Easy to Compare:
Wal Mart & Google, except that Google has a strong brand.

Blogs:
more than a spit fight

Death of Newspapers:
The future of journalism

AdWords Spying:
GoogSpy looks scrapes hundreds of thousands of searches from Google to determine who is bidding on what terms. The idea is killer, but the implementation is a bit lacking. Link found from ThreadWatch.

Google AdSense in RSS:
alpha testing

RSS Spamming:
RSS Injector

Niche Tips:
an old WMW thread

Book:
Steven Berlin Johnson, one of my favorite authors, announced the release of Everything Bad Is Good for You

Boston:
Search Engine Meeting, reviewed

I don't really sell SEO services because they are time consuming and I am bad at pricing them.

Today I chatted with one of my friends about marketing their SEO firm. Many SEO firms spend thousands or tens of thousands of dollars renting links each month, but otherwise remain somewhat anonymous.

Small Sale Steps:
With advertising they may rank great and get in front of a target audience, but after the audience finds the site it might make sense if there is an added step between finding a site and buy services. If you sell quality services they are usually going to cost a good sum of money. It is a huge leap of faith for a person to sign on from finding you in the search results.
Research Notorious Salesmen:
This added step could further sell the client on you and prequalify them to meet what you are looking for in a client. I pretended I was interested in signing up for Cory Rudl's mentorship program because I wanted to see how they sold it.

There are lots of issues that make the mentorship program not appealing to me, but do you know how they did the sales calls?

Prequalify:
They were not sold to me as sales pitches. They were sold as interviews to see if I was qualified for the program.

The whole time they were reminding me that they only wanted success stories. They were not willing to take me on unless I was serious. My first interview was to prequalify me for a second interview. The second interviewer normally is not available for a week or two, but surprise surprise they just happened to be available 15 minutes after my first interview was over. Why? They wanted to convert what they thought was a hot lead.

Remove Doubt:
They reminded me the for common things that held people back:

• time - a reminder that it takes time to see results and people should not be willing to give up quickly. Also a reminder that I would need to invest many hours of time into the program to see successful results. I would need to have time set aside.

• money - they reminded me that I could take out loans, but that usually credit cards made it easier to get started right away. As a new unproven business is easier to get credit from credit card company than to apply for a loan.
• knowledge - That is what the mentorship was supposed to provide me.
• fear - It is an uncertain world. Some people fear success. Some people fear failure. By making the mentorship program seem overtly logical by addressing the above concerns they wanted to reinforce that I was making a good choice and there was no reason for fear.

Of course when I backed off when it came time to enter my credit card details they became even more aggressive in the hard sales pitch techniques. I said I had to talk to a friend and they said that I should respect my own thoughts and opinions. They said that I should put my own future and my business in my own hands. I agreed with them and that is why I told them to let me think about it for a while.

People buying SEO services likely share some of the concerns as people buying a marketing mentorship program. There are also a few others, but some of the most common questions might be easily packagable as downloadable PDF. To prospects sometimes the format of information can matter as much or more than the actual contents of the container.

Things that are under $100 (and especially things that are under $50) can be an impulse buy. The right kind of SEO client is typically not the kind who is doing impulse buying.

Anonymity Problems:
The web makes it easy to research about a person or business, but most of the time the people turn up as anonymous. Most websites have some degree of fraud to them.

Competitive Research:
Most internet marketing techniques are fairly transparent.

• Look at competing sites. How do they market on their sites.

• Look at competign backlinks. How do they market via links.
• Use Alexa. If you can afford it collect more data via HitWise.
• Create seed sites in various industries. Have an auto insurance site that you market on AdWords or Overture.
• Ask questions to friendly competitors.
• Call or have a friend call other competitors as a prospective lead.
• Ask for proposal documents.

Doing some of those might help show you where others are doing well, and then again the might do well in spite of, not because some of the action. Then maybe there are additional things you could do that most firms are not.

Being Human:
Some things firms could do to bridge the credibility gap beyond what algorithms say:

• Write a bunch of articles and publish them on various sites.

