My apologies if you’ve just received an email with a six month old news-type response article to something daft that I’d just read. Last year, I wrote a piece about a criticism of SEO, called “SEO: Bullshit is Bullshit“. This morning, for opaque reasons, FeedBurner sent the email version of the article off to my subscriber list, again. I think I know why…
I wrote an advertorial for a local newspaper recently. I’ve backed that up with a longer version of the article, offering advice for small and new businesses, about the basic things they should be looking at, to improve business coming off their sites. Nothing that a seasoned professional wouldn’t know about, and nothing, I think, very contentious.
I published the article on Friday, to match the likely print publication date. I even had a very kind comment from AdWordsPro.Sarah, a Google employee, asking if the article could be referenced from the AdWords Help Forum – that’s the typical audience that this article was intended to help. People struggling, and often not knowing which part of their internet marketing problems to tackle… Aren’t I nice? :)
I have no idea *how*, but after publishing the post, I managed to check the WordPress editing box that marks an article as Private. I don’t think I’ve ever used that checkbox on this blog and can’t, at the moment, think of a reason to use it here. On AdWords Help Experts, where the AdWords Help Forum Top Contributors hang out, I can think of uses – we do share hints and tricks, and ideas about customer problems, and a private article or two, so, yeah, that could be handy over there…
I suspect that when an article is published, and then made private, that this trips the “must send out an email” message at FeedBurner. Failing to find the most current article, it then grasps around for something close… and I have a nasty suspicion that the flailing finds articles by date… by the first part of the date… and that brings up a one year old article.
So, my apologies, I think my mousing slipped, and I inadvertently sent you an old article.
It did make me revisit the article though, and has brought me to face a vital shift in the direction of Merjis. Something that hasn’t been well-exposed on the blog.
Our business, Merjis, has progressively switched from a “primarily SEO” in 2003/2004, to a “primarily PPC” in 2005 to 2007, and our customer base has now driven back to “primarily SEO” for 2008. The switch is dramatic. In January 2008, about 80% of our clients engaged us for primarily PPC reasons. In January 2009, about 80% engage us primarily for SEO.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot for the last month or so. I think I have some ideas about what has been happening, and why. If you’ve been following my recent postings in the AdWords Help Forum, you’ll see an faint echo of what’s going on in private communications in the “Google Clubhouse” and the Top Contributors area of the AdWords Help Forum. I’ve done nothing public about that – yet.
