Ask Kalena

Oooh you're back! Lookin good. Have you lost weight? Yes, that was a compliment designed to butter you up for my next question. Subscribed to my feed yet? :-)

Did you know that Search Engine Wiki – the world’s first vertical wiki dedicated to search engines and search engine marketing is now two years old? It’s true!  To celebrate, we’ve taken the site out of BETA and given it a facelift.

Long time readers of this blog will remember when we first launched the site back in November 2007. The idea behind Search Engine Wiki is to provide a collaborative online library of search engine marketing (SEM) resources.

We’ve been spending a lot of time on Search Engine Wiki lately, adding new resources and checking for broken links. We’re particularly proud of our comprehensive list of worldwide search engines and directories, categorized by country and region.

Our list of Australian search engines has just been updated this week, so if you run link building campaigns for Australian clients, you might want to pop your head in there and make sure their sites are listed in all of them. We’ll be making a post here soon featuring all the new Australian search engines and directories.

Another popular section of Search Engine Wiki is our Niche Search Engines category. In here you’ll find lists of search engines and directories categorized by niche, industry or theme e.g. weddings, business, travel or government.

So if you haven’t visited Search Engine Wiki for a while, now’s a great time to pop in. It’s a community wiki, so if you have additional search engines, tools or resources to add, we’d welcome your contributions.

Dear Kalena…

I just read your article on SEM careers at Pandia and I have a strong feeling that you probably are the right person that I can air my career-question to.

I am Raj from Hyderabad, India and I am an engineering graduate. I worked as a Software Developer and am planning to shift my career to SEM/SEO. I have been reading as many article as I possibly could on SEO/SEM but unable to get that first break. Could you please answer the following questions for me?

1. Is it possible for a newbie on SEM/SEO to work remotely (from home)?

2. Where does a newbie make a beginning and how?

Regards

Raj

Hi Raj

There’s no reason why you can’t start a successful career in SEO and/or SEM working from home. As you’ve already read my “11 Reasons” article, you’ll know the benefits of gaining employment in the search industry.

If you need SEO / SEM training, there are plenty of options available these days, (including *cough* Search Engine College *cough*) but you should also start practising on your own sites and others as soon as possible. Hands-on experience is essential to competency in the field.

Once you feel confident with your newly acquired skills, offer to SEO sites pro-bono or for very little compensation, to help expand your experience. Charity or Not-For-Profit sites often need SEO services but don’t have the budget to hire experts.

Monitor industry job sites such as our SEM Jobs Board and join sites like Elance to bid for projects to gain freelance SEM work. If there is an appropriate opportunity in your location, offer to be an unpaid intern for a SEM agency for a month. The knowledge you will gain will be invaluable. Likewise, you could offer to do some voluntary freelance SEO or SEM work online from home for an agency you respect that is not necessarily in your region.

Review all the posts here in the Jobs and Salaries categories for more inspiration.

Best of luck!

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Like to learn more about SEO? Download my free SEO lesson. No catch!

Google has provoked more concerns over privacy this month with the launch of Google Dashboard.

Googe Dashboard is basically an access point for all your Google logins and tools associated with your Google account, as well as a summary of your usage of those tools.

From the official blog post:

“In an effort to provide you with greater transparency and control over their own data, we’ve built the Google Dashboard. Designed to be simple and useful, the Dashboard summarizes data for each product that you use (when signed in to your account) and provides you direct links to control your personal settings.”

From the Dashboard, you can now manage your settings for and view usage of more than 20 products, including:

• Google Alerts
• Blogger accounts
• Calendar
• Contacts
• Google Docs
• Gmail
• iGoogle / Google Gadgets
• Orkut
• Latitude
• YouTube
• Picasa
• Web History
• Product Search
• Google Profile
• Google Reader
• GTalk

Google is planning to add even more products to the Dashboard, such as:

• Google Analytics
• Google AdSense
• Google AdWords
• Audio Ads
• Google Base
• Local Business Center
• Google Page Creator
• Google Webmaster Tools
• Google Subscribed Links
• Google Wave
• Website Optimizer

To find the Google Dashboard, sign in to your Google account, then click on the Settings link from the Google Home Page and choose Google Account Settings from the drop down menu. This will open your Google Accounts page. From there you’ll see a new link under Personal Settings called Dashboard – View Data Stored With This Account. Click on that link and you’ll be prompted to enter your password again before being taken to the Dashboard page.

If you’re already logged into your Google Account, you can access the Dashboard by typing in https://www.google.com/dashboard/. All data stored in your Dashboard is private unless indicated by the shared icon as visible to others.

Having viewed my own Dashboard and usage data, I can understand why privacy experts and bloggers are freaked out. It’s quite disconcerting to see exactly how much Google knows about you and your online history. People have been concerned enough about the search history tracking built into the Google Toolbar, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. Dashboard proves that Google is collecting much, much more data about your online activities than you might think. In the wrong hands, this information could easily present opportunities for mass identity theft.

However, one of the major prompts for launching Dashboard was to give people back some element of control over how their data is stored by Google. This is a step towards transparency after all – and as their official blog post states – they are the first major Internet company to offer this degree of control.

So while it’s a little alarming to witness so much of your personal data stored by the Big G, you at least now have the ability to edit and/or permanently remove it. (Or so they say?)

The latest issue of the Search Light newsletter came out yesterday. And it’s only 2 days late! At this rate, our November newsletter may even buck the trend and be published on time.

In this issue, we celebrate Search Engine College reaching 45 countries by offering subscribers a USD 50 discount on all certification courses.

The newsletter also includes some of the more interesting FAQs answered in this blog and an article debunking the myth of SEO as voodoo, written by web site usability extraordinaire Kim Krause Berg

If you’re not yet a newsletter subscriber catch it here and then quickly go and subscribe before I find out!

So last week, Derek, you decided that Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) was worthless and persons who perform SEO were evildoers.

Not surprisingly, the SEO industry was outraged. Some bared their teeth and responded in kind. Others tried to reason with you and calmly deconstruct your criticisms.  All of us were offended on some level and felt the need to defend the industry, me included.

This week, you seem to have had second thoughts about your rant and you’ve posted an apology of sorts on your blog. This is to be commended Derek, thank you and I’m pleased you finally seem to understand why you were wrong to isolate an industry. BUT, you tarnish the apology by accusing us of being too defensive and not doing enough to clean up the industry.

You say:

“I ask the good SEOs: What are you doing to clean up your industry? Perhaps if you did more, you wouldn’t have to endure the regular bleats of frustration from people like me.”

As Shari Thurow and Jill Whalen state in the comment thread, we write articles. We speak at conferences. We publish blogs and newsletters that educate webmasters about *good* SEO.

I run this (unpaid) agony aunt column answering newbie questions about anything search engine related. My latest post even warns a reader against taking up the services of a scammer (calling himself an SEO) claiming to be able to put a site onto the first page of Google within 24 hours.

I tutor students in 44 countries in SEO via an online educational institution that I founded specifically to educate confused webmasters. And yes, web design, usability and copywriting are featured as key components.

In other words, we’re doing our best.

Derek, you end your *apology* with:

“If someone tells you that your hair is green, the only reason to get defensive is if it’s true.”

Another reason to come to the defense of our industry is when it is wrongly labelled. If we didn’t care about our industry’s reputation we wouldn’t bother to try and correct assumptions and stop the spread of misinformation, right?

As one commenter stated in the *apology* thread,  we felt we needed to clean up YOUR view of the SEO practitioners out there so it didn’t propagate the myth that SEO is evil. It’s just another way we’re trying to clean up our industry as a whole, as you are suggesting.

What more would you have us do?