SEO 2.0

Remember my post 10 Reasons Not to Use Digg from 4 months ago? Everything I said is still true or rather more than ever. While I tried hard to find an alternative at Netscape.com (now Propeller) which failed repeatedly and I was banned at Reddit even before I really started to contribute I now finally found one: Mixx.

Mixx is the new better Digg, a social news site we all have waited for.

Why is that? I want to tell you why, I will provide you with 12 reasons to join Mixx and thus also to abandon Digg. Many of them also apply to Reddit or Propeller.

1. New, fresh, nascent community where your contribution counts
2. Politeness in disagreeing, basically any flaming is banned at Mixx so the ugly Diggers we’re used to by now and who also flame on StumbleUpon won’t attack you here
3. Personalization instead of one size fits all, the front page metaphor of the newspaper does not work for the Net, at Mixx you get your personalized news first, not just the lowest common denominator, thus also niche news get exposure
4. Mixed media with images and videos right up front like on social news mashups allow you a quick overview
5. It’s not just about exploitation of UGC and your “social capital”, you can also gain by promoting your own stuff
6. Responsibility for what you voted down or buried, it’s visible who did it
7. Private groups extend Mixx. Instead of participating in an anonymous mob site you can socialize with peers
8. Apple marketers and fans comprise one of the biggest pressure groups on Digg, almost every day at any given time you have an Apple front page story, not on Mixx yet
9. No SEO hate, in fact my 101 blog optimization tips have been mixxed by some stranger, in contrast all my articles have been buried on Digg because I do not hide the fact of doing SEO, while all the Apple marketers do
10. SEO niche news can coexist with the rest and SEOs are embraced
11. All my favourite social media superheroes are already there, Zaibatsu, tamar, MSaleem, Nowsourcing, Andy Beard, maki where are you?
12. The founder has a solid media and publishing background and does not offend people because of their occupation like Kevin Rose of Digg “SEO is a whole industry dedicated to gaming the system” or Jason Calacanis of Netscape.com “SEO is bullshit“

In fact I have more reasons to appreciate Mixx than 12 but I haven’t that much time, I want to spare some for browsing social news at Mixx! OK, I also have to do some work

I am onreact.com at Mixx and you also may have noticed the “Add to Mixx” buttons below my headlines. If you feel like voting for me, don’t do it because of my hat!

What do others say about Mixx? While I am an early adopter myself, they have been there long before me:

• SEOCO Blog » Mixx.com Review
• A Digg Clone That Might Actually Make It << Vandelay Website Design
• Mixxing In, and Why Early Adoption is Important: A Review of the Newest Social News Network » techipedia | tamar weinberg
• Top Digg Contributor’s are Frustrated: Is Mixx the Answer? | Inventor Spot
• Mixx: A Social News Remix : Somewhat Frank
• Stealthy Startup Mixx Launches Into Private Beta

See you in the Mixx. Btw. do not digg this, or I will use this code here to block Digg.

Did you know that as a teenager I had to fight with a gang leader to be able to join his clique? I guess we have watched too many American movies and listened too much to gangster rap but aren’t all Mexicans cholos ?
What was most striking about this fight which wasn’t that bad, it was more of a scuffle without a bloody outcome, was that exactly at the lawn we fought there was the hugest pile of dog-shit lying around I have ever seen in my life! Now guess what? Did I end up with my face in it? Well, actually I didn’t and I wonder to this day how we managed not to notice it in the first place and how we didn’t end up smeared all over with it.

Nowadays it’s much easier to join a clique. For bloggers there is even a new service that facilitates it: CLIQ. Most of you noticed the silver widget on the right, it’s the better BlogRush. It still has some issues I discovered but I am particularly fond of it anyways. Especially as some exceptional blogging experts have joined me.

The best thing about my CLIQ is that they aren’t ugly SEO spammers who hide in dark alleys like I am, but they’re real bloggers!

