SEO / Social Media Consultant - SF Bay Area Blog

Musings and Thoughts on SEO, Books, and Marketing

• Review of Chris Brogan, Google+ for Business: How Google's Social Network Changes Everything (January 21, 2012) - A good first book but misses the point.

• Review of AdWords for Dummies by Howie Jacobson - AskHowie, How Does He Do It? (December 23, 2011) - A five star book on a three star subject!

• The Age of the Platform (Three Stars / Recommended) (November 11, 2011) - It's a bird, it's a plane, it's super platform! Why definitions and concepts matter.

• Facebook Fame: The Facebook Marketing Bible For The Small Business (October 28, 2011) - Facebook Fables and Foibles

• Free Marketing: 101 Low and No-Cost Ways to Grow Your Business (October 14, 2011) - A Stream of Consciousness Not a How To List of Free Marketing Ideas

• No Bullshit Social Media by Jason Falls and Eric Deckers (October 1, 2011) - Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

• Social Media ROI (Return on Investment) - Review of Olivier Blanchard’s Social Media ROI (June 17, 2011) - The Era of Our Ford

• The Complete Guide to Google AdWords - by Larisa Lambert (May 20, 2011) - A San Francisco Bay Area Perspective

• Book Review: How to Make Money with Social Media (Marketing) (May 14, 2011) - How not to: Buy this Book.

• Review of Brains on Fire (May 6, 2011) - Where there is Social Media Marketing Smoke, is there Fire?

• Review of Stephen Rappaport, Listen First! Advertising Research Foundation (April 20, 2011) - Social Media Marketing Research by Listening In, A Lot!

• Outsmarting Google, Evan Bailyn (April 7, 2011) - Too Smart for Our Own SEO Good and Not To Mention, AdWords.

• Search Engine Optimization Secrets, Danny Dover (April 2, 2011) - SEO for SEOers is like Poetry for Poets.

• The Thank You Economy (March 18, 2011) - a review of Gary Vaynerchuk's new book on Social Media Marketing.

• What is web spam? What is search engine spam? (January 24, 2011) - It is one of those concepts that everyone seems to believe that they know, and hate, but no one really can define it. One man's trash is another man's treasure!

• Smash Party AdWords vs. SEO: A Tragic, Common Mistake by Small Business Advertisers (December 13, 2010) - Most posts in the mainstream media about Google AdWords are little more than boosterism. Unfortunately, recent posts in the New York Times, follow this trajectory as well. They treat AdWords 'as if' it should be dealt with independently from SEO.

• A Quick Start Guide to Google Adwords: Get Your Product to the Top of Google and Reach Your Customers: Book Review (November 8, 2010) - Not the best book, sigh.

• Social Media Marketing for Dummies by Zimmerman and Sahlin: Book Review (September 20, 2010) - check out this useful, detailed book - lots of information on all the social media marketing platforms plus plenty of yummy links to free tools and services!

• SEO TrustRank: Review of We Build Pages and Jim Boynkin from Search Engine Strategies (SES) San Francisco (August 23, 2010) - Jim Boynkin is the guru of building high TrustRank links for SEO. I saw him at SES, and was in awe.

• Best SEO Books Ever - Review of Best Search Engine Optimization Books by Jason McDonald, SEO Book Reviewer (August 6, 2010) - my list of my top four SEO books. Best books for ever! (Pun on BFF).

• Search Engine Strategies San Francisco - Recommended Sessions and Vendors - SES is coming to San Francisco, August 18th! Here are my recommendations on what to see, free!

• How Best To Choose a San Francisco Bay Area Professional SEO Company (July 19, 2010) - With the website revamped, I set out my thoughts on how best to choose an SEO company. Is it for or with?

• Free Meta Tag Analyzer: Review of SEO Centro's Meta Tag Tool (June 6, 2010) - Once you understand how page tags, here are two convenient free tools to help you check your page tags for SEO friendliness.

