SocialCASTER:

Steve Rubel and Jason Calacanis Interview

2 of my favorite bloggers sit down for diet cokes and a video podcast.

Gone For a While

I have been absent from blog for a while. I have taken a new position, live in a new city, and have been doing some other new things. I apologize for my lack posting lately, and I will be back in full swing soon.

FYI: Ning is cool. Try it.

Friday Link Round Up

Inside Adwords- adwords quality score update. They also added a "quality score" column in adgroups to see the quality of your keywords. Very awesome.

NIN Web Trail- Industrial band Nine Inch Nails quietly launched a pretty complicated promotional campaign for their new record "Year Zero". T-shirts sold on the current tour have an encrypted message on the back which leads to IAmTryingToBelieve.com, a website with a very disturbing vision of the future. But that is only one site out of a cast of "web characters" that support the theme of the new album. There is also AnotherVersionOfTheTruth.com, BeTheHammer.org, ChurchOfPlano.com, and all the weird stuff interlinked between them. Very interesting marketing strategy.

Josiah Cole- 19 things NOT to do when building a website

LinkedInABox- slick blog widget that shows off your LinkedIn info

8apps- a social network with collaboration on productivity tools? weird.

Mr.SEO- list of 22 places to submit your press release for free

Blackberry 8800- new trackball on the front AND media player. I want it.

Problogger- 11 ways to find new RSS subscribers

Negotiations.com- 32 reasons why geeks are severely underpaid. What it boils down to is that geeks aren't ballsy enough to negotiate. ALWAYS NEGOTIATE, never accept the first offer!

SmashingMagazine- 83 gorgeous Wordpress themes

Stumble Video and Wii- hands on with the cool app and the new device

The Power 150- I don't know how I missed this for so long but it's a list of the 150 best marketing blogs. I just grabbed the OPML and stuffed Google Reader. I'll probably spend most of the week going through everything in it.

GTD- getting things done with Google

Another Crazy Boss (but in a good way)- Ricardo Semler’s employees set their hours, determine their salaries and choose their bosses. Meet the Brazilian businessman who does everything differently

WebProNews- Search guru Danny Sullivan runs into traffic (diggers) over SEO debate

Sitemaps- how sitemaps can improve your rank

SoloSEO- a simple do-it-yourself SEO system

More SEO debate- SEO vs. Paid Search

Proposal Writing- never wrote a proposal before? Start here.

ConversionRater.com- 11 tools to help publishers make more money

Typepad Hack- Dynamic title tags for better Google rank

Wow, that's a pretty big list of links. I hope you enjoy them!

Google Checkout in AdSense

I'm still not sure this is really a PayPal killer.

YouTube Heavy Metal Parodies

via Blabbermouth

Pissed off kid loves metal...but not ALL metal. So he takes the songs from bands he hates, creates a new interpretation of the lyrics, and re-makes the music video with still pics found on the net. The result is hilarious. The video below is a paraody of a song by Orlando,FL metal band Trivium on Roadrunner Records. The single had spins on MTV2 and the band tours successfully across the US and Europe. But the parody has more plays than the orignal professionally produced video on YouTube.

How to Finance a High-Tech Start-Up

I don't know what to think about this.

The SEO Debate Is Getting Rediculous

I am officially entering the debate over SEO. I know this is dangerous. I know my family is worried about me. I might get torn to shreds here. But I feel I have to get in on the action and toss in my two pennies. So here we go...

Most bloggers who slam SEO practices don't seem to realize that SEO is helping them everyday whether they know/like it or not. Yes, even Jason Calacanis is benefiting from SEO every time he writes a blog post. How? Well, it seems to me that every major blog platform operates with SEO in mind. Typepad, Wordpress, Blogsmith, and the various themes and templates available for them have intrinsic SEO qualities that help them rank.

SEO techniques and SEO firms are two different things. Would I hire a pure SEO firm? Probably not. Would I research and use white hat SEO tactics? Yes.

Due diligence will make the difference between buying snake oil and true SEO success. Before even entertaining the idea of an SEO initiative (in house or not) make sure to research the market and get a damn clue. I can tell you right now, if an SEO firm tells you they can get you on the front page for "debt consolidation" or "home loans" or "Viagra" you should run the other direction. If you have taken the time to research the competition, how search engines work, and maybe invested in a keyword research tool you will be able to plainly see where and when SEO can help you.

People still have a bad taste in their mouths from Bubble 1.0. Back before pay per click search advertising, blogging, and social media, Internet marketing was a totally different landscape. Two techniques dominated Internet marketing budgets and both have a bad rep to this day: Email and SEO. If you have been burned by an SEO firm before there is probably no chance you will use one ever again. But don't let the sleazy salesman of 1.0 steer you away from good SEO practices here in 2point0land.

You might surprised what some basic SEO tweaks can do for your paid search campaigns. I once ran an AdWords campaign for a HIGHLY competitive keyword set and decided I was going to try and get an edge over the rest of the flock. I changed the landing page to pure CSS, I used some simple SEO guidelines for keyword placement in headlines and copy, and revamped the site map. I changed NOTHING within AdWords (same ad copy, same bids, same keywords). Not only did the pages convert better, not only did our ad position skyrocket, buy our cost per click went DOWN. That's all I need say about that.

SEO is not something you just decide to do, it's an ongoing practice that you commit to. Stop talking to SEO firms, stop reading blogs about the debate (except mine, I'm smarter and my blog looks cooler), and for the love of Pete don't let Jason Calacanis run your web dev and marketing departments from his blog. Just go learn about SEO, grab some free SEO checklists off the net, talk to some peers who have used SEO, subscribe to some SEO good blogs, and get your web dev staff to do it too. Just make sure you have SEO in mind and commit to testing the techniques and monitoring the results. You'll be fine.

SitePal- wtf??

Is it just me or does Sitepal seem to have a rediculous top heavy ratio of media to marketshare. I have been seeing ads for this service for years all over the place but I have yet to see it in action even once. Granted, they do have an affiliate program, so that could be the reason I see so many ads. But I still haven't seen (or "spoken" to) a Sitepal ever. Anyone else find this strange?

UPDATE: I spoke to some friends and I think I am going crazy. Seems like not that many people have heard of Sitepals' talking custom avatar heads. Is this one of those cases where you or a friend buys a new car and then you suddenly see them everywhere? But I haven't bought a new car!! And my friends don't use Sitepal!! WHAT'S HAPPENING TO ME!?!

UPDATE: I just got an IM from someone who never heard of Sitepal and actually thinks it's pretty cool. Something is afoot.

UPDATE: Just got a frienly email from Vanessa at Sitepal informing over 7,000 businesses use the Sitepal talking avatar guide. Here is a list. Looks like I am going crazy.

Netvibes adds Play Podcast buttons in feed windows

You can now play podcasts within Netvibes simply by hitting the play button in the feed item headline. Way cool.

Webmaster 2.0

via AwakenedVoice

Rob Safuto has a great post that asks if your webmaster is "in the know 2.0". Personally, I'm sick of the old school acronym spitting webmaster who brushes off the new web. We are living in the web version of the wild west and you better get some bigger guns. At this point even rookie webmasters should be able to at least install Wordpress, Drupal, Mediawiki, and have some basic understanding of RSS, podcasting, and basic new web concepts like tagging and social bookmarking.

BOTTOM LINE: Get a Bluehost.com (not aff) account with Fantastico one click install of some of these technologies, play with them, hack them, have fun, change the world. And for G*d sakes start a damn blog already!