So let me introduce my 4 CLIQ members:

• Wayne of Blah! Blah! Technology (or is it all lowercase) is a down to earth as well as rock solid web developer with a unique design taste. He is not afraid to disagree with fake Mexicans and former gang members and has a blog about a wide range of technology related topics. He has an original take on what’s going on, so he even manages to turn old news into something worth to tell.
• Pearl who is the woman behind Interesting Observations who just hit the front page of Digg, del.icio.us and became popular on StumbleUpon at the same time. What more can I say? she writes about blogging, social media, the web, also 2.0 and self improvement among others. She’s a Jane of all trades in e positive sense.
• Fred of Newest on the Net is a very active hard working blogger who devises posts for eternity. Thus he is already highly successful while blogging only for a few months by now. He is also very active on some social media I participate.
• Lidija of BlogWell does not have to be introduced anymore I guess as she contributed two fabulous and highly popular posts to SEO 2.0. nonetheless it should be noted that she is a long standing media expert with blogging being a stage of her publishing career which has also included numerous other media outlets. She is a gifted writer and a passionate contributor.

We also have one contender who wants to join:

Dicky of TechSnack is a web development, Web 2.0 and technology blogger from Europe with a sense for a good blog name, design and interesting topics. Like myself he is not a native speaker of English so he makes some mistakes but I guess his fervor compensates that minor flaw.

So CLIQ members, let me know via email (it’s onreact at onreact.com) if you want him to join us.

Btw. I was asked once whether CLIQ is all about the traffic. I think not: It’s like a dynamic blogroll in a way. It connects you with fellow bloggers unlike the selfish and random BlogRush thing.

Recently I was subject to or part of some major disagreements and discussions online. This is partly due to the rapid spread of my SEO 2.0 ideas. People just can’t ignore them anymore. While I am in Internet publishing for ten years now and have done basically everything, written about every topic, tried every medium and contributed to multiple publications and communities doing it I encounter still the same problems.

Partly they stem from the Internet itself and it’s alienation but a large part of it is people lacking basic social skills. This is astonishing as most people I discuss with are grown ups and often respectable business people. During my first years online I still assumed that me being a newbie or still very young people treated me accordingly. By now I realized that it’s not my fault, I’m 33 years old and have a solid background of 10 years as an Internet specialist. So now I perceive rudeness as what it is.

Of course I’m not perfect myself, I still get angry when people make remarks or voice “opinions” that are anti-democratic, racist, sexist, demeaning and the like. Basically in real life they wouldn’t do it facing me. Phillip of Google Blogoscoped just reprimanded me a few days ago for insulting people who denounce free speech.

Nonetheless I want to talk about real discussions here, not flame wars.

Disagreement is the foundation of evolving ideas.

Where everybody agrees everything has come to halt. It’s a standstill. This can’t be the goal. The goal is to move on and get better.

So I collected 15 basic rules of disagreeing with style, an art which is not very widely spread on the Net right now it seems. If you disagree:

1. Disagree with opinions and ideas, not persons
2. Explain what you disagree with and why instead of sulking like a 5 year old kid or crying “no” again and again
3. Be polite, just because you think your opponent is wrong does not mean she or he is an idiot or something
4. Disagree directly where the discussion takes place, do not discredit someone behind hers or his back in a place you think you got more support by your online buddies
5. If you’re angry do not send a reply but wait until the next day, if you’re only agitated reply right away
6. Do not write a two liner in a reply to a full-fledged analysis or thorough article, take your time to read it thoroughly and to formulate a reply
7. Do not engage in a mob action just because adding some remarks in the slipstream of others feels so much safer
8. Read the article which started the discussion in the first place, do not just react to the third follow up
9. Do not pretend to be objective, only God is, people are only capable of being subjective, do not use phrases like “it’s generally known”
10. Do not assume that customs from your hometown or country apply to the rest of the world
11. Overlook misspellings of your opponent and concentrate on the points she or he made, especially if you discuss with non-native speakers of English
12. Use your real name and link to your website to establish authority
13. Do not question the authority of your opponent by citing things she or he did or said out of the context of the disagreement, unless she or he is an axe murderer
14. Question your opinion. Remember it applies to your own experience while your opponent has probably another understanding of the subject than you have based on hers or his experience, just because you didn’t do or see it yet does not mean it does not exist or it’s not true
15. Do not try to convince somebody by relying on tradition “we always do that” or the majority “everybody knows that”, new ideas are never main stream at the beginning

