I had a conversation with a friend the other day regarding my freelance SEO work. What he doesn’t understand is why I’m doing everything on a volunteer basis and not charging these business owners market rate for my consulting work - or at least at a discounted rate. I guess he doesn’t want to see me do all that work and get nothing in return. Truth of the matter is I AM getting something in return - experience, testimonials and referrals. My hands on experience puts SEO theory to practice; written testimonials instill a sense of trust in prospective clients; and referrals show other business owners that I know what I’m doing. ...

Happy new years eve!!! Just a few more hours before the start of 2011 and I thought it’d be a great idea to showcase some of the top funny and interesting search phrases of 2010 for CafePress. I had to sift through copious amounts of data to find them and even then I had a difficult time narrowing them down. I love looking for these weird tidbits because they are always a nugget for a good laugh. Moreover, it still boggles my mind on how people are able to find CafePress using search phrases that are totally unrelated to the business. ...

What is Christmas about? I’m not religious but check out the following video. Regardless of religion, it’s very clever and proves how powerful social media can be. YouTube: Christmas 2.0 Merry Christmas!!!

Link building is one of the most important aspect of any search engine optimization campaign. Since my SEO journey began half a year ago, I have read countless articles titled “Link Building 101” or “Top XYZ Link Building Tactics.” What most of these authors overlook, or don’t stress enough, is the power of internal link building. IMAGE REMOVED In early November my dentist asked me to SEO his website for him. Being new to the field I offered him a free trial for one month so I could put my new SEO skill set to the test. Let’s be honest though, every marketer knows there is always a catch to trial periods. ...

I gotta give props to them. The folks over at the Transportation Security Administration probably have one of the toughest social media jobs right now in light of the recent public backlash over enhanced security measures. Not only do they have to deal with the endless stream of “comments” being posted on the TSA blog but the official TSA twitter account, TSABlogTeam, needs to fend off an attack from all sides via parody accounts. ...

To get yourself up to speed, I would recommend reading part uno of this two part series - Domain Change and Duplicate Content. But first, allow me to bask in my own glory as I provide an update on my current search engine rankings for this blog. seo chris yee - #2 on Google; #1 on Bing/Yahoo seo christopher yee - #2 on Google; #1 on Bing/Yahoo christopher yee- #38 on Google; >100 on Bing/Yahoo ...

It has been three weeks since the advent of Google Instant and there’s already 85 million search results for it - WOW! That is very impressive….but then again, that’s the world wide web for yah. In any case, I’d like to contribute to the search community regarding the aftermath of Google Instant’s impact on search behavior. This article is based on blog posts from Conductor, SEOmoz and Distilled. Unless I am mistaken, a thing to keep in mind is not everyone has Google Instant yet so the numbers will eventually change. Also, I would like to thank Seer Interactive for their free downloadable spreadsheet - it has worked wonders! ...

Tomorrow marks my one month anniversary as an SEO Analyst Intern with CafePress! Although it has only been a month, I have learned more in 30 days about search engine optimization than reading 5 books cover to cover relating to the search industry. Why? Because of practical hands on experience. I can not stress this enough and believe this is _the_best way to go for search industry newcomers. By no means am I claiming the books weren’t helpful at all and that hands on experience trumps everything else. Instead, I think of the books as a wire frame that prepared my mind to think like an SEO professional and the actual SEO work as the stuffing that goes into it. What you have in the end is a master piece! ...