings of John Dvorak)

Revelation #2
There are no large SEO firms or agencies, the entire SEO industry is made up of shady individuals who consult for ‘a few’ companies and whisper (shadily) about their tricks in the background.
(source: Paragraph 3 of the mad ramblings of John Dvorak)

Revelation #3
All website selling something are controlled and/or influenced by SEOs. It could in no way, shape or form be an affiliate or genuine company. Fact.
(source: Paragraph 5 of the mad ramblings of John Dvorak)

Revelation #4
PC Magazine is one of the ‘few trusted’ sources for information on, well that doesn’t matter. anything. Coincidentally that is where this man writes – who would have thought?
(source: Paragraph 7 of the mad ramblings of John Dvorak)

Revelation #5
When you click a link and it takes you to another search engine results page you have been tricked. The number of instances of this event tell you how well ’search engine countermeasures’ are ‘doing’. Quite what they are doing and against whom is not specified.
(source: Paragraph 8 of the mad ramblings of John Dvorak)

Final Thought
SEOs are large and vague like fog – no one knows who they are but everyone is reading about SEO (somehow). So we need to er, get ready.

Still don’t believe that the internet is just one big tricksy lie made by search engines tricked by SEOs? Then you are what some people might call mentally retarded.

Rather than list some arbitrary things you should do, see, lick or try in 2010 I’m going to arbitrarily list some lists that I think you should read about 2010 that will enrich your life, that will make you more physically attractive and make you an SEO Voodoo Priest like that guy from Predator 2.

So without further ado, here is my list of top lists about 2010:

SEO LIST ONE:
Mystic Rand rubs his crystals balls and predicts what he thinks will happen in SEO in the big one-oh. Here are his 8 Predictions For SEO in 2010 – will they be true? Bets are still being taken – contact me for details!

SEO LIST TWO:
Over at Holistic Search Pete Young stalks a woman on a beach, as well as compiling a list of Ten People You Should Be Following in 2010. I know you didn’t want to make everyone else look bad which is why I’m not on this list. Right Pete?

Pete?

Ahem.

SEO LIST THREE:
If you couldn’t be bothered to come up with your own, check out this great list of 20 SEO Resolutions for 2010 from SEOptimise. That’s 1.67 resolutions a month – he’s a maniac!

So now that you’ve read those lists you feel better right?

Powerful?

Almost… superhuman…

Happy New Year!

Here is a snip (courtesy of chrismoyles.net):

So back to Hannah. The song that has been going round in my head is a version of this but, of course, with the words “Hannah Bo Banna” (please forgive my bad singing – I am no singer):

Now with this clearly there are other people in SEO that it could work for and so next I have “Stuart P Turner”

And whilst I’m in the mood, here’s one for “Rebecca Kelley”:

Can you think of any other people in SEO who could fit the same song? Feel free to download the backing track from Vitamin String Quartet’s “Processed Strings” and have a go yourself!

So here for your viewing pleasure I present, the original (Clorets) Meerkats. I seem to remember them having as much of an impact (certainly in my playground) as the current Compare the Market one. Perhaps this is an advertising secret weapon!

On a more serious note though here are 10 Great Ways to come up with Linkbait Ideas from someone a little more professional…

And so, at the request of Tom Critchlow, here is that very image your are looking for…

Obviously the potential to mash up this particular image is great and I’d love to see your versions in the comments below. What could Stu be looking at? BTW if you are wondering why an Ostrich – it was the first funny thing I could think of when doing a Google image search – go figure!

Whilst you are here I thought I’d share the mash up I did of one of Distilled’s reputation monitoring banners following Will’s small incident with an elbow (in case you didn’t see it from Twitter)…

Right… back to reading that blog post.

I met with captain Dom Hodgson last night to discuss plans to bring the SEOs and SEMs of the North together in a beautiful medley of beer, chatter and general geekery. Dom’s post has around the same amount of detail but for the record:

Northern SEM Meetup

Tuesday the 7th of April

Mr Foley’s (directions)

An official Northern SEM blog/forum will be launching soon and this monthly gathering will continue on into the future until we all need new livers.

So spread the work, join us, JOIN US!

Q: How many SEOs does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Four.

• One to make sure the bulb is marked up with words including bright, shiny, and energy-saving.
• One to get lots of people to point at it saying “light bulb”.
• One to go around asking people “how many light bulbs can you change in one minute?”.
• One to create lots of “I heart light bulbs” badges.

A speach-impared SEO goes to the doctor and says “doctor, doctor, I’m not ranking high enough”, to which the doctor replies “try using both hands”.

Q: Why did the SEO cross the road?
A: To analyse the traffic.

George McFly walks up to Rebecca Kelley and says “I am your keyword density”.

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Google.
301 /
Are you cloaking?

Do you know any more rib-ticklers? Submit them in the comments below.

Lynx Click Shower Gel

Something about clicking on links… too tenuous? Can you think of any other everyday brands that are ideally suited for people in search marketing?