Tonight, I visited the Nashville SEO Meetup, presented by Ross Jones, of 2 The Top Website Design and Promotion.

The topic was learning to put the right words in the right places. As an SEO strategy, on-page optimization is a lot about content and how content is manipulated. Unfortunately, I had an expectation that there would be a bunch of SEOs gathering to talk about the details (the meta, haha!) of SEO, but what I got was the standard on-page advice you’d get from any basic tutorial, with an audience who was all looking to get advice on how to improve their websites. I wish I was still needing freelance clients, because it would have been an SEO Freelancer’s heaven, but since I’m not taking new clients, I was a little frustrated.

That said, it’s quite possible I didn’t read the description of the event properly. Ross was quite knowledgeable and is an adjunct professor at the Art Institute teaching online marketing. He’s obviously very good at what he does and would be a great resource for future projects.

The group meets the last Thursday of the month and next month’s topic is how Google+ is affecting SEO. It should be a very interesting discussion. I’d really like to give it a chance and go a few more times. But what I would really like is a group of actual SEOs who do this stuff all day every day like me.

Online Marketing and SEO are only going to grow in importance. I need a place to go and learn and discuss the latest trends with Google, social media, blogging, linking and on-site optimization.

My first reaction is, *&^*&#@$@*@#!! Excuse me??!! You’ve got to be stupid to say something like that, especially when a large part of your audience is SEO consultants! Dan’s background is as an SEO consultant himself, and then he moved to social media to help get his SEO rankings up. Now he works for Hubspot as someone who analyzes the numbers of all the sites being tracked by Hubspot’s software and presents that data as research. I find some of his extrapolations questionable, but overall, he’s got a lot of good data to share.

But what could he have really meant? After all, anyone with any experience with SEO knows that it’s not JUST about content. It’s about meta tags, linking strategies, site structure, XML site maps, titles, descriptions, directory listings, Heading tags, formatting of content and competitive analysis. It’s about page names and friendly URLs, interactive content and lead generation. Content is part of the equation, albeit, a large part, but go create content on a site with little SEO thought and good luck in getting found! SEO, content, social media and analog marketing go hand in hand.

I’m sure he knows that, and that means he knows that hiring an SEO to consult, develop and implement strategies for higher search rankings has TONS of value! So why would he have said this?…

Here’s my idea of where he’s likely coming from:

• Dan’s definition of “SEO” is not the same as mine, so we’re dealing in semantics.
• Hubspot is so powerful because they create ginormous amounts of quality content. That’s the culture and he’s seen the positive results from it.
• SEO has a stigma of being spammy.
• SEOs are not necessarily going to get your site linked to in an organic, natural way. Good content does that.
• An “SEO Site” (I put it in quotes because I want to phrase it in a way that falls under the stigma of a low quality site with content built for bots, not humans) may get an initial boost, but over the long run, it won’t be successful in generating quality leads.
• He wants SEOs to blog about him and get more links to his site.
• And finally, SEO, as Dan says, is not a main strategy, it’s a part of a much larger strategy of online marketing.

I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. He has a point that SEO isn’t the be all, end all of online marketing like some people claim it to be. It’s not magic and it doesn’t always work the way you hope. But Dan is a smart guy and understands that what he said requires some clarification to be accurate.

Okay. My rant is over. I know the value of SEO first hand, and it’s silly to think that it’s not, but the question here is “Should I hire an SEO?” which implies the idea that you might want to do it yourself instead. Read Below:

Why You Would Want to do Your Own SEO

• Can’t spend $250/mo. with Malechi Technology Services
• Love learning about online marketing
• You have lots of time before you need to start getting results
• Your brand/company is the only one in its space
• Have a kid or friend who will do it for free (BE CAREFUL!)
• Already hired an SEO and got burned (sorry, they’re not all good guys)
• Have the time to learn SEO on your own
• Already know HTML, CSS and Google Analytics – just jumping into something new.
• Don’t care about the risks. Just trying it for fun.

Why You May Want to Hire an SEO

• You’ve got competitors who are killing you online.
• You need more traffic and more leads to your site.
• You’re short on time, and don’t care to learn SEO yourself.
• You don’t want to learn HTML, CSS and Web Design.
• The money is manageable and you believe the results will pay for the investment.
• You know a trustworthy firm or local SEO in Nashville, TN.
• You want to maximize conversions on your website.
• Your brand needs greater recognition.
• You want to be seen as a leader in your market.
• You want to say, “Just Google me” to your prospective clients.

Conclusion

Am I biased? Yes. I KNOW how valuable SEO is to a small business. I know that a website that doesn’t generate results is not worth building. I know that a quality lead you don’t have to pay for is worth more than just the SEO efforts.

