SEM Scholarship entry “So You Wanna Be A Search Marketer”

Andy Beal’s SEM Scholarship contest is well underway and there are some great articles out there. I wanted to give a shout out to my friend and fellow China traveler Nicole St. Martin aka SEMgirl. Nicole has written an article for the contest entitled “So You Wanna Be A Search Marketer” where she talks about the qualities you need to make it in this wacky seo world. Her first and my personal favorite quality for a search marketer is “passion”. Now one thing that many of the people I know in this field have and that is passion. Just take a look at responses to guys like Jason Calacanis and Dave Pasternack when they bash seo. This industry if full of passionate people. Please take a look at Nicole’s entry and read some of the others ones while you’re there and feel the “passion”.

SEM Scholarship – take two from Marketing Pilgrim

If you didn’t get a chance to follow last year’s SEM Scholarship contest, then you don’t want to miss this. Andy Beal’s pulling out all the stops and offering a scholarship worth more than $10,000.  That includes a full conference pass to Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, and the winner will have their article published in Search Marketing Standard, an sem industry magazine.

Last year’s winner Ben Wills wrote a great piece on social media and has been a busy guy since he won. The new  Marketing Pilgrim SEM Scholarship Contest is on again and “this time it’s bigger, better and badder than before!”

I entered this contest last year and really enjoyed the challenge of driving as much traffic in a week as I could. I finished 12th out of 48 entries and had a great time doing it. My entry was in the last week when other procrastinators like myself waited until the last minute. So we were competing against more weekly entries than the others.

This year all entries will be printed at the same time and there will be 5 finalists instead of the 4 last year. Contestants will also have 4 weeks to promote their story. The finalists are chosen based on the number of unique page views they have and then the excellent panel of judges picks the final winner.

The deadline for all entries is April 6, 2007.

1. There will be ONLY ONE ROUND OF ENTRIES. Unlike last year – with four weekly deadlines – there will be just one chance to submit your article.
2. The biggest suggestion from last year was that one week to build traffic to an article, really didn’t demonstrate the true abilities of a search marketer. This time around, you’ll have a full 4 weeks to spread the word, drive traffic, build links, etc.
3. We’ll have five finalists this year, instead of four.

Once again the panel of judges is a who’s who list of the search marketing world.

Kim Krause Berg – UsabilityEffect.com
Jim Boykin – WebBuildPages.com
Rand Fishkin – SEOMoz.org
Andrew Goodman – Page-Zero.com
Michael Jensen – SoloSEO.com
Kalena Jordan – SearchEngineCollege.com
Jennifer Laycock – SearchEngineGuide.com
Todd Malicoat – Stuntdubl.com
Boris Mordkovich – SearchMarketingStandard.com
Lee Odden – TopRankBlog.com
Elisabeth Osmeloski – SearchEngineWatch.com
Neil Patel – PronetAdvertising.com
Barry Schwartz – RustyBrick.com
Brett Tabke – WebmasterWorld.com
Laura Thieme – BizResearch.com
Aaron Wall – SEOBook.com

This is one contest you don’t want to miss either as a participant or a reader. There were some great articles last year and I imagine this year there will be even more. 

If you don’t want to miss the contest updates and deadlines, subscribe to the RSS feed. Best wishes to all the contestants!

Cre8asiteforums creates training and certification sponsorhip opportunities

Kim Krause Berg of Cre8pc recently announced that the very popular Cr8asiteforums is offering sponsorships for students of search engine marketing, user centered design and web design industries. The sponsorship funds ($1,600) will be offered to four training programs who will then apply the funds to a “student in need or financial aid or create a scholarship with funds”. My personal choice would be for each of those training programs to create a scholarship with the funds and run their own “contest” to determine who gets the scholarship.

 Forum members will choose the four training programs from a list of six including; SEMPO Institute, Search Engine College Certifications, Bruce Clay’s SEO ToolSet, Fresh Egg Internship, Web Design Training Program, Human Factors International and SEO Pros.  The poll includes an “other” choice to be considered in future sponsorships. Polling will end on January 15, 2007 and the winners will be announced.

Hats off to Kim and those at Cre8asiteforums for promoting education and training.  I encourage all of these training programs and others to follow her lead and offer “scholarships” or other ways to encourage training and certification.

