It’s not really a common occurance that a blog or news article about Search Engine Optimisation will get me excited. Interested yes, because it my job afterall to know what’s happening and why. But rarely do i find myself thinking screw lunch, i’m going to read this article on how to list top for ‘light fittings’ instead, whoo!.

However (no, this isn’t just a completely pointless whinge about how boring SEO articles are, it actually has a counterpoint!), there is one blog series that really got my attention in the past, and the author is at it again.

A while back, Jennifer Laycock, editor of Search Engine Guide, wrote a series called Zero Dollars, a Little Talent and 30 Days. She blogged every day about starting up a business that had to turn a profit in 30 days. Following the process from scratch was fantastically addictive, and it soon became the case that the first thing me and my SEO colleague would mention (that’s me quoted in her blog) when we came into work was Jennifer’s next post in the series.

I was pretty disappointed when the series ended, and i haven’t checked Search Engine Guide’s pages for quite a while. I popped in today however and was ecstatic to see that Jennifer has started another series! The Hide & Speak project has another interesting challenge - to make money on an online business website without any of the major search engines. The major search engines have been blocked in the website’s robots text file, and Jennifer and her business partner are working on getting sales from the site mainly through social networking and link building methods.

What with SEO careering towards social-networking anyway, it’s going to be really interesting to see how a pro does it, and how successful they are without Google. There is certainly room for the concept that Google is not the be-all and end-all of SEO online, and that nowadays Search Engine Optimisation shouldn’t necessarily be focused on ’search engines’ anymore. I would suggest changing the name to just Optimisation, but i have difficulty enough already introducing myself as an SEO - if i have to go around saying i’m an O i’ll feel like something off Sesame Street.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 6th, 2007 at 7:44 pm and is filed under code monkey, search engine optimisation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.