Final Goodbye to Marketsmart Interactive

Wow, it's final. The very first company I ever worked for, the company that introduced me to web marketing, taught me the fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization, has officially closed down. Once one of the biggest names in SEO, is now just a memory. I went into the company when it was called Websourced, and left at Websourced's peak. Then I heard about the company crashing, rebranding into Marketsmart Interactive, Rounds of Layoffs, and now, finally, the closing of the company.

Other than the salary, I had some great times there. I felt like I was a part of a team (Team Barracudas) and I had lots of fun. I learned so much from that company, both career wise and people wise. I'm really sad to see it go away.

A lot of people I know from there are blogging about it, just as I am.

Post from my bud Evan, on the causes of the end of the company.
The Relief from the French
Brent the copywriter
JP the competitive intelligence expert
Andy Beal the Industry Expert

Please take some time and remember all the great memories everyone had there, such as basketball and $50 bonuses.

Another Round of Layoffs at Market Smart Interactive

Layoffs are tough on everyone, and I'm sad to hear through the grape vines that there was another round today at Market Smart Interactive. I remember there were around 150 employees when I left the company, and back then it was called Websourced. Now, I hear there're only about 20 employees. I feel lucky that I left the company when it was doing well, because I personally wouldn't want to be a part of the downfall of the company.

To all that are willing to relocate: I come across job openings in DC (mostly technical and copy-writing), and I'd love to help out anyone in need. ppzhao at aol.com

On the brighter side, some of us are at least seeing the lighter side of things, making limericks and short rhymes of politics at Market Smart Interactive.

Optometrists in Denver Colorado

I had a friend who was looking for an optometrist in Denver Colorado who didn’t have a phone book or Internet at the time and called for my help. He knows I’m always on the Internet and I can find him an optometrist in Denver quickly.

He actually asked me to find him an "eye doctor", and the first thing I started searching for was "Optometrist". After getting off the phone with my friend, I started being curious: Percentage wise, how many people search for Denver Optometrists and how many people search for Denver Eye Doctors? After some keyword research with the Overture tool (even though I know it only represents less than 30% of the Internet), I realized I was within the "norm" of other searchers. "Optometrists in Denver" is searched approximately three times as much as "Eye Doctors in Denver".

Just a random blurb about how my geekiness somehow accidentally flows into my social life.

Random Google Quote

Note: This is NOT an official quote from Google or any of its employees, but I read it somewhere and I just thought it was really funny.

"Speaking of Ask Jeeves, we kicked their @$$es so bad Jeeves ran away and left just Ask (currently ask.com). Now they want you to “try” their new approach to search engines? HA! We could buy the little company with my Christmas bonus."

Baidu The Chinese Search Engine

I was reading a New York Times (yes, the competition) article yesterday and it talked about the rise of Baidu, the #1 Chinese search engine. As the 4th most visited website in the world (due to the number of Chinese people in the world), its market share and revenue are both increasing, and I think that's great news.

I remember working with baidu.com almost two years ago, when I was involved in the Chinese portion of the "Motorola Project". One of my earliest successes in SEO was getting Motorola's Chinese website, http://www.motorola.com.cn/pcs/index.asp ranked #1 in Baidu for the Chinese characters "Cell Phone".

Danny Sullivan leaving SEW & SES

For those who is knows anything about search marketing, this is truly the end of an era. One of the founding fathers of search engine marketing, Danny Sullivan, is no longer going to write for Search Engine Watch or host Search Engine Strategies. Is SEW and SES going to be the "industry authority" forum and conference in the next few years without Danny? I guess we will have to wait and see.

Does anyone know what he wanted from Incisive Media that they wouldn't give him? Not to sound too much like a fanboy, but the image of having "Danny Sullivan" in the company itself is probably worth whatever he asked for.

Typo Online Marketing

Today I found a typo (highlighted) on WashingtonPost.com’s local homepage (page is served to local IP addresses), where they misspelled a word in the caption of the front image. They spelled Schools "Shools".

That got me interested; I know there’s a lot of marketing around common misspelled words, such as googel.com (redirects to google.com), but I never knew the same type of marketing was true for typo’s. There actually is a Shools.com all about online schools.

Guess I learn something new everyday.

Live from Long Island - Day 2

Today went fairly well. Got up around 9:15 to have a business meeting at 10AM. Did the whole SEO presenation thing, had some discussion about SEO best practices, went over some traffic stats/graphs, everything went well and it ended around noon. I then met up with the Google team around 1PM. Google has a great office, and they give out free food. Free lunches reminded me of my first job at WBS, except the food is better and the drinks are free as well.

