There would be nothing better in this world than to be coddled by Mr. Mom himself. Actually, when I was looking for the picture above, there were some disturbing search results, most of which were NSFW and included Tony Danza nude… I now feel that Tony Danza is a total creep, but that’s not what I am writing about. I just needed a clever title, and since I was listening to the radio on my way to work, and the song was “Tiny Dancer” by Elton John – I decided this title would suffice. I know, I’m retarded..

Some Simple SEO Talk for You

So, you like to build links right? Well lately, I have been doing more in the way of research than practice. I have been looking at sites from a linkbuilding standpoint, and trying to find good ways to legitimately build links without spamming people. I found out that a site I have been on for a couple years is actually a linkbuilding goldmine, at least at face value it is.

I have been on VOX for almost 2 years. I like VOX because it integrates very well with my Palm, and I can post photos and videos on the fly. I also like the social network/blog feel that a lot of sites tend to over-do. In my opinion, VOX is what would happen if Tumblr, TypePad, and Blogger had a crazy night out and 9 months later, well, you get it. All cliche’s aside though: Vox does not use nofollow or noindex. In fact, whenever I post a blog on Vox, it is indexed in Google the same day (usually). Since Vox indexes and follows everything, it makes it a great place to start a new blog. Plus, the social aspect of Vox is pretty nice, and the ease of use is awesome.

Benefits:

• Canonicalized URLs
• DoFollow/DoIndex
• SEF URLs
• Post Links (and it uses the website’s meta info)
• Photos (no ALT text though, boo)
• Streaming and Uploading Videos
• Easily Socialized Content
• Ease of Use

There are a lot of other benefits that make Vox better than most of the other platforms out there, but you won’t fully understand what they are until you give it a shot.

Now, back to Tony Danza for a minute:

DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT do a google search for Tony Danza. Apparently back in the 1980s, Tony was a guy who posed nude. Go figure.. I thought he was a baseball player from Brooklyn, but I guess I was wrong about that… If only it was possible to gouge out my minds eye..

Big news today on the interwebernet! Twitter is creating a FULL-FLEDGED search engine that crawls sites and everything. Is this a good idea? I’m on the fence. Keep in mind, this blog is my opinion, and I have no idea how twitter plans to use the search engine. They are smarter than me, so I assume they have it all figured out.

Apparently, Twitter will be crawling and indexing links that are tweeted by it’s users, and the results of your searches will reference the sites that were posted. How will it work?

My first concern is that the links are already no-follow links, so they will have to exclude that from their algorithm (maybe?). If they completely exclude the nofollow attributes, they may indexing some pages that aren’t intended to be indexed (that is, of course, if they decide to crawl deeper than just the page that they are intending to index, but I don’t think they would do that). Also, most of the links on Twitter  are truncated and shortened, so how will this impact the SEO part of the search function (I know that some SEOs are probably wondering about this, because any new search engine with a high potential of users needs to be exploited one way or another)?

Here is how I think it will most likely work:

I think that Twitter will not work like a standard search engine, regardless of what people say, or what they would like to believe.  I think Twitter Search will base their popularity on things like Retweets and how many people post a particular link. So I guess it is a form of link popularity, but it’s not going to be a standard backlink count (excuse my seemingly ignorant lack of information, but I’m not talking about this right now).

I also think that they will rank links based on the status of the user. For example, If I post a link to a story in the New Times, and no one retweets it, it won’t do very good in the search engine; however, on the flip side, if AplusK posts the same link, it would probably do a little better.  Makes sense, right? Right!

Ok, so as a dude who loves social media, seo, and all things web, so I know that I will be following this very closely. I’ll post all of the updates that I find below this blog as I find them. We’ll put all of this together, together (that sounded better in my head:p).

**UPDATE #1  - 05/07/2009 @ 5:18pm**

So I was reading this article, and they are giving more insight on this big new search feature on Twitter. This is going to be really big (I hope). If you are in the social media/marketing industry, you should be paying REALLY close attention to these changes.

Link: http://www.whosbloggingwhat.com/issues/2009/05072009/05072009_w?goback=.hom

If you are looking for a free quote, please email nick@notaindustries.com.

I will give you a FREE SEO QUOTE and a FREE WEB DESIGN QUOTE, or you can choose between the two.

What is the importance in this? Well, some companies will charge you for consultation, I will not. I will work as your personal SEO Consultant and Web Design Consultant. I will give you a detailed marketing and/or design plan/proposal and work with your budget to make sure that YOU can get a solid return for your investment.

Please Contact Me Directly:

Nick Norris
nick@notaindustries.com
(480)747-1469

I have been trying to figure out what the hell is going on locally with all of these Arizona SEO Companies. They have been aggressively pursuing my clients and offering them SEO programs for like $250/mo. WTF?!? Are they for real? All I can think is that they are turn-and-burn SEO companies who are trying to squeak by with a few easy money contracts, and bounce once their clients realize that they are paying for nothing.

I have noticed that there are 3 local companies all using the same testimonials.  

The testimonial reads:

Chris Viscardi
Arizona Golf Cart Repair

DCC created my business from nothing and now I have over 10 employees and a very profitable business, all in 8 months!
 

What the heck?!? This guy has worked with every SEO company in Phoenix? Do you know why I think this testimonial is fake? I think it is fake because because it’s no written the same way that people talk. It says, “now I have over 10 employees…” Over ten employees? What does that mean? He has 11 employees? Does he have 20 employees? That is just not right. There is no way that a local SEO company made a brick and mortar business grow that fast, especially on a local scale.

I hate to be the guy who calls BS on local companies. I personally don’t like reading when people diss local companies. However, whenever I see a company that is being dishonest, it makes me upset. Plus, if one of those sites is valid (and I think that I know which one is), and the other 2 sites are just taking their testimonials, then that is just lame.

Looks like some I ran across some interesting search data yesterday on the very industry I work in.  I’m an Arizona SEO, as evidenced the title of my blog, so when people talk about Phoenix SEO and bring up specific examples, of course my curiosity is piqued.  Peter Vatistas wrote a blog titled “Phoenix SEO – a Case Study on Competition ” and he mentioned companies like MCP Media (run by my homie Chris), ObuWeb, and a bunch of other local SEOs who I compete with.

It’s really interesting looking into the top sites for that SERP.  Obviously, they are all trying to rank for that phrase, and their backlink structures look so different from each other.  ObuSearch has a bunch if sitewide links on various sites like pix.ly and what appear to be client sites.  Dataflurry has loads of crappy links with very specific anchor text, and MCP Media has just weird links in general.  Look like old client work to me.

Now, my site is still pretty new so ranking in the first few pages for the phrase “Arizona SEO ” to me looks like if I keep this up, in a few months I’ll be first page for sure.  That phrase is not as competitive as Phoenix SEO , but there are still a bunch of sites optimizing for it.  Old sites like web-optimize.com, primeview.com, mcpmedia.com.  Just the fact that they are old gives me an uphill battle because it’s easier to optimize an old domain than a new one.

Everybody knows search engine optimization is really links and content.  None of those sites at the top update frequently enough in my opinion, but they are all older than mine and have more links.  but I don’t want spammy links.  Those types of links bring a certain element of risk.  I don’t want Google to associate me with spam sites, so the easiest to get links (FFAs, crappy directories, and all those kind of sites) are pretty much off the menu for me.  And from the looks of things, there’s a lot of spammy links being harvested in Phoenix.  I’m not stalking specifically about the Phoenix SEO sites either.  The realtors, lawyers, and loan sharks out here are AGGRESSIVE.  I’m surprised Google hasn’t been axing those sites left and right.