Yesterday, my most recent contribution to the Bruce Clay Newsletter went live. Improving Search Marketing Efforts with Analytics was aimed as a follow-up to my March 15th article, Search Marketers Need Web Analytics.

If you have some time, check it out and let me know what your thoughts are. As always, props goes out to Lisa Barone, Virginia Nussey and Susan Esparza for their mad editing skills.

One of the main reasons my blog has been lacking new posts is because I’ve been using Twitter more often. A couple weeks ago, Barry Schwartz threw out a short and simple tweet that grabbed my attention.

Shortly thereafter, his post I Don’t Expect My Employees To Work Harder Than I Do, Do You? hit the Cartoon Barry blog.

Since then, I’ve been wanting to write this post. Despite it being weeks overdue, it’s a message that needs to be repeated. Often.

I’ve gone off before on various rants regarding team etiquette and the costs of poor management in the workplace. While I feel that these things are paramount to optimal results and productivity, nothing beats a solid work ethic.

I’m willing to bet that if you took a poll around the office where I work, the majority would tell you that I do nothing. I hang out in the kitchen, talking shop with designers, IT folks and site installers. I’m addicted to caffeine, and since it’s freely flowing at the single brewing office machine - it’s a hang out of mine I frequent.

Unfortunately, outside of the office - people cannot see me working until 1 or 2AM. It’s the cost of being in an salary job and taking yourself seriously. I work with some amazing clients — and I’ll be damned if they don’t deserve my attention and best efforts. Thing is, I can only work really well in spurts before I get fried out at the office I work at. It’s a dark, stale and tense environment that is simply not conducive to quality organic optimization.

As a result - I get up and do my thing more often than not, and log a solid three more hours a night from home when I know I can devote every second of my time to what needs to be done.

Tying this back into Barry’s post - one could argue that those who support my efforts (I don’t really have a team. I’m sort of the lone man on the organic island) would be driven to work at a lesser level because of my behavior and the poor example that I set for them. I get that, and know that I need to improve how I come across while in the office. As Barry wisely states:

I figure, you set an example and hopefully it encourages them to work harder.

Continuing on that same path, I have to call attention to the closing statements in Barry’s post and the question posed to readers:

I do expect that if I work for someone they work as hard as I do. I expect that. If it is your business, you should care more about your business then I do. Sometimes, be it with clients or other work, I get the feeling that I care more about their business then they do. That bugs me, it really does. Why should I work my brains out and pick up the pieces when they care less than I do?

Anyone ever feel that way?

Yes! Working for a Fortune 300 organization (we’re slipping, and I think I can see how that may happen) you realize that there are people who are just there while there are others who are truly dedicated to the company and its customers.

In any event, I often feel like I’m working for various people who slack. Those that pass the buck and try to act as though they’re assisting you are the ones that bother me most. I’m not an idiot, and I’m certainly not naive enough to buy your BS stories repeatedly. If that makes me some sort of outcast for not admiring you and your incredibly lazy ways - so be it.

I’m not going to assassinate my character for your ego.

QUICK LINKS FROM THIS POST
Bruce Clay Blog
6 Questions With Analytics Guru Avinash Kaushik, by Lisa Barone

Bruce Clay’s SEOToolSet™ Newsletter
Search Marketers Need Web Analytics, by Eric Lander

At SMX West, I had the opportunity to meet up with Lisa Barone, Susan Esparza and for a brief moment - Bruce Clay himself. If there’s one thing you need to know about Bruce Clay Inc., it’s that the organization is an absolute veteran in the space. When my first startup tried to compete head to head with Bruce Clay back in 2001, we failed miserably. Since then, Bruce Clay has opened up offices in Europe, Austrailia, Africa and Japan and continues to dominate the industry by providing market leading SEO services and internet marketing tools.

My point: there’s something to be said about experience, a strong team and proven leadership.

Anyways, today’s a pretty cool day for me because I actually had two references from Bruce Clay Inc. The first was a little bit of link love from Lisa Barone with her interview of Google Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik. The post, 6 Questions With Analytics Guru Avinash Kaushik, includes multiple questions that I offered up to Lisa when I found out she had the interview opportunity.

While Avinash isn’t a full blooded Googler (he’s technically a consultant), he fits the mold by not sharing any real juicy details on what’s up with Google Analytics. Rather than have me go on an on about that, just check out the interview already.

The other contribution I made to Bruce Clay Inc., came in the form of today’s featured newsletter. If you didn’t already know, Bruce Clay offers up an SEO newsletter that’s distributed on the 15th and last day of the month.

My contribution to the latest edition of the newsletter is the current featured piece, Search Marketers Need Web Analytics. The article speaks towards the beginner’s side of things by walking the reader through the overall purpose of web analytics. I go on to discuss various technologies involved in tracking data (page tagging, logs, etc.) and eventually end up discussing how to establish and track goals and baseline data for your site users.

The article wraps up by introducing some simple ideas to use common reports from most web analytic packages to help increase the effectiveness of your search marketing campaigns. Obviously, analytics is something I’ve really been spending a lot of time with recently - and I’d certainly be open to extending this featured article out to cover more comprehensive integration of analytics with search marketing.

A few moments ago, Brent Csutoras posted on his blog, that Google is showing indented results from a different domain. I hadn’t seen this behavior before, so I wanted to cover the topic here with a little insight.

Before we jump in though, please take a look at Brent’s screen shot and then read the full post and the information he presents.

The most notable element here is that he was able to refresh many times and still get the same formatting of results. When I ran the same search though, I could not replicate the behavior in FF, IE or Opera - both logged in and logged out.

If you have come across this yourself I’d certainly like to hear your thoughts and see additional examples. Initially, I expected to see some sort of reference from the indented site over to Brent’s in his example. It’s become clear to me that Google needs to understand the origin of content, especially given the scrapers out there with RSS feeds running wild. So, my first thought was that one of Brent’s posts was referenced and replicated — and that’s why the indent occured.

Not so.

Again, it’s the first time I’ve seen this, so I’m going to try to look into it further. At the end of the night though, it could’ve just been a random tweak that was let loose as a mistake.

Hunter Satterwhite, to me, is the Andrew Gerhart of 2008. A bold claim based on how much I’ve learned and appreciated Andrew’s guidance in my career.

So here’s the deal. Hunter has already obtained his BS in Graphic Design & New Media from Johnson and Wales University — the same school Gerhart was at when we brought him into the mix at TSL.

Of course, formal education is nothing in this industry. It’s all about drive, ambition and determination. A few weeks ago Satterwhite transitioned from an intern here at the office over to a full time designer.

Having made the same transition after college, I’m hoping to steer Hunter in the right direction to get him up to speed on advanced SEO tactics. Right now he’s focusing a lot of his time on PHP, MySQL while still managing to maintain his role as a designer.

If you want to get a feel for what he’s all about, be sure to check out Two Plus One Design, a company that Hunter co-owns with Chris Gioranino (fellow designer here) and Sam Pannice.

I’m also pushing Hunter to get a blog going, so stay tuned for that as well. My simple goal is to corrupt him and get him into SEO as much as possible.