Yesterday Jen and I did the first show in like a month! I still suck at doing all the live video stuff but its getting better. We talked about lots of topics everything from the Top affiliate Challenge to everything that has been going on in the search industry to the obligatory twitter talk.

Stream videos at Ustream

The PurposeINC SEO Think Tank 2008, one of the most anticipated SEO events of the year just added a very interesting component – Mixed Martial Arts Training.

On site at the event will be Xtreme Couture trainer Shawn Tompkins. Shawn has trained the best of the best including current UFC Champion Randy Couture and now he is unleashed to train a bunch of SEO’s EEEEEK!

Sure Hits is sponsoring the MMA training. Shots out to Jon Kelly.

To learn more about the 2008 SEO Think Tank or to see who is already booked check out the page here.

So all the buzz about SMX Advanced was about how dark it was. But there was another thing extremely noticeable to me too, and that is how seriously under-represented women were at the conference. Someone pointed out a few weeks before we all made our second annual pilgrimage to Seattle that there were hardly any women listed on the panels on the SMX agenda. Now, we all know how things change and like half the speakers end up not being added until the week before. So I kinda filed it away with the things that make you go hmmmmm and promptly forgot about it. Forgot about it, that is, until the conference was underway and it was like stepping back in time. Where were the chicks?

It seems that Danny Sullivan believes there are no women capable of speaking on Advanced SEO. Looking at the schedule, there are about five women panelists (not including the moderators, which were mostly SMX/SearchEngineLand/Sphinn peeps anyway) and most of the female speakers who were asked to speak presented about advanced advertising not advanced SEO.

So where the hell were the women? Is this 1970 when women stayed home with the kids while they lovingly sent their husbands off to work? Should we go put on our aprons and dust the countertops with flour for bread making? Because Danny must not think women are capable of breadwinning in the SEO world since none of the top SEO women I know were asked to speak.

Even the audience was skewed way more to the male side (although granted, some of them do look asleep). Heck, SEOMoz accounted for most of the hot chicks in attendance. At previous conferences in the SEO conference circuit it has felt much more gender even, while at SMX Advanced they were far and few between, if you didn’t count the booth babe types loitering around the expo hall with their botox and silicone. Heck, even Matt Cutts was surrounded solely by men.

Then you have Gray Wolf who was criticizing BlogHer for the fact you have to be a chick to speak, going so far as to call it sexual discrimination. Well, it is any surprise when you have supposed industry leading conferences like SMX which is really more like Search Male Experts than Search Marketing Experts? What SMX did is far worse than a conference that has openly called itself a conference for women. I am not a “girls rule, boys drool” female by any stretch of the imagination. But when Danny Sullivan is making it rather clear through his choice of speakers that when it comes to SEO that males are far superior to females, why shouldn’t there be a BlogHer to counter balance that just a bit?

To be fair, sure, maybe there was a whole crew of women who were asked to speak at Seattle but for whatever reason couldn’t make it. And I am not asking anyone to pick a girl based upon the fact she has boobs instead of a dick, base it on skill level. But I heard from many who weren’t even asked to speak in the first place, women who I consider to be top SEOs in the industry and the same women that many males consistently talk about as being the best of the best. I am not going to call any names out because a quick Google/Yahoo/Live search will show who people feel are the top females in the industry but let’s just say I was rather surprised.

Will the next Advanced Search Male Expo be as skewed towards being an Old Boy’s Club with the girls on the outside looking in? Only Danny Sullivan’s glass ceiling knows that. But it is a sad state of internet marketing when one of the most respected and recognized people in the industry obviously feels that women just aren’t cutting it in the world of SEO.

I wonder at what point MC Hammer references will leave my mind… This song rocked. ANYWAY….

Lijit – A new search service for bloggers launched last week… But calling it a “search service” really does not do it much justice. Do you remember when you first installed the mybloglog widget then all of a sudden you had all these great quicklook stats when you logged into mybloglog? Thats the warm fuzzy feeling I get when I log into Lijit.

Built in searching within wordpress has been probably one of the worst built in features for some time. Its probably why bloggers have opted to use Google Custom Search. Google Custom Search returns great results but it can be a bit difficult to implement. Well maybe not to implement but to customize and look right. My blog has looked jacked up for a while with GCS. Now Sure you get money if you use Google Custom Search…. I mean I have made a whole 2$ in the last year…..

