And I replied:

@BenJerrysWest #OMGFreeBenJerrys Come to @imarketinginc We have a whole company of 60+ people craving for ice cream! http://t.co/9ADbre6fb0

April 24, 2013 6:58 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@BenjArriola

Benj Arriola

And told them what’s in my head:

@BenJerrysWest #OMGFreeBenJerrys Let me help you show what's in my head @iMarketingInc Come http://t.co/9ADbre6fb0 http://t.co/gIPzLy4hgS

April 24, 2013 7:21 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@BenjArriola

Benj Arriola

Ben & Jerry’s was in Benj’s Head

Got a few retweets. Thanks for the RT’s Kit, JR, Otep, Jon, Bryan, Best Foods n Travel, Master Bentong!

Several people in the office tweeted too!

@BenJerrysWest #OMGFreeBenJerrys come to Internet Marketing Inc!

April 24, 2013 6:03 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SeanKlope

Sean Klope

@BenJerrysWest #OMGFreeBenJerrys come to our offices! @iMarketingInc @InternetMktgInc - I <3 Ice Cream!!! Especially Ben & Jerry's.

April 24, 2013 6:06 pm via DigsbyReplyRetweetFavorite

@gratefullab

gratefullab

@BenJerrysWest #OMGFreeBenJerrys come to @iMarketingInc !

April 24, 2013 6:11 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@kevincgraves

Kevin Graves

@BenJerrysWest #OMGFreeBenJerrys to come to the IMI office! They're in San Diego and riding around w/ free ice cream :)!

April 24, 2013 7:29 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@brentgleeson

Brent Gleeson

I retweeted all of them. I also saw other agencies downtown saying B&J should go there. So I tweet again:

@BenJerrysWest @iMarketingInc Downtown parking is hard. @imarketinginc has parking space specially for you! Map: http://t.co/9ADbre6fb0

April 24, 2013 7:40 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@BenjArriola

Benj Arriola

Which one from Digitaria gives a rebuttal to my tweet and replies:

@BenjArriola Parking downtown is only hard if you don't have the hookup ;) We got your back @BenJerrysWest. COME SEE US! #omgfreebenjerrys

April 24, 2013 9:49 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@beccadebono

Rebecca Debono

And what was the result?

We tweeted and they came! We love Ben & Jerrys ice cream! @BenJerrysWest #OMGFreeBenJerrys @iMarketingInc

April 25, 2013 12:08 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SeanKlope

Sean Klope

#OMGFreeBenJerrys stopped by at our office today! Holler 🍦#weallscreamforicecream @butterflytires… http://t.co/UJn9yoUStR

April 25, 2013 12:01 am via InstagramReplyRetweetFavorite

@melissambraden

Melissa Braden

Yay, it worked! #OMGFreeBenJerrys Thanks @BenJerrysWest http://t.co/0fw8WtQgdu

April 24, 2013 11:54 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@kelsey_powellxo

Kelsey Powell

Ben & Jerry’s comes to Internet Marketing Inc.

Makes everyone happy:

THANK YOU @BenJerrysWest for the #icecream! We <3 you! #OMGFreeBenJerrys http://t.co/rrAY457cY4

April 25, 2013 12:09 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@iMarketingInc

IMI

Everyone at Internet Marketing Inc. with Ben & Jerry’s!

Thanks Ben & Jerry’s! Yay Internet Marketing Inc.!

Benj Arriola Presenting at the Online Marketing Summit (OMS) at Silicon Valley. Photo Credit: David McBee.

The Online Marketing Summit – Silicon Valley was great! Didn’t realize there were several OMS speakers sitting at the back and thanks to all those that gave nice words about my presentation on Google Panda and Penguin updates.

Thanks so much for the kind tweets.

Learning so much on Panda & Penguin Updates from the brilliant @BenjArriola #omsummit

October 23, 2012 6:16 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@zenaweist

Zena Weist

Thanks Zena, I noticed you were at the second row. I came in when you were still presenting about Operationalizing Social Business, I came to the end of it but it did look very insightful and analytical and how you relied on custom tools your company has developed.

Common themes in both #ContentMarketing and #SEO: Good content good links, more video. @arniek and @benjarriola #omsummit

October 23, 2012 6:58 pm via Twitter for iPadReplyRetweetFavorite

@NatalieBering

Natalie Bering

Nice to know we are all on the same page, which is good for all of us and for PR Newswire as well. Which in my opinion is one of the best online PR distribution services. It just gets one of the highest exposure.

.@benjarriola is sharing far more great #seo info than I can tweet - will share slides after. #omsummit

October 23, 2012 6:42 pm via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite

@tonia_ries

Tonia Ries

Thank Tonia, I also shared the slides down below this blog post. Dank! Merci!

