SEO Mentor

So this last Monday I booked my flights and hotel heading to sunny Fort Lauderdale Florida (ok I don’t know if it is sunny but hey it is Florida). “Why am I going to Florida in October,” you may ask yourself? I would then reply and say well, “Why Not?” If you could spend a couple of days learning about SEO, SEM, Social Media and much more from a group of stand up people in the industry, then I think you would as well, not to mention the conference is in Florida. Ok, Ok, so what is this conference you might ask, well to find out all the details I would head over to ScarySEO.com to get the low down.

You might have your reasons why your are going or not, but here are the Top 10 Reasons why I am going to the Scary SEO conference on October 24-25, 2008:

1. Dave Snyder (Why is this my number 1 reason? Cause have never met this big huge gorrilla)
2. Speakers - Jordan Kasteler, Jeff Quipp, Rhea Drysdale, Martin Bowling, Loren Baker, Brandy Eddings, Pamela Lund, Brian Chappell, John Carcutt, Ross Dunn, Brian Carter, Chris Hart, Eric Lander (get each speakers bio here scaryseo.com/speakers/)
3. Mini-conference! With this being a mini-conference the networking is going to be amazing, not to mention the close up training with more manageable debates.
4. Agenda - with the above great speakers we will be learning and debating; The Code of SEO, Link Building, Online Reputation Management, SEO Tools, SEM strategies, Analytics, SEO Project Management, Content Creation, Social Media Optimization and much more!
5. Florida! Who doesn’t want to go to Florida and it has been years since I have been out there.
6. I get to meet my buddy Joshua Sciarrino (formerly known as the flying monkey)
7. Zima Contest. If you haven’t heard of Martin Bowling and his love for Zima then you need to check out his Zima Contest and see how you can win a trip to Scary SEO.
   
8. SEOmoz sponsored night on the town with a Limo Bus excursion to the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino.
9. Learning and Fun, and a couple days away from work!
10. For being the first year of Scary SEO their prices are outstanding with total admission to the conference and parties being a great value at $200 per person.

These just happen to be my top ten reasons why I am going to the Scary SEO conference and I could go on and on but I think you get the point. As you can see I am quite excited about going and you should be too. Not to use the fear of loss marketing tactic, but there are only 50 seats available and time is running out so register now.

nuf said!

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I find that sometimes the Online Marketing and SEO industries can be a bore and that is the very reason why Chuck Lewis the SEO Rapper has had so much success. If you haven’t heard Chuck’s raps then you have missed out on some serious entertainment and also some great content. I had a wonderful opportunity to find out more about The SEO Rapper in my interview and he even let me add one of his raps within the interview so listen to the interview above or check it out below. Thanks Chuck!

Garrett: Hello everyone, this is Garrett Pierson, Your SEO Mentor here. I have the opportunity to interview Chuck Lewis, also known as The SEO Rapper of TheSEORapper.com. How are you, Chuck?

Chuck: I’m good. I can’t complain at all.

Garrett: Good! I just want to ask you my first introduction question. Tell us a little bit more about yourself, for people that might not know you. Tell us about your background, the music, and the online marketing industries, family hobbies, or something we might not know about you.

Chuck: Okay, about me, it can be found online. I’ve been in the music business for a while. I’ve been writing rap since middle school and high school, doing gospel hip-hop, marketing hip-hop where the name “poetic prophet” came from, as some people refer to me. I released a couple of albums doing this and they did pretty well. My Mo Serious Entertainment record label, mostly entertainment, that’s where that album premiered. I have a couple of other artists that I manage for the most part. For about the five or six years I’ve been doing online marketing at an agency called Pop Labs. I do search engine marketing there. I’m doing keyword research, optimization, and managing pay-per-clicks and everything else there, all day every day.

I have three children, Jordan, Akilah, and Brianna. They are my Charlie’s Angels, as I call them. I play basketball, play pool, and watch sports. Those are my hobbies if I’m not on some social media site creating a profile or something.

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My interview with Alejandro Reyes aka Successfool was the bomb this rockstar is so smart and has so much passion. Take a listen to the interview above or read the transcript below!

Garrett: Hello Everyone, Garrett Pierson here. I am here with Alejandro Reyes. How are you buddy?