That said I welcome you to disagree with me in a civilized manner. Just because we disagree we do not have to go to war. I do not think that the spirit of the Bush administration has been adopted by the US public which is my main audience based on my Google Analytics stats. What the Iranians can, many of them read my blog too, you can too.

Wayne Smallman over at Blah! Blah! Technology has taken great lengths to convince people that conventional SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is better than SMO (Social Media Optimization) for middle sized and small businesses.

As I do not advocate a pure either or approach but rather the as well or more accurately “SEO as a side effect” approach of SEO 2.0 I am not against SEO altogether.

In fact my blog is called SEO 2.0 and not SMO whatever because I believe that SMO is just a as set of practices inside a larger discipline: SEO 2.0.

SEO for Web 2.0 does not only consist of SEO of course but, if I you would ask me for numbers I would say 70% SMO and 30% SEO. On the other hand if you would ask me for the time and effort spend with SEO compared to the hours spent for SMO in SEO 2.0 I would reply 5-10% for SEO and up to 95% for SMO.

This does not mean that SMO is to hard to implement, it means that in SEO 2.0 you take standard SEO best practices for granted and do bother later.

That said I still have to refute the points Wayne voiced. I highly respect Wayne, he’s in my CLIQ and he is an web and technology expert, doing web development and design, blogging, SEO and actively using social media. As a blogger he has a good grip on the larger picture while I sometimes am to much in love with my own niche oftraffic generation.

Nonetheless I have the impression that Wayne is driven somehow by a strange kind of nostalgia to the easy days of SEO where you optimized once, added some links from directories or link exchange and then you got traffic for an infinite time via Google and other search engines.

The online world has changed in the recent years where Web 2.0 style social sites and blogging have become omnipresent. The new web is still predominantly populated by bloggers, early adopters and Internet specialists. The John Doe webmaster uses, on the other hand, still a simple website if at all, and probably has never heard of terms like SEO, blogging or Web 2.0 so you won’t teach her or him SMO right away.

It’s not impossible to succeed on the social web as a small business webmaster though. The contrary is the case, you can compete with the big guys if you use the tools of Web 2.0 right. You get both direct traffic and as secondary effect the traffic via Google and the likes.

Wayne states that “99% of businesses will never benefit from Social Media or Social Networking” which he underpins with basically only 5 claims.

So let’s take a look at Waynes main points, I have to narrow them to an easily digestible size:

Claim 1: Small businesses do not need much content, they need websites with 5 pages
In reality: Small businesses need the so called “long tail” to compete with the big guys as in SEO 1.0 in most cases you can’t outperform the big sites optimizing for the same main keywords.

Claim 2: Small business owners and employees are too busy, lazy, stupid or not web-savvy enough to blog or engage in social media
In reality: Business people can very well explain what they do or report what happens in their industry. Blogging is as easy as checking web mil right now so what’s the problem? If they can’t themselves you only need someone to write for your blog three times a week for one hour, do you think you can afford that?

Claim 3: Small businesses dealing with or selling non-sexy products or services will never succeed on social media
In reality: This is a widely spread misconception, as if only Apple is allowed to push their products via all social media. Well, it’s not true. If you look at Digg you can be much more successful as a plumber there than as a SEO. Just look at the many top articles dealing with toilets. I know plumbers are not all about toilets, but people love strange stories about them.

