If you dig your head out of the sands of content and linkbuilding for a minute to think about bigger ideas in search and marketing, what would you think of?

Here are my questions and some answers I've collected.

Atten-shun!

1. First of all, what is the best measure of attention equity? Until recently, I would have bet subscribers. But when I asked the question on my blog, Linda from Get Elastic SEO & Ecommerce, (who recently did a nice piece at Problogger), gave me an answer that changed my mind. And, while partly convincing me that comments/repeat commenters were the best measure, she also made me think that perhaps there were better answers. Hence I put the question to the broader community here at SEOmoz... What's your idea of the best metric for attention equity?

Don't be a fool, use great tools! 

2. Second of all, XMCP (the bright guy who writes this blackhat seo blog and wrote this super informative post on porn seo) is currently developing an SEO tool with me. It takes an existing tool idea and adds a whole new functionality to it that saves the end user a loooot of time.

My question is should it be released publicly? Or should I keep it for private use with my own clients, as a sort of competitive advantage I can build up a la Epiar? If it is public, do I just release it as linkbait? Plenty of people have done that and after the time/effort/money, they got few/little links for their tools. And I've been in that failed linkbait place before... (*cough Jane * cough* *Facebook blog* PMs * cough :P ... sorry, this Canadian winter's been knocking a whole bunch of us Canucks under the weather.) Or should I charge for the tool? If I charge, is it per use, per month, per year?  I was also thinking of giving it away to SEOmoz Pro members. What should I do?

User Generated Sessions 

3. I pitched SMX on a greyhat session. I'm wondering what they'll think. On the one hand the search engines likely would prefer that the topic not be discussed officially, but on the other hand there's obviously an interest in the topic, and even in shadier stuff, as the incredible growth of XMCP's subscribership shows (0 - 1200 in 6 months!). I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments as to whether you'd like to attend such a session.

It's now time to pitch SES, and I've been pondering pitching them on a greyhat session too (considering how little treatment greyhat seo gets, there's plenty of fresh stuff to go around), or perhaps a session on shifting your learning from a beginner level to intermediate, or intermediate-advanced.

The issue with the greyhat session is, again, the issue of ticking off the SEs and their big sponsorship dollars. That said, I can't see the SEs not sponsoring just because there's greyhat stuff, and the fact is they sponsored shows where link buying was discussed.

(Incidentally, if you're in the market, here's how to disguise your text link ads to beat human review, courtesy of yours truly and some friends. You may also like this on using n grams for anchor text - though my n grams inspiration here suggests that while the idea is good, Google's n gram data should be steered clear of .)

As to the other session, being that I am the "bookworm-seo" I'm also well-qualified to discuss this, but I'm not sure what I'd say besides read a minimum 15 hours a week, check out the SERPs, and experiment. Any thoughts, content, suggestions, etc. for such an "education on educating yourself outside of conferences" panel? I can see there being details on how to analyze a SERP, perhaps?

Also, I have a question as to whether the mere fact of speaking attracts leads, or whether you need to be speaking on a panel where people are likely to outsource said function? While I might be wrong, I'm not sure how many people in the audience want to hire someone for greyhat work. (Then again, how many want to hire people to teach them how to learn?)

Trends in Search (or, Grey is the new Black) 

There's a lot of premium SEO products being created and marketed at the moment. (SEOmoz  is obviously a thought leader in this respect, not to mention that if offers the best value, imho.) At the same time, there's a generalized trend towards making content free and supporting it with ads.

What I personally find very interesting is that this, in a certain perspective, contradicts the trend Seth Godin outlined in Meatball Sundae - there's an increasingly inverted bell curve of demand. That is, where the y axis represents volume of demand and the x axis represents price (untraditional, but easier to grasp visually), there's lots of demand at uber-cheap prices (think wholesale) and lots of demand at premium price. Hence an upside down bell curve with all the action at either end, and not in the middle. And while there are increasing amounts of free content, I'd say the middle of the curve is well served here, especially by SEOmoz and Aaron Wall.

(Aside: OK, a certain SEO we all know (no link/name mention because he turned his formerly free tools paid, which upsets me) is selling his training program for several K, but I somehow doubt that many people are buying.) 

What would you do to differentiate yourSEO educational offering?  

 

p.s. While Rand got a debate going on the ability/lack thereof for two links on one page to both pass anchor text values to any given page, you'll notice a workaround in this post. Have one of the links link to a page on which there's a backlink to the same page. It's not perfect, but it works. And besides, I recall a certain SEO Book writer ranking for "Traffic Power" on the strength of co-citation...