.@benjarriola is talking about google's manual website review process. Very interesting! #omsummit

October 23, 2012 6:40 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@nherbw

Nicholas Walter

Nicholas, I know we have tweeted on talking about more SEO issues over lunch, and sorry I didn’t get to catch you at lunch and was at the table with OMS speakers Nicole Muñoz, and our Scandinavians friends Steen Rasmussen and Henrik Stenmann where we continued to talk about Panda, Penguin and other matters.

highly recommend>> .@benjarriola hosting a writing seminar on Nov 13 >> http://t.co/Baq2OjpI cc @marissamcn #omsummit

October 23, 2012 6:36 pm via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite

@tonia_ries

Tonia Ries

Yes, thanks Tonia, and to others, check it out, it will be free. This is the same training we also give to our internal SEO team. Sign up today for this Content Writing Webinar!

Understanding Panda and Penguin updates (love this image) @BenjArriola #omsummit http://t.co/OVDdhizC

October 23, 2012 6:22 pm via Camera on iOSReplyRetweetFavorite

@NatalieBering

Natalie Bering

Thank Natalie, I actually stalled at this slide. And talked a bit before going to the next slide. I waited for you and David to put down your phones before I moved to the next slide.

Panda: "I'm bored reading your stale content." Penguin: "Your links look spammy." @BenjArriola #omsummit http://t.co/PXaFA5ZY

October 23, 2012 6:18 pm via Photos on iOSReplyRetweetFavorite

@davidmcbee

David McBee

And thanks David for actually going out of your way to come and approach me for your feedback of the presentation. And for everyone that missed it, I have my tweet below where you can get everything.

My #OMS12 #OMSummit Presentation on Google Panda and Penguin updates is downloadable here: http://t.co/yDdG1hrF http://t.co/HLL1KHEc

October 23, 2012 9:29 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@BenjArriola

Benj Arriola

Thanks also to those that were not at OMS but like the presentation!

@BenjArriola I wasn't able to be present at the summit. Really enjoyed your slides. Do you have a webinar in the works?

October 24, 2012 5:42 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Shellnelsa

Shelley Nelson

Thanks Shelley!

Sir @BenjArriola I like the part on Trust Bait :) http://t.co/LqQgV75x via @iMarketingInc

October 26, 2012 1:54 am via Tweet ButtonReplyRetweetFavorite

@gdtalampas

Geromme Talampas

Salamat Geromme!

Thanks also to those that tweeted with their premonition. Blessed are those that believe in my SEO, even if they have not heard my presentation yet.

@BenjArriola #oms12 #omsummit You will undoubtedly be one of the best speakers there!

October 22, 2012 8:19 pm via DigsbyReplyRetweetFavorite

@gratefullab

gratefullab

Links to all resources, tools and webinar signup are on the Internet Marketing Inc. blog, check it out.

@BenjArriola fantastic - you answered all my questions & saved me so much time. Thank you!!

October 23, 2012 8:31 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@tonia_ries

Tonia Ries

Great #OMSummit talks today from @dsiroker @marketo @benjarriola @chrisgoward @rocketfuelinc

October 23, 2012 8:56 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@ednoles

ednoles

And thanks Ed and thanks again Tonia

Shoemoney’s $132,994.97 Adsense Check

I have been an oldschool follower of Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker even in the early days of his career being an early listener of WebmasterRadio.fm and has always listened to his first podcast show there, Net Income. SEO people today don’t hear his name that much anymore and more of the affiliate marketers know him more these days. He claims he doesn’t know SEO as much as many of the masters do, but I would say he has a good SEO common sense anyway. He has a good marketing common sense as well that he can made a brand powerful and SEO just naturally happens.

The photo above is one of the famous pictures of Shoemoney. Where he holds up his $132,994.97 Google Adsense check. Nearly $140,000.

I have about 140,000 more than Shoemoney!

Below is a photo of me, in typical Shoemoney inspired pose. In this photo I have estimated 140,000 more than Shoemoney! 140,000 estimated more strands of hair on my head than Shoemoney. Didn’t mean to offend Shoemoney in anyway by the way, he looks good without hair and I look bad without it.

Benj Arriola’s $1,689.85 Adsense Check and 140,000 more strands of hair

All my Adsense earnings from the day I joined in 2003 was direct deposited to my bank account. I only decided to have this sent by check so I can do the Shoemoney pose. Now I’ve done it, I am going back to Direct Deposit, it’s way more convenient.

So I really don’t make as much, but $1,689.85 isn’t bad. And I really do not make this much regularly every month, it all goes up and down. But even on bad months, passive income is passive income. You really do not work on it and money just comes in. For those that are discouraged by not even making $100 a month, don’t worry, everyone that is sharing some large check started where you are. The very first day I joined Adsense in 2003, my first month was only $0.09 and I thought Google Adsense was one of the worst ways to make money online. Later on… as it increases through better optimization, I just started to love it.