Claim 4: Several profiles at Web 2.0 services are useless for small businesses
In reality: Ever heard the term reputation management? do you prefer disgruntled clients or former employees slandering your business in the google top ten or do you prefer to control the first ten or twenty search results. Just look up my “company” onreact or onreact.com in Google.com, I dominate the first 20 results for both!

Claim 5: Befriending people online does not make sense for small business owners or employees
In reality: Do you think email is good way of communication? Why don’t you meet all your clients or at least call them personally each time you have a message for them? The same answer applies to social networks and the likes.

Additionally I want to ad several key differences why SEO 2.0 techniques are better than outdated SEO practices:

1. While with SEO you’re dependent mostly on Google, you can be banned over night for no apparent reason, Matt Cutts or rather nameless algorithms can destroy businesses with a blink of an eye! SEO 2.0 or SMO drives traffic from many sources and via people not robots. even if one site bans you or goes down, the people you networked with will still know you and probably socialize with you elsewhere
2. With SEO you sometimes have to wait up to one year to see some good rankings as Google places yoo in the so called sand box filter for new sites. So you optimize for a year and then see some effects. With SEO 2.0 or SMO you’ll see traffic from day one, if done right. The links you gain via social media will push you in the rankings too so sometimes you#ll overcome the sand box much quicker.
3. In SEO you have to write long copy in a really boring repetitive style using keywords in such a way you rank well, so that people will get bored with your copy. While in SEO 2.0 you write with passion for the people and you want to attract them right away, they love your copy.
4. Socializing on the Net is just another way of forging business relations with your existing business partners or new ones. While you would never befriend anAustralian living there while you’re in Europe in real life unless you work as a flight attendant you can do it with social media. Did you ever befriend anybody at Google or Yahoo or search? You can’t even email someone if you’re rankings drop. Google does not care for small business owners.
5. While it’s utter bullshit most normal people assume that SEO is shady manipulation only somewhere along the spam you get via email. So business owners are often very hesitant to even admit they do SEO. In fact that’s one of the reasons why SEO has such a bad rep because you only see the bad one as a normal user and nobody will tell how the New York Times optimizes it’s website. SEO 2.0 or SMO is out there in the open. In a way it’s about showing off you and your business or company. You d not have to lie to your clients about it.

I could go on like hat but I have to do some SEO work now, but I can convince more and more clients that SEO 2.0 with it’s set of SMO methods is the better choice and why buying or exchanging links and dependance on the Google monopoly (95% market share in Germany by now) can amount to suicide sometimes. I can convince them although blogging and social media are still nascent in Germany with only just a few people actively participating.

Most people apparently think social media services based on User Generated Content (UGC) like YouTube, Blogger, Digg, del.icio.us, Flickr or StumbleUpon are outright idealistic endeavors built for the benefit of humanity and not Social Media Optimization. Yet they are not. They are about business and making money.

The question is just who makes the money and who does not.

It’s about exploitation or worse slavery.

Over at our group blog Collective Thoughts Marty of aimClear has written an intriguing article about the notion that you are not allowed to perform certain practices on social media unless you are well respected power user who spent numerous hours in selflessly filling such a site with content and interaction.

The consensus seems to be that the entrepreneurs or companies behind social media services are allowed to earn billions while the users have to add strictly not-for-profit content out of love for mankind. As you already may sense it, there’s an inherent flaw in this dogma.

• Who would agree to work for free in real life?
• Who would create wealth for profit oriented companies without getting paid?
• Who would attack anybody demanding being paid for all the work?

Slaves!

The Wikipedia definition of slave says among other things

Slaves are held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase, or birth, and are deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive compensation in return for their labour.

(my emphasis).

So basically although we are not forced to work and we can stop anytime, at least we are not compensated just like slaves. Popular Web 2.0 companies are basically saying

Hey we give you all the tools, machines and a seat in our factory, you can socialize with your coworkers, what else do you want? Money? Are you joking?

Not all slaves fought slavery in the USA along with the abolitionist movement. Malcolm X used the term “house nigger” for all those slaves who supported slavery out of selfish motives. The term stems from the time of slavery itself, it describes those slaves who had some privileges like sleeping in the masters house or indeed working there instead of the plantation.

