The media is paying increasing attention to outsourcing as the US economy struggles and jobs remain scarce. This is fine, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. Search the news and you’ll read about corporations shipping jobs overseas to lower production costs, to reduce training costs, and to generally reduce costs of doing business. Numerous other reports show the very large percentage of corporations similarly sheltering their earnings overseas, to avoid US taxes.

Meanwhile there are few jobs, high taxes, and decreasing services available to citizens.

But if you’re in tech and the web, you know how hard it is to find a good front end developer or web developer, or analytics ninja or generally highly-capable tech worker. The good ones are all fully booked. The ones that are available seem to be unworthy of your trust and dependence. What’s going on? Shouldn’t the demand for qualified workers drive the production of .. qualified workers?

Education and jobs.. collateral damage from the corporate outsourcing of American jobs and profits.

The public school system was created not to educate the masses but to train workers in the basic skills they needed to operate machinery and manage other workers.  Prior to the industrial revolution, government and wealthy elites preferred the common man remain ignorant and dependent on them for jobs and basic survival. With the advent of machines we needed operating manuals, and workers who could write and read them. Public schools were created for corporations. Go ahead, research the history of public schools.

Throughout history local companies have pressed school boards to adjust curricula to support their local manufacturing and service economies. Large tech centers like Rochester NY rose out of funding and political influence from large corporation (like Kodak). Schools developed along with industry. We needed to fight for academic freedom and well-rounded education, but the major driving force was jobs jobs jobs because success was global and we needed to stay competitive.

In the past 40 years we’ve seen the US drop in mathematics learning as Asian nations excelled. There are parallels to economic development. In my years inside academia, I knew many academic leaders who pushed diligently for better high school education so that students would be better prepared for college. High schools needed to prepare kids for tech jobs. Colleges intended to prepare them for better jobs such as Engineering and management and leadership positions. Leaders lead others… other workers.

Perhaps corporate America has abandoned more than just creating US jobs and paying US taxes. They may have abandoned  support of US education. After all, if they outsource the lower and mid-level jobs overseas, and select their top-tier employees from a global talent pool of self-funded university grads, do they really care about the previously important public school  worker producing channels?

No. They can externalize the cost of advancing civil society just as they externalize the costs of  pollution, hazardous waste, health insurance, and transportation. Soon I expect they will extend their externalization of the costs of defense to local security issues, as they increasingly need protection from the very same out of work, under-educated, lost-in-space citizens they have abandoned.

The decline of the community college tracks this…  the inflation of the higher education finance bubble is a consequence of the collapse of the middle tier of universities, suddenly left with inadequate qualified students, inadequate industrial and commercial support, and an embarrassingly disconnected leadership. What could they do but get in line with the Wall Street  Way, looking to fancy financial instruments to save their dying businesses?

The next time you think outsourcing is ok, and notice the substantial costs of worker hiring and retraining if you don’t outsource,  remember there’s more to the story. Societal collapse, for example.

I think to Boldy Go where Man Has Gone Before.. is Foolish

Even I am too young for the real original Star Trek sagas, but I do remember the daytime TV I watched as a kid, with episode after episode of Captain James T. Kirk keeping courage, trust, integrity and humanity alive in the Universe. And of course, the call to action every episode was “to boldly go where no man has gone before“. Wow… not just to go into the unknown, but to boldly go. That takes courage.

We SEO innovators put our courage to the test constantly, pushing limits and testing both Google and the marketplace. We go where no man has gone before, and often on behalf of our clients. When we boldly go, we usually go on our own, testing the waters or innovating, uncertain of the outcomes. Since in capitalist systems reward tries to flow to risk takers, we often boldly go where we believe we can successfully innovate. There is little room in the SEO research arena for timidity.

Recently I’ve witnessed a different sort of SEO effort though. I’ve seen SEO people boldly going where many people have gone before, without full awareness of the outcomes (seo history).  I think that is the definition of SEO foolish. As my favorite ADD coach says, go boldly, but not carelessly.

The other day in an initial meeting with a web team, I boldly stated that “I know that 95% of quoted statistics are nonsense, but I say 90% of SEO materials published on the web are wrong“. I offered  a money back guarantee on that claim. It’s true. The vast bulk of so-called SEO blogs, articles, and advice proffered by web vendors is misleading at best and typically incorrect (often outdated). To boldly follow such advice can be very risky.

When a webmaster believes what she reads about SEO on the web and then implements it, she either wastes time and effort (because it won’t work well) or assumes undue risk (making changes with uncertain outcomes). In search marketing, taking incorrect actions can cost you more than not having done anything at all.

Changes to public-facing signals (which by definition are search-engine-facing signals) always incur SEO risks. If something  is misinterpreted by the search engines, it can cost you. Even if nothing changes, the wasted resources bleed power from other efforts that could have increased sales or lowered costs. And if we analyze subsequent rankings changes (which may or may not have had anything to do with the “seo” efforts) from a correlational perspective, or otherwise biased cause-and-effect perspective, such efforts can gain negative momentum and cost us even more progress.