• Free XML Sitemap Generator: Generate a Free Sitemap for Google (April 7, 2010) - Everyone wants their website indexed frequently by Google, Yahoo, and Bing. XML sitemaps are one of the best ways to accomplish this.

• Free SEO Link-Building Tool - Linkdiagnosis: Checking Inbound links for SEO (March 8, 2010) - One great, free fantastic tool comes from Linkdiagnosis.com. Here is my review of this free SEO link-building tool.

• SEO Certification Test (Informal) - Do You Really Know SEO? I Mean Really? (February 21, 2010) - Whether you are one of my online students, a student from my real-world SEO classes in San Francisco, or a potential student, this page gives you a test of getting SEO certified, informally, through my class. It's informal, but if you can do well on this test you at least grasp the basics of SEO. And you therefore deserve Certification in SEO.

• Free SEO Tool - Using Google's Wonder Wheel for SEO Keyword Discovery (25 January 2010) - Google is the world's greatest search engine! But Google doesn't have the world's greatest marketing and branding department. Think of some of their brand names. Froogle? Or what about hiding Google Local Search under Maps. Yelp, anyone? For SEO people, one of the best free SEO tools is the Google Wonder Wheel. It's totally hidden, and most people do not know it exists, nor how to use it. Let's take a look.

• Free Website SEO Analysis - HubSpot Website Grader, a Review (7 January 2010) - One stop shopping. One size fits all. Take a pill. Have someone else do it for you. With the cornucopia of free SEO tools out there, why doesn't someone make a one-stop-shop (free) tool for SEO? Wouldn't a simple Website Grader be fantastic? Believe me, the thought has crossed my mind, so I investigated the most popular service out there: HubSpot Website Grader. Here's my review.

• Be #1 on Google - 52 Fast and Easy Search Engine Optimization Tools to Drive Customers to Your Web Site (18 November 2009) - Want to be No. 1 on Google? Who doesn't? In his new book, Internet guru Jon Smith attempts to outline 52 SEO tools to get to the top of Google. A few of the suggestions are right on the mark. Unfortunately, many fall short. Here is our review of this new book.

• Google Local Business - What is It, How to Get Listed on Google Local for SEO? (17 November 2009) - Google local is so important to locally-based businesses, but Google has done a terrible job at making it easy to understand. How can you get listed? What are the tips and pointers for SEO?

• Facebook SEO vs. Google SEO (15 November 2009) - do you Facebook? Do you Google? What is a good strategy for Facebook? What is a good integrated strategy for both Facebook and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) / search engine marketing? A recent New York Times article got me thinking...

• Internet Marketing Tools for SEO (26 October 2009) - what is Integrated Marketing Communications (ICM)? How can you devise a strategy to integrate your "real-world" and "online marketing" activities? And are there any free tools out there? You bet...

• Online SEO Training vs. Real-World SEO Training (9 October 2009) - Online vs. real-world. Which is better? Which is more feasible? I teach both, and enjoy both. I find that each has its advantages - so read my blog post comparing and contrasting the two.

• Youtube as an SEO Opportunity (4 October 2009) - Do you Youtube? Beyond that, do you realize that videos and Youtube are great opportunities not just for search engine optimization but also for getting to the top of Google for your target keywords?

• SEO Page Template (9 September 2009) - So much noise is out there. Here are the best tags for on page SEO, described in a nifty page template. Feel free to copy and reproduce!

• Free Social Media Webinars (7 September 2009) - United break guitars, social media is hot, and here are some upcoming free webinars on Twitter and friends. Did I say free?

• SEO Keywords (30 August 2009) - curious what words and searches were the most popular in SEO, I turned the spotlight on the SEO industry, itself. Here are my results.

• Seo Training - What to Look for in a Search Engine Optimization course (29 August 2009) - if you are looking for real-world or online seo training, what should you look for? (or here | here).