Most of the social media users are the plain slaves working at the plantation while the power users are house niggers who have some personal gain out of the being a slave. Of course the money goes into the pockets of the plantation and slave owners.

• How much time do you spend on Web 2.0 and social media? How much time do you spend daily while on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Pownce?
• How much do you earn for this work?

It’s not work you might ague, it’s fun. But you sit at the computer in front of the screen.

• Does it feel like spending time with your family,
• going for walk
• or playing basketball with your peers?

Moreover: It’s so called social capital. The relationships you build are social capital. Your social capital but predominantly the social capital of the plantation owner, Google, Yahoo, eBay.

It gets more ridiculous:

Once you give up your relations for free to a company they sell them back to you.

It’s like paying for the tools to work without compensation. XING, a LinkedIn competitor just announced a sharp rise in profits. What do they earn their money with? By selling full accounts where you can send messages to your friends online. So in fact they let you pay for contacting your friends or business partners!

SEO 2.0 and thus also Social Media Optimization (SMO) and even Marketing (SMM) is about using social media for your own ends, whatever they might be.

So SEO 2.0 has a really subversive role in the social media environment. It empowers you to get compensated for all the toil you do not get compensated for. Of course some social media users turn slave drivers and they will offend you for doing that as they want to “protect” the sanctity of the service which is based on exploitation.

Be subversive, work for yourself not for corporations who do not pay you, practice SEO 2.0. Use Web 2.0 inasmuch as it uses you. Strike back. SEO 2.0 is the abolitionism of the 21st century. We even go a step further freeing you of the chains of wage slavery.

Success has one disadvantage: Once it’s there, you take it for granted and get bored! With social media and blogging

• once you get stumbled daily even if you do not write something you deem worthy being stumbled
• once you get over 1000 visitors daily for a couple of days
• once you end up on the front page of your favorite niche social news community with every post that is submitted
• once women start to love you because of your blog
• and people start to beg you to work for you for free

you start to look for a new frontier. Especially if you do not want to go pro as in problogging or not yet. If you want to retain this warm feeling inside your guts while blogging.

If you want to keep the fun of blogging without making it your work, what can you do?

1. Address the people who are most thankful: Normally your subscribers, but also watch external audiences from various media. For instance people from Poland or Germany hate me. I was born in Poland and live in Germany where I also contributed very much to the social media there but I get no love in return. In contrast, the SEO bloggers, the Sphinn audience and most stumblers as well as many bloggers have proved to be a great audience. Guess whom I will tout more in future?
2. Share your success not only by bragging but by truly sharing the fruits of it: Stumble bloggers who haven’t been discovered yet. This month for instance I got almost 400 visitors from this blog post here, if you wonder why it was so popular just click this link here. I didn’t do it out of selfish motives. I just felt like doing it, but the success returns to you once you send it away
3. Do more of the posts that performed best while giving you the best possible time: I noticed that people love my humor, my provocative and informal writing style as well as the more webmaster + blogger related content you can not onlyapply as a SEO while many have criticized that I do not prove my theories and do not offer data objectively enough. In fact I’m not a man of numbers, I a man of hearts. I love statistics but I still see the people behind them and I do not drill down or over-interpret numbers. If I feel that something works I do not need proof of that to believe it in an instant. Thta’s why I’m much quicker to react to current trends. More conservative people will wait until they got proof and then they’ll be late. Besides it’s the heart that makes anything in life worth living, not the head.
4. Thus do write with the heart not with the head: Express a feeling in every post. Otherwise it’s just work. Show compassion. People read your blog not because of your information solely, after all they can get it in other places as well probably. They read because you are the one that connects the data with their emotions. be the most passionate blogger around in your niche. Then people will remember you: This is the gal or guy that really cares!
5. Do not limit yourself: Like in life if you stick to the same niche like a robot you become like a robot. Blog off topic from time to time even if you loose some subscribers. Readers are not your clients. They have to accept you as a human being not a business partner. You do not sell anything on your blog, you give your knowledge for free. You share, you give away, you’re the Santa Claus of the information sphere. So you deserve to be treated and respected like a human being who not only cares for hers/his job or hobby but also has manifold other interests.

