(not provided) not for much longer?

Like most search marketers, I've been pretty frustrated by the loss of keyword data. I hear the reasons, but don't really get the distinction between (not provided) for organic clicks, provided for paid clicks. Smells a little hypocritical to me.

But with recent reports out of SXSW that big G is giving us our keywords back, one must wonder what that might look like.

I was one who speculated that we would be paying for our keywords. Fortunately, that's looking less likely (fingers-crossed).

Will they be back in GA or will we see more data in GWT?

I actually like GWT. It's just hard to swallow the vast discrepancies between GA and GWT.

I know, I know.

Two completely different tools generating data in very different ways.

I'd take GWT keyword data, but for our business, we really need better filtering (i.e. regions, local, personalized, etc).

I'd also like some more info about how GWT data is generated. Anyone have a reliable resource?

IT is not equal to SEO

Computers and information technology came before modern search engines. Likewise, people with educations and careers in IT preceded SEOs.

Somewhere along the way, IT folks started clumping SEO under the IT label.

More than once, I've been on calls with IT professionals (webmasters, admins, etc) that purport to know SEO.

Then we crawl their site...

URLs that differ by a character. Duplicate/missing page titles, meta descriptions, 404 errors, 302 redirects, etc.

Often, when confronted with these issues, the IT professional will largely dismiss them as trivial.

If forced to choose between an IT professional and a marketer to lead the SEO team, I take the marketer every single time.

The IT professional has enough information and ego to crush a site's visibility in search.

Does that mean you can ignore technical SEO? Absolutely not. In fact, in most of the sites that I review, most of the SEO issues are technical in nature.

The point here is that IT professionals need to stop masquerading as SEOs.

Awkward Service Experience at Dillman's in Chicago

Went to Dillman's last night. They've been receiving very high marks from people within my earshot. Located across from East Bank (where Steve's Deli used to be).

Really cool atmosphere. Tufted seats. Exposed brick. My kind of decor.

Reservation for 730p, we were a bit late (10 mins) weren't seated until 8p, no worries.

Took our seats, were served water.

No greeting from server.

Sat for 20 minutes, no greeting, no drink order taken.

Made eye contact with a server, got impression that we weren't his table.

He visited adjacent table. Eye contact again, no acknowledgement.

Served adjacent table again, still nothing.

I stood up and met him over by computer.

"Are we your table?" I asked.

"Oh sorry about that." As if we had bumped into one another on the train or something. Very casual.

Took our drink and food order. Was apologetic. However, there was an awkwardness with him the rest of the evening. No big deal, but just felt weird.

Felt like I had something hanging from my nose or something and he was focused on it but wouldn't mention it.

Food was great by the way. Reuben, thick-cut bacon, matzah soup.

$10 for Jameson's a little ridiculous, but hey, someone has to pay for the decor.

Best Search-Performing Social Profiles

One easy way to take control of your what searchers see on searches for your name is to claim and optimize authoritative social media profiles. But of course, there are a lot of profiles from which to choose and some perform better than others in search. Here are a couple that I have noticed do especially well in search results:

LinkedIn - My LinkedIn profile has pretty steadily stayed near the top of results for searches for my name.

Twitter - Twitter is probably #2 on my list (although this wasn't really intended to be in order).

Google + - Shouldn't be much of a surprise that my Google Plus profile is near the top. It is, after all, owned by Google.

SlideShare - This one might come as a surprise to some folks. I've found both slideshare profiles, as well as, presentations do very well in search results.

JD Supra - Unique really to legal professionals, JD Supra profiles are fairly well optimized and show up.

Facebook - Yep, when optimized, facebook profiles and pages do pretty well. So be careful if you don't want people to find your facebook pages in search.

Blogger - Another Google-owned property, Blogger blogs (like this one) on the blogspot.com domain are pretty strong.

Scribd - Another social sharing and publishing site where profiles perform very well.

Tumblr - The micro blogging and sharing site called Tumblr does well.

About.me - Finally, about.me profiles round out my top choices.

What site profiles perform the best for searches for your name?

All SEO Isn't Created Equally

While some of the 30,000 ft. concepts of SEO have broad application for a variety of businesses, you don't have to read much about SEO online to learn that not all SEO is created equally. For example, Godaddy sells SEO for $2.99/month. On the other hand, some SEO consultants have sold their services for as much as $1,000 per hour. How can they possibly be selling the same thing? The answer is that they're not. But even if we assume that we're talking about similar SEO services, there's still a big difference between many SEO programs that are being sold at comparable prices. And then, there are also differences from vertical to vertical. Again, while there is overlap in some basic marketing principles, selling legal services is quite different from selling ice cream. Likewise, SEO for lawyers is quite different from SEO for ice cream. One of the best things you can do for your business online is to get out of the SEO is SEO mindset. Start thinking about how people find you, why they might choose to interact with your business or your website, and then communicate to them the reasons for which they should choose you.

Renting Links

One of the most popular strategies in the law firm web marketing vertical (aside perhaps for reciprocal linking) is renting links.

The scheme goes something like this. Law firms pay "SEO" companies to add links from other sites "in their network."

There are a variety of ways in which this is done. One of the most common is by creating several "resources" pages.

This tactic is by no means new, nor limited to the legal vertical. And unfortunately, it appears to work in some limited cases for a limited period of time.

To me, this type of link scheme is a clear violation of Google's Quality Guidelines.

Nonetheless, it's very common.

Assuming you're willing to take the risk of being penalized by search engines, you should also weigh the cost benefits of engaging in this sort of scheme.

You'll likely end up shelling out thousands per month. And if you stop paying, your links are removed.

This is why I call it renting links. You get links so long as you keep laying the rent.

Social Profiles & Blogging

When I find something I like online, I want to share it and give credit to the author. And sure, sharing a link alone does give "some" credit.

However, I much prefer to append a twitter and/or google plus profile to my share.

This way, the author gets notification of my nod.

Unfortunately, many authors still make finding their social profiles quite difficult.

This is partly due to lack of social understanding, and partly due to lack of native sharing functionality with mainstream web publishing platforms.

So, publishers, make it easy for your readers to find your profiles, sharers, spend a little more time giving social credit to authors, and developers, let's make social sharing integration a priority.