Convergence of PPC and Dark Lords of SEO
January 4th, 2008 by 
Thomas
Last week I was going over some items on my “to do” list that for some reason or another, I never got around to in 2007.
As I scanned over my chicken scratched notepad, I came across an entry that read “check SEO skills - SEO test/seomoz”. I remember reading about this test somewhere online so I jotted it down real quick and thought “I’ll have to comeback and see how bad I suck at SEO.”
As a PPC marketer, it’s easy to get wrapped up in “your baby” for the week. You tend to spend most your time analyzing a new market your excited about, you start building landing pages, structuring keywords, uploading campaigns etc. while envisioning how great you’ll look on the cover of TIME magazine as “Brilliant Marketer of the Year”. No Google fridge or 2 GB pocket drives for you buddy, this is the big time 
Unfortunately, thats not enough.
With the convergence of PPC and SEO, you have to think long term. Gone are the days of 1 cent bids and direct-to-merchant affiliate linking while you sit at home and wallpaper your living room with hundred dollar bills. Nowadays, you need your own freakin Wiki about “the past, present and future of boy bands” if you want to continue bidding on “backstreet boy fanny pack”.
Don’t think thin affiliate sites and fast offers - think big, content-rich SEO’d super sites! This should be your goal in 2008 and beyond - if it’s not already.
Case in point: Being lazy will eventually kill you in this business. Build a visitor worthy site, not crap.
Ok, back to the quiz…
So the other night, I went over to the SEOmoz and took the SEO Quiz. To my surprise, I was considered a “Dark Lord” of SEO. I don’t know exactly what that means, (you trying to tell me I’m a black hat or what?) but my score was 93%.
I was REALLY surprised. I expected my score to be lower because it’s difficult to keep up in the ever-changing worlds of PPC, SEO and Boy Band Reunion Tours for my Wiki.
No doubt the test is fun, but to be honest, there were a couple questions that I thought were debatable and there were two or so I wasn’t 100% sure about but I made a best guess stab at em.
I recommend that you take the quiz, you will learn a few NEW things about SEO while you brush up on your current skills - (it’s a mix of SEO techniques everyone should know, the SEO industry, and some PPC).
I’m interested in what you think about it so please feel free to comment with your thoughts and scores if you take it.
Amit will be returning from India and be back to his regular postings soon. I hope you all have a great and prosperous 2008 and look forward to meeting some of you at the Affiliate Summit in Vegas this year.
-Thomas
semoz seo quiz website content
Posted in PPC Marketing, SEO Tactics | 
I hereby dub thee: Darth Thomas!!
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Lord Thomas, RISE…
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Happy New Year!
i totally agree. google is forcing affiliate marketers to be seo experts now. I’m no seo expert, i’m a marketer for christ sake. so what if i just want to push a cpa offer for a few months? google needs to stick to search engine results and let us, their PAYING customers do what’s best for converting sales.
What a crock of sh..
I’m an SEO and been for a long time and got a bad score. They gave me the “right” answers afterwards which, on most, I didn’t agree.
My sites are kicking ass in the serps though, so I must have got something right over the years;)
Tom, thanks for the tip about the quiz. I’ll be sure to check it out. Very good post.
Kev, you’re right in principle. However, the message from Google is clear: if you want traffic from us, you WILL do things OUR way. I don’t see that changing until someone can unseat them.
exactly doug. they need to feel some competiton, its bad for us and the google ego. who do they think provides the $600+ stock prices? people are getting pissed.
http://www.cafepress.com/googlesucks
interesting test, I only had 68%
But as a non-english-native-speaker I must say that the questions are sometimes not that easy to understand, a few questions are really US-focussed, etc. So all excuses why I do not have 90% hahahaha
richard
p.s. take some time for the test as it consists out of 75 questions.
How much can a Landing page worth ?
I have a couple of landing pages I want to sell but no one is willing to pay , why is that ?
example of my landing pages for that I want to sell
UCLACenter.com and MyLAInk.com
Any tips
I scored a 75%, I’m happy with it
I missed the bluefind, danny sullivan type questions, but the rest are generally accepted answers.
Raz - I don’t know how you don’t agree with most of the test. Some of the questions are hard facts, even though they may be about the industry or technical questions regarding 301’s 404’s etc.
……”while envisioning how great you’ll look on the cover of TIME magazine as “Brilliant Marketer of the Year”. No Google fridge or 2 GB pocket drives for you buddy, this is the big time”…
1) Nice post. Thanks!
2) Absolutely fantastic line. I’m still laughing:)
“you need your own freakin Wiki about “the past, present and future of boy bands” if you want to continue bidding on “backstreet boy fanny pack”…”
This is funny as hell dude! LMAO
I gotta search ebay and get me one of these. Thanks for the great post and humor, made my day.
Hey Tom,
Gratz, I think you got Amit’s blog ranking for boy bands now!
Speaking of SEO here is a link to a fun story called “How to Get to Number 1 in Google”: http://www.dfinitive.com/blog/seo/how-i-got-aerobed-to-number-1-in-google/
It’s by Julian Paling, a hard working internet marketer from London who got 45% of his client Aerobed’s top twenty keywords to a number 1 position on Google.
If you do a Google search for “How to Get to Number 1 in Google” Julian’s article comes up.
(By the way, Julian is obviously a very capable SEO, but you beat him by 12 percentage points on the SEOMOZ Seo Quiz.)
Rex,
I love posts like that. Step-by-step, straight-forward techniques that anyone can follow and apply. Thanks for sharing it
Julian’s results speak louder than any test score.
Hey thanks for the info. Your posts are always very inspiring.