Of course you can set new goals in numbers too, get more than 1000 subscribers or such. Like my goal is still to be #1 in Google.com for SEO I was in the top 100, at least in Europe, after 2 months. So imagine what can happen after 2 years…

I digress. The 5 goals above are the more practical for anybody who is blogging succesfully…

Hello world!

My name is Tad Chef of the world famous SEO 2.0 blog.

Now I present to you my first audio post*.

I call it an „interview with myself“.

Interviews are a vital way to make people disclose information they normally would not write down.

In the recent weeks I was interviewed twice via email.
Once by a blogger and once by an internet magazine.

An email interview has two disadvantages or drawbacks.

1. You can not hear the voices
2. The questions either have to be formulated before the interview and put into the email, or you have to email back and forth.

With chat like the one Skype offers you still won’t hear the voices but the action reaction time span is much shorter.

On the other hand: The replies are also shorter. It makes them sometimes too short. Thus a chat interview can be compared to an SMS interview.

Moreover beside the technical difficulties most interviewers do not use the medium interview right.

They waste most of it’s potential by just asking what they already think to know.

So they do not want to know what they don’t know before. They simply want to confirm their own ideas instead of asking for new ones.

So instead of asking me what SEO currently is about they will ask me about cloaking, keyword stuffing or paid links.

It’s boring. It’s boring for me and boring for the audience.

Therefore I will show you now how an interview should be done.

To make it easier for me to exemplify it, I will interview myself.

Yes, you got it right: I will interview myself now. The famous Tad Chef interviewed by the fabulous Tad Chef.

So let’s start our little Q and A session Tad!

OK Tad, I’m ready! How about you?

Perfect! Let’s go.

Q: What does SEO 2.0 really mean? What is it about?

A: SEO 2.0 or second SEO to make it easier to pronouce it is about the rebirth of search engine optimization.
The first SEO is dead, but the second SEO is alive and kicking. While the old SEO was about robots, the new SEO is about people.

Q: Wait a minute? Wasn’t white hat SEO always about writing fur humans not spiders?

A: Yes, but you still targeted mainly visitors form search engines like Google. So for instance you would use boring repetetive titles to rank high in Google and depend on the searchers to find you and then click your results for being the one on top.

Q: So does the new SEO not optimize for Google anymore?

A: Good question Tad! Indeed it does. Therefore it’s still called SEO, but it does the other way around. You optimize for the people and because the people love it Google will probably love it too. Somehow as a side effect.

Q: Tad, that does not sound very revolutionary to me. So what’s really the 2.0 about it?

A: Great question Tad. The new thing about it is that as soon as it works, and people swarm to your site via StumbleUpon for instance, which btw. is the best traffic source for bloggers right now, you quickly realize that you do not depend on Google for traffic. At least as a blogger StumbleUpon is the traffic source of choice for you. Even small niche social news sites like Sphinn bring more traffic to my blog than Google search does.

Q: So do you say that you don’t care for Google anymore?

A: In a way, yes Tad. On the other hand I was an SEO for too long not to care, but indeed it’s a waste of time, looking up the 30 Google referers a day. While you get 300 or 3000 visitors from StumbleUpon.

* Sadly the quality of the audio file was not good enough to post it.

Steampunk is a popular trend among what we call retro future, or future of the past. Steampunk makes modern appliances look like they have been built in the 19. century or the Victorian age. It looks great and thus people really love it. In SEO nowadays we have a large trend to ignore current developments in the social sphere and attempt to apply antique methods to a modern media environment. I call it steampunk SEO. This steampunk sucks unlike the original the metaphor is derived from.