Marketing Pilgrim’s SEM Scholarship contest revisited

At dinner in Chicago I was fortunate to be able to visit with Andy Beal and Ben Wills, winner of Andy’s SEM Scholarship contest. I commented that I had learned a lot and shared some of my views about the contest. I also talked about how all that great content was now buried in the mounds of blog posts that Andy’s so fond of creating. 

Andy said to send him over my thoughts and that it would be a good idea to revisit the contest now that the dust had settled. This is a great way to repurpose content (that may not be the correct description but fits in this case). I think other bloggers should take note and dig up some of their great posts and comment on what has changed. There is so much content out there and to write about it once and then never visit it again, is a waste.

Danny Sullivan recognizes growth of seo sem training and certification

In Danny’s recent blog post SEM Certification & Training Courses at the Search Engine Watch Blog he states “The move toward offering certification and training in search marketing is accelerating”.  Now I doubt Danny’s been reading my blog but even if he has, he certainly realized the importance of training long ago.

In fact he is the original sem seo certification and training evangelist, wouldn’t you agree? Yes, others have offered free advice on forums but Danny started Search Engine Strategies back in 1999. Here’s from their description “At this unique one-day event, you’ll learn the ins-and-outs of search engine marketing from top experts in the field”.  In addition to that Danny has been writing about search engines for more than 10 years and will add to that at Search Engine Land. 

So what’s the big deal you ask? Well in my article, Shhhh!….the dirty little secret about sem seo certification, for Marketing Pilgrim’s SEM Scholarship contest I gave 4 practical tips and my first one was “Practical tip #1 – Whenever Danny Sullivan speaks, listen, whatever he writes, read”. If Danny’s writing that sem seo certification and training is accelerating then we should definitely pay attention. One way to do that is to subscribe to this blog’s feed. 😉

Danny talks about the “Certification Pathways” from Search Engine College, SEMPO’s webinar for those thinking about getting into search marketing, Starting a Career in Search Marketing and their new online training at SEMPO University. He also discusses the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) SEM Certification, the Incisive Media training after SES Chicago and of course Bruce Clay’s SEO Toolset, which I also mentioned in my article.

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SEOmoz’s Rebecca performs analytics on custom built Fresh Egg desk

Despite the title Rebecca didn’t determine what type of wood the desk was made of or if it was ergonomically correct. What she was doing in her Fresh Egg SEO Intern Training was working with Lee Colbran to measure any changes to conversion rates from a new development they put into an existing website weeks earlier, at her new desk.  Here’s how Ammon Johns described it on the Fresh Egg blog;

Meanwhile, the Interns’ desk was finally delivered and assembled. It is a huge thing, custom built, that places the Interns right in the heart of the SEO team area, pretty much equidistant to both myself and to Lee. It is the Lincoln Continental of desks. Only fair, since Rand had equipped Rebecca with a laptop the size of a buick for her time in England.

Rebecca’s off to London with Ammon to consult with a client. Good luck Recbecca, let us know how it goes.

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Andy Beal breaks down Marketing Pilgrim’s SEM Scholarship contest

Andy Beal refers to his SEM Scholarship contest as “SEM Idol” and I think that’s a good way to look at it. He does a great job breaking down the contest and reports visitors (unique views), page views and the top 3 referrers for each article.

Another overview of this scholarship contest is covered in my week by week blow but Andy’s “anatomy” is certainly all encompassing.  The  four weekly finalists will get a closer look by not only the distinguished panel of judges but also the sem seo community as a whole. Even those that didn’t make the finals “won” in a sense because they no doubt learned a lot and had the ability to express their views.

One clear lesson is the power of social media and in fact the last week’s winning article was “The Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing“.  Another lesson was that a link from Stuntdubl,  SEOmoz and TopRankBlog  turned out to be a great way to get page views since these blogs are all about seo sem, the target audience. This blog also provided a few referrers to other people’s articles. Not a smart move in a contest. I just thought that all the articles  should be read.

My article came in 12th place out of 48 entries with 273 visitors and 375 page views.  Many of those page views came from the same IP address at work so next time I’ll make sure my colleagues check it out on their home computers.  I’ll also start preaching the power of social media. 

All in all this was an excellent experience and I look forward to the next time around. Again, congratulations to the finalists and best wishes!

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