Musings For A Darkened Room

After my last blog post and my e-mails to the Kevin and Bean show, I decided I would take a moment to respond to the e-mail I received from Michael Baldwin of Zotfish regarding the events that took place today. I wanted to make sure that it was all in fun, and also let him know that I appreciated his e-mail and applauded ZotFish’s efforts to stop bogus questions such as my own. Here was my response:

Hi Michael,

I appreciate the e-mail; know that the Criss Angel attempt was all in fun. However I did cover the events of the day related to it on my blog and gave ZotFish some link love as well as some recognition for the sites efforts to thwart my question. If you’re interested feel free to check it out at http://www.musingsforadarkenedroom.com.

Warmest Regards,

Mike Wilton

I was thrilled to find out when I got home that ZotFish had actually taken the time to respond to my Criss Angel question attempt personally. While I am bummed that things didn’t go as planned, I applaud ZotFish for their quick response to something like this. I really was hoping that perhaps I could have gotten some KROQ involvement before it got to this point, but I never knew for certain that they would get involved to begin with. I am going to send out an e-mail to the Kevin and Bean show and let them know about the question being taken down, but I do plan to direct them to my blog just in case they are still interested in how things went. Oh, and if you’re wondering what ZotFish had to say about the question, here is the response I got:

Hi Mike,

Congratulations on getting your question up to the #1 spot!

I appreciate the enthusiasm — ideally everyone would get that many of their friends to register and vote on their questions. Of course, we’ll have to remove it due to its harassing content, since we are launching a serious site.

We welcome all questions of yours that aren’t offensive, however.

Cheers
Michael
ZotFish

Again, there are no hard feelings with ZotFish and I wish nothing but the best for the site. I think it is a great concept and if they can get it to work and if they can get some responses from the celebrities I think it will be an incredible site. Again my purpose for this was simply to cause some buzz and hopefully have the opportunity to potentially get KROQ and some of their listeners involved in something that would be overall quite amusing. Obviously Criss Angel would have never answered, but the buzz alone would have been worth every ounce of effort.

Following a good hour plus of solid votes and links from Stumble, Twitter, and del.icio.us ZotFish.com removed my question to magician Criss Angel. Apparently, “Why are you such a douche bag?” doesn’t cut it on their site. Strangely though they not only deleted my question, but Criss Angel altogether.

Sadly this thwarts my efforts of getting listener support from local radio station 106.7 KROQ, but it was fun while it lasted.

If you are a fan of the Kevin and Bean show, which is aired weekdays on the Los Angeles based 106.7 KROQ, then the title of this post is familiar to you. Kevin and Bean have an ongoing joke about Criss Angel being a douche bag. However, I have taken his douchiness to the next level.

Earlier today I read Mashable.com’s review of ZotFish, a new website designed to allow the general public to ask celebrities, politicians, and athletes questions. ZotFish allows users to ask questions and then the more votes the questions get the better chance they have of being asked and/or answered by celebrities. As I browsed the celebrities featured on ZotFish I discovered they had magician Criss Angel listed.

Being the wise ass I am, I decided to create an account and ask the pressing question, “Why are you a douche bag?”. I have since contacted the whole Kevin and Bean morning show about my efforts in hopes that they will give me some on air hype to get more votes. The morning show has made similar efforts with Rachel Ray in an online question form. My hope as that they will aid my efforts in the same way.

You can view the Criss Angel page which features my question at http://www.zotfish.com/celeb.php?id=2279619. If you’re interested in helping me hype this please sign up and give my question a vote!

Update: As of 2:45pm PST this is how this effort is going for me

Unlike most SEO’s I didn’t actively seek a career in SEO, in fact I hadn’t even considered it when I was given the position. Instead I was handed the position based on my performance in another role with the company I work for. I’m assuming my strong client communication skills and my ability to quickly grasp new concepts played a big part in it, but I’m still not totally sure why I was picked for the position.

July will mark the one year anniversary of my position as a “Website Marketing Specialist”. In that time I have learned a lot, yet at the same time there is still a lot I don’t fully understand. Integrating myself in the SEO industry has been an incredible experience and while I am surely no chameleon that has easily or quickly blended with my surroundings, there has definitely been a significant amount of change. Below I have compiled a list of what I have learned and what has changed since my blind beginnings nearly a year ago.

1. There needs to be an eighth day of the week added solely to catch up on industry blogs and happenings.
2. Twitter will be the downfall of humanity and office productivity. Honestly, Twitter updates have taken priority over checking my e-mail.
3. Branding is everything…Whether it is an avatar, a username, or your love for diet coke; having something that makes you easily identifiable and standout in the sea of SEO’s is key.
4. No matter how hard you try most people will not understand what it is you do…I’ve simply just started telling people I do marketing for websites; it at least shuts them up.
5. SEO is something you eventually eat, sleep and breathe 24/7-365. When your wife can identify Danny Sullivan and Michael Gray , and you have a reminder set to remind you to listen to the Daily Searchcast you know you’re in over your head…
6. No matter how much you learn or think you know, someone else will come along and know more. But as it was so nicely put earlier this week in Neil Patel’s interview on SEOBook, “…someone is always going to have a bigger penis than you, so might as well not try to compete and do the best you can do.”