Times have changed but people are slow to follow. Especially many people are selfish and can’t cope with social media being

• not about egoism but altruism,
• not about competition but cooperation,
• not about stopping PageRank bleed but about linking out generously to like minded people

You either adapt or you get left behind. I often restate that in a different form because it’s the truth many hesitate to accept. Face it: SEO 2.0 has arrived.

• This blog has more visitors from a small community called Sphinn, than Google!
• I do no link building whatsoever, but the SEO 2.0 blog has an authority of 200 after 4 months
• I do not even have to submit my posts to social media, as my peers, fellow bloggers, SEOs and social media power users do it for me without even being asked to do so

This culminated in social media Merlin Brian Wallace of Nowsourcing asking me to join his team, or rather collective as there is no boss, at Collective Thoughts, a brand new group blog of some famous online publishing giants.

This is the proof that a SEO 2.0 strategy like the one I have introduced can make you an Internet celebrity in just 4 months if you are not a newbie to the Net.

You just have to adapt to the current way it works. As I want to convince you to take part in this epochal paradigm shift I wrote my first article on Collective Thoughts illustrating the difference between SEO and SEO 2.0 with the aforementioned steampunk metaphor.

One love to all the DIY steampunk artists!

In the context of SEO steampunk is about being anachronistic and unable and unwilling to adapt though. I think this metaphor fits.

Who else contributes to the blog? Some of the most renown and successful bloggers right now:

• Niche marketer “100 pingbacks per post” Andy Beard
• Glen the chilling viper “I get 100.000 visitors in one day if I want to”
• SEO Mark Laymon “I will get on the Digg front page with an empty PowerPoint presentation”
• Marty Weintraub “anything i do will sell” of Aim Clear
• PPC Think “You think you’re Net savvy? I’ll teach you kid” Rose Silvia
• Shana Albert, the “I’ll be twice as successful as you but still make you feel I look up to you”
• SEO Consultant Tim Nash “Give up, I have surrouded you with my blogs and social media profiles, there is no escape”

Stay tuned. Next time I will introduce my CLIQ. They are at least as interesting or even more. I’ll explain why.

After more than 3 years as a full time SEO consultant and 10 years in online publishing and 10 years writing for the web I realized that I can really write about just anything to make it popular. It’s the fervor or carazon as we Mexicans say

Even such a dull topic like SEO 70% of the population hates turns into gold if I touch it.

So basically I want to blog even more, until now I did it for fun, almost never more than 2 hours per day. To do that, I want to sell ads or offer advertising directly to companies: Web design, SEO, web hosting and Web 2.0 companies and services will fit best for my highly educated and most probably affluent audience.

My readers are often SEOs who seldom master web design themselves so they need web designers and sometimes also coders to assist them. On the other hand not only SEOs read SEO 2.0, also people interested in SEO looking for services that simplify DIY SEO or allow to outsource it.
Many of my readers already use web hosting providers but many need more than one, some probably would try a new one if they get the right offers while others do blog on Wordpress.com or Blogger and will need hosting sooner or later. As my readers are eager to try new Web 2.0 services of all types any Web 2.0 company will find here a very targeted audience.

Of course there are many reasons why you should advertise at SEO 2.0 so I collected 30 of them in a short brains storming today:

