And you know what’s best about meeting good ole’ friends at those events? Yeah, meeting them, having booze and getting introduced to THEIR friends… it’s about networking and actually the non-plus-ultra is if your friends actually do the “elevator pitch” for you, so all you have to do is stand there are smile, hand out some cards and then get back to those folks actually

Shimon Sandler was introduced to me, and while I didn’t recall the name I found that this is actually a really respected SEO consultant in the scene … well- in fact I read on his blog and a ton of this comments eg on Jim Boykin’s link building blog.

One of Shimon’s interesting posts on his blog is that Job-Definition of what an SEO actually does… I love those posts (just like Todd/Stuntdubl also ALWAYS releases those posts where I just think RESOURCE… it’s a RESOURCE… man, it’s great and I’ll be back)

You know when I look at Shimons definition of what an SEO consultant does I actually have to remind myself to finally revamp, rewrite and (hell) get rid of the typos in the copy of my own SEO company site – and yes sure – I want to sync the content in AT LEAST two languages english and german, after all that’s one of my USPs here… and I even got some spain and italian domains for Cemper.Com as well last week …

Shimons’ definition will serve me well as a blueprint, an information architecture for my new copy… 16 points that describe the basis SEO process… very nice..

and best of all, Shimon even gives away a “standard proposal” he sends out to his clients, including specifications for deliverables and EVEN the charging model … he starts with a retainer fee of $2000 for his services, that’s 20 hours work … but still charges what is above that.. I think that’s pretty cool to buy… after all that’s just 4-5 hours a week … half a day… I bet he spends HALF of that already for communication and reporting on some clients…

(hint hint hint to all clients and managers – let your people work

What I’m missing there is some detailled spec on WHAT/WHEN Shimon reports on his link building, link buys, etc… my impression in general is that link building is a bit under-sized in the whole post – after all links are 95% of the game, once you made sure in the first month that the site-structure and content does not suck as it usually does in the beginning when an “agency” created that nice ALL-FLASH loaded site…

But where do these clients come from? … hehe.. Shimon is a nice guy… giving away a “sales blueprint” with some sort of checklists to ask prospective clients is definately worth a read…

The “questions for SEO clients” are even a bit sophisticated… assuming you KNOW you have an SEO client… you know which question saved me HUNDREDS OF WASTED hours over the last 3 years?

Nice site you got, promoting all your products, services, etc. blabla

So – what would it do in the bottom line for your business when you get from NOWHERE to number1 in Google? do you know much you actually make per sale? and how much can you spend to increase the number of sales?

Oh – you don’t know?

Frankly, I met/got called up by so many folks that do “internet marketing” just for some sort of “branding value” or their ego to be up in ranks that they have NO CLUE if they can spend 1000, 10,000 or 100,000 EUR per time interval… well – that’s where I usually end the call… sorry – but people that got no idea on their spends usually have no idea on their goals, or just don’t care… neither of these is a reason to do business…

But anyway, you know it’s REALLY funny – bumping into friends on conferences is one thing, but getting to know the next “indirection” of the network just by chance is in fact the MAJOR reason for me to go to these conferences and to to spend $350+ a night for that sneazy little room in the hilton… Staying as close as possible to the even gives you those extra 15 minutes AT LEAST twice a day where you can meet up with a lot more people that if you would stay ANYWHERE…

Too bad I’ll miss out on the SMX in June and the SES In August – but I’ll then have my studies and master’s finished (be sure to checkout the online survey !)

After this bit longer break I’ll do these

- DrupalCon in Barcelona (September) – NICE weather

- SMX social media special (October) in New York City again, YEAH - rocks

- WMW in Las Vegas (the classic in November)

and then maybe even some SES in chicago… or I might just hang out with my friends there… not sure

Then I’ll sing – “I just can’t get enough…”

BrandVerb … aka making your brand so popular that people are using it as a very – just as you “google” for information

Source & Definition: SeoBlackHat.com

Linkbaiting is what people talk about these days… I heard it first at the November WMW show from Jim Boykin and was clear about it – however a couple of folks asked me about that – so what's a Link Bait ?

Link baiting (or linkbaiting) is the new art of building a useful tool (the Linkbait), writing an interesting or controversial article, or even running a fancy kind of "event" or contest on your site. With the only goal to attract a lot of links naturally.

or in short: Creating COOL Content that gets digg'ed , slashdot'ted and cited from all over the internet.

Some other recent mentions of link baits:

Matt Cutts / Google engineer – "doesn’t have to be a bad thing"

Jim Boykin – Ceo of Webuildpages

offering 1000$ for a cool link bait idea – because "we suck at it" (linkbaiting)

Link Bait Case Study

One older post from November

Using other people's content as link bait

Measured on the rush for Link Baits and Matt's positive comments on this – that's the future link building deal – build great content* and you will get *great rankings

Fundamental Idea of Marketing

Organizations survive and prosper through meeting the needs of customers

• Needs and Products
• Needs are basic requirements
• A want is a desire for a specific product to satisfy an underlying need
• A demand is a want for a specific product supported by an ability and willingness to pay for it

Randfish got it … the price for SEO is 19 Dollars … the perfect answer to the wrong question… but there are clients that believe they oly have to buy a secret shareware-tool… well, and off.