I love small business and I’m here to assist you in your online marketing and lead generation efforts online. I live and work in Nashville and love what I do.

Call Me: 615-852-7696

The iPhone 4s is nearly 4x faster on the download speed as the iPhone 4s.

The iPhone 4 has a better upload speed, but nearly a quarter of the 3G speed on the iPhone 4s

By the way, I used the iPhone app called “Speed Test” for the above images.

A buddy of mine wanted to compare speeds to decide whether or not to buy the new iPhone 4s, but we were not in the same exact place when we grabbed these screenshots, so the towers we were accessing were different. However, we are less than 10 miles apart, both in Nashville, TN. That said, he had a full 5 bars on his iPhone, while I only had 3, and the results were still astounding. But I wanted to disclose that the results you have may vary depending on the cell towers you use to test your iPhones.

When I have the opportunity to test two iPhones in the exact same location, I will post those results.

Let me know what kind of results you had in the comments below.

One of the things many people look for in a website is a great photo gallery. This is a simple, but effective gallery that I’ve used in the tutorial above.

This plugin allows you to easily add images and create galleries on your WordPress website. I’ve tried using several free plugins, but I have run into issues where I can’t create multiple galleries per page and this plugin solves that problem. It also makes it easy to add descriptions and titles to your pictures. Below is an affiliate link, so I’d really appreciate it if you would use this link if you decide to buy the plugin.

However, Adwords customers will still get all the data just like before, from both logged in and non-logged in users.

The takeaway: If you don’t want people other than Google to know what keyword was used to land you at a particular website (for privacy reasons), then log into Google. Uh hmm… Yeah, that’s tons less private.

The moral of the story: Making money off of someone else’s product or service (online marketers) places you at the mercy of that company’s product or service (Google Search).

Do I care?: Not really. Privacy nuts are not going to be satisfied with this because they are still providing tons of data to Google if they use a Google product or log in at any point. On the other side, those who choose not to log into Google while browsing online (through using Gmail or another Google product) won’t have any change to their data.

As a marketer: I’ll have to see what the numbers look like over the next several weeks, but my guess is that the missing data won’t affect my strategy much.

An article on the matter from Hubspot

Steve Jobs, you will be missed.

When your article shows up in a news feed packed with dozens of other articles, or in a search results page with 10 other ads and 10 organic search results or in an inbox with 50 other unread emails, your title is what sets you apart, but how do you do that without selling your soul?

Here’s the rub. You’re not that special. You know it and I know it. So does every person online wanting to get info or prices, but the difference is that searchers want to believe you’re special. They want to find something no one else has found. They want to believe that you’ve discovered the secret to eternal wealth by simply pushing a button hidden in some far reaching corner of the Internet.

Many searchers also want an honest deal. They are willing to pay for quality and they don’t mind shipping prices when they believe you have given them at least what they’ve paid for. These two personalities may reside in the same body, but as a marketer, you constantly must choose to which one you appeal.

When you write a title to an ad or blog post, what emotion or personality are you targeting? The personality that wants everything for nothing, or the one that’s looking for quality?

The way I see it, you can pull on the fears that people have:

“I will never have enough money.”
“I can’t learn something new.”
“I’m not smart enough.”
“I’m not creative enough.”

Or you can empower people to make smart decisions:

“Happiness comes from within.”
“You will have to work hard, but an honest dollar is worth the effort.”
“Trusting God to provide for you is as important as your willingness to work for a living.”
“Listening to your audience and giving them something of value is far more important than forcing them into a product they don’t need or want.”

Some people ask themselves what kind of headline will get the click. The more important question, at least in my mind, is which emotion am I going to target? Then the headline comes easily.

This was sent to me by my buddy Carlos Cooper. Thought I would share

Google Doodle celebrates Lucille Ball's 100th birthday with a playable TV with famous clips

Google honors Lucille Ball’s 100th Birthday with a home page Doodle. This doodle, like some of the more complex examples, allows for interactivity. Click the TV image to play a video clip of a famous episode. Not crazy about that clip? Click it again to move to the next one.

Netflix changes pricing by splitting plans

Netflix provides links in the email to go and change the plan options or cancel for those who don’t want to absorb the new, higher costs.

A call to customer service revealed that the corporate line on the increase is to help Netflix get new releases more quickly instead of having to wait for a much longer time while higher priced services like Blockbuster, DirecTv, Comcast and iTunes get them sooner.

I’m not happy about this, and as one of millions of Netflix users, I imagine many others won’t be either. What plan are you using and did you get the email? What are your thoughts?