I was told that there were some Internet connection issues at Bataan that there was some difficulty in downloading the video. It is indeed a large file, aside from being very long. A ordinary YouTube account will not accept it. Vimeo who has a 500MB limit was also not enough. I did a 1280 x 720 video in HD format. So this is what I will do… I will split up the file into several videos, bookmark this URL and come back later. I decided to place this on my personal blog and not on Internet Marketing Inc. which is where I primarily blog about SEO stuff, mainly because there are several times I spoke in Tagalog and it is just not appropriate to have it on the IMI blog.

I am currently splitting up the videos now and will be tweeting #morcon2012, posting in the SEO.org.ph forum, the SEO Org Philippines Facebook group and in the 24×7 Skype chat room as these videos go online.

Sorry for the inconvenience this may have brought you, if ever you were expecting my video or even my live appearance at the event.

IMPORTANT NOTE: These videos were intended for SEO Organization Philippines’ conference MORCon 2012, thus these videos are presented in English and Tagalog.

Part 1: Business Side of SEO – Benj Arriola’s MORCon 2012 Introduction

Part 2: Business Side of SEO – Business Goals and High Level Overview of the SEO Industry

Not all SEOs are business people, although not all SEOs also run their own business. The main goal of any business is to make money, and we may all be in different situations with regards to business.

Most people think that making a profit is more important if you own an SEO company or is a freelance SEO professional. But even if you are an employee of an SEO company, making sure the company is profitable also helps ensure job security knowing the company will survive. So being part of the goal of making sure the company makes money still benefits you as an SEO employee.

Part 3: Business Side of SEO – Pricing and SEO Proposals

Most of this knowledge on pricing and proposals is basic knowledge in business that can be applied outside of SEO. This is already about an hour long total for all 3 videos, but it doesn’t end there. I was initially giving the options for the users to choose which one to present, the first half or second half for MORCon. But neither were show due to technical problems. So you will get to watch it all here online.

Part 4: Business Side of SEO – SEO Operations

Part 4 of the video is more on setting goals and KPIs, using the right tools, setting a project plan, using project management tools.

MORCon 2012 Business Side of SEO – MORCon 2012 Presentation Summary

MORCon 2012 Video Presentation Update:

• 1:56 AM 9/30/2012 PST: Cut first part of video, the introduction, currently rendering video and will be uploading on YouTube, will be posted shortly.
• 2:18 AM 9/30/2012 PST: Uploaded part 1 on YouTube. Currently preparing part 2.
• 2:53 AM 9/30/2012 PST: Uploaded part 2 on YouTube. Will not work on the rest of the videos yet. It’s 2:54am here. Will continue tomorrow.
• 10:33 AM 9/30/2012 PST: Rendering Part 3 of the video which is 41 minutes, so it will take a while to render and upload. YouTube also told me I am now allowed more than 15 minutes but I am not sure what my upper limit is, if it doesn’t work out, I will probably use Vimeo. Should be embedded here in an hour or two.
• 11:35 AM 9/30/2012 PST: Part 3 uploaded. Will upload remaining later. Going out for lunch.
• 1:58 PM 9/30/2012 PST:Rendering Part 4 of this video.
• 9:32 PM 9/30/2012 PST: All videos uploaded.

The great Joe Frazier and Beautiful Anna Nicole Smith, may they rest in peace.

I really respect these great personalities that has entertained us in one way or another in the past, and this blog post is not in anyway intended to offend any friends or relatives of these people. May their souls rest in peace.

What this blog post is about are two linked in request I have received a few days ago.

Both I decided not to approve. One from Joe Frazier, and another from Ana Nicole Smith. Both I did not approve because they just do not seem to be real people. To all the SEO guys out there, you know I do get the fake profile thing… creating new personas, adding more people, getting more friends, followers, relationships and later on trying to promote something. But always trying to appear like a soft sell and not blatant marketing. But creating profiles with real names of popular dead people? That just makes the profile look more fake?!?!

Ok, maybe I am wrong. Maybe there is someone named Joe Frazier and Ana Nicole Smith. They just so happened to be named the same names as these famous celebrities.

Joe Frazier – The SEO from India

Joe Frazier is from India, and Ana Nicole Smith is the Link Builder from Indonesia

Ana Nicole Smith – The Link Builder from Indonesia

I highly doubt these are the real names. I believe Frazier does not sound like a last name from India. And Smith also does not sound like a last name from Indonesia. And lastly, we do not even know if these request really came from those countries.

