Peter Vatistas

Interested to know what your online competition is spending their money on and how they rank in the SERPs? Well now you can (for the most part) with a great tool that I use religiously called SpyFu. SpyFu is a free online tool to track and manage what your competitors are doing and what they average on a daily basis for keywords and what-not.

SpyFu also offers a paid version which allows you to see and track more stats on the fly. I know this is a great tool and it is worth your time to check it out - I wonder how many of your competitors are tracking your moves online right now?

I just registered for the Blog World Expo which is on November 7th - 9th and I am extremely excited for this conference!  I am especially excited for the SEO Best Practices session on the 7th with Aaron Wall, the author of SEO Book. Blog World is in Las Vegas this year so I will be making the most of my trip by staying an extra 3 or 4 days to reflect of what I learned and the new contacts thousands of dollars I have made.  ;)

If your attending be sure to leave a comment, email, or IM me and let me know; maybe we can grab drinks and shoot the shit. Although I have been heavily involved with SEO, SEM, and Online Marketing for a couple years, I am new to blogs and blogging; I think Blog World is perfect for me and I know I will make the most of it. Make sure to click the links below and check out Blog World’s schedule, speakers, and what they have to offer!

Blog World

Blog World Schedule

Blog World Speakers

Blog World Pricing

There were a couple good posts written a while ago about URL canonicalization and it’s importance for SEO. If someone wants to link to my blog for example, there are several ways they could do so:

http://peter-v.com

http://www.peter-v.com

http://peter-v.com/index.php

http://www.peter-v.com/index.php

https://peter-v.com/index.php

https://www.peter-v.com/index.php

The problem here is Google sees different links and weighs page rank on individual links, not on the domain (Google ranks pages, not sites). The solution to this issue is canonicalization using Mod-rewrite expressions in Apache or using a tool like ISAPI_Rewrite for IIS ($99).

Web servers running Apache, just open your .htaccess (I recommend just contacting your host) and add the following expression (remember to replace peter-v with your domain):

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond % ^peter-v\.com

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.peter-v.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

The Rewrite expressions above state that the URL http://peter-v.com permantly changes to http://www.peter-v.com.

Web servers running Windows IIS with ISAPI_Rewrite, edit the .ini file and follow the same expressions:

# IIS Mod-Rewrite configuration file

#Turn IIS Mod-Rewrite engine on

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond Host: ^peter-v\.com

RewriteRule (.*) http\://www.peter-v.com$1 [I,RP]

There you have it, now you can stop worrying about how people link to you and worry more about the anchor text they are linking to you with!! Here are a few real good posts and articles about canonicalization:

Matt Cutts

Chris Hooley

Also a good link that explains more about ISAPI_Rewrite expressions:

Scott Hanselman

So how much does and in-house search marketer really make? Currently there isn’t much market data out there for SEM and SEO salary ranges. As you know anyone can view salary ranges for almost any job out there using tools provided by career sites like Career Builder and Monster but what if your an SEM and your want to know what your really worth? Good luck.

When I was hired on by my current employer they wanted me to provide them with a price tag for my services. For me that was very hard because I couldn’t compare my skill set and experience to a salary. The way I came up with a figure was based on how important my role would be within the company and how much revenue I could potentially bring in for them. In addition I contacted quite a few people in the industry working as in-house SEO’s or SEM’s and asked them what they get paid and their primary job role.

Well this is soon to change thanks to SEMPO’s in-house salary survey they are currently conducting. I am sure there are many SEM’s out there that feel they are worth much more than they currently take in and like any industry there are many SEM’s that are probably overpaid. At the same time this survey is only as good as the person submitting the information and I am sure there will be a lot of submissions claiming to make $300,000 a year as an SEO.

Do you think this will help or hurt in-house search marketers? What tools or guidelines do you use when hiring a search optimizer or search marketer?

 SEMPO’s In-House Salary Survey

Full Article

This has to be the funniest interview ever and if you haven’t heard of Chris Hooley your missing out. Chris is employed by NextStudent and has set the bar very high when it comes to SEO & SEM in the student lending industry. I find Chris both hilarious and informative with a talent worth following.

 Here are some funny parts, be sure to click the link below to see the full interview:

- “Cool. I have to admit, this interview is riveting.

   Before you ask, it’s huge. ”

- “I used to be able to dunk and freestyle rap.

    I thought you were supposed to wait for me to ask you a question.

    Oh yeah sorry I just wanted everybody to know that. “

Now, for the funniest SEO interview ever: Chris Hooley interviews Chris Hooley!