After the meeting, I took a cab to Laguardia Airport where my car rental reservation is. I rented from Enterprise. I'm renting for 4 days, and got a "one free day" coupon from my buddy Eddie, and the 3 days of rent is going to cost me around $150, which isn't too bad for NYC. Since I rigged my PDA into a GPS, I took it with me so I don't get lost in NY. My GPS told me the trip from the car rental to my relative's place on Long Island would take about an hour, but it took two due to traffic. I had dinner with some relatives, and I visited one of my best friends growing up (lived on Long Island for 5 years).

Business trip is officially over, let the fun begin (other than working from home 9-5).

Live in NYC - Day 1

Some might know that I'll be in NY this week. This is my first "business trip", and it's going well so far. I reserved a cab at 7:30AM yesterday, from work to airport, so I don't have to park at the airport. Things went well, and I arrived in NYC around 10AM.

I don't ride cabs often, is it normal to have flat tires while on a cab? The cab driver acted calm and like he was used to it. He got out and changed his tire in 15 minutes and went on like nothing happened.

I had a meeting with my first stop, things went well, I shared some "SEO best practices", went over their PPC results for last month and trends over the past few months, and their traffic analysis. Yeah, some real nerdy stuff.

After checking in the hotel around 2PM, my boss and I decided to eat at restaurant at the 2nd floor of the hotel. It was a fairly fancy place, and the steak sandwich I had costed $22, which my boss will expense as a part of the "business trip cost".

We went to our next business stop for a meeting, and we were done for the day. I came back to the hotel, lay around for a bit, and waited for my friend Patrick to get off work and come by for dinner. He lives in NJ and works in NYC. So luck would have it, a mutual friend, May, was also in NY doing job interviews, and I haven't seen her for about 3 years. Patrick, May, and myself went to a Japanese place for dinner. We shared a bottle of Saki and then we went to another bar and had a few drinks to catch up on some old times.

Alcohol in NYC's expensive. A pint of Guiness costed me $8?

Company Party

Two days ago, 6/20/06 was the official birthday of the launch of washingtonpost.com. It was launched 6/20/1996. Wow, it's a big one, 10 whole years. Sometimes I wish I could've bought washingtonpost.com back in 95 or something and sold it to the Washington Post company for a gigantic amount of money. So we had a party at a place called "Clarenden Ballroom". It was casual dress, mingle event, nothing fancy. They had free food and an open bar, and all the "important people" at washingtonpost.com were there. Obviously ate all the free food there was, and I had about 5 different 8-oz mixed drinks, which equals to about 3-4 shots, over 2 hrs. So it wasn't bad at all.

While socializing, I shook hands with my boss's boos, the VP of marketing. He actually introduced me to Don Graham, the owner of Washington Post. I did the polite thing, shook his hand, did the whole "it's great to meet you thing". After the VP of marketing told Mr. Graham what I do, he also did the diplomatic thing and said something like "I'm really glad you could join us, washingtonpost.com needs as much traffic as possible, etc". But wow, I shook Don Graham's hand, I'm thinking that's the most "important" person's hand I've shaken in my whole life.

Unsuck Your Life

This is another one of my boring posts about work. In a "marketing brainstorm" to promote washingtonpost.com's City Guide section, the director of customer service jokingly suggested the slogan "unsuck your life". I personally thought it was kinda catchy, with the logic saying "your life's boring, go to this city guide, go out and do something fun, UNSUCK YOUR LIFE".

I doubt anyone will ever use that slogan, but I just wanted to have it in writing, so it's forever remembered before the joke fades away.

HTML Knowledge Level

I read an interesting blog about the evaluation of someone's HTML skills. The ranking goes from level 0, which is someone who doesn't even know what HTML is, to level 6, which is someone who's looking to develop new HTML code, set new HTML web standards.

It's somewhat interesting, and I think I'd rank myself a level 2, without the back-end programming experience. I know the simple formatting tags, and I know what's "possible" with HTML.

Isulong Seoph

So I randomly read about this SEO contest, hosted by some guy in the Philippines, located here. The keyword contested is isulong seoph in Google. Since I'm not "officially entering" the contest, I'm not going to worry about their rules or put more effort into it than this post. I just wanted to see how one post in my blog to target Isulong Seoph will result against the SEO professionals out there who're serious about this contest. I think I'd be lucky to rank within #50.

Oh yeah, does anyone know if "Isulong Seoph" means anything in Filipino (Pilipino or Tagalog)?

Search Engine Marketing Position Open

Hi, I've just been informed that a Search Engine Marketing position is open, if there're any SEM professionals that are looking for a job and is willing to relocate to NYC, please Email me at ppzhao at aol.com.

The position is for a major TV guide company, requires both SEO and PPC skills and experiences. They need a lot of help redesigning their site for SEO and starting their PPC campaigns. The pay range is about $55-$65k, depending on your negotiation skills. Personally speaking, I would prefer working in-house in a big company over working in SEM agencies, so if anyone's interested, you know what to do. The person this position will be reporting to seems like a great person. For a few weeks, I talked to her on a weekly bases and I think she would be a good boss.