So I first noticed the widget on copyblogger and problogger’s sites and i went their and made a account. It seriously took less then 1 minute to complete my profile and have the widget running on my site:

So it gives you some of the basic stats we all know and love… like previews and stuff like that but here is what I REALLY like:

(click for full size)

Pretty slick!

PerformancingAds launched on Saturday and was well covered in the blogosphere. When I initially heard they revenue split was 40/60 with 60% going to the publishers I was really turned off. I currently use Google Ad Manager and it costs me nothing. It did not make sense why we should give someone 40% for no additional benefits? I twittered as such and immediately got my answers (<3 twitter).

So that changes things a bit. I missed the fact that they take 0% of the revenue of ads placed direct from you that they host and serve for you. They ONLY take 40% of advertising that comes from their marketplace.

I think everyone should at least put their site into the performancing system. I have only sold a few reviews through reviewme over the years being in the marketplace has brought a lot of advertisers.

Amazing lol…

Seems like just yesterday I made my first post….

Its hard to imagine 60k comments.   Especially when about 80% of them are manually approved with all the spam filters we have.

Aaron “SEO Book” Wall has an awesome article about Google’s new Knol service.

The Google/Digg acquisition negotiations were in full swing as of last Tuesday, had passed the term sheet stage and the two companies were in final negotiations in the $200 million range. But sometime this last week Google decided to walk from the deal. Digg was notified on late Thursday or Friday.

Google was in the due diligence stage of the deal, where they peer deep into Digg’s technology and financial statements. Most term sheets are non binding, so anything that gives the buyer pause can be used as an excuse to walk away – but generally the buyer already has a very good idea what they are getting well before the term sheet stage.

Two sources close to the companies suggested that some issue that came up during technical due diligence was to blame. One source said that the issue was more personality driven, and that Google decided after spending more time with Digg’s top team that there just wasn’t a fit.

Either way the deal appears to dead and can be added to the long list of failed Digg acquisition deals. And when a company is “left at the altar” other buyers are usually hesitant to step in.

So what will Digg do now? We’re hearing they’ll just push through with a new round of financing. Digg hired Allen & Co. to represent them in the sale, but the investment bank is just as good at closing massive venture financings, too (they represented both Slide and Ning in their recent a half billion dollar valuation financings).

TechCrunch is a content partner of ShoeMoney.com.

Barry Schwartz is one of the most respected journalists in the SEO industry and when he wrote this article called The Sadness In The Industry the other day I was a bit surprised.

When I wrote Why I dont Like 95% Of The SEO industry it seemed to upset a lot of people who thought it was a blanket statement about SEO. It was not at all. It was a statement about the PEOPLE in the industry. Pretty much every established SEO who has been around a bit that I know agreed with the post or atleast thought the points had some validity.

I had Danny Sullivan (the godfather of SEO) on my webmaster radio show and I felt it was a very good show. From the beginning it was pretty clear that we agreed knowing SEO obviously is a very powerful skill but the industry needs to be held to some standards. There was a lot more to the discussion but that is the just of it. After the show there was a huge backlash against Danny for not coming at me with guns blazing… I think that even opened Danny’s eyes a little more at what I was talking about in regards to all these people who call themselves SEO’s.

So the current state of SEO is no surprise to me. While I am not a professional SEO (I have never been paid to do SEO) we attend many internet marketing conferences and have become very good friends with the most accomplished SEO’s walking the planet.

You pretty much have 2 groups of “old school” SEO’s:

Those who have celebrity status for what they have written about - These people have become venomous… They hate the fact that new people have come along with their blogs and made them irrelevant. They are super jealous of anyone who is recognized more then they are. The occasionally make forum posts or blog posts outing other SEO’s tactics so that people remember they still exist.

Those who have celebrity status for what they have accomplished These guys have distanced themselves from the industry. They used to blog, be apart of forums, have radio shows but they have slowed way down. They never really cared about the spotlight in the first place and now that there is all this venom in the industry they would rather rack up contracts with companies for actually *DOING* SEO then writing or talking about it.

Honestly I think the SEO profession is a victim of its own success.

I love SEO… I love the way it works. I love optimizing sites for search engines. SEO is a important part of internet marketing. I still believe SEO will become less important as time goes on but that does not mean I do not respect the skill ATM.

I feel very insulted when I am labeled a SEO and have for a long time. Are you proud to labeled a SEO?

SearchEngineCollege.com is an online SEO course website. It doesn’t look like its nationally accredited, but hey, you get the SearchEngineCollege.com stamp of approval once the courses are completed.

Thanks for the shirt guys.

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