As I’ve mentioned previously, I use the name Tuppy Glossop as a pseudonym in order to keep my day job somewhat separate from my extra-curricular business activities.

In an effort to increase the reach of my thoughts, I’m going to begin blogging elsewhere as well as here at Job Is A Four Letter Word. Not much to see there yet, but do stop by and say hi when you have a chance.

All the organizers of SphinnCon Israel deserve a big pat on the back, including Search Engine Roundtable; it was a terrific event. I’m guessing there were around 170 attendees all together, and I heard through the grapevine that a lot more people were turned away over the last few days. Organization was very thorough, with excellent food & drink (and lots of it) and it all ran smoothly. A few glitches with mics made a couple of speakers a little difficult to understand, but other than that a good time was had by all.

Barry started with a bang: The big announcement of the day was the possibility of a two-day SMX Search Marketing Expo in Tel Aviv, scheduled for January of 2009. That was greeted with loads of applause, and judging by the responses to SphinnCon, it’ll be a big hit.

Three panels followed, interspersed by networking and more food and drink. (Look, it’s a largely Jewish crowd; we like to eat, what can I say?) Here’s a brief summary of the three panels.

Session 1 - SEO Panel: Paid Links & Penalties

A short presentation by Branko Rihtman (who is clearly in a league of his own - obviously just a brilliant guy) led into a Q&A with the other panelists, Ophir Cohen, Sam Michelson, and Gilad Sasson. Branko outlined the history and importance of links; recent penalties for paid links; the recent controversy over those penalties; and some linking tips for 2008.

The last section introduced what became the recurrent theme of the afternoon: Create good content that’s worth linking to. Of course, it’s not quite that simple, but that’s where it all starts. You need to know the likes & dislikes of different crowds before you aim at them (Reddit isn’t Digg, which isn’t Stumble Upon, etc). Experiment, experiment, and experiment some more. He also highly recommended getting involved in off line activities that will incidentally create good links; sponsor events, speak at colleges (good source of .edu links) etc.

A couple of standouts from the questions that followed:

Q. Does link farming still work in Israel (and by extension, other non-English language markets)?
A. Yes, but it won’t for long; Israel’s about three years behind the US in many things, including the dos and don’ts of SEO. Build your business for the long-term.

Q. What should I do if my keyword disappeared from the SERPs?
A. Immediately, nothing. Wait for a few days; maybe it was a glitch. Use those days to do some analysis, see if you can see what may have caused it if there was no glitch. If you decide it’s really gone; bail, and get a new domain. Yes, there are things that you could do, but they’ll all cost more money than just starting over.

(My personal favorite)
Q. Do you have limits as to which clients you’ll take? Or will you all just whore for anyone?
A. (After a stunned silence, and some giggling.) Decide what sort of business you’re building. In the long-term, you may want to steer clear of certain markets as you build your reputation. But in the short-term, some of these markets are fun, lucrative, and can teach you something. It’s possible to work both long-term and short-term strategies simultaneously, so long as you know that’s what you’re doing.

Session 2 - PPC Panel: Will the PPC Model Hold Up as Click Prices Rise?

Opened by Avi Wilensky, perhaps not the most comfortable speaker I’ve ever heard, the initial presentation (available for download here) addressed the reasons for click price rises over the last year or two. In a nutshell … more players in the market, including some who will over-pay for branding goals rather than sales; limited inventory of advertising; and simple inflation.

Avi went on to a Top Ten list of ways to keep your prices down, including long-tail terms, geo-targeting, and landing page optimization. Two suggestions that I plan to look at more closely, since we’ve done little with them so far; demographic bidding, and day-parting.

Others on the panel included Itai Levitan, Alon Sheafer, Tal Cohen, and Michael G. Samet.

Some of the questions from this session included:

Q. Should I buy direct from publishers, rather than using the content networks?
A. A guarded “maybe”, with the proviso that tracking and reporting will be more difficult.

Q. With a marketing budget of $5,000 how much should go to PPC, and how much to SEO?
A. Lots of answers to this one. One of the two best was from Tal Cohen of Google Israel, who pointed out that with only $5,000 you obviously need revenue quickly. Spend it where you’ll see the best, and fastest returns.

And if I remember correctly, the other good answer was from Itai Levitan of EasyNet, who suggested a very small-scale PPC campaign for research purposes. Once you know which terms are converting for you, then put the balance into SEO for those terms.

Session 3 - Social Panel: Should You Social?

Eli Feldblum opened the final session with a presentation of the what, why, how, should, and whether of social marketing. It was a bit dense, and rather challenging to read some very detailed graphs, but he nevertheless gave a very thorough and well-documented breakdown of how to do social marketing, and how not to.

He was joined on the panel by Tzvika Avnery, Roi Carthy, and Lior Hener. This was arguably the most opinionated and heated of the panels, although it took a while to get rolling. There seemed to be only a few questions, largely since each one got a thorough going-over. One stood out however:

Q. How can social media negatively impact link equity? Can you actually get hurt by a rush of links (the Digg , or TechCrunch effect) that come & go?
A. No. Not if your product is any good. If it isn’t any good, you could get buried.

