I don’t go off-topic on this blog too often, but this seemed worth recording somewhere. I’m sitting listening to the concert from the Lincoln Memorial, the concert to celebrate President Obama’s Inaugural.

From a few hours before the concert, Bruce and Pete warming up for their performance, accompanied by a gospel choir.

I was born in England, and now live in Israel. Although I lived in the US for many years, I never became a citizen (no reason particularly, I just didn’t) … yet I feel a profound sense of history being made. The thought that a black man could be elected President of the US was unfathomable in the Sixties, when I was born, and even in 2008 it seemed an unattainable summit.

Yet it happened. Millions of Americans put their hopes and trust in Barack Obama, and today the National Mall is swarmed with people listening to a celebration of an historic moment. The concert is coming to a close as I type this, and I just listened to Bruce Springsteen and the 89 year old Pete Seeger lead the crowd in a singalong of “This Land is Your Land. What an extraordinary day.

When I first started developing sites for myself — affiliate marketing sites, AdSense vehicles, etc. — I was still working full-time for a NY based company. Since my work there included PPC campaign development, search engine optimization, and other online marketing activities, I decided to use a pseudonym for my moonlighting work in order to keep these two lives separate.

Since I’m a big fan of the British author P.G. Wodehouse I chose the name of one of his minor characters, Tuppy Glossop, for my online alter ego. As a result, poor Tuppy is all over the Google result pages  for a variety of activities he would never have countenanced (or indeed, understood!)

Anyway, it’s been a few months now since I left that position and I’ve decided it’s time to move out from under Tuppy’s shadow. He’ll still be around, since I quite like writing as someone anonymous occasionally, but I’ll be using my real name much more from now on, particularly on this blog.

Just wanted to tidy up any potential confusion for new visitors here.

Today I once again emerged from my shell and ventured into Jerusalem, this time for breakfast with Jeff Pulver and around 80 of his friends. I have to get accustomed to this idea of being with actual live people, but I think I could grow to like it.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with these events (I wasn’t until today) you’ll find this video interesting:

Jeff is a multi-faceted guy with an impressive resume and an engaging style. He’s been hosting these breakfasts for a year or so; this morning’s was the first in Jerusalem, although there have been a few in Tel Aviv. All in all he’s done 35 of them in 18 different cities.

I got to reconnect with some of the people I met at the Jerusalem Web Professionals meeting last week, which was nice … it’s much easier to go into these events knowing a few friendly faces. So, it was good to see Charlie Kalech, Kim Mayroze, Shimshon Young, and Debi Zylbermann again.

Some other attendees included Brian Blum of This Normal Life and his wife Jody Blum, a financial coach; Yehudit Singer, the editor of IsraTimes; Joel Katz of Religion & State in Israel; Robin Zalben from Spielberg Film Archive; and Bernie DeKoven, the Fun Maven.

The tools that Jeff describes in his video … The Personal Social Networking Toolkit, as he has dubbed it … is what makes this event stand out from others I’ve attended. For me at least the tag labels were awkward. Particularly when talking to women I was a little shy about applying labels to someone’s chest, so those were a bust. But the personal tag line is a marvelous conversational ice breaker, and there were some very creative ones to be seen. (I never did get the chance to ask Jody Blum about soup, but I found the tag line intriguing nonetheless!)

I had a great time at Jerusalem’s first Breakfast with Jeff Pulver, and I’m eagerly looking forward to the next one.

Wow, it’s been a long while since I posted here, and also a long time since I actually left my house and met people face-to-face. Well, face-to-face in terms of a professional meeting, some networking, and talking with other SEO & SEM geeks. Outside of my work I do leave my house. Sometimes. No, really, I do. If I have to.

Enough of my solitary endeavors. Last night I went with two friends to a presentation about SEO organized by Jerusalem Web Professionals, a group founded by Kim Mayroze. Kimm is head of Kimmdesign, a Jerusalem web studio specializing in creative concept development. I haven’t been to any previous JWP events, but I’ll be making a point to go in the future.

After her brief introduction, Kimm turned over the presentation to the three speakers. The first of them, Shimshon Young, owns a web site design company, Excellence Internet Service. His presentations were probably the shortest, but he offered practical tips that would be valuable to many sites; have awesome content, have lots of pages, buy multi-year registrations for your domains, and create a favicon (something I rarely do, and probably should).

Debi Zylbermann spoke next; with long-experience in high tech and QA, she moved into SEO comparatively recently. She’s very dynamic, and a confident speaker … her presentation was interesting but could perhaps have benefited from a dry-run rehearsal for a non “tech-head” friend first. Her explanation of page rank sculpting was fine for me, but my non-geek friend had zoned out within a minute or two.

I’m also slightly dubious about her method of using AdWords for keyword research. The concept is clever — aim your bids for position 9 or 10, and use the impression count for stats — but in practice I have a feeling that the data would not be terribly accurate. It’s hard to derive search numbers from impressions, since it depends on ad inventory for that term, quality score for that advertiser, etc. And of course, it doesn’t give a sense of which words are buying terms in the way that clicks would. I’d be more likely to use paid tools like Keyword Elite and SEO Elite, or even a free service like the SEO Book keyword suggestion tool.

The third speaker was Charlie Kalech, director of Jerusalem web design company J-Town Productions. He opened with the fishing clip from The Frisco Kid explaining the difference between broad search and narrow search … very cute, and put his point across very succinctly: “How hungry are you?”

Two strong themes that I got from his presentation:

• Plan your site structure early in the process in order to use keywords effectively. This will help both Google, and your users, find their way around.
• Know what sort of traffic you’re looking for. Understand the costs and benefits of attracting floods of traffic, versus getting only a trickle of traffic that’s intensely targeted to your content.

I had a good time at the event, and I’m pleased to have discovered Jerusalem Web Professionals. Looking forward to the next meeting so I can leave the BatCave once more before 2009.

Only one fly in the ointment … there were one or two attendees who had clearly come with an agenda of showing their own brilliance and superiority at the expense of the presenters. I mean, I like to hear myself talk as much as the next guy, but this was ridiculous.

One in particular managed to alienate pretty much the whole room within a sentence or two. But it was clear that he was familiar to the presenters, and they addressed him with the same kind of gentle, calming, and dismissive tone that I use on my crazy Uncle Louie … you know, the one who spends every Seder explaining that the CIA is bugging his potato kugel.

But the wing nuts were in a minority, and it was nice to renew a couple of acquaintances. Same time next month?

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.