1. I rank in the top 10 for best seo company
2. My blog is black and white so an ad would be clearly visible
3. I won’t stuff 4, 6 or 10 ads in the sidebar like all the famous bloggers do where everybody will overlook them
4. I do not compete with you, or do you offer SEO in German ?
5. I am a renown social media power user and people trust me in Germany and globally
6. Leading SEO experts, famous bloggers and SEO publications trust me and link to me too: Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch, Google Blogoscoped , Dosh Dosh, Bill Slawski, Andy Beard, WebMetricsGuru, Cornwall SEO, SmallBusinnesHub
7. My blog posts have been translated into numerous languages
8. My blogs get more and more popular, by now even on bad days I have over 500 visitors
9. You pay me fixed prices
10. You will be introduced as a Sponsor, Partner or whatever in a blog post, this blog post will appear high up in Google and be good for your reputation
11. I do not advertise for crappy or controversial services, so your ad will appear in a good context
12. Advertising with SEO 2.0 means you match my high ethical standards of white hat SEO so people will trust your brand
13. Some people all me the Rand Fishkin of Germany
14. If you want I will write a highly optimized article about your area of expertise, I am SEO 1.0 expert btw., say “SEO services” and your ad will be displayed above it (I am not talking about a paid review here, I just explain SEO services in the post)
15. You can even display an all page ad for Google visitors for 10 seconds on posts like the above or others you choose to
16. My traffic is 55% from the US, 10% UK, 6% Canada, 3% Germany, 2% Australia…
17. My bounce rate is below 50%
18. I am a regular front page appearance on Sphinn
19. Advertising on SEO 2.0 is still very cheap
20. I love what I do and people know it
21. I can write about SEO like nobody else can
22. My readers are well known bloggers, Internet professionals, active social media users, early adopters, movers and shakers, industry leading specialists
23. I can take any market by storm, even exotic ones like China or Iran!
24. People love my Sombrero, basically they’ll love anything I do
25. I have a Technorati authority of 200 after 4 months of part time blogging in my free time, imagine how I could increase that with the help of your ad money!
26. I have more approx. 150 subscribers
27. My wife says I should stop wasting time blogging and make money!
28. I rank at #11 for seo company china and other similar country combinations
29. You probably know me and trust me too already
30. I already rank in the top 100 for seo, in 8 months I will be in the top 20
31. You just can’t withstand, I’m the cool SEO guy you always wanted to be but didn’t manage
32. Limited number of advertisers, one company can purchase 2 or more “spots” out of the total number
33. You get a discount if you’re quick:

So contact me now to advertise here (click here to write an email), the prices will probably go up as the supply and demand will be taken into account. The first advertiser gets 20% discount for the first 3 months, the second advertiser gets 10%, the third 5%, the fourth 2.5%, the fifth 1.25%, the last one will get no discount. I won’t accept more than 6 as I do not want to clutter my blog too much.

So if you offer web design, SEO, web hosting, Web 2.0 services or work for a company that does be quick. Advertise here.

I was asked to disclose the prices so that advertisers do not have the impression that I make them up depending on who they are. The more innovative ad formats and types have no prices yet, I have to think about their worth first but the traditional banner ad formats already have:

Long banner ads 468*60 above the title of the posts: 100$ per month

Special banner ads 200*150 above “Recent Posts”: 80$ per month

Standard square banner ads 125*125

- above the scroll, inbetween “Menu” and “Categories”: 50$ per month

- below the scroll, inbetween “Archives” and “Meta”: 30$ per month.

Yes, your blog! I am talking to you. At least if you found me via Technorati or other vanity search methods. This blog post here explains one way how you can find out whether your blog has been compromised and advertises Viagra, Phentermine and online casinos. I checked mine and then I checked others.

I found out that for instance these blogs have been hacked by spammers:

• Hey, Hot Shot!
• scale nine : skins and themes for flex and adobe air
• Elatable | Bradley Horowitz
• The Macalope
• conduit labs blog
• Crazy Apple Rumors Site
• AvantLink’s Affiliate Marketing Blog

Are you one of them? Check your source code. Some blogs aren’t hacked on the front page but certain posts are.

When I tried to contact one of those bloggers, I noticed that he makes it very difficult to contact him. No email address to be found neither on LinkedIn nor on his site. I surely will not pay to upgrade my LinkedIn account just to tell you that you’re hacked.

Do you know other methods to test whether your blog has been hacked by spammers? Add them in the comments.

Btw.: If you are one of those Internet newbies who mistake SEOs for spammers: I did not hack you, so before you sue me:

I am the guy who told you that you’re blog has been hacked!