HomeGain Nation 2010 – San Francisco

Some days it is just good to be me. (grin)

These are days you are grateful for. The kind when everything goes right and life is good. I just landed in San Francisco after a great flight in from Cincinnatti. The weather when I left home? 30’s and cold. The weather for HomeGain Nation 2010? Perfect.

Very nice ride in on the plane. Hooked up to the in flight internet and connected with a few clients while I was in the air. i sent out 5 leads from our website in three hours that we SOLID people looking to see homes plus 15 others that we just looking. All during the flight.

HomeGain put the Live Nation event up at the Fairmont (top of Knob Hill in San Francisco) again this year. It is classy and tonight only gets better. I get to hang out with people that I really like and have not seen in quite a while.

Louis Cammarrasono – from HomeGain
Russell Shaw – someone who I aspire to be like. Simple as that.
Brian Brady – from the Bloodhound Blog (looking forward to chatting with him big time.)
Eric Bramlett – who will be speaking with me.
Jay Thompson…
The list is long and I don’t want to offend any others by not mentioning them. (Just trust me that there are dozens more to add to the list).

The HomeGain staff takes care of everything and makes is EASY for someone to work with them.

Oh, yeah… And the University of Louisville just beat UCONN. Last second shot by Edgar Sosa.

Good grief, does it get any better? For me these types of events (where I can pick the brains of the experts and trade ideas with valued colleagues) are an upper. They are what I need to clear the fog and get to the business of my business.

I guess I just want to say that I am grateful to get to be me. Today it is good to be me. Very good. I have learned to appreciate these days and savor them for what they are. And to say thanks, as well.

If you are at HomeGain Nation 2010, ping me.

Mark Jaquith gets it…and SEO’s should too.

With this post, I could really get into the technical nitty gritty of “how” some people do their SEO. I could get into link injection, spinning content with Markov generators, sneaking code (read: links ) into every possible crevice of someone else’s WordPress site through surreptitious means. But I won’t.

Doing these things is not right. Period.

I read this morning Mark Jaquith’s post about what is and is not acceptable in the way of WordPress plugins staying in the directory. I could not agree more. Somebody that does SEO agrees with that? ABSO-doggone-lutely. Every word. Especially the part about credit links being by default turned off.

HERE’S WHY:

In 2007 I wrote a post about online communities needing to have clear rules and lots of police. WordPress is a community not AT ALL unlike the real estate communities that I mentioned. Anytime you facilitate letting people write on your site OR you facilitate (via plugins) the ability for people to (possibly) write on other people’s sites as well, clear rules and good enforcement are CRUCIAL.

I applaud Mark for clearly stating what the rules of the road are. I agree with them. Even if I did not agree with them, they are his rules because they are WordPress’s road, and WordPress is apparently taking these steps to manage the rules of participation in their community, the same way that the folks at Real Estate Webmasters take seriously the conditions of when and how they will let people write on their site. Clear rules build communities. I said it in 2007 and I still believe it today.

BUT I AGREE w/ Mark FULLY ANYWAY. The entire value of links is the extent to which they are an accurate measurement of a site’s true authority on a given subject. That is why search engines use it as a factor. That is why the BEST search engine optimization efforts are long term TRUE AUTHORITY building efforts and not the trickery.

This means if you want to optimize really effectively, form long lasting and solid relationships with lots of reputable people in an industry. Make sure that the search engines can SEE the relationships you have formed, and you will over time build a SOLID online presence that is truly an asset.

This does not happen by surreptitiously playing “hide the link” sausage with as many other folks as you can. Seriously.

WordPress has developed into a powerhouse blogging platform / website platform / CMS. Those who develop plugins can either choose to develop them for the community (or not). If they are developed under GPLv2, then (in my opinion) they should not turn links on by default.

There are so many ways for folks to build true authority out there, why resort to less than “Do unto others” level of business? I will admit that I have not ALWAYS done everything that I would put into that category, but I can tell you without hesitation, that is my goal and it has been my goal for quite some time.

Good works. Seriously. It does.

For those who disagree with my take on this, that is fine. Either way, clarity as to the rules of the road is commendable. Kudos Mark for taking this one on head on.