• Get interviewed by others.
• Give away something.
• Act your size. A large corporate account might bring in a ton of money, but they may suck up most your resources and have a ton of red tape.
• Do not be afraid to put a personality into what you do.
• Look for clients with common interests. Maybe there is some pent up demand in the local area?
• Lots of other ideas. My friend came up with a great one, but I don't want to share it because its his idea. Hopefully he gives it a shot. :)

[disclaimer: I might be out to lunch here, but the intent of the post is to help...]

So I have been getting some of the Gmail feeds and ads recently. Hopefully I answered this question correctly or you the reader will call me dumb...

Bad Call #1:

Here is an example thread
title:

Question from Search Marketing Info

question:

Which internet search engine was co-founded by a math major who chose the name to imply a vast reach ?

Thanks in advance,
Chryss

answer:

Google was a mispelling for Googol, which means a 1 with a million
zeros behind it.

Larry Page founded it and Sergey Brin was his co founder.

and here was Google's contextually targeted Gmail ad:

Head Gasket Blown? - www.rxauto.com - Repair It Yourself Guaranteed ThermaGasket The Mechanics Choice

That is data stored on Google's servers and that is the best that they can target it? When you couple that in with all the AdSense spam sites and click fraud it really makes you wonder why Google assumes anybody would want that traffic.

Bad Call #2:

One of the default feeds was Engaget. Presumably because they run AdSense? Don't get me wrong here, its cool to help smaller publishers, but if you put Engaget in there you should put Gizmodo there also unless you want people to quetion you motives.

Placing random off target off topic crap I don't want in my email is being evil. At least the old Hotmail dating ads would occassionally show pictures of cute girls ;)

I know that I can unsubscribe from feeds, but I shouldn't have to opt out. Maybe off the start you could just promote Google News, Froogle, and your other portal pieces up there?

Bad Call #3:

Google actually places feeds in your spam folder. How stupid is it to place contextually relevant feeds near stuff that was deemed as being unwanted useless junk? What better way is there to turn users off?

Another thing that is really weird is most (maybe all) of the spam feeds were for spam recipies:

• Spam Vegetable Strudel - Bake 20 minutes or until golden, serve with soy sauce

• Savory Spam Crescents - Bake 12-15 minutes or until golden brown
• French Fry Spam Casserole - Bake 30-40 minutes

They may place the spam ads in there to try to push the cute and innocent corporate culture, but I don't buy it.

After bogusly adding the Google Toolbar Autolink feature which directed B&N customers to Amazon many people started to become increasingly suspicious of potential hidden business partnerships. Is Google partnered with Hormel Foods now too?

Toolbar PageRank Update:
occuring now.

Google UK:
maps local (partnered with Yell for local)

Charity:
Google.org

Googleness of Being:
further qualified - SEO tips. Generally I don't agree with much of the stuff Michael Martinez says, but apparently his article was allegedly decent. ;)

Google Distributes Local Search, Ads:
Google has inked AccuWeather as the first beta distribution partner for local search results combined with locally targeted AdWords search ads.

Google execs:
a few Q&A's from their webcast.

I feared this post was reading as though I got it from Google's PR firm, so I felt I should include this...
Google Blowout Quarter Update:

There's a blurb in the Wall Street Journal today that explains how Google's reported bottom line is being gamed by their own options program. It seems since they backloaded the options expense onto last year's earnings statement, this quarter's results will be ARTIFICIALLY BOOSTED almost 100%, even though it has absolutely nothing to do with their actual profitability as a business. Keep that in mind when they announce earnings tomorrow.

Google a Bully?
Google sues Froogles

Paul Graham on PR

PR is the news equivalent of search engine optimization: instead of buying ads, which readers ignore, you get yourself inserted directly into the stories.

many ThreadWatch comments on SEO & PR. Most people do not like to feel deceived, but most do not realize how much the world is ran on deception.

I am a bit naive much of the time. I view it as a blessing to manipulate information systems for a living. It helps you take things with a grain of salt.