As most know, SEO traffic is something that gets built up over time. You spend upfront time doing research, picking your targets, then getting your hands dirty with the details. It is very rewarding to be able to take a site and start making improvements to see the traffic increase from the search engines. The #1 most annoying thing that can happen is a robots.txt gets uploaded that starts to tank your search traffic. To give some background, a robots.txt file is a simple text file that gives the search engines instructions like where to find your sitemap and what not to crawl. You might use a robots.txt file to disallow a search engine from crawling your content management system’s (CMS) admin or another password protected part of your site.

An example of a robots.txt file that would disallow a WordPress CMS admin would look like this:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /wp-admin

Sitemap: http://www.domain.com/sitemap.xml

If I didn’t want any search engines crawling my site, I would do this:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /

That simple little / can get a whole entire site removed from the search engine results pages (serps). Time and time again I’ve seen sites fall to this terrible problem. One of the ways I’ve seen it happen is the development company uses a server where they test new features, code, etc. They use a robots.txt to tell the search engines to not index the development site since it would be a duplicate of the live site. When they finish their programming, they copy files from the development site to the live site, forgetting about the robots.txt and taking it live. Weeks or even months later, someone is putting something together and finds the site not ranking for even their brand name.

I’m super excited! I’ve wanted to go to Pubcon for a few years now, almost went last year but was super slammed and couldn’t escape to Vegas for it. We’re leaving today, flying out of Cleveland around lunch time and will be in Vegas early this afternoon.

There are a ton of awesome events at Pubcon. My good friend DK really goes all out I hear with the poker tournament, burgers, fight clubs and more! Check out his overview here. He has 2 Fight Clubs this year: Fight Club at Randy Coutures’ gym and Fight Club with Robert Drysdale. Drysdale is a really awesome dude, super laid back. I got to meet him at ThinKTank this summer. Check out his site for more on Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in Las Vegas. He is also in the video below which is pretty slick.

Can’t wait to connect with friends at Pubcon! Brian has a bet going that he can out drink both the Madhat and Streko. He better not back out, its going to be absolutely hysterical to see!

I’m pleased to announce that I will be speaking at the Karcher Group’s Akron SEO Seminar in September! I will be talking about social media and all the fun stuff involved. The conference is the 18th and 19th of September and there are still spots available to register! We will also be having Anita Campbell from Small Business Trends and Jake Baillie from STN Labs speaking at this seminar.

Some of the topics that will be covered besides social media are blogging, copy writing, PPC, and link building. I have heard Jake speak before and he is a really good speaker so I’m excited to be speaking along with him and all the others. If you are interesting in attending, you can click on the link below. My discount code is COREY and it will save you $100 which is an awesome discount!

Akron SEO Seminar

I read Shoemoney’s post within this last week and I honesty didn’t get into the debate about 95% of SEO’s being “the used car salesmen” of search engine marketing (SEM). But then yesterday his podcast with Danny Sullivan about 95% of SEO’s being “shady” and it really got me thinking about the real definition of an SEO and what their value should be. Ultimately Danny and Shoe made really good point, and I understand Shoe position.

What value do we truly offer as SEO’s or SEM’s? Danny talked a lot about new things coming in and kind of branching off SEO like reputation management, social media, etc. and I think they are viable SEO activities but at the same time, I feel they shouldn’t be used to “razzle and dazzle” but rather compliment the basics such as the title tags, building out content, and link building. The more and more I learn about SEO, true link building is an art and not such an easy one. I mean, people are building out great content and getting links back, but I think there are some elements to link building that can be tougher than just content creation.

I think this podcast was awesome and more real discussions like this should take place between people in the industry! Thanks Shoe and Danny!