Alejandro: Good, thanks for having me on your show.

Garrett: No problem; it’s a pleasure. I just wanted to tell everybody that I’m so excited to have you and talk with you for a little while. I’ve been totally impressed with you, what you do, and I think of you as the “master connector” and “relationship builder”. That’s what I call you.

One thing that has impressed me is that you’re not afraid of anything. Would you agree with that?

Alejandro: Wow! You’re reading my mail.

Garrett: You’re not afraid. You love to connect with people. I think that’s so powerful. In some of the questions I’m going to be asking you today, we will get into a little bit more of that.

A little bit more about Alejandro; he is a social media marketing consultant, entrepreneur, blogger, connector, speaker, family man; he has a little girl, four months old. Is that right?

Alejandro: Yes, little baby Sadie.

Garrett: Awesome! He runs Successfool.com. For all those listening at iTunes, or anywhere else, just go to YourSEOMentor.com, search for the Alejandro Reyes interview, and you can get all the links to his stuff.

Successfool.com is a blog for entrepreneurs and internet marketers for understanding how to use social media to better connect with the audience. It’s an awesome, awesome blog. You all need to get over there and check it out. One thing that Alejandro helps people with is he helps them become rock stars online. Isn’t that right, Alejandro?

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In todays Social Media News & Tip Podcast there was some quick news items and a great tip. Here are some of the items that I talked about when it comes to social media and networking:

Facebook Redesign To Go Live Tomorrow

Initially Facebook announced they were working on a redesign earlier this year. In May, a glimpse of the redesigned was released to developers in the developers sandbox. Tomorrow evening the redesign will be open to the public. …

Google Maps Offers Walking Directions

If you visit Google Maps today, you may notice a new feature called Walking Directions. It could definitely come in handy, especially if you live a city where having a car is just not efficient. Google Maps lists the driving directions …

Serious YouTube test of copyright law

A woman who posted a home video on YouTube of her 13-month-old son dancing to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” squared off Friday against entertainment giant Universal Music Corp. in a federal court case that tests copyright law. …

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I had the opportunity to interview my Mom for my second Monday interview podcast and was able to ask her a couple question about SEO and Social Media. Find out what the normal everyday person knows about SEO and Social Media.

Here is the transcript of the interview below if you would rather read:

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With the influx of new Web 2.0 sites online there is a growing concern with businesses both online and offline and how to benefit from Social Networking and Media sites that are currently rocking the online world.

The president of the company I used to work for asked me the following,

“How can Social Media help my company and why should I waste time with it.”

I went through a couple examples of how social marketing would help his business grow and showed him a couple of sites that I thought he should check out like Facebook.com, Squidoo.com, Twitter.com, and Stumbleupon.com just to name a few. Once I said ‘Facebook’ his eyes lit up and he said how fun he has had on Facebook and how he has come across old friends that he hasn’t talked to for years. I then saw a light go on in his head realizing the power of Social Media and Social Networking sites.

A recent article called “Why is Social Media So Hard For Businesses?” by Mark Collier of SearchEngineGuide.com stated:

“More businesses than ever are exploring the possibility of using social media tools and sites to help grow their business. But many of these efforts aren’t very effective, and I think that is due to many businesses simply misunderstanding what social media is, and why it’s so important.

First, what exactly IS social media? Asking 10 people might result in 10 different answers, but for simplicity sake, lets say that social media is a group of tools and sites that let you easily create and share content online. Blogs, social networks, and podcasts are the common forms of social media that most of us are at least somewhat familiar with.

The problem that I think many businesses have, is how they view social media. I believe many businesses (of all sizes) see social media sites and tools as new channels to publish content into. In order words, they view social media as being marketing channels.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Notice in the above definition of social media, I said that these sites and tools are ways to create and share content. Why use the word ’share’ instead of ‘publish’ or ‘distribute’?”

I totally agree with Mark and believe that not only businesses but in general people are misunderstanding the purpose of these social media sites that are now getting more pageviews than even the major search engines. Think of a search engine as a quick search for something and then leave. With these social media sites people are not only viewing more pages on the sites but they are also staying on these sites up to 5 times longer than they stay in the search engines, meaning you as a business owner now have five times as long to catch your viewers attention. THIS IS POWERFUL!!!

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