And that was fundamentally the message of the afternoon. Create good content, content that’s worth linking to, content that’s viral-worthy (a term that’s been copyrighted by Roi Carthy I believe).

Once again, kudos to the organizers of SphinnCon Israel; you did a great job. Looking forward to seeing you all in Tel Aviv next January.

I’ve been looking forward to SphinnCon Israel for a month now … to the best of my knowledge, one of the highest-profile search conferences we’ve had in Israel so far.

it’s rare that I leave the house, let alone go to a spiffy conference in the big city with cool people who don’t wear pajamas all day and who feed me great food and tell me how much they like my work and don’t I look a little like Tom Cruise and would I like another free t-shirt and how would I like to take on this huge freelance gig that only someone like me could do and sure you can have options with that and … and …

Yeah, I’m excited. I don’t really think most of those things will happen, but there are some great speakers planned and I’m hoping to meet a couple of people I currently know only via email or their blogs. The chair is Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable and Rusty Brick, and speakers include Sam Michelson, Eli Feldblum, and several other people with impressive sounding titles.

Although I spend much of my day-job-life running PPC campaigns, and I’m sure the panel on PPC will be good, I’m most interested in the session about social networking. I get it on an intellectual level, but I’ve never been able to put it into practice usefully. So many of these sites have a very high signal to noise ratio, and I lack the patience to sift through the dross and find the gold. Although I must admit I’ve seen some nice occasional spikes of traffic from Stumble Upon, so I’m obviously missing something. That said, feel free to Stumble this and I’ll test my hypothesis again.

I had vague thoughts about live blogging the conference, but have decided against it because

• I’m a lousy typist, and
• If there’s WiFi available I’ll end up answering email when I should be listening instead.

And more importantly, Miriam Schwab of illuminea is going to be there and has hinted that she’s going to live blog the event … I suspect she’ll do a much better job than I will, so I’m going to leave it to the professionals.

I’ll be ducking into a phone booth right before the conference, removing my online superhero pseudonym disguise, and going as my real self … so if you suspect you recognize me, pop over and say”Hey, aren’t you Tuppy Glossop?” I’ll be honored to buy a drink for the first person to do so!

Skellie, a stalwart of Problogger, has launched a new blog of her own called Anywired. Billed as a place to learn how to work the hours you want from anywhere in the world, it looks very promising.

One of her first posts is a list of ideas to help you start working online. Excellent ideas, with several I’d never have thought of (but with my art skills or lack thereof, a web comic really isn’t in the cards). My only criticism? I find the font very hard to read … it’s fine for headings, but not for running text.

Do take a look at Anywired … I think this one’s going to be a keeper.

Life, work, and everything in between has stopped me writing on this blog for over a month. It may be time to reconsider my commitment to it, hmmm?

But if I can’t post, I can at least comment on other blogs; so I’m taking Lorelle up on her challenge to start commenting more.

My favorite comic, Pearls Before Swine, turned its attention to blogs today.

I like the analogy.

That’s my new goal for this blog I think: It needs to be more fulfilling — both for me and the readers — than beating someone with a toilet seat. I hope I’m up to the challenge.

Part 2: The Work

As I hinted in my last post, neither Mrs. Tuppy nor I have taken mainstream jobs here since our move to Israel. Instead, with the freedom that the Internet gives us we both work in the US from a distance, although in rather different ways.

Like most people, my picture of offshore workers used to involve computer support staff in India but the truth is that there are some very highly-skilled professionals working across time-zones around the world. My wife is an assistant to a small group of radiologists — all American trained and board certified — who cover the night shift in a series of East Coast hospitals. Since almost all imaging is now digital, rather than on film, files can be sent to Israel as easily as they’re sent down the hall to the radiology department in the hospital. Continue Reading »

Part 1: The Move

One of the miracles and blessings of the Internet is the freedom that we have to work from anywhere. Three years ago my wife and I took advantage of this to facilitate a dream we’d had for many years … but first, some background.

I grew up in England, and lived there until I was around 20. In college I majored in American Studies and thus had the chance to study in the US. I spent my junior year at the University of California in Santa Barbara and that, as they say, was it. I absolutely fell in love with America and during my final year of college back in England I made plans to return for graduate school. As chance would have it I got a scholarship to study at the University of Kansas and, in my naivete I figured “California … Kansas … How different could it be?” Continue Reading »

Or: How to learn new skills on your employer’s time

I never was one of those kids who knew what they wanted to be when they grew up. I still envy my friends who knew in elementary school that they wanted to teach, or be a doctor … me, I had no idea. I knew that I had little or no head for math & science, and I read like mad; but I had no idea what work I wanted to do. My parents never had the chance to go to college but it was taken as a given that I would, which suited me fine.

My first degree was great fun, but prepared me for … well, for very little really. I majored in American Studies, a combination of history and literature. It was the perfect choice for someone who loves to read, but has little patience for anything written before about 1850. The great thing about American literature is that there is none (or precious little) before then! Strangely, employers weren’t beating down my door to hire me with my shiny new BA in American Studies, so I decide to indulge a lifelong interest in theatre and go to graduate school. Continue Reading »