Job description from the company:

We have two needs:
1. immediate consulting to make sure the redesign is done properly
2. longterm ongoing expertise and focus on SEO, paid search & generating inbound linking

Update June 13: I just got the full job description from the company in a .doc MS Word file.

Calling all SEM Professionals

Calling all SEM/SEO professionals that actually read my personal blog, that means you, Evan and Thomas! Maybe you too, Jeff and Julie, or anyone else I know or don’t know that's reading my blog but not leaving comments. I'm actually stumped on something, and I can't figure this one out. I just posted this in some forums as well, but maybe a "personal touch" on a personal blog is always nice.

So here's the problem:

About 6 months ago, Slate Magazine has moved out of slate.msn.com to slate.com, and did a 301-redirect on a page by page bases (dynamically so anything you type under slate.msn.com would go to the corresponding URL in slate.com). Example: If you type in slate.msn.com/asdf, it would 301-redirect to slate.com/asdf.

I am seeing slate.msn.com still taking priority over slate.com, even with the 301 redirect after months. Even new articles under slate.com are showing up as slate.msn.com. Example: If you Google "slate lacrosse editor" (without quotes), the article that should show up for slate's result is showing up under msn's domain.

Shouldn't 301-redirects have the effect of letting the search engines know "This page/site is no longer here, go to the new site, keep the rankings/link popularity I currently have, and DROP THE OLD URL"?

Any help on this is greatly appreciated.
Paul.

New Yahoo Front Page

Evan's Blog mentioned the new redesign of Yahoo, and I think it somewhat resembles AOL’s design. It’s got the same “Tabbed Top Stories” front center and “Personalized Services” on the right side AOL used for a long time. The main difference is Yahoo’s new page’s directories are on the left, while AOL’s is on the bottom.

Update: Yahoo just reverted to its old front page (5/21/06). I guess it was only a test for a few days, seeing if users like it.

Update: Yahoo is using the new front page (5/25). When will Yahoo make up their minds?

Search Engine Rankings for my name

Google and MSN are recognizing my new blog URL, and I finally got first position for keyword "Paul Zhao". Take THAT, scientology Paul Zhao!

My Paycheck

I just looked at my paystub today, and I'm surprised at how much VA taxes are. I picked the cheapest insurance package, and I only get to keep about 2/3 of my income? What's up with that?

New Job at Washington Post

I havn't been blogging in the past few days because I just arrived in DC over the weekend, and the corp housing has no computers. I know, whatta bummer. It's especially annoying because I'm looking for a place to stay, I've only got corp housing for 2 weeks. The apartment is beautiful, too bad I can't stay here forever.

My new job is going well, this is the 2nd day. Met some people, explored some places. So far, I'm just looking at their past data and giving suggestions on there areas that could help improve their profit. but I'm still new at this, so I'm sure I'll pick this one up pretty quickly. My office is the modern-style big office, "cubicle" type situation, but no walls to separate the people, so you get a big open office. :) I got a desk by the window. I'm on the 9th floor so I gotta great view. My postings will probably be slowing down in the next two weeks, I got lots to do no computer outside of work.

So far, so good. Visit me in DC sometime.

Last day of BEM

Tomorrow's the last day of my job, I'll miss all my coworkers. I hope everything goings well for them in their careers. This post is dedicated to all the people I enjoyed working with in BEM, and all the coworkers I've learned so much from.

PS, whoever reads this blog from my job, just tell me "I've read your blog and you're gonna buy me lunch", and I will. :) Just don't let the word out so everyone says that to me.

Oh yeah, if I wake up early enough, I think I'll buy donuts for the office as well.

Googling my own name

I'm so excited, I'm finally ranked on my own name in Google on the first page. It's no longer some random people I've never heard of. "Paul Zhao" is currently at the bottom of the first page of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). It's a post from an SEO group I participate in. I don't know how long my name will be ranked as the post gets "old", but let's just keep our fingers crossed and hope I stay in the first page. :)

Goodbye to a former coworker

Even though I'm leaving my current company, I found out sometime last week, that someone beat me to it. A sales lady, ES, decided to resign from BEM to pursue other opportunities and today was her last day. The whole company will miss her a lot, and I personally wish her the best. I hope she moves to Wilmington sometime in the next few years like she planned to. It's always great to live by the beach.

We will all miss her.

Search Engine Optimization Keyword Search

This being my first blog, and the industry I'm in (SEM), I'd like to get my blog ranked under something in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN. So, I'm searching for keywords to get ranked on for Search Engine Optimization. My first thought is "Paul's Blog", but how boring and uncreative is that? I'm taking ideas, please help.