Feb 2014 Edit: The calls, functions and worksheet used in this blog post may be outdated. If you know of a better guide please contact me and I’ll send a link your way. I want to share with everyone a very quick rank checking tool that I built using the ImportXML function from Google Documents. But first, a quick history lesson… Or you can just grab the G-Doc ImportXML Rank Checker here. Historical Context I used to love rank checking when I first started out as an SEO analyst. I thought it was the only thing that mattered and took great pride when the keyword rankings jumped to the top of the fold on page one. However, as I matured professionally and took on more important responsibilities at CafePress*, checking for keyword ranks fell to the wayside and lost its novelty as it became a time suck. ...

I’ve officially transitioned my SEO blog from the free wordpress.COM to the paid wordpress.ORG version. Everything went off without a hitch and I can’t thank the WordPress team enough for making this process ridiculously easy. I have yet to work on the color scheme and layout although that can always come later. With that out of the way, I think it’s time to set some goals for my new blog domain. I am the type of person who likes to reassess their goals every year, half-year and quarter. I admit it maybe a little extreme but it keeps me focused on my long term goals. For example, when I was first hired as an SEO Analyst at CafePress, I re-evaluated my job responsibilities every month. In fact, I still have them! ...

When I first started this blog a little over a year ago, its main purpose was to act as my resume. It was to show potential employers that even though I had no knowledge about the SEO industry, I was very passionate about it. I made it my goal to write at least one blog post per month even though there wasn’t any real value to it. But that will all be changing soon as I have finally decided to migrate over to the paid version of WordPress - with new goals in mind. ...

Wow - this blog is officially ONE YEAR OLD! I have learned a lot about the art and science of search engine optimization since my journey began and I must admit it has been quite an experience. Below are some of the lessons learned these past 12 months in no particular order of importance. Want to propose an SEO change? Justify it with numbers. People search for the darn-est things. Reading a book (or blog post) written by an industry leader is different than actually doing it yourself. ...

I ran my SEObook Rank Checker the other day for one of my clients Google keywords rankings when I came upon the Captcha image below. They may be the world’s best search engine at the moment but they still have a lot of work to do….lol. google captcha - balls

Interactive marketing is hot in the job market right now and a recent report by ClickZ illustrates the increase in salary since 2010. What is fishy about this study is how they don’t account for experience. For instance, the salary for an interactive copywriter this year gained 2.5% but is that for one who has 6 months or 5 years of experience? Additionally, the results may be skewed as it doesn’t take the location of the respondents into account. A major city like New York will obviously offer a higher pay grade rather than a small backwater town like Willow Creek, Alaska. ...

I was conducting some basic research for a prospective client yesterday using Google Insights and went off on a small tangent which lead me to write this blog post. By the way, Insights is a great SEO tool to help visualize search volume throughout the year by category, geographic location and specific years. In any case, I was curious to know what the search volume is for “porn” in the good ol’ United States of America. Here’s a graph that shows the gradual increase in search volume since 2004. ...

You’ve finally taken a big step in admitting that your website needs to be optimized for search and compiled a list of SEO agencies in your area. Now all you need to do is call and ask them countless boring questions about how they’re different. Well guess what? They already know what you’re going to ask and have the answers ready. Don’t believe me? Perform a search on Google for how to hire an SEO company and you’ll find more than ten million results. All those articles out there telling people how to choose an SEO consultant coupled with the negative attention the industry already receives, you better believe these companies will have trained employees who at least know how to read from a script. ...