or: How Shit my Dad Happens An online definition of Shit My Dad Says states, "In 2009, Justin Halpern , an aspiring comedy writer, was dumped by his girlfriend and moved back in with his parents. He began using Twitter as a way of keeping track of the brutally funny, off-color things his father said around the house." The popularity of Halpern's Twitter feed spread quickly. Soon, he had hundreds of thousands of followers. Today,

Friday fun. Search for Matt Cutts and Google recommends paid links.

Lisa Barone wrote an interesting piece entitled " Are SEOs Responsible For Rankings Or Money? ". At a recent SMX conference, Matt McGee posed the SEO myth "SEO is about rankings". Lisa was relieved when the panel concluded that SEO was really all about the money. I agree, but then all business activity is ultimately about money. We could say car racing is all about money, but it's also about engineering. It's about skill, excitement, and winning the game.

So the conversation in tech media of late is that Facebook is set to become a bigger cash cow than Google. Why? People spend more time on Facebook. Facebook has users locked-in )kinda(. Facebook "owns" the social map. Facebook is popular. Facebook is everywhere. Facebook is big. Uh-huh. Facebook may be all those things, but when it comes to translating "viewers" into revenue, Google currently wins hands down.

Only on very rare occasions can you say that someone "wrote the book" on a topic of relevance and it jumps from metaphor to accuracy. Tamar Weinberg , a social media strategist and author of 2009's O'Reilly published text: The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web , makes a wonderful exception to the rule. An expert trusted worldwide for her experience, opinions and guidance in all things social, Tamar's book on the subject remains a vital,

At a recent SMX conference , Baris Gultekin, Group Product Manager for Google AdWords, put the cat amongst the pigeons when he said the Google Keyword Tool only provides keyword data for the terms Google deems "commercial" . Teething problems? New policy? Bit of both? Regardless, it's fair to say there has been a backlash against the changes made to the keyword tool. For example,

At a recent SEO conference there was a question asked about getting a geo-local page to rank better for their own specific brand + the location )where they were competing against resellers & aggregators in that vertical(. I was a bit tired at the end of the day, so I am not sure if I got my point across well enough there...so I figured it would make sense to follow up here.

Marketers often rely on a facade. If marketing and advertising were truly transparent few marketers would ever be seen as heroes ;( When information didn't spread as widely it was easy for one public relations hero to scam one country into bombing and destroying another for the benefit of their client. Distortions and misinformation can work in the short run, but with the web people are connected all the time and the memory is deep.

The latest video from Matt Cutts talks about the value of SEO to Google. The questioner asks: "Why does Google support SEO specialists with advice? Google's business is to sell text ads..."? Matt explains that Google sees SEO helping, rather than hindering, their business model long term. How? SEOs create - and encourage site-owners to create - the very sites that Google's technology demands i.e. context accessible by an automated crawler, largely text based,

Since 2003, Anita Campbell is perhaps best known as the Founder and Executive Editor of Small Business Trends , a website bringing over 1 Million readers annually a clear focus on small business news , trends, advice and everything small business. A multi-award-winning site )including a 2010 SEMMY Award (, Small Business Trends has remained a dependable and provocative resource of relevant, small business-related content where expert opinions fuse into passionate,

I recently came across an interesting stream of search traffic. The demographic using this search stream was one I had no direct experience of previously. I was amazed at the high level of site interaction this group engaged in. It was related to the wedding of two people I'd never previously heard of - Ti & Tiny . From the names of the people who responded, I determined the traffic was mostly African-American. Pretty obvious given the topic, right.

BOTW emailed a coupon out good for all of October which saves you 20% off your listing fees. If you do the one-time submission the price is $299, but this coupon will save you $60, making it a $239 one-time submission fee. Save 20% on all Web, Blog, & UK Directory Submissions Discount offer and Promo Code " SAVE20 " is valid through October 2010 and only applicable to the BOTW Directory )botw.org(, BOTW Blog Directory )blogs.botw.org( and BOTW UK Directory )botw.org.uk(.

Forbes AdVoice , a new Forbes editorial strategy that does away with the traditional barriers between advertising and editorial content: The pitch is this: We'll sell you a blog, and your content will live alongside that of Forbes' journalists and bloggers. This isn't the "sponsored post" of yore; rather, it is giving advocacy groups or corporations such as Ford or Pfizer the same voice and same distribution tools as Forbes staffers, not to mention the Forbes brand.

Effective marketers leverage marketing channels. Scammers ruin them for everyone else. There is a long line of this on the web... Email was personal, then it was easy to automate & done in bulk. Guest books and blog comments were a way to add value, then they were sources of free links. Links were a signal of relevancy, then they were bought and sold in bulk. As people get burned the web as a whole gets more cynical.

About a year ago my wife and I started to notice Google's increasingly aggressive push into demoting the organic results and extending AdWords ads. Based in large part on that we decided to partner with Geordie Carswell to create a sister site to SEO Book focused on paid search & contextual advertising - PPC Blog. I have been meaning to interview him for a while & just finally got around to it. How did you get into pay per click marketing?

Sometimes when reading TechCrunch I feel like I am watching the History Channel, and that there is a regularly scheduled show called WWII Wednesdays ) or something like that (. Ironically there was even a junk TechCrunch post about killing the hype cycle . But they know the truth on manipulation - they wouldn't have a profitable product without it . So often marketers highlight how *this changes everything* I just saw an article about how the Facebook like button kills SEO,

Influence Finder is a new link analysis tool that aims to make link research more targeted and less time-consuming while producing better results. Despite how SEO has evolved over the years one aspect remains crucial to the success of any SEO campaign, links. So just about any tool that claims to make the process faster, smarter, and better quality is worth taking a look at.

Google Instant launched. It is a new always-on search experience where Google tries to complete your keyword search by predicting what keyword you are searching for. As you type more letters the search results change. Short intro here: Long view here: Not seeing it yet? You can probably turn it on here )though in some countries you may also need to be logged into a Google account(.

It is no secret that in the past Rand and I have had some minor difference of opinions )mainly on outing(. ;( But in spite of those, there is no denying that he is an astute marketer. So I thought it would be fun to ask him about his background in SEO and to articulate his take on where some of our differences in opinions are. Interestingly, it turns out we shared far more views than I thought! Hope you enjoy the interview. :( Throughout your history in the SEO field,

The following is a guest post by Jim Kukral. Google knows this. Now you do as well. Easy always wins. Take a moment and picture your website or your blog or your product or service in your head right now. Now, think of Google's. Which one is easier? No, you're not a search engine, you're probably a small business owner with a variety of products services, entrepreneur with a business idea, or blogger .