I wrote about the way the SEO marketplace skews understanding of the SEO a long time ago in a blog post about “A Market for Lemons” and SEO consulting. The marketing materials published by SEO vendors comprises a big portion of the potentially harmful SEO misinformation out there.

Following incorrect SEO advice is a mistake. Boldly following it, can be disastrous.

SEO contrarians have been more consistently correct than SEO pundits for quite some time now. Don’t let that stop innovation and experimentation, but I suggest the following approach to strong SEO today:

• Don’t execute hard on anything you haven’t soundly tested for yourself
• Don’t trust what you read from free or vendor-sponsored SEO publications. this is a variation on the old but very sound advice “follow the money”
• Ask specific questions so you can estimate risk and reward, before you execute SEO tactics. If you don’t know where to safely ask such questions, you’ve just identified your first need: you need a good seo consultant (such as Audette Media)
• Definitely go where SEOs have gone before, just don’t do so foolishly (boldly). Test and execute, and of course double down on  things that clearly work. You won’t enjoy the benefits of early execution for long, as the web is rather transparent when it comes to SEO (competitors will see you rank and figure out what you did… and copy it).
• Learn why PPC is a valuable test tool for SEO. Join PPCBlog.com if you need cut-to-the-chase practical advice.
• Boldly Go where No Man Has Gone Before - this is great advice. Do it on separate test sites or sites you can afford to lose, and learn learn learn. And if you find you love this aspect of SEO, welcome to my world of advanced SEO and SEO research. I hope to see you in the seobook.com private forums, or in-person at conference networking events, or involved in my future SEO newsletter WebPrescience.com.

Big is attractive. Now Facebook is so big, it’s a magnet drawing attention from otherwise reasonable people in online marketing. Facebook Facebook Facebook. It was previously Social Media, Social Media, Social Media but now it’s more specific because, well, Facebook is big. Billions big.

Whatever you’re measuring, find a smaller unit of measure so you can report bigger counts. People just love big numbers. Facebook had millions of users, but now it’s valued at Billions of dollars. Billions…. wow.

So Facebook is super important. Are you marketing on Facebook?

And then the same old  discussions begin… we have a “Facebook Page” (but don’t do anything with it). We have “Facebook friends” (but not many, and don’t do anything with them). We do some “Facebook advertising” (but most things we’ve tried didn’t produce results). Etcetera.

Take a look folks, and know your history.  Facebook is a closed community. A walled garden. Like the old AOL - America Online. It needs to be big to succeed. Huge, even. It must, or it won’t work. Big big big.. huge. Everyone is on it.. you have to be on it. Unless “just about everyone” is on it, it will disappoint. Etcetera.

So what about content? Well, why should anyone be on Facebook at all? In the beginning, if “everyone” is on it, you have to be on it. But once you’re past the “hey you’re here too? that’s cool I’m here too did you know Bob’s here also?” stage, then what? That’s right.. content.  Same old same old. Entertain me. Educate me. Adore me. Make me feel special. Or… I’l go somewhere else.

So content becomes king. Just. Like. On. The. Web.

Content? What content? Well, take a look at the reports from emarketer.com on Facebook activity. Who’s got Facebook pages? Local businesses, politicians, musicians, schools…. the top list is full of community builders or community-based efforts. That reflects the comprehensiveness part of the equation — if everyone in your group is on Facebook, you need to be on Facebook. It’s audience building.

Then look at the “Ten Largest Brands on Facebook” and you see the same thing… audience building, for branding. Coca Cola, YouTube, Skittles. What used to be done with a web page on the web and TV and other media, is now *also* done in Facebook (because a BIG community is there).

Look at what people expect from those brands with Facebook pages… “77% of new media users want brands to offer them incentives online. Additionally, 28% would like to be entertained.”

Content. Constant, attractive and engaging content to keep the audience happy. Just like on the Web. The big difference is that now your content is managed by Facebook. Your audience is “owned” by Facebook. Your web page (fan page) is owned and hosted by Facebook, who by the way can wrap it in any context it likes, etc etc etc. Just like the old AOL.

A few more quotes from that article, showing how much work is associated with publishing to Facebook to succeed on Facebook:

Coca-Cola, with 19.8 million Facebook fans, used a year-long social media campaign…to keep its Facebook page constantly updated with content posted by brand ambassadors.

Sounds exactly like a regular website (if you want it to succeed). So, basically, what you have to do to succeed on Facebook is the same stuff you have to do to suceed on your website. And if your organization doesn’t make and maintain compelling content on your website, will it do that on Facebook?

Sometimes I wonder if these Facebook successes really just skunkworks, and I wonder when managers will acknowledge that it is their own people that get in the way of their own people succeeding on the web (or in front of any audience for that matter).