Again, I can still be wrong. But my SEO spammer sense is tingling telling me they do not seem to be real people. If this is the work of someone I personally know… sorry. I also didn’t have any intentions to offend you. Some of you might be saying what is Benj doing? Calling out other SEOs, I should understand what they do. And I actually do. All my SEO clients are whitehat SEO clients and that doesn’t mean I haven’t played on the dark side for experiments and stuff. But if you don’t do things correctly, these are the things that the non-SEO people hate about the SEO people. And the more people that hate us, the more it breaks our credibility.

The Whitehat Advice: Don’t do this, don’t make fake profiles. It’s wrong.

The Blackhat Advice: WTH? What kind of name is that? Please use a better realistic name.

This is more of a rant post. Not really anything about SEO tips, social media tips or what. There are just some stuff I don’t like out there, and it may be targeted to some people I know and if ever you feel offended by this post, I am sorry, this is just how I feel about this matter. But I will keep names out of this, not only am I purposely doing it that way, I also cannot remember the names of the people that do this. By now you probably still do not know what I am talking about, so let’s just get started.

1. I hate people requesting me to be their friend on LinkedIn when their profile is almost nearly blank

I approve people I know, and if I do not know you, at least you can introduce yourself. And if you do not introduce yourself, at least give some information on your profile which should make me decide to approve your request. If I do not know and you do not introduce yourself, and your profile does not say anything that you, no information of the company where you work, no educational background and just your name, you look to spammy to me. Looks like a profile just made to spam people in some way or form. Sorry I do not want to approve you.

I get several of these every week. Here is one:

I blurred the name and country. But you can see this is the only thing in his profile.

Want to see the details of this guy? Here is where he works, specifically.

WTH is that? Clear keyword spamming.

2. I don’t like your LinkedIn or Facebook keyword rich first names & last names, I will not add you

Hey I am an SEO person too, I get what you are trying to do, but sorry I hate that style. You can already see I do not that to myself, My first name is Benj and my last name is Arriola. Many people out there use these fields in the database to say SEO Expert, SEO Guru, SEO Specialist, SEO Consultant, whatever. I am not here to debate if it works or not, if it helps your ranking or not, but for me, if it helps ranking or not, that is besides the point. It is just wrong. The more you abuse the system, the more you get kicked out. The more the rules change. The more the social media networks will change. The more Google will change again. Those tactics are short-term and not future-proof.

Nice last name you got there. Even putting together expert and guru in the same line so you can try to rank for both.

3. Retweet, request to share or like on Facebook for mediocre blog post or photo

Hey I get this too, I know what you are trying to do. In fact I may have asked favors from you before to retweet, share or like. But I do not do that to all my blog post. I only do this if I sincerely believe what I am putting out there is really good quality and deserves some attention. Some of you just pass on random article you wrote for your SEO client and was written in the most boring way possible. Then you see some keyword focused link in there going to your SEO client. It is the great wall of text, no images, just a bunch of words, paraphrased from other sources and written as boring as it can be. Some of you ask request to like a photo in some photo contest. I know that in photo contest, the subject of the photo may be subjective, but the least the photo can have is to really have photography-quality that is worthy of a prize. Some ask for some votes and your photo really looks bad, it’s blurry, amateur made, subject makes no sense to the theme. C’mon, how can you expect me to like that?

Let me clear things up a bit, I am not a hard person to please, and you can easily ask me favors for voting, sharing, liking, retweeting, whatever, but please consider also if you put in the effort to really come up with something good to share out there.

Remember when you are asking for voting, bookmarking, sharing or retweeting favors, it should never be voted, shared or bookmarked by only the people you know. If they are the only people doing this for you, that means the quality of your work is very low. The purpose is for the general public to like what you have to share. And the people you personally know is just to start to get the ball rolling to gain the initial attention that will reach the people you do not know.

This one I have no example of because I delete them so quickly on FaceBook and it is hard to find on Twitter. But for those that I personally know, sometimes I send them a PM or I chat with them and give them advice on how they can improve their blog post. And when they improve it, then I share it, like it etc. But if I personally do not know you, sorry, your message goes to the delete box.

Since this is more of a rant, and I may offend some other people, some of you may be my friends, I decided to post it here and not on my SEO Company’s blog where I work.

Some people get SEO right away, for others it takes a while to digest. That is totally understandable since all of us come from different knowledge backgrounds. TO know every detail of SEO takes some time, which is why some business just hire SEO agencies but still try their best to get a good overview of what SEO is all about. Watch the video below.

Google released a video 2 days ago, presented by Maile Ohye, with the title SEO for Startups in Under 10 Minutes. But I think this video is also good not only for startup companies, but for any company that has no done SEO yet in the past and needs an overview of the initial steps and what will happen in an SEO campaign.

Now if you are still confused, there are some good beginner’s SEO books out there, and for the pros, maybe you can suggest some of the books that you found to be good for SEO Newbies.