There are a number of other things here and there that I have picked up, but I really didn’t feel like regurgitating (like basic SEO). Then of course there are also things I am working on or discovering, such as Google’s view of RSS feeds vs. the live content the feed comes from. Either way as I near my 1 year anniversary of working in the SEO industry I know that this is something that is going to stick with me as long as it exists.

My passion will always be web and graphics design, but being able to bring SEO into the equation makes me feel that much more valuable as a designer. Furthermore it’s one more service I can offer my clients.

Anyone who regularly uses Twitter knows that they have had their share of bugs and downtimes as of late. Blogs and tweets (when they work) have been bashing the social site regularly over the last couple weeks. But I see light in all of this…If you keep an eye out at the issues within Twitter.com itself there is a lot of humor in their problems. Below is a snipet from a screenshot I took this morning when Twitter wouldn’t let me look at older tweets.

I’m going to keep my eyes peeled and continue posting humorous errors and bugs as I come across them. Though I hate when Twitter goes down or is being buggy, it is at least nice of Twitter to make me chuckle when they do.

First attempt at lyrics in quite sometime; posted for your enjoyment.

I know what you’re thinking
You’re thinking you caused me to break
The truth is I was already broken
Sorting through pieces of past mistakes

So please don’t bear this burden
This isn’t yours to bear
Just let me know that you’re still with me
Just let me know that you still care

And if I’m going down
Then I’m going down alone
I can’t bear to see you suffer
For all the sorrow I have sewn

If I make my bed I’ll lie in it
If I dig my grave I’ll die in it
This isn’t yours it’s mine alone
This isn’t yours I’m on my own

So please don’t bear this burden
This isn’t yours to bear
Just let me know that you’re still with me
Just let me know that you still care

So today Misty and I were supposed to go to the Whole Children Whole Planet Expo up in Nothridge, CA. But unfortunately a small feud and a late start ruined our efforts and after seeing how horrible traffic was while trying to leave Corona we decided against it.

Though we missed out on some great opportunities on green and natural family living, I still did my part today to make myself and now others more aware.

While at Target I stopped by the snack bar to get an Icee and some nachos. Sadly this will probably be the last time I order nachos from Target. I discovered that instead of pulling a serving of chips from a large bag, they have the chips pre-packaged by serving. This clearly creates significantly more plastic waste than one large bag would create.

In addition to finding out about Target’s nacho serving practices and my decision to no longer order their nachos as a way to help cut back on the amount of waste we produce, I decided to try and go green with one of my favorite beverages today. While shopping at Cost Plus World Market I discovered Blue Marble Organic Pilsner; an organic beer that is brewed here in California. The beer it self has a nice full flavor and the cost wasn’t bad for a six pack. I am definitely going to consider buying this beer again in the future.

The advantages to switching to an organic beer are not only that I am putting nothing but organic ingredients in my body, but also that the farming done for the ingredients is done organically without harmful pesticides or chemicals. The beer is also brewed here in California, meaning that the short distance required to transport the beer cuts back on the pollution caused by transporting goods from one place to another.

As the year progresses Misty and I also progress with our strive to live as green and as natural as possible given our current living situation. Switching to more organic produce, making sure we recycle everything we possibly can, and cutting back on waste have been some of our biggest changes.

So for archival purposes I am going to start transferring over old posts from my long outdated LiveJournal. I figure since Musings For A Darkened Room is going to be my primary blog from here on out I better backup the old information before my LiveJournal account is closed or deleted.

I’ve noticed over the last month or so that many backlinks I am finding in Google, while doing link research for clients, are RSS feeds from free directories. What’s even more intriguing is that these appear to show up towards the top of the results when I use the link operator. Even more interesting, is that the pages that the links are displayed on within the site typically don’t carry any PR and aren’t indexed.

My preliminary finding seems to be that even if some of these free directories suck on site, they appear to please Google in RSS form. Below is an example from today’s research. I ran the link operator for one of my clients competitors and the first backlink Google listed was http://www.seagency.net/rss.php?c=456&s=H. I did a little snooping and found the competitor site over 3/4 of the way down the list of links. Which means even though it’s a good 400 links in, Google is still picking it up as a relevant backlink.

After discovering that the site sat so low in the RSS feed I decided to check out the listing on the physical site itself. The backlink is found on page 20 of the directories Real Estate and Property category; the page has no PR and is NOT indexed. Furthermore the page itself is not listed within the backlinks for the site.

While I obviously can’t say that this is the case for EVERY RSS fed directory, I have a strong hunch that as more directories feed themselves via RSS we may see more of this. Google obviously isn’t viewing and giving value to RSS fed links the same way it is links on the physical website. Furthermore if you subscribe to the theory that the order links are listed when you run a link operator are an indicator of importance, then it would seem that the links fed via RSS hold a significant value in the eyes of Google. For now I am going to hop and the bandwagon and see if I can’t suck some of the link juice from some of these directories, I’m sure it’s only time before Google sees things differently.

I’ll continue to look into this and if/as I